Work Text:
When Buck finally made it out of the building, he immediately found Ravi and Karen and collapsed into a group hug. The three of them huddled together in commiseration, mourning the loss they had all suffered. After a few moments, someone behind them cleared their throat. The hug broke, and Buck turned to see Tommy standing there.
“I'm sorry, Evan,” Tommy offered, reaching out in an attempt to hug him.
Buck recoiled, stepping back toward Karen and Ravi. “No. I don't want your sympathies.”
“He was my Captain once too. I get it.”
“No, you don’t! To you, he was just a captain. To us, he’s so much more than that. He’s family. We just lost someone in our family . Just go… Please... I need to call Eddie. I need to tell him.” The last part was mumbled, mostly to himself.
Tommy visibly stiffened. Buck paid him no more attention. He wasn't worth it.
“How do I—“ Buck gulped, casting a frantic glance between Ravi and Karen. “How do I tell Eddie?”
“Do you want one of us to call him?” Ravi offered.
“No. No, it needs to be me. But how do I tell him that Bobby—“ Buck couldn’t finish the sentence, sobs wracking his body again.
He tried to calm down as he dialed Eddie's number, but it was no use. The tears kept flowing steadily. Karen laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. Ravi patted him a few times on the back. Buck thanked them but asked them to step away right after. He didn’t want an audience. As the phone rang, his emotions got more intense. Delivering this news to Eddie made it more real . He almost hoped Eddie wouldn’t answer so he could put off telling him for a little longer, even though he knew that wasn’t fair. Just when Buck thought he’d be sent to voicemail, the line connected.
“Buck?” Eddie answered, his voice sleep-riddled. It was well past midnight in El Paso. “You don’t normally call this late.”
“Eddie,” Buck sobbed the instant he heard his voice.
Eddie felt his blood freeze in his veins. All of the tiredness sapped away, leaving him in a state of tense alertness. He had never heard Buck sound this destroyed before. Something had happened on shift. A shift he wasn’t there for, and now he had to find out in the middle of the night, alone, 800 miles away.
“How bad is it?” Eddie asked, already blinking back tears. “And who?”
“Eddie, he’s-he’s dead,” Buck managed to gasp out between heart-wrenching sobs.
Eddie gripped his phone tightly as his mind raced to try to fill in the blank. “Who?”
All Eddie got in response was more sobbing. Fear strangled Eddie's heart. The way Buck was crying, it could only be one person.
“It's Bobby, isn’t it?” Buck sobbed louder. Tears finally started falling from Eddie's eyes as the realization washed over him. “No. Fuck. FUCK!”
This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. This was a cruel joke. It was a dream. It was anything other than reality. It had only been a few weeks ago that Bobby had given him a glowing review to Captain Morales. A promise that he would always have a place waiting for him at the 118. A promise that now couldn’t be upheld. Eddie could—he would —return to LA, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to return to his station. His family. The family that was now broken beyond repair. They had lost their figurehead, their leader, their Captain, their friend, their father. Nothing would ever be the same without Bobby Nash at the helm. And Eddie hadn’t been there with his family when it happened. His heart crumbled more and more with each passing second as the loss settled over him. He didn’t want to reach the last stage of grief. He didn’t want to accept it. He didn’t want to face a world without one of his closest companions. Even 800 miles away, he knew he had Bobby to rely on. He could have gone to him for advice or support at any time. And now that was gone. A pillar of hope and guidance just… gone.
“I can't do this,” Buck said a few minutes later after they’d done nothing but cry together on the phone, twin tears echoing across the line. He'd managed to calm down his sobbing to a more manageable cry, but his throat was still tight as he spoke, making his voice come out strangled. “I don't know what to do.”
“Take things one minute at a time,” Eddie said softly. He sniffed and wiped away what tears he could, trying to rein himself in so he could give Buck what he needed. “What happened, Buck?”
“What didn’t happen is a better question,” Buck said, devoid of humor. “An arson fire at a bio lab. An explosion during the call that trapped everyone inside the lab but me. Hen had a collapsed lung. A super strain of a deadly virus got released. Chim got infected after his mask shattered. They barely got him the only dose of the cure… Bobby got infected, too. His air hose had a hole. He didn’t say anything so Chimney could be saved. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but those are the basics.”
Eddie felt his heart clench tightly again and curled in on himself to try to manage the pain. “I should've been there.”
“No,” Buck said, a little power coming back to his voice. “For once, I'm glad you weren’t. It was bad enough seeing everyone else trapped. I don't know what I would have done if you had been in there, too.”
“But maybe things would’ve been different if I had been… At the very least, I could’ve been with everyone when it… when it happened.” Eddie cleared his throat. “Is everyone else okay?”
“As okay as they can be. Chim is still being quarantined. Hen had to have a chest tube put in, and she’s going to be kept for observation. Ravi's fine. Physically, anyway.”
“And you?”
“I didn't get hurt at all. Like I said, I was the only one not trapped. So, physically, I'm fine. Athena and I… we were able to help get the cure to Chimney.”
“Good. That's good at least.”
“He shut the isolation door right in front of me, Eddie,” Buck whispered. “Shut the door and took off his gear. He was already bleeding. He—“ Buck choked on a sob as he brought up the memory. “He said ‘I love you, kid,’ then made me leave so he could be alone with Athena. I didn’t—Eddie, I didn't say it back. I didn't say anything back, and now he’s gone.”
“He knows, Buck. He knows you love him. You’ve shown it in so many ways.”
“I'm sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye,” Buck said after a pause. “I know he was important to you, too.”
“We had a goodbye before I left for Texas,” Eddie said, trying to smile through the tears. He was trying to convince Buck as much as himself that the goodbye he’d had was sufficient. “God, this sucks.”
“It hurts so much.”
“I wish there was a way to make it better. Eventually, you just… grow around the grief, I guess. You learn how to carry it.”
“I don't want to carry it.”
“I know. Neither do I. We can carry it together, though, yeah?”
“It's kinda hard to do that when you’re in Texas.”
Eddie let out a long breath. “Did you really think I would stay here after something like this? I'm going to catch the first flight out that I can.”
“Chris, too?” Buck asked with sadness-tinged hope.
“Chris, too,” Eddie confirmed. “We’re all gonna need each other.”