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Buck dives without thinking, not even hearing the shouts for him to stop as he leaps off the bridge, sucks in a deep breath, and breaks through the murky river water. It burns his eyes, yet he keeps a trained gaze to the sinking car, kicking his feet in quick, hard strides as he darts in the water toward the vehicle, making it in just under fourteen seconds, keeping count for his lungs’ sake.
He doesn’t have a clear gauge of how long the car’s been under, but the kid, a teenager in the driver’s seat, is still conscious, though he’s panicking hard enough that he’ll be out in a matter of seconds. Buck tries to motion for the kid to calm down, but the kid’s bashing his hands against the window until their bruised and bloody, and Buck spares a glance toward surface, a quick contemplation of going back for tools, but then the panicked hits against the window grow quiet, and he whips his gaze back just in time to see the teen’s eyes flutter closed.
A minute and seven seconds now, and Buck’s lungs are beginning to burn and tighten around a need for air, and he shifts his body to the side and swings his elbow against the window. Pain blooms up and down his arm, but he keeps the motion, hitting the window over and over. He can see it cracking. Just a little more.
Two minutes and thirteen seconds.
Frustration pushes at his chest and creeps up to his mind, and without meaning to, he screams, and water shoots down his throat, hot, burning, vile, and he gags around it, coughing into the water. Gray dots dance across his vision, and he lifts his arm to bash his elbow into the window again, just as his lungs seize in his chest and the gray dots stretch and extend to coat his vision.
He doesn’t hear Eddie dive into the water, doesn’t see him break the window with a tool, doesn’t feel his strong arm wrap around his waist, but the second his head breaks surface, his lungs explode, and he’s gasping awake, coughing and choking up water as panic colors his vision.
“Buck, stop!” Eddie’s struggling against Buck’s aggressive jerking at his side. He’s trying to keep Buck’s head above water with one arm, and the unconscious teen’s with the other arm. “Evan!”
Buck snaps a quick gaze to Eddie, eyes flicking across Eddie’s dark ones, trying to find a color of calm to his wide, blue ones, and Eddie’s furrowed forehead, his sharp, narrowed eyes, bring him back, and he inhales deeply, coughing lightly to the side.
“You’re okay,” Eddie says, and Buck clings to that steady statement.
“I’m okay,” he parrots back, and Eddie’s eyes flick to the teen at his side, his head dropping to the crook of his neck.
“Can you swim?”
Buck nods, the burning desire to save lives washing over his body, hotter than the water around them, and together, he and Eddie kick and swim to the left, both supporting the teen, until they’re being pulled to land a few feet below the bridge.
Bobby’s already yelling, furious with Buck’s consistent need to run risks and disobey orders, but Eddie steps forward to douse the flames in Bobby’s eyes with calm words and raised hands, leaving Buck to drag his gaze to Hen and Chimney, relief pushing against his chest when they successfully resuscitate the teen, and he lets out a deep breath he was unaware he’d been holding in his lungs.
“He didn’t even take anything with him, Eddie! All he did was risk his life--”
“--he had the window cracked,” Eddie tries, voice easy, steady. “It only took me two hits to break it. It would have taken longer if he--”
“--he could have died!”
Buck steps in, inching up to Eddie’s side yet unable to bring his gaze up to Bobby’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Bobby,” he mutters, voice quiet, shoulders slumped. He sucks in a breath and wills his eyes to rise until they’re locking to Bobby’s. “I don’t know what happened. The second I heard the driver was inside, I just lost control--”
“--you cannot lose control, Buck,” Bobby snaps, yet he keeps his voice frighteningly quiet. “That’s how lives get lost, and I’m not losing any of you.” His voice cracks toward the end, the anger breaking to tired concern, and Buck shrinks away slightly, stopping when Eddie’s hand finds the small of his back.
“Trust me, Cap,” Eddie starts, “Buck’s going to get a hell of a lecture about not being an idiot later.”
Buck frowns at Eddie, pinpointing the concern that’s threatening to break past his easy tone.
