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Buck doesn’t realise what’s happening until it’s too late. Until he’s turning, a smile on his lips and a joke on the tip of his tongue, and he sees that the space that should be occupied by Eddie, the space that usually is occupied by Eddie, is empty.
There’s cold dread in his heart when he looks towards the building they have just been ordered to evacuate, and still doesn’t see Eddie. His legs are moving before his brain catches up and he’s running, but he doesn’t make it a couple of steps before there’s a hand on his shoulder.
“The building has been declared unsafe, Buck” Bobby tells him, but Buck is barely hearing him.
“Eddie is still in there” he responds, like that explains everything. To him, it does.
Bobby doesn’t get a chance to answer him, tho, because there’s a rumbling sound coming from the building, and before Buck knows it, a whole section of it - the section where he was only a couple of minutes before, the section where Eddie still is - collapses.
“Firefighter Diaz” Bobby’s voice and the sound of Eddie’s name cut through the rushing sound in Buck’s ears “firefighter Diaz, what’s your status? Eddie, do you copy?”
The silence on the other side of the radio stretches for what feels like hours. Buck is starting to run again, shrugging off Bobby’s hand, when he hears a familiar ringtone. His pulls his phone from the inside pocket of his turnout coat, and he stares at the name on the screen. His hands are shaking, and it takes him a couple of tries, but he finally answers.
“Eddie?”
“Buck?”
The relief he feels at the sound of Eddie’s voice is enough to knock the breath out of him.
“Eddie, are you okay? Hang on, we’re coming to get you out, okay?” Buck is starting to move towards the building again, but this time, both Bobby and Chimney are moving to stand in his way.
“What are you doing?” Buck asks “He’s- it’s Eddie, cap. He’s alive, we have to get him out!”
“The building is not secured, Buck. It could come down any second” Bobby tells him, and his eyes are sad in a way Buck can’t stand.
“I don’t care about the building” Buck says, because he really, really doesn’t “I can get to him. I can be in and out, and I can-”
“You can’t, Buck.” Eddie’s voice interrupts his rant, and Buck feels a lump in his throat.
“I’m not leaving you inside a collapsed building, Eddie” he manages to say.
“I’m- sorry, Buck. You don’t deserve this.” Eddie’s voice is quiet, but steady. He sounds like he’s a bit breathless, but he doesn’t sound like he’s dying. Which means, Buck can still get to him. He can still get him out.
“Deserve- what? Eddie, what are you talking about? You just need to tell me where you are. I’m coming to get you.”
“Buck, no- I- Buck, listen to me.” Eddie says, a bit more forceful, but Buck’s brain barely registers the words, because he’s focusing on the building, on looking for entry points, on how to secure it enough so that it doesn’t collapse on his head when he gets inside. Because he’s getting inside.
“Eddie, look, I think I found a way to-“ he begins, and he starts walking- running again, managing to slip Bobby’s hold, but he only makes it halfway towards the building before two set of hands are on him and almost tackling him to the ground. He starts struggling against Chimney and Bobby, his brain fully on autopilot as the only thing on his mind is Eddie, Eddie, Eddie when he hears a “Buck” coming from the speaker of his phone, and his attention is snapped back to it.
“Eddie, please-” he starts pleading, because a thought is making its way through his brain, and he knows that once he acknowledges it, it will be over.
“I need you to promise me one thing.” Eddie says, and Buck stops struggling. Whatever Bobby and Chimney see on his face, they must know he will not try to run into the building again, because they let him go and back away.
Buck is kneeling on the ground, the phone cradled in his hands, his eyes closed.
He knows what Eddie is about to ask him. He doesn’t want to hear it.
“Eddie, please. No.” His voice is barely a whisper, but he knows Eddie will hear it. He’s always listening.
“Evan.” Eddie calls, and the way his name sounds on Eddie’s lips is almost reverent. Buck feels the weight it holds, so real it’s like something has been placed on his shoulders.
“Eddie, I- I can’t-”
“But you will, won’t you?” And for just a moment, Buck really hates him. He hates how well Eddie knows him, he hates being seen and listened to and looked after.
