Archive of Our Own

Christopher is there, and then he’s not.

Eddie can’t quite wrap his head around it.

Everything’s so different that it feels alien. He doesn’t eat breakfast for the first week that Christopher is gone, because there’s no one to cook breakfast for. He’s on the phone with his mother more than he’s ever been in his life. He leaves the door to Christopher’s room shut, so he can pretend that his kid is in there, playing video games and avoiding homework, or maybe just avoiding him. He’d do anything to be back in those ten hours between Kim leaving and his parents showing up, even if it meant Chris wouldn’t talk to him. At least he’d be here. At least he’d be home. 

When May becomes June, and June becomes July, the calendar on his fridge doesn’t change. Aside from work, there’s not anything he’d put on it these days. It’s frozen in time just like Chris’ room is— field trips and basketball games and date nights long past. Eddie thinks it’s pretty fitting, honestly, in a stupid, poetic sort of way. The world keeps turning, but Eddie’s stuck in the moment he lost his son.

His son, who wouldn’t even look at him as he said goodbye.

Eddie cries, in private, every day for the first two weeks. Then he can’t seem to cry at all. He thinks it might be better this way.

Things are pretty shit at the 118. Work’s the only thing keeping Eddie going— if he didn’t have a commitment to keep, he thinks he’d go off the deep end. Or, well, further into the deep end than he already is. 

Captain Gerrard is a vile, hateful man, and Eddie’s blood absolutely fucking burns at every word that comes out of his mouth. Chimney is man behind more often than not, punishment for antagonizing Gerrard with snarky comments, which leaves Hen as the sole paramedic and Eddie as her fumbling partner. 

Sometimes, when he’s helping a patient with Hen and he can hear Buck and Ravi playfully squabbling in the distance, it feels like the time Chimney went searching for Maddie. When Eddie would get off shift just as Christopher was waking up in the morning— just in time to burn some pancakes and serve him cereal instead, just in time to hold up the school drop-off line because he wanted to give his son a hug. He revels in the fantasy for as long as his mind lets him, and when it hits him that it isn’t real, it’s like he’s watching Chris walk out the door all over again. 

Gerrard is surprisingly, albeit begrudgingly, civil towards him. Eddie thinks it’s because he keeps his mouth shut. In the first few weeks after Chris leaves, he can tell that everyone expects him to be angry again. And he is angry, somewhere deep down that he doesn’t want to reach, but he’s been down this road before— he knows it doesn’t end well. Sure, he’s thought about the fighting ring again. Wondered if Bosko would still be around; if she’d rat him out if he showed up again. And yeah, he spends more time at the punching bag these days than lifting weights, waving Ravi over to hold the bag because as nosy as the kid is, he’s a little too wary of the situation to ask any questions. But he doesn’t punch holes in his bedroom walls again, doesn’t snap at his friends when they catch him off guard, and doesn’t cuss out Captain Gerrard no matter how much he wants to. 

It doesn’t stop everyone else from worrying. 

Hen and Chimney’s concern is quiet. It’s in compassionate glances; gentle touches on his shoulder when they say goodbye at the end of a shift. They’re careful not to talk about Mara in front of him, conversations coming to a dead stop when he walks in the room, but he brings her up anyways, asks how she’s settling in, and thinks they take it as a good sign. They’re good friends to him. He knows if he ever wants to talk to them about it— about anything— they’ll be all ears, but there’s nothing he wants to say to anyone who isn’t his son.

Ravi is clearly making a concerted effort not to treat him any differently, but he’s dialed back the jokes. Rosen, Quintana, West, the rest of the A-shift— they keep their mouths shut and their heads down, the occasional interaction rife with awkwardness. 

Bobby reaches out a lot in the beginning; texts and calls that Eddie leaves on read. It dwindles down to one missed call a week. Eddie’s not sure how he’ll feel when Bobby stops trying. 

Buck’s the worst about it, in a way Eddie can’t even judge him for. It’s just the way he is. He hovers like a helicopter parent, making excuses to drive him home from work or come over on their days off. Eddie lets him, at first— it’s not like he has anything else to keep him occupied. But Buck keeps wanting to talk about it, keeps wanting to fix it, keeps looking at him with those too-sad eyes. Eddie feels guilty every time he shuts down that conversation. He knows he’s not the only one missing Chris. But Chris at least spoke to Buck; looked at him as he said goodbye. Buck’s not the one who fucked it up.

And Buck, these days— Buck is happy. Every time he thinks Eddie’s not looking, there’s this contentedness that settles over him, this small smile that lives in the corner of his mouth. Then he looks back at Eddie and the expression falls off his face in less than a second. Everything’s heavy all over again. Eddie’s upset, so Buck has to be upset, and for maybe the first time in six years, Eddie starts to resent their codependency. He’s bringing Buck down by virtue of existing. Buck is a fixer, through and through, and he doesn’t understand that Eddie is broken beyond repair— that he’s wasting all of his time and energy on something that will never bring him joy again.

Buck’s got a good thing going with Tommy, Eddie knows that. So it’s an easy decision to slowly extract himself from their lives, and from everyone’s. Tommy’s invitations to sparring sessions and boxing matches had already slowed once Tommy and Buck had started dating, and after Eddie declines a few more, they stop for good. He turns down post-work breakfasts and Friday night drinks because he’s not in the mood, sorry, and who can fault him for that?

And then it goes from declining invitations to simply never responding in the groupchat. His presence is still wanted, he knows this, but it’s not expected anymore. 

There’s comments made about the bigger events— Hen telling him one morning that she wished he could have made it to Bobby and Athena’s housewarming— but other than that, he’s off the hook. 

The life he’s left with is almost unbearably empty. 

When he’s home, he drinks, mostly. Never to oblivion— just enough to let his thoughts take on a wispy, unreal quality; just enough to spend twenty seconds in a world where his son isn’t in Texas before he remembers again. Eddie sits in Christopher’s empty room and hugs the pillow that barely smells like him anymore. Scrolls through the text thread with his mother, his endless requests for updates mostly answered in a few short words; a few photos of Christopher at the lake or with his cousins or in a cowboy hat too big for him. Eddie can’t really tell, not through the pictures, and it’s only been two months, but Christopher looks taller. 

