Archive of Our Own

Before the tsunami, there wasn’t ever one specific thing that Buck thought of when he woke up. It used to be that there were many things that came to mind, like what crazy calls they might get at the station or what no-good he could get up to just to annoy Chim. It was a similar situation at night, too; he lay in bed wondering about the lives they saved, hoping that the families of the people they lost could go on. Buck didn’t pray for them per se, but he thought of them. 

That changed when the tsunami crashed into his world and turned everything upside down. In some ways, it was an eye-opener. Buck had realized that there was no proving he belonged back at the station if he sat around doing nothing, so he’d reached out to Bobby and the Chief, and he’d been placed on light duty. The tsunami showed him he was ready to get back to work, and now, he just needed to prove it to his superiors.

But while the tsunami made a lot of things more clear, putting the important things in focus, it also left behind wreckage unlike any other that he’d ever witnessed. 

The first few nights immediately following the disaster were littered with dreams of never breaking the surface after that initial hit, each one waking him up with a sharp gasp, only for him to fall asleep again and let another plague him. In his dreams, he comes up for breath, but when he takes in the air, his lungs fill with water and his throat burns. He dreams of bodies, sinking or floating. He dreams of being dragged away by one of the final surges, only to be cast out to sea and never seen again. On the worst night, he loses Christopher, and it’s more devastating than any of his nightmares because it’s not a nightmare. It’s a memory. It happened . 

Post-tsunami, there is one thing that Buck wakes up and goes to sleep thinking.

Christopher is alive, and he is okay.

Buck knows that he isn’t doing as well as he could be, but his self-assurance is enough to shed some of the guilt that he bears, and by the fourth night, he feels like he might be getting better. He knows he’s lost weight because some of his shirts don’t fit so snug around his stomach like they used to, but he’s functioning— and this sure as hell isn’t freshman year of college when he was falling into microsleeps in lectures during midterms. Buck figures it could be worse. 

It’s just his luck that worse does come, and it hits him on a night at that he just so happens to stay at Eddie’s. 

It’s completely unplanned. Not even a full week after the tsunami, Eddie invites Buck over for dinner with him and Christopher. Buck had started working again, but hanging out today happens to align perfectly with his schedule. He gets off early, and now that he’s done two days of training, he’s got the next day off before he starts back again on a regular schedule. 

And once Christopher has Buck, he doesn’t want to let go. 

Dinner is a fun affair. They’d made homemade mini pizzas and used toppings in an attempt to recreate each other’s faces, and then they’d indulged Christopher and built different things with some legos while Finding Nemo played in the background.

When Dory sings her classic “just keep swimming,” Christopher and Buck look to each other like the words are an inside secret. Christopher smiles wider than he has the last few days, so Eddie can’t be bothered to feel left out. 

Not long after the movie ends, Christopher must be able to tell that Buck is getting ready to depart because he insists that they play a board game. Buck politely declines, knowing that Eddie must be exhausted after a long shift, but that doesn’t stop the determined boy.

Eddie sees it coming the second that Christopher turns to him, a devious smile playing on his lips.

“Daddy,” the boy calls his attention. “Can Buck spend the night?” 

Buck fumbles with a small bucket of legos, nearly spilling the whole thing.

“I don’t know, bud,” he starts and Christopher frowns. “Have you asked him if he wants to?”

Based on the way he looks to Eddie with wide eyes, Buck didn’t see that coming, likely expecting some form of no. Eddie would be lying if he hadn’t thought about asking him himself, though. He knows that Buck is free the next day and that Christopher would love to have him around for breakfast before school. 

Christopher turns to Buck then, and the man stares back. “Hey, Buck,” he says. 

“Yeah, Chris?”

“Do you want to spend the night?” The boy looks up to him with that same goofy smile that he always has.

Buck looks to Eddie as if to ask if that’s okay. 

Eddie gives him a look back that asks him how that’s even a question. 

“Of course,” Buck finally answers, “but you—”

Buck is promptly cut off by Christopher’s cheering. He throws his hands into the air and squeals. 

Buck and Eddie laugh at the boy’s antics.

“But you still have a bedtime,” Buck reminds him as the cheering dies down. “So, if you want to do anything else, you’re going to have to get ready for bed first.” 

Christopher gasps and nods enthusiastically, already jumping up to go to his room. 

“I’ll be as quick as lightning,” he promises Buck, then heads off toward his room. 

