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It was, as Eddie’s beginning to realize most of his best things are, a series of events he’s not able to control that lands him at the realization he’s in love with his best friend. And it’s a series of events he can’t control that leads him to finally saying the words out loud. He used to kid himself and say that he didn’t worry about things he couldn’t control; he knows now that it isn’t true.
The point is, Eddie knows now that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, or whatever, and the flipside of that coin tells him that the road to happiness is forged by some of the most difficult things he’s ever had to endure.
He thinks it’s bullshit, if he’s being honest. But it’s life. Eddie is trying his damnedest to come to terms with it.
The first thing that happens is that Eddie falls in love with Evan Buckley so completely and so quietly that he doesn’t notice right away. He doesn’t notice until that all-encompassing love has rewritten every cell in his body, to the point that he doesn’t think he can breathe without loving Buck.
The second thing that happens is that lightning strikes.
The thing is—
The thing is. Eddie wasn’t planning on telling him. What they had is good and is safe and doesn’t risk breaking his son’s or Buck’s heart. Eddie could handle it, if it broke his heart a little bit, because he lived his whole life that way. So he was going to take it to the grave.
Then lightning struck and the love of his life was suspended forty feet in the air but more unreachable than ever.
His plan, his list. The carefully-crafted life he thought he could get away with having if he could balance following his heart and keeping it in line. It all goes to shit in a matter of seconds.
So he really wasn’t going to tell Buck.
It just happened outside of his control.
He has Buck’s heart in his hands and he tries, god, he tries everything he can think of to breathe life back into it. If wishing and praying were enough, he could take his hands back and watch as Buck’s heart started beating again on it’s own, but it isn’t enough. They wheel the gurney with Buck lifeless and Eddie on top of him through the glass doors and it should stop there, Eddie knows that. They don’t go further than this. A nurse’s hands replace his and then Bobby’s hands are on his shoulders pulling him off. Buck is taken to a trauma bay and his beautiful face gets lost in a sea of doctors and nurses who now have to do the job that Eddie himself couldn’t complete. They have to bring Buck back.
The last time they were here—well. It wasn’t quite like this, the last time. When the person Eddie thought he’d spend the rest of his life with was wheeled in on a gurney the first time, he already knew there was no hope of her coming back to him. He already knew. And he’d said goodbye, he said his peace, so it was okay. But Buck—
Eddie didn’t say anything. He’d never said anything. And he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to hope that Buck is gonna pull through.
Bobby’s hands turn him until Eddie’s looking him in the eye. “Eddie,” he says, and god. If Buck dies it will ruin all of them. “Are you with me?”
So the last time they were here—the last time that Eddie felt like this, like his lungs were taking a page out of the world’s book and crumbling down around him, like his own heart was forgetting how to beat because the other half of it was somewhere in this hospital not beating either, like he’d never be able to see past his grief—
“Bobby,” Eddie says, and it’s the only warning any of them get before his knees give out underneath him.
Half a second.
That’s all it was, really. Half a second from when lightning struck Buck until it traveled down the ladder and knocked Eddie down. Voltage that was so powerful it kicked Eddie right off of the ground, and Buck took the brunt of it.
That tiny half second led to a few hours in the ER and even more in the OR to try and stabilize him. It led to six sleepless hours of Eddie pacing the floor of the waiting room, shrugging off Bobby’s suggestion to sit down and ignoring the cup of coffee Hen brings him. That stupid little fragment of time left him with a bruised tailbone and a ruptured eardrum that was treated in under an hour and all the while Buck’s heart was struggling to restart.
They get the word just after three in the morning that Buck is out of surgery.
“We placed a pacemaker,” Dr. Cooper tells them. “Most likely temporary, but with his heart continually arresting, it was our best option at the time. We’re keeping him on the ventilator, too, until he can breathe on his own. It’s not uncommon for recover from respiratory arrest to take longer than cardiac recovery in these cases.”
“Yeah?” Eddie says, voice sharp. “You deal with a lot of people struck by lightning?”
