Chapter Text
Eddie has been trying to get used to this new normal—Christopher being in Texas, working on himself. He’s back in therapy and it’s fine, really, but something is missing. Frank doesn’t need to tell him what’s wrong, what he’s missing, because he knows already. He knows it all.
He tries not to be too self-satisfied at outsmarting his therapist and over-intellectualizing his entire psyche. He tries not to be too happy when Buck breaks up with Tommy less than two weeks after Christopher leaves. He doesn’t ask if it’s because of Buck spending more time with Eddie than with his own boyfriend.
He kind of already knows that the answer is yes.
Therapy helps sometimes, so Eddie keeps going, and he puts his head down at work and laughs at Gerrard in private when he, Buck, Hen, and Chim all go out for drinks or have dinner at one of their places. Buck has taken on the role of their inside man—a spy of sorts, if only for gossip, but mainly to make the 118 bearable for the non-white members of the A shift. He’s always been better at playing the pacifist.
Eddie, on the other hand? He’s lost count of the times he’s had to refrain from punching Gerrard on sight. He keeps going to the pickup games and when Tommy doesn’t show up again, he invites Chim. They play on opposite teams to get their frustration out in a healthy manner. See, therapy is doing him good!
He doesn’t join a fight club again, he doesn’t further endanger himself or anyone around him, and Buck doesn’t even freak out when he learns Chim is Eddie’s new basketball partner. Eddie is learning a lot more about himself, in and outside of therapy and Wilson-mandated team wine nights. Things are going okay and he and Buck are closer than ever.
Which should be weird, all things considered. Especially when it comes to their recent, almost conveniently-timed mutual sexuality revelations—well, Eddie’s always known, he’s just pushed it down for just as long. But nothing is weird between them. They understand each other better than they ever have, with time and patience and a safe space to share everything, and Eddie is hesitant to admit it, but…
He knows that Buck knows it too. He doesn’t want to admit it, but it’s because Eddie can’t hide behind Christopher anymore. He can’t hide behind how much Buck means to Chris when he really means that Buck means a lot to him, or that Buck’s continued presence in his life wasn’t exclusive to Christopher being there.
Neither of them can hide the positive things that have come from their friendship with Christopher absent. They don’t acknowledge it, either, because if Eddie looked at it just a little closer, he’d end up admitting a whole lot more than gratitude towards Buck about the whole situation.
It’s only a matter of time of collecting statements and violations from the entire firehouse—not just the A shift—before their full file gets put down on HR’s desk with enough evidence to make sure Gerrard never works for the LAFD again. Eddie waits until he’s in the front seat of his own truck, Buck in the driver’s seat, to cheer at their success.
Bobby took time off to heal, both physically and emotionally, and a few weeks after he and Athena settled into a new place, he returned to the 118 as the station Captain. Between work feeling a little more like home and family again, his increased closeness with Buck, and Frank’s insistence on implementing EMDR into their sessions, Eddie’s life has graduated from “okay” to “good”.
Christopher is the only thing missing. Eddie is becoming impatient with the lack of contact on his parents’ part since school in LA is supposed to start in two weeks. There is no way in hell that Eddie is going to sign anything that will let Chris stay in Texas for his last year of middle school. That is a fight he’s willing to have with anyone.
He says as much to Hen when she asks him in the station kitchen, having just told him and Chimney how excited Denny and Mara are to be going to the same school.
She opens her mouth to say something and closes it just as quickly.
Eddie leans over the counter to offer her a cup of coffee. “What? You don’t think I should—?”
“No, I agree with you.” She shakes her head. “I think you should put your foot down with your parents. They’ve overstepped enough.”
Chim, next to her and uncharacteristically quiet so far, turns to her and raises an eyebrow.
“Come on, we’ve all been thinking it,” she chastises him and turns to Eddie again. “You’ve mentioned that you wished they had offered support and let you take the lead instead of just whisking Chris away, right?”
Eddie nods and notes that Bobby is also silent, sorting through files and papers on the kitchen table, occasionally looking up to pay attention to the team a few feet away. Their shift has been pretty steady; not too busy or too quiet.
