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Buck groaned. This sucked. It sucked ass.
But whining and complaining wasn’t going to reset the clock and let him sleep for 48 hours, so he only let himself hit snooze on his alarm twice (the beeping was practically drilling a hole into his head) before accepting that it was time to face the day.
The early rays of sun creeping through the window weren’t helping the insistent pounding behind his eyes, and getting up made his head swim, but he could move and breathe fine and so really he was okay.
Eddie didn’t agree.
“You look like shit,” he said, climbing into the Jeep with two thermoses in hand.
“Always a ray of sunshine,” Buck remarked.
Eddie rolled his eyes.
“Good morning Buck. You still look like shit.” He pressed a thermos into Buck's hand. “Calling in sick is out of the question?”
Buck shook his head. “I’m fine, Eds. It’s just allergies.”
Allergies make you break out in cold sweats, right? Besides, it was the middle of June. There was serious pollen. Like, everywhere.
Buck took a sip from the thermos, expecting coffee (half milk with a shit ton of sugar, the way Eddie knows he loves but would never admit). Instead, he was greeted by a slightly spicy herbal blend, with an afternote of... honey?
“Tea?”
Eddie shrugged. “Figured you could use it. Bobby made breakfast casserole yesterday, and you barely touched it. That always means you’re about to come down with the plague.”
“Ha ha,” Buck quipped. “I do not have the plague or anything else, besides a vendetta against trees.”
Eddie gave him a look that said he didn’t believe his bullshit one bit and drank from his own thermos (coffee, black. One sugar).
Buck scoffed. So what if he wasn’t hungry yesterday? That happens. Eddie’s weird sickness horoscope didn’t mean anything.
He cleared his throat. The feeling of swallowing glass was also definitely a side effect of allergies.
He was still gonna drink the tea though. It was good.
~~~~~
Eddie didn’t seem convinced by the time they pulled into the firehouse parking lot, but he’d at least dropped it for now.
Buck shivered as he climbed out of the Jeep. When had it gotten so cold? Though Eddie seemed unbothered in a T-shirt and shorts compared to his sweatpants and jacket, so Buck figured he always tended to run colder anyway and brushed it off as more allergies.
He’d shake off this weird feeling by the end of the 24-hour shift, catch a quick power nap at the loft, and be right as rain before movie night.
The tradition had started one random October afternoon, and soon movie nights every other Friday were a sacred ritual. Even with Chris at a science camp for the rest of the week, Buck and Eddie carried on the tradition.
Even if it was Eddie’s turn to pick and he’d probably make them watch The Princess Bride for the thousandth time, Buck wouldn’t trade it for the world.
So he grabbed another cough drop, plastered on a smile, and followed Eddie inside.
~~~~~
He did not shake it off.
By the 9-hour mark, the chills, headache, sore throat, and dizziness were accompanied by general fatigue, and by hour 21 nausea had joined the mix. He was also pretty sure he was running a low-grade fever. Damn Eddie and his stupidly accurate observations.
Thankfully the shift was pretty low-key. A couple of med calls, a small backyard fire where a grill turned a backyard into a more or less self-contained fire pit.
Ok the flip side of that, they hadn’t been called to anything strenuous enough to explain Buck’s lethargy.
Everyone had been shooting him weird looks all day as if watching for his sudden collapse. But, he had managed to duck away from both Bobby and Hen’s attempts to take his temperature with little argument, so he seemed to be keeping up appearances somewhat alright.
Either way, the shift concluded with little fanfare, and he escaped in one piece, so everyone was obviously overreacting.
————-
By the time he dropped Eddie at his house (with the promise to return in a few hours with pizza in tow), made it to the loft and stumbled inside, Buck was ready to die. His head spun as he climbed the stairs, trying to breathe through the congestion.
Staggering into the bathroom, he popped 3 ibuprofen and the last DayQuil (that was likely expired but probably still fine), before setting his alarm for 5 hours, toeing off his shoes and collapsing into bed still in his uniform. This was fine. He’d take a nice long nap, grab a hot shower, and be good as new.
As sleep pulled him deeper into its embrace, he vaguely registered a notification from his phone, before he gave into the wave of exhaustion and fell asleep.
Waking up immediately made him want to crawl into a hole and perish.
Nausea reared its ugly head and he grimaced, already pushing himself up as his mouth turned sour in sudden warning.