“He better,” Bobby says, but then he steps forward and claps a hand to Buck’s shoulder. “Good work out there,” he says, “and make sure you never do that again.”
When Bobby moves to the truck, motioning for the two to follow, Buck leans into Eddie’s side, and they follow after their captain, both silently thankful for the end of their shift.
*****
Buck’s quiet on the drive to Eddie’s house, only perking up when Christopher asks a question. He can see the tension through Eddie’s grip on the steering wheel, through his almost clipped replies when Christopher asks how the day went, and through the too-quick motions of getting Christopher ready and tucked into bed when they get to Eddie’s house.
He burrows onto the couch, feeling a little too tired, his nose a little stuffed up, and he reaches behind him for a blanket just as Eddie’s rounding the corner, a storm in his dark eyes.
“Are you out of your fucking mind, Buck?”
“I’m pretty sure lectures don’t open with cuss words,” Buck tries, a half-smile pulling at his lips that Eddie throws his hands up at.
“Are you seriously joking about this right now?” He keeps his voice quiet for Christopher’s sake, yet his heart is hammering against his rib cage with a need to scream and kiss Buck at the same time. “You almost drowned!”
“Good thing I had my own, personal Superman to save me.” Buck tugs the blanket around his shoulders, frowning when Eddie drops to the coffee table across from him, leaning forward and scrubbing his hands up and down his face.
“Please take this seriously, Evan.”
“I’m fine,” Buck pushes, leaning forward to pulls Eddie’s hands from his face, the blanket slipping down his shoulders a little.
“But you almost weren’t.”
There are many things in life Buck hates, but for the longest time, the mere idea of not being a firefighter was the top one, that was until Eddie came along and stole his heart as fast as a wave swelling and crashing down. Now, he finds that what he hates the most is Eddie’s frown, Eddie’s concern toward him, his exhaustion, his weariness, and he leans forward, lips brushing against Eddie’s in a gentle kiss.
“I’m fine.” He pushes, and Eddie breaks the kiss with a deep sigh, getting to his feet.
“Fuck you.”
“Eddie--”
“--let’s go to bed.”
He holds Eddie’s gaze until Eddie breaks it with a tired smile, and he leaps from the couch, smacking Eddie’s ass as the two walk into the room.
*****
Buck struggles to wake the next morning. His head’s a little too heavy, and his throat feels scratchy. He’s having a hard time breathing through his nose, and he wants to curl into himself and drift back off, but he can hear Christopher’s laugh, and it warms him in a way that he knows he could never verbally explain. It’s enough to pull him from the bed, and he shuffles out of the room and into the kitchen, smile already pulling at the corners of his lips.
“Morning sleepyhead,” Eddie mutters around the rim of a coffee cup, and Buck could melt to a puddle in the floor if it weren’t for the fact that haven’t exactly had a conversation with Christopher about their relationship yet.
“Morning,” Buck says through a yawn, arms pulling up into a stretch, but the smile that could be permanently plastered to his face by Christopher alone slowly drops as Eddie’s falls. “What?”
“You sound congested. Are you okay?”
Shrugging, Buck takes a moment to ruffle Christopher’s hair before reaching past Eddie to snag a coffee cup. “Fine. Probably coming down with a cold.”
“You should stay home today.”
“Why would I do that--”
“--are you sick, Buck?”
He shoots a half-heated glare Eddie’s way before whipping around with a wide smile. “Probably just a small cold, bud. Nothing to worry about!”
“Consider staying home,” Eddie whispers to him once Christoper finishes his breakfast and leaves the room to get ready. “I can even drive you back to your place if you want, but after yesterday--”
“--Eddie,” Buck interrupts, stealing a kiss to Eddie’s cheek before Christopher comes back. “I’m fine. If I start to feel worse, I’ll go home.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yeah,” Buck shrugs, and easy smile pulling at his lips. “You’re right. Now let’s get a move on before we’re late!”
*****
Buck spends the entire day being mocked because his voice is thick with congestion, morphing some letters into others, but toward the end, he’s beginning to feel the ill effects of the cold like a small weighted blanket draping over him.
