Archive of Our Own ^beta

The worst part, Eddie thinks as he sits and stares unseeing at the row of lockers, is that the day started out so normal.

They moved into their new home a few days ago, a house with three bedrooms that’s close to work and the kids’ schools. Despite the slightly outrageous rent, Eddie knows the move was worth it, because he could only handle so many more of Cassie’s meltdowns when she and Buck eventually had to return to Buck’s apartment.

They tried explaining that the four of them living in Eddie’s current house wasn’t going to work simply given sheer space, but without fail, the second Buck started coaxing her into the jeep, she screamed like she was trying to wake the dead. Eddie felt bad that he couldn’t be with them after they left, but he knew from Buck that she would eventually slip into silence, refusing to talk to him for hours until she forgot that she was angry.

After a couple weeks of that, Buck and Eddie figured enough was enough, and started looking for houses to rent in earnest. Given the state of the rental market in LA, they found a place faster than they thought they would. It was only last weekend that everyone was helping them move on their forty-eight off—not ideal timing, but Buck and Eddie were counting on their upcoming four days off to really settle into the house and make it their own.

Just this morning, Buck and Cassie were working on a landscape puzzle (“Come on, Eds, when are we ever going to have this much space in the living room to lay out all the pieces?”), Buck chewing on half of Eddie’s bagel as he pointed out potential matches for the piece Cassie was hunting for. When Eddie started hurrying them out the door so they could get the kids to school on time before heading towards the station, Buck groaned playfully before pressing a kiss to his cheek. Eddie can still feel the wet squish of cream cheese sticking to his stubble and Buck’s quiet whoops and resulting laughter as he wiped it away and licked the excess off his thumb.

They had taken so long that Eddie eventually made the executive decision to take separate cars, ushering Christopher into the back of his truck and loudly letting Buck know that he was on his own getting Cassie to school. He still remembers Buck’s faux-indignant, “Hey!” as Eddie closed the door behind him, and the playfully stern look Buck bestowed on him when he arrived at work half an hour after Eddie.

And now, not even twenty-four hours later, Buck is in emergency surgery. His heart stopped. For agonizing minutes, they could only do compressions before using the lifepak, and even then, he didn’t have a pulse until Eddie got his hands on him as they pushed through the hospital doors.

Buck could be dead right now for all Eddie knows, because instead of planting himself in a waiting room chair like he so desperately wanted, he had to return to the station. Distantly, he understands why. He needed to take off the turnouts, change into civilian clothes, grab his bag, grab Buck’s, too. Except somewhere in the middle, his mind went frustratingly, disturbingly blank, and now all he can do is stare at his and Buck’s shared locker.

For the longest time, Eddie kept a photo of Christopher on the inside of the locker door, a reminder of who he was going home to each shift. He can’t recall when Buck added a photo strip of the three of them from a photobooth. Based on the shape of Christopher’s glasses, Eddie figures it was after the tsunami, since they had to replace his old ones, too scratched to see through properly.

Another photo is posted on the door now, added long before their friendship ever held the promise of becoming something more. From Buck’s shoulders in front of the giraffe exhibit, Cassie beams, Eddie grinning just as wide from Buck’s side, Christopher between them.

They’re a family. They’ve been a family longer than either of them could have admitted a year ago, but a family nonetheless. It’s been a long time since Eddie’s only had Christopher to remind him exactly who he’s fighting to come home to.

And now–

God.

Eddie can’t even think about the possibility that he’s going to lose the family they worked so hard to build, because then he will collapse and he’ll never get up, and that can’t happen, because he has two children he can’t fall apart in front of.

It’s not an option.

“Hey.” Bobby’s voice comes from behind him.

He knows that Bobby’s talking to him, but everything feels so far away and intangible. He thinks of wet rope slipping through his gloves, Buck’s unmoving body so close yet so fucking far, and tastes bile on the back of his tongue.

“Eddie,” Bobby says, pointed.

It’s enough to get him to glance over his shoulder. He thinks about saying something, but what would he even say? Hey? There’s nothing to say when Buck is currently fighting for his life, all alone in a hospital that’s too far away from Eddie.

“I asked Pete to notify Maddie about what happened.”

Eddie shakes his head. He can’t stop staring at Buck’s smile, his fingers wrapped tight around Cassie’s shins. “I should have gone.”

“Maddie is Buck’s emergency contact,” Bobby says firmly. “This is protocol.”

“Doesn’t matter. She should have heard it from me.”

“She’ll see you at the hospital. Come on, I’ll drive you.”

That should have Eddie rocketing to his feet, but he’s rooted to the spot, paralyzed by something more acrid than fear. If he walks into the hospital and has to walk out with a bag of Buck’s personal items, that will break him. For good, this time.

“Bobby, I–” He chokes on his own words. His hair, he realizes as he drags a hand through it, is still damp. His eyes burn, but they stay frustratingly dry. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Hey,” Bobby says, sliding onto the bench next to him. Eddie doesn’t—can’t—look over, too afraid of what he’ll see in Bobby’s eyes. “Buck had a pulse when we left. He’s being looked after by the best of the best. He’s going to be okay.”

“Do you really believe that?” Eddie whispers.

“I have to,” he replies frankly. “And so do you.”

“If—if he–” Eddie swallows around nothing, his throat unbearably dry. “What am I going to do? Christopher is—and Cassie. Oh my god, Bobby. Cassie. How am I going to tell her? She already—fuck.”

“You don’t need to worry about that for a while yet,” he says reasonably. “When do you have to pick them up? Three thirty? That gives you a little over twelve hours to figure it out. But for now, I’m driving you to the hospital.”

Eddie nods jerkily, chin tucked into his neck, and follows Bobby out of the locker room.

Chimney and Maddie are already there when Eddie and Bobby round the corner, Maddie curled into Chimney’s embrace.

The closer Eddie walks to the window, the more it feels like a hand is steadily squeezing around his throat, tight enough that black threatens to seep in at the edges of his vision.

“What do we know?” Bobby asks, braver than Eddie could ever be.

They look up at Bobby’s voice, and Maddie’s face crumples even more at the sight of them. “Oh my god, Eddie,” she sobs, and Eddie wraps her into his open arms, holding her as tight as she’s clinging to him. He’s not quite sure who is propping up who; either way, they’re both still standing despite everything that threatens to shatter them completely.

“He’s alive,” Chimney replies, and Eddie squeezes Maddie tighter. She’s definitely holding him up, now. “He’s in a medically induced coma to let his body rest and recover. The doctor said the next twenty-four hours are gonna be crucial.”

The words are barely a reprieve. Yes, Buck is alive, but there’s no guarantee he’s going to stay that way.

Maddie walks Eddie over to the window, slow and steady, and the sight that awaits him makes him suck in a sharp breath. “Oh, god,” he breathes, stumbling away, turning his back on Buck laying prone in a hospital bed, a ventilation apparatus fixed over his mouth. Eddie hunches in on himself, digging his fingernails into the back of his neck until the urge to throw up passes.

He doesn’t have to look to know that it’s Bobby who presses a warm palm between his shoulder blades. It feels too similar to comfort offered on a day that still makes him ache every May, so he shakes off the touch and pretends that the sight of Buck on life support isn’t seared onto the back of his eyelids.

“It’s my fault,” Chimney murmurs, letting out a shaky sigh. “I was going up the ladder, but he stopped me and went up instead. I should’ve–”

“Chimney, no.” Bobby’s firm opposition overlaps Maddie’s adamant protests.

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie says, voice thick with unshed tears. This, he thinks blearily, would be a lot easier if he could just cry. “I secured his line. If it’s your fault, it’s mine, too.”

“It’s no one’s fault,” Bobby says with harried finality.

Eddie looks at him, then—really looks at him for the first time since they wheeled Buck into First Presbyterian. The skin around his eyes is strained, his hair mussed in a way he never lets anyone see, and it hasn’t escaped Eddie’s notice that he’s been thumbing a rosary in his pocket. “It’s not your fault either, Cap.”

Bobby straightens at the use of his title as if remembering that he is, in fact, their captain. “When any of you are in the field, you’re my responsibility. This happened under my watch.”

“Lightning happened under your watch,” Eddie replies, suddenly very tired. He recalls then that it’s one in the morning, and he hasn’t slept in almost twenty-four hours. “I’m going to find some coffee.”

“I’ll come with you,” Maddie offers.

Something shutters in her eyes when he accidentally snaps, “No,” but he can’t summon an apology, blinking dully at the windowpane and the pattern on Buck’s hospital gown and the gentle curl of his fingers against the sheets—anywhere but his face. “I’ll go alone.”

As Eddie walks away, he wonders if his words are a premonition of the future. He hopes, desperately—silently—that they aren’t.

Once noon rolls around with no updates on Buck, Eddie is none too gently forced to go home. As much as he wants to put up a fight with Hen, he knows he needs to eat food that wasn’t made in a hospital, and he needs to shower, and he needs to figure out how to tell Christopher and Cassie that Buck got struck by fucking lightning.

Two of those tasks are easier than the other, so Eddie focuses on them as he keys open the front door. Or at least, he tries to, but his thoughts of what might be in the fridge and idle imaginings of washing the smell of hospital off him are instantly derailed the second he steps inside.

The entire floor is covered in balloons of all shapes and colors, enough that Eddie has to kick them out of his path as he drops their bags and hooks his keys inside the closet. For a moment, he wonders if he somehow let himself into the wrong house on the street—it’s been home for less than a week, it’s possible—but he can see Buck and Cassie’s unfinished puzzle laid beneath the layer of balloons. It’s only when he sees the banner hung up in the archway between the living room and kitchen that the penny drops.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! is spelled out on a long banner clearly made by his kids, Cassie’s additions obvious in the green lettering and the smattering of Yoshi stickers, who she recently decided is way cooler than Baby Peach. Eddie can see Christopher’s influence in the evenly spaced block letters, likely measured and re-measured before he let Cassie start painting.

Eddie laughs, sharp in the quiet of the empty house, but it comes out more like a choked sob, breath catching in his chest, because in all the commotion, he forgot.

He forgot about his own birthday.

Buck didn’t, though. That much is clear. It all makes sense now, the way he was lagging behind yesterday morning, why Christopher was grinning so much on the drive to school, and why Buck walked into the station with a spring in his step despite Eddie leaving him and Cassie to their own devices. Getting Eddie to leave without them had always been part of the plan, carefully crafted so Buck could decorate the house without Eddie suspecting a thing.

A flawless plan, really. If today was a normal day, Eddie can imagine how pleased Buck would have been to surprise him with this, how he would’ve bounced on his toes with his tongue pressed against the back of his teeth, fingers twisting in unnecessary nervousness until Eddie fit his thumbs into his dimples and kissed his beautiful smile.

The image of Buck’s lips, slack around a ventilation tube, flashes in Eddie’s mind.

No one is home. The kids are at school until later in the day. That’s enough for Eddie to let himself sink to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them like a child.

Buck told him once, only a few months ago, how scared he was about the possibility of Christopher and Cassie losing another parent. While Eddie understood the worry, he believed in the future he and Buck could have more than he wanted to entertain the fear. They were solid—as partners, as friends, as parents. Nothing could have convinced Eddie in that moment that Christopher and Cassie would lose either one of them. Eddie certainly wasn’t going anywhere, and even though Buck couldn’t even admit it to himself back then, he knew Buck wasn’t going anywhere either.

In all that certainty, Eddie never once thought about how the possibility of their kids losing another parent wouldn’t necessarily be a choice, Buck ripped from their grasp barely two months after they intentionally started their life together.

Surrounded by balloons and the hand-painted banner—surrounded by the love and celebration his family painstakingly injected into their new home for his birthday—Eddie rests his forehead on his knees, and he finally, finally cries.

Happy birthday to him.

By the time he picks up the kids, Eddie still doesn’t know how he’s going to break the news to them.

He spent the afternoon crying on the floor and then sobbing in the shower—he got himself mostly under control, until he started making a grilled cheese sandwich and reached for the wrong drawer when he needed a knife.

On the fourth night in the new house, Buck, riled up for no reason, swapped the cutlery drawer with the one they were using for their miscellaneous kitchen tools.

“It makes no sense, Eddie,” he told him over the clatter of forks and knives and spoons over their countertops, all indignant and frenetic energy. “I keep on reaching for a knife and I pick up the mushroom slicer.” He brandished the slicer in Eddie’s face. “I’m going to throw this out the window if it happens again, and it won’t be my fault.”