Eddie looks at the clothes Christopher left behind, his least favourite shirts hung in a row, and wonders if Chris will have outgrown them by the time he’s back. If he’ll come home with new clothes and new friends and his son will be a stranger to him.

When he came home from Afghanistan, the second time, he’d spent a long time looking at Christopher and thinking about the photos Shannon had sent him. Trying to line them up side-by-side in his mind’s eye; make it click that this was his son he’d fought so desperately to come home to. Christopher, still so young, had looked at him with that same lack of recognition. They’d been strangers to each other. At least they had been in it together. 

Maybe his parents were right, all those years ago. Maybe he should have left Chris in Texas with them. Maybe he was dragging his son down with him. If Eddie hadn’t brought Christopher to L.A., Chris wouldn’t have been caught up in the tsunami. Wouldn’t have been frightened by Eddie’s mental breakdown. Wouldn’t have had to deal with his father’s mortality, and his mother— 

Eddie would have never had a reason to reach out to Shannon. Christopher’s mother wouldn’t have left him again, wouldn’t have left this world, because she would have stayed gone. 

If Eddie knows one thing about himself, it is that he is horribly selfish. He has always needed Christopher more than Christopher needed him. It just took Chris realizing that for him to realize it too.

Eddie thinks about calling Kim and playing pretend again. He wonders if the bangs were real, if she’d trimmed them herself the way Shannon used to, if she’d scrunched her brows together in the same way Shannon would when leaning in close to the bathroom mirror. He wonders how long it had taken her, after he’d shown her the pictures of Shannon, to commit to this dead-wife-D.I.Y-therapy. Did she fall back on her theatre training? Was she a method actress? Did she feel joy and grief when Christopher called her “Mom,” or did it make her stomach turn? Maybe she told her friends all about this escapade later, reenacted it like it was a scandalous drama. Maybe she kept it to herself, her own private shame, and tried never to think of Shannon Diaz again.  

Eddie thinks about calling Marisol, about asking her to pray for him. He’d tried to contact her once, twice, after that night. Between the way she’d stormed out that night and her silence after, it was clear she wanted nothing to do with him. A petty part of him argues that she’s a hypocrite, she’s not being a good Catholic, what about forgiveness? But Marisol’s not a nun, she’s real in a way Eddie thinks he may have never understood, and he knows she owes him nothing. He still considers showing up at her church. If he went to confession, what kind of penance would he be assigned for his sins? What could possibly absolve him of something like this?

Eddie thinks about calling Ana, just to tell her she was wrong. He’s not a good father; he’s not a good man. He destroys everything he touches. His relationship with Christopher; his relationships with Ana, Marisol, Kim— hell, even Shannon had asked him for a divorce before the end of everything, as much as he tries to forget it. Ana never stood a chance. She was the first woman he dated after Shannon; the second woman in his life who saw something in him, some goodness, some fool’s gold, and was made worse for it. 

Eddie thinks about calling Buck. Buck, who’s been the hardest to shake off during his whole disappearing act. He still catches the worried glances at work; shrugs off the twice-a-week “Hey, man, are you doing alright?”. Buck cares about him, because that’s who he is— the king of second chances, doling them out to everyone who doesn’t deserve it. Eddie thinks, no, he knows he deserves it least of all. He wonders what it would take to get Buck to stop caring. He wonders if by losing Christopher, he’s already on the way there. 

Make sure he wears sunscreen, Eddie wants to text his mother. Christopher takes after Shannon; burns easily. He needs at least SPF 50. Make sure he does his physical therapy exercises, take away his phone before bed so he doesn’t stay up all night, don’t let him get that new video game he’s been talking about, because Eddie’s done his research and it’s not age-appropriate. 

He likes blueberries as a side to his pancakes, not in them. He won’t focus on his homework unless someone is sitting with him. Keep the hall light on at night in case he has a nightmare. Let him talk about the nightmares, it’s less scary when you talk about it. Don’t let Dad tell him he’s not supposed to cry.

Make sure he knows I love him. Make sure he knows I didn’t mean to hurt him, didn’t mean to scar him for life, didn’t mean to take everything familiar from him. Make sure he knows he can come back anytime— that his bed’s already made, we’ll make homemade pizza and he can laugh at me when I burn it, and I’ll let him pick whatever movie he wants to watch, even if it’s Big Hero 6 for the fifteenth time. 

Make sure he knows where his home is. 

Too many drinks in, some miserable midnight after a 48, Eddie thinks, in a sick, roundabout way, that it would be easier if Christopher was dead. Because if Christopher was dead, he would be too— there’s no question about it. You can’t survive when your heart’s stopped beating. He’s seen so many suicides gone wrong that he knows just the right ways to do it, and he’d be gone in a fucking instant. Reunited with his son and his wife, playing happy family in heaven forever, everything he was always supposed to want. No one left behind, this time. 

The thought of his son, dead, makes him retch all over his kitchen floor. His throat burns with bile in a way that feels like an inadequate punishment. He doesn’t go down that road again.

Everything he does, he does for Christopher. For years, Eddie repeats this like a mantra— when he reenlists in the army, when he uproots Chris to L.A., when he changes his will to give Buck legal custody of his son if he dies. It’s a defining fact of his life. 

And then one day there’s a woman at the Promenade with Shannon’s face and Shannon’s voice and he thinks you know what, maybe it’s high time he puts himself first. Maybe it’s his turn to take what he wants, even when he knows it won’t be good for him in the long run. Kim is an indulgence, a guilty pleasure just for him, and Eddie is finally, finally doing what he wants to do— not what he thinks he should do. 

It crumbles so fast that it’s almost comedic. Buck meeting Kim at the station, catching him in this contrived soap opera plot. Marisol bringing Chris home early just to see him crying in the arms of his dead wife’s clone. Chris refusing to speak to him, to look at him, to let him try to explain something he has no possible explanation for. 