Dr. Cooper gives him a tired smile. She puts a hand on his arm and says, “I’m sure you’re all eager to see him. We have him set up in a room in intensive care. Visiting hours aren’t until seven, but I can take one of you back now. We don’t know when he’ll wake up, though I’m sure he’d be relieved to have one of you there when he does.”
“Eddie,” Bobby instructs, at the same time Eddie insists, “Me, I’m going.”
The way everyone looks at him, Eddie knows it wasn’t even a question.
Buck looks—sick.
Eddie can’t think of any other way to put it.
He’s pale and looks smaller than he actually is in his hospital gown. His chest rises and falls with each hissing sound of the ventilator. Eddie can’t even count the number of lines he’s connected to, no doubt pressers and fluids and whatever else is necessary to bring his blood pressure back up. His vitals are—not great. BP low, heart rate high, temperature elevated.
There’s a small scar on his collarbone. Practically hidden by the large lightning burn across Buck’s chest. Eddie can’t see all of it, only a sliver from the pull on Buck’s gown, but he’s sure it’s big.
He has to—Eddie has to take a step back. He has to look at Buck like he’s a medical professional and Buck is just a patient, because if he’s honest with himself he can’t stomach seeing Buck like this in any other way. But it’s—
It’s Buck.
And Eddie’s never been good at doing what he’s supposed to when it comes to Evan Buckley.
“Can I—” Eddie chokes out, but he loses the rest of the sentence before he even really knows what he was going to ask. Can I touch him? Can I hold him? Can I put my hands on him again and hope that this time it’s enough to bring him home to me?
“Of course,” Dr. Cooper says, voice gentle, and Eddie staggers forward. He isn’t aware he’s reaching for Buck until his cold hand is twined with Eddie’s, and after that it’s really instinct that keeps pulling Eddie closer until he can rest his forehead against Buck’s. Like Buck is the sun and Eddie’s the helpless idiot caught in his orbit.
Eddie breathes in time with Buck’s ventilator. He wishes he could breathe for Buck—wishes he could make this better. Wishes he took the brunt of the strike instead of Buck even knowing it would have landed him in this same spot.
“I’ll give you two some time,” Dr. Cooper says softly. “You can talk to him. You should. He might be able to hear you.”
When she’s gone, Eddie tells him everything.
“I love you,” he whispers. “Buck, dios, I love you so bad. And you scare the hell outta me.”
Buck’s eyes aren’t even moving. Eddie wonders if he’s dreaming.
“You gotta come back to me,” Eddie continues, and his voice threatens to break but he’s been holding the words back for years and he can’t stop now. “You have to, baby, because I love you and I want to tell you that every day for the rest of our lives, so. Come home to me. Come home to Chris. He loves you too, Buck, you’re the most important person in the world to him. He’s… he’s your kid, too. And he needs you.”
On the monitor, Buck’s heart rate starts to slow down. The pacemaker keeps the beats nice and steady. Eddie kisses the delicate skin on the inside of Buck’s wrist and reminds himself to keep breathing.
“I’ll build us a home,” Eddie promises. “A big house with a yard, and that huge kitchen you’re always dreaming of. And we’ll make a kitchen table big enough to fit everyone from the firehouse so we always have room for family dinners. Just tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you. I’ll hold you, I’ll lift you up when you need it and I’ll bring you back to earth if you start floating away from me. My hands weren’t enough to bring you back but they can build us a good life, Evan, so I need you to come home to me and tell me what you want that life to have so I can make sure you have it.”
Buck doesn’t wake up. His fingers don’t twitch while Eddie’s holding his hand and his eyes don’t open and he doesn’t wake up but Eddie has to believe he’s still in there somewhere and that he’s fighting like hell to come home. He has to believe that Buck heard him and that he’s going to wake up as soon as he can.
Because Eddie can’t control any more than that. There’s nothing else he can do except sit here and hold Evan’s hand, and pray, and love him.
So he waits.