Nearly braining himself on the corner of the bathroom counter, he dropped to his knees in front of the toilet just in time to lose what he’d managed to keep down that morning.
Seeing as he’d barely eaten anything the last two days, all that he brought up was mostly water and bile, which was super fun.
Finally, after what seemed like hours of the torturous cycle, he got enough of a break to catch his breath.
Buck whined. He was seconds away from puking again, the bathroom lights were driving a drill through his head, and he was so fucking cold but sweating through his shirt and he felt absolutely horrible.
Eventually, the nausea abated enough that he could breathe without fear of immediately gagging on air, and though the floor seemed infinitely comfortable, he’d rather not wake up with every muscle aching more than it already was.
Flushing the toilet, he gritted his teeth and steeled himself as he staggered back to bed, forgoing brushing his teeth until he was confident in his ability to not instantly retch at the taste of toothpaste.
A glance at the clock said he’d only been asleep for a little over an hour.
He’d kill for some water right now, but he’d surely trip and kill himself in a state of fever haze if he attempted the stairs. So he crawled back into bed, closed his eyes again, and tried to go back to sleep.
He dozed fitfully, piling on the covers before kicking them all off. Breathing through his nose was damn near impossible, and after a coughing fit that left his throat completely ruined, he came to the conclusion that life would be a hell of a lot easier if you didn’t need to breathe at all.
By the time his alarm went off, Buck had accepted that it was time to throw in the towel. He could barely manage to get out of bed, let alone drive across the city. Wincing, he reached for his phone.
It took a few tries to enter his password (he looked shitty enough that Face ID apparently couldn’t recognize him).
Despite the general crappiness of the situation, he smiled at his home screen; Chris pulling a face at the camera over a chocolate sundae that Eddie warned would give him an epic sugar crash but relented to anyways.
Eddies was one of his first saved contacts, right next to Maddie, but it still took a couple of attempts to hit the right buttons.
He figured texting would be easier, seeing as Eddie would probably be asleep still.
Eddie 🧡
Hey Eds think I’m gosnn
have to take a rain check
on. Ovie nirht
Movie nigh*
(Close enough.)
Of course, a reply came almost immediately.
Eddie 🧡
Are you okay?
(No, definitely not.)
Eddie 🧡
Yup all good
Jusr a cold
Eddie's typing bubbles popped up and went away twice. Finally,
Eddie 🧡
Okay
You need anything?
Even over text, Eddie sounded unconvinced. Still sweet though.
He wanted to say yes. To be honest, he wasn’t sure he had any medicine in his apartment besides ibuprofen and ginger tea was sounded really good right about now. And, selfishly, he wanted some company. Geez, he must really be out of it.
He was a grown adult; if he could get himself through strep at sixteen he could get himself through a cold now. There was no reason to give Eddie anything else to worry about, especially not just because Buck couldn’t handle being alone after a lifetime of practice.
So he texted back a negative to Eddie (throwing in a smiley face for good measure), turned off his phone, and tried to go back to sleep.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Yeah, Buck was completely screwed, Eddie figured as he got the text canceling for the night.
If he was admitting that he might have a cold, it was probably a shitty flu at least. The last time he’d called in for ‘a cold’, he was knocked out for a week and a half.
He also doubted there were any sort of sick supplies in the loft, bar the ibuprofen that Buck seemed to believe was the key to eternal life.
Either way, Buck has always been the suffer-in-silence type. His recipe for recovery seemed to be to stew in his misery until it went away.
Eddie grabbed his keys.
There was some shopping to do.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The cashier raised an eyebrow at him as he paid for enough DayQuil, cough drops, and tissues to stock a small hospital.
“Rough day?” She asked, scanning a blue Gatorade (light blue, because both Buck and Christopher claimed that the dark blue tasted like mud somehow).
Eddie huffed a laugh, fighting his wallet for his card. “Something like that.”
She smiled placidly, putting two different cold and flu bottles in a bag.
The way to Bucks's place was as ingrained in his memory as the way to his own house. As he punched in the door code, one of the neighbors a few doors down from Buck held the elevator for him, smiling and asking about Christopher. The two of them were a common enough occurrence in the building that conversation about his kid was more natural than confusion at his bringing groceries home to an apartment he didn’t live in.