“I think it’s time they back off, that’s all,” Hen continues. “You’re Christopher’s father, you know best what’s best for him. You’ve proved that with how much you’ve done these past few months.”
“What if he refuses to come back?” Eddie chews on his lip. “I can set boundaries with my parents, but I don’t want to give him an ultimatum.”
“It’s not an ultimatum,” Chimney interjects. “It’s a boundary with him just like it is with your parents. If he’s not ready…” He shrugs. “Give him choices in other ways. Tell him that he has plenty of family here to stay with temporarily if he’s not ready to talk to you, but that it’s a non-negotiable for him to be in California for the school year.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“Eddie…” Hen sighs and looks up from her coffee. “He’s old enough to see the other side of this, both yours and what your parents have a tendency to do. Being back here will give you an opportunity to explain that to him and start to mend things. It doesn’t have to be perfect at first.”
Eddie thinks on her words for a moment and then shifts against the counter to call over to the table. “What about you, Bobby? What’s your advice?”
His captain looks up from his work and clicks his pen closed. “What does Buck think?”
Before he’s even finished speaking, Eddie hears familiar footsteps coming up the stairs. He doesn’t have time to analyze that Bobby’s immediate response was to ask for the opinion of Buck. Which, of course, Eddie understands, because to him, Buck is Christopher’s other parent, but he didn’t think Bobby thought of it that way. At least not enough to make a blatant stance on it in front of Hen and Chim.
“What do I think about what?” Buck asks, long legs bringing him across the loft, around Bobby’s chair, and beside Eddie in record time.
“Talking with my parents about, uh, Chris coming home for the school year,” Eddie answers. They’ve already talked about this at length.
“Ah.” Buck nods and picks up Eddie’s coffee mug to steal a sip. “Well, you already know this, obviously,” he pauses to gesture to Eddie with the mug he returns, “but I think they have to start somewhere. Even if Chris comes back with an attitude, at least he’ll be back. If he’s still pissed at you, he has me.”
Buck shrugs as he finishes, glancing between Hen, Chim, and Bobby, before going to the cabinet and pulling out those gross kale chips Eddie can’t stand.
Eddie doesn’t let his mouth fall open in shock, though he’s dangerously close to proposing to Buck or something equally stupid and ridiculous, and gleefully, he watches Hen and Chim be unable to contain their surprise. Their eyebrows raise, lips parting to speak, and their eyes light up in tandem with a shared glance.
It’s the look they get when they’re about to pounce.
Eddie has never been more thankful for the bell ringing. He’s first in the truck. Buck slides in across from him with a mouthful of chips and he has to shake his head with what he knows is a stupidly lovesick smile on his face.
Hen and Chim don’t get the chance to tease Buck or Eddie on their next call that takes them south of the city, and they’re further spared when the team is climbing back into the truck.
“118, this is Dispatch. Have you left the scene?” Linda’s tense voice crackles over their radios.
Bobby puts on his headset to answer her, and Eddie hopes she isn’t giving them a repeat of last week’s 4.4 earthquake in Highland Park and Pasadena to respond to. Bobby is quiet for a few moments before he’s directing Fergusson, in the driver’s seat, in the opposite direction of their route back to the station. Further south.
“SoCal Edison hasn’t shut off the power in Portuguese Bend yet,” Bobby starts to explain, looking over his shoulder.
“In Rancho Palos Verde?” Buck raises his voice to be heard over the sirens now blaring above them.
“That’s the one,” Bobby answers. “Gas service shut offs and recommended evacuations began almost a month ago with the increased landslide risks. They were trying to keep the power on as long as they could.”
“But they’ve had record highs the past few weeks,” Hen says. “And with all the rain this year, shifting land, the risk of equipment…”
“Let me guess.” Chim frowns. “Power line fell and started a fire.”
“One of the smaller local stations is responding to that,” Bobby corrects. “We’re the closest backup—less than five miles out—to a landslide. Some experienced hikers were far enough away from what they thought were the risky areas, but…”
He gives the firefighters a moment before he’s launching into more detail.
