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When Eddie wakes up it is to darkness and smoke and the crackling of fire. His head hurts and it’s hard—so fucking hard—to breathe. There’s something on top of him, no someone, crushing out his breath with their dead weight.
“Buck!” He rasps; the weight could only be him. They were in a multi-family structure fire and were clearing a floor when everything both below and above them collapsed.
Buck shifts, relieving some of the pressure from his chest as he gets his own hands beneath him and checks over Eddie visually. “Y’ok?” He finally slurs, a bit of blood dripping from a cut on his head onto Eddie’s neck.
“Yeah, I’m ok.”
Ok, so just to be fair here, Eddie didn’t know he was a liar at the time.
When Eddie wakes up, it isn’t as dark as before, but it is twice as smoky. There is an incessant banging off to his right that beats in time with the pounding in his head.
He tries to get up—operative word being try.
He grunts when he falls back down, something in his side shifting painfully. The banging stops, but the throbbing doesn’t and a few seconds later warm hands are cupping his face.
“Eds, hang on, ok? Don’t go back to sleep. We can’t…we can’t wait for help, so you gotta stay awake and I gotta dig us out, ok?”
The worry in Buck’s tone squeezes fiercely at Eddie’s heart. He wants to do what Buck asked but the darkness is already roaring back through his skull and he wants to cry at the broken sob he hears just before it pulls him down
down
down.
When Eddie wakes up, it’s darker, but there is less smoke. And he’s moving. He watches the ground pass by between his ankles as his feet drag along the floor, errant bits of detritus scattering in his wake.
He whimpers as that thing—he’s identifying it as a rib now that he has a little more thought power—shifts in his side again and a litany of apologies surrounded him as Buck continues to pull him to what he assumes is safety.
They come to an abrupt halt somewhere between now and never and Eddie can feel the way Buck trembles as he holds him.
“Fuck.” He whispers into Eddie’s hair.
Buck lays him down on the ground as carefully as he can and he makes sure to pause for a second to hold eye-contact. To give him a soft smile.
Darkness is already creeping back in when Buck slips away from him and a second later Eddie’s entire body startles when Buck screams fuck again, but he’s already gone before he finds out the source of his distress.
“…m’sorry Eddie, I tried…I tried so hard…I tried and I failed you and I’m so fucking sorry…”
When Eddie wakes up, he’s warmer than he should be, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He’s curled up with Buck, which is an activity he enjoys. He takes a few moments to gaze up into his partner’s face, which is slack with sleep.
He reaches up a trembling hand—why is he feeling so heavy all of a sudden?—to cup Buck’s cheek, gently wiping his thumb through the soot marring that birthmark he loves so much. He coughs and a sharp pain like lightning lances all the way through his chest and for a brief second, everything turns white.
Then fades to gray.
Then to black.
When Eddie wakes up; well and truly wakes up, it’s to blue eyes and a wobbly smile.
“Babe,” Buck’s voice is barely-there and he’s got bandages on his head and more on his neck and arms, but he’s never looked so beautiful before. “I was so worried. I thought I failed you.” His eyebrows draw in and his breath hitches and then he’s practically crawling into bed with Eddie, both of them hissing and groaning at various pain points but eventually settling into each other comfortably enough.
“I love you so much.” Eddie murmurs into Buck’s hair as he rubs a slow circle into the hand resting on his chest.
They go to sleep there in the hospital bed and the next morning-and every morning after that-Eddie wakes up to the light of his life and it absolutely never stops being the best part of his day.