He hates letting Eddie Diaz get under his skin and make a home for himself there, because there is nothing else he can say to him, except “Of course I will.”
There is a moment of silence on the other side of the phone, and for a second, panic fills Buck’s chest. But then he hears a sigh, and Eddie’s voice is stronger when he says “I need to hear you say it.”
Buck hates him a bit more. He hates him, and the hate is as real as the love he has felt for months, and both are filling his chest to the point he’s struggling to breathe. He hates him, but it’s Eddie, and he’s the love of his life. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for him.
“I will fight for Christopher every day of my life, Eddie. You know I will, you know I can’t- I will fight for him, and I will be there for him. He’s- it’s- you know. You know he’s like my own.” The words come out strangled, but there’s no uncertainty in his voice. Chris is the only reason he’s on the ground instead of inside the building. The thought makes his chest hurt.
“He is, Buck. He’s yours as much as he’s mine.”
If Buck wasn’t already on his knees, the trembling in Eddie’s voice would have brought him down.
“Eddie, please” he pleads “it doesn’t have to- I can try to-” he knows he sounds desperate. He is desperate.
“You can’t, Buck. You know you can’t. It’s okay.”
Buck almost starts laughing. It’s okay. No, he is pretty sure nothing will ever be okay again.
“No, Eddie, it’s- I can’t. I can’t do this without you.” And maybe Eddie will think about Chris, about how Buck thinks he can’t raise him alone- and sure, he doesn’t think he can, but actually Buck means all of it. The thought of a life without Eddie is creeping in on him, and it’s filling him with such undiluted dread, that Buck has to take a couple of - choked, strained - deep breaths, because he’s two seconds away from a panic attack, and he can’t afford it. Not when Eddie is still alive, still breathing, and still talking to him.
“You can, Buck, and you will. It will be okay.”
“‘preciate the effort, Eds, but I really think nothing will ever be okay again” he says, and he’s trying to make a joke, but it isn’t really a joke if you mean it, is it?
Eddie huffs on the other side of the phone, and takes what sound like two deep breaths.
“Buck” he says, and Buck thinks he has never heard his name said with so much fondness and affection. It makes him want to carve his heart out. He is about to ask Eddie to say his name again, so he can brand the sound in his brain, when he continues.
“There is something else I need to say, and I am so, so sorry for not saying it before. But I can’t- this can’t happen without me saying it. I need you to know. I need you to know why I did it, I need you to know why- I need to know why you. And I didn’t even understand it myself until a couple of months ago, but it has always been you, Buck. I gave Christopher to you because there is no one else I would trust with my son more than you, there is no one else I would trust with my- heart, more than you. And it’s crazy that it took me so long to say it, and I’m sorry that I’m telling you this now, especially because I know- I know you don’t feel the same, and Buck, it’s okay. I just needed you to know, because I never want you to feel like it was a decision I made lightly. And I need you to live for me- for this, for Chris. I needed you to know, that I gave my heart to you, and I knew you were going to take care of it. And it’s okay if you don’t love me like that, because I have loved you for years now, and the two months I have spent knowing I love you- they were the best two months of my life.”
For a couple of seconds, the words barely register in Buck’s brain. I love you. It has always been you. I gave my heart to you and I knew you were going to take care of it. Then, they hit him so hard he almost keels over, and he has to steady himself with a hand on the asphalt. His heart is thundering in his chest, and he’s feeling so much it physically hurts. Eddie loves him. Eddie loves him, and he has waited until it’s too late to say it.
“I- you-” I love you too, is what Buck wants to say, because he might suffocate if he doesn’t, but what comes out of his mouth is a “I hate you. I hate you so much. How dare you- how dare you. I’m never- I didn’t- Eddie” he gasps, and suddenly he’s crying “for fuck’s sake. How could I not feel the same? How could I not- Eddie, you are it for me. I can’t believe you are telling me when you’re about to- fuck you, Eddie. Fuck you. I love you. I love you so- I have never loved anyone like this, Eddie, and I hate you so much, because now, I’m never going to love again.”