“From the landmarks they saw before getting trapped, Dispatch thinks they’re in Altamira Canyon, near the coast. It’s mostly steep bluffs, and with how hot and dry it’s been, it’ll be difficult to get to them without endangering any of us.”
“Slow and steady wins the race,” Eddie thinks aloud. Buck eyes him warily.
It’s a rescue that will unnerve all of them, especially since the close call they had with that mom and her kids in the car that went over the cliff, and how the truck almost went down too.
When they arrive first on the scene, they get the truck as close as possible to the hikers—it’s not easy with so much of the road being blocked or entire trees blocking some part of it. Bobby yells out directions and everyone falls into a good pace.
They can’t set up a line to rappel down to the hikers since the bluffs are so unstable. It’s slow going to make sure Buck and Eddie—because of course it’s them, Hen remarks with a laugh that doesn’t make her eyes sparkle like they usually do—manage not to dislodge anything on their way down. Their surroundings remind Eddie of the call that Buck still insists was made by a ghost.
They’ve gotten close enough to hear the hikers shouting for help at a distance, but not close enough to yell back, when Bobby is telling them to stop over the radio.
Eddie shares a glance with Buck before he’s reaching for the radio. “Cap? You’re sure? I think we still have a path.”
Buck nudges his shoulder and tilts his chin in the direction of their descent. “Look.”
Eddie follows his gaze and his heart sinks. There’s no way they’ll make it around the shifting sand and rocks—moving even now—to the overlook the hikers are trapped inside of.
“Scratch that,” Eddie says over the radio.
“I’ve got a resident up here who lives just down the coast and was getting ready to evacuate when the road got cut off,” Bobby’s voice crackles back. “Checked it out and the trail going from their yard down to the ocean is stable enough to travel on.”
“You want us to get the hikers from below?” Buck radios next. “It’ll take a lot longer.”
“It’s the best way to keep everyone alive and well by the end of this,” Bobby returns. “One of the hikers is a med student and Dispatch seems confident they’re relatively uninjured. It’s just some rubble blocking them in.”
“Heading up,” Buck answers. He goes first and maintains the same path they came down.
“They could suffocate in there,” Eddie calls up to him. “There has to be loads of dust and debris trapped in there with them. We don’t know how airtight the rocks have made that bubble.”
Buck stops at that, reaching for his radio again. “Cap, is Dispatch still connected to them?”
“Yes, but they could get cut off any minute. Cell phone battery is dying.”
“Let me talk to them.” Buck waits for Linda’s voice to tell him he’s connected before he clicks his radio again. He gets their names and attention before he’s instructing them to preserve their energy. “Don’t yell or shout until you hear us calling for you. We’ve got a pretty good idea of where you are.”
Their shaky voices confirm and Eddie closes his eyes for a second. Both of them are young, early twenties, if he had to guess.
“Stay put and stay calm, we’re coming to get you.” Buck releases his radio and begins to climb back up.
They’re still cautious in their ascent, but it’s easier since they’ve used those rocks and grips as footholds before and know what’s stable. Once they’re on solid ground again, Bobby and the resident lead them to the trail to go down—this route allows Chim and Hen to follow them at a distance. If the hikers are injured, or anything goes wrong in extracting them, they’ll be on the beach to take the hikers from Eddie and Buck.
The four of them break through the trees of the trail to end up on the clear beach. A cool breeze hits Eddie’s face, around where his goggles and helmet are protecting him from the sun and wayward dirt and fog, but it’s a welcome feeling. He can’t relish in it.
“Let me go first,” he tells Buck.
Buck steps aside on the narrow path they’ve started to scout to head up to the small canyon, complete with a dramatic gesture of his arms. “Of course, my liege.”
Eddie pretends to reach behind him and swat Buck, but he remains mostly upright to maintain his balance. “Shut up.”
Buck just laughs and the sound echoes around them. It’s easier to climb this way—stabler, too, and whenever they stop or don’t need their arms to support their climb, one of them offers an update over the radio. Chim and Hen keep them in their sights from the beach, waiting with their bags and two backboards, just in case.
“Dispatch just got disconnected,” Bobby updates them as they’re approaching the overgrowth just south of the canyon.