“I think I’ll go back to my place tonight,” he tells Eddie when they’re changing for the night, and Eddie freezes at his locker, whipping around with a sharp frown.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to get Christopher sick,” Buck admits, and Eddie can’t really argue with that. His shoulders slump, and he moves to where Buck’s seated on a bench, pressing the back of his hand to Buck’s forehead.
“You don’t have a fever,” he says, relieved to feel a cool, normal temperature against his knuckles. “But, I’d rather you come back to mine and let me take care of you.”
“You forget,” Buck draws out, getting to his feet, “that I’m a grown man.”
“Easy to forget when you act like a two-year-old ninety percent of the time,” Eddie bites out, laughing lightly when Buck’s fist finds his shoulder.
“Fuck off, Diaz. I’m out.” He moves toward the door, stopping only when Eddie’s fingers latch around his wrist. “Eddie--”
“--will you just call me if you get worse? Please?”
He nods, and Eddie lets go of his wrist, concern colored deeply in his eyes.
“God, you’re such a mother hen sap,” Buck spits out, sparing only a breath of a kiss to Eddie’s cheek as he starts out of the room.
“At least I don’t cry at Titanic!”
“You don’t cry because you’re a heartless monster!”
*****
Two days of medicine, relatively easy work, and deep rest alone, yet Buck’s only beginning to feel worse, unable to shake this cold. He starts coughing by the third day, and he must look the part of a sick man based on the gaping stares he receives when he walks into the station.
“I am still alive,” he grumbles around a few coughs, “so you can all stop staring as if I’m not.”
“Sorry,” Hen starts, “you just look like actual shit.” She stops before him, reaching one hand to his forehead, and he just manages a quick dodge, already knowing he’s running a low-grade fever based on the small chill clinging to his limbs.
“I’m fine.” He drags both words out, stressing each letter, but Hen doesn’t give in, and she and Chimney follow him as he starts toward the locker room to change.
“No offense, Buck, but I’m going to tell Bobby you have the plague so he’ll send you home--”
“--it’s just a cold, Hen!” Buck shouts back as Hen starts up the steps, and he makes to follow, stopping only when a coughing fit bubbles in his lungs and up his throats. He turns to cough into the crook of his arm, and when he catches his breath and turns, Eddie’s tense at his open locker, staring hard at him.
“You weren’t coughing yesterday.”
“It’s a cold, Eddie,” Buck sighs, feeling almost like a broken record. “Sometimes coughing’s a symptom.”
“A fever’s not usually one.” Eddie’s voice is as rigid as his muscles, and Buck frowns tilting his head.
“I don’t have a fever.” He tries to push through an easy lie, even going so far as to match Eddie’s stern gaze, yet Eddie’s eyes flick across his features, a studious gaze that Buck knows all to well.
“Yeah, well you’re shaking.” Eddie starts, moving toward him, and Buck finds that he can’t move from Eddie’s sharp stare.
“And you’re a lot paler than normal.” He continues, stopping just before Buck. He reaches out and drops a hand to Buck’s forehead. “And warm.”
“Fever means contagion,” Bobby says behind them, startling both. “Get your ass out of here, Buck--”
“--But, Bobby--”
“--Now.”
Buck wants to argue, throw a fit even, but it’s a one-sided battle with a loss that will always be the outcome. His shoulders slump, and a few coughs slip past his lips. Defeat tastes weird on his tongue, and in the short time he’s been with the 118, he’s never had to miss work for something as small as a pesky cold.
“We all just want you to get better,” Eddie whispers at Buck’s side, knowing that lost puppy look all too well. “And Christopher hasn’t shut up about you for the last three days. It’s okay to take a few days off to rest.”
Buck knows this, but he’s still fighting the internal battle that he’s fallen behind after his leg and the blood thinners, even though his team has rallied behind him in support that he’s still performing well despite the medical leave.
He clutches his bag and turns toward the door, stopping only when Eddie pulls him to his chest with an arm around his waist.
“Bobby’ll kill me if you get sick too, Eddie.”