Eddie, who didn’t care where the cutlery drawer ended up, watched in warm silence, helplessly in love.

No one can blame him for bursting into tears after remembering that, right?

Eddie doesn’t really believe that the universe is sentient, but it sure does have a knack for pulling the rug out from underneath him right when he thinks he’s finally on solid ground.

Cassie’s school lets out earlier than Christopher’s, so he swings by there first, cutting off the engine and sloping inside right as the bell rings. It reminds him a bit of the first time he picked Cassie up on his own, her initial confusion at seeing him instead of Buck that was easily swiped away once he promised her a special night with just the two of them.

He thought being away from Buck for so long would upset her, but the most stressful part of that evening was when the cheese sauce for their macaroni started getting gritty. When he called Bobby in a panic, he didn’t actually believe that he’d prepared it correctly until Cassie cleaned her entire bowl and held it out for seconds.

He looks back on that night with fondness, but with a stomach-sinking realization, Eddie knows today won’t be the same. Instead of telling her that Buck simply had a bad day, he has to tell her he doesn’t know if he’s ever coming home.

Suddenly, Eddie feels a surge of gratitude for Buck. He had to do the exact same thing with Christopher when Eddie was shot. If he remembers correctly, Buck apologized for losing it when he told him, and quietly, Eddie wonders how he isn’t going to do the same.

“Eddie!” Cassie shouts from inside the classroom, startling several students around her. She waves wildly through the window, baring all her teeth in what’s probably supposed to be a smile.

Eddie grins back, small but genuine, lifting his hand in a weak wave. He watches her collect her bag and jacket, only to abandon them the moment she leaves the classroom in favor of launching directly at him. Catching her under her arms with a grunt, Eddie heaves her onto his hip.

“Happy birthday!” she enthuses. “Killian’s birthday is today too, but I think your birthday is way more important. Did you see the balloons I blew up for you? I did all the green ones.”

As her rambling washes over him, he feels more centered than he has all day. He thinks, unbidden, that if the universe doesn’t bring Buck back to him, he at least gets to keep this small piece of him, solid and alive in his arms.

But then a thought occurs to him. If the worst were to happen and Buck never wakes up from the coma, what happens to Cassie? She hasn’t even been in Buck’s life for a full year, yet—has Buck updated his will since September? He and Eddie have only been officially together since mid-January, and Eddie’s pretty sure Buck hasn’t made an appointment with an attorney between then and now.

He doubts Buck included his parents in his will, so everything probably goes to Maddie, Cassie included. The thought of having to give her up, even to Maddie, makes him feel hollow, scooped out and empty inside.

Surely Maddie would let Cassie stay with him and Christopher.

Right?

“Eddie,” Cassie says, poking his forehead with a surprisingly strong finger, then starts repeating his name so rapidly it starts sounding like daddy.

“I’m here,” he replies, blinking back to the moment. “How was your day?”

“Killian’s mom brought cupcakes. There weren’t any with green icing so I ate a blue one instead.”

“How was it?”

“Yummy delicious,” she enthuses, meaning it was the best thing she’s eaten ever. “It was vanilla with sprinkles.”

“That was very nice of Killian’s mom,” Eddie says, speaking on autopilot. “Did you say thank you?”

“Uh huh.” Cassie nods proudly. “Oh, there are some left!” she exclaims, then slithers out his arms and darts back into the classroom before he can start shuffling her outside.

As Eddie resigns himself to Cassie on a sugar high, he picks up the jacket she left splayed on the ground and swings her backpack over one shoulder, standing just in time to see Mrs. Lam carefully placing a chocolate cupcake into Cassie’s cupped palms. Mindful of the fragile item in her hands, Cassie walks out of the classroom at a reasonable pace, then presents it to him eagerly.

“For you,” she says. “I asked Mrs. Lam if I could have another one to give you because it’s your birthday, and birthday boys get cupcakes. That’s what Killian’s mom said.”

“Oh,” he somehow manages to choke out, nose stinging as pressure starts to build behind his eyes. “Thank you.”

She smiles, pleased, bouncing on her toes. It reminds him so much of Buck that Eddie wants to drop to his knees and tuck her into his arms and keep her safe for the rest of her life. Then she goes and wraps her fist around his stuttering heart by saying, “Daddy said chocolate’s your favorite.”

“It is,” he whispers, voice failing him. Clearing his throat, he adds, “Your dad knows me pretty well, huh?”

“He knows you most,” she tells him.

The statement is casual, but its simplicity is anything but, devastating in a way her offhand observations often are. She’s not saying it for any other reason than because to her, it’s the concrete truth, an undeniable fact of life. Carrots are the only tolerable vegetable, Ravi is her favorite, and Buck knows Eddie most.

If Eddie loses it right now, he’s not going to make it on time to pick up Christopher, which is the only reason he’s able to suggest, “How about we go get your brother?”

“Yes,” she agrees seriously. “And then ice cream?”

The last thing he wants to do is butter the kids up with ice cream only to tell them that Buck almost died last night. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

She peers up at him with beseeching eyes, lips turned into a pout. “Not even for your birthday?”

“Not even for my birthday,” he confirms.

“But you could get chocolate,” she wheedles.

Nearing the end of his rope, Eddie says, sharper than he intends, “Cassie. No.”

The effect is instant; she shrinks in on herself, slumping in defeat.

Goddammit. Eddie hadn’t really thought about how this would go, but it’s somehow even worse than he expected. “Come on.” He holds out his hand, relief coursing through him as she takes it despite his snapping. “Let’s go get Chris.”

“Hey dad,” Christopher says as he drops his crutches into the footwell and climbs into the back of the jeep, which one of the guys from B shift dropped off for Eddie earlier that afternoon. A good thing too, considering this is currently their only vehicle with a car seat in it. “Happy birthday.”

Eddie knows that the kids are only trying to be nice, but the reminder that his birthday now shares a date with one of the worst days of his life makes him want to pummel the steering wheel until the horn starts sounding. He takes a deep, steadying breath, and tells his son, “Thank you.”

“Did you have a good day?”

“Uh,” he says, not thinking when he adds, “not really, bud.”

Christopher eyes him through the rear-view mirror. “Why not?”

Turning in his seat, he looks at Cassie, who stares back expectantly, and then at Christopher, a wrinkle in his forehead behind his flop of curls. He thinks about telling them right now, blurting it out and letting the cards fall where they may, but this isn’t the right place for it.

“Let’s talk at home,” he says, and shifts the car into drive.

“Where’s Buck?” 

“Yeah, where’s daddy?”

Eddie should have been prepared for this question. Why didn’t he prepare for this question? “He’s a little busy right now, that’s all.”

When Eddie chances a glance up at the mirror, Christopher frowns deeply at him. “Are you guys fighting?”

“No,” he replies. “Why would you think that?”

Christopher shrugs. “You’re being weird.”

“I am being a little weird,” he admits. “I’ll explain when we get home.”

“Why are you being weird?” Cassie asks.

“He just said he’d explain when we get home,” Christopher says mulishly.

“Hey,” Eddie says in warning. “Don’t snap at Cassie.”

“Don’t snap at me!” he retorts.

“I’m not snapping at you!”

“Yes you are!”

“Chris.”

“If you and Buck are fighting, don’t take it out on us.”

“We’re not fighting.”

“Then what’s going on?”

At that, Eddie almost barks out, Buck’s in the hospital and I’m hanging on by a thread, barely managing to keep it between his teeth, bitter on his tongue. Instead, he pushes his hair out of his eyes, leans his elbow on the door, and determinedly keeps his eyes on the road. “We will talk about this at home.”

“Whatever,” he sighs, hunching low in his seat, arms crossed.

The rest of the drive is quiet, the utter silence pressing against Eddie on all sides. It reminds him, viscerally, of being trapped forty feet underneath a collapsed well, like if he makes one wrong move, he’ll be mercilessly crushed by the pressure.

When they get back to the house, Christopher lets himself out of the car almost before Eddie parks, like he wants to escape the confines of the jeep as much as Eddie does. By the time Eddie lets Cassie out of her car seat and nudges her in the direction of the house, Christopher’s already unlocked the door. As they follow him inside, Eddie notices that he’s paused in the entryway hallway, glancing around in confusion.

To Cassie, he asks, “Did you and Buck not blow up the balloons?”

“No, we did!” she tells him adamantly. “Where’d they go?”

“I put them away,” Eddie answers, which is a sanitized version of the twenty minutes he spent viciously stabbing them, blinded by tears, taking sick satisfaction in every single pop.

“But…” she says sadly. “It’s your birthday. Did you not like them?”

“I loved them,” he tells her truthfully, but he figured he should get rid of them before the kids came home. There won’t be much to celebrate once he tells them the news. “I appreciate all the hard work you guys put in to decorate. It was very sweet.”

Cassie grins at that, but she must sense that something is still off, because it fades quickly.

“Why don’t you two take a seat?” Eddie suggests, and Christopher’s gaze shoots to him, trepidation written in every line of his body.

He doesn’t expect Cassie to sit down in the middle of the hallway, legs crossed, or for Christopher to promptly follow suit.

Eddie glances in the direction of their living room—Buck’s massive couch is only a few feet away, there’s no reason for them to do this on the floor. “You don’t want to sit on the couch?”

Cassie shakes her head and Christopher makes no move to get up, so Eddie resigns himself to an uncomfortable conversation on uncomfortable floorboards—it’s only fitting, after all. Knees cracking, he lowers to the floor and mirrors his kids, elbows resting on his thighs as he regards them seriously, meeting their eyes in turn.

There’s nothing else he can do to put it off. He has to tell them. He opens his mouth and says, “Buck is in the hospital.”

Cassie’s face crumples, brow wrinkling in a way that reminds him of Maddie, but she doesn’t cry. She doesn’t say anything.

“What happened?” Christopher asks.

“He got struck by lightning.”

Christopher’s jaw sags, eyebrows raising in shock, and Cassie says, “The light in the sky hurt him?”

“Yeah,” Eddie confirms. “His heart stopped, but we got it going again.”

“So he’s going to be okay?” Christopher asks instantly.

The pause Eddie takes is too long, but he doesn’t know what to tell them. He wants to say, yes, of course, but it would be a terrific, terrible lie, one he will never be able to forgive himself for uttering if Buck doesn’t make it.

He decides to tell the truth. There’s only so much of a front he can put up—he’s just one man. “I don’t know,” he admits. “He’s been put in a medically induced coma to help him heal. We have to wait and see if he wakes up.”

“If?” Cassie echoes, voice small. “He might not?”

“There’s a chance, yeah,” he answers, breath hitching. “It’s probably going to be a few days before we know more about his condition.”

“I want to see him,” Christopher declares.

Eddie’s already shaking his head. “He’s in the ICU, Chris. Kids aren’t allowed.”

“The ICU?” Cassie questions.

“Intensive Care Unit,” Eddie and Christopher chime in unison, and Eddie feels a little sick that his son knows about that unit so intimately. First Eddie, now Buck.

God, he doesn’t deserve this. Neither of them does.

“Oh,” she says, eyes downcast. He’s surprised that she’s taking this so well—she’s sad, that much is clear, but he wonders how much of the reality she’s truly grasping.

“Hey,” he says, nudging her knee to get her to look up. “You know one thing I know about your dad? He’s going to do everything in his power to get back to us. He’s a fighter.”

“I know,” she says with conviction that even Eddie couldn’t dream of possessing. “He told me he’d always come back. He pinky swore.”

That’s enough for the tears Eddie’s been successfully holding back to resurface, vision blurring for barely a second before spilling over. The tears are hot on his cheeks before he wipes them away.

“Yeah,” he agrees, throat aching. “He did.”

Cassie gets to her feet then, crossing the short distance between them to tangle her arms around his neck, leaning into his side. “It’s gonna be okay, kid,” she says into his neck.

Eddie laughs, the first real one since a bolt of electricity lanced through Buck’s heart and his too in one fell swoop. It’s forced out of him partly by shock and partly by the fierce, unwavering love he has for the little girl in his arms. She only said that because it’s what Christopher tells her when she’s crying or overtired or sniffling over a scraped knee, and Christopher only says that because it’s what Eddie used to tell him.

This isn’t how this conversation was supposed to go, Eddie thinks, with Cassie comforting him and not the other way around. He’s not about to turn it down though, the damp cold that took root deep within him thawing ever so slightly as he wraps an arm around her back, squeezing her tighter.

“C’mere,” he murmurs, lifting her so she’s sitting in his lap with one arm still looped around his shoulders.

