Chapter Text
“How’s Eddie?” Bobby asked the moment he laid eyes on Buck, and Buck let out a sigh.
“Abuela’s going over,” he answered. “I think she said something about baking cookies together.”
During one of their sessions with Dr. Copeland, they had started talking about traumas that had occurred before Eddie was a firefighter. She had tasked him, before their family vacation, with reaching out to some of the others he had served with. To touch base and talk about it with people who would understand his experiences better than Buck or the good doctor ever could.
And so, on the Saturday after their trip to St. Paul, Eddie did just that. Or he tried to, at least.
Eddie had not taken the news that everyone he had saved when their helicopter had been shot down, had gone on to die anyways. He had especially not taken the news about Mills well, who had killed herself just months before. It had been a difficult night, and a difficult morning after.
Now, on the Sunday that was supposed to be their first day back to work after the week-long vacation, Buck had come in alone.
“Eddie’ll bake cookies with Abuela, and they’ll watch their shows together, and he’ll be fine,” Buck said. “Chris is with him, too. He’s been clinging to him since last night. Getting him to go back to school tomorrow is going to be difficult.”
“He’s a good kid,” Bobby said.
“The best,” Buck agreed, pouring himself some of the fresh coffee that had just finished brewing. He turned to where Hen and Ravi were sitting at one of the tables, the former scrolling through her phone while drinking coffee, the latter looking a bit morose. “How’s Albert?”
Apparently, due to circumstances Buck was entirely uncertain about but which probably involved the floaters they had available, Albert had been stuck on regular firefighting duty instead of being partnered with Hen while they were in St. Paul. Just before everyone was scheduled to come back, the poor guy had gotten a pretty solid whack to the head at a scene, and was now out for a few days with a concussion. One of the floaters from the week before - a paramedic named Jonah Greenway, whom Buck had never met before - was going to continue covering for him.
“I’ll tell you as soon as Mrs. Lee tells me,” Ravi groused. “Al still isn’t supposed to be looking at screens.”
“You two are like a pair of very sad puppies,” Hen said, looking up from her phone to smirk at them both.
“Oh shut up, you’re just jealous you don’t get to go to work with yours,” Buck said. “Actually, since we’re apparently doing a census: Hen, how’s Karen doing?”
Two weeks ago, the answer to that question would have been: Not well. Two weeks ago, Gavin had finally been moved from the Wilsons’ household to a family that would, hopefully, be his forever. Karen and Buck had both reacted to his departure appropriately, which is to say that they spent the night afterwards getting wine drunk together and crying on each other's shoulders while going through the many, many pictures of him on their phones.
“Karen is doing fine. We got a new foster last week, so the empty nest didn’t last for long.”
“Good, good,” Buck said, nodding. “Pops, what about you? How’s ma?”
“You talked to her just last night,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes fondly.
“Do I have to call you pops?” The owner of the voice was a blond guy that Buck had never laid eyes on before.
“Nope, just Cap for you, or Bobby,” the captain said. He pointed and said, “That’s Buck.”
“You must be Jonah, right?” He didn’t offer to shake the paramedic’s hand. Something about the other man just seemed… Off. A bit plastic, a bit fake. Not fake like Taylor got, when she was trying to charm her way into a lead, but… Buck couldn’t think of the proper way to describe it. Jonah Greenway just seemed too put together.
“Yeah, filling in for Albert Han,” the man said, and Buck caught Hen making a face, which did not help his opinion any. He almost went to drag her away to ask her about that, but then Bobby grabbed his shoulder.
“I’m about to call everyone and do the morning briefing,” the captain said. “And then afterwards, you’re coming with me to the office.”
“Why?” Buck asked warily. “I have literally been in the building less than ten minutes, I haven’t done anything yet.”
“I’m going to walk you through some of the day-to-day paperwork captains have to do,” Bobby said, and grinned widely at the groan those words prompted. “I was not joking about wanting to be able to go on a vacation and not have to juggle captains from other shifts or stations, Buck.”