The silence on the other end of the line stretches for so long that Buck has to check that the call is still connected. It is, and if he listens very closely, he can still hear Eddie breathing. Except, his breathing is laboured now, and when he lets out a “Buck-” the sound is strangled.
“I hate you.” Buck repeats, because he feels like Eddie needs to know. “I- I love you, Eds, and I hate you so much right now.”
“You will be okay, Buck. I know you will” Eddie says, and the tilt of his voice is fond, and sad, and Buck really can’t stand it.
“Don’t lie to me, Eds” Buck says, and he isn’t crying anymore, but the words come out quiet anyway.
“I would never.” Eddie’s voice is stable, and Buck wants to believe him so desperately, he almost does.
“Eddie-”
“I know, Buck. Me too.”
“I can’t-” Buck starts saying, but this time, the call cuts off abruptly. He stares at the phone for what feels like an eternity, before he’s shaken out of his stupor by a loud crash coming from in front of him.
The building collapses onto itself.
*
Eddie is looking at the phone, dead in his hands.
There are worse ways to go, he thinks. He had the time to leave a voicemail for Chris. He managed to tell Buck he loved him, and even heard him say it back. He doesn’t let himself dwell too much on the what ifs and the could have beens; he will go insane if he does, and he doesn’t want his last moments to be spent in a panic.
He hears a snap, sees rubble fall in front of him, and a second later, he’s not seeing anything anymore.
*
Someone is screaming, and it sounds like a wounded animal.
It takes Buck a couple of seconds to realise that he’s the one screaming, and that he’s on the ground, but a couple of hundred meters from where he was talking to Eddie on the phone. Bobby, Chim, and Ravi are with him- they are holding him down, actually, and he’s screaming. His throat hurts, and he’s shaking, and he’s pretty sure he’s crying, too, but the physical pain is nothing compared to what he’s feeling in his chest.
It feels like someone has carved out his heart and replaced it with thorns.
Breathing hurts, and every heartbeat feels like torture, and Buck distantly wonders how he’s supposed to go on with his life if this is how he will feel for the rest of it.
He doesn’t know how long he stays like that- on the ground, surrounded by his team, crying his eyes out. At some point, hands drag him up, and he’s brought to sit by the ambulance. Hen checks him out, but he’s fine, he is safe, he is alive, and Eddie-
He’s still sitting in the back of the ambulance when he feels a wave of nausea, and he has to push Hen away with one hand before he empties the contents of his stomach on the asphalt. He feels panic rising in his chest again, but before he can say anything, Hen is pushing an oxygen mask on his face.
“You need to breathe, Buck” she says, looking at him with sad eyes.
Buck knows he is not the only one who has- he is not the only one who loves Eddie. He knows the rest of the 118 is probably in shambles too. He thinks he should be doing something about it, but he can’t bring himself to. The more he’s sitting down, the more oxygen gets to his head, the less he’s feeling. A voice in his head suggests that it might be a trauma response, and it’s probably not a healthy coping mechanism, but the numbness that’s settling into him feels way more comforting that feeling thorns with every heartbeat. So he sits in the back of the ambulance, and he breathes, and he watches what’s left of the building. Another firehouse is coming on the scene- that’s protocol, he knows, when a firefighter is down. He heard Bobby say it.
“You need to go home, Buck.” Bobby’s voice is somewhere at his left, but he just shakes his head. He can’t leave- he can’t. He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but he knows he can’t move.
He distractedly hears Chim murmur something to Bobby and pass him a phone. A couple of seconds later, Maddie’s voice comes through the speaker.
“Evan? Buck- you need to get some rest. Go home” she says, her voice soft and slightly trembling.
“No” he responds, and his voice is hoarse and his throat hurts, but he doesn’t really care. Hen is passing him a water battle, but he ignores her.
“Bobby can drive you” Maddie continues, her voice still sweet and worries “and I’ll head there too, so you won’t have to be alone, okay?”
Before he can tell her no again, Bobby starts gently nudging him towards his car. “It’s been two hours, Buck. We need to leave the scene” and Buck thinks how has it been two hours?