He holds out a hand for Christopher, who gamely shuffles over and tucks himself under Eddie’s proffered arm. Pushing his hair out of the way, Eddie drops a kiss to Christopher’s temple, then does the same with Cassie before resting his cheek on the crown of her head. He’s holding them too tight, and he knows he’s going to have to let them go at some point, but for now he pulls them closer, letting their warmth thaw him from the outside in.

Eddie wakes to a dark bedroom and the sound of familiar footsteps.

Half awake, he murmurs, “Cassie?”

“Daddy,” she replies, sniffly.

He sits up, peering over at her where she stopped near the footboard, and his heart breaks all over again. “Daddy’s in the hospital, remember?”

“No,” she whines.

Eddie’s wondering how he’s going to get through another explanation that Buck got struck by lightning when she climbs up onto the empty side of the mattress and crawls right into his space.

She presses a palm to the middle of his chest, propping herself up, and says, “You.”

Blinking at her owlishly, he repeats dumbly, “Me?”

Cassie nods emphatically.

“Okay,” he agrees, not understanding whatever it is she’s trying to tell him.

Now that he’s more awake, he remembers to check his phone for any updates on Buck. The lock screen lights up as he taps it, blinding him and Cassie as it cheerfully announces that it’s 1:46 am.  A text from Bobby waits for him from almost two hours ago, informing Eddie that he’s heading home and that there’s no news on Buck’s condition—the first twenty-four hours were the most critical, so Eddie’s going to take that as a good sign. He reminds himself that Buck’s alive, which is the important thing.

He wants to be there with him more than he can express, but the kids are already one dad down—it wouldn’t be fair to leave them with Carla or Pepa in this awful time of uncertainty.

“Daddy,” Cassie repeats insistently, shaking his shoulder a little.

Eddie brushes Cassie’s hair out of her eyes with his fingers, devastation sweeping through him. “He’s okay for now, sweetheart. I’m sorry he can’t be here.”

“No, you,” she says. “You, daddy.”

“Oh,” he says, understanding piercing him like a bullet.

He remembers the first time he heard Cassie call Buck that. It was when they returned to Eddie’s house after a shift—Cassie greeted him with the same enthusiasm Christopher had when he was younger, screeching daddy! and clinging to his leg. He thought that might have been the first time, but Buck’s quiet, bashful smile and bunched red cheeks as he bent down to scoop her into his arms was gentle and practiced, with none of the surprise he would have expected showing on his face.

After Buck set her down, Eddie had leaned in and asked, “When did that happen?”

“Uh,” he replied with a little huff and shrug, “few days ago?”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah.”

“How you feeling?”

“I think I’m feeling, uh,” he exhaled, “okay? About it?”

“You don’t sound that sure.”

“I’m working on it,” he said with a pinched grin, and Eddie now understands exactly how that feels.

Buck used to feel like he didn’t deserve Cassie’s love and trust—or Eddie’s, for that matter—but he’s working on it, and Eddie’s been working on the same in kind. And he’s not stupid, he knows that he’s taken a parental role with Cassie even before he saw his own desire reflected in Buck’s eyes under a blanket fort, or kissed Buck’s knuckles outside the 118 firehouse. It was only a matter of time before Cassie finally put a name to who he is to her.

But goddammit, the fact that she did it now, when Buck isn’t even around to see it? Eddie’s eyes prickle at the injustice of it, but he doesn’t cry, his endless well of tears run dry.

“Yeah, Cassie,” he says, taking her face in his hands. “Of course I’m your dad.”

She grins, a small thing, cheeks pressing against his palms, then whispers, “Daddy said I could have three dads.”

Eddie must be not as awake as he thought, because he squints at her, uncomprehending, until he realizes she means Connor. “Your dad isn’t very good at math, but I think he got the numbers right in this instance.”

“Mm-hmm,” she mumbles in sleepy agreement.

“Why are you awake?” he asks, thumbing at her damp cheeks. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Cassie shrugs, smushing her face into Eddie’s neck. She asks quietly, “I stay?”

Well, he isn’t about to make her sleep in her own bed—and he selfishly really misses Buck—so he says, “Yeah, you can stay here. Under the covers?”

She tucks in her feet so she’s a ball in his lap, making it easy for him to lean back, fold her into his side, and pull the duvet over them. He arranges her so she can use his shoulder as a pillow, placing the blankets around them both.

“Comfy?” he asks.

Her hum is the only response he gets, her breathing evening out almost instantly. As she settles into sleep, Eddie reaches for his phone once more, tapping the message notification from Bobby so he can reply. One handed, he thumbs out, thank you for staying with him.

Despite it nearing two in the morning, Bobby replies within seconds. Of course.

Before he knows what he’s doing, Eddie’s resting his phone over his heart like Bobby’s text is somehow a tether to Buck, comatose in a hospital clear across town. Then Cassie shifts in his hold, nose pressing against his chest, and Eddie remembers the actual tether he has to Buck is the little girl currently asleep in his arms, who has somehow decided to put her trust into Eddie.

He’s never contemplated parenting Cassie without Buck, always following Buck’s lead when it comes to making any decisions about or related to her. He’s always counted on Buck’s presence and support to be a parent she could see as an equal to Buck.

The possibility of a future where Cassie has to go the rest of her life without Buck there to be her dad stretches out in front of him, an endless gaping void. He can’t picture it. He doesn’t want to picture it.

Forcing those thoughts out of his mind, Eddie focuses on Cassie, craning his neck a bit to press a light kiss to her hair. “Love you,” he murmurs.

Even with Cassie as a comforting weight curled against him, it still takes Eddie hours to fall asleep.

He drops Cassie and Christopher off the following morning at school with minimal complaints. Christopher tries to convince Eddie to let him see Buck over breakfast, but he’s able to gently shut him down as he cobbles together two balanced lunches.

Mrs. Lam stares at him in shocked silence when he pulls her aside to let her know that Cassie’s dad is currently in the hospital, a heads-up in case she starts acting out in class. However, despite her nightmare, Cassie’s been surprisingly fine since Eddie broke the news, fully convinced that Buck is going to be okay. Eddie will take that over her believing the opposite—he’s not convinced he’d survive it.

Once the kids are dropped off, Eddie heads to the hospital.

Buck looks the same as he did the day before, stretched out on a thin mattress, a pulse oximeter clipped to his finger, veins stark against his pale forearms. Eddie takes a chair, slips his hand into Buck’s limp one, and holds on tight.

“Hi sweetheart,” he whispers, lifting Buck’s hand to press a dry kiss to his knuckles. “Thanks for decorating the house for my birthday. I kind of, uh, destroyed it, though. Sorry about that.” He sighs, resting the back of Buck’s hand against his cheek. “Didn’t really feel like there was much to celebrate.”

Eddie falls silent as the machines keeping Buck alive continue to beep steadily, reassuring rather than annoying.

“I love you so, so much,” he says as he cards his fingers through Buck’s hair. “I really need you to wake up. And I know you’re fighting so hard, I know you are, but Christopher and Cassie need you. I need you. If you can hear me—god, Buck, please. Please wake up. Don’t leave me.”

As much as Eddie wants him to, Buck, predictably, does not instantly wake up to reassure him, or crack a joke about Eddie’s sheer desperation. The machines continue to beep, and his chest continues to rise and fall, and Eddie’s sanity continues to dwindle.

Chewing on his bottom lip, Eddie reaches for the book he snagged from Buck’s nightstand, some non-fiction novel about octopi (“Actually, it’s octopuses,” Buck’s voice chimes in his head. “Octopodes, maybe, but that might only be a UK thing.”) dogeared in the middle of chapter six. Eddie has this crazy theory that if he reads it aloud to Buck, it might force him awake to complain about how you haven’t even read the first five chapters, how are you going to understand what’s happening, Eddie?

It’s a book about octopi—or octopuses, or octopodes—so Eddie doesn’t think he’ll be too lost.

He’s three pages into chapter seven when he notices a rhythmic tapping from the opposite side of Buck’s room. Before, he wrote it off as an echo from the ventilation machine, but on second thought, it definitely sounds distinctly like thudding.

Eddie flips the book closed.

It feels weird to leave Buck like this, but the noise only seems to get louder as he nears the door to Buck’s room, the rhythm giving way to something more staccato—almost frantic.

When Eddie pokes his head out, the hallway is deserted, and it’s immediately obvious that the sound is coming from the room beside Buck’s. It doesn’t seem like a patient’s room since it has solid walls and a single door, so Eddie guesses it’s a storage room.

“Hello?” he calls out as he steps closer. He feels incredibly foolish as he does so, wondering if he’s hearing things and talking to a door, but someone might need help, so he pushes through the discomfort. “Is someone in there?”

A singular, solid bang reverberates through the door. Eddie doesn’t see the door move, but he feels it like a shock wave.

Oh shit, someone’s actually stuck in there.

Eddie reaches out to turn the handle—strangely cold—only for it to stick. It’s locked, and there’s a flat black box next to the door indicating it requires some sort of access card to open it. Figures.

“Hey!” Eddie calls down the hallway, where hopefully a nurse or receptionist or someone will hear him. “I think someone’s locked in here!”

He tests the handle again only for the knob to rattle loudly as he fails to magically unlock the door. Whoever is in the room must know someone has noticed their attempts to be heard, because the thumps rise to a crescendo before they cut off abruptly.

“Don’t worry,” he tells whoever is behind the door. “We’ll get you out.”

He expects a muffled reply, or even a thump of acknowledgement—surely whoever accidentally locked themselves in there can hear him and respond?—but the chaotic noise ceases, the hallway eerily silent.

“Hey,” he says, putting his ear to the door to try and hear them better. “Are you okay?”

Then the machines in Buck’s room start beeping like crazy.

Heart in his throat, Eddie forgets about the storage room mystery instantly, skidding past the doorway to see Buck’s oxygen levels plummeting. Before he can even think about yelling for help, two nurses careen past him, already halfway to him thanks to his shout from earlier. One of them pages Dr. Becker and the other exclaims, “He’s not responding!”

Utterly useless, Eddie presses himself into the corner, out of the way. He feels dangerously close to a panic attack, heart knocking painfully against his ribs as the doctor says something about Buck’s pressures being through the roof and how there’s no air movement. Eddie gulps down air unsuccessfully and thinks, no air movement indeed.

They start bagging him, and Eddie grips his own elbows, aching with the want to be the one squeezing life into Buck’s lungs. Eddie’s a civilian here—he has no place to try to get involved, no matter how ineffective he feels standing here. 

He thinks, suddenly and terribly, I shouldn’t be here. Shannon died right in front of him, was murmuring apologies until her last breath, eyes wild and cheeks tear stained. She knew she was about to die, and she spent her last moments telling him just how badly she wanted to stay. 

Buck’s in a coma. If he’s about to die, he’ll slip away quietly and without pain.

What’s better? A violent death with breathy apologies? Or a silent one that leaves too many things left unsaid?

Eddie doesn’t know. And he doesn’t know if he can survive watching someone he loves die again. 

But then he thinks about the alternative—Buck dying alone in an empty hospital room, Eddie outside in the hallway, hunched over and cowardly. 

No. He won’t do that to Buck. He’d rather chew through his own tongue than let him die alone.

He pushes off the wall and nears Buck’s bed, ringing a hand around his ankle, as close as he dares get without getting in the way. “Come on, Buck,” he whispers over the commotion. “We’re not done yet. Come back to me.”

A second passes, then two, and then—

“His breathing’s starting to stabilize,” the nurse announces, and it seems like everyone in the room lets out a collective sigh—Buck included. 

“Breathing is stable,” Dr. Becker confirms, brushing her hair out of her face with her forearm. “Good work everyone.”

It’s only half an hour later, after the doctor informs him about the pulmonary contusion in Buck’s lungs and he watches Buck get hooked up to the ECMO, that Eddie remembers about the person trapped in the storage room. 

He informs a nurse about it, only for her to give Eddie a strange look and tell him that it’s impossible to get locked inside their storage rooms whether the person has a keycard or not. When Eddie asks her to check, just in case, she humors him much like how Eddie assumes she would a dementia patient.

He knows he heard someone pounding against the door. Someone who isn’t truly trapped wouldn’t have tried so hard to get out, or made such an incredible racket. He’s certain that somebody’s in there, and a little ashamed it’s taken him this long to get them out.

Eddie stands at the doorway as the nurse taps her keycard to open the door, expecting someone to come tripping out, breathless thank yous tumbling from their lips. Except the door swings open and the storage room is–

Empty.

