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Eddie waits.
He picks himself up in the morning and goes to work, where he constantly looks beside him for someone who isn’t there. He does laundry, orders more takeout than usual, drives Christopher to school. He sinks down into Hen and Karen’s sofa and tries not to think too hard about why they’re making him a nice, hot homemade meal. He listens to Chris and Denny’s laughter down the hallway. He navigates the world feeling like everything is upside down and wrong. He talks to people, even though he wants to shut down.
He talks to Buck, too.
He’s at the hospital every time he ends a shift and, truthfully, he’d be there every second of the day if he could. But there’s—his job, which feels wrong without Buck by his side, there’s answering his son’s questions about why Buck is still asleep, there’s making sure Maddie’s okay even though he knows Chim has her, there’s Chris’ school clubs and homework, there’s too much.
The nurses that cycle through Buck’s room look at him with matching expressions—always so sympathetic, mouth twisted up in a grimace-like smile as they walk into room 3125 and see him in that same exact spot.
They’ve stopped putting the chair back against the wall, must’ve gotten tired after the fifth, sixth time of Eddie or Maddie dragging it right beside Buck’s bed.
The calls today were quick and easy. Good ol’ cat in a tree, small fire started by a toaster, some idiot crashing into a tree because they thought driving drunk was easier than calling someone. It was easy and Eddie was fine, he was, but Bobby looked at him with those eyes after lunch and told him to go.
He didn’t argue and he didn’t make the usual right turn to get home. He made a left and found himself beside Buck, holding the hand on the opposite side of those angry red marks. Evidence of the volts of electricity that stopped his partner’s heart.
“It’s me.”
Buck’s so quiet and he’s so still and he doesn’t twitch or move or laugh when Eddie takes his hand. He doesn’t open his eyes and quirk a questioning brow. Doesn’t wiggle his eyebrows with a laugh in his eyes. They don’t do this, they’ve never done this, save for the way they woke up as tangled limbs during quarantine, but Buck’s asleep and has been since that night and Eddie doesn’t know what to do other than hold him and try to piece him back together himself.
One of the nurses, Catalina, kind brown eyes, curly hair, makes her way into Buck’s room an hour into his stay.
She says, “Hi, Eddie,” because he’s been here every day, new name tag on his chest in big, bold letters. The dates on those stickers are really the only way he knows how many days have passed. She’s scribbling down his vitals and her eyebrows pinch together a little bit and Eddie feels like he might just start losing his mind pretty soon.
It’s been three whole days.
“Anything new?”
There’s a pause. Eddie looks back to Buck. The nasal cannula is pumping him full of oxygen and he’s so fucking still. He knows the answer, but it’s worth an ask.
“No, Mr. Diaz. Sorry. He’s stable, but…no. Nothing new.”
He doesn’t say anything. Just nods at her and squeezes Buck’s hand three times while his eyes flit around the room aimlessly for a few seconds.
Like always, he finds himself back to looking at Buck. Tracing over his face with his eyes, slowly, carefully, over every line, every wrinkle, every scar, every mark. His stubble, untouched over the past few days, is shadowed against his face and Eddie—doesn’t know why he does it, just reaches out and ghosts his hand over Buck’s jaw, to feel the beginning pricks of facial hair against the pads of his fingertips.
Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
So, he waits.
He picks himself up every morning, after that awful second of remembering what happened and where they are, and waits for Buck to wake up.
“Do you think,” Maddie says, voice thick after a few moments of silence. Christopher stirs and snuffs a little where he’s slumped against Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie reaches out and runs a hand through his curls. It’s his first time visiting, and he refused to leave thirty minutes before, when Eddie brought up school in the morning. Worked himself up until he tired himself out. “Do you think he’s having a good dream?”
Eddie’s throat works into a lump. He keeps massaging Chris’ scalp, so he doesn’t do something crazy like hold Buck’s hand and touch his face in front of his sister. “I hope so.”
“Maybe we can,” she pauses, voice going higher as she tries not to cry, soothing her palm over his forearm, “Maybe—let’s keep talking about nice things. In case he’s having a bad one.”
Eddie’s brain zeroes in on a memory and he huffs out a laugh. It surprises him—he feels like he hasn’t laughed since.
Since.
