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Buck thought—key word, thought—he was over the trauma or whatever of being struck by lightning, that he wouldn’t feel that pit of sickness and anxiety when he climbed up the ladder on his first week back that he hid so no one knew, even after Chimney told him he wouldn’t be allowed anymore but he argued on it anyways.
Surely, Eddie was a bit of a helicopter friend, always worrying about Buck when he wasn’t in his sight, asking if anything hurt or if he was feeling some sort of way that wasn’t right or didn’t feel right, and yet he was brushed off.
After countless physical therapy and actual therapy sessions, he thought he wouldn’t be having any other issues with his stupid lightning near-death situation. That all of it blew over quicker than ever, with just the subtle reminder when Eddie brings up he was to a person on a call who needs some 'reassuring’ that what happened to them wasn’t the end of the world, just made them start asking Buck questions that the other would respond over him with that he just knew the answer to.
He didn’t expect, however, that the memories of that moment, the time before he got struck, would come up as he climbed the ladder of the truck to help get an actor down on the set of Hotshots.
When he tilted his head up to see the man and he gripped the steel as he went up the steps, he suddenly felt off. He blinks, and suddenly he’s back in the rain. Blue strikes across the sky that replicated the sound of bowling balls hitting pins—remembering Maddie telling him it’s just people in heaven playing bowling and a woman just got a spare when it would crack loudly across their home. He hears Chimney pursuing him to go up in an echoed voice and a clip on his gear, but he can’t move to tell himself to stop; he’s stuck.
He feels the crack as it happens to him, the way it shot into his body and took everything out; it made him completely hollow and bare, to tip him over and hang with lasting moments before his heart stops that he feels when he’s gasping from the sides, seeing his body drenched in rain, hanging as if he’s nothing more but something light.
He can hear after a few pauses, maybe to process, Eddie calling his name in a muffled voice, coming up the ladder to tend to him, before he feels something on his shoulder and he’s gasping, blinking as he’s suddenly back where he’s supposed to be, where he’s alive; his heart is pulsing, blood rushes in his arms, and he’s dry.
“—uck? Buck? You alright? Maybe I should go up." Chimney had climbed onto the truck in the midst of Buck’s issue, beginning to press the small clasp to unclip the harness from him before he suddenly jumped. “Buck—”
“It’s fine; I was just spacing out by accident. Forgot to take my medication today, sorry,” Buck excuses, gripping tighter to the rails and going up, leaving Chimney to go back down the truck to help the patient when he was down. He could see when he got up for assistance; Eddie shot him a small concerned look, definitely going to be heard from him later, but suddenly went away when he started rubbing his chest to try and get him to be alert.
The man got down fine and well with Buck and Eddie’s help, probably just to be properly examined at the hospital in case of any issues and problems, but he was not looking forward to the pressure of his best friend trying to get him to tell him what happened.
When they arrived at the station, Buck immediately went to hang his gear and head to the lockers to change to go home; his shift was well done almost anyway. As he went into the lockers, he heard the door open behind him, and he knew he’s in for something.
“So, you want to tell me what happened on the ladder?” Eddie says into the silence, and Buck puts his shirt on without a word, not having the urge to look at him. “Buck, come on. You can’t pretend—”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” Buck suddenly yells, staring at the other, who just blinks at his outburst. It echoes out into the glass where some of the others turn to stare for a few seconds. Hen and Bobby stare a bit longer as he hangs his head and shuts his locker. “I’m—I’m fine, Eddie.”
“You don’t have to lie, Buck. There’s nothing wrong with not being fine, especially with that,” Eddie pressures, and it makes Buck want to scream. “Buck, PTSD isn’t something—”
“I don’t fucking have PTSD or whatever, alright? Just—just forget it,” Buck argues one last time, in a feeble attempt to let this go, so he won’t have to deal with Bobby breathing down his back of going to therapy again. And as always, Eddie can’t back down; he steps in Buck’s way and stands there, hands crossed as if he’s trying to parent, and he blinks as he makes eye contact with the other. "Eddie."
“No, you are not going to shut me out and pretend nothing is wrong when it’s clear there is,” Eddie battled, and Buck sighed. “What the hell happened on that ladder, Buck?”
“Nothing, Eddie. Nothing happened on the ladder; I just—just forgot to take my medication this morning; I was in a rush and spaced out because of it; won’t happen again,” Buck excused, moving to the side again to leave, but Eddie just followed. “Eddie.”
“I’ve seen you off your medication, Buck. Multiple times, you don’t space out like that on calls ever. What the fuck happened, Buck?” Eddie presses once more, and he knows that Bobby or Hen are wondering if they should intervene, but Hen also knows that he knows Buck better than himself.