It’s not actually empty, of course. Medical supplies and overflowing piles of nitrile gloves line metal wire shelves, boxes of equipment that Eddie is frankly envious of stacked high to the ceiling. What there isn’t, though, is a person.

Breathless in his disbelief, Eddie shoves his way inside, spinning on his heel as he determines there is, in fact, no one trapped in here. Honestly, he doesn’t even know how someone could have reached the back wall with how densely packed the shelves are, or generated enough force in such a tiny space to create those thumping noises. Nothing even looks out of place.

Huh. Okay, then.

Eddie sends a tight smile in the nurse’s direction, who graciously doesn’t tell him I told you so. “Thanks for checking. Sorry.”

She waves him off as she closes the door behind them. On her way to another room, she throws over her shoulder with a grin, “Maybe it was a ghost.”

Eddie huffs, less a laugh and more of an acknowledgement that she made a joke. “Yeah, sure,” he mutters, voice dripping with disdain.

But as he returns to Buck’s bedside, he can’t help but eye the wall opposite Buck’s bed and wonder exactly who—or what—could have made that noise.

Bobby shows up on Eddie’s doorstep at five o’clock sharp.

It’s not a surprise to see him—at the hospital, Bobby told him he’d be swinging by later that evening—but his full arms are unexpected.

“Hey,” Eddie says, stepping back automatically to give Bobby a wide berth as he elbows his way inside.

“Boss dad!” Cassie calls out, jumping up from where she’s been kneeling over the puzzle. Progress has slowed down significantly without Buck’s uncanny ability to pull out the exact piece she’s looking for.

She clings to Bobby’s leg as he laughs and gently begs off to put away whatever it is he’s carrying. Cassie trails behind, her attention snagged.

They follow Bobby into the kitchen, and Eddie knows that Bobby notices the birthday banner that Eddie didn’t have the heart to take down by the way he hesitates at the threshold for barely a second. When Bobby recovers, he drops his haul to the island countertop, uncovering one of the items to reveal his famous mac and cheese. While Cassie cheers her enthusiasm, relief threatens to buckle Eddie’s knees; he drops into one of the barstools instead.

Bobby lifts the casserole dish as if for permission, and when Eddie nods, gratitude choking him, he fiddles with the oven settings before sliding it in.

“No preheat?” Eddie asks lightly, but his teasing falls flat with how utterly exhausted he sounds.

“Just needs to warm up,” Bobby replies.

“Thank you,” he says, hoping Bobby can hear how grateful he truly is. He can cook—he’s not even that bad at it anymore—but the kitchen is Buck’s domain, and it’s not fully unpacked yet, and the fridge isn’t completely stocked, and Eddie’s never been the type of person who can throw together a decent meal with whatever he has on hand. He’d already resigned himself to ordering takeout for the second night in a row when Bobby showed up.

“Happy to help,” Bobby says, a stiffness in his voice that’s quickly masked by a wide smile as he finally caves to Cassie’s wordless pleas to be picked up. “Thought this one might appreciate her favorite meal.”

“It’s the bestest meal in the whole world,” she tells him seriously, then turns to Eddie expectantly.

“Definitely the bestest meal,” Eddie confirms dutifully.

Cassie nods solemnly, and Bobby presses a quick kiss to the top of her head. When he pulls back, she asks, “Wanna puzzle with me?”

“I would love to puzzle with you,” he replies, setting her down. “Why don’t you go pick out all the pieces you want me to fit in somewhere?”

“Okay!” she agrees easily, already racing out of the kitchen.

Eddie watches him knowingly, recognizing a ploy to get a child out of earshot from miles away. Instead of launching into a conversation that Eddie suspects is necessary but he’s dreading all the same, Bobby silently pushes the second container across the counter until it bumps into his arm. Taking the cue for what it is, he pops it open to reveal–

Oh.

It’s a cake. A beautiful one at that, a tall cylinder covered in chocolate icing, a dark ganache dripping down the sides, piled high with icing and macaroons and pieces of Eddie’s favorite chocolate bars.

“Happy belated birthday,” Bobby says.

Eddie’s stomach twists. “Bobby, this is nice, but I don’t–”

“Buck ordered the cake,” he interrupts, which shuts Eddie right up. “He asked me to pick it up and keep it in my fridge so he could surprise you with it. I was supposed to drop it off yesterday, but with everything that happened, it slipped my mind. I debated with myself about bringing it over because I know you’re probably not in the celebrating mood, but I think Buck would want you to enjoy it regardless.”

Eddie looks at the cake with renewed eyes, indisputable evidence of Buck’s thoughtfulness, and drops his head into his palms like he can physically hold back the tears burning behind his eyelids.

Soft footsteps draw closer, the barstool next to Eddie’s scraping against the floor as Bobby settles beside him, a warm shoulder pressing into his. “How are you handling everything?”

“Badly,” Eddie chokes out. He thinks that’s all he can manage, but then words tumble past his lips without a second thought. “Chris is barely talking to me because I won’t let him see Buck, Cassie is fine, which is fucking weird, and I’m–” Eddie swallows past the lump in his throat, finally lifting his head and glancing around the room. “Buck and I were supposed to be setting up the house this week. The kids’ rooms are mostly done, but I still don’t have the wi-fi set up, and there isn’t anything hung on the walls, and our room is a mess. Buck’s half of the closet is empty and it makes me feel like he’s already dead.”

Eddie blinks at his clenched fists resting against the countertop. He didn’t know how much he really believed it until he said it, but it’s true. There’s no trace of Buck in this house other than the sagging birthday banner, and even that reminds Eddie more of the kids than Buck. They barely had a couple of days to settle in before they returned to work, and then Buck immediately got struck by lightning. Their bed sheets don’t even smell like him.

It’s like there’s this giant, Buck shaped hole that was ripped out of him without finesse, leaving a gaping wound that won’t stop leaking blood no matter how hard he tries to patch himself up.

All of it brings forth a barrage of guilt, because Eddie should be making this house a home for their kids, but he can’t bring himself to do it without Buck.  He needs to, really, because if Buck doesn’t wake up, then Eddie definitely won’t be up to choosing window blinds and hammering nails into the wall. But this was supposed to be their house; one they could make into a home together. The thought of decorating and making decisions without Buck only makes him feel worse, a never-ending cycle of guilt.

Eddie’s on the precipice of losing a partner, but Bobby—he might lose a son. Bobby and Buck aren’t bound by blood, but they might as well be. Comparing the two types of loss isn’t quite fair, but losing Christopher? A part of Eddie knows that’s something he probably would never come back from, and that terrifies him. Now here’s Bobby, who’s already lost two children and facing the possibility of losing another one, and he’s somehow still upright.

“How are you?” Eddie asks.

Bobby’s mouth opens instantly, likely about to say something about how he’s fine, but he must see how Eddie isn’t going to believe his bullshit based on the look in his eyes, so he closes it. The line of Bobby’s shoulders droops slightly as he hunches over the countertop.

“Honestly?” he asks. Without waiting for an answer, he says, “It’s times like these when I wish I wasn’t sober.”

Involuntarily, Eddie straightens, hyper-aware of the bottle of scotch across the kitchen that he cracked open late last night.

“Don’t worry,” Bobby says with a wry smile. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. You were honest with me—figured I should be honest with you.”

“The honest truth is that Buck needs to stop ending up in hospitals,” Eddie grumbles.

“He’s not nearly as bad as he used to be,” Bobby muses.

Eddie glances up in interest, but he figures he shouldn’t be surprised. He knows all about Buck’s tendency to accidentally-on-purpose get himself hurt as a kid to get his parents’ attention. Eddie’s jaw clenches at the realization that Buck’s first few years on the job probably weren’t much different.

Bobby smiles then, but his gaze is far away. “Kid was so eager to help it was practically branded on him. He was capable, and headstrong, but so goddamn reckless. Not a self-preservation instinct in sight.”

Recklessness isn’t what Eddie would call it, but he can see how Buck’s willingness to put himself in danger to save someone else could come across that way to their captain.

“First week on the job he scraped his chin and cheek all to hell chasing after a patient’s dog that ran out of the house while they were having a heart attack. Still has the scars. Have you noticed them?”

“I thought they were acne scars,” Eddie says faintly.

Bobby only shakes his head. “Three months in, he sprained his ankle coming down the stairs of a burning apartment building. The IC gave the order to evacuate, but there was one person unaccounted for.”

“Buck stayed,” Eddie states.

“He stayed,” Bobby confirms. “He was lucky it was only a sprained ankle—the whole building collapsed practically the moment he stepped out.”

“But he found the person?” he asks.

“Yup. Buck watched him reunite with his family, then looked me right in the eye and told me he’d do it again in a heartbeat. As a captain, it was maddening—it still is—but I could tell his heart was in the right place. That boy would do anything to save the people he loves, and I can’t really be anything but grateful for it, because he saved me.”

Eddie glances over, brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

Bobby holds his gaze, contemplative. “How much do you know about what the team used to be like before you joined?”

“Uh.” He blinks at the swift subject change. “Not a whole lot.”

“It was different,” Bobby tells him. “I had moved from Minnesota only a few years prior and was still mourning my family. Still drowning in grief and guilt. Chimney and Hen were already close by the time I became their captain, but when Buck joined–” Bobby shakes his head. “It was obvious he wanted connection. He’d call me Pops, invite me to concerts, and I—I didn’t not like it, but it was like he wanted us to be one big happy family, and that hit a nerve. I never wanted anyone to know about my past, but you know how Buck can be when he’s worried about someone.”

“Like a dog with a bone,” Eddie agrees.

“Exactly. He wouldn’t let my secrets stay secret. Back then, I used to carry this book with me. It had 148 blank lines in it—the exact number of the people who died in the apartment fire back in St. Paul. Every time I saved somebody on the job, I’d write their name in that book.”

Eddie winces. He can guess why Bobby would do that, and he can also guess what Buck would do in response to figuring it out.

“All I wanted was to fill out that book. Nothing else really mattered to me. I’d atone for my sins, and then I’d be done. But Buck…” Bobby chuckles wetly. “He wouldn’t let me. There was this really awful call we went to, a plane crash near the beach. We only had a few minutes before the plane sank, and one woman was stuck. I gave the order for everyone to evacuate, fully resigning myself to saving this woman or dying with her. Buck, of course, disregarded the order. I can’t tell you how angry I was, but he got me and that woman out. He saved both of us.”

“Buck sure has a knack for saving people and pissing you off in the process, doesn’t he?” Eddie asks.

Bobby laughs, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. “He sure does. God, I can’t quantify how many times he’s saved my life. The whole team has, really. Chimney came with me for moral support when I thought I had cancer but actually had life-saving blood–”

Eddie raises his eyebrows—he didn’t know about that.

“–and Hen and Buck checked up on me after I fell off the wagon. They brought me to an NA meeting. Buck even told me he vetted it, said he thought I’d do best at that specific one, and he was right—that’s where I met Wendell.” Bobby’s mouth purses as it always does when he speaks about his late friend, then he looks over at Eddie. “Even you.”

“Me?” Eddie asks, surprised.

“That day you came over and told me that I saved your life and Christopher’s, I had gone to the liquor store earlier and bought myself a bottle of scotch. Right before you knocked on the door, I was about to pour myself a glass.” Bobby doesn’t look away from Eddie once, like he wants him to know exactly how honest he’s being. “After you left, I emptied it right down the drain. I never told you how much what you said meant to me, but I know that if it hadn’t been for you, I would have broken my sobriety that day. So, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Eddie chokes out.

Bobby gives him a watery smile. “It feels like all you guys do is save my life, and all I do is put you in danger.”

“We’re firefighters, Bobby,” he says. “This is what we signed up for.”

“We were in the middle of a lightning storm,” he grunts. “I shouldn’t have made the call for anyone to go up the ladder. It was practically a giant lightning rod.”

Eddie opens his mouth to protest, but Bobby continues without missing a beat.

“I interviewed Jonah Greenway myself, welcomed him to our team without a second thought. I didn’t think anything was off about him, and he kidnapped and tortured Hen and Chim. When you got shot by that sniper–”

“Don’t tell me you’re somehow to blame for that?” Eddie interrupts, dry.

With a sigh, Bobby admits, “No, I suppose not. But every day after, I might as well have led those firefighters to their deaths.”

“They would have followed you regardless.”

“Somehow,” Bobby says tiredly, “that doesn’t make me feel better.”