Buck just beams at the boy, absolute joy filling his bones. 

“You’re good with him,” Eddie comments after his son is out of earshot. “If I’d said that, there’d be a bit more reluctance.”

Buck shrugs and scoops some more loose legos into the container. “I knew you were getting tired,” he admits. “And if we give that boy too much reign, he’ll go crazy.” 

“Oh, you’re telling me,” Eddie laughs. “You need help with those?” He points at the legos and Buck shakes his head. 

“Nah. But I uh… I don’t actually have anything to sleep in,” he admits. 

Eddie makes a face. “You don’t have your work duffle in your car?” 

“Not in months,” Buck says. “There wasn’t a point.”

Realization washes over Eddie and he nearly facepalms. “Of course,” he rushes out. “I’m sorry. I forgot I guess.”

“It’s fine,” Buck assures him.

“It’s just that you’ve been around so much that it was easy to forget that you aren’t at work, too,” Eddie explains. “You never feel very far.” 

Buck sets the small bucket down, trying to find the words to respond. Part of him feels like Eddie is saying something more, but he tries not to look into it much. 

Fortunately, he’s saved by Eddie speaking up again, not having read into Buck’s silence. 

“Anyway, you can borrow something of mine,” Eddie suggests. He gets up from his seat and starts toward his room. “It’ll probably fit you just fine, too. You’re so thin these days, Buck, I swear. You need to start eating…” The man’s voice disappears as he walks away, and Buck takes in his surroundings.

The end credits of Finding Nemo are still rolling with the volume turned low, and the room is barely lit from outside light, a deep blue permeating the sky. The blue hour , his brain supplies from some unknown source. When the sun is already below the horizon, but the light still fills the sky. 

It’s not something he gets to see very often anymore. His apartment windows are blocked by another apartment complex, and even before he was confined to his place, he was usually at work during these hours. 

So he sits there, watching the blue get deeper. Somewhere in the house, Christopher is giggling. Buck can hear some closet doors opening and closing from another direction— likely Eddie looking for clothes.

It’s nice not to feel so alone. He doesn’t have this at the apartment. When he’s there, it’s just him, and it’s so lonely that it makes going home all the more difficult after a long day at work or even a good one out with friends. 

Sometimes the silence is suffocating.

His thoughts are interrupted as Eddie comes back, whistling a tune that Buck doesn’t recognize. 

“This is nice,” Buck tells him before he can even process that he’s speaking.

Eddie’s whistling slows and he tosses a few things onto the couch behind Buck, but Buck doesn’t bother to look, eyes fixated on the sky. The blue is fading to grey now. 

“What’s nice?” Eddie asks.

“The company,” he admits. “The sound.”

Eddie listens and doesn’t hear much out of the normal— nothing especially pleasing, at least. 

“What about the sound?” he questions.

“Just that it’s there, I guess.” Buck shrugs and shifts in his seat ever so slightly. “It can get really quiet at the apartment. Background noise is usually some adult swim cartoon that I don’t watch.”

Eddie notes the lack of the word “home” in the sentence and stores it away for later.

“Well, you’re always welcome here,” he tells Buck. “There’s always plenty of noise to share. I’m going to go help Christopher, but I got you some shorts and a t-shirt you can change into if you want.”

Buck turns to him and nods. “Thanks,” he nearly whispers. “And thanks for having me over, Eddie.” 

Eddie swallows the lump in his throat and jerks his head. He retreats before Buck can say anything else that threatens to make him feel something. He doesn’t even know why his friend’s words make his chest ache so much.

Eddie guesses he never really thought about what Buck might be feeling in all his alone time— never considered the fact that the man is alone, with no one to come home to and no special someone to look forward to seeing outside of work.

Hen’s voice echoes in his ear, reminding him of what she said the day before the tsunami. 

“What does Buck have?”

The thought of Evan Buckley ever being alone for any amount of time is wrong, even if it’s just the amount of time it takes to leave the room and come back.

If Eddie helps Christopher move just a little bit faster, only he needs to know it’s not just for Christopher’s benefit.

When Eddie and Christopher come back out again, Buck is changed into his friend’s clothes, and the provided blanket and pillow are laid out across the couch. Buck’s just finishing tidying up the coffee table when Christopher crashes into his legs. 

For a second, Eddie thinks the man might fall. Buck does sway a bit, but he adjusts his other foot with ease and balances himself— a good thing considering Christopher would have lost all balance if Buck had.

