Chapter Text
The sharp, bitter tang of antiseptic curled in the back of his throat. Eddie hated hospitals. He especially hated hospital waiting rooms. And there was nothing he hated more than sitting in a horrid, moulded-plastic chair in a hospital waiting room, not knowing what was happening to his best friend on the other side of the double-doors.
“He’s gonna be ok, big guy.” Hen’s voice was soft and sure as she rubbed soothing circles on his back. “His vitals were steady, pupils round, equal, and reactive when they took him back. I don’t think he even had a concussion this time.”
Eddie barked a harsh, coughing laugh at that. “No, no concussion, just a fucking piece of lumber through him.”
It had started out as a run-of-the-mill rescue call. Some kids goofing off in a vacant, half-renovated apartment complex had gotten into trouble when an unfinished stairway collapsed, stranding them on the 5th floor. With the building so clearly unstable, the best and safest way to reach them had been to bring them out through the window.
Ladder rescues still made Eddie nervous, but Buck went up like… well, like he had something to prove. Three points of contact all the way. Eddie watched every step, followed him up once Buck was at the window so he could bring the teenagers down.
The first three handoffs were pretty easy, the kids putting on a good show for their friends but anxiously following every instruction the firefighters gave, clearly more than a little nervous as they made their way back down to earth. But the second-to last one started panicking when part of the floor gave way behind him, basically catapulting himself over Buck to get to the ladder, and Buck… fell. He was thankfully wearing his harness, so didn’t fall far – unfortunately, he swung directly into a broken section of the window frame, and his bad luck had conspired to let him hit at just the right angle and force that a jagged piece of it had gone directly into his abdomen.
Another scar, thought Eddie. Another surgery, another night in this fucking waiting room.
Waiting.
Eddie had promised himself there would be no more waiting after the last time, with the lightning. And after the time before that when they’d been taken hostage, or the one before that, when Eddie had been shot and Buck had tried to get himself shot – that time, Eddie had come so close to telling him. Telling him what Buck really meant to him, even though Eddie had only just begun to suspect it himself. That Buck held Eddie’s whole heart in his hands, that Buck’s smiles made his breath catch in his chest, that Eddie ached with a need to make Buck see his own self-worth. Somehow, though, Eddie could never find the words. The closest he could come was telling Buck about the will, and even then - even holding Eddie's heart and soul in trust like that - Buck still had doubts. Still saw himself as somehow expendable, and as a result was always finding himself here. In this hospital. With another call, another mishap, another risk taken and rescue gone awry.
Eddie closed his eyes and inhaled sharply through his nose, trying to calm down, trying to focus on anything besides the fury, the incandescent rage boiling up in his chest – because he knew it was really just abject terror in disguise.
He was so afraid that one of these days he’d lose him for real.
***
“Family of Evan Buckley?” called the intern – medical student? – holding a tablet in one hand and scanning the room with the other. Eddie and Hen rose together, and Eddie smiled wanly at Bobby, Chim, and Ravi as they stood.
“That’s us. I’m his emergency medical proxy,” said Eddie. He’d been through it enough times. The kid – god, when did interns get so young? he thought – blinked at him, and then at the crowd of firefighters who’d come straight from the end of their shift (all except Eddie, who hadn’t left the hospital), shrugged and said, “Follow me, he’s in recovery and should be waking up soon.”
Together, the 118 headed down the too-familiar halls toward the surgical wing, Eddie only half-listening to the update the young woman read from the tablet as they walked. No major organ damage, 10-14 days off work for the abdominal wall to heal.
Ugh, he thought. Two weeks of working without Buck having his back. Maybe he could talk to Bobby about using some PTO…
Actually, that wasn’t the worst idea. He knew Buck got squirrelly when he had to be off work for an injury. At least if Eddie was at home with him, he could make sure the younger man didn’t get himself into any (more) trouble.
Buck was half-sitting up in the hospital bed as the team crowded through the door, blinking owlishly through the haze of painkillers and anesthesia. “Hey, everyone! Wow, you all came!” He looked fine, if a little pale (which made the birthmark framing his left eye stand out all the more, Eddie noticed). And then he turned the full force of his million-megawatt smile, undimmed by the drugs coursing through his system, on Eddie.
Dammit, Eddie thought ruefully. Every goddamn time. He was absolutely certain that Buck had no idea what his smile did to him; he’d only gotten comfortable acknowledging it himself in the past year or so. It had taken a hell of a lot of work with Frank for Eddie to get through his Catholic guilt and repression and a whole heap of internalized homophobia, but he was grateful for the work because it had brought him here.
To Buck’s hospital bedside.
Staring at Buck’s incredible, infuriating, endearing, gorgeous smile.
Get it together, he cautioned himself.
“Buck. Glad to see you’re feeling better.” Eddie gave him a one-sided smirk. “I see they’re giving you the good stuff. Must be because you’ve racked up enough frequent flyer points.”
“Eddie! I feel great. Almost as good as when we had those brownies. Remember those brownies? Oh, but wait, you were crying, so I guess you didn’t feel good? But I bet you’d feel really good if you had what I’m having. You should always feel good. I like it when you feel good,” Buck babbled happily.
Eddie felt his ears heat up, and hurriedly tried to change the subject. The last thing he needed right now was to think about Buck wanting to him feel good, or any of the million ways he thought about making Buck feel good. Not here, in the hospital, surrounded by their coworkers. As hilarious as high Buck was, he needed to get him talking about something else. Anything else.
“Well, the doctors are saying you’re off work for a week or two, so I don’t know how good you’ll be feeling once the drugs wear off,” Eddie said.
“Two weeks?” Buck frowned. “That seems like more weeks than I need to get better. What am I gonna do at home for two weeks? That’s a lot of days. I don’t want to be off work for that many days.”
“Tell you what,” replied Bobby. “We’ll have this conversation again in one week, and assess whether you can be on light duty but still at work for the second week. How does that sound?”
Buck happily agreed to the suggestion, and Eddie saw that his blinks were getting longer and longer. “I think it might be time for you to take a nap, Buck.”
Bobby agreed, and ushered the crew out to the hallway. Eddie followed only as far as the door. “Bobby… would I be able to…”
“Of course,” his captain replied before he could finish. “Go where you’re needed. The whole time, or just the first couple of days?”
Eddi’s breath whooshed out in startled relief. Of course Bobby knew he’d want time off. He and Buck had been trading off which one of them was hurt and which was looking after the injured one for years at this point. Just because Eddie realized, now, that Buck was the love of his life made no difference.
Besides, it’s not like he was about to tell Bobby that.
“Thanks, Cap. I’ll let you know in a couple days when it looks like I’ll be back – depends on how well our boy genius here can follow doctor’s orders.” He glanced back at Buck, the fondness on his face and in his tone belying the words. Bobby hummed again in assent, watching Eddie quizzically for a moment before turning to walk through the door.
Eddie, in the meantime, had pulled a seat up beside Buck’s bed and clearly had no intention of following anything like visiting hours. He leaned back insofar as he was able in the too-small chair, stretched his legs out in front of him and started scrolling through his phone with one hand, the other resting on the bed where it could almost-but-not-quite touch Buck’s where it lay against the now-sleeping man’s side. He would wait a little longer.
But only a little.