Eddie lets the silence pool between them, wondering how he can make Bobby feel better, and an idea occurs to him. “Hey, I’m gonna give you your performance review early. You ready?”

That seems to pique Bobby’s interest—as it should, because Eddie never thought he would be giving him a review that wasn’t under extreme duress. “Yeah.”

“You’re a damn good captain, Bobby. You know how to guide people in a way that isn’t patronizing. You’re competent, and confident, and you inspire that confidence in others. I’ve barely had to second guess any of your orders on a call because I wouldn’t do anything differently. That’s more than I can say for a lot of my superior officers in the Army.”

“I’m not perfect, Eddie.”

“I didn’t say you were,” he replies with a pointed raised eyebrow. “You and Buck say that you and I are similar, but I think you and Buck are more alike than you think. You both tend to take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault. You’re both too hard on yourselves. Look, being captain is hard work, and you can’t see the future. Sometimes you’re gonna make calls that you wouldn’t have in hindsight. And if Buck does—if he doesn’t wake up, no one is going to blame you. I’m not going to blame you. So, if I don’t blame you, you can’t blame yourself. Those are the rules.”

Bobby huffs a laugh. “Those are the rules?”

Eddie plucks half a Milky Way bar out of the candy mound on top of his cake and pops it into his mouth. “Yup.”

Eyeing him silently, Bobby eventually says, “Alright then. I’ll take that under advisement.”

“See that you do,” Eddie says.

“Popsy,” Cassie singsongs from the living room. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll be right there!” Bobby promises. He steps off the barstool, clapping a warm hand to Eddie’s shoulder before saying seriously, “Thank you.”

“Does this mean I won’t be dragged into your office against my will next month?” he asks, hopeful.

Bobby hums. “I’ll think about it.” Then he points to the oven. “That’ll be ready in about ten minutes.”

Eddie nods, waving him off, letting Cassie’s bright chirps and Bobby’s low responses wash over him. Somehow, he feels lighter than he has in days.

When Eddie arrives at the hospital the next day, Phillip and Margaret Buckley are at Buck’s bedside. The sight is jarring, and Eddie has to blink a couple times before he remembers that they’ve been in town this whole week. He’s not sure how he could have forgotten—he saw them just a few days ago at the family dinner Maddie and Chimney hosted.

Buck had contemplated blowing it off, especially since the timing coincided terribly with their moving day, but eventually they decided to go, if only to provide moral support to Chimney. So they loaded up the kids into the jeep and drove over, which was when Buck revealed he hadn’t actually told his parents about any of the new developments in his life, Cassie and Eddie included. Eddie wasn’t upset about Buck not telling his parents about them, but he would have appreciated a head’s up more than fifteen minutes before he’d have to be the center of their likely undivided attention.

Buck’s parents weren’t as blindsided as Eddie expected them to be, since apparently Maddie had been keeping them updated. Most of the evening was spent answering questions that Margaret and Phillip really should’ve known by virtue of being Buck’s parents, and also corralling Cassie into being friendly with them. Margaret and Phillip didn’t quite know how to broach the subject of Buck and Eddie’s relationship, likely knowing on some level that if Buck had wanted them to know anything about his life, he would have shared it already. Eddie kept feeling their curious stares on him whenever he interacted with Cassie, or when Christopher turned to Buck and asked if they could paint his new room two colors instead of one.

Thankfully, Eddie and Buck’s minor drama was swiftly overshadowed by the Hans, and they were happy to blend into the wallpaper after that. Eddie remembers Buck telling him as they were getting ready for bed that it was nice the Buckleys weren’t the source of family drama this time.

Now, Margaret sits in the chair that Eddie has selfishly thought of as his, her husband standing behind her like a sentinel, his hand resting on her shoulder. Uncharitably, Eddie thinks the picture is fitting—the Buckleys a united front while Buck lays a distance away, a chasm of missed opportunities gaping between them.

Right when Eddie decides he doesn’t want to fight Buck’s parents over his comatose body and moves to leave, Phillip notices him.

“Eddie,” he says. Eddie resents how surprised he sounds.

“Uh, hi,” he replies, trying not to look like he was about to flee at the sight of them.

“I thought you would be at home with the kids,” Margaret comments, which probably isn’t meant to be condescending, but her tone rankles Eddie anyway. It’s not like either of the Buckley parents have reached out to offer childcare so Eddie could be at the hospital with Buck.

He smiles at her placidly. “They’re at school.”

She hums. “I didn’t think Cassie was old enough to be in school.”

“She turned four in November,” Eddie tells her. “She’s in pre-k.”

“Oh.”

The room descends into awkward, soul-crushing silence. Grasping for something neutral to discuss, Eddie asks, “Are Maddie and Chim around?”

“Yes,” Phillip responds. “They went to get–”

“Coffee!” Chimney interrupts jubilantly, squeezing between Eddie and the door frame to gift the Buckleys their drinks.

“We didn’t know when you’d get here,” Maddie says as she follows him inside, holding up two cups that are undoubtedly hers and Chimney’s. “Otherwise we would have grabbed you one.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Eddie says, honestly grateful for an excuse to escape. “I’ll get my own.”

“You can take mine, if you want?” she offers, holding her drink out.

“I’m good,” he replies, trying to give her a smile that doesn’t look as forced as it feels. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“I’ll come with you,” Chimney offers, and follows without time for Eddie to refuse.

Chimney doesn’t bother asking him how he’s doing as they walk side by side down the hallway, which Eddie appreciates. He’s pretty sure he’s giving off vibes that spell out I’M DOING BAD so clearly the words might as well be branded on his forehead. He hasn’t shaved in days, hasn’t persuaded the kids to even look at a vegetable, and he ate a second helping of the cake Bobby brought over late last night, choking it down in between sobs.

Not that Chimney could know those last two things just from looking at him, but it’s probably obvious to everyone who knows him that he’s not exactly doing well.

Before Chimney can think better of the comfortable silence, Eddie asks, “How’s it going with your dad?”

“Uh.” He glances over, vaguely surprised by the question before furrowing his brow, considering. “I don’t know. He and Myung-Soon been looking after Jee while Maddie and I are here, which is nice.”

“What about Margaret and Phillip?”

“They’ve been around, too. Maddie has this idea that Jee needs to know her grandparents, but…” Chimney shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s complicated.”

Eddie thinks of his tangled feelings about Christopher’s relationship with his own parents and says, “Tell me about it.”

Chimney must think he’s talking about a different set of grandparents, because he asks, “Have Phillip and Margaret offered to watch Cassie and Christopher?”

“Nope,” Eddie tells him, taking immense satisfaction in the wash of frustration and resignation over Chimney’s face as he pops the ‘p.’ “It’s fine,” Eddie finds himself saying. “It’s not like I expected them to. If I’m being honest, I kind of forgot they were in town.”

“What about your parents?”

“My parents?” he echoes.

“Have you told them what happened?” Chimney clarifies.

“No,” he replies. It’s not that he thinks they wouldn’t come to help, but the thought honestly hadn’t occurred to him. When he thinks about what his kids need in his and Buck’s absence, his parents aren’t exactly at the top of that list. Cassie hasn’t even met them yet—they’d essentially be strangers.

“If you need someone to watch them while you’re here, you know that I’d–”

“I know,” Eddie interrupts, knowing what Chimney was about to offer. But Buck is practically his brother—he doesn’t want to pull Chimney away from the hospital any more than he would Maddie. “I’m good.”

Chimney gives him a look that’s so unimpressed that it makes Eddie snort despite himself.

“Okay, I’m not good at all,” he admits as they join the coffee line. “But if I need help with the kids, I promise I’ll call you.”

Chimney nods, and the barista waves Eddie forward, and the matter is blissfully dropped.

Despite his conversation with Chimney, Eddie already knows that he won’t be going to the hospital over the weekend. Thankfully, Buck won’t be alone in his absence—the 118’s unofficial rotation of visitors will take care of that: Maddie and Chimney on Saturday morning, Hen and Karen in the afternoon while Denny’s at drum lessons, and then Bobby and Athena on Sunday after morning mass.

As much as Eddie wants to be by Buck’s side, he recognizes that this week hasn’t only affected him. He could get away with being there every day while the kids were at school, but they can’t join him in the ICU, so he decides he’s going to stay home with them.

Then Christopher asks if he can go over to Aydin’s house to finish a project that’s due on Monday. Eddie glares a little, because his son sure has a knack for waiting until the eleventh hour to tell him about important deadlines, but eventually relents. Apparently, the boys have been designing a rainwater harvesting system prototype all week and now they need to build it, and it wouldn’t be fair to either of them to force them do it over Zoom. Besides, Eddie will take any excuse to get Christopher’s mind off Buck in the hospital.

Eddie’s already planning a full day to keep Cassie entertained when Ava texts him. She’s been messaging him non-stop all week, evidently taking the news of Buck in the hospital as license to send him constant running commentary on her life. It’s been nice, actually. When he wakes up at three in the morning searching for warmth that isn’t there, usually at least five texts are waiting for him, ranging from Ava’s complaints about her chafed nipples to commentary on the newest season of Too Hot to Handle.

Her newest text reads, I need Auntie Ava time 🥺, and Eddie isn’t sure how true that is considering she has a full household of twin two-year-olds and four-month-olds, but it has been a while since Cassie’s spent meaningful time with her. And, with both the kids occupied, he might be able to check in on Buck for a couple of hours.

He texts back, dropping Chris off at a friend’s at 1pm, is it okay if I bring Cassie by after that?

She replies, YES 🙌🙌🙌, so that’s that.

After quickly reheating the mac and cheese that has been sustaining them for days—and pointedly ignoring Christopher’s longsuffering sigh at the sight of it—Eddie ushers both kids into the jeep. He chats with Aydin’s dad at the door long enough for Chris to be invited for dinner if they need more time to work on their project, then they’re off to Ava’s house.

Eddie wouldn’t call Cassie a quiet kid. She’s not loud, per se, but she’s more vocal than Christopher ever was at her age, usually filling silences by asking questions, or lightly kicking the back of his seat, or singing the last song she heard them play. He’s gotten used to the constant noise that Cassie makes, which is why it’s disconcerting how the second Eddie turns down Ava’s familiar suburban street, the car falls eerily silent.

“Cassie?” he asks, trying to catch her gaze in the rearview mirror. “You okay?”

Her eyes are wide as she watches the houses they pass, brows dipping and chin wrinkling as she frowns. She says, somewhat accusingly, “You said daddy was still sleeping.”

Eddie blinks at her in the mirror, startled. “He is. He’s still in the coma. Why are you wondering about that?”

Instead of answering him, she says determinedly, “I thought we aren’t supposed to lie.”

“Uh,” he says dubiously as he swings into Ava’s driveway behind her new van. Once he parks, he twists in his seat to face Cassie with only a little bit of trepidation. “You’re right. We should always try to be honest with each other.”

She still isn’t looking at him, instead staring at the façade of Ava and Lyle’s house. Her eyes well up with tears as she wobbles out, “Then why are you lying?”

“What?” he asks. Eddie reaches out to comfort her, only for Cassie to jerk away before he can make contact. “Sweetheart, I’m not lying. Buck’s fine.”

“No!” she yells. “He’s dead and you’re lying! You’re lying! You’re lying!”

Eddie stares at her, completely taken aback. He has no idea where this is coming from. “Hey!” he says over her screams. “Hey, calm down. I’m not lying to you. Buck’s alive.”

“No!” Cassie sobs. “Don’t lie, you’re lying!”

Her entire face is flushed, eyelashes clumped, snot dripping down her lips as she cries. Her tiny fingers are wrapped around the restraints of her car seat as she trashes against them, feet kicking against the back of Eddie’s seat so hard that the whole car gently sways with the force of it. With every heaving breath, her belly presses against the belts, and Eddie doesn’t want Cassie to hurt herself by struggling so hard against them, so he quickly climbs out of the jeep to get her.

Cassie screams bloody murder the moment the back door opens. She twists away from him, which only makes the straps dig further into her delicate skin. It’s painful, seeing her like this—she hasn’t had a meltdown like this in months. What’s worse is that he doesn’t even know what caused it. It reminds him, worryingly, of the tantrums Buck described when he first became her guardian, random and sometimes a little violent.

“I’m just going to unbuckle you, Cassie, it’s okay,” he tells her, reaching for the clasps.

“No!” she screams. “No, no, no!”