“Woah there, little man!” Buck shouts. “You could take out a building with that strength.”

Eddie watches from a few feet away, arms crossed and absolutely pleased with himself. He knows that the sleepover was Christopher’s idea, and it’s not something either he or Buck have done before or ever had the idea to, but the smile on Buck’s face is worth extending Chris’s bedtime. 

“So what are the plans and how much time do we have to do them?” Buck asks.

“Well, I figured that since Christopher’s all ready for bed, we could extend his bedtime by a bit—” Eddie watches as his boy’s smile grows, “—which means we have an hour to do whatever you two want to do.”

Christopher gasps and looks up to Buck. “Everything,” he whispers in awe.

"Everything" ends up being a game of go fish, finished off with ice cream and Buck building little card castles for Christopher to knock down with the breath of his laughter.

They end on such a good note that Buck forgets all about the darkness that’s been welcoming him at night. Even when Eddie wishes him goodnight and shuts off the family room lights, Buck still feels the sunshine that Chris constantly emits surrounding him, and he feels safe.

His eyes shoot open when the sound of rushing water meets his ears. Immediately, he gets off the couch and his feet meet cold water. 

“No,” he whispers. He looks down and the white moonlight trailing in through the window reflects off of the surface. In the dark, the water looks like black ink, and it laps at his ankles. 

His eyes shoot up to the room in front of him. “Christopher,” he worries aloud.

He throws himself across the room and searches for the light switch, but when his hand meets the wall, there’s nothing but smooth surface. With his breathing speeding up, he rubs his hand across the wall, looking for the small plastic square but can’t find it.

He’ll have to worry about seeing later. He needs to get to Christopher.

Buck let’s memory guide the way as he stumbles to the boy’s room. With the water halfway up his shins, the door is hard to open, but with his strength, he manages to push it. The door drags through the water like it weighs hundreds of pounds, and Buck can only hear the sloshing of it all.

“Christopher!” he shouts. “Buddy, we gotta go, now.” 

There’s no response.

He runs through the water as quickly as he can and is alarmed when he finds the bed empty. 

Where did he go? Did he already get out?

He goes to Eddie next. He might be with Eddie.

His friend’s room is empty, too.

Buck tries to calm his heart rate as he starts thinking of what to do. 

Had they left the house already? Were they safe?

With the water at his knees now, Buck trudges through the house to get back to the front. 

That’s when he sees familiar red flashing lights outside.

The 118. They’re here.

Before he knows it, he’s on the truck. No one is talking, and his body shivers from the cold, but he remains vigilant. 

Eddie sits across from him, stone-faced as ever. He should talk to him— tell him that he couldn’t find Christopher— but he can’t. He can’t find the words.

“Where are we going?” he asks instead.

From the front seat, Bobby turns to look at him and responds, but Buck can’t hear it. The roaring of the water is getting louder and the truck begins to shake.

Buck yells out, grasping for balance in the small space, but the others don’t move. They don’t even blink as the truck tilts on its side. 

Buck knows he’s yelling but the roaring of water crashing into the buildings is even louder.

Buildings.

Buck blinks and can hardly believe it. 

No, no, no, no, no. He can’t be here. He was just with his team.

This isn’t right.

“Christopher!” he yells, and this time he hears his own voice. It’s raspy and cracking and it hurts . Buck continues anyway.

From the top of the firetruck, he yells into the dark. He’s lost Christopher. He needs to find him.

“Christopher!” His throat burns from the salt water he’d inhaled earlier. It feels like his every sound is clawing its way out of his chest and through his throat, but he keeps going. 

The moonlight casts shadows of the buildings and the dark makes it impossible to see anything.

If he doesn’t find him, he’ll never be able to forgive himself. He’ll never be able to look Eddie in the eye again because he would have failed his best friend and his child that Buck had come to love as if he were his own.

“Christo—” The surge hits the truck and he tumbles into the water as it flows back out to sea.

He flails in the water, trying to get back to the surface, but he can’t remember which way is up. He tries to push off of something, anything , but there’s nothing to give him purchase. 

He can’t breathe, he remembers a second too late. He needs to breathe.

With darkness creeping in, Buck waves his limbs around in a desperate attempt to right himself. 

When his hand smacks metal, he latches on and opens his eyes. 

It’s the ferris wheel. It’s laying on its side.

He turns to survey his underwater surroundings, and the last of his breath leaves his lungs.