“I’m taking in shallow breaths,” Eddie says, and Buck rolls his eyes. “Do you want me to come over after? I can leave Christopher with abuela tonight--”
“--no,” Buck says, voice beginning to reflect the exhaustion settling over him. “It’s better if you keep your distance so you don’t get catch this.”
Buck shakes his head when Eddie pouts softly toward him. “Now who’s the child?”
“Only when I can’t have what I want,” Eddie presses, a small smile creeping at his lips. “And when I can’t argue against sound reasoning.”
Buck can’t help but laugh, a few more coughs slipping past his lips, and he doesn’t miss the quick flick of concern that pulls at Eddie’s feature once more.
“I’ll call you.”
“You better.”
*****
Buck falls asleep the second his head hits his pillow, and he’s out for hours, waking when the sun begins to set, shining a warm glow into his bedroom. It’s hard to open his eyes, but more so, it’s hard to breathe. His chest feels hot and tight, and he coughs, hoping to ease some of the pressure, but then he can’t stop coughing. He struggles into a sitting position, fist pressed to his mouth as his entire body seems to quake with each cough. It’s a solid three minutes of barking coughs before his lungs settle enough to allow him to suck in a breath, and he frowns when he can only inhale a small, labored breath, not doing anything to ease his shaking lungs.
He reaches blindly around his bed for his phone when it starts buzzing. “Hello?” he croaks, not having looked at the caller ID.
“Jesus Christ, Evan! I was two seconds away from sending every single unit after you!”
Eddie’s voice is too loud in his ear, and he can’t help but wince, rubbing his free hand up and down his far-too-warm face. “Sorry,” he rasps out, “was sleeping.”
“You sound worse. How do you feel?”
“Pretty shitty,” Buck admits, reaching to tug one of his blankets over him when the chills pick up. He really should get a read on this fever. “But I’ll be okay--”
“--I’m coming over--”
“--no, you aren’t.” Buck’s surprised at the power behind his voice, considering he was coughing up a lung only moments ago. “Seriously, Eddie. This is a pretty crappy cold, and the last thing I want is for you or Christopher to get it.” There’s silence on the other line, but Buck can hear Eddie’s quiet breaths, and he just knows that Eddie’s biting absently on his lower lip and frowning.
“I don’t know, Buck, I don’t like this.”
“Well, you’re going to have to deal, for my sake. I won’t be able to get better if I know you’re moping around all night.” More silence, then he hears the telltale sigh of defeat, and he takes the win with a brief smile.
“Fine, but I’m serious, Evan. Please call me if you get even a little worse. I’m worried this is more than a cold.”
“I will, I will,” Buck grumbles, wanting to end this conversation as fast as possible for his lungs are beginning to burn again. Luck’s on his side because Buck can hear Bobby calling for Eddie in the background, and Eddie ends the call a few moments later. The second the call drops, Buck curls in on himself, coughing hard enough to bring tears to his eyes.
He knows he should find medicine, take his temperature, but he’s too tired and too cold, and without really meaning to, he falls back asleep, his fingers curled around his phone.
*****
He’s pulled awake hours later by a loud banging at his door. He jerks forward, and then he’s coughing, and he can’t stop. The pressure on his chest hurts unbearably so, and he’s ice cold despite the heat rolling off his face. His phone is buzzing against his hand, and the banging is getting louder, more severe, but his coughing is drowning it out.
When his mind comes to the too-slow conclusion that he can’t fucking breathe, he answers his phone, bringing it close to his ear as he barks out coughs.
“Eddie,” he wheezes, wanting so desperately to inhale deeply, “I can’t--” His eyes grow dark, and his coughing continues, wet, deep, as if trying to pull something from his lungs, and he tilts to the side, rolling off the bed and onto the floor as his vision grows dark.
He’s fading in and out, coming to first when he hears an incredibly loud bang at his door, then again when Eddie’s shouting something over his shoulder. He can faintly make out flashing lights outside his window, and then he’s being lifted, and his half-lidded eyes find Eddie’s. Eddie’s lips are moving, but he can’t follow anything because he can’t fucking breathe, and he can’t stop shivering.