She shoves his hands away, and when Eddie ignores her, she digs her fingernails into his skin, hard. His first instinct is to pull back, red welts already forming, three parallel lines mirrored on his forearms. As he stares at them, more surprised by her ferocity than anything, Cassie lands a solid kick to his stomach, shocking him enough to send him stumbling back a couple steps.

“Don’t make me,” she cries, breath stuttering as she sucks air in, letting it out on a wail. “I don’t wanna go, I wanna stay. I wanna stay, I wanna stay, let me stay.”

“Honey, it’s just your Auntie Ava,” he says, at a loss. “I don’t–”

“You said you were my dad but you lied. You said I could stay.”

That brings Eddie up short. He quickly re-calibrates, glancing between Cassie and Ava’s house as realization dawns. This isn’t some random outburst; this is Cassie thinking that Eddie’s about to abandon her on Ava’s doorstep without so much as a goodbye. She’s clutching the car seat straps not because she wants to be released, but because she doesn’t want to leave.

“Oh, shit,” he breathes. He fucked up.

He and Buck have dropped Cassie off at Ava’s house with no issue before, but with Buck in the hospital, the sense of permanence that Cassie craves has been completely uprooted. Now that Eddie thinks about it, that night Cassie called him daddy and asked if she could stay wasn’t about seeking comfort after a nightmare; it was about re-establishing a primary caregiver in Buck’s absence. He wanted to surprise her with a visit to her Auntie Ava, but instead, he drove her to the house she clearly still associates with losing her parents.

Jesus, she thinks Buck is dead.

“Cassie,” he tries, attempting to reach for her, but she flinches, hands up to ward away any attempts to unbuckle her, feet poised to kick him again.

Eddie’s half-tempted to crawl into the backseat beside her to calm her down, but he thinks as long as they’re parked in Ava’s driveway, Cassie isn’t going to listen to a word he says. She already believes he’s lying to her about Buck.

“Fuck,” he mutters, dragging a hand through his hair. To Cassie, he says seriously, “We’re going home,” gently shuts the passenger door, climbs into the front seat, and drives back out the way they came.

Cassie’s sobs subside the farther they get from Ava’s house, her hitching breaths evening out as she eventually succumbs to exhaustion. Once they’re almost home, Ava calls. With one hand, Eddie fumbles in the cup holder to get one wireless earbud from its case before picking up.

“Hey,” he says.

“Where are you guys? I thought you’d have arrived by now, but you seem to be driving in the opposite direction of my house.”

Eddie doesn’t question how she has his current location; it’s par for the course with Ava. The first text he ever got from her was a picture of Buck holding an impossibly small baby, and the only reason he knew it was from her was because Buck didn’t know anyone else who had recently given birth. The caption she sent read, thought you’d enjoy this sight 😉. She followed up the first photo with a slew of others: Buck crouched next to Cassie showing her how to support the baby’s neck; Cassie beaming with both babies on her lap; Buck gazing gooey eyed into a crib, tiny fingers wrapped completely around his index finger.

Eddie saved them all to his camera roll immediately. But it didn’t escape his notice that he never actually gave Ava his number.

“We’re gonna have to reschedule,” Eddie tells her, keeping a close eye on the sleeping kid in the backseat. He doesn’t want her to overhear something and start believing something she shouldn’t. They’ve had enough misunderstandings today. “We’re on our way home.”

Ava makes a sympathetic noise in his ear. “Is everything okay?”

“It will be,” he replies. “I’ll explain later, you know, when–”

“When there are no listening ears around,” she finishes his sentence seamlessly. “Got it. I would offer to come to you, but…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie says. He wouldn’t want to wrangle four children into a car, either. “I get it.”

“Yeah, but.” She groans frustratedly. “I just wanted to—I was hoping you’d be able to see Buck.”

Eddie sighs. “Yeah. Me too.” He glances into the rearview mirror again, at the dried tear tracks on Cassie’s cheeks and her slack open mouth because her nose is stuffed up. “But this is more important.”

“If you don’t call me later tonight with an update, I’m gonna call you. You’ve been warned.”

“Sounds good,” he laughs. “Talk to you then.”

In true Ava fashion, she hangs up without a goodbye, but Eddie isn’t bothered, because it’s that moment he pulls into the driveway. He twists in his seat, temple against the headrest as he silently watches Cassie, feeling about as drained as she looks, slumped in her car seat. Eddie doesn’t quite know how he’s going to fix this, but he knows where he should start.

Steeling himself, he gets out of the car and pulls open the back door. Even with the noise, Cassie doesn’t stir. Usually, Eddie would simply unbuckle her and carry her in without waking her, but he has a distinct impression that if Cassie wakes in the middle of Eddie undoing her seat belt, it won’t go over well. Instead, he wraps a hand around her shoulder and gently rouses her.

“Hey,” he whispers. “We’re home.”

Cassie blinks at him, eyes glassy and unfocused before awareness sinks in. She tenses instantly as she remembers her earlier upset, only relaxing once she realizes that Eddie hadn’t been lying. They really are home.

Her chin wobbles, eyes welling and arms lifting towards him as she whines, “Daddy.”

An emotion stronger than relief washes over him at her response; he was half-expecting another tantrum, fully prepared to sit in the back seat with her and ride it out.

“Can I unbuckle you now?” Eddie asks. He gets a nod and a sniff in response, which is more than enough permission to quickly unclasp the straps across her chest, Cassie wiggling her arms under them before insistently reaching back up.

Eddie hoists her onto his hip, not even cringing at the feeling of her wet, snotty face tucking into his shoulder, because she wraps her arms around his neck and clamps her legs around his waist and it’s the best thing he’s felt all day. He carries her into the house, heart clenching at the small whimper she lets out when he has to use one hand to unlock the front door, then settles into the corner of the couch.

Cassie only shifts to get more comfortable, then nestles back into Eddie’s hold, like she’s afraid if she gets too far, he’ll disappear. It makes him think of Buck during the first couple weeks after they first got together, greedy with touches before he realized they weren’t something he had to hoard in case he never got it again, before their relationship settled into something stable. Permanent.

Except Eddie doesn’t think Buck has ever believed Eddie might abandon him quite like Cassie does.

Eddie doesn’t speak right away, letting her lay against his chest as he combs his fingers through her wild tangle of curls, seemingly as meditative for Cassie as it is for him. For a moment, he thinks she might have fallen back asleep, but when he glances down, her eyes are open, gaze unfocused but alert.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you we were going to Ava’s house,” Eddie starts. “I should have told you that she wanted you to come over for a play date with the twins. But Cassie,” he murmurs, leaning down a fraction so his words are pressed into the crown of her head, “it was only going to be a few hours. I was always coming back.”

Cassie sniffs, pressing her whole face into his chest, her breaths warming his shirt.

“This is your home. With Buck and Christopher and me.”

“Even if daddy doesn’t wake up?” she asks, voice so muffled Eddie almost doesn’t understand her.

“Even if Buck doesn’t wake up,” he confirms, hoping he isn’t lying. He’ll fight for Cassie, though, just like he knows Buck would fight for Christopher. “But he’s alive, okay? He’s in a coma, but he’s alive. I promise you if that changes, I’ll tell you right away.”

“Mm-kay,” Cassie mumbles. She pauses before softly admitting, “I like it here. I don’t want to go.”

“You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart, I promise,” he replies immediately. “I’m your dad, too. I never want you to doubt that.”

She doesn’t have an outward reaction to his words, and Eddie wonders if he’s about to be called a liar again, only for Cassie to rest her cheek against his heart, sighing deeply. “I know,” she says. “Like always.”

Eddie frowns down at her. “Like always?”

She shrugs as much as she’s able. “Feels like you’ve always been my dad.”

“Oh,” he says, more of a sound than a word.

From the moment he met her, Cassie’s had this ability to say things that are deceptively plain yet carry so much meaning, more than she’s probably even aware. He squeezes her tighter as he rests his cheek on her head, helplessly endeared as he curls around her.

He feels the same way, is the thing. That first day he laid eyes on Cassie silently staring at him from the car seat he helped install, Eddie felt his life change. It was an expansion, a sense of himself shifting to encompass a whole other person, not dissimilar to the moment he held Christopher for the first time.

Eddie wonders if Buck felt the same way about Christopher so soon, like his entire being instantly rearranged to accommodate this kid he barely knew. Then he remembers how Buck dove into a second wave of a tsunami to save Christopher barely a year after they met and thinks, yeah, I think he did.

They felt like a family shockingly fast—first when it was just the three of them, and then again when Cassie came along. Eddie was painfully aware of what they looked like on that first outing to the zoo, Cassie and Christopher walking ahead of them while his and Buck’s shoulders brushed. Eddie and Christopher had known Cassie for all of one hour before a high schooler offered to take a picture of them all together—a family photo that hangs in their locker at work and is still displayed proudly on Buck’s lock screen.

His place in Cassie’s life solidified the day Cassie begged Buck to never stop hanging out with Eddie, pleading with him to make Eddie stay. When she raised her arms in Eddie’s direction instead of Buck’s, a wordless plea for comfort, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to pick her up and to murmur promises he wasn’t sure he could keep while she shook from wracking sobs. It was that moment he knew that he would happily be a permanent fixture in Cassie’s life whether he and Buck were together or not.

Before this week, Eddie had never thought about being a permanent fixture without Buck, but now it’s all he can think about. And he knows his position hasn’t changed.

“You want to know a secret?” Eddie murmurs.

“Mm-hmm,” Cassie replies, nodding against his chest.

“It feels like you’ve always been my daughter, too.”

She slumps even further against him, the last of any tension finally slipping away like this is a truth she already knew but is relieved to hear him say it anyway. They stay like that, curled together on the couch in the slowly darkening living room, and Eddie holds her for as long as she’ll allow.

On Monday afternoon, Eddie gets a text, the short double vibration indicating it’s Christopher. He puts a bookmark in the second chapter of Buck’s octopus book, which he’s rereading himself from the start because it actually turned out to be interesting. Eddie needs to finish it before Buck wakes up, otherwise he’ll never live it down.

School let out half an hour ago, and since Eddie was scheduled to be back at work today, he didn’t see any reason to dismiss Carla for the twenty-four hours he would have been gone. He’ll gladly keep his kids on the same routine if he can, and take some extra time with Buck while he’s at it. Carla and the kids should be close to—if not already at—home.

Christopher’s message reads: What’s Buck’s room #?

Considering Christopher’s unrelenting insistence on seeing Buck in the hospital, the text makes him frown. Eddie has a sinking suspicion that they’re not at home, after all.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells Hen, who nods and waves him off.

His suspicions are proven correct when he rounds the corner to see Christopher and Cassie sitting in the waiting room, Carla standing sheepishly next to them.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “but they insisted on coming here.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow at Christopher, knowing who really insisted on coming here, but notices a spark of defiance in Cassie’s eye as she puffs out her chest indignantly.

“You could’ve just texted me the room number,” Christopher grumbles.

“Chris,” Eddie sighs. It feels like they’ve been over this a million times; he doesn’t know what else he can say. “You know they don’t let kids in the ICU.”

Chrisopher glares at him. “I don’t care.”

“Me neither!” Cassie adds, loud enough that Eddie casts a glance over his shoulder at the attending nurse on the other side of the room.

“I want to talk to him,” Christopher says. “I need to talk to him.”

Eddie looks between his kids helplessly, abruptly realizing that it’s not the hospital rules that have made him so adamant that Christopher and Cassie can’t see Buck. Watching Buck, usually so animated and exuberant, lay still in a hospital bed with his chest rising and falling mechanically, has been brutally grating on Eddie’s already frayed nerves. Watching his kids interact with Buck when he can’t hug them back or whisper reassurances might actually, genuinely break him.

But he looks at Christopher, who hadn’t been able to see Eddie in the hospital after he was shot because of the pandemic, who wouldn’t have been able to see him if there were surgery complications. Then he looks at Cassie, who never even had the chance to properly say goodbye to her parents before they were ruthlessly ripped away from her.

Eddie purses his lips, hands on his hips as he considers them. He can’t, in good consciousness, deny them this, but he also desperately wants to shield them from the gut-wrenching sight of Buck in a coma.

He kneels before his kids so he can meet their gazes seriously in turn. “Are you sure?” he asks them. “Buck doesn’t quite look like himself. He’s pale and he’s hooked up to a bunch of machines that are keeping him alive.” Eddie glances at his son. “I know you want to talk to him, but he won’t be able to respond.”

“I know,” Christopher says. “I’m sure.”

