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There’s a gun pointed at Buck.
Eddie’s got a patient bleeding out under his hands and Hen’s packing gauze around the knife in the man’s thigh, courtesy of his girlfriend and.
There's a gun pointed at Buck.
Hen hasn’t seen it yet but Buck has and Eddie can’t see his partner’s face. He can see the woman holding the gun, though, and the distant look in her eyes. Fear - paralyzing fear, full body fear, cold fear - is dousing Eddie like someone’s dumped water over his head. His hands start shaking.
There’s a
gun
pointed at Buck.
“Hey,” Buck says, slowly raising his hands above his head. The woman flinches at his voice and the gun wobbles in her grasp. Eddie’s heart frantically hammers against his chest. He resists the urge to run at them, to get the gun out of her hands and away from Buck.
“Wha -” Hen starts to say but Eddie reaches out and clamps a hand on her arm, a touch too forceful. She turns to Buck and stills.
Reaching for his radio, Eddie chokes out, “Cap, don’t let anyone else into the apartment. Code Silver.”
Because there’s a
gun gun gun gun gun
pointed at Buck.
“Copy that, Diaz.” Cap says through the radio.
The patient beneath them swears loudly when he sees the gun and Eddie has to grit his teeth to not yell at him to shut the fuck up. Hen sends a glare at their patient and presses a finger to her lips. There’s the beginning of shaking fear around her eyes. Eddie’s struggling to breath. He can’t look away.
“Can you let them take him to the ambulance?” Buck asks gently like he’s trying to soothe a wild animal.
The woman just stares at him. Still with the gun (getitawaygetitawaygetitaway) pointed at Buck.
“I - “ The woman starts, shifting her gaze to her boyfriend who, gracias a dios, has shut up. She’s in shock, that much Eddie can tell, and typically he has sympathy for women like her who have to defend themselves from someone who’s supposed to love them. The ring of purple bruises around her neck make it clear why this man has a kitchen knife in his leg.
But she’s pointing a gun at Buck.
Outside the apartment, police sirens draw closer and two things happen at once.
The man beneath them crows out, “Oh, you’re going to jail, honey.”
And Dispatch crackles through the radio, “Firefighters 118, is this a hostage situation?”
Taking this all in, the woman comes to the same conclusion that Eddie does. That she’s the one pointing a gun at a firefighter and who stabbed a knife into her boyfriend. But for whatever reason - shock, fear, trauma - she doesn’t come to the conclusion that the bruises on her neck excuse most of this. She’s not gonna go to jail, not unless she pulls the trigger.
She doesn’t know this.
“Get out!” She screams, twisting to look at Eddie, Hen and the boyfriend. Hen responds quickly and soothes,
“Okay, okay, okay. We’ll do that. We’ll do that.” She gestures at Eddie to lift the foot end of the backboard and he does through a syrupy haze.
There’s a gun - fire in his shoulder, fire in his leg, fire in his wrist - pointed at Buck.
And Eddie’s walking away.
Buck steps backwards on instinct and the woman snaps her gaze back to him. “Not you.” She says shakily. “You stay.”
Buck’s eyes flash and his jaw twitches. “Okay.” He breathes out, hands still above his shoulders. Careful. It’s a careful situation. Too fragile, too delicate, too risky. Eddie hates that it makes sense. That no amount of logic makes him staying here the right choice even when everything in him is protesting walking away.
There’s a gun pointed at Buck.
A scream builds in Eddie’s throat. The usual icy cold wall that separates him from the danger around him is cracking open. He can’t - he can’t let it break. He has to make sure Buck stays alive.
He risks a glance at his partner as they back out of the apartment. He still can’t see Buck’s face. That doesn’t stop him from knowing, really, because he knows the man he loves.
The man who he woke up with this morning. The man who peppered kisses to his face over coffee. The man who ruffled their son’s hair and made them breakfast. He knows Buck. And there’s a determined set to his jaw, visible from the side, that sends something big and awful crashing through Eddie.
You are not expendable, Eddie thinks. Begs. Prays.