“There was this time,” he says, and clears his throat. “The three of us were at my Abuela’s house. She was making tamales for the holidays and she needed some extra hands. One of my younger cousins put Selena music videos on the living room TV, and Buck was, like, instantly sold. Did that dumb face, when he hears a really good song. You know, when he—”
Maddie’s laughing when she cuts in, “Like you’ve just insulted him. The wide open mouth, the eyebrows.”
“That’s the one,” Eddie confirms, light, but Buck is so still in front of them, so pale, and he’s not fucking moving at all, not looking up at him while Selena sings about the boy in apartment 512 like he’s hearing music for the first time. “So him and Chris started dancing in the middle of the kitchen, Pepa joined, so did Abuela, while I did all the work with the tamales. And—I just, uh, that was the first Christmas after Shannon. And it was the first time I was like, hey. I’m going to be okay, because I have him. As long as I have him…”
Maddie, bless her, doesn’t say anything. Not even when Eddie sucks in a big breath like he was splashed with ice water, when he realizes what he said.
A minute goes by. Eddie listens to the monitors, the beeping.
It’s so cold in the room, he wonders if Buck wants another blanket. He must’ve been so cold when it happened, and what if he still is and can’t tell them, it’s—
“He did that the first time I played No Doubt for him.”
Eddie takes a breath. Plays with his son’s hair. Rips his eyes away from Buck to look over at Maddie, who is looking at her brother with tears in her eyes. He feels useless—he couldn’t get to Buck in time, and he can’t get to the other Buckley that’s across the hospital bed, because Chris is fast asleep on his shoulder and he doesn’t want to wake him.
“Maddie,” he says. She looks over at him, and one of those tears falls down her cheek before she can blink it away. “He’s going to be okay.”
She nods, more tears falling, and she uses the sleeves of her shirt to dab her face dry. “I know. I know he is.”
Buck’s going to be okay, because Eddie doesn’t know what he’ll do if he isn’t.
“Dad?”
“Yeah, mijo?”
Christopher chews on his bottom lip. Eddie can see how careful he’s being, running through the thoughts in his head before he speaks.
Their dinner, Chinese takeout, is growing cold in front of Eddie.
“You said Buck can hear us. Is that really true?”
Eddie takes a deep breath and tries not to rub at his face. He knows he looks a little like he did before he got himself back into therapy—bags under his eyes, lips cracked and dry from the way he’s been biting at them, nails bitten to nothing.
He doesn’t know how to say that he heard people around him when he was unconscious after being gunned down in the middle of a busy street in L.A. He heard Buck, he heard paramedics, he heard doctors.
He ends up saying a definitive, “Yes.” Even though he knows it depends. Even though he’s not sure what’s happening in Buck’s head.
Even though—even though.
Christopher is silent again, moving the noodles around on his plate.
“Yes,” he says again. “He can—”
If he can, if, if, if,
“hear us. It might be a little scary for him, so we talk about happy things. Or just—how our day went. When you touch him, or talk to him, it’s stimulating his senses, which can help him get better quicker.”
“I know I have school,” Chris starts, and looks up at Eddie with his big eyes. There’s a little smudge on his glasses. “But can I go see him again tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
Bobby rests a hand on Eddie’s shoulder before lunch.
Eddie’s wired and hasn’t been sleeping and is made almost entirely of strong coffee so he jumps at the sensation.
“Sorry,” Bobby says, quiet enough that only Eddie can hear. “I was just making sure you’re okay.”
Eddie’s not, Bobby knows that, the entire firehouse knows that, from the way he screamed Buck’s name and the way he’s looked every day since, but he nods anyway. “All good.”
Bobby’s gaze softens. He squeezes Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie tries not to think about how it’s been days since Buck has touched him—those soft, calming brushes, skin against skin, an are you good? without having to use words.
“Hen called off work after what happened to Karen. Chimney did the same when he needed to be there for Maddie.”
Eddie’s mouth hangs open. It’s not the same, Bobby knows it’s not the same, they aren’t—they’ve never been.
But Bobby’s looking at him like he knows what went through Eddie’s head when Buck was hanging midair by a rope, heart not beating.
“You’re not doing your best work when you’re counting down the minutes until you can get back to the hospital. Would you have wanted Hen or Chimney here, when they were dealing with what happened?”
Eddie finds his voice, but it’s shaky. Not at all convincing. “It’s not the same, Cap, you—”
“I don’t want to go back and forth with you. I’m just saying to consider taking a few days. He’d want to hear your voice.”
Eddie leaves right after lunch because Bobby is an asshole and how could he not, after what he said?