But it’s okay because breathing doesn’t matter anymore.

Nothing matters anymore.

Because he’s found, Christopher. 

The boy is pale and his eyes are wide open, and Buck stares.

And he cries.

Sobs and absolute devastation roll through him like the currents that rolled through Santa Monica. His entire body trembles under the force of the lifeless gaze.

Christopher is dead. And it’s all his fault.

“Buck!” 

Coming to consciousness is alarming and easing all at once because all in one moment he knows. He knows it was a dream.

Christopher is alive, and he is okay.

But moments ago, he hadn’t been, and for that Buck cries.

He hears someone calling his name, but the grief that had been so real is wracking through his body. He presses his hands to his eyes and wipes desperately at the tears, willing them to stop because no one can see him like this.

He doesn’t deserve to feel bad. It’s his own damn fault that Christopher had been lost, and if he’d actually died, that’d be on him, too.

“Buck,” he hears again, this time softer than before.

Christopher is alive, and he is okay.

Buck tells himself it was just a dream, but the tears don’t stop flowing, cascading down his face like the waves in his nightmare. He wishes the water would carry him away from here, too. He’s not ready to face anyone.

So he cries, and he stops trying to make the tears stop, and he lets the pain in his chest consume him— so much that he barely feels himself being moved.

He takes comfort in the warmth that envelopes him. And he waits for the aching to fade away.

Buck takes in his surroundings. The room is lit by a deep blue coming in through the window. If Buck didn’t know any better, he’d say that it’d been a full twenty-four hours since he last saw the color. But it hasn’t. His world had ended— shattered to pieces and snapped back together— in the span of hours. 

There’s a certain crispness to the air that says it’s morning, but it’s still earlier than anyone should be awake. 

But someone is awake because arms are wrapped around him and there are fingers tracing patterns into his face with a featherlight touch.

He blinks slowly and takes a heavy breath. The fingers on his face stop moving and come to rest on his shoulder. The larger arms around him offer a small squeeze.

“You with us?” he hears Eddie ask.

Buck nods, and he can feel where tears dried on his face and neck. The saltiness leaving a certain stiffness behind.

He looks to Eddie then. One leg hangs off the couch, foot planted on the ground, and the other is wrapped around him, resting across the back of the cushions. His arms are what’s holding Buck up, one around his shoulders and the other rested on Buck’s chest, hand above his own where Buck clutches at his shirt— Eddie’s shirt , his unhelpful brain reminds him.

He turns to his other side and finds Christopher. The boy’s curled up in his own blue-striped blanket, but he leans heavily on Buck’s arm. His right hand rests on Buck’s shoulder— the one that was touching his face.

“What was that?’ he asks the boy.

Christopher raises his eyebrows and wiggles his fingers in question. Buck huffs, the smallest smile gracing his lips. He nods.

“I was drawing on your face,” the boy whispers. “Daddy does it for me to help me calm down when I’m upset.” Christopher raises his hand to Buck’s face again and runs the pad of his finger across his cheekbone. He doesn’t stop there, though, raising his arm to drag his finger pass his temple and across his forehead. He trails down the center of Buck’s face next and lifts his finger as he reaches the tip of Buck’s nose.

Buck feels like his chakras have been fucking opened and laid bare for warmth to settle in.

“That’s some magical stuff,” he tells him.

“That’s what Daddy said it is,” Christopher responds. “It’s magic.”

Buck faces Eddie again. The man’s eyebrows are furrowed as he watches Buck in worry.

Buck goes to say something, but Eddie shakes his head softly. “Don’t be sorry,” he murmurs as if he’d read his mind. “In the morning… We can talk in the morning.”

Buck looks to the window because it is morning, but Eddie shakes his head again. 

“Let’s just rest,” Eddie suggests, tapping his fingers against Buck’s. “Let’s all rest a little while longer.”

—

The three of them doze off like that, squashed on the couch and holding each other. It’s been a long time since he fell asleep with someone holding him, but this is different. Buck feels cared for and loved in a way that he just hasn’t since he was a kid. 

He wakes up the same way. Birds are chirping and warmth surrounds him. 

Christopher is alive, and he is okay.

The sound of something smacking the floor reaches his ears and he peeks his eyes open.

To his left, Eddie is no longer holding him and is instead smacking his right food on the ground. Buck can’t help but chuckle lightly at the sight. 

Eddie turns to him with wide eyes and grins awkwardly, teeth on full display.