What he wouldn’t give to be baking cookies with Abuela, instead.
“Abuela, you know I can’t cook,” Eddie said, watching as his grandmother set out all the required ingredients for cookies. She had come over a couple hours after Buck had left for work, who had probably called her to let her know things were Not Okay. She’d arrived with warm words and warmer hugs, and bags filled with everything she decided Eddie needed.
“I know you don’t cook,” she corrected him, getting out one of Buck’s mixing bowls. “It took Buckito two whole weeks to stop gushing to me and Pepa about the dinner you made for him last year for Valentine's Day, so you cannot lie to me and say you can’t. But this isn’t cooking, it’s baking. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, dad,” Chris chipped in. He had been awake for a couple hours now, but was still in his pajamas. “It’s totally different.”
Eddie rolled his eyes but couldn’t help but smile.
Baking with Abuela and Chris really wasn’t all that awful. He and Chris helped measure the ingredients and add them all in, both of them getting their hands whacked with a spoon when Abuela caught them sneaking handfuls of chocolate chips. And then he was tasked with mixing the batter, “because of your big, strong arms, nieto.”
And then he had to send his son off to wash up, because he turned around from putting the tray of dough blobs into the oven to find Chris had dove face-first into the mixing bowl.
“How are you, Eddie?” Abuela asked him as she set a kitchen timer, taking the opportunity now that Chris was out of the room. “Truly?”
“I don’t know,” was his honest answer. There was a whole mess of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to untangle, not yet. If Buck hadn’t been there, watching with increasing worry as he tried to reach the people he had thought he saved, only to be repeatedly told that he had only delayed the inevitable, Eddie didn’t know what he would have done.
The shouting and crying probably would have paled in comparison.
“It is terrible news to hear, no matter the circumstances,” she told him, reaching up to cup his cheek. Eddie wasn’t certain what Buck had told her, precisely. “But it is good for you to not be alone.”
“Buck wouldn’t let me be alone.”
“He is a good young man.”
“He’s your favorite.”
“Nonsense, that was and always will be you,” Abuela said, smiling up at him. “Tied for Chris, now. Buck agrees, and that’s why we get along so well.”
“Thank you for coming over,” he said, loosely wrapping a hand around her wrist.
“Always, any time,” she promised. “Buck mentioned you were going to talk to that doctor of yours?”
“Tomorrow,” Eddie said. “No office hours on Sunday.”
“Still, it’s good that you’re talking to someone,” Abuela said. “I don’t want you to be like your father, Eddito. All pride, and refusing to bend before he breaks. Refusing to admit when he needs help, refusing to admit that other people can help him.”
Eddie had to swallow the hint of shame those words evoked, because he had been like that, was still like that in some ways. He had been taught how to be a man according to his father’s particular ideals, and unlearning all of those childhood lessons was a difficult and seemingly never ending task. It was still his initial instinct to suck it up and move on, to repress rather than actually deal with anything.
(Ramon Diaz had been the topic of more than one session with Dr. Copeland.)
“That’s mostly Buck’s influence,” he admitted.
“And that,” his abuela said, “is why Buckito is my second favorite.”
By the time Chris came back, with his face washed and having changed out of his pajamas, the cookies were ready to come out of the oven. They were set on the counter to cool, and then Abuela dragged them both out of the kitchen and to the couch. Eddie didn’t get to watch their shows every day, and was a week behind thanks to the trip to St. Paul, so they ended up watching a bunch of episodes that the older woman had already watched.
Her commentary was just as entertaining as the petty dramas on the screen.
Buck didn’t like it when he was thankful for the alarm to ring, because it always felt like he was being thankful for other people being hurt or in danger. But occasionally the timing was just so convenient, so fortuitous, that he couldn’t help but be a little bit grateful. Like now, when it rang in the middle of Bobby showing him the system for making the schedules and all the consideration that went into it.