He’d want to hear your voice. He’d want to hear your voice. He’d want to hear your voice.
When Eddie was shot and was spilling blood all over the streets of L.A., the only thought he could muster was, please keep talking. Buck’s voice made everything better. Hang on, I need you to hang on, he heard, and Eddie focused on that until he could do it.
He gets a few people on other shifts to cover him the next couple of days and drives straight to Chris’ school. He walks in, looking like he hasn’t slept well in days, because he hasn’t, and Carol, the lady at the front desk, clicks her tongue and frowns at him.
“Afternoon, Mr. Diaz. How are you holding up?”
“We’re—getting through it. Thanks.”
He kind of wishes he never sent a note with Chris explaining what happened, because he’d rather not break down in front of Carol and her kind eyes in public.
His eyes sting and he clears his throat.
“Checking him out early?”
“Yeah,” he says, trying not to lean all of his weight onto the front desk area and collapse, like a drama queen. “We’re heading to the hospital for a visit.”
Her blue eyes shine under the fluorescents and she nods in understanding. “I’ll give his teacher a call if you want to take a seat.”
He takes the seat near the exit and closes his eyes. He can hear Carol on the phone and a few other women talking about attendance and he can hear the copy machine going off too many times, all those annoying beeps.
The world is still moving, still turning, people are still living their lives like Buck isn’t stuck in the hospital, not moving, not blinking, not squeezing his hand back. Not opening his eyes and talking about some reel he saw on Instagram about sloths.
Eddie doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it.
How are these people going on normally when Eddie feels like he’s not even in control of his own body? He feels like—he’s just going through the motions. He doesn’t know how he’s doing it, just that he is doing it.
The beeping of the copy machine starts to sound like the slow rhythm of Buck’s heart, but before he can spiral about it, Christopher appears in the front office like a miracle, stifling that panic, loosening his chest.
Chris is touching Buck’s face gently, his hand a stark contrast against Buck’s ghostly lack of color. Eddie’s holding his hand again, going from squeezing to running his fingers along his knuckles, and he’s so deprived of sleep that maybe he’ll lean in and kiss them later. Just to see what happens.
“—And then I went to science class, and you would have loved today because we were talking about how this year’s science fair is going to work,” he trails off a little at the end, voice getting quieter. “We have…we only have a month to do our projects, so I think—you should get better soon, so we have enough time to finish it.”
Eddie hides the wounded noise he makes with a cough.
“I know you’ll wake up soon,” Christopher continues, and gets his hand into Buck’s hair. Without product, it’s curly, and Eddie feels a sharp pain in his chest when he looks between the two of them. “Because you told me you weren’t going anywhere. And you promised.”
There’s an awful whimper that tears out of Chris’ throat, and then his hand leaves Buck’s hair, and he’s throwing himself into Eddie with a cry that shatters his heart into a million more pieces.
Follow your heart, Carla had said, and look where that got him. His is about to stop working with all the love and grief that’s overflowing it.
He lets go of Buck’s hand only so he can hold Chris close to his chest. The tears he was holding in really start going now, and they’re spilling out on his cheeks, seeping into his son’s hair.
“I know, mijo. Believe me, I know,” he says, voice rough and raw and fucked up. He runs his hands up Christopher’s back, reminds him to breathe through it, and if Buck knew what was happening right now, surely he’d wake up, right?
“I just want him to wake up,” Chris gets out through hiccups and gasps, and he sounds so young, a desperate childish plea, and Eddie’s being ripped into shreds. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be whole again. “I want him to come home.”
Eddie waits it out. He waits for Chris to calm down, waits for the crying to slow down, waits for him to stop shaking and instead slump against him, tired.
“If he promised you,” Eddie whispers, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “He’s going to do everything to keep that promise.”
Another day passes.
Eddie sits in his kitchen while the world is asleep and scrolls through his camera roll. Buck is in almost every picture. He’s in the kitchen—the small dent on the island, the magnets he stuck on the fridge that look like planets, the handwriting in their calendar. He’s in the living room—a spare pair of shoes near the front door, a book about slugs on the coffee table, an old, busted Lion King DVD near the TV. He’s in his bedroom—the wall he helped fix up, the picture of the three of them on his bedside table, spare clothes in Eddie’s bottom drawer.
He’s everywhere.
He’s everything.