It’s deathly still when he’s finished talking. There’s noise in the distance above them, from the road, but it’s a paranoid kind of stillness that surrounds Buck and Eddie. Wind whistles past their ears and up the cliffs on either side of them.
They break through the bushes and enter the canyon, starting to slip down sand dunes. Eddie steadies himself first and grabs Buck’s arm to stop him from falling forward.
“At least it’s not a ghost this time,” Buck pants and flashes a grin over to Eddie.
“Not again with the ghost,” Eddie complains. “These guys are very much alive, Buck.”
It’s not far to the mess of dislodged boulders and debris that’s made its way into the canyon. They both head for the largest one—it’s most likely to have created a pocket inside where the hikers got trapped. Buck starts calling their names first and immediately gets a response.
Eddie is thankful for his thick gloves that protect his fingers from being torn up when he starts to tear apart the rubble trapping the hikers. It’s a race against time and another landslide, which could come at any moment and without any warning, to get them free and clear of the canyon. It’s deep enough that any subsequent movement and landslide would likely trap any debris inside instead of hurtling more towards the beach.
Their shouting gets louder the more Buck and Eddie work until finally the hikers are able to squeeze through the hole in the rubble, looking sweaty and flushed from the limited air supply and dust, but otherwise fine to walk. Buck goes first on the descent, the young woman behind him, then her boyfriend, and Eddie in the rear. They make it back up the sandy hill to breach the southern edge of the canyon when the ground starts to shift.
Eddie knows what an earthquake feels like, all kinds of them, and this isn’t that. Something fell above them and is unsettling everything that had stopped moving in the last hour.
Everyone freezes and Buck is first to shout at the hikers to go over the edge, pulling on the woman’s arm to have her duck through the brush and bushes on the other side. Eddie turns around to confirm what he’s hearing—the mess of boulders that the hikers just emerged from is hurtling towards them and down the hill, with far too much momentum to stop when it reaches the end of the canyon.
“Buck!” Eddie shouts and turns back, rushing over the edge when the young man is clear. “Sideways, sideways!”
It’s all he manages to get out before he’s shoving the hikers onto a trail that will clear them of the landslide’s path and something hits him in the back of the head hard enough to make him stumble, vision swimming.
It only lasts for a few seconds before he blacks out entirely.
Eddie wakes up with a pounding headache.
For a delirious moment, he wonders why his alarm isn’t going off, and then he smells something. The ocean.
Why can he smell the ocean?
He opens his eyes and it’s pitch black—he blinks until his pupils have expanded enough to make out his surroundings. He’s laying in the dirt, trapped in a tiny space, and he can only move his upper body. Something is pinning him from the waist down.
Shit.
“Buck?” Eddie calls. He cuts himself short with a cough and he’s forced to cover his mouth. “Buck!” he says, louder this time, opening his eyes again.
Pain shoots up and down his spine when Eddie turns his head. It’s almost worse than the sight of Buck next to him, their positions matching exactly, except Buck isn’t awake. Eddie reaches over—they’re close enough for him to shove at Buck’s arm.
“Buck, wake up. You gotta wake up. You can’t be sleeping right now, not now.” Eddie jostles him until Buck is grumbling under his breath.
“I’m alive, jeez. Stop that. It hurts.”
“Are you hurt?” Eddie asks dumbly. Of course he’s hurt. They’re both pinned down by rocks that weigh hundreds of pounds, and if they fell any length down the cliff, they’d have broken bones and worse from the impact.
Eddie has seen enough situations like this one to know that the shock and pressure of being pinned down is keeping them alive. The second help arrives, it’s a race to keep someone alive from whatever injury is hidden beneath the…
Well, in their case, beneath these rocks.
“Yeah, but I can’t…” Buck takes his question seriously anyway. “Can’t tell what. Can’t see my legs. Can you?”
“No. Can’t see mine, either,” Eddie whispers.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Buck sighs heavily. “At least I can feel my legs.” He holds up his hands and brings them close to his face, inspecting whatever is there and deciding to take off his gloves.
Eddie can see the thick, dark sheen of blood covering his hands.