He lets Bobby bring him to the captain’s truck. He finds that resisting requires energies he doesn’t currently have. He lets himself be guided to the passenger seat, and he doesn’t say a word when Bobby drives him to his loft.
“We’ll speak later, okay? I’ll call you tomorrow. Try and get some rest, kid.” Bobby tells him, a hand on his shoulder while he walks him to his door.
There is a memory of another hand on his shoulder and of a thumb pressing on his pulse point trying to make its way through the numbness in his body, but he pushes it firmly away. He knows that the moment he acknowledges it, the moment he thinks about- he is going to break into a million pieces, and he can’t.
When he enters his apartment, Maddie is there, and she has already started cooking him something. It’s late, a couple of minutes after midnight, but he hasn’t eaten for hours. Not that he’s hungry, anyway.
She hugs him as soon as she sees him, and he manages to hug her back.
From that, every one of his actions is mechanic: climbing the stairs to the bathroom, showering, getting dressed. Maddie seems to understand that it isn’t the moment to push, because she doesn’t try to talk to him. She just puts food in front of him, and watches as he tries and fails to eat it.
He knows he should feel thankful and cared for, especially when she announces that she’s going to stay the night. He tries to protest, but she doesn’t want to leave him alone, and Buck supposes he can’t really blame her. And he really knows he should feel grateful, but he can’t find it in himself to. He can’t find it in himself to feel much at all.
While he’s trying to avoid thinking about what happened, he can’t stop thinking about Chris. Chris, Chris, Chris. Chris, who is still in El Paso. Chris, who didn’t even get to say goodbye. Chris, to which Buck has to tell what happened, and how is he supposed to do that?
He knows he can’t call him right away- knows that he has to wait for some kind of confirmation, as he also knows - and the thought makes him sick all over again - that the search and rescue at the scene has already become a search and recovery.
Buck is not sure how he manages to climb the stairs to his bed, but at some point, he finds himself staring at the ceiling of his loft for what feel like hours.
He hears Maddie’s light breathing from his couch. She told him to try and get some sleep, but every time Buck tries to close his eyes, he hears Eddie’s voice. He hears I need you to promise me one thing. He hears The two months I have spent knowing I love you were the best two months of my life.
He is dangerously close to breaking, and he’s feeling the numbness slip away and the pain starting to creep back in, when he’s startled by the sound of his phone ringing. It’s an unknown number.
Buck stares at it for interminable seconds. He knows what it means, and he knows that all the feelings he was pushing down are about to come back up with a vengeance. He knows that the moment he lets himself feel them, they will drown him with the force of a tsunami. He also knows he will take those feelings and put them in a tightly sealed box, and he knows he will have to take the first flight out to El Paso the next day.
He knows he’s never going to love again.
He picks up the phone at the last possible second.
“Mr. Buckley?”
“It’s me.” His voice is rough, and he knows it’s because he hasn’t used it for hours.
“You are registered as the emergency contact of an Edmundo Diaz. He was at the building that collapsed earlier in the afternoon” the voice at the phone is careful and measured, but Buck is barely registering the words. He feels panic swelling in his chest, and the thorns are pushing against his ribcage.
“Yes, I- I know” he manages to say “We’re firefighters, I was there. Did you-“ breathe, Buck tells himself. He needs to ask; he cannot bring himself to say it. But he has to, and so he does. “Did you find the body?”
“No, Mr. Buckley. No, we- he’s alive. He’s being admitted to Presbyterian as we speak. He was found unconscious, but breathing. He’s in critical conditions. I can’t tell you much more for now-“ Buck stops listening. He’s moving on autopilot again: getting up from the bed, getting dressed, going down the stairs.
“I’ll be there as soon as possible” he remembers to say, before closing the call.
Maddie’s eyes are red-rimmed and tired when she looks up at him from the couch.
“They found him” he tells her, and he is already rushing to put on his shoes, grab his coat, his keys-
“Buck-” Maddie’s voice is uncertain, and it gives him pause. He turns to look at her.