“Nothing, Eddie! Just—"
“It’s because of the man who was dangling, wasn’t it? Because it reminded you of going up that ladder that night." Buck winces, a whimper under his throat from Eddie’s yelling. “You had a PTSD episode while going up, didn’t you?”
“Eddie, please,” Buck pleads, so close to sobbing and breaking into pieces. “Just forget it.”
“Buck, I can’t forget it when you are pausing on the job like that. It’s dangerous and risky, you know that. You’ve never frozen like that." He pushes one more time, and that’s all it took for Buck to jump and lose his cool.
“Just stop it already, Eddie!” Buck shouts, loud to the point it escapes the locker room out to the rest of the firehouse. Everything is still for a second before Eddie blinks at him, almost shocked.
“Fine, I’ll stop worrying about you. Sorry, I care, Buck.” Eddie turns to grab his own bag from his locker, shutting it with a loud bang before exiting the locker room with even more anger, not even saying goodbye to Hen or Bobby.
Buck frowns before he grabs his things and leaves, not saying anything to Hen or Bobby either, just getting to his car and leaving for his apartment.
Buck thought, keyword thought, he would just have some stupid flashback of the lightning strike, and it would be all over. Once and all done, but he was wrong, so fucking wrong.
He knew they weren’t supposed to get storms for the next few weeks, making LA dry and annoying, but guessing he lost track of when he last tracked that tonight would be thunderstorms, and his brain decided to give him one last hit to the bubbling trauma of his lightning strike injury.
He’s back to when he was struck again; this time it feels more real to the point he can feel the rain hitting his skin and making it bitter cold with a slight shiver. He can hear Chimney say something to him in an echo of something he can’t understand as he goes up, and his stomach feels knotted and tight the higher he goes, as though he’s on a rollercoaster about to go down the huge dip.
It feels too real to him; it feels as if he’s living it all over again when it strikes him. It hurts, and he can feel the way his heart stops and he’s gasping for air, but he seems allergic and unable to as he tries to breathe slowly, like he remembers from his therapist when he got too worked up trying to explain how scared he was seeing Eddie’s lifeless body with a sniper waiting to shoot him or someone else on scene with them.
When he closes his eyes with the light sound of a machine flatlining, it goes away when he opens again to his dark bedroom with harsh gasps of breath. His shirt is turned to the side of him, and he feels hot, so fucking hot to the point sweat is sticking to his skin.
Buck jumps at a flash of lightning, trying to calm himself before he does something stupid, but he just can’t. His chest hurts so much, and it’s so hard to catch his breath.
He feels around in his bed for his phone, gasping for air still as his fingers find his phone, and he opens it with shaking hands that makes it so hard for him to even press a single button. His hands work on autopilot from his head, clicking on Eddie’s contact as he rasps in an effort to get quality air into his lungs so he can breathe properly again.
It rings for so long, and it just makes Buck want to cry—he should’ve just been honest; he should’ve told Eddie that he was right, but he just was so angry he wasn’t over it that he just didn’t own up to it, like an idiot.
“Hello?” His voice is dark, deep in tone from just waking up, and it takes Buck everything not to tell him nevermind or hang up. “Buck? Are you there?”
“Eddie—” Buck chokes, and his lip wobbles once more until he puts it between his teeth to bite so he doesn’t sob. “Eddie.”
“Buck? What’s wrong?” Eddie urges, but Buck can’t get anything out to explain or to tell him he was right. That he was so fucking right to care, that he should’ve just owned up that there was—is—something wrong.
“Eds, please—please hurry,” Buck pleads, and Eddie gets his answer of what’s wrong when a huge bolt of lightning followed by thunder echoes through the house and Buck whimpers on the other end of the line.
“I’ll be there soon, Buck. You’re safe, okay?” Eddie slips on his shoes and grabs his truck keys, locking them behind him as he sees the downpour when he rushes to his vehicle. “I’m in the car now; I’ll be there soon, Buck.”
He isn’t responding now, but Eddie doesn’t really want to force him to; it would be too much for him to do at once and just overwhelm him more than he already is.
Once he’s at Buck’s complex, it seems the rain and thunder and lightning had worsened as he continued to drive, but he rushed inside anyway to the exact floor and room. He fishes out his key, unlocking it when another flash of lightning followed by loud thunder echoes in Buck’s loft and a sob follows.
Eddie doesn’t think twice about rushing up the stairs even though he knows Buck will be angry in the morning about everything happening right now, but he knows his best friend needs his help right now, and he can’t deny it because he’s angry he wouldn’t tell him what’s going on.