Buck winces as he drops the gloves to his side. “How bad do you think this is?”
“Hard to tell. I don’t think I’m cut anywhere and nothing feels broken.” Eddie keeps his voice low. “But if the pressure of all those rocks is taken off and—”
“No,” Buck says firmly. “Do not go there.”
“We both know what could happen.”
“But you don’t have to say it.” Buck sighs again and they fall into silence. “What about your radio? Mine’s in a thousand pieces.”
Eddie carefully reaches to where his radio is pinned to his shoulder, going slow enough to minimize the pain blooming in his arms. It’s in one piece. He pushes down on the button and he hears nothing but static.
“This is Firefighter Diaz,” he says anyway, “with Firefighter Buckley.”
He tries a few different channels and keeps calling for help but their pleas go unheard. They must have been buried deeper than the hikers were. In order for their team to get them out, they’ll have to make sure the land is stable enough to climb again, which could be hours from now. Even if the 118 did find them soon, Eddie has no idea how long it would take for them to pry him and Buck out of wherever they are, let alone get them both down to the beach and to safety.
He tilts his head to make eye contact with Buck again. In the dark, Buck’s blue eyes look brown like Eddie’s. Their expressions match, too. Eddie knows he’s figured out how dire this is.
He takes a deep breath and says, “They’re gonna have to get one of us out first. There won’t be enough time.”
“No.” Buck shakes his head. “No, they’ll get both of us.”
“We have no idea how unstable this is,” Eddie argues. “Half of it could fall on one of us while they’re getting the other one out. We need to decide—”
“Forget it, Eddie!” Buck snaps. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“I don’t want to leave you, either, but…”
“I can’t,” Buck whispers.
“What?”
“I mean I literally can’t leave you. There’s this—” Buck groans in pain. “I can’t see it. Just feel something from the ground stuck deep in my side.”
“Are you putting pressure on it?” Eddie starts scrambling in the dirt beside him, trying to feel if he can wiggle out of his turnouts to hand to Buck to stop the bleeding. There’s a boulder pressed against his hip that he can’t move away from.
“Of course I’m putting pressure on it.” Buck puts out an arm to stop Eddie’s movement. “But I have no idea how long it will take to get me out of here. So if anyone is going first, it’s you.”
Eddie’s neck goes hot. “What happened to not making that choice?”
“Fuck off, okay? I’m not thinking clearly.”
Eddie has no idea why he wants to argue with Buck about this. But he does. He can’t just leave him here. “I’m not leaving you either.”
“Well now who’s contradicting himself?” Buck tries to joke.
Then they’re quiet again. Something settles around them with a tiny shuffle of rock against rock.
“I’d never be able to look Maddie or Chim in the eye again if I went first,” Eddie breaks the silence.
“They’ve both survived losing a brother.” Buck coughs and then covers his mouth with the hand that isn’t on his side to block the dust. “They can do it again.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“What about Hen?” Buck retorts and doesn’t deny it. “You think I’d be able to look her in the eye if I left you here?”
“And Bobby?” Eddie fires back. “You think Maddie and Chim could survive losing you, fine. Think what you want even if you’re wrong. But I know your head isn’t so far up your ass that you think that after everything else that’s happened this year, Bobby would make it through losing another one of his kids.”
Buck scowls. “That’s not fair.”
“Really? Because you have family, Buck, family that would grieve you harder than they’ve grieved anyone else, and you can’t sit here and pretend it would be better for me to be the first one out!”
“You wanna talk about family?” Buck rolls his eyes impossibly far back into his head. He gives Eddie a stare so virulent that Eddie worries he’ll burst into flames. “If you made me get out first and died in here, you’d be leaving behind your child.”
“He’d have you!”
“Like that would matter to a grieving teenager! I would know!”
“Stop arguing with me, Buck!” Eddie shouts. He hasn’t raised his voice yet to preserve his energy.
Buck snaps his mouth shut.
“My will—”
“No, no,” Buck cuts him off, shaking his head. “You can’t bring that up.”