They carry their patient out of the apartment and onto the gurney Sanchez is waiting by. Hen shoots a worried glance behind them. Eddie stares down at the patient’s shoes and breathes robotically. He hears Buck start talking. He’s trying to reason with the woman, to explain that no one’s arresting her. His voice is gentle, so gentle, too gentle for someone holding a gun to his face. Eddie wants to - to grab Buck’s parents and shake some goddamn sense into them, wants to find everyone who ever hurt his partner and to demand that they try to explain how, wants to watch as they can’t. Because how can you explain hurting Buck?
“Eddie,” Hen says quietly when they get situated in the elevator. Eddie reaches over to press the button for the first floor, watches as the number 3 ticks down to 2, breathes. He thinks Hen has seen something on his face. Maybe the desperation, maybe the anger, maybe the terror. Maybe she didn’t have to see anything. Maybe she just knows.
Two weeks ago, Eddie kissed Buck for the first time and they laughed and Buck said, frowning, they’ll transfer one of us, and Eddie said, so we keep it to ourselves for a bit. And they did. Maybe Hen knows anyway.
“He’s gonna be fine.” Eddie says. He swallows. It feels like a lie and he hates it.
What he hates more is that when they put their patient into the ambulance and Hen and Sanchez climb in the back, Cap tries to tell him to drive.
“No.”
“Eddie - “ Bobby tries, again.
“No.” He snaps. He can hear his breathing grow ragged.
Leaving that apartment had been hard enough, like pulling a piece of himself away from his body in a stinging wound of broken blood vessels and shiny skin. His heart hasn’t stopped pounding against his ribs since he saw that gun. So, no. He’s not fucking driving away.
Cap huffs. His gaze keeps darting back to the apartment building, flicking from Eddie to the police cars to where Buck is. Bobby shakes his head like he wants this to be a bad dream. Eddie relates. “I’m your boss, Eddie.”
“Would you leave if it was Athena up there?” Eddie demands. He doesn’t care that he’s just shown his heart. He doesn’t care, because Bobby’s face shutters with surprise, then understanding, and he tells Jones to drive.
“Athena’s my wife.” Bobby says while they wait. A steady stream of police officers, negotiators and another RA unit are arriving on the scene, all packed into this shitty parking lot while Buck has a gun pointed at him.
“I know.” Eddie says steadily. He feels the opposite of steady. He feels like he’s seven years old and fragile and waiting for the rug to be pulled out from under his feet.
Bobby’s quiet. They watch as negotiators set up contact, as time ticks by, as everything seems to spiral slowly out of control. Eddie’s chest gets tighter and tighter while the negotiator’s get more and more concerned. He refuses to leave.
Cap places a tense hand against Eddie’s shoulder and
bang
and Eddie can’t breathe.
He knows what a gunshot sounds like. He knows what a fucking gunshot sounds like and he knows how easy it is to die from bullets. He knows what people look like while it happens. Eddie Diaz was an Army Medic and he watched people die from that lethal metal, something burning and bullying that steals years of life. And one of them could be in Buck. Precious, pedantic, perfect Buck.
Eddie chokes. He stumbles. There’s someone holding onto him, Bobby, maybe, holding him back from running into the building, running to Buck. Something loud and terrified and raw is coming out of his throat. A gurney is coming out of the doors and to the 122’s ambulance.
Eddie catches a glimpse of golden hair and blue eyes and red blood and he’s running.
“What are you - “ One of the paramedics says when he stops her from closing the ambulance doors.
“I’m his boyfriend,” Eddie gasps out, “Please -”
“Get in.” The other paramedic says and hauls him up. Within a second, they’re slamming the doors and driving away and Eddie’s grabbing Buck’s hand.
He’s staring up at the ambulance roof, dazed. There’s - there’s so much blood, too much blood, spilling out of Buck’s left leg. His bad leg, the one that used to have a metal rod and four screws in it. Eddie says as much to the paramedics while they wrap gauze around him to stifle the waterfall of red, red, red.
“Buck.” Eddie says. Has been saying, is saying, will be saying for the rest of his life. This isn’t their end, it can’t be, not - not like this, they’ve barely begun.
But Buck still hasn’t looked at him.
There’s a lot of possible reasons for that. He hit his head when the bullet tore through his leg and toppled him. He’s suffering serious blood loss. He’s too focused on the pain to see properly.
None of them are good.
“Buck, please. Baby.” Eddie begs, tears flowing freely. “Please just look at me. I’m right here.”
