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“Buckley, Diaz, how’s the south end looking?” Bobby’s voice crackles over the radio after checking in with Hen and Chimney in the east end.
“Clear so far, Cap, but the smoke is getting thick. Chimney was right, fire’s headed for us next,” Eddie answers for himself and Buck. “We haven’t found anyone, but we’re gonna keep looking as long as we can.” He and Buck both know as long as we can means pushing well past the boundary of how long they should, and judging by the sigh over the radio at Eddie’s word choice, Bobby knows it too.
“Do not push it, you two. I mean it,” Bobby says. “I think Chris enjoys having both of you around.” Eddie and Buck grin at each other and then keep pushing on.
After that, there isn’t much over the radio. The blaze is intense and the work is hard, meaning no chatter or teasing over an open line like they do sometimes. Every so often there’s an update from either Bobby or the Incident Commander, or one of the pairs searching the building will call out a rescue or a fatality. It’s grueling, but routine, and everyone is glad for it in their own slightly morbid way.
Routine or not, though, Bobby hasn’t been able to shake the pit in his stomach as he watches from outside, having been kept at the command tent for some insight.
“Cap, I’m really not loving the sounds this building is making,” Hen calls over the radio maybe ten minutes after another check-in. The sounds she’s talking about reach Bobby’s ears moments later, and he has to fight the urge to run in and pull his team out by the scruffs of their necks.
“I think it’s coming from the south wing, Cap,” Chimney adds.
“Buck, Eddie, get out of there. I mean it,” Bobby demands. “Hen, Chim, is your area safe for the time being?”
“Think so, but we’re done with our sweep so we aren’t sticking around to find out,” Hen answers.
“We’re finished up, too, Cap,” Buck assures Bobby. He’s cut off by the Incident Commander calling for an evac of all teams still inside, clearly just as concerned about the groaning noises no building should be making. “We’re about thirty yards from the ex-” Static. Moments later, Bobby can only watch in horror as part of the south end of the building collapses on itself.
The radio channel for all the firefighters becomes an absolute cacophony of voices. Bobby’s is one of them, and he can pick out Hen’s and Chimney’s. He doesn’t hear Eddie, though, until the radio quiets a little.
“Buck!” Eddie sounds wrecked, and while Bobby takes some comfort in the fact that Eddie is okay enough to be concerned about Buck, he realizes that doesn’t mean much—Buck and Eddie would move Heaven and Earth for each other.
“118, switch to channel two and sound off!” Bobby demands, switching his own radio. All around him, the other captains are doing the same, frantically trying to get in touch with the missing members of their crews without the chaos of all the other crews drowning them out.
“This is Wilson,” Hen is the first to check in.
“Han, I’m with Wilson, I’m alright,” Chimney adds. There’s a beat, and Bobby holds his breath.
“I can’t find him!” Eddie’s voice breaks around the words and Bobby feels his heart lurch. “God, he shoved me forward and then I turned around and he was just gone.”
“Is he under debris, or was the floor you were on one of the ones that collapsed?” Bobby asks, voice shaking. He’s not sure which alternative is worse.
“We were on the second floor. Our level’s still intact, but if he’s alive under there he’s under the weight of about eight or ten square feet from… two floors, maybe three? Bobby, I don’t-” Eddie’s voice breaks off and his radio cuts out.
“Eddie, will digging for him compromise the structural integrity of your area?” Bobby demands.
“No, it’s- there’s nothing left above us to hold up,” Eddie says. “If I leave him under there, he could get crushed by the floors that haven’t collapsed yet.” He goes quiet, but his line stays open, and Bobby can hear him grunting and calling for Buck as he moves debris.
“Chimney, Hen, if you can get to them safely, help Eddie get Buck. I’m coming in,” Bobby says. He tells the Incident Commander as much and then jogs off before he can be told no, donning his mask and securing his turnout coat closed.
Halfway up the stairs, a noise over the radio makes Bobby’s heart stop.
All firefighters have sounds and feelings and memories that never leave them. It’s different for every firefighter, and the circumstances are almost never the same. Firefighters respond to such a variety of calls that there’s a nearly infinite number of ways for things to go wrong. The sound that almost every firefighter has etched into their brain, however, is the one Bobby’s hearing over his radio now.