Eddie watches the same video over and over again. It was taken at work, in the bunks. Buck was snoring so loudly that it was actually pretty impressive, so Eddie moved in close to take a video just in case Buck didn’t believe the severity of it, because Eddie’s been known to be dramatic sometimes, or whatever.
He’s snoring and the sound would be annoying if it was coming from anyone else, but it’s Buck. So Eddie’s giggling to himself in the video, and it’s so fucking embarrassing that it’s making his toes curl.
Because that’s the kind of laughter that’s soaked with fondness and love and maybe if Eddie watched this video over and over when it was taken, he might have realized what was going on before Buck was struck by lightning and stuck in a hospital bed.
In the video, Buck’s eyes open, and Eddie’s stomach drops every single time it happens. His eyes open and those beautiful blues shine in the sunlight that’s filtering in through the windows behind Eddie, and he looks so goofy and confused for a second before he’s breaking out into that brilliant laughter and swiping at the phone.
“Why’d you wake me up!” Video Buck is shouting, and Eddie has to stop himself from throwing his phone into the sink.
Eddie misses him.
He misses him and he misses him and he misses him and he doesn’t know how he ever dealt with not seeing him for more than a day.
Sometimes he’d forget to reply to a text on their day off and sometimes he’d have to cancel plans because he was too tired from Chris’ extracurriculars and he clenches his jaw so hard his teeth creak under the pressure.
He thinks back to all the times he could have said just a few more words to him or watched another nature documentary with him but let sleep come instead and has to call Buck’s phone, just to hear the voicemail.
Eddie has videos of him, has his voice stored in his camera roll. He’s been listening to them over and over. But there’s something about the stupid recording.
Hello? Nah, I’m just kidding. This is my voicemail. Leave a message after the beep. Oh, this is Buck by the way, if you didn’t—
Beep.
Maddie calls him the next night, which sends a horrendous wave of panic through his whole body that almost paralyzes him.
He answers the call and can barely even get out the initial hello because his heart’s racing so hard he can feel it in his throat, choking him.
“Nothing happened, don’t worry,” she gets out quick, and Eddie sinks back down into his bed and struggles to breathe for a few seconds. “Sorry. I should have texted you first.”
“No,” he says, breathless, “It’s okay.”
“I was just thinking about something and I needed to say it,” she says over the line. There’s a smile in her voice, and it helps to calm Eddie’s pulse. “Whenever I first moved here, whenever I was trying to catch up with everything that had happened and was happening with him—he would not shut up about you.”
Eddie doesn’t even realize he’s speaking until he hears himself go, “What?”
“He was so jealous for a good, what? Five minutes? Remember?”
“Yeah,” Eddie croaks out. “Got pissed at me because my niece took a good photo of me.”
There’s a pause. He hears a car honking outside, can hear the thrumming of their AC unit outside, Maddie breathing peacefully.
“I’m glad he found you,” she says. Quiet. “I’m glad you found him. I was lying here thinking about everything that had to happen in order for me to get to Howie, and—” she makes a wet sound and takes a second to recover. Eddie just sits there, waiting, breathing. “It’s the same with Evan. He had to go through so much, but you were what was waiting for him at the end of it. You and Christopher.”
A little hysterically, Eddie thinks about that book Carla read once, about invisible strings.
It’s nice, to think about it like that. All of them connected, just waiting for the right moment to come together.
“Well, when you put it like that…”
They both laugh into the phone, the line becoming crackly with static.
“You’ve thought about it, though? You and him?” She asks a few seconds after they both get their shit together. “Shit. Sorry. You don’t have to tell me—”
“It’s okay,” Eddie answers right away, because this is Maddie, and she’s calling him at midnight to tell him he’s Buck’s destiny, or something. He’s in the dark, and he has the safety of being alone in his room. He can be truthful. “Yeah. I have. It was—it was only when…I didn’t know. Until.”
“Oh, Eddie.”
Maddie talks to him for another hour and Eddie lets everything out, from the beginning.
He’s not really sure if his eyes are playing tricks on him, but Eddie thinks Frank looks sad for him.
He’s usually met with an indifferent expression, mouth set in a line, eyes carefully blank. Maybe a soothing smile if he’s lucky. But Eddie’s in the chair for the first time since it happened and Frank’s eyes look sad.
“It’s been—?”
“About a week. He’s stable, just… not awake.”
Frank sets aside his pen and his journal and puts his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
Eddie lets his head tilt a little and tries to swallow the guilt and the anger and the sadness. “It didn’t happen to me, though. It happened to Buck.”