“Alive. He’s- alive” for now, is what Buck doesn’t say. Because Buck is a firefighter, and it’s part of his job to know that even if they found him breathing, it doesn’t mean he will still be by the time they arrive at the hospital. He heard the words unconscious and critical condition, and he knows that a building collapsed on top of him, and so he can’t get his hopes up. He can’t think about the fact that he’s already breathing a bit easier, knowing that Eddie is still on this earth with him.
Maddie tells him something, but he doesn’t really register her words. His head is stuck on a loop of he’s alive, he’s alive, he’s alive, and critical condition, and the phone going silent a couple of second before the building collapsed. Unconscious, but breathing.
Buck doesn’t protest when Maddie moves to the driver’s seat, but after a couple of minutes on the road, all he wants to do is scream at her to go fast, faster, because if Eddie is hurt, if Eddie is alive but just barely, if Eddie only has a couple more instants before he’s gone, Buck cannot waste his time in a fucking car.
It feels like centuries before they arrive at the hospital, and Buck can’t sit still. He’s counting the seconds that separate them from the hospital. It’s the middle of the night and streets are deserted, and Maddie is actually going faster than she should, so it only takes them ten minutes to arrive.
Ten minutes, before Buck is almost launching himself out of the car, door hanging open, and running through the hospital doors so fast he almost trips on his own feet.
All he can think about is how Eddie is alive but not out of danger, and about how he could die himself if he doesn’t get the chance to see him before- before. He needs to see him. He needs to look at him, alive and breathing, and tell him that he doesn’t get to do this, that he doesn’t get to leave Buck, and that he’ll never forgive him if he does-
He goes towards the first desk he sees, and he has to suck in a breath and clear his throat before he can speak again, but in the end he manages to say “I’m here to see- Eddie Diaz. A firefighter, he was found in a building-“
“Mr. Buckley?”
Buck turns, and he sees a doctor with a chart in her hands coming towards him. He’s fully aware of the dread pumping in his chest, and for all he wants to see Eddie, he doesn’t really think he’s ready to hear it.
Because he thought Eddie was dead, and they told him he isn’t. And he has been trying very hard not to hope, he has been trying to function under the assumption that Eddie is in critical condition and that he might not make it to the end of the night. But despite all his efforts, he’s hoping now, and he’s terrified. He’s terrified that once this hope is taken away, he will not be able to hold himself together anymore. If Eddie is taken from him again, he thinks, he will break. And he really, really cannot break. He needs to take care of Christopher, and he can’t break.
Buck doesn’t think he can speak again, so he just nods.
“Your partner has been very lucky. He has a couple of broken ribs, and he took a blow to the head when the building collapsed, which caused a mild concussion” the doctor says “he’s dehydrated, too, since it took a while to get him out, but nothing that a night here won’t fix.”
Buck blinks a couple of times, the meaning of the words still lost to him. It takes him a couple of seconds to hear your partner, followed by very lucky. He blinks again, wondering if he has hallucinated the whole thing and the doctor is about to tell him Eddie won’t make it through the night.
“He is going to be okay, Mr. Buckley. He is resting now, but you can wait in his room.”
“He’s- he’s fine?” Buck says, and it feels like the sound is trapped somewhere around his throat.
The doctor smiles kindly, and nods. “You can see for yourself.”
She points him to a room, and it takes Buck a couple of tries before he can manage to put one foot in front of the other to move towards it. The room is just on the other side of the corridor, and by the time he arrives to it, he’s running.
He stops abruptly at the doorway, and the breath is knocked out of him when he catches sight of Eddie’s familiar face. He’s asleep, and he has some scraps and bruises, but he’s alive. Buck has never seen anything more beautiful than the rising of Eddie’s chest in is life.
He takes a careful step inside the room, and when he arrives at the side of the bed, he doesn’t even think before he gently puts his fingers on Eddie’s wrist.
It’s not the first time Buck has felt Eddie’s pulse. He doesn’t always do it consciously, he knows - sometimes it’s a hand on the shoulder, a light touch of the wrist - but at this point, he can say he knows Eddie’s heart as well as his own- hell, he probably knows Eddie better than he knows himself.