What Eddie wants, more than anything, is to atone for what he’s done. He wants to make up for leaving Christopher behind, make up for how things turned out with Shannon, make up for the undoable damage he’s done to his son. He’s not a fixer, not like Buck, because Eddie’s attempts to make things right always fail. He’s just striving, bleak and Sisyphean, to make amends for every facet of his existence. 

And then Christopher leaves, and he finally learns his lesson: Eddie Diaz is not allowed to want. Nothing can ever be his. Not even his son, his still-beating heart. The second he wants, everything gets ripped away from him, like some sick cosmic punishment. 

Eddie still doesn’t really know if he believes in God anymore — he tries hard not to think about his reservoir of Catholic guilt, of the prayer book Bobby had pressed into his hands — but he knows one thing. If God exists, there is no way He is good. 

It all comes to a head on a hot August afternoon, three months since Eddie last saw his son. 

The 118 is called to a cliffside rescue, a father and son cliff-diving adventure gone wrong. They pull up at the top of the cliff, a rope rescue far easier in this location than trying to access the man from lower ground. The park ranger explains what’s happened, how the high winds pushed the man off course and caused him to land on the ground instead of the lake, how his son watched him fall. 

Chimney and Hen trade a look, muttering about the Santa Anas, and Buck starts rattling off facts about the human body’s uncanny ability to survive drops from tall heights. Eddie looks over at the son, no more than fifteen, who’s staring over the edge of the cliff. They’ve all got to make their way over there eventually; set up the ropes, see what they’re working with, but Eddie starts towards him immediately, the kid too close to the edge for his comfort. 

Eddie barely makes it three steps when the wind whistles, dry and powerful, pushing hard at his back—

and the kid must feel it in that same instant too, because he stumbles forward just an inch, and then he’s falling over the edge. There and then not. 

Eddie barely even processes the yell that rips out of his throat, feet pounding towards the cliffside. He skids to a stop just before the edge, scanning the area below. The father is sprawled out on some rocks— definitely a spinal injury, if he’s alive— and the kid is nowhere to be found. The lake ripples as if it’s been disturbed.

“The water,” he gasps out to his team, who are peering over the edge with him. “He went into the water. He hasn’t resurfaced.”

“Maybe he hit his head on a rock,” Hen says. “Or a spinal injury, broken bones— you land in the water at the wrong angle and anything could happen.”

Hen says things, sometimes, that feel like a strange sort of foreshadowing. Really, the whole team does. Eddie isn’t superstitious, but it’s hard to ignore a pattern. 

Captain Gerrard clears his throat. “Panikkar, you’re on winch. Buckley, Diaz, you’re going down. Wilson, Han…”

Eddie stops listening. The water below is unfathomably dark. There’s a kid down there, below the surface, hurt; his dad, maybe dead, maybe alive, stranded just out of reach on shore. By the time they get the ropes, get harnessed in, get down, get the kid, start CPR— they’ll be out of time. If the kid lives, he’ll have brain damage, and that’s a strong if. 

“Diaz!” Gerrard shouts. 

Eddie turns back. Chimney, Hen, and Ravi are already back at the truck, gathering the necessary equipment. Gerrard is no less than ten steps away, with that perpetually angry look on his face, Buck behind him like a shadow.

He locks eyes with Buck. Buck, who knows him better than anyone; who looks just as afraid as he did covered in Eddie’s blood; who is lunging forward, anticipating Eddie’s next move before Eddie himself even knows he’s going to make it. The decision, then, is easy.

Eddie jumps. 

They say, when you’re about to die, you see your entire life flash before your eyes. Eddie thinks that’s bullshit. He’s an expert on almost dying, and he’s never once seen his entire life, birth to imminent death, playing out in chronological order. 

Twice, he saw Christopher, and refused to give up. Once, he saw the world as it was: his best friend covered in blood he didn’t realize was his, the sky so blue it seemed unreal, and then darkness. 

Now, during the fourth time, he sees nothing. 

He doesn’t know much about cliff-diving. It never interested him— he’s pretty set when it comes to ways he can get an adrenaline rush. So he relies on common sense: feet-first, arms crossed, hands on his shoulders. Eyes shut. Blood rushes in his ears, his heart jumping up to his throat. 

The water’s cold for August.

It feels like the lake he surfaced in when he got stuck in the collapsed well; the one the feeder pipes led to. Suffocating, disorienting, inviting him to stay forever like a trap in a Grecian myth. 

Distantly, he wonders if this is what the tsunami felt like when it happened. No sound, no direction, nothing to be known — just Buck and Christopher lost in the endless water. 

Christopher.

He kicks his way upwards, an agonizing pain ripping through both of his ankles, enough to make him scream wordlessly the instant his head breaks the surface. Greedily gulping down air, he wonders if his team is watching him— if they think he’s still alive. If they think this is more or less insane than shacking up with his dead wife’s doppelgänger. 

He dives into the water. Standard underwater search-and-rescue protocol is to do three breaststroke arm movements, and then ascend to the surface with your fist leading the way, so if there’s something above you, you don’t hit your head. Eddie figures he’s already ignored protocol once today— another time can’t hurt. He stays underwater, feeling around for the kid, eyes straining against the murky water. 

He’s about to surface and try again when he sees a glimpse of red— the t-shirt the boy was wearing. He kicks furiously over, doggy-paddling with his arms to try to lessen the strain on his damaged ankles, and finally, gratefully, grabs hold onto a solid body. There’s no time to worry about a spinal injury, not when the kid’s been underwater so long and he doesn’t have a backboard waiting for him on shore, so he just grabs the kid under the arms and yanks him upwards. 

Gasping for air, Eddie scans for the closest patch of land and kicks towards it. It’s rocky, but there’s a flat enough place for him to lay the kid down and start treatment. On autopilot, he tilts the kid’s head back to check his airways, fingers checking for a pulse. Zero for two. He gives two rescue breaths and starts compressions, the heel of his palm digging mercilessly into the kid’s chest. 

“Come on,” he grunts. The kid’s head lolls uselessly with every compression. “Breathe, buddy, c’mon, I know you can do it.” 