He doesn’t know how long he cries and pleads. He doesn’t know who he’s begging to, Buck or God or the universe. He doesn’t know if it’s him or luck or a miracle that has Buck shifting his gaze over and finally, finally, looking at him.
“Hi.” Eddie cries.
Buck blinks up at him with muddled recognition, face tight with pain. He opens his mouth but only whines and cries. Eddie holds him and wishes he could pull that pain from him like unspooling yarn, tugging it out and looping it around himself instead.
But he can’t do that so he just keeps talking. Mutters in Spanish, spills out of his mouth the engagement ring tucked into a box of winter clothes in his closet, lets endearments fall from his lips like they’re gold and silver. Anything that keeps Buck’s attention on him, that keeps the ocean in his eyes awake and moving.
The ambulance beneath them shakes. The paramedics from the 122 continue working on Buck, calling out for time estimates from their driver. Eddie holds his lover and talks and talks and talks. Maybe if he puts enough of his love out there, scoops it out of his beating heart and into the air Buck breathes, he can make this person stay. Please, please, please, he thinks, or maybe he says it. He can’t help but see Shannon. Just for a second, a different face. A yellow blouse. Smudged eyeliner.
It’s the fact that he’s done this before that has him reeling at doing it again. So don’t, he begs, don’t leave too.
They pull into the hospital’s emergency entrance. The gurney rattles as the paramedics carry Buck, still breathing, still alive (stay alive, stay alive, please, please, please) down the ambulance steps. Eddie stumbles after them. He swallows his instinctive protests when Buck’s rolled away but can’t stop his sobs.
“Sir,” Someone says - a nurse - and points towards the waiting room, “You can use the bathroom, have some privacy.”
He croaks out a hoarse, “Thanks,” and nearly sprints to the bathroom. He collapses onto the tiled floor and forces himself to breathe.
An aeon or minutes later, Eddie’s breathing evens out. He’s shaking, he realises distantly, and he’s sat on a sticky bathroom floor. Buck’s gonna be fine, he tells himself. He’s in the hospital, he’s in surgery. I’ve survived bullet wounds, so will he.
He tries very, very hard to believe it. But he can feel hot sand and hot asphalt between his fingers; he doesn’t know what to believe anymore. Buck, Shannon, blood and love and promises and a gravestone. No more. No more gravestones. Not yet. He’s begging to a God he stopped believing in as a buttoned-up, golden child. He thinks he has enough goodwill from those early years of Church and prayer, guilt and obedience, rules and shined shoes, that he can ask for this. For Buck’s life.
“Eddie?” comes a croaky voice from outside the bathroom door. It’s familiar enough Eddie is able to heave himself off the floor and open it. Maddie’s got tears running down her face and a hand reaching out to Eddie. He accepts the comfort, tumbling into a hug, and they just hold each other.
He focuses on Maddie: warm tears soaking into his shoulder, brown hair tickling his nose, the phone clutched in one hand. This woman is someone who loves Buck with an old, soul deep intensity. She’s held Buck since his first day on this earth and Eddie prays that their combined force can tether Buck here, with them, alive and safe.
“I’m so sorry.” Maddie sobs into Eddie’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
Eddie blinks futilely. “I’m sorry it happened to you.” He returns, because he is. He’s so fucking sorry Maddie has to go through this shaking uncertainty over her brother’s life again.
Maddie knows about him and Buck, has known since Buck called her and grinned the entire time he made her promise not to say anything to Chimney. She’d kept her promise but warned them to hurry up with telling ‘the family’. Eddie had felt the words echo around his mind for days afterwards.
The family.
He has one of those now - a big, chaotic extended family he trusts without question. It’s new and surprising to Eddie. The Diazes and connected branches are a big family, but El Paso was just Eddie’s little family, all the others up north in L.A. and San Francisco. It’s something almost poetic, actually, that moving back to the city he was born in gave Eddie his wonderful chosen family.
The proof of just how wonderful his family is sits in the waiting room.