Finally at the door, he knocked once to announce himself before unlocking it with his spare key. Hopefully, Buck would be sleeping by now, so he tried to be as quiet as he could, dropping the bags in the kitchen before venturing upstairs to see if he could bully Buck into some NyQuil.
The bedroom was empty. Seemingly every blanket in the loft had been piled onto the bed and then kicked off in a tangled pile at the foot of the bed, and a pillow had been knocked halfway across the floor.
The bathroom door was open, spilling light across the floor a bit further along the wall. Stepping forward, Eddie’s eyes found Buck as he felt his heart break a little.
Buck looked absolutely wrecked. He was curled against the wall next to the toilet, head in his arms. His hair was stuck to his forehead with sweat, usually tamed curls plastered against his too-pale face. Eddie couldn’t tell if he was asleep or not, but as he came closer he could see him shaking.
Crouching next to him, Eddie gently shook his arm.
“Buck,” he promoted. Buck groaned at him, trying to swat away his hand. Eddie tried again.
“Hey, come on. Can you look at me?”
Buck whined, shifting a bit so Eddie could see his face, eyes still screwed shut. Eddie tentatively put a hand on his forehead, brushing his hair out of his face. Buck leaned into the contact while Eddie cursed under his breath. He was burning up.
“Buck,” he tried once again, lightly tapping his shoulder. “What’s wrong? Tell me what hurts.”
Buck whined again. It was so unlike him. If he had his way, he’d play it off until he passed out.
“Head hurts,” he groaned, barely above a whisper.
“Okay,” Eddie replied. “Hang on a minute.”
He stood and turned off the light, before rummaging through the medicine cabinet for the thermometer he’d bought the last time Buck was sick and being stubborn. It certainly hadn’t been this bad though.
He returned triumphant, brandishing the thermometer.
“Alright, come on. Open up.”
Buck gave a noncommittal sound of discontent and sluggishly tried to push away Eddie’s hand.
“Uh uh, come on. Under the tongue.”
The last of the fight left Buck's body as he glared half-heartedly at Eddie but let him slip the thermometer into his mouth, offering no help on his end.
Buck's eyes fluttered in the seconds it took to work, but Eddie nudged him awake before he could doze off and screw up the reading.
The thermometer beeped.
“101.8,” Eddie declared softly. Not terrible, but would need to come down. “Have you taken anything yet?”
Buck gave a tired half-shrug. “Advil, threw it up already.”
Eddie frowned, humming in sympathy. He hated how miserable Buck was. He didn’t deserve any of it.
“Do you think you can keep another dose down?”
Buck responded with another half-shrug, which Eddie took as a yes.
He grabbed the bags from downstairs, dropping what he didn’t need by the nightstand and returning with a pharmacy’s worth of OTC medicine.
Shaking out an Advil and a NyQuil (though it was only 5, hopefully it would knock Buck out enough to let him sleep until tomorrow), he offered them to Buck with a glass of water, gently guiding his shaking hand and making sure he didn’t drop the glass.
Buck pushed it away after drinking half, which Eddie took as a win.
Placing the glass safely on the counter, he turned back to Buck. “Will you be okay here for a minute? I just need to do something real quick.”
Buck nodded. He was already dozing off as Eddie squeezed his shoulder quickly before heading to the linen closet.
He pulled the spare sheets from the top shelf and stripped the current ones, stuffing them into a laundry basket to be taken down later.
Spreading the new sheets over the mattress and straightening the blankets with an efficiency only gained through years of military service, Eddie squashed down a chronically rekindling rage at anyone being left alone in a state like this by those who were supposed to love them no matter what. Especially a kid. Especially Buck.
Eddie would die without hesitation before willingly letting Christopher ever feel so unwanted. He would go to his grave hating the Buckley parents for continuing to give up on their living children, managing to bring fresh pain with every meeting nearly thirty years later.
None of that was helpful now, he told himself as he returned to the bathroom in record time.
Buck blinked wearily at him, eyes glazed over even in the dimly lit room. Somehow he was still absolutely adorable.
Eddie couldn’t help but smile.
“Alright, let’s get you to bed.”
Buck groaned again and curled farther into himself. “‘M good here. Floor’s great.”
Eddie laughed. “Yeah, you won’t think that tomorrow. Trust me, bed’s gonna be a lot better.”