Another two rescue breaths. This time, as he returns to compressions, Eddie notices a wound on the kid’s head, blood beginning to leak from it now that it’s no longer immersed in water. He must have hit his head when he fell. Eddie knows that the kid could be dead already, CPR useless against blunt force trauma, but there’s a chance that the blow was only enough to knock him unconscious— that it’s the water in his lungs that stopped his breathing and the lack of air that stopped his heart. It’s that chance he’s banking on. 

On the third round of compressions, one of the kid’s ribs cracks underneath his palms. Eddie shudders. It’s like killing a spider— a tissue not enough of a barrier to stop you from feeling its legs crunching beneath your fingers. It’s a sensation that had made him cry countless times as a child, never able to shake it off.

Between his urges for the kid to breathe, Eddie apologizes. He keeps his rhythm steady despite the damage he’s doing. Thinks that might be what he always does. 

Two more rescue breaths. Thirty more compressions. Another rib cracks and Eddie starts crying. 

Nine compressions into the eighteenth round of CPR— approximately seven minutes since Eddie pulled the kid out of the water— there are strong arms pulling him away from the kid. Eddie yells, thrashing against the hold, reaching his arms forward to continue treatment. He can’t stop now, he can’t, he can’t let him go— he feels his jaw working, thinks he might be shouting— and then he’s being dragged further backwards, ankles screaming in pain as they hit the rocks. 

The back of an LAFD shirt appears in his vision and he stops scrabbling against the person holding him, trying to process what’s happening. Dark hair, steady movements. Chimney, continuing CPR. 

Eddie goes boneless with relief.  

Eddie’s used to life in fragments. Half-sentences, flashes of movements, grabbing hold of a morsel of understanding just for it to leave you. It’s what it felt like when he was shot, when Shannon died, when he was buried alive, when he was shot again, when the lightning struck, when the overpass collapsed. When his parents showed up to take Christopher away. 

Most of it is a blur. Some of it is clear: Eddie chasing down Christopher’s eyeline. Not letting him leave until he knew that Chris heard him say “I love you.” His father’s expression as he shut the door, pained and knowing. Buck’s firm hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing into his skin. His heart, gone. 

Here, now, he gets some sound. The AED whirring to life, advising a shock. Chimney and Hen in tense conversation. And some feeling, too— white-hot pain in both his ankles. The phantom sensation of ribs breaking below his cramped hands. Wet clothes sticking uncomfortably to his skin. Rock, jagged and steady, beneath him; warmth, solid and familiar, behind him. The wind striking his cheeks.

Above him, the blue-grey sky. 

Hen calls out for Buck, for a backboard. He hears Buck’s voice in his ear; feels himself moved against the rocks. The warmth disappears. He lets himself float, overtaken by a dizzying sense of unreality. Welcoming the fragments as they come. 

Eddie doesn’t realize he’s shut his eyes until he opens them again, the pressure on his sternum hard to ignore. He hates a sternal rub more than anything; hates how it aches for days after. He lets out a groan, begging for it to stop, and maybe the nauseating pain in his ankles could cease too, that would be nice, and while he’s making requests, he’d really like his son back, please. 

“Eddie.” Buck sounds worried. Buck’s always worried these days. “Eddie, are you with me?” 

Eddie blinks until his vision clears. Buck, above him, teary-eyed and determined in a way he’s seen countless times before, the sun a perfect halo behind his head. 

“Eddie, come on.” 

Buck’s pulling at his arms, pulling him upwards. Eddie can’t help the broken cry that escapes him when he shifts onto his feet, or the way he immediately lets Buck take his entire body weight. It’s just them, he realizes, at the bottom of the cliff.

“The kid,” Eddie whispers, voice raw.

“Airlifted out,” Buck answers.

“Alive?”

Buck looks away from him. Like he doesn’t want to see the desperation Eddie is feeling. “I don’t know,” he says at last.

Eddie thinks of Christopher, cold and lifeless, and wants to vomit.

“The dad’s alive,” Buck says.

He’s not, Eddie wants to tell him. If his kid’s gone, so is he. 

“He was also airlifted,” Buck continues, struggling to strap him into a harness and hold him up at the same time. Eddie wishes he could help. Even if his ankles weren’t warring against him, he doesn’t know if he’d be strong enough to stand right now. “We’re taking the hard way out.” 

Eddie blinks a few times, trying to process. Buck clips their harnesses together, wraps an arm around Eddie’s waist, and speaks into his radio. “Got him. Conscious, responsive, and harnessed in. We’re ready.”

“Copy,” Ravi’s staticky voice responds.

Buck pulls on the rope twice and they’re floating upwards, slow and dizzying. It feels like the reverse of Eddie’s plunge down into the waters, and when the thought occurs to him, he lets out a hysterical laugh. That’s something he did. He just jumped, no safety net, nothing. He’s never been actively suicidal, but he’s sure Frank will have something to say about this. God, he should probably see Frank again, shouldn’t he?

“What is it?” Buck asks, arm tightening around his waist. Eddie can’t find it within himself to answer, burying his face in Buck’s shoulder as the laughter overtakes him.

By the time they make it up the cliffside, kneeling on solid ground again, Eddie’s laughter has turned to sobs.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Gerrard snaps. Bobby would never, ever say that. Bobby hardly even gets angry. What the fuck is this guy’s problem? 

Buck has one warm hand on the back of Eddie’s neck, the other making quick work of unclipping him from the harness. Between the crying, his wet hair, and his soaked clothes, Eddie’s left Buck with a very damp shirt. He’s done enough damage already that he doesn’t think continuing to cry would make a difference, so he lets the tears stream out as he thinks about how he can make it up to Buck later. Maybe do his laundry. Maybe apologize without being able to explain anything. Maybe never be able to make things right.

He misses Christopher so, so much.

“He’s broken both his ankles,” Buck announces, and yeah, based on the pain, Eddie kind of figured. “Possible concussion, but he might just be going into shock. I didn’t get a chance to check.”

“I’ll radio for an ambulance,” says Ravi. 

“You’ll do no such thing,” Gerrard replies.