When Buck feels the light tap, tap of Eddie’s heartbeat against his fingers, a choked sound escapes him. All the tension he has been holding in his body for the past hours melts out, and he doesn’t realise he’s crying until a tear falls on the back of his hand. Because Eddie is alive. Eddie is alive, and he is going to be okay. Buck won’t have to tell his son that his father is dead, he won’t have to raise Christopher alone. He won’t have to live without Eddie. Eddie is alive. For the first time since he heard Eddie’s voice on the phone, he feels like he can take a deep breath. Like his heart is back where it belongs, and heartbeats don’t hurt anymore.
He doesn’t know how long he’s crying- he sits on the chair beside the bed at some point, his fingers still pressed to Eddie’s wrist and his face pressed to the sheets. He doesn’t even realise falling asleep, until he’s woken up by the feeling of a hand passing through his hair.
He raises his head just slightly- enough to meet Eddie’s eyes, but not so much that his hand drops away.
“Hey, Buck.” Eddie’s smile is soft, and his eyes are warm. He looks tired, with bags under his eyes and a couple of scratches on his face, but he looks unmistakably alive. He’s alive, and he’s smiling at Buck, and Buck has never seen anything so beautiful. He loves him so much, and he really needs to tell him-
“Fuck you, Eds” is what he blurts out instead. His voice is still rough, and he’s crying again, but he also feels like he can finally breathe. Because Eddie is alive. He’s alive, alive, and he looks beautiful, and he’s laughing.
“I love you too, Buck” he says, the hand that’s still in Buck’s hair moving to massage his scalp slowly “sorry you had to go through all that to hear it, tho.”
If Buck wasn’t feeling so grateful and in love, and if Eddie wasn’t recovery from a building collapse, he would probably punch him. Or kiss him. Now that he thinks about it, he might still do the latter.
“You can’t- ever do that again” he says, leaning into Eddie’s touch. He still thinks he’s hallucinating, because twenty-four hours ago, he thought Eddie was straight and that he would’ve had to settle with being nothing more than best friend forever, and he would have been perfectly content. Eight hours ago, he thought that Eddie was dead, and he was certain he was never going to feel joy, or love, ever again. And now- now he’s in a hospital room, his hand on Eddie’s pulse, his heart beating strong, and one of Eddie’s hands is stroking Buck’s hair. And he has just told him he loves him.
“I- I love you. You’re an idiot. Don’t ever do that again” he says again, for good measure.
“The loving you part, or the being trapped in a collapsed building part?”
“I really, really hate you sometimes.”
Eddie laughs again, but he stops abruptly and mumbles an “Ouch”, rubbing at his ribs.
“That’s what you get for waiting months to tell me you love me, and only do it because you think you’re about to die” Buck points out, but he also reaches to lightly prod at Eddie’s ribs. As the doctor said, a couple of them feel broken, but Buck knows that it’s nothing but luck that he got away this easily.
“I didn’t hear you confess your feelings before you thought I was about to die” Eddie retorts, rolling his eyes at Buck’s ministrations.
Buck sighs, and he moves to meet Eddie’s gaze. “I suppose we’re both idiots, then” he says.
Eddie smiles at him. Buck has risen from the chair to check on his ribs, which means that they’re now closer than they were before. He can see the mole under Eddie’s eye, and he really wants to kiss it. He’s just about to give in to the urge, when someone clears their throat behind them.
Buck startles and almost falls back into the chair, and Eddie lets out a choked laugh.
The doctor from before is standing in the doorway, and she’s looking at them with a glint of amusement in her eyes. “I thought you might want to know that the rest of your team has arrived. They were very- insistent about seeing you. I believe they are very worried.”
“Ah- of course, they can come. Thank you, doctor, and sorry for any kind of issue they may have caused” Eddie smiles. His cheeks are a delicious shade of red, and Buck can’t stop staring at him. He really, really needs to kiss him, but he settles for bringing his chair a bit closer to the bed, and taking Eddie’s hand in his. Eddie squeezes his fingers, and Buck moves them so that he can feel his heartbeat again.
