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It took about four minutes to finally cut through the last layer of duct tape on his ankle.
In that time, he’d gone from smelling a fire to hearing it, starting at a dull roar and slowly building behind the steel door. Buck had no idea what might lie behind the door, but he didn’t have a choice. As soon as he was steady on his feet, he quickly moved across the room, only to give the computers one final glance.
His eyes focused on the screens, staring at the people who had become family to him. If he got burned too badly, he wouldn’t be able to give them a final goodbye. Instead they’d be left with the thought of him dying horrifically and alone. No, he shook his head. He couldn’t dwell on it. If he stood there any longer, he wouldn’t get the chance to say goodbye. If he attempted it, he could at least have a shot at it.
There was a part of him that knew he’d survive this. He’d heard a horror story from Andy about being burned alive, one night months ago after she and Quynh had had a fight and she’d arrived at his apartment annoyed. She’d told him about how long it had taken to heal, how much pain she’d been in, and how she’d done so without screaming, having already shredded her voice raw screaming for her lover when they’d been ripped apart that last time.
A crash broke him from his ill timed thoughts. He couldn’t just stand there. He had to at least try to escape.
A quick bruck of his hand confirmed fear number one: the door was hot. The flames had already reached around his little cinder block prison. The air was steadily becoming harder to breathe, with smoke already starting to fill the room.
He took a deep breath and spared one last look at the screens. He was able to see his team gearing up. Were they coming here? On the other, the BAU and LAPD were rushing out of the precinct, looking as though they were already prepared to see death.
As if the camera knew where his thoughts were about to go, the angle at the LAFD changed so that he could clearly see Eddie, climbing into the truck with a face of warring emotions. He didn’t let his thoughts take the dark turn they wanted to.
Buck put his head on the handle and pulled.
All he could see was fire.
Buck stumbled around another burning wooden pallet, trying to find a wall or an exit. He’d gotten turned around almost immediately when a rafter from above had fallen in front of his former prison, forcing him away from the wall and into the open area of the burning warehouse. He could feel the small burns from the flames on his skin attempting to heal with every step he took, skin reforming and burning again in a morbid pattern.
He ducked under a walkway, finding an area that was relatively clear of active flames and tried to catch his breath. There was no telling how long he’d been in the fire. He had no idea if the 118 or whatever station that was routed to this fire was on their way or if they’d arrived. Did the girl that was holding him hostage get caught or did she escape?
After only a few seconds, he started moving again. He had to find a way out.
Probably ten or fifteen stumbled steps later, he practically ran into a wall. His body gave out on him for a second, strength leaving his limbs and sending him collapsing and sprawling to the ground. He blinked once, twice, and then darkness.
He awoke to screaming.
Every burn on his body, mostly new as his healing was still rather decent, screamed at him to stay still. In the few moments he’d been dead again, a beam that had been supporting the partial second story of the warehouse had cracked from the burns, falling onto him. Luckily it was only a small section, one that was surprisingly easy to pull himself out from.
Getting to his feet was a different story. Yes, his injuries were healing, but each movement seemed to pause the healing, which meant flaring pain every few seconds. But it didn’t matter. He could ignore his injuries as long as he needed to.
Someone was screaming. Someone was in danger. He could still do his job, even without his equipment.
He followed the cries around whatever structure was in what he assumed to be the middle of the warehouse. On the other side, he spied what looked like a large tarp being pressed to the ground by a section of the roof. But it wasn’t flat. He could spy something under it, but he wasn’t sure what. Another small crate? No, that was a person.
“Hang on!” Buck tried to yell over the roaring fire. He ducked under a burning rafter and around the sheetmetal. On the other side, he was startled to see that the person was someone annoyingly familiar.
Her hood had fallen from her face, revealing that of the girl that had been holding him captive, though her face now sported a new burn on one cheek. The lower half of her body was pinned down by the rafter. The only thing preventing her from being horrifically burned was the fire retardant tarp she’d been hiding under, now keeping her trapped while also protecting her.
There was a fleeting part of him that wanted to be petty and vindictive. This woman had been causing property damage and had also contributed to the deaths of four people who had been seeking shelter within her targeted buildings. She’d attacked him and left him to die.
But that wasn’t who Buck was. He was alive - still, miraculously alive - and put here to save people. He wasn’t going to leave her to die. She deserved to be arrested, not be left alone to die.
He didn’t waste any more breath. Instead, he quickly looked around and spotted another blanket of the same material, though this one had ripped at some point. He quickly used some of the scraps to wrap and protect his hands before moving back to one side of the rafters. One very hard tug and shove later, the girl carefully pulled herself free.
As she gasped for air, she finally realized who was helping her. “Why-” her question was cut off by a coughing fit.
Buck grabbed the rest of the second blanket and used it to cover both of them from the rising fire. “Because no one deserves to burn alive,” he said. He quickly tugged her less burned arm and began to lead them away from the hole in the roof. “Do you know which way to an exit?” He glanced around, but all he could see was the flames.
“To the rig-” another cough. “Right.”
He turned and spied exactly where she was attempting to direct them to. The flames hadn’t reached this side of the building yet, leaving them instead with a blocked doorway thanks to some furniture. He carefully eased her to lean against the wall before making quick work of the desks and boxes against the door. Once their path was clear, he was able to force the door open and helped her stumble out into the cool afternoon air.
Buck had barely fallen to his knees about ten paces from the door when emergency vehicles came rushing up to the building. He kept the blanket around the girl as they pulled to a stop, the 118’s truck leading the way. A smile touched his face seeing Bobby and Eddie sprinting towards him, almost competing to see who would get there first.
He didn’t know. He was unconscious before they touched him.