“The hell I can’t!” Eddie yells again. He still remembers the night he told Chris about it, a few days after Buck got out of the hospital from his coma. It hadn’t been planned—Chris overheard Buck asking Eddie if he had told him yet when he was supposed to be in bed, and it didn’t leave Eddie much room to deny it. “I made that choice for a reason, to make sure the child I’ve spent thirteen years loving would be taken care of by someone who loves him just as much.”
“Eddie, you know I could never…”
“Replace me? That’s not what this is about.” Eddie scoffs. “You don’t just become his guardian. You get the house, assets; everything.” In the wake of his yelling and the stillness of settled rubble around them, his voice seems like a whisper. “Everything except the fund Shannon set up for Chris to get when he’s eighteen.”
“Okay?” Buck shoots back. There’s a bite to his tone Eddie didn’t expect. “You get everything of mine, too. That’s not something you can use to one-up me.”
“I’m not trying to one-up you, I’m trying to save your life!” Eddie returns. He doesn’t let the shock of that reveal slow him down.
“By sacrificing yours?”
“Yes, if that’s what it takes!” Eddie knows he’s close to shouting again. “What, you could wish it was you when I got shot, but I can’t?”
“That’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Because you think you don’t deserve to be the survivor. Because you think people will blame you for being the survivor.”
“For this, I would blame myself,” Buck chokes out.
“You’re telling me you’d rather sacrifice yourself and save me because you think Christopher would make that choice? You think he’d want me to live if it meant he lost you?” Eddie is dangerously close to admitting the truth behind how Chris sees Buck. “I can see it now, him being pissed at me in Texas when he hears the news, and—” Eddie almost can’t say it. Almost. “He’d never forgive me for letting you die.”
“Stop it,” Buck snaps. “You didn’t see him when you got shot, and I-I told him about it. I kinda lost it when I heard you got out of surgery.” He’s crying now, with a sheen to his cheeks from the tears that Eddie can barely make out. “And he…God, Eddie, he wasn’t even at double digits and he hugged me while I cried in relief that you were gonna be okay. You think he couldn’t handle losing me?”
Eddie can’t let Buck distract him. “That’s the point. He’d strong arm it like everything else until he snaps.”
He doesn’t have to explain how Christopher handled the tsunami, Shannon’s death, his brush with death, because Buck saw it up close and personal.
“Something he learned from you,” Buck says.
Eddie blinks in the darkness.
“Come on, Eddie, I—”
“You didn’t see him when you were in the coma,” Eddie interrupts. He can play Buck’s game. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He had to see you. He couldn’t let himself believe any possibility other than you getting better.”
“So why make him have to sit through it with you?” Buck cries. “When you won’t ever get better, you won’t ever get out of this? You’d let him lose his dad when he’s already lost Shannon?”
“You’re his dad!” Eddie blurts out. His throat is tightening with tears about to flow. “I’m his father, and I always will be, but you, Buck, you’re…” He blinks to clear his vision. “You are his dad.” Tears stream down his face. “Either way this goes, our son is losing a dad.”
Buck doesn’t say anything.
It’s starting to hurt Eddie’s neck to look at him, but he can’t look away, not when Buck’s mouth falls open in shock and the blood on his eyebrow is falling in time with a tear on his cheek. Eddie watches until the blood runs into the tear.
“I counted the seconds,” Eddie whispers. He doesn’t have to explain what he means. He doesn’t have to tell Buck that from the moment he saw Buck hanging there, Eddie counted every second until Chimney could start CPR.
Past Eddie unintentionally revealing the exact count at that night of poker, Buck hasn’t asked him about it.
“And I had your blood in my mouth.” Buck’s voice is low and steady like Eddie’s never heard before. “On my hands. All over my shirt, while you asked if I was hurt.” His face twists with grief while he stares at Eddie. “You say you don’t remember it. But I do, I remember every fucking second, Eddie.” He’s growing less calm with every word. “It was the worst day of my life. And I’ve had a lot of bad days.”
“I remember more than I told you I did.”
The truth is slowly slipping out of Eddie and he can’t control it. He blames the loss of blood, or a concussion, or literally anything else that’s happening to his body, because it’s dark and he can’t see or move and check himself or Buck.