“That’s true. But you’re experiencing the aftermath, aren’t you?”
Eddie bites back a sarcastic you got me there, because it isn’t Frank’s fault that Buck got struck by lightning. It is his fault that he’s here and speaking about it explicitly and comfortable with spitting out his every thought and emotion, though.
“I guess so.”
Frank doesn’t push. It’s raw and it hurts and Eddie’s pulling at a thread on the arm of the couch just so he has something to do with his hands.
But after a while, he speaks.
“I want him to wake up. I want him to wake up so fucking bad, because—I feel like my life isn’t my own anymore. It feels robotic. I’m waking up, I’m eating, I’m sleeping, I’m making sure my kid is taken care of, I’m going through the motions. But I need him. I’ve always known I needed him, I told you all about how he was the one by my side when I came back to you for help. But I didn’t know how much—”
A noise is ripped from his chest. It’s ugly and raw and he grinds his back teeth together to quiet himself down. Angry, hot tears spill down his cheeks until they wet the collar of his shirt.
He breathes. He breathes and he breathes and counts to five.
Frank is patient. He watches him with sympathetic eyes and nods towards the box of tissues that are beside Eddie, like he might have forgotten they were available.
“I just wish I would have known what I felt for him earlier. It was always on the tip of my tongue, it was so close. It seems so fucking obvious now, but now he’s hooked up to machines and he won’t open his goddamn eyes, no matter how hard I try.”
He sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, finally caves and grabs a tissue and starts to get himself together.
Frank’s still looking at him when Eddie lifts his head up.
“And who the fuck gets struck by lightning, anyway?”
There’s an old text thread that Eddie scrolls for forever to find.
It was from a few months back, after they went out to a bar with the whole crew.
Everyone had gotten separate Ubers, and Eddie had been in the backseat for only a few seconds before his phone lit up. The car hadn’t even started moving. She was double checking his information as best as she could because he was distracted by his phone.
Buck: Come back I miss you
Eddie: I just saw you
Buck: I know
Buck: I still do
Eddie: Well get in
Eddie: Come home withme
The thread ends there, because Buck ran up to door and scared the shit out of the poor lady up front.
“Sorry,” Eddie had said, and he didn’t even think he was that drunk, but he saw two of Buck, so maybe he was. He opened the door and groaned when Buck got in without even waiting for Eddie to scoot over. “He missed me so he’s getting in.”
He’s pretty sure the lady said, “I don’t get paid enough for this,” which—Eddie does not disagree with.
He lies in bed and rereads the come back I miss you message until it’s burned into his eyes and falls asleep.
Eddie’s alone with him.
Maddie and Chim are out at the park with Jee, for some much needed fresh air and distraction. Hen and Karen have Denny’s soccer game, Bobby and Athena are catching up with May, Chris is at home with Carla, finishing up homework.
“It’s me,” he says, like he always does when he first sits down in the chair. “I think it’ll just be me tonight.”
Buck doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move, doesn’t stir.
He would laugh at the amount of flowers and cards that have been filling up the room since that night.
Eddie takes his hand and closes his eyes. “You’re killing me, man. Seriously. It was only a billion volts of electricity. Big whoop.”
He lets himself slump over, lets himself rest his forehead on Buck’s forearm. He runs his thumb over Buck’s hand and lets out a miserable little breath of air.
“You’ve gotten crushed by an engine, Buck. You were in a tsunami. You got through that blood clot. You—okay—I was trying to make a point about you always pulling through, but I think I just need to put you in bubble wrap from now on. Jesus Christ.”
Nothing.
The machines beep and there are quiet conversations in the hallway and in the real world, floors and floors below them, cars honk and people shout and sirens blare.
“This isn’t fair, you know,” he says, and sits back up. He squeezes Buck’s hand just to see if anything happens. “Because, normally when people have their big, grand realization that they’re in love with someone, they can tell them right away. Not me. I had to lose my fucking mind because you were just dangling in the air all alone. I had to get to you in that mess, revive you, and now you won’t even wake up.”
Buck’s lips are so pink against the paleness of his face. Eddie has memorized their shape, even before this. It was so close. He was always so close to getting it.
“If you don’t feel the same, you could just say so. No need to be dramatic about it.”