It’s the shrill alarm from a PASS device, and the only person it can belong to is Buck.
“No, no, nonono…” Bobby mutters to himself, picking up his pace up the stairs as much as he possibly can. Eddie’s muttering much the same to himself, and the crashing as debris gets tossed to the side picks up speed.
Bobby’s not sure what he was expecting when he reached the scene, but he knows it wasn’t this. It’s easy to forget how much of a building is concrete and metal until it’s laying on top of one of your firefighters, and Bobby immediately throws himself into digging. They pull piles and piles off of Buck, banding together for the heavy debris before returning to their own areas of the mess, and it’s nearly five minutes before a shout from Chimney.
“I got a hand!” he cries. He pulls a few more pieces away and then takes one of his gloves off, sliding his fingers underneath the edge of Buck’s turnout sleeve to find his pulse point. Nobody dares to move until Chimney looks at all of them with unfiltered hope on his face and shouts, “I got a pulse!” Bobby grabs his radio as he, Hen, and Eddie join Chimney in the spot he was digging.
“This is Captain Bobby Nash, I need a backboard on the second floor of the south end of the building now,” he demands. He doesn’t even wait to hear the confirmation before diving back into the rubble. Now that they’ve found a part of Buck, they uncover the rest of him easily.
“Buck, Dios mío.” Eddie breathes, kneeling by his head once he’s been completely freed from the layers of the building that had been on top of him. Eddie clearly doesn’t know what to do with his hands and doesn’t want to get in Hen and Chimney’s way as they check Buck out, so he settles for gripping Buck’s right hand as soon as Chimney gets an IV in. He also grabs Buck’s PASS device, fiddling with it until it turns off. Bobby hadn’t even totally realized it was still going off, everything fading to a dull roar in his ears. He can’t focus on much other than Buck.
Buck, who still isn’t moving.
The only thing keeping Bobby from losing it is knowing that Buck has a pulse, but looking at the man he considers a son not moving, barely breathing, with a small trickle of blood escaping from the corner of his mouth… Bobby’s not sure how he’s going to keep his cool. When the backboard arrives, Bobby says a rushed thank you with what little air he can force from his lungs, then runs it over to load Buck onto it. Once he’s situated, it requires maneuvering from all four of them to get him off the ground and Bobby’s grateful to finally have something to do. He can tell Eddie is, too.
-
“Bobby? I got here as fast as I could, what’s going on with Buck?” Athena asks Bobby as she appears in front of him still in uniform, badge and all. Maddie had arrived only minutes earlier, and Chimney was filling her in softly a few seats down from Bobby. The blur that life had turned into as they got Buck out of the building and bundled into the ambulance calms a little as soon as Athena’s face is in Bobby’s eyeline.
“He… He and Eddie were in the part of the building that collapsed,” Bobby tells Athena, and her face drops.
“The big office fire down on Roberts and fifth?” she asks, and Bobby nods. “Bobby, I saw that on the news at the precinct, it looked bad.”
“Eddie said Buck pushed him out of the way,” he tells her. “I should’ve gotten them out of there faster, the building wasn’t-”
“Robert Nash, do not go there,” Athena cuts him off sharply. “I have watched you on so many calls with that team and you have always done your best to do right by them. Always.” Bobby lets himself be pulled into a hug by his wife until he hears a doctor call for “Family of Evan Buckley?”
Everyone shoots out of their chairs and surrounds the doctor, just barely managing not to crowd her.
“Is he- how is he?” Eddie chokes out.
“First things first, he is alive, and it looks to me like he’s planning to stay that way,” she says with a small smile. “He’s got some minor crush injuries as expected and he does have a chest tube because one of his lungs decided to collapse just after he got here, but it’s all things he’ll recover from.” The entire group in the waiting room heaves a huge sigh of relief, and Bobby almost misses the doctor telling them that though Buck was in the ICU and would be asleep for a while, he could have two visitors at a time. “He’ll be in a medically induced coma through the night and at least most of tomorrow,” she explains, “but it’ll be good for him to have some familiar voices around.” Eddie jumps up right alongside Maddie, and the doctor leads them back first.