“Sorry,” Eddie whispers. “Did I wake you?” 

Buck shakes his head, and the movement makes him realize that Christopher is still at his other side.

“What are you doing?” Buck asks him. 

“My leg fell asleep,” Eddie grumbles. The realization that Eddie had cradled him for the last few hours enters his mind and disappears in a fast and fleeting moment. “I’m just waking—” smack, “it—” smack , “up.” 

With the final smack, the bundle of blankets stirs and Christopher’s head pops up. “Daddy,” the boy drawls, “violence is never the answer.”

Eddie freezes and slowly leans back into the space next to Buck. “You are absolutely right, mijo.” Buck can tell that he’s feigning feeling scolded. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” 

Christopher erupts into giggles again. The sound makes Buck feel like there is air in his lungs once again. 

He turns to the boy. “Well good morning to you, Christopher.”

“Morning, Buck,” the boy smiles back.

Buck’s gaze lingers a second too long, and suddenly the emotions from his nightmare are making a return. His dreams don’t usually affect him like this, but seeing the boy in the flesh— color in his skin and life in his eyes— hits him differently this morning. 

Tears spring to his eyes before he can think to tamp down his emotions. He sniffles and Christopher shoots forward, wrapping his arms around Buck’s neck

Eddie’s heart lurches as Buck leans back, pulling the boy halfway into his lap. 

“Why are you crying?” the boy asks into his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Eddie smiles sadly at the pair and runs a hand through Christopher’s hair before finding a spot on Buck’s shoulder. He lets it rest there, his small attempt at support.

“I’m okay, buddy,” he answers, tears already coming to a slow. “I just had a bad dream last night. That’s all.” 

The boy lifts his head and peers at his dad, a knowing look on his face.

“I think it’s time for breakfast,” Eddie says. 

Breakfast, unlike dinner the night before, is a quiet event. Eddie sends Christopher off to get ready for the day, and Eddie has Buck follow him over to the kitchen. There’s more light than when they were all up before, and Buck seems to notice this because he checks the time.

Buck curses under his breath. “Eddie, man. It’s already eight. Chris is going to be late.” 

He makes a quick move to head toward the said boy’s room, but Eddie catches his arm and shakes his head softly at him. Buck sends him a confused look.

“He’s staying home today,” Eddie explains. 

Buck’s face immediately falls.

“Oh, man. I’m sorry if this is because—”

“No,” Eddie cuts him off. “I decided he could stay home before you woke up.”

“Wh— why?” Buck questions.

“He had a nightmare,” he says. And before Buck can respond, he adds, “I did, too.”

Buck looks at him with wide, glassy eyes. “The tsunami?” he whispers, barely loud enough to reach Eddie.

The man nods and turns to the fridge to pull out some breakfast meats. He hears Buck shuffling around behind him, but his friend remains silent as he moves to the pantry to pull out stuff for waffles.

It’s not until he’s mixing the batter that Buck speaks up again.

“Are his nightmares bad?” Buck asks. Eddie glances at him where he now rests in a chair. Buck is wringing his hands.

“It wasn’t bad last night. He was mostly just scared and couldn’t remember much of it. I already had him talk with a counselor that the school provides and she said that it might get worse before it gets better.” Buck nods along at the information.

“I might take him to a specialist,” Eddie continues. “The lady recommended it, but also said I might just keep hearing the same things. Kids are resilient and all that. I guess it just might take a second for the trauma to register as real.” He says the last part almost like it’s a question. 

“What about you?” Buck jerks his chin at Eddie. 

Eddie shrugs. “Just a bad dream. Christopher was actually fine and up for going to school, but I just wanted to be with him today… wanted to be able to see him.”

Buck huffs. “Yeah, I get that.”

Eddie swallows the lump in his throat. Damn that guy for making him feel something. The fact that Buck feels for his son in a way that’s not much less than how he does… 

Eddie slowly pours the batter into the waffle maker then starts to heat the pan for some bacon. He can feel Buck’s eyes on him as he moves to the freezer for the sausage. He’ll have to defrost them in the microwave.

“Do you need—”

“Are you okay?” Eddie blurts out before Buck can finish his own question. 

Buck hesitates to answer and Eddie can see that he’s clearly not .

“Buck, I have never seen anyone wake up from a nightmare like that,” he says softly. “I’ve seen screaming and yelling.” Eddie’s heart aches for his friend as his words spill out of his mouth. “I’ve been punched a few times, too, but I have never seen someone so openly sobbing like they just lost their entire world.”