He doesn’t let Buck ask him what he’s talking about. “Did you realize anything when you were in the coma, dreaming?”
“That the family I had was better than the family I thought I wanted,” Buck answers without questioning why Eddie is redirecting them.
Eddie doesn’t have his usual urge to throw a punch at Margaret and Phillip Buckley, not when all he can think about is Buck dying before he knows this. “Anything else?”
Buck opens his mouth to say something and then hesitates. “You realized something when you got shot.” It’s supposed to be a question. It isn’t.
“Yeah, I…” Eddie wants to say it. Dios mio, does he want to tell Buck everything, give him his entire heart in a way he can’t misconstrue anything ever again.
Buck’s eyes are shining in the darkness and he reaches for Eddie’s hand. His palm is colder than it should be. He’s waiting, lips parted, for whatever Eddie says next.
And then his eyelashes are fluttering and the breath he’s taking catches. He squeezes Eddie’s hand. “Eddie, I can’t—I’m sorry—”
“No, no, Buck, come on!” Eddie pleads. “Please hang on. You gotta hang on. You can’t go, not like this.”
“Shut up,” Buck mutters.
Eddie has no choice but to obey.
Buck’s trying to keep his eyes open. “Tell Chris I love him, and—” he cuts himself off with a cough and a wince.
“I will.”
“And everything’s gonna be okay in time. Tell everyone that. They’re all gonna be okay.”
“Buck, please,” Eddie sobs. “I can’t watch you go, too.”
Buck’s eyes snap back open, and for one miraculous second, Eddie thinks he’ll be able to stay conscious. He can see the implication dawn in Buck’s eyes—even in the dark, even with the space between them, even with the threat of death knocking, ready to swipe them both.
Buck coughs and heaves, trying to catch his breath.
“No, Evan, please.” Eddie chokes on his own tears. “Hang on.”
Buck’s eyes close and he gasps in a breath. “I love you, Eddie. More than anything.”
Eddie’s heart leaps to his chest and then Buck stops moving—his hand loosens in Eddie’s grip, his eyes are still, and his chest, his lungs, they’re—
“No!” Eddie screams. “No, no, no, you can’t leave me! Buck! Buck!”
Eddie screams until his throat is dry and it cracks around his words. His tears are never ending and he watches. He watches and waits.
Buck doesn’t move.
“You need to stay alive,” Eddie whines. “I don’t want you to go! I can’t let you die! You have to-to wake up, Buck, please, please. I don’t want everything of yours, I want you to live, please, just stay—stay alive.”
He hears shouting from above them, something about their names and coming to rescue them, and he doesn’t care, he just keeps crying. He shifts his hand in Buck’s grip to hold two fingers to his wrist, right where he should be able to—
“No, no, no,” Eddie screams. “No, you can’t go! You can’t die again, not like this, please, Evan, come back to me.”
There’s a bright, shining light, from all different directions, and all the helmets of all the firefighters and paramedics prying them free. Eddie can see Buck’s silent face but he can’t feel Buck’s pulse.
“Wake up,” he begs. “Please, Evan. Please.”
“Eddie, Eddie, I’ve got him.” Chim is the first voice Eddie can recognize among the shouting.
Eddie sobs in relief. “His pulse,” is all he can manage.
“I’ve got him,” Chimney repeats, and Eddie believes him. He’d do the same for Maddie if her and Chim were here, dying together. He’d do anything to save Maddie.
Someone takes Buck’s hand away while the others move rocks off of them both.
“No!” Eddie screams. “No, I can’t lose him!”
“Hen and Chim have him.” It’s Bobby talking to him now, blocking his view of Buck’s body. “We’ve gotta save you too.”
Eddie sobs and screws his eyes shut. He’s in pain everywhere, and the pounding of his head is made worse with the sun pointing directly in his eyes.
“Need another backboard over here!” Bobby shouts. “Come on, let’s go!”
While steady hands are strapping his limbs to the board that will carry him out of here, an oxygen mask goes over Eddie’s face.
He hears Chimney from a few feet away, over the chaos around him, say something before he blacks out.
“I’ve got a pulse!”