Eddie hasn’t allowed himself to think about what would happen if he doesn’t wake up, and he’s not about to start now. So he scoots his chair as close to the bed as he can and brings Buck’s hand to his lips. Takes his time to kiss each knuckle, and then his palm. Slowly, carefully, he lowers it back.
“I’m gonna play your stupid playlist,” he decides, and grabs his phone from the table. He scrolls through their shared Spotify and finds Buck’s Pleasures because according to him, he has nothing to feel guilty about.
A song from Katy Perry’s first album starts playing and Eddie lowers the volume because Buck may not be ashamed, but he doesn’t want nurses to walk by and think he’s the one stuck in 2008.
“Maddie called me the other night,” he says, taking Buck’s hand again. He doesn’t want to let go, ever. He’s grown used to the weight of it, the warmth. The roughness, the unique lines of Buck’s palm. “I think it’s the first time she’s ever called me. But, she told me how you wouldn’t shut up about me when I first transferred. That’s so embarrassing for you, by the way. You should wake up and explain yourself.”
Nothing.
Eddie sighs, but there’s a smile on his lips. “She said you had a boy crush on me. That’s even more embarrassing, if you even care.”
Steady beeping.
“She also said something about how we were supposed to meet. Like, everything that happened to us, led us here. Together. I agree with her on that part.”
Eddie plays with Buck’s ring finger. Traces the space that meets the meat of his hand, where a ring goes. “I could have taken a job somewhere else, you know. I mean, my Abuela and Pepa were already here, so probably not. But it was a possibility. And that possibility, never ever getting to meet you,” he pauses, breath shaky. He leans down, presses another kiss into Buck’s skin. “I can’t imagine that. I can’t imagine not knowing you. I can’t imagine a world where you’re not here. So please. Evan, please, I know you can hear me. I need you to wake up for me. I need you to wake up, because I need you.”
Eddie knows that they aren’t in a movie. Buck’s not going to magically wake up just because Eddie’s pleading with him and throwing up his heart and presenting it to him on a silver platter at his bedside.
He knows life isn’t fair.
He cries about it, anyway.
Eddie wakes up with a sore back. He wakes up with a crick in his neck. He wakes up to Buck’s playlist still going, some pop-punk song that sounds like it should be playing at the end of a cheesy, terribly acted rom-com.
He straightens up from where he was napping on Buck’s good arm and checks his watch. Same day, nearly an hour later.
Jesus.
He checks his phone.
Maddie: Anything new?
Bobby: Need any food brought up there?
“God,” he says under his breath, and starts to reply to Maddie.
No, nothing. Just fell asleep, sorry for the late r
“What,” he hears.
Eddie drops his phone to the floor with a clatter. He looks up so fast that he hisses, neck twinging in pain.
But—
But Buck’s eyes are open. Buck’s eyes are open and Eddie’s pretty sure he just woke up from a nap, he’s pretty sure he’s not dreaming because his neck hurts and his back hurts and he can feel that, but he reaches down and pinches himself anyway.
“Fuck, ow,” he gets out, and tries to scoot his chair closer but is met with the soft resistance of the hospital bed. “Buck? Buck? Did you say something? Are your eyes open, I don’t—”
“Where…?”
Eddie’s mouth hangs wide open in shock, and a bubble of relieved laughter punches out of him so hard he slumps over with it. “We’re—Buck, we’re at the hospital. You’re in the—you’re okay. You’re okay.”
Buck’s eyebrows draw together. He tries to move but winces, a low groan rumbling through his chest.
“No, hey, don’t move, Buck. Don’t try to move. You’re okay. You’re—you’re—”
“Hurts, what the fuck is that,” Buck says, all angry, that stupid, dumb, angry face, and Eddie’s heart is beating so hard he’s not sure how he’s not passed out cold on the floor, and oh, shit, fuck, he should get somebody, he should get Catalina, he should—he should.
He presses the button on Buck’s bed, presses it three more times, and then does it again five more times, because Buck’s cursing and his eyes are open and he’s not—he’s not dreaming anymore.
He gets up and knocks his chair backwards with how fast he does it, and Eddie’s too scared to think about the possibilities of what happened to his beautiful brain the week he was asleep and dead to the world, but—
“Eddie, don’t want this on me—”
Eddie laughs and he cries again and he must look crazy, because the nurses that come running in give him a look, but Eddie doesn’t care, he doesn’t fucking care.