Eddie turns to Cassie, who nods pointedly, chin dipping twice. “I’m sure,” she echoes steadily.

He sighs, standing. “Okay, then,” he agrees. “I’ll take you to him.”

Eddie scoops Cassie into his arms, ushering Christopher ahead of him as Carla helpfully distracts the nurse as they shuffle down the hallway.

“Christopher,” Hen says in surprise when Eddie lets him into the room first. “And…Cassie?”

He sets Cassie down and sends Hen a quelling look before he turns to shut the blinds on the interior window and then the door. “I couldn’t tell them no,” he mutters.

Christopher wastes no time in walking straight up to Buck’s bedside, taking Eddie’s abandoned chair, but Cassie only drifts a couple steps closer to the foot of Buck’s bed. She looks back at Eddie, visibly hesitant.

“Go ahead,” he croaks, nodding his head towards Buck in what he hopes is encouragement. “Be careful with the tubes.”

She chooses the side opposite Christopher, bright eyes cataloguing all the things that aren’t quite right—the strange wires connecting Buck to machines bigger than her, the hiss of air from the ventilator, the unnatural stillness from someone she’s only known to be wholly and unapologetically present.

“So he’s…asleep?” she asks, head tilted.

“Something like that,” Eddie replies, half stumbling into the ECMO monitor, leaning on it gratefully. “He’s resting so all these machines can make him better.”

Christopher asks what all the tubes are for, and Eddie tries to respond, but he just—he can’t. He turns his face away from the sight of Cassie curling her small fingers around Buck’s lax hand, biting his tongue, cheek, anything to try to stop the burning behind his eyes.

Hen gracefully tells Christopher what the ECMO machine is and how it works, and then Christopher is talking to Buck, pleading him to wake up and come back, and Eddie loses the battle against his tears instantly.

“Where is he?” Cassie asks.

The question isn’t directed to anyone in particular, but it’s Christopher who answers. “I don’t know. Somewhere else.”

“If he’s asleep, maybe he’s dreaming.”

“Maybe,” he allows. “But wherever he is, he’ll come back. He pinky promised, remember?”

“Mm-hmm,” she says, leaning closer on her tiptoes to lightly drag her fingertips over one of his eyebrows. She frowns as she notices his eyes moving behind his lids, glancing up at Christopher. “Do you think he’s having nightmares?”

Eddie catches Hen’s eye at that, and they share a miserable look.

“I don’t think so, honey,” Eddie murmurs, then startles upright as a very familiar thump sounds behind the wall across from Buck’s bed.

Hen barely thinks of it, telling the kids easily, “I’m sure someone just dropped something.”

Christopher and Cassie believe the explanation without a second thought, but Eddie hesitates, eyeing the wall for a moment longer.

Before he realizes he’s even going to speak, he says, “Hey,” and turns to Cassie. “You know what your dad does when you have a nightmare? I bet he could use some of that, right now.”

“Snuggles?” she asks hopefully.

“Exactly,” he says, and moves to help Cassie up beside Buck, making sure the tubes are safely out of the way of her tiny limbs. She rests her head on his shoulder, letting her hand fall onto his chest, tracing the pattern of his hospital gown.

“I hope you wake up soon, daddy,” she whispers.

Christopher echoes a similar sentiment, Hen sniffles, and Eddie ignores the resulting thump from across the room, weaker than he’s ever heard it before.

When Eddie parks at the hospital a couple days later, he doesn’t get out right away.

For the past week, he’s barely been able to shift the car into park before eagerly darting into the hospital, but not today. Today, he stares unseeing out the windshield before tipping to rest his forehead against the steering wheel. He lets out a ragged sigh, fingers clenched around the leather, shoulders bunched up by his ears.

Today, they’re taking Buck off the ventilator. Either Buck breathes on his own, or he doesn’t. Either Buck will wake up once they take him off sedation, or he won’t.

Eddie desperately wishes to be decidedly elsewhere, but he already knows that when it comes to Buck, he can’t be anywhere else. If Buck doesn’t breathe on his own today, then Eddie’s damn well going to be right by his side when it happens.

He gets out of the truck.

When he arrives at the room that’s practically become his second home, he finds Maddie and the Buckley parents. The former he was hoping was already here, the latter he could really do without.

“Hey,” Eddie says, drawing the attention of every Buckley in the room save the one he wants most. He catches Maddie’s eye and tips his head to the hallway. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

“Oh,” Maddie says, glancing at her parents before settling on Eddie. “Yeah, of course.”

She follows him outside, and before Eddie can decide how he wants to broach his topic, Maddie’s already talking without stopping for breath.

“Look, I know taking him off the ventilator is scary, but I really think it’s the best decision we have. His oxygen levels are good, he should–”

“No,” he interrupts. “That’s not—I agree. This isn’t about taking him off the ventilator. Well, not really.”

Maddie stops short, confusion wrinkling her brow. “Oh.” She shifts, crossing her arms. “Then what did you want to talk about?”

This is probably going to be awkward no matter how Eddie phrases it, so he figures it’d be better to be direct about it. “Has Buck ever talked to you about his will?”

“His will?” she echoes. “Uh, no. Why?”

“I know he has one—Bobby has been on a one-man mission to get every firefighter in the 118 to set one up, just in case. I just don’t know if–” Eddie sighs. “I don’t know if he’s updated it since September.”

Understanding dawns instantly in Maddie’s eyes. “Ah.”

Eddie barrels on despite his discomfort. “I’m assuming he leaves everything to you and Chimney. I’m pretty sure he said something about leaving a chunk specifically for Jee-Yun, too. But if he hasn’t updated it, then Cassie—she’d–” He loses his breath just thinking about losing her, even to Maddie. “She’d go to you, too.”

Maddie says nothing as she watches him knowingly, likely sensing he has more to add. He appreciates the warm hand she wraps around his arm, squeezing encouragingly.

“I know Buck and I have only been—I don’t know, dating, together, whatever you want to call it—since January, but god, Maddie, she’s already lost so much. If Buck dies too, I–” Eddie squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, hating that he said it out loud, but he needs to know. “I’m not sure if I’m going to be enough for her, but I want to at least try. She’s my—she’s Buck’s, but she’s mine, too. So I need to know that if Buck doesn’t wake up, Cassie will stay with me. Please.”

“Oh, Eddie,” she breathes. He barely gets a glimpse of tears spilling down her cheeks before she reaches up and tugs him down into a crushing hug. He stumbles into her embrace, tucking half his face into her shoulder and finally letting the tears fall, throat aching. “It hasn’t just been a couple months. We both know what you and Buck have been to each other these past few years.”

He laughs wetly into her cardigan, clutching her tightly, remembering all those long, wine-tinged nights with her.  “Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles.

She pulls back slightly, and Eddie reluctantly lets her go, meeting her kind, steady gaze. “Buck hasn’t talked to me about his will. I have no idea what choices he made. But, if it does come to that, you’re Cassie’s dad. She’s your daughter. Of course she’d stay with you.”

Eddie sniffs, nodding jerkily, and he thinks that he’ll be able to hold it together, but then he lets out a sharp sob, vision blurring before he automatically blinks the tears away. “Thank you,” he says gruffly, pinching his lips together as he tries to get himself under control.

“You don’t need to thank me.”

“I do,” he presses. “Thank you, seriously. For everything. I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you much this past week. He’s your brother, and I should’ve–”

“Hey, no,” she interrupts. “Don’t even go there. You’ve been there for him, and you’ve been there for Christopher and Cassie. That’s what I want for him, and what he would’ve wanted, too.”

“Yeah,” Eddie chokes out. “I hope so.”

“I know so,” she replies. “And I know he’s probably chomping at the bit to wake up and get back to you and the kids, so…” she trails off, looking through the window where Buck lays still. “Let’s give him the chance, okay?”

Eddie nods, straightening. He’s hoping for the best, but at least now he’s prepared for the worst.

Not wanting to put off the inevitable any longer, he gestures for her to head back in first. “Lead the way.”

In the end, it’s pretty anti-climactic.

Almost immediately after Dr. Becker unhooks the ventilator, Buck takes a spontaneous breath. Like Maddie said, it’s as if he was waiting for the opportunity and jumped at the chance.

Despite Dr. Becker informing them it could take up to twenty-four hours for the sedation to wear off. Eddie waits all day for Buck to wake up. By the time he leaves to pick up the kids at school, Buck still hasn’t woken. Bobby assures Eddie that he’ll call the second Buck starts to stir.

Dinner is a lighthearted affair after Eddie shares the news, with Christopher and Cassie trading updates that they need to share with Buck once he’s awake. They end the night with popcorn and a movie; it would feel more like a celebration if Buck was here with them, but this is the most relaxed he’s seen the kids since Buck got struck by lightning, so Eddie’s not about to complain.

Getting Cassie into bed is a bit of a challenge. It seems like every five minutes she’s asking him to check to see if Buck’s awake, and when he relays that there are no messages sitting in his notifications, she frowns, disappointed. It feels like walking for too long on unsteady ground, like one more lack of update is going to trigger a landslide that culminates in a complete meltdown.

Thankfully, after one glass of water, three stories, and five assurances that Buck still hasn’t woken, she drops into sleep. Eddie sighs in relief when he finally notices, closing the latest book and setting it silently on her nightstand. He hovers in her doorway for a long moment, making sure she’s fully out before pulling the door closed and returning to his own room.

Sleeping in here alone is still difficult. It never got easier after that first night—instead, it only became more depressing as he envisioned the next several years of sleeping alone in the room meant for him and Buck, surrounded by boxes of Buck’s things that Eddie would never have the heart to unpack.

Now, he stretches his hand into the space Buck would usually occupy and hopes.

Eddie bolts half upright as he groggily tries to determine what woke him. It's been years since Christopher darkened his doorstep in the middle of the night, Cassie isn’t standing at the foot of the bed, and he can’t hear anything from their rooms that would be indicative of nightmares.

What he can hear, however, is an incessant buzzing against the top of his nightstand. Eddie reaches for his phone, heart leaping into his throat as he sees Bobby’s name on the screen, his contact photo smiling at him with a cat he single-handedly rescued from a tree on a call two years back.

“Bobby?” Eddie gasps into the phone. Middle-of-the-night phone calls are usually never good. “Is Buck okay?”

“He’s fine,” Bobby says steadily, a smile in his voice. “I wouldn’t be calling you at this hour, but Buck wouldn’t take no for an answer. He wanted you to know he’s awake, and that he wants to see all three of you.”

“We’ll be there in half an hour,” Eddie promises immediately.

“Eddie, it’s three in the morning.”

“Don’t care,” he says, already hunting for his boxers in the dark, his phone trapped between his ear and shoulder as he fights to put on socks. “I’ll wake up the kids and bring them, they’ll want to know.”

Bobby pauses, his disapproval palpable. “Don’t they have school tomorrow?”

“I’ll excuse them,” he says easily.

“I know you want to see him for yourself,” Bobby says placatingly, “but he’s probably going to fall back asleep soon.” A faint grunt sounds in the background. “You will, Buck, you just woke up from a coma. Eddie, you don’t need to drop everything, I just wanted to let you know.”

Eddie straightens, already dressed, taking his phone back in hand. “And you thought I wouldn’t drop everything?”

Bobby sighs. “I’ll see you in half an hour.”

“Yup,” Eddie agrees, ending the call and sliding his phone into his pocket.

The kids aren’t pleased to be woken at first, but they change their tune immediately once he tells them that Buck’s awake. They’re dressed and in the car in record time—if only Eddie could get them out of the house this quickly for school.

Christopher and Cassie conk out on the drive to the hospital, which Eddie is grateful for. He’s not sure he could take any questions he can’t answer right now.

In the parking lot, he nudges Christopher awake and steadies him once he’s on the pavement; he’s always a little wobbly when he’s tired. With Christopher at his side, Eddie simply unbuckles a sleeping Cassie from her car seat and carries her into the hospital. She doesn’t stir once.

Yesterday, while waiting for the sedation to wear off, two nurses moved Buck out of the ICU and into a recovery room. Eddie almost presses the elevator button for the ICU before he remembers the change, hitting the correct floor number at the last second. At least now he doesn’t have to sneak Christopher and Cassie into Buck’s room.

Through the window into Buck’s new room, Bobby sees Eddie coming, rising and meeting him at the door. “He fell back asleep,” he says unnecessarily, because Eddie can see as much.

Christopher immediately crosses the room towards the couch along the far wall, resting his crutches against the arm and curling up. “Wake me up when Buck’s awake,” he says, then turns over.