A couple of seconds later, the 118 is in the room with them, in different states of disarray- it’s clear that most of them weren’t sleeping, and that they ran to the hospital as soon as they heard. Maddie is with them, and Buck is sure that she’s the one who called them. He meets her eyes across the room, and she smiles at him, broad and happy. He smiles back, and mouths a thank you. She just nods in return.
The hospital staff allows six visitors in a single room for about twenty minutes - “It’s four in the morning, and we have already made a big exception by letting you in in the first place” -, but there is nothing that can convince Buck to leave Eddie’s side.
“You should go get some sleep” Eddie tells him for the fourth time. They are alone in the room, and Buck can see that Eddie is exhausted.
“I can get some sleep right here” Buck answers, and to make his point, he reclines the chair and fixes the blanket a nurse kindly brought for him. “If you think I’m ever letting you out of my sight again, you’re sorely mistaken. Now, you get some sleep.”
“You can’t be comfortable” Eddie mumbles, but Buck can see that his eyes are closing. He’s still holding his hand, and Buck is drawing circles on the inside of his wrist.
“There’s no place I’d rather be. Sleep, Eds. I’m not going anywhere.”
*
Eddie is cleared to go home the day after.
Chris calls them the next morning, freaking out about a “Very weird, very worrying” voicemail he received from Eddie. They decide to spare him the details for now, and just reassure him that Eddie is fine.
“I’m coming home anyway” Chris tells them “if something had happened to dad- I’m coming home.”
And really, Buck shouldn’t be this happy, considering that it took a near death experience to get him to come home, but he’ll take his victories when he can get them. Looking at the radiant smile on Eddie’s face, he knows that he’s thinking the same.
Buck brings Eddie home - to the Diaz house, which to him, will always feel more like home than any other place on earth - and he barely manages a step through the door before Eddie is pushing him against the wall and kissing him.
Buck lets a surprised sound through his lips, but it doesn’t take him long to kiss Eddie back. His hands raise to Eddie’s hips, still careful of his bruises, and he sighs on Eddie’s lips when he feels him deepen the kiss.
Eddie’s hands are gripping the short hair at the base of his neck, and the kiss is sweet and exhilarating, and Buck wonders, not for the first time in the past twenty four hours, if he’s hallucinating. But Eddie feels real under his hands, and the sound he makes when Buck’s hands touch bare skin under his shirt is very real, and way hotter than it should be.
In the end, it’s Buck that (reluctantly) pulls back. “There are so many things I want to do to you, and even more I want you to do to me” he tells Eddie, and he enjoys the shiver that passes through his body “but not when you’re convalescing from two broken ribs and a concussion. On the couch, now.”
“You cannot say something like that and expect me to just- stop” Eddie whispers on his lips, and Buck really needs to appeal to all of his self-control not to pick Eddie up and carry him to his bedroom. But Eddie just had a building collapse on top of him, and that would definitively hurt his recovery.
Buck plants a kiss on Eddie’s lips, before gently manoeuvring him away from the door and towards the couch. “You have waited years to kiss me, Diaz. You can wait some more.”
“I would argue that exactly because I have waited years, I don’t want to waste a second more. Especially not after-” Eddie takes a deep breath as he lowers himself on the couch with Buck’s help “I really thought that was it for me, Buck. I really thought I was about to get crashed, and all I could think about was- how I didn’t get a chance to make things right with Chris, and how I never got to be with you. To tell you I love you, and to kiss you.”
Buck sits next to him, and he can’t help but to move his hand so that it runs through Eddie’s hair. “I hated you so much for dying on me” he murmurs, resting his forehead against Eddie’s. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me until it was too late. I can’t believe you didn’t know how hopelessly in love with you I was.”
Eddie lets out a huffed laugh. “You were sitting on this exact couch, not more than two months ago, freshly dumped. Excuse me for assuming you weren’t exactly ready for me to pour my heart out to you.”
Buck shakes his head and starts to protest, when- “Wait- you said. You said that you had known you were in love with me for- two months” he says, recalling Eddie’s words the night before. “Do you mean…?”