Buck’s hand tightens on the back of Eddie’s neck. “What? What the fuck are you talking about?” 

“You said it yourself,” Gerrard sneers. “He’s conscious and responsive. He can make it back to the truck with us.”

“He needs an ambulance,” Ravi insists. “He’s hurt.”

“And are you a paramedic, Panikkar?” 

“I have EMT training just like you do, sir, and I can see that—”

“The answer is no. You’re not a paramedic, and you’re not Captain. It’s not your call to make.” Gerrard’s voice rings clear. “Calling an ambulance is a waste of resources. It was his choice to ignore protocol. If he wants to take himself to the hospital during his suspension period, he can do that. Let’s get a move on.”

Buck starts yelling. A radio crackles to life. Eddie is so, so tired.

“Cap’s right,” Eddie chokes out, lifting his head from Buck’s shoulder. God, he doesn’t feel good. “Don’t call an ambulance. Better places for them to be.” 

“Eddie—”

“Buck.”

“You’re hurt,” Buck protests. 

Eddie shakes his head. The world spins. “Waste of resources,” he echoes. “Help me up?” 

“Captain Gerrard, this isn’t—“

“I can suspend more than one of you,” Gerrard says coolly. “I can have your job. Hell, I might have his. Diaz, how do you feel about never working for the LAFD again?”

“Help me up,” Eddie repeats to Buck. There are so many emotions on Buck’s face that it’s hard to process them all. Eddie tilts his head, trying to catch his gaze. “Buck. C’mon.”

Buck blinks. Takes a breath, like he’s coming back to himself. He looks Gerrard dead in the eyes and holds down the call button on his radio. “This is Buckley with the 118,” he says, voice measured. “We need an ambulance to our location immediately. We have a firefighter down, repeat, a firefighter down.” 

“Copy, 118,” Josh’s voice comes in clear over the radio. Eddie distantly hopes he doesn’t have to thank him for this later. They’re still kind of enemies, after all. “A unit is on route to your location.” 

“Ravi, get blankets and a backboard,” Buck orders. Ravi jogs off. Eddie turns his head to watch him go and catches a glimpse of Gerrard, face drawn and angry. 

“You’re making a mistake.”

“He’s following protocol,” Eddie points out, voice strained. If Buck hadn’t— if Buck had chosen staying at the 118 over Eddie— he would have accepted it. He knows how much this job means to Buck. But since that’s not the case, the least he can do is defend him. “I thought you cared about that.” 

“You’re fired, Diaz,” Gerrard snaps. He turns to Buck. “And after you and Panikkar have finished this shift, you’re fired too.” 

“Ravi’s not a part of this,” Buck says firmly.

“No, I am,” Ravi calls out, jogging towards them with his arms full. He drops the blankets, snapping open the backboard and turning to Gerrard. “You fucking suck, man.” 

A shocked laugh bubbles out of Buck. Eddie laughs too, and then winces at the movement. He’s been shivering too much to keep completely still, every half-inch he moves making the pain even more agonizing, and a full-body laugh is a hell of a lot worse than a little shaking. Nausea roils in his gut and he clenches his cramped hands into the back of Buck’s shirt.

“It’s okay,” Buck says. “We’re going to lower you down. Nice and easy.”

He feels Ravi’s hands on his shoulders, Buck’s hands on his waist, guiding him onto his side and then his back. He thinks he might bite his tongue when his legs shift with the rest of his body, because his vision goes white and all he can taste is blood in his mouth. His ankles burn and ache and throb all at once. He’s just starting to breathe again, just starting to settle, when there are hands on his legs and he screams . 

Eddie comes back to himself what he thinks is a few moments later. Aside from the searing pain, he can feel a blanket draped over his upper body; a softness touching his hair. His St. Christopher medallion sitting cold in the hollow of his throat. For a few delicate moments, everything’s in fragments again.

He blinks a few times to see Buck, above him, drying his wet hair with a blanket. He thinks of going to the pool with him and Chris after the tsunami, letting them get reacquainted with the water together, Buck helping Christopher dry off his hair after and then shaking his own hair like a dog. All three of them bursting into laughter. Eddie makes some shitty decisions, he knows that, but he thinks changing his will was one of the better ones. 

Maybe Christopher doesn’t want that anymore, he realizes, blood running cold. If Chris called his grandparents at two in the morning, begged to go to Texas instead of reaching out to Buck— is that what Chris would want, if Eddie died? He’d discussed the will with Christopher years ago and it had gone well, even if he’d had to hug him tight and promise him it was all just a precaution, he wasn’t going anywhere. But what if that had changed? What if he didn’t know his son anymore?

His heart beats faster. He can feel it in his ankles. “Easy,” Buck says. “It’s okay.”

Sirens, in the distance. Eddie turns his head, trying to look. “Hen? Chim?” 

“They’re not here. Dispatch requested an ambulance to a nearby altercation right after the victims got airlifted. Gerrard sent them off.” 

Eddie frowns, trying to make sense of the timeline in his head. “While… while I was…”

“While you were still down there,” Buck confirms, jaw tense. “All we knew is that you were conscious enough to perform CPR after jumping off a goddamn cliff and he still sent our ambulance and paramedics away.” 

Eddie thinks it makes sense, thinks maybe he should have been left on those rocks down there forever. It was nice of Gerrard, really, to make sure Chimney and Hen wouldn’t have to watch him die. He knows how it feels— Buck, dangling lifelessly off the ladder in the lightning storm; Chimney barely hanging onto the edge of the ambulance during the overpass collapse; Hen’s body, too still, on the floor of the bank vault they couldn’t get into. Bobby, just three months ago, on a ventilator after having died for fourteen minutes. Shannon, in the ambulance, trying too hard to speak. I’m leaving again. He wouldn’t wish that fear, that shock, that grief on the people he loves. Even if he were worthy of it.

He blinks and Buck’s still there, worried and red-eyed, and the sirens come to a halt. Eddie tries not to feel relief about being saved. With his luck, the ambulance will crash on the way to the hospital— or the paramedic will be Jonah, purposefully stopping his heart — or some terrible accident will happen with the gurney and he’ll roll right off the cliff again. He stops focusing on breathing through the pain, and starts focusing on not wanting. 