“Buck told me that you should wake him up when you got here,” Bobby says, “but I think we should let him rest.”

“Yeah,” Eddie breathes, everything else he wants to say sticking in his throat.

Buck already looks so much better, his skin returning to his normal pallor. Without the ventilator, he actually looks like he’s sleeping, face slack, cheek squished into his pillow. Eddie cracks a faint smile thinking about how frustrated Buck probably was about his inability to sleep on his side.

“I think I’m going to head home,” Bobby says, gently touching Eddie’s elbow to get his attention. “Finally get some sleep.”

“You can stay,” Eddie offers, shifting Cassie to his opposite arm. “If you want.”

“It’s okay,” he replies. “We talked for a bit before he fell asleep. It’s you guys he’s aching to see.”

Eddie’s chest tightens at the thought of Buck missing them for as long as they’ve been missing him. “Thank you,” Eddie says, catching Bobby’s wrist before he leaves the room, squeezing once. “For calling. For the time off. For everything.”

Bobby covers Eddie’s hand with his own. “Anytime,” he says seriously, then huffs a quiet laugh. “Hopefully not anytime soon, but anytime.” He pats Eddie’s hand, and with a final glance at Buck, he leaves the room.

With Christopher passed out on the couch, Eddie gently places Cassie on Buck’s bed, tucking her into the small space between his arm and chest. Without waking, she snuggles into Buck’s warmth, and Eddie positively melts.

He sinks into a chair on the same side of the bed, knees against the mattress so if Cassie turns over in her sleep she won’t fall, slipping his hand into Buck’s. Eddie means to stay awake, but he’s running on a pitiful amount of sleep, and his eyelids slowly sink closed. They don’t open again until he feels a tug on his hand.

Blinking at Buck’s fingers linked with his own, Eddie doesn’t fully comprehend what’s happening until he sees it for himself: Buck’s hand squeezing around his, fingertips slowly turning white with the force of his grip.

Eddie’s gaze snaps to Buck’s face, who’s watching him under half-lidded eyes. “Buck,” he whispers, jostling Cassie as he moves to sits on the mattress, but she doesn’t wake, not even when Eddie leans over her to cup Buck’s stubbled jaw and scatter kisses all over his face. Eventually, he pulls back and says, “Hi,” only to notice that tears are spilling from the corner of Buck’s eyes. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong? Am I–”

As Eddie tries to stand to make sure he hasn’t accidentally exacerbated his injuries, Buck’s hand covers one of Eddie’s, effectively holding him in place. He shakes his head as the tears continue to flow, overcome.

“You’re okay,” Eddie says, thumbing the wetness away. “It’s okay, sweetheart, I got you.”

That only seems to make Buck cry harder, but Eddie dutifully wipes his tears and drops kisses on his chin, his hairline, his birthmark until Buck calms down.

“Hey,” Eddie tries again eventually. “You okay?”

Buck nods, pressing a kiss to the palm of Eddie’s hand. “Just…” he rasps, “…really missed you.”

Eddie softens; how could he not? “I missed you, too.”

“And I missed them,” Buck adds, pulling Cassie closer into his side as he glances at Christopher’s back. He’s talking in a whisper, likely to lessen the strain on his throat after so long on a ventilator. “How were they?”

Eddie sighs, tugging a loose curl out of Cassie’s mouth with one finger. “They managed. Christopher’s practically a pro, at this point.”

Buck laughs, then winces. “Hopefully Cassie doesn’t get any more practice.”

“Yeah,” he agrees quietly. “She was okay at first. Thought you’d wake up for sure. You did pinky promise, after all.” That makes Buck smile, watching Cassie fondly as she slumbers on. “She slept in our bed one night. Called me daddy for the first time.”

Tears well up in Buck’s eyes all over again. “Really?”

Eddie nods, getting choked up himself. “Yeah.”

“You’re her dad, Eds,” Buck says. “You already knew that.”

“I did,” he confirms. “But it’s something else to hear it.”

Buck lets out an amused breath. “Tell me about it.”

“I, uh, I took her to Ava’s on the weekend. Chris was at a friend’s place working on a project, so I thought I might be able to come see you, but she—she kind of freaked out.”

“Freaked out?” Buck echoes with a slight frown. “What happened?”

“She thought you’d died in the coma and that I was abandoning her at Ava’s house.”

Buck takes in this news with wide, wet eyes, gaze dropping to Cassie, completely crestfallen. “Oh, Cassie,” he whispers to her.

“We got it sorted out, but it was—it was pretty bad, Buck. She wanted permanency in case you didn’t wake up, and I didn’t even know if I could give her that. I basically accosted Maddie before we took you off the ventilator to make sure that Cassie would be able to stay with me in case—well.”

Buck’s eyebrows draw together. Eddie’s never been happier to see those three creases between his brows. “Huh?”

“Well, I–” he stutters, “–I assumed if anything happened to you, everything would go to Maddie. Cassie included.”

The look Buck gives him Eddie can only describe as bewildered, and maybe a tiny bit offended. Slowly, he says, “No.”

“No?” he repeats, confused.

Buck closes his eyes, shifting slightly on the mattress as he says casually, “I changed my will in November.”

Now it’s Eddie’s turn to say, “Huh?”

“After I went back to work,” Buck clarifies.

“But that was–” Eddie starts, trying to parse together the timeline. The morning they woke up in the blanket fort together was the first weekend in December. He won’t be forgetting it anytime soon, because he’d spent the entire two days stewing in Buck’s silence, convinced he’d ruined everything between them. “That was before we–”

“I know,” Buck interrupts, then huffs a laugh, a sparkle in his eye. “Makes a lot of sense in hindsight, though, doesn’t it? It’s not like we were dating when you put me in your will.”

“Well, no, but–” Eddie cuts off, rendered speechless. What does he even say to this? Is this how Buck felt when Eddie told him about his will? Like his entire world shattered into jigsaw puzzle pieces and as he tried to put it back together, Eddie handed him the final missing piece?

“Is it really that surprising?” Buck asks. “I knew that if anything happened to me on the job, I wanted her to have you and Christopher. I wanted you to have each other.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Eddie asks.

Buck’s silent for a long moment as he considers his answer. Finally, he says, “Probably the same reason you didn’t tell me. Felt too revealing. Even though I didn’t really know why, at the time.”

“I love you,” Eddie’s helpless to say, the words falling from his lips without a second thought. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” Buck murmurs, tipping his chin in a clear request for a kiss.

Eddie grants it easily, the kiss chaste but lingering. He savors the feel of Buck alive and warm under him, the press of Buck’s fingertips against his scalp, the drag of his own lips against Buck’s dry ones.

“I’m sorry,” Buck rasps when he pulls back. “That I wasn’t there. I missed your birthday.”

A tiny grin tugs at Eddie’s lips, exasperated and fond at the same time. “It wasn’t exactly your fault.”

“I tried so hard to get back,” Buck says nonsensically. “Nothing worked.”

Eddie straightens, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

“I had this—this dream,” he says, squinting into the distance as he recounts the story. “It felt so real. I woke up in the hospital and Taylor was there.”

Eddie can feel his eyebrows fly up. “Taylor?”

“She was on her phone,” Buck continues, which makes perfect sense to Eddie. “She teased me about falling off a ladder. It felt kind of off, but dream logic, you know? And then—a little girl ran into the room. She called Taylor mommy and me daddy and she had bright red hair, and this wave of wrongness washed over me. It was like a switch flipped. The dream changed instantly.”

Buck shakes his head a little, eyes clearing as he blinks out of the daze.

“Taylor and the girl disappeared, and then I was in this weird, sterile room with a single window.” He meets Eddie’s gaze, strangely serious. “I saw myself in the hospital room, the one in the ICU. I was hooked up to a ventilator. I saw everyone—Maddie, Chimney, Bobby, Hen, you. I heard you.”

Buck grabs Eddie’s hand like he thinks Eddie’s going to bolt, and Eddie holds Buck’s hand between both of his to comfort him. He’s heard the stories that people in comas can still hear and process what’s happening around them. It’s a nice thought and comforted Eddie more than once while he talked to Buck’s comatose body, but he’s never put much stock in it.

Humoring him, Eddie says, “What was I saying?”

“You were reading Many Things Under a Rock,” Buck replies without skipping a beat.

Eddie’s heart seizes in his chest. That’s the title of the book about octopi—octopuses, octopodes, whatever—that he read to Buck. What a weird coincidence.

“I could hear you reading, and I wanted to get to you so bad. I kept on trying to break the window, I was hitting it so hard. And finally—you looked up. You heard me.”

A chill sweeps up Eddie’s spine and down his arms. The thumping in the storage room. But—no. That’s crazy.

“You heard me. I know you did. You came to the door, you asked if anyone was in there, and I hit the door as hard as I could. You told me you’d get me out. I guess maybe I pushed it a little too far, because then I couldn’t breathe. It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room.”

“Buck…” Eddie whispers, disbelieving.

“I saw everything,” he continues. “Bobby busted out the rosary beads. Athena told me to fight. Hen held my hand.” He chews on the inside of his lip, glancing away. “Maddie cried a lot, but at least Chim was there with her. Shockingly, my parents showed up. Although, maybe it’s not all that shocking, considering that kind of stunt always worked when I was a kid.” His melancholy expression melts away with a bright smirk. “You snuck the kids into the ICU to see me.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Bobby ratted me out, huh?”

“What? No. Eddie, I saw the whole thing.”

“Sure,” he agrees easily.

Buck sighs, gaze steely and determined, gripping Eddie’s hand like he’s got a point to prove. “Chris was on my left side. He told me I was gonna be okay, that all the machines were making me better.” Buck glances at Christopher, passed out on the couch. “He begged me to come back.”

Eddie’s resolve begins to crumble. He really doubts that Hen went into that much detail when she told Bobby about Eddie’s smuggling routine. It goes against everything Eddie believes, but why would Buck lie about this?

“Cassie traced my eyebrow,” Buck recounts, smoothing his index finger over Eddie’s eyebrows in the exact same way Cassie did before returning his arm to hold her close. “She wondered if I was dreaming. If I was having a nightmare. And god, Eddie, I was. I could see you and hear you and I was so close, but I was still so far away.”

A memory occurs to him. Faintly, he says, “You banged on the wall.”

“Mm-hmm,” Buck replies with a little dip of his chin, eyes glassy.

Jesus Christ. “That was really you?”

Buck’s nod is tiny but no less imploring.

“Baby,” he breathes, fitting his palm to Buck’s cheek and kissing him hard. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

Buck sobs into Eddie’s mouth and Eddie kisses the hurt away. His reaction at seeing Eddie and the kids when he first woke up makes a lot more sense now.

“We’re here,” Eddie tells him between kisses. “You’re here, you’re okay, we’re all okay.”

“I know,” he whispers, crushing Eddie into a hug. “I know.”

The movement jostles Cassie enough for her to whine unhappily, pushing her hair out of her face to level Eddie with an unimpressed pout. She doesn’t seem to realize Buck is awake until she registers the hand rubbing her back isn’t Eddie, and the way her expression lights up makes Eddie wish he’d thought to catch this moment on camera.

“Daddy!” she squeals, scrambling directly into Buck’s waiting arms. He lets out an oof as he catches a knee in the ribs, but he quickly waves off Eddie’s worried look and hovering hands, pulling Cassie closer.

Christopher stirs at the ruckus, adjusting his glasses as he peers over his shoulder towards Buck’s bed. “Dad,” he grumbles, “I told you to wake me up.”

“Sorry, bud,” he replies, but he can’t wipe his grin off his face.

Christopher foregoes the crutches to shuffle across the room to Buck’s bedside, climbing onto the opposite side of the bed. Buck immediately holds out an arm to pull him into the fold, which Christopher sinks into gratefully.

“Hey, you two,” Buck whispers into their hair. “I missed you guys a whole lot.”

“Missed you, too,” they murmur back simultaneously.

“Sorry for waking you up in the middle of the night.”

“’s okay,” Christopher says, resting his head on Buck’s chest and closing his eyes. Eddie would bet his last dollar that all three of them will be asleep within the next ten minutes. He’s only slightly jealous there isn’t enough room on the bed to fit a fourth.

Into his shoulder, Cassie mumbles, “You came back.”

“Of course I did,” Buck replies, reaching to tangle his fingers in Eddie’s. He smiles, weary but still incandescently happy. “I’m always gonna fight to come home to my family.”