Eddie and Maddie barely fit through the door together, but they are determined to stay by each others’ sides. They part only to take their seats on either side of Buck, settling into the uncomfortable hospital chairs they’ve grown so used to. Eddie thinks distantly that he should start keeping those folding chairs people bring to tailgates in the back of his truck. They’d certainly be more comfortable than the plastic monstrosities with squeaky vinyl cushions, and he’s pretty sure he’s got at least four in various places in his garage. The one time Eddie had seen Buck in one of the hospital chairs instead of it being the other way around, the back of it had barely gone more than halfway up Buck’s back.
“Eddie, stop stewing over there,” Maddie’s voice cuts through his thoughts.
“He pushed me out of the way, Maddie. I should’ve been paying more-” Maddie holds a single manicured finger up in the air and it is plenty to silence Eddie. She may not have known it, but it was really starting to look like the two of them were going to be siblings-in-law and Eddie had a very strong feeling he should probably stay on her good side.
“Eddie, you two are so in love it hurts to watch, and my brother would do anything for you,” Maddie says. Alright, well, maybe she did know. “He would push you out from under falling debris every shift if he had to.” Eddie cracks a wry smile.
“He would, wouldn’t he?” he agrees. The two of them go silent for a couple minutes, each gripping one of Buck’s hands, before Eddie speaks again. “How did you know about me and Buck?”
“Bobby was actually the one who pointed it out to me,” Maddie says, smiling fondly. “We were at the last barbecue and he pointed over to you two with Christopher. You were sitting down for something, and instead of being between you, Chris was on your laps, half on you and half on Buck.” Eddie remembers that barbecue vividly. It’s been almost a month since then, and it was the first barbecue they’d been to as a couple. He tells Maddie as much, and she smiles.
“I’d do anything for him too, y’know,” Eddie says.
“I know you would,” Maddie tells him. “It’s been a long wait to see you two settle into the family you were very clearly meant to be. But it’s been well worth it.”
“Yeah, it has,” Eddie agrees. After another few silent moments, Maddie stands.
“I’ll be back, but I think it’s time to send some others in,” she says. When Eddie moves to stand, she just shakes her head at him. “You’re right where you need to be, Eddie.”
Eddie’s not surprised when the next person in the room is Bobby, and the two men smile at each other before Bobby takes the chair Maddie vacated.
“So… how long?” Bobby asks, and when Eddie breaks his gaze from Buck’s face to look at Bobby, he’s got his eyebrows raised and he’s gesturing between the two men. Eddie sighs and huffs out a half-chuckle.
“A couple months. Maddie said you figured it out at the last barbecue,” Eddie answers.
“A little before then, actually. Damn, you lost me the bet by about a week,” Bobby says. “Looks like Michael’s gonna get to take David out to that fancy restaurant they’ve been wanting to try.”
“I’m sorry, Michael and David were in on this?” Eddie demands. The bet was no surprise, but the fact that it was reaching that far certainly was. Bobby just nods stoically.
“Eddie, you know you two wouldn’t be separated at work, right? Is that why you were waiting to talk to me?”
“No, we know it’s just some paperwork for HR,” Eddie assures him. “We just… I don’t know, we just wanted to feel it out, make sure it was something we both knew would work.”
“I have to say, you two have really grown,” Bobby says, looking for all the world like a proud parent. “The Buck and Eddie I met would not have that much restraint. God, the Buck I met would’ve jumped your bones the second you walked in on your first day.” Eddie lets out a surprised laugh, and Bobby just chuckles to himself as he lets his soft gaze rest on Buck’s face.
“We’ll get the paperwork done as soon as Buck’s back at work,” Eddie promises.
“Oh, I know you will,” Bobby says without looking away from Buck. “Now that people are finding out, this boy’s going to want to hang his love for you right out on display.”
“Y’know, after today, I’m more than ready to do the same,” Eddie admits.
-
When Buck wakes up two and a half days later and the first words out of his mouth are, “Eds? Y’okay?” Eddie does just that. The wolf whistles he gets in answer to the kiss he pulls Buck into (because of course Buck woke up when the entirety of the 118 was in his hospital room) are entirely worth it.