Bobby looks up, red eyed and stricken, when Eddie and Maddie walk in. Athena’s at his side, dressed in sweats and an LAFD t-shirt Eddie would bet has ‘Nash’ printed on the back. She must’ve rushed over from a post shift nap, he realises. They’re more Buck’s parents than his actual ones. Across from them is a huddle of firefighters, Robertson and Clarke and Maxwell who were on shift too but not in the ambulance with Hen. Chim walks up to them carefully and Maddie fusses until he takes a seat, the aftereffects of the CCHF still keeping him away from work even months later. Organ failure is no joke. Is Buck going through -
Hen places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder and he forces himself away from speculation, the oncoming spiral he desperately needs to not fall down. She guides him to sit over by her and Karen where there’s a free seat. He takes the comfort, letting Karen wrap an arm around him and accepting the water bottle Hen hands him.
The art of the waiting room is one they’re all well practiced in. Was it like this, Eddie wonders, when I got shot? Except Buck had actually seen it happen. If Eddie’s haunted by the glassy look in Buck’s eyes and the tide of red pouring out of his leg, how must Buck have felt to watch the bullet tear through Eddie and not be able to do a damn thing about it?
It seems like hours pass until a nurse walks up to them. “Family of Evan Buckley?” She asks.
Eddie stands up on shaky legs immediately. Maddie does too, telling the nurse, “I’m his sister.”
The nurse looks at Eddie questioningly. “I’m his boyfriend.” He manages.
Ignoring the faint noises of surprise from around him, Eddie walks up to Maddie and the nurse. She looks at them with a cool sympathy. Eddie’s worked with a lot of healthcare professionals over the years - he knows not to take it personally. It stings nevertheless.
“Mr Buckley’s lucky.” She tells them. Eddie has to grip his water bottle to not fall to his knees and sob in relief. “He’s just been taken in for surgery. There’s concerns about the muscle tissue, what with his crush injury. How long ago was that?”
Eddie answers hoarsely, “About six years ago.”
The nurse asks some more questions, reassures them that Buck’s chances are good with the surgery. Maddie thanks her quietly, leading Eddie back to the seats when the nurse walks away.
Back to the art of the waiting room.
Quiet conversation. Waiting. Crying. Waiting. Shitty hospital coffee. Waiting. Plans for collecting the kids. Waiting. A message from Chris once school lets out, having heard the news from… someone. Waiting. Chris turning up, driven by Tia Pepa, and Eddie holding him close. Waiting. Being guided into Buck’s room post surgery and nearly collapsing from relief. Waiting. Holding Buck’s hand in his. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Hours and hours and hours of waiting.
Then, the sky clears and the sun shines through.
“Hi, mi vida.” Eddie says softly, heart picking up as Buck’s eyes flutter open. He’s laid out on a hospital bed in a private room, his leg wrapped up not too differently to Eddie’s vague memories of the ladder truck explosion and subsequent hospital stay.
Buck groans. Reaching forward, Eddie grabs the glass of water off the side table as Chris moves closer to Buck’s face.
“Hey, Buck.” Chris says. Buck smiles at him and reaches up a hand to card through Chris’ curls. Curls the same as Bucks. Eddie has to blink back tears.
Buck’s voice takes on a distinctly paternal quality when he says to Chris, “Hey, buddy. How long was I out?”
Chris laughs wetly, “Too long.” He shrugs, still holding onto some of that teenage nonchalance. Buck just hums and Eddie knows he sees right through it and into the heart of how Chris actually feels. Eddie hands his boyfriend the water, helping him hold it up with the drugs impeding him.
Buck goes quiet as Eddie puts the glass back on the table, and he can taste what’s coming. Feeling sick with it all of a sudden, Eddie’s helpless to stop the apology falling from Buck’s lips.
“I am so sorry.” Buck whispers.
Eddie shakes his head. “No. No, not your fault. Buck.” Eddie says desperately, shuffling closer to cup Buck’s jaw in one hand and force eye contact. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Sighing, Buck leans into Eddie’s touch and mumbles, “Love you.”
“I love you too.” Eddie tells him even as he tears up. It’s been a very stressful day - he thinks it’s been about a day - and the breath of fresh air that is Buck being okay has him emotional.
“You’re disgusting.” Chris deadpans.
They both turn to look at him and he rolls his eyes, “Love you guys too. And I’m really glad you're okay, Buck.” He gets quiet enough that Buck reaches forward to hug him tight.
“Love you, Chris.” Buck says into their son’s hair. Eddie watches his family and thinks, not for the first time, that everything they’ve done and everything they’ll do, is worth it to have this.