“Eddie—”

“And what do you do when no one is there to help you?”

“That doesn’t usually happen,” Buck admits.

“Usually?” Eddie’s eyebrows raise. “It’s not even been a week, Buck. How many nightmares have you had?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, looking down at his hands. “A couple a night maybe?”

Eddie is speechless as he stares at his best friend. So many questions were running through his head. Was Buck telling the truth when he said that his nightmares weren’t usually like that? Was he even getting enough rest? 

What could I do to make it better?

Eddie’s thoughts are cut off by Christopher entering the room, a giggle on his lips as he trails his hand across the wall for balance. 

Buck turns to him first, his face doing a one-eighty as he puts on a smile for the boy. It makes Eddie’s gut twist into an uneasy feeling.

“Hey, Chris!” he greets the boy. “Wow, you got ready so fast.”

“I didn’t want to miss breakfast,” the boy explains.

“Oh, as if we’d start without you, silly goose.”

And so the meal carries on in the good mood, but Eddie can tell that Buck is putting in the extra effort. Even Christopher is more quiet than normal, seemingly content with the silence. He doesn’t say anything, but Eddie’s knows his kid can tell something is up.

When he’s done with his food, Christopher excuses himself to his room as if knowing that they need to talk. Buck looks guilty as the boy walks away, and Eddie can’t help but feel like the man must be blaming himself for the atmosphere.

“So you wash, I dry?” Buck suggests.

Eddie just shakes his head. “We can worry about that later. I think that uh…” Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration. “I think you need to tell me everything that happened. Christopher won’t, and as it is neither of us know what he saw on his own.”

Buck closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

“I— I know it’s hard for you,” Eddie continues. “I’m not asking you to talk about feelings, and you don’t have to talk about your dreams, but I want to have an idea—”

“No, I get it,” Buck says quickly. “It’s just…” Well, Buck isn’t sure how to describe it.

Eddie doesn’t respond, fiddling with the fork in his hand. He can’t force Buck to talk about any of it, but he can’t help but feel like knowing is better than the horrors from not knowing that already plague his mind. More importantly, he wants to be able to help Buck and Christopher.

“Let’s move back to the couch,” Buck whispers. “I’ll tell you.”

—

“We saw the wave coming before the sirens went off.”

Buck’s sitting in the same spot he was earlier, blanket pulled up to his chin, but this time he’s pulled his feet up onto the cushions, shoving his toes into the cushion. He faces Eddie, who sits across from him, back pressed against the armrest. 

Their feet are only inches from touching, and Buck longs to be held again, but he’d rather take on clean-up duty for a week at the firehouse than ask Eddie to touch him in any way as intimately as they’d been touching this morning. Buck had never felt so safe in someone’s arms— not even his own mother’s— but to ask that of his friend felt like crossing a line.

“It took a second to register,” he continues. “Some people were backing away in fear, but when the alarm rang out, it was pure panic.” Buck glances at Eddie, but he’s not giving away any emotion. “I grabbed Christopher then, and I just ran. People were screaming and I wasn’t even close to halfway down the pier before I felt the wave hit. The whole pier shook and…”

Eddie watches as Buck trails off, mouth hanging open on the next words and eyes seeing something other than this room. He’s pretty sure he can see Buck’s heartbeat in his neck.

“There was no getting us out of there,” Buck sighs. It sounds like an apology. “I got Christopher in one of those game stalls— the ones with stuffed animals for prizes— and by the time I was jumping in after him, the water was already hitting. I was lucky the watchtower broke the wave first because that impact alone could’ve killed me… I don’t remember the part after that very well. One second he was in my arms, and the next I was fighting for a surface when I couldn’t tell which way was up.”

A vivid image flashes in Buck’s mind and he can’t tell if it’s from his dream or something from that day. 

“When I did come up, we were already in the streets—” Eddie’s head jerks at that. “What?” Buck asks. 

“That’s— Buck, the water carried you nearly half a mile.”

Buck shrugs. “For all I knew it carried me ten feet. But being under that water felt like a lifetime. I didn’t know whether or not I was going to break the surface before I ran out of air. I don’t even remember holding my breath.”

Eddie leans forward, arms coming uncrossed from where they rested on his knees to reach over to Buck’s. He rests his hand on his friend’s knee, and Buck watches him with owlish eyes. 