He wheezes out a quiet, raspy “help,” and then the lack of oxygen slams against him, pushing him straight to darkness.
*****
He knows he’s in a hospital before he opens his eyes, from the persistent beeping alone. His mind is fuzzy. All he can remember is that he couldn’t breathe, and it’s then that he feels the small, uncomfortable pressure of something over his mouth. He groans because he hates these masks, and when a hand tightens around his, careful of the IV sticking out from the back of his hand, he pries his eyes open.
“Evan?”
The thing, Buck thinks, with his first name is that he equally loves and hates when Eddie says it. Too often, Eddie says it because he’s scared or mad, but sometimes, when Christopher’s staying at abuela’s and their having sex, Eddie will groan out his name, his first name, in such a way that has Buck flushing all over.
But this one, this one is different. There’s muted relief faintly coloring the deep-rooted worry, and he brings a gaze to meet Eddie’s eyes, frowning at his pale, drawn features, the dark bags under his eyes.
“You look like shit,” he mutters against the mask, words muffled, and Eddie suddenly jerks to his feet and kicks the chair he’s had pulled up to Buck’s bedside away. Bucks’s eyes widen despite the clutch of sleep gripping at him.
“I could actually kill you,” Eddie starts, pacing the small length of the hospital room. “You literally almost died from pneumonia,” he pauses, whipping a dangerous gaze to Buck. “Yes, pneumonia. Pneumonia because you inhaled a bunch of fucking water when you went to save that kid. I find you half-conscious. Your lips were fucking blue, and the first words out of your mouth are about how I look?”
“Eddie--”
“Do you want to know what that felt like?” Eddie continues, ignoring Buck’s weak call. “Do you remember how you felt when you and Christopher got separated during the tsunami? When you thought you lost him? Someone you care deeply about? It felt like that times fucking ten.”
“Eddie,” Buck tries again, eyes glistening.
“You were minutes away from death, Evan. Minutes. And I--”
Buck rips the mask from his mouth, ignoring the small burn still clinging to his lungs. “Eddie!” He snaps, tears spilling out over his eyes, and then he’s coughing, his lungs struggling without the assistance. He shoots forward, one arm clutching at his chest, and then Eddie’s at his side and easing the mask back over his mouth, and Buck reaches out to him, fingers digging into Eddie’s bare arm.
It takes a minute to catch his breath, but when he does, his eyes are pained when they lock to Eddie’s similar gaze. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, voice cracking. “I’m so fucking sorry.” He could say it forever, should say it forever, but then Eddie’s pulling him to his chest, and he clutches to the steady warmth like a lifeline.
“I know,” Eddie mutters, voice mirroring Buck’s. “I know you are, and I’m sorry for yelling.”
“Don’t be,” Buck rasps out as he pulls away. “I should have noticed sooner.” He keeps his eyes to Eddie’s as Eddie eases him back against the pillows. “You have every right to be mad--”
“--I’m not mad,” Eddie sighs, raking one hand through his hair. “I’m just so fucking scared.”
“I’m sorry--”
Eddie holds a hand up and shakes his head. “We need to talk about this,” he starts, and Buck’s eyes, though still watering, are bright, focused. “Not now, but when you’re released and staying with me and Christopher. We’ll talk, then.”
Buck tries not to linger on the part where he’s apparently staying with Eddie and Christopher. He wants to push that, question it, dissect each word, but Eddie gets to his feet, and Buck immediately misses the warmth at his side.
“I’m going to get the others before Bobby breaks down a wall to get back here.”
Buck’s shoulders slump because Bobby’s disappointment hurts as bad as a father’s disappointment, and Eddie’s face softens, still tired, but no longer furrowed in angry concern.
“Don’t worry. I told him to take it easy on you.”
For the first time, Buck’s lips curl up into a smile, and Eddie matches his, and Buck knows, though it will take time, healing, and a lot of talking, that they’re okay.
“Thanks, Eddie.”