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Buck sees their faces most nights. Desperate. Terrified. Hopeless.
It starts after Devon. Buck can still feel the cold of the rollercoaster track, his knuckles white as he grips it tighter, reaching down as close as he can. Take my hand. Please take my hand. I won’t let you fall, I promise. But it never matters how much he pleads. Devon lets go, every time. His eyes are fixed on Buck as he falls, down, down, down, and just before he hits the ground Buck claws his way back to consciousness, grasping at the covers on his bed, heart hammering so fiercely he thinks it might break through his ribs.
He tries therapy, more to keep Bobby off his back than anything. Then he’s opening up without even realising it and he thinks maybe, just maybe, this might work. It might actually help him after all.
He sleeps with his therapist. It just kind of… happens. He stops seeing her.
Chimney’s accident. The plane crash. It all starts piling up, more and more faces waiting for him to fall asleep so that they can haunt him, screaming and bloodied, or worse, silent and still.
He has Abby to talk to, though. He doesn’t like to bother her, not when she’s got her mom to worry about, but eventually he lets slip that some calls never really leave him, and she listens. She’s kind. She cares. Some nights he falls asleep still on the phone to her; those are the nights he actually manages to sleep until the sun comes up.
Abby’s mom dies. She quits her job and leaves for Ireland. Buck stops sleeping again.
Suddenly his sister’s in town, and she’s staying at his. Or rather, she’s staying at Abby’s with him. Everyone keeps telling him to move on, but they don’t know for sure that she isn’t coming back to him, and besides, he told her he’d housesit, and it’s not like he’s going to go back on his word, is he?
He takes the couch and tells Maddie to have the bedroom. She teases him for his new-found gallantry and he rolls his eyes, but she smiles and rests her hand on his arm and lets him be chivalrous.
It’s Devon in his dreams again that night. Buck bolts up, his shirt sticking to his back with sweat, and it takes him a moment to realise Maddie is there, sat on the arm of the couch murmuring the same reassurances she used to give him twenty years ago. She wraps an arm around his shoulders and he leans into her like he really is six years old again and a hug from his big sister will fix it all. Maddie doesn’t press him to tell her what he dreamt of. He doubts he’s the only one of them to have woken from a nightmare that night, but she doesn’t seem too keen to say anything either.
Buck flashes a smile and insists he’s fine now. Maddie doesn’t look like she believes him, but she goes back to bed and shuts the door behind her with a click. Buck wonders if she manages to find sleep again. He doesn’t.
There’s a new recruit at their House, and Buck kind of hates him. He hates how easily Eddie Diaz fits into their team, hates how quickly everybody trusts him when it took them months to stop thinking of him as some cocky kid, if they even have stopped thinking of him like that. Eddie is dedicated and cool-headed and attractive and perfect and Buck resents him for all of it.
He figures his resentment might’ve been a little too obvious when Bobby makes him ride with Eddie in the ambulance after a call with a dud grenade. Except it isn’t a dud grenade, and now Buck’s helping to disarm explosives with the guy he hated more than anyone else in the world not half an hour ago. He’s trying to keep his hands from shaking and every little noise outside makes him want to flinch, but somehow, somehow he and Eddie both make it out of that ambulance alive.
“You can have my back any day,” Eddie tells him, and Buck isn’t sure whether the adrenaline high has anything to do with it, but he decides then that this Eddie guy maybe isn’t so bad after all.
“Or you could have mine,” he offers, and the look on Eddie’s face makes him grin. He was never really worried, he tells Bobby with a half-hearted shrug. Then the grenade goes off after all, and Buck stares at the flames and tries not to think about what might’ve happened if it had gone off ten minutes earlier.
Everything keeps moving at a hundred miles an hour and it doesn’t stop to let him breathe. An earthquake tears through the city and he tries not to let the bodies he sees stay in his mind. Focus on the ones you save, he tells himself. Remember their faces instead. And he does remember them. It doesn’t mean he forgets the others.
Things don’t really get better, but he works out how to handle it. If he hangs on until he’s exhausted he can sometimes avoid dreaming altogether, and if he downs an energy drink or two before his shift he can keep going long enough to make it through the day. It gets him a lecture from Bobby and an unimpressed raised eyebrow from Hen, but he’s used to that by now. He knows how to laugh it off.