“He’s over here,” Gerrard announces in the distance, sounding almost bored. Eddie can hear Ravi talking rapid-fire, explaining the situation to the two approaching paramedics. 

“You did a good job elevating his legs, but we’re going to have to remove the blankets to move him,” he hears a woman say.

“No, I know, I just wanted to lessen the swelling,” Buck responds. 

The woman crouches next to him. She looks nothing like Hen, but there’s something in the knit of her brows, her calm demeanour, that reminds him of his friend. 

“Hi Eddie, I’m Amanda,” she says. “We’re going to have to move your legs back down before we move you, so I want you to brace yourself for a bit of pain, okay?”

Eddie nods, and then agony floods him once more. He digs his nails into the palm of his hand and wills himself not to scream, a shred of his dignity returning now that other people are here. 

“Good,” says Amanda, “keep on breathing. Okay, my partner and I are going to lift you on three. You got this, Eddie. One, two, three—!” 

And he’s up in the air, flat on the backboard, head spinning endlessly as they transfer him to a gurney and start pushing the gurney towards the waiting ambulance. Buck walks beside him the whole time.

“I hope you enjoyed your time at the LAFD, Diaz,” Gerrard says, waiting at the doors of the ambulance. Eddie doesn’t have a lot of energy, but he still tries to glare at him. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” 

He’d say sorry, except he knows now that apologies do nothing. He’d explain himself, except he knows that that doesn’t help either. He’d defend his actions, try to justify it, but he doesn’t even know if the kid’s alive. Maybe he’s spent all this time trying to save something that’s already gone. 

When it becomes clear he’s not going to answer, Gerrard gestures to the ambulance with his chin. The paramedics take that as his cue to load him in and Eddie grits his teeth at the movement. 

Buck is clambering into the back of the ambulance when Captain Gerrard starts shouting again. “The hell do you think you’re doing, Buckley? You have eight hours left on shift!” 

“You said I was fired,” Buck snarks.

“After your shift is over. You still have a duty to the public. You’re supposed to be helping the community, not your boyfriend.” 

“Go,” Eddie rasps. “I’ll be fine.” 

Buck gives him a long, searching look, and then he’s gone. 

They’re on the road before Eddie can even process it. His thoughts are scattered, everywhere from boyfriend? to I probably owe Ravi a gift basket after this . Amanda won’t let him close his eyes, but he tries to sleep anyways. Hopes that maybe he’ll wake up on his couch, movie credits rolling in the background, his son fast asleep in his arms. Hopes that these past three months — this past year — his whole life — was just one big bad dream. 

“Pushing morphine,” Amanda says, and then everything becomes too soft around the edges to think.

The hospital is familiar, too-bright in a way that sets him on edge. Eddie sits patiently through the x-rays, the questions, the further care instructions. He gets cut out of his pants and his shoes and can’t be bothered to think about the cost of replacements. The painkillers he’s given do their job, but also encourage the tears in his eyes. 

His phone is busted— waterlogged and useless, just another stupid choice he’s made compounding with all the others. He doesn’t feel particularly charming right now, so when he asks a nurse to let him borrow her phone so he can make a call, he thinks her acquiescence is more out of pity than his aptitude for persuasion.

Dialling his parents’ home phone number makes him feel like a little kid again, like he puked in class and has to call someone to pick him up. That childish feeling is heightened by the painkillers, making him dizzy and off-kilter, and when he hears his mother’s voice he almost questions his sense of time.

“Mom? It’s Eddie,” he says, his throat dry.

“Edmundo,” she breathes, her tone surprised. “Where are you calling me from? I don’t have this number saved.”

“My phone broke,” he deflects. “I just wanted to—”

“You don’t sound good,” she says, her tone almost scolding. There’s a moment of silence on her end, steady beeping on his, and then she gasps. “Are you in the hospital?”

Eddie groans. “It’s fine, Mom. There was a rough call, it’s just protocol to get checked out, I’m fine.”

“Fine, like the time you got shot, fine?” 

“I didn’t get shot again,” Eddie complains, a little too loudly. A nurse pauses outside his door, giving him a concerned glance. He lowers his volume. “Look, I just wanted to check in. Chris, is he…?”

His mother sighs. “Having a rough day today,” she admits. Like father, like son. “He slept over at his cousin’s, which means he didn’t sleep at all, and so breakfast tasted wrong and he misses his friends and he doesn’t want to watch the movie he couldn’t stop talking about yesterday. He’s been in a mood all day. Barely even speaking to me and your father.”

“Let him come to you,” Eddie blurts out, not meaning to. “He just needs space. You can’t force it. Wait until he opens the door himself.”

“I will,” his mother says. “Are you sure you’re alright?” 

“I’m okay,” he says, blinking back tears. “He’s going to be okay, so I’m going to be okay. You know I might have watched a kid die today?” 

His mother’s gasp is sharp. “Eddie,” she says hopelessly, and then goes quiet.

“I’m sorry,” he rushes out. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I said that, I— it was just a rough shift. I’m sorry.” 

He doesn’t really hear his mother’s response, thinking about the kid again. Over the edge in the blink of an eye. Ribs cracking under Eddie’s hands. Trying to help and hurting instead. Buck had turned away when he said he didn’t know if the kid was alive. Eddie’s not sure whether or not to follow up about this one. He’s not sure he can handle the answer.

Movement in the doorway catches his vision. Bobby’s there, his gaze steady and concerned, and Eddie’s heart catches in his throat. He has the strange sense that he’s been caught. 

“I- I have to go, Mom,” he stammers into the phone. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Please tell Christopher I love him. Please.” 

“He knows you do,” his mother says quietly, and then sighs. “Take care of yourself, Edmundo. Call me again soon.”

“I will,” he promises, and takes the phone away from his ear just as the line goes dead.