“I- yeah, the night you came here after you broke up with Tommy. You know how I told you I was trying to- find joy? I realised that sitting there with you in silence, drinking a beer- that was joy. Didn’t take much after that to understand why that was.” Eddie’s forehead is still pressed against his own, and his eyes are closed, but his lips are curved in a smile. Buck traces the smile with a finger, and he still barely believes he’s allowed to do that.
“I think I knew even before I realised I was bi” he whispers “with Tommy, it really wasn’t- I never believed I could have you. If I had known it was even a possibility, there wouldn’t have been anyone else.”
At that, Eddie leans forward to place another kiss on Buck’s lips. Buck tries to keep the kiss short and sweet, but Eddie’s hand is firm on his neck, and his teeth are nipping at Buck’s lower lip. He lets out a gasp, and Eddie smiles on his lips and takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss.
And, look, Buck is trying very hard to be considerate and mindful of Eddie’s injuries. But Eddie is moving so that they’re completely facing each other, and his legs are on top of Buck’s, and he still can’t believe that he thought he had lost Eddie, and now he’s here. In his arms, basically on his lap, kissing him like he’s drowning and Buck’s lips are oxygen.
In the end, it’s Eddie that pulls back, lips red and cheeks flushed. Buck is feeling breathless and a bit dizzy, and he’s sure it’s more about the kissing rather than the sleep he has failed to get in the past day.
“I think you need to get some actual sleep.” Eddie tells him, and Buck wonders if he can read his mind.
“I have slept in the hospital” he protests, but Eddie just rolls his eyes.
“No, you didn’t. We can take a nap before dinner.”
“We?”
“I’m not passing up an opportunity to use you as a pillow now that I can.”
It’s really all Buck needs to be convinced- he’s feeling the exhaustion weighing on his shoulders, and now that Eddie has mentioned it, he realises that he hasn’t really rested since the call the night before. So he helps Eddie get up, and follows him into the bathroom.
“Are you planning on following me everywhere now?” Eddie jokes, but a look at Buck’s face has him soften. “I’m not going anywhere, Buck.”
“Yeah, well, forgive me if I’d rather not have you out of my sight for at least 48 hours after believing you were dead. Plus, you can’t really wash yourself, can you?” Buck retorts, raising an eyebrow. He can see Eddie trying to come up with an answer, but then he sighs in defeat and just nods.
“If you want to see me naked, you just need to ask, Buckley” he teases.
“Eds. Of course I want to see you naked. But I also want to get you to sleep, and we need to wash you first, so would you please let me take off your clothes?”
Eddie barks out a laugh and immediately winces, bringing a hand up to his ribs. “Yes, fine.”
The shower is a quiet affair. While Buck certainly looks his fill, he also takes extra caution around Eddie’s ribs, and keeps his movements gentle and clinical. He knows now he will have all the time in the world to touch and to explore. Eddie, for his part, lets Buck move him around and follows his lead easily. Buck can see that he, too, is exhausted, and the way he lets himself into Buck’s care warms something in his heart.
They settle into bed as if they have done it a thousand times before, and Buck arranges the pillows so that Eddie doesn’t have to sleep laying down. When Eddie is as comfortable as he can be, Buck nestles his face near his waist, and Eddie’s hand comes to rest in his hair. Buck sighs, content, and he drapes an arm across Eddie’s waist to reach his other hand. He doesn’t need to explain himself, because Eddie turns his arm so that Buck can put a finger on his pulse point again.
“After the lightning strike, I wanted to do it too. All the time. Don’t know how I stopped myself.” Eddie murmurs, eyes closed, head slightly reclined back in the pillows.
“If you had randomly reached out to touch my pulse at any given moment, I would have had my sexuality crisis way earlier” Buck teases, but his voice is soft. Because now he knows, he guesses, how Eddie felt for those three minutes and seventeen seconds.
“I should have done it, then” Eddie mumbles, and Buck can hear he’s falling asleep. He smiles against his waist, and smiles some more when Eddie’s hand slips from his hair to his neck, right on his pulse point.
“Better late than never” Buck sighs, and lets himself be lulled to sleep by the steady beat of Eddie’s heart.
Buck thinks he has never heard a more beautiful rhythm.