“Buck? I’m here; you’re safe. I got you." Eddie spoke as he approached the other on the bed, his phone lost in the bedsheets somewhere, and he should’ve probably taken his shoes off at the door before he angered Buck about the water he trailed in. “I’m here, okay? You need to breathe.”
“Felt so real, thought—thought I was going to die again,” Buck rasps, his throat so overworked and exhausted that his words just come out in puffs of a terrible job at breathing. “It hurt so much.”
“It’s okay, Buck. It’s going to be okay; can I touch you? Is that okay?” Eddie asks as he finally takes off his shoes, not wanting to put more rainwater onto Buck’s loft floors. He responds with a small sound that sounds close to a yes, and Eddie slowly touches his shoulders, rubbing off all tensions in his shoulders out to his thumbs. “You are going to be fine, I promise. I’m here for you; I’ll always be here for you.”
“Even—even when I push you away?” Buck’s voice breaks, and Eddie nods.
“Even then, yes. If it wasn’t true, I wouldn’t be here right now,” Eddie softly smiles, trailing up to Buck’s cheeks, rubbing the stray tears away from there with his thumbs. “You don’t need to be ashamed of something like that, Buck. I hope you know that.”
“I’m sorry,” Buck blinks with more tears clinging to his lashes, and Eddie shakes his head, bringing him into a hug.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Buck. You don’t need to apologize,” Eddie feels the way he tenses when a clash of thunder ruins the calmness in Buck’s body, making him cling harsher to the man’s shirt. “I got you; it’s okay. Everything will be okay.”
It’s a while of calming Buck down when every time Eddie finally has him calm and not on the verge of sobbing, thunder and lightning strike and he’s back to square one, but at the end of it, Buck had fallen asleep on him after two hours of it.
He had fallen asleep as well, just in and out, nothing really close to a sleep, though if he was honest, too concerned about Buck. He turns and twists, wakes up to just tighten the hold on Eddie, then goes back to sleep. The storm was well over, but the other wouldn’t leave either way, not without some sort of communication.
When the sun rose, Eddie decided to make breakfast for the both of them; seemingly Buck needed his rest and he needed to do something until the other woke up, and he couldn’t take another episode of whatever was playing on Buck’s television if he was forced to.
It’s a few hours of Eddie trying to perfect some sort of edible breakfast for the both of them before Buck walks down the stairs with a grumble before stopping at the end of his loft.
“Eddie? What the hell? Why are you here?”
“Because you called me,” Eddie responds, cutting up some fruit. “And I came because you were having a panic attack and you called me asking me to come.”
“You didn’t have to come, Eddie. It was just a nightmare or something, not that deep,” Buck defends. “Can you leave now?”
“Buck, come on. Why are you denying help? This is obviously still bothering you,” Eddie challenged, and Buck scoffs, tightening the blanket around him that he must’ve brought with him without the knowledge of his presence. “You went through a traumatic event; it’s okay to have triggers and possibly have PTSD, Buck.”
“I don’t have PTSD! I’m fine!” Eddie watches as Buck’s eyes fill the dam with tears, filling up and up until they spill over, and he has to blink over and over for it to calm down, for himself to calm down. It doesn’t work when he speaks again and his voice breaks the dam with a wobbly, “I’m fine."
“You aren’t, Buck. And that’s okay. You know that, right?” Eddie drops the knife to walk over to his best friend, his eyes still red from the crying before and now will be even more tinted red from the crying as Eddie hugs him, his stupid blanket and all. “You could’ve told me, you know. I know how it feels, with the flashbacks and stuff. I wouldn’t have judged you or made you feel like you had to hide it; it would’ve been hypocritical of me because you helped me then, when Chris called you.”
“It’s not—it’s not the same,” Buck argues, and Eddie just sighs. “Our situations are—”
“Yeah, they’re different in terms of the situation, but the actions after are almost the same. The flashbacks, the nightmares, the denying. You didn’t leave me alone that night, and I won’t leave you alone either.”
Buck doesn’t say anything after that; it’s quiet for moments, until his hands wrap around Eddie and gently squeeze, and he takes a soft breath before Buck speaks, “Will you help me get help?”
“Yeah,” Eddie smiles before releasing Buck to tend to their breakfast. “Waffles?”
“Keep the burnt and undercooked ones to yourself; I’ll make my own.” Buck gets out of the blanket to leave it on the island chair before kicking Eddie out of his kitchen. “Jesus, you can’t cook for shit.”
“Fuck off,” Eddie grumbles, stealing a piece of fruit as Buck shows a small smile
It’s a few weeks after what happened at Buck’s loft, and after countless searches for a good therapist through the department, Buck finally found one with the help of Eddie and began going every week.
It was surely helpful and helped him a lot with other things as well, not just the lightning strike.