Bobby drives him home. Doesn’t ask any questions; doesn’t look at him with judgement. Eddie thinks, in another life, he would have made a great priest. Bobby’s the kind of person you want to confess your sins to, and he’s the kind of person who knows what absolution is worth. 

When Eddie was shot— second time, fourth bullet total— Buck had driven him home from the hospital. He’d gone slow, avoiding any bumps in the road, and Eddie had rested his head against the cool window and taken deep breaths to quell his nausea. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Buck looking over at him every time they stopped at a light. Buck was still processing the conversation about the will. Eddie was still processing that he had said anything about it at all.

That time, Christopher had been there when he got home. He’d been there with a smile on his face and a banner above him and everything had felt right again. He was glad to see his tía and Carla and Ana too, more than a little confused at the presence of Taylor Kelly in his home, but the only thing that really mattered to him was Christopher. Anything could have happened— another earthquake, another tsunami, another shooting— and Eddie wouldn’t have cared, so long as Christopher was with him, home and safe.

Eddie wonders what would have happened back in May if he’d brought up the will. Fought against Christopher leaving, brought the law into it, said that if his son was going with anyone it would be Buck. As hard as he tries to picture the looks on his parents’ faces, he can’t figure out what emotion would be most prevalent aside from shock. Anger? Fear? Sadness? Or the way his father looked at him, closing the door as Christopher left— like he knew something Eddie didn’t? 

The house is empty when they arrive, just like it’s been for the past three months. It’s difficult, figuring out how to get Eddie up the stairs and inside— Bobby ends up carrying him a few feet, shame present in every bone in Eddie’s body. He deposits Eddie gently on the couch without saying a word about it.

It makes Eddie think about the logistics of his recovery— he’s going to need someone to help him; going to have to ask Carla if he can rent a wheelchair from somewhere; going to be out of work for months, if he even has a job after this— and he can’t help the frustration that bubbles up in his throat. He puts his hands over his face for a brief moment, like he can hide from the world, and when he removes them, Bobby is setting a glass of water down on the coffee table. 

“Do you feel up to eating something?” Bobby asks, taking a seat.

Eddie looks up at the popcorn ceiling. He’s going to have to get used to this view. 

“I think we have ammo against Gerrard,” he hears himself say.

“What happened?”

Eddie gestures at the whole of himself; at his ankles in casts. “Broke protocol. Made a stupid decision. Gerrard said not to call for an ambulance.”

There’s no answer from Bobby. Eddie looks over at him to see that his face is pale; his eyes searching Eddie’s face for God-knows-what. Finally, he speaks. 

“You mean to tell me that you broke several bones on the job and didn’t receive medical attention?” 

“Well, no,” Eddie starts, “Buck called for help anyway. Even after Gerrard threatened to fire him. I’ve been fired, by the way. So have Buck and Ravi. I think. I wasn’t fully following.”

Bobby takes a deep breath. “And Hen and Chimney were…”

“Sent out on a med call the minute the patients were airlifted out. I was still down there. I’m pretty sure Buck thinks it was on purpose. All I know is that Gerrard said calling a unit for me would be a ‘waste of resources,’” Eddie quotes. 

He’s saying far more than he thinks he would say if he weren’t on painkillers, but at least he didn’t say he jumped off a cliff. 

Bobby’s jaw drops. 

“Oh, shit,” Eddie realizes, “did I just tell you I jumped off a cliff?”

“You did,” Bobby says, his voice tight. 

“I wasn’t very good at it,” Eddie shares. 

Bobby barks out a laugh. It doesn’t sound entirely happy. “I can see that.” 

“You’re a good captain,” Eddie tells him, earnest and loopy. “Way better than that asshole.” 

His eyes drift back up to the popcorn ceiling, thinking about how the texture made it difficult to stick glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of Christopher’s room. How he did it anyways.

“You’re a good dad, too,” Eddie mumbles, not processing the words until they've left his mouth.

“So are you,” Bobby says gently. 

Eddie shakes his head immediately, ignoring how the world spins in response. It’s shitty of Bobby to lie, he thinks. He thought they were friends. 

“You did what was best for Christopher. You put his needs first.”

“Only after fucking everything up,” Eddie reminds him. If he looks to the doorway, he can picture Christopher there, looking so much younger than thirteen, saying “Mom?”. “I’ve never stopped failing him. I used to think it was okay, because it meant I was trying, but now…”

“You’re still trying,” Bobby says. “You’re only human, Eddie. You make mistakes just like the rest of us. Part of growing up is realizing your parents are people too. Christopher’s just starting to learn that.” 

Eddie shuts his eyes. Lets the world tilt around him, his stomach dropping like he’s on the world’s shittiest rollercoaster. When he opens his eyes, Bobby’s still there. Christopher isn’t. 

“I don’t know who I am without him,” Eddie admits. His vision blurs with tears. “I’m broken. There’s always been some part of me that’s broken. But at least I had a purpose. And now it’s all over, and my heart is gone, and what am I now?” 

“You’re alive,” Bobby tells him, and it sounds like he’s said these words before. Recited like a prayer. “You’re here. There’s a future ahead of you. That has to count for something.”

The realization hits him like a shot to the shoulder, and he half-expects to see blood splattering across his living room. Eddie chokes on his own horror. Bobby’s speaking from experience, lived experience, how could Eddie have forgotten in this moment what happened to his children? How can Eddie be so selfish yet again, never learning his lesson, forcing a man who lost his first family to listen to him mourn his son, alive and well in Texas? 

Bobby’s telling him to breathe and Eddie’s choking out apologies between gasps for air and the world is so fucking dizzy he might be sick. Bobby knows what it’s like to lose a son. To be the reason why he was lost. Everything temporary that Eddie is experiencing is permanent for Bobby in a way that makes his chest burn with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says again once he’s gotten a little more air in his lungs. “I’m sorry, Bobby, I’m sorry.” 

“Just breathe, Eddie,” Bobby says soothingly. “Why are you sorry?”

“Christopher,” he says breathlessly. “He’s—”

Alive, he can’t bring himself to say. Coming home one day, he can’t quite believe. 

“In Texas,” he finishes lamely.