“Eddie?” 

“Yeah?”

“Can—” Buck groans. “Nevermind.”

“No, don’t do that,” Eddie presses. “What’s wrong?”

Buck tilts his head a couple times as if arguing with himself. For a moment, Eddie expects to hear something awful and braces himself.

“Can you hug me?” Buck rushes out.

Eddie lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, and if it weren’t for the look on Buck’s face— looking more vulnerable than he’s ever seen him before— he’d laugh. 

“Yeah,” Eddie whispers. “Yeah, come here.”

Buck falls into Eddie’s arms in a heartbeat, and after that, words fall from his mouth easier than before. Buck tells him about getting them onto the firetruck, about sitting there in silence, holding Christopher close to his chest as the water’s flow never stopped. For a while, Buck and Christopher hadn’t seen anything bad, just debris floating and bobbing in and out of the water. He tells Eddie of Dory and how the boy telling him to just keep swimming gave him hope not only that they would get out of there in one piece, but also that Buck could get back to where he was in his life. After a small time, Buck had helped some people get aboard the truck as well, but there hadn’t been anything bad . 

They were playing I Spy when he first saw bodies, but Buck tells Eddie of how he turned the boy away from them, tricking into trying to spy something near the rooftops. 

“I don’t think I was pointing at anything,” Buck admits. “If I was, I don’t remember. I think Chris eventually said something, and I just told him that he got it.”

“Thank you,” Eddie whispers back. “Thank you for keeping him from that.”

“I can’t imagine letting him see it,” Buck tells him. “In our line of work, we’ve seen some bad stuff, but seeing this was completely different. Knowing that I somehow survived and those people didn’t just hit me so hard. I couldn’t stop wondering what the difference was. It’s only chance that I’m alive that debris didn’t break every bone in my body.” Buck’s fingers reach up to trail across the three cuts near his eye. “I could’ve lost an eye,” he laughs humorlessly. 

“What did that?” Eddie asks.

“I don’t even remember.”

Buck continues to talk about their wait. But that’s mostly all it was— waiting. Buck mentions distracting Christopher if a body drifted by, and the boy never seemed to catch on, but as Buck’s retelling comes to an end, Eddie realizes that that’s all.

Eddie tries to understand. 

“What are your nightmares about?” he asks. Because in all of this, Buck never seemed scared. Though, Eddie figures that he might be leaving that part out. 

“All of it,” Buck states simply. “Sometimes I just see bodies, and I wake up with that same awful feeling of why me ? Other times I never make it to the surface, and even though I don’t see it, I know that Christopher didn’t either.”

Eddie barely keeps his breakfast down.

“And last night?” Eddie questions tentatively.

Buck sucks in a harsh breath. 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Eddie assures him. “But, Buck, I worry about you too, you know? Yes, I worry about Chris, but he has me at night. Who do you have? Who brings you back to reality after—”

“Last night he died,” Buck mutters abruptly. “We were here, but then the water came in and I was looking for him, but as the final surge took me back out to the ocean, the currents pulled me under and I saw him. I saw him lifeless and his eyes stared back at me and trying to get back to the surface didn’t matter anymore.”

Tears fall from Eddie’s face then. “Oh, Buck,” he cries into his hair, holding him tighter than he’d been. “You just need to remember that he’s okay. You remind yourself that you did everything for my boy, and he’s alive because of it.” Buck nods into Eddie’s neck, sniffling away his own tears.

“I do,” he replies. “Before I go to bed, and every morning when I wake up— every day since that morning after. I tell myself Christopher is alive, and he is okay.” 

“And I will always be grateful for that— grateful for you, Evan Buckley.”

When Buck squeezes back, Eddie knows that Buck needed this. He might have told him that he wasn’t mad at him and that he trusted him already, but this felt different. 

Buck knows that talking about it won’t stop the nightmares for him, and both men know that Christopher’s have barely begun, but it lifts a weight that Buck hadn’t realized he’d been carrying. 

The three of them spend the rest of the morning like that, Christopher having joined them not long after. They watch another movie, and when the afternoon rolls around, Eddie and Buck clean the kitchen, and Buck insists on treating them to lunch out.

Buck still has a nightmare that night, but when he wakes up, the sound of the waves isn’t as loud, and when he’s alone, the silence is more bearable.

For the first time in a while, Buck thinks he might be okay, or at least on his way there.