Glaring hazily at him, Buck grumbled his disagreement, but let Eddie guide him into a more seated position, then standing.
He swayed dangerously on his feet, Eddie quickly stepping forward to steady him. Buck leaned into him, dropping his head onto Eddie’s shoulder. He was so fucking tired, and Eddie was warm. Damn, Buck was cold. Maybe he could just fall asleep here.
Annoyingly, Eddie gently nudged him forward, moving their little huddle into the bedroom.
Moving was a lot worse than standing, Buck decided, closing his eyes against the spinning room.
Eddie was right though, and the bed proved to be 10 times better than the floor.
As he sank into the pillows, he noticed they weren’t the same ones as before.
Eddie had seen right through his bullshit, coming straight over with the medicine he knew was the only kind Buck would take. He’d brushed his hair back and brought him water and apparently even changed his fucking sheets.
Buck felt hot tears threatening to spill down his face as he fought to hold them back. What did he ever do to deserve Eddie? Thoughtful, caring, beautiful Eddie, who certainly had better things to do on his day off than play nurse but was standing in his apartment anyway because he knew Buck better than himself.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The fever must really be getting to him, Eddie thought as Buck didn’t protest Eddie’s tucking him into bed. He offered a lackluster “I can do it myself”, but didn’t try to argue any further.
Eddie was a bit taken aback at how similar Buck and Christopher were, especially now. With their matching curly blonde hair and attitudes when they were sick, Chris might as well have been Buck’s kid. Though, Eddie supposed he wasn’t a much better patient himself, even if he liked to think so.
Buck was already drifting off as Eddie brushed a hand through Buck's hair, gauging the fever. He didn’t expect it to have gone down much yet, but it was a force of habit.
Buck hummed, leaning into him again. Everything hurt, he felt like throwing up or crying or finding a hole to die in. But Eddie's hand in his hair was cool and soothing and felt like heaven.
Eddie always felt like that. He was warm and safe and loving and he’d opened his heart and his home to Buck when he surely didn’t deserve it. He’d never deserved any of it. Every part of Eddie was a gift from whatever was up there that came with a tiny voice in the back of his head wondering when it would be taken away.
And now Eddie was here, on his day off, changing his sheets and making him take medicine, and running a hand through his hair for no reason other than he cared. What a wonderful thing. What a crazy, wonderful thing he’d never expected to have in his life. He loved Eddie with every part of his heart and somehow could almost believe that Eddie loved him too.
The fever must really be cooking his brain if he was waxing soliloquies (word of the day, from the calendar Eddie and Chris had forcibly hung up on his living room wall).
He felt Eddie's hand leave his head. An involuntary whine escaped before he could stop it, and he flushed, hoping he was red enough from the fever that Eddie wouldn’t notice.
Eddie stilled for a moment, and Buck was sure his heart had stopped beating, and then surely dropped into his stomach as he felt Eddie start to move away.
He would forever be appalled by his lack of self-discipline in the next moment, but the thought of being left once again, after feeling so loved for the first time he could remember, shattered the last of his reserve.
Struggling against the blankets, he reached out and caught Eddie’s hand as he turned away.
“Please don’ go,” he managed in nearly a whisper.
Eddie’s heart broke twice over again.
“Hey, I’m not going anywhere, okay? I’m just going to grab the water, yeah?”
Buck hummed, sounding unconvinced, but dropped Eddie's hand. Maybe he believed him, maybe he was just too tired to resist anymore. Either way, Eddie was quick.
He returned in under a minute, with the glass of water refilled and a cold cloth. Buck flinched as Eddie laid it over his forehead, but soon he seemed to relax, looking as calm as he’d been all night. He blinked up at Eddie suddenly, a look on his face like he couldn’t believe he was still there.
Eyes glassy, he reached out again and gently tugged Eddie towards him.
“Stay?”
Eddie smiled.
“Of course, cariño.” Eddie toed his shoes off, slipping in next to him. Buck immediately turned over, pressing his face into Eddie's shoulder with a contented sigh. Eddie wrapped his arms around him and listened as his breathing evened out.
He couldn’t imagine how anyone could ever leave Buck. He was the most wonderful person Eddie had ever met, other than Christopher, of course. How someone who gave so much love to everyone and everything could be so deprived of it himself was a wonder and a horror that Eddie would never understand. He would do his best to make up for it though, however he could.