A look of regret and understanding settles in Bobby’s eyes. “You still lost him,” Bobby says, and of course he gets it, and of course he’s being a saint about it. “You’re still grieving.” 

Eddie lets out a miserable sob, bringing his hands up to his face. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m not even doing this, and I don’t know how to—”

“You take it one day at a time,” Bobby interrupts. “You accept the grief, you accept your guilt, and you try your damnedest not to let it consume you. You learn what life is without him, even if it’s not a life you want to live. You learn who you are, or who you could become, in his absence. And you let people in. You don’t isolate yourself.”

Eddie scrubs at his tears until his skin starts to feel raw. He can’t seem to look at Bobby, guilt festering under his skin.

“I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in a while,” he whispers.

“I’m sorry too.”

He takes a deep breath. None of this feels real. Nothing has felt real since he saw the ghost of Shannon in that shop window. 

“Christopher will come back to you,” Bobby promises, “and in the meantime, you still have family to lean on. He’s not alone right now. You shouldn’t be either.” 

Eddie doesn’t know what to say to that, so he nods. It’s the right answer. Bobby squeezes his shoulder, firm and comforting, and they stay like that for a long while. 

Eddie has a sandwich and puts a hoodie over his hospital gown and promises to show up for Sunday night dinner once he’s able to move around a little more. He still needs to see the new place, Bobby reminds him, though Eddie knows this very well. It’s hard to untangle the Grant-Nash house fire and Bobby’s time in the hospital from his memories of Christopher leaving. Together, they make up the worst 48 hours of Eddie’s life. 

Bobby busies himself with tidying, making the house a little more accessible for someone who can’t exactly walk at the moment, and talking in a low voice to someone on the phone. Eddie drifts on the couch, thoughts slipping through the sieve of his painkiller-addled mind. 

The house phone rings. Eddie’s not used to that— no one’s ever really called him on the house phone, save for telemarketers. He just has it for emergencies, in case Christopher is home alone and something happens. The sound is so foreign to him that he almost thinks he’s somewhere else, having to blink a few times to really process his surroundings.

“It’s for you,” Bobby says, a soft look on his face. He extends the corded phone as far as he can to Eddie. It ends up resting on his chest, not quite close enough to get up to his ear, and Bobby makes quick work in pushing the couch a little closer to the kitchen so the phone can reach him. The movement sends a jolt through his entire body and he turns his face into the cushion to muffle his cry of pain. 

Taking a deep breath to combat the pain, Eddie picks up the phone. Bobby doesn’t answer his questioning look— just walks out of the room to give him space.

“This is Eddie,” he says, his voice raw.

“Dad?”

The world rights itself. Eddie lets out a choked noise, somewhere between a sob and a gasp. “Christopher?”

“Are you okay?” Christopher sounds upset. Uncertain. Afraid. Eddie is so, so grateful that his voice is still familiar; that he can pick out all the nuances of what his son is feeling in just three words.

“Yeah,” Eddie chokes out, blinking back tears. “Yeah, I’m okay, buddy. Are you okay? Did something happen?”

There’s silence for a moment. “I overheard Grandma talking to Grandpa,” Christopher says finally. “She said— she said you were in the hospital again?” 

Christopher sounds like he’s about to cry and Eddie’s heart shatters into a million little pieces. “No, no, Chris,” he soothes. “I’m home.”

“I know,” Chris says, and there’s that teenager attitude again. “I called the home phone. Buck said you’d be back by now.” 

Eddie blinks, feeling dizzy. “You… you talked to Buck?” 

“Please don’t be mad at him, Dad. I asked him not to tell you. I just wanted to know…”

If he’d lost another parent. Nausea crawls up Eddie’s throat. “I’m okay,” Eddie reassures him. “I hurt my ankles a bit, I think I’m gonna be on the couch for a while, but I’m okay. I promise.” 

“Okay,” Christopher says quietly. 

“I’m sorry for worrying you, buddy,” Eddie says, voice thick. “It’s good to hear from you.”

“I’m glad I’m not home.” 

Eddie can’t breathe. Someone shoot him again, someone bury him alive, someone reverse time and let him fuck up that cliff-dive so that Eddie never, ever has to process those words. 

“It would be pretty hard to have a movie night if you’re on the couch all day long,” Christopher continues. 

Eddie tilts his head back in relief, letting out a strangled noise that devolves into a sob. He clutches the phone so tight that it hurts. “Yeah,” he tries to say, another sob overtaking the word. “That would kind of blow.” 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Christopher asks, sounding uncertain.

Eddie wipes uselessly at his tears, his throat tight. He’s got his son on the line, his son’s voice in his ear, he couldn’t be anything more than okay. 

“You remember when I hurt my ankle playing basketball, and Tommy brought me home, and I was kind of loopy? And we watched Inside Out and I couldn’t stop crying?”

Chris giggles. Eddie’s heart aches, wanting to bottle that sound and hold onto it forever. “It wasn’t that sad, Dad.”

“I know, bud. But the painkillers, they made me more sad than I would be. It’s like that, right now. I’m okay. I’m just feeling a lot.” 

Christopher is quiet on the other end of the line. Eddie is terrified, and he thinks he might be making the wrong choice, but he has to try it. 

“Chris?” He hardly recognizes his own voice. “Have you… have you put any thought into when you might wanna come home?” 

More silence. Eddie will be able to live with it if Chris doesn’t answer him, but he thinks it’ll make that broken thing inside him break just a little more.

Eventually, Christopher says, “I have to go now.” 

“Okay,” Eddie whispers, fighting off the disappointment clawing at his throat. “Okay. Just know I’m here whenever you’re ready. Thank you for calling, buddy. Be safe. I love you.”

Christopher doesn’t say it back. Eddie doesn’t expect him to, not now. Eddie doesn’t expect him to say anything at all.

But Chris’ voice comes through the speaker one last time, small but there.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Dad.”

The line goes dead. Eddie listens to the disconnect tone, tears running down his face, and smiles. He’s going to see his son again. He doesn’t know when, but he will. 

For the first time since Christopher left, he truly believes that one day, everything might be okay.