And yes, okay, it was actually interesting, but it came with the knowledge that he would one day have to know how to do it. Because Bobby had decided, against all logic and reason and wisdom, that Buck was the person best suited to fill in for him, and that… Buck hadn’t yet managed to wrap his mind around it properly, especially when it came with the expectation that Bobby would one day not be there to do it himself.
So it was with some guilt-tinged relief that he practically sprinted out of Bobby’s office when the alarm rang.
When they pulled up to the scene, they found a woman hanging from a sign on the edge of an apartment building, several stories above the ground.
“Woman fell off the balcony from the penthouse floor. Luckily she got caught on that sign on the way down,” Bobby told them as they piled out of the trucks. The woman was kicking her legs as she dangled helplessly, while a man a couple balconies above her was gesturing violently and shouting down at them. Apparently, he was worried they would somehow miss the woman clinging for her life on the side of a building. “We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s hustle up. Tactical gear all around, let’s go.”
“Floor’s too high for the ladder, and she’s too high up for an airbag,” Buck pointed out. At that height, even an airbag would result in at least several broken bones. Worse, depending on how she landed. “What’s the plan?”
For a moment, just the briefest of moments, he was afraid Bobby would try to turn this into a learning experience for him, but thankfully the moment passed.
“You’ll come down from the roof,” the captain said, and Buck nodded in acknowledgement as he ran to get the needed gear from the truck. “Ravi, Jonah, I want you on the floor below her. Take out that window so you can bring her in through there. Hen, find the building manager, get us access to the adjacent floors.”
Buck rushed into the building with the others, carrying the harness and the wench, as Bobby shouted for the area to be cleared. As a group, they climbed the stairs, splitting off as each reached the floor of their objective. The firefighter who followed him to the roof, Duncan, tended to bounce between shifts and fill in where it was needed. Buck had no doubt he was good at the job, but he wasn’t Eddie, and he absolutely hated doing these kinds of rescues without his husband at the wench.
“Just entered the unit, Cap,” Ravi announced over the radio as Buck and Duncan got to the roof. “We’re anchoring off and about to remove the window.”
There was some commotion from the balcony below, where the man had been, and Buck took a moment from securing lines and getting harnessed up to glance down. Bobby had arrived there, and one of the others was getting the man out of the way.
“Lines secured and I’m harnessed up, Cap,” Buck said into the radio. “Coming down now.”
“Copy that,” Bobby radioed back, glancing up at him as he swung a leg over the edge. “Fast as you can, Buck.”
“Cap, we have a problem,” Hen said. Below, the dangling woman’s screams were getting a touch more frantic. “We have to move now, that sign is not secure.”
“Alright, thirty seconds. Buck’s coming down,” Bobby replied, and Buck nodded at him as he passed. “How’s that window?”
“We’re getting there,” Jonah replied.
“It needs to happen now.”
“Got to move fast, she’s about to drop,” Hen said, and Buck hurried his pace.
“Help me!” the woman screamed as he got closer to her, the sign starting to tilt. “Help!”
“I’m almost there!” he assured her, and she finally looked up at him, instead of down at the ground.
“Oh, thank God!”
“I need you to try not to move,” Buck told her, sliding the spare harness off his shoulder and holding it out. “I’m gonna put this harness around you and get you down, okay?”
“Please hurry,” she replied, and the sign tilted just a little more. Buck was almost to her, almost within reach to put the harness around her, when one of the ropes holding the sign finally snapped entirely. She shrieked, and there was nothing he could do but watch as she fell-
Right into Ravi’s arms, who had poked his head out of the window to see what was happening. Buck watched in stunned relief as the younger man dragged her inside with Jonah's help.
“She’s safe.” Ravi sounded out of breath over the radio a few moments later, and the woman’s thankful jubilations were audible in the background.
“Puta madre,” Buck muttered to himself, and then radioed for Duncan to pull him up.