The problem with running on energy drinks and two hours of sleep a night, he finds, is that once that energy runs out, it really runs out.
He just about remembers coming back from a call, staggering up the stairs and sinking into the couch. Familiar sounds, Bobby cooking, Hen and Chimney arguing about something unimportant, and Buck starts to drift. He doesn’t even notice it.
The firehouse fades away, and all at once, he’s chin-deep in water in the wreckage of a plane.
He can hear screams but he can’t find where they’re coming from. There’s a distant calling from behind him, first responders pulling survivors out of the water. He thinks he recognises their voices. The water is still rising, and he can hear them calling to him, telling him to get out of there, but he can’t. Not while he can still hear cries for help. He needs to find them, needs to save them, it’s his job, it’s what he’s there for.
He can’t find them. He turns as best he can, searching for any sign of life, but he can’t find any.
“Call out!” The water is pressing against his chest, trying to find its way to his lungs. “Hello? Call out!”
He sees someone facing away from him. He swims over, muddy water stinging his eyes, and reaches forwards. He grabs a handful of their shirt and turns them towards him.
Blank, lifeless eyes stare back.
There’s a hand on his shoulder suddenly, gripping so tightly he can feel the bruises forming, and it’s dragging him down into the water, down, down-
“Buck!”
His eyes fly open. His fingers dig into the fabric of the couch beneath him as he gasps for breath, shaking off the phantom feel of the water.
Eddie sits beside him, a grounding hand on Buck’s shoulder; Buck clings to his arm like a lifeline. He can’t bring himself to be embarrassed, not while he still feels like he can’t breathe, not when he can still feel the pull of the ocean against him.
“You’re okay,” Eddie says quietly. He’s calm, calmer than Buck would be if his coworker freaked out in front of him like he was. Eddie barely blinks an eye. “You’re okay. Just breathe. Breathe.”
Buck does his best. He can’t get the hang of it at first, the breath catching in his throat as he tries to calm himself down. He squeezes his eyes shut. Focuses on Eddie, on the steady pulse he can feel, his fingers curled around Eddie’s wrist. He takes a breath in. Holds it. Lets it out again slowly. Another. In. Hold it. Out.
“That’s good,” Eddie says. “That’s good, Buck.”
He can breathe again, and the embarrassment starts to creep over him. He lets go of Eddie’s arm and scrubs furiously at his eyes. He can feel the others watching him, and he hates it. “Sorry,” he mutters. He coughs to clear his throat, wipes his palms on his pants. “Sorry.”
“Why?” Eddie gives him half a smile. “I did two tours in Afghanistan. You think you’re the only one who gets nightmares?”
Buck scoffs.
Eddie glances behind them to where the others are pretending not to listen. He lowers his voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Buck shakes his head before Eddie’s even finished speaking. “No. Thanks. I’m okay.”
“Okay. But if you change your mind…” Eddie picks up Buck’s phone from the coffee table without waiting for an invitation, typing resolutely. He hands the phone back. “Text me whenever. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll answer.”
Buck looks down at the contact in his phone. “You don’t have to-”
“I know,” Eddie says. “I want to. And I mean it. Any time you want to talk.”
Buck manages a smile. “Thanks, Eddie.”
“Food’s done,” Bobby calls. Eddie nudges him in the ribs as he gets up; Buck elbows him back and follows him to the table.
Bobby sets a plate down in front of him and squeezes his shoulder before moving away; Hen and Chimney start up another argument he’s sure they’re only having to keep the attention off him; Eddie sits down next to him and tries to pick a side in whatever Hen and Chimney are talking about. Buck lets the sound of his family wash over him.
He starts awake a little after 3AM. He lies in the dark, his heart beating so loudly he wonders if his eardrums might burst. Hesitantly, he reaches for his phone. Finds Eddie’s number. He almost thinks better of it. Then, before he can change his mind, he types a message and presses send.
Can I talk to you?
Eddie calls him almost immediately. Buck stares at the screen, takes a breath, and answers.