Waking up in a hospital wasn’t something that he normally did nowadays.
Before he even bothered opening his eyes, Buck listened to the conversation around him. Spencer was to his left, in the middle of talking about something - wait, that sounded like the beginning of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Little giggles also reached his ear, which told him that Spencer was reciting the tale from memory, and Christopher was enjoying every minute of it. That would explain the lanky body curled up against his left side. From the right, he could just make out Eddie’s mutterings, probably on the phone or texting someone updates.
Just as Spencer reached the poem about the Jabberwocky, Buck made it a point to shift, which caused Chris to immediately cry out, “Buck! You’re awake!”
Buck cracked open one eye, then the other. Sure enough, Chris was practically sharing the bed with him, hugging around his neck as tightly as he could. Spencer was in a chair next to him, giving him a less than impressed look. On his other side, Eddie moved away from the wall he’d been leaning against, quickly hanging up on whomever he was talking to.
“Hey,” he said. Eddie visibly rolled his eyes. “How bad?”
“Some light smoke inhalation and a few stubborn burns,” Spencer reported. “You’ll be out of here as soon as they check in on you.” He nodded at Chris, who helpfully pressed the call button.
Eddie stepped forward. “Hey Chris, Carla is outside with some McDonald's. Can you give me a moment with Buck?”
Chris sighed. “You just want to have an adult conversation without me. Fine, but I get him next!” The sass from the boy was absolutely hilarious. Eddie looked like his son had hit him with a smelly trout, while Buck and Spencer had to work to keep from bursting into laughter.
The door barely closed behind the pre-teen when both men turned on Buck. “You could have been killed,” snapped Eddie. The glare was particularly frosty.
“You cut that very close,” Spencer added, annoyance present in his voice.
Buck sighed. “For the record, I didn’t go looking for her. She hit me after she lit up that warehouse near my loft. If I’d stayed where she’d locked me up, there might not have been enough left over for me to be buried, let alone come back from it.”
That sobered up the men for just a moment, long enough for the attendant on duty to pop in and begin to do her checks. While he answered her questions, Buck let his mind wander. This wasn’t exactly how he had wanted Eddie and Spencer to really meet, outside of the case as his immortal brother would say. He’d been hoping to have Spencer over one night, invite the Diazes, maybe talk Nile and the rest into making an appearance, and basically introducing both sides of his life in one fail swoop. Having this meeting with him in a hospital bed, uncommon as it was now, was not exactly part of his plan.
The attendant pretty much immediately recommended his discharge and left to get the paperwork started. He didn’t bother waiting for the door to click shut before asking the question that had been rattling around his brain since the moment he escaped that chair, back in the warehouse.
“Who was that girl, anyway?”
Spencer shifted in his seat, clearly expecting the question. “Her name is Chloe Bell, a former USC student. She and her friends ended up being the victims of a host of crimes last semester. After two dropped out and three others transferred, Bell decided to get back at the people who had hurt her group of friends.”
Eddie nodded, following along. “The problem is, most of those places were illegal and shut down last year. Remember that, Buck?”
Buck shrugged. “Yeah, I remember. I thought that the police were never going to get ahead of the organizers.”
“Since her targets were now in jail or were unknown to begin with, she decided to burn the buildings as a way to symbolically heal her friends,” Spencer continued. “Bell didn’t seem to care who got in her way to do so.” He paused, then added, “She did express regret for taking you, though, Buck. I believe because you saved her life.”
Buck nodded. “I wasn’t about to leave her to die. If I could help her, I was going to.”
Any further conversation was cut off by the opening of the door, admitting a returning Carla and Christopher (holding McDonald’s fries out to him, bless them), a nurse with discharge papers, and a mildly harassed Bobby Nash.
“You good Buck?” Bobby asked, sparing a quick glance at Spencer, but keeping his focus on Buck, who was making quick work demolishing the fires.
“Yeah, I’m fine Bobby, nothing to worry about.” The words barely left his mouth before the captain turned towards Eddie, who promptly reported his actual injuries. “Hey!”
Eddie chuckled. “He’ll be fine by our next shift, Cap. I’m half tempted to take him home with me-”
“Yay!”
“- but I know he also has things he needs to do at the loft.”
Bobby nodded and turned back to Buck. “First scare in a year. Think you can go two before doing that to me again?”
Buck nodded, not bothering to answer, because answering meant giving up the fries and that wasn’t about to happen. It was his cheat food, he was allowed.
Fifteen minutes later, he was being wheeled out to Eddie’s truck and back to normalcy.
There was a small part of Buck who privately thought he should have gambled on how likely it was that his loft would be invaded by the time he got back.
He and Spencer had only just reached his floor when the smell of amazing food reached them at the elevator. A quick glance showed no surprise on Spencer’s face, telling him that he was in on it.
In his kitchen, Joe and Nicky were preparing what had to be a feast, dancing around each other with a familiarity that was only borne from a thousand years of doing so. Nile was off to the side on chopping duty, listening as they spun a tale of one of their many adventures from lifetimes ago. Spencer’s friend Penelope Garcia was sitting at the island, listening with rapt attention.
The living room was occupied by Booker and Derek Morgan, both watching a sports game, baseball, he thought. While Derek had a beer in his hand, Booker had chosen one of Buck’s bottles of water, as he had committed to cutting back after an incident a few years prior (of which Buck still didn’t know about). Through the sliding doors, he could easily see Andy and Quynh sharing one of his expensive wines, a long forgotten gift from Abby.
“Should I be worried?” Buck muttered.
Spencer gave him the shy smile that Buck had grown to know so well. “No. This is our family. And soon we will add in yours.”
Buck grinned and went to join the group in the kitchen, already preparing to be put to work.