“Sir, you’re going to have to give us some space. It’s common for patients to be a little agitated upon first waking, so if you could wait outside for the time being—”
Buck cuts through the words, voice tense and a little too panicked for Eddie’s liking. “Want him to stay. Please.”
Lindsey, the other nurse, just points to the area beside the window. “Just step aside then, please. He’s not leaving, Mr. Buckley. You’re okay.”
Eddie watches everyone filter through Buck’s room after tests are ran and scans are taken, after he’s checked over and given a tentative okay.
He’s glad no one is asking him to leave to make room for new people, or he would have just shut the door and kept Buck to himself.
He stays on Buck’s bad side, where the red marks are halfway to faded. He has a soft hand on Buck’s forearm, because it will be a cold day in hell before he stops touching him.
He watches as Maddie kisses his face a couple dozen times and cries while Chimney rubs her back and acts like he’s not also crying. He watches as Hen and Karen tear up and touch his face with gentle hands. He watches as Bobby kisses the top of his head, followed by Athena. He watches as Ravi cracks jokes and tries not to get too serious, watches as Carla walks in with a quiet Christopher by her side.
He watches, with brand new eyes, as Buck’s gaze softens the first second he lays eyes on Chris.
“Oh,” Buck says, voice wet, and looks over at Eddie with a wobbling bottom lip.
Christopher is gentle with his hug when he gets to Buck’s good side, eyes big and wide and shiny. He’s trying so hard not to cry, but as soon as he looks over at Eddie and sees dried tear marks on his cheeks stained with fresh new ones, he lets it happen.
“Hey, hey, sweetheart, I’m okay,” Buck says, so, soft, and raises his arm with a wince so he can pull Christopher close again. “I’m okay. I promise.”
Christopher’s crying, Eddie’s crying, Buck’s crying, it’s all a mess.
Eddie wouldn’t change a goddamn thing, because Buck’s awake and he’s okay, and he promised, he promised and he kept it.
“I knew you would be,” Chris says, shaky, and reaches up to touch his face. Something about the gesture makes Buck’s face crumple. “You were asleep for a long time.”
“I know. I missed you the whole time,” he says, voice so overcome with emotion that Eddie thinks he might have a permanent lump in his throat. He can barely breathe through it. “I heard you talking to me. I heard your dad talking to me. My sister, Bobby. Everyone. My body just had to get better before I woke up.”
Christopher smiles, big and wide and white. “Dad said you would.”
And—Eddie’s a little too caught up in Buck alive and awake and breathing to even freak out about it.
Later, after Carla takes Christopher back home and visiting hours are over, Eddie’s still there in the same horrific, uncomfortable chair, pulled right up to Buck’s side.
Apparently he’s allowed to stay, because Buck has him after Maddie in his emergency file.
Also, he’s pretty sure no one is about to say no to someone who just woke up from a fucking coma after being struck by lightning.
Buck’s been going in and out of sleep because of the pain killers he’s been given after all the tests have been ran, and Eddie—Eddie can breathe. He can breathe and his chest doesn’t hurt with every breath he takes because the doctors are impressed with his labs and scans and nothing too bad must have happened, because they’re allowing the two of them to be alone, together.
Still, they’re keeping a watchful eye and want to keep him for a few days.
Eddie’s good with being stuck in this horrible chair.
He’s good.
It’s a little after two in the morning when Buck pokes his shoulder. Eddie’s been dozing off and waking up every fifteen minutes because as soon as he’s unconscious his body seems to remember where he is and what happened and he shoots up like he’s been slapped.
But Buck gently prods his shoulder and Eddie wakes up with a sniffle.
“Mm. Yeah? Are you okay?”
Buck’s smiling and his eyes are glassy. He remembers that feeling after being shot—all those drugs in his system. He felt like he was just floating. Zero gravity.
“’M okay. When I—Chris, I told him I could hear you.”
“You did.”
“I wasn’t…” Buck’s eyes close for a little too long. Eddie thinks he’s fallen back asleep until he opens them, slowly. “I wasn’t lying.”
“What’d you hear?”
“Dreamed about you,” he says instead of answering, words stuck together. “Always dream about you.”
“If you wanted to dream about me for that long, you didn’t have to go into a coma about it.”
Buck breathes out a puff of air. His drugged out version of laughter. “Feel like we should…talk about this later.”
Eddie smiles. He runs his hand through Buck’s hair and stares at his tired face. He looks like he’s already dreaming again, but there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips and there’s color back in his cheeks.
“Later sounds good to me.”