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“Ok, I’m heading out!” Eddie calls up to the loft as he makes his way to the open bay doors.
“I’ll be right behind you! Just gotta swing by the gas station, first.” Buck yells back over the railing as he hurries to go and finish putting the dishes away before he leaves, too.
“Ooh, is it date night?” Hen asks as she saunters by on her way to the stairs.
Buck pinkens from the bridge of his nose to the tips of his ears. “Four month anniversary, actually.”
Hen grins, shooting Buck a lascivious look. “Oh, you know the sex is good if you’re still counting anniversaries in months.”
Buck laughs, putting away the last stack of bowls and closing the cabinet with a flourish. “I’ll have you know that both Eddie and I are enthusiastic, creative and thoughtful lovers. I don’t think the sex is ever gonna stop being good.”
“Ew, gross—as your older basically-brother I demand you stop talking about your sex life.” Chim said as he went to the coffee maker to top off his to-go cup.
“I’ll consider that once your sex life doesn’t involve my actual sister.”
“Yeah, ok, fair.”
Buck claps his hands together, giving them both a silly grin. “Well, I’m out! See you next shift.”
“Yeah, same Buck time, same Buck channel.” Chim calls out as Buck bounds down the stairs, throwing back an “I don’t know what that means!” over his shoulder before disappearing out the bay doors.
Buck makes it to the gas station.
Buck does not make it to Eddie’s.
“Hey, Raya! My beer is stuck too far back on the racks to reach, do you mind if I run into the cooler to grab it?”
The lady behind the counter gave him the go-ahead, since she had four other people in line and trusted him enough to not do anything stupid in there.
He shivers when he goes in, his breath immediately fogging in front of him. He goes to grab his beer but sees that the racks were pretty empty all around, so Buck decides to spend a few minutes replenishing the beer and a few sodas to help Raya, grabbing a six-pack of his and Eddie’s favorite from the back wall on his way out.
Only he doesn’t get far.
He steps into the middle of a robbery in progress and is promptly shot four times in the chest. The room tilted violently and Buck goes down hard, taking a candy stand out with him. As he lie on the floor covered in M&Ms, Reece’s Cups and blood, his last cognitive thoughts are of Chris’s laughter and Eddie’s beautiful brown eyes.
When thirty minutes had passed and Buck had not shown, Eddie didn’t worry too much about it. Any number of things could have happened; he could have gotten caught up in conversation with Hen or Chim or likely Hen and Chim. He could have run into traffic. There could just be an extra long line at the store.
It was fine. Everything was fine.
When an hour passed and there was no Buck and there was no answer to his call, Eddie decided he could worry a little. Or maybe a lot. Enough to get in his truck and trace the route Buck would have taken to get to his place backwards in hopes of finding him safe and sound.
Like, maybe he got a flat tire and his phone didn’t have a charge.
Or maybe a fucking magic circus had appeared in a parking lot and he had been lured in by some creepy clown.
Ok, probably not that one.
But Eddie knew when he saw it—the gas station they most frequented was wrapped in crime scene tape and lit up by the various reds and blues coming off cruisers and ambulances and a ladder truck. He knew that this was the reason Buck was late.
He pulled into the lot, avoiding the officers trying to wave him off long enough to park and get out of the car with his hands raised. “Hey, listen officers—I’m with the LAFD and that’s my partner’s Jeep over there at the gas pumps. He…he was late and—is he ok?”
The two officers exchanged a glance, hands relaxing off their weapons minutely. “Sorry, sir—we can’t give any information at this time. This is an active crime scene—“
But Eddie was no longer listening. Two EMTs were wheeling a gurney out of the front of the store and taking it toward a waiting ambulance. Whoever was on it was covered head-to-toe in a white sheet.
“Buck?” He said a little brokenly.
Blood was seeping through the sheet.
“Buck!” He cried, stumbling forward a pace only to be caught by the two officers, who tried to gently steer him back toward his car.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off the form on the gurney as they were loaded up. He wouldn’t leave until he knew—
They were dead. Whoever was under that sheet was dead and he had to know it wasn’t Buck. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Buck wouldn’t leave him like this; wouldn’t break up their little family by doing something as stupid as dying. It. Was not. Possible.
It wasn’t Buck and he had to prove that to himself. He had to do it now.
He made very short work of the two men attempting to hold him back; a quick sweep of the legs and a twisting takedown had both of the officers incapacitated long enough for him to sprint away from them through the parking lot and leap over the crime scene tape. He’s sure the main reason no one is shooting at him is that he’s dodging between the gas pumps, past Buck’s Jeep and then into the back of the ambulance before the people closer to the scene knew what was happening.
The two EMTs were startled as he leapt on board, but one of them recognizes him and quickly connected the dots between his wild-eyed desperation and the body on the gurney.
She raised her hands, placating. “Diaz. Diaz! Listen to me. He’s already gone—“
Well, fuck if that isn’t the wrong wording.
Eddie went still, his lips trembling as he stared at the sheet-covered form.
“Shit Diaz—no! I mean he’s already been taken by another unit. Last I heard he was still alive.”
And if that wasn’t a familiar punch to the gut.
“He-he’s alive?”
She lowered her hands a bit, so she could pull back the sheet a little to reveal Raya, the cashier they most regularly saw at the store.
"Buck's alive?" he asks again, but doesn't really wait for an answer. Buck's alive and he has to get to him.
It was lucky for him that one of the officers that had been investigating inside the store also recognized him and was able to talk the two men he’d downed on his way to the ambulance into letting him go.
And go he did.
Buck’s awareness doesn’t come back all at once. It comes in patches of pleading voices and tangled fingers and tears. It comes in caresses to his face and a familiar weight pressed into his side and snippets of stories of fourth-grade drama. It comes in the enticing scent of warm pastries that he really really wanted to taste, but he couldn’t quite unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth enough to ask for.
It comes in Eddie’s gentle ministrations; his feather-light touches as he keeps Buck’s hair off his forehead and the more focused massaging of his bad leg, making sure the muscles don’t get tight even as Buck can do little more than lie there.
He’s finally able to make them aware that he’s kinda-sorta aware one night when Eddie is getting near the end of the book he’d been reading to Christopher (and by extension, Buck).
“Knew it.” He breathed out, his voice raspy with disuse.
Eddie drops the book and Chris perks up from his spot curled up into Buck’s least-injured side.
“Buck?” His name on Eddie’s lips is soft and full of awe.
Buck can’t quite force his eyes open, but he is able to produce a tremulous smile in the direction of Eddie’s voice. “Ev’ry day’s a year. S’eatin’ their youth.”
He’s already asleep again before Eddie can say anything else, but it’s enough; it’s real sleep now, not the quiet coma the Diaz’s had been holding vigil by for the last two weeks.
Eddie calls for the nurse and shoots out a text to let everyone know Buck had woken up for a few minutes and once all the hubbub dies down, he picks up the book again and can’t keep the smile out of his voice as he finishes the rest of the story.