Archive of Our Own

“Cuando te vi sentí algo raro por dentro, una mezcla de miedo con locura y tu mirada me juró que si te pierdo, habré perdido la más grande fortuna”

“When I saw you, I felt something strange inside, a mixture of fear with madness, and your gaze swore to me that if I lose you, I'll have lost the greatest fortune.”

Eddie Diaz walked into the station with a soldier’s stride —measured, firm, a backpack slung over his shoulder as if it carried not just gear, but the weight of entire worlds he had already lived through. His expression was calm, composed, the kind of serenity forged only in places where chaos had reigned. The army had carved discipline into his bones, silence into his lungs. But here, in this new place, what he needed wasn’t silence —it was to belong.

He had arrived early, wanting the extra time. Wanting to breathe the air of this firehouse before it filled with voices that weren’t his. 

Bobby had filled him in on A-shift earlier, a quick rundown like a family portrait painted in broad strokes. He had spoken of Hen, steady as stone and sharp as lightning, of Chimney with his technical brilliance hidden beneath a layer of humor. He had spoken of their meals, of the way the crew functioned less like colleagues and more like a unit stitched together by shared hunger, shared danger.

And then Bobby had mentioned him.

“Buck,” Bobby had said, his lips tugging into the kind of smile he reserved for Christopher, half fondness and half exasperation. “Impulsive. Reckless. Act first, thinks later. But at the end of the day? He’s a good kid. Just needs someone to ground him.”

Eddie hadn’t known whether to take that at face value or file it away as one of those warnings people gave you about “the difficult one.” He wasn’t sure which version of Buck he would meet.

He was still tugging on his uniform shirt when he heard voices flooding in, the rest of the crew arriving in a wave of chatter and easy laughter. Eddie pasted on the kind of smile he’d learned in civilian life —polite, approachable, the mask of a man used to disarming strangers with pleasantries. One by one, introductions came, warm handshakes and easy chatter. He thought, fleetingly, that maybe this wouldn’t be so hard.

Until Bobby called someone else over.

And there he was. The famous Buck.

The man didn’t walk into the room so much as radiate into it. Young, sharp, carrying himself with that kind of restless energy that made everyone else seem too slow.  He wasn’t exactly friendly, not yet —there was an edge of arrogance in the way his gaze lingered, steady and challenging, like he was already testing him: Let’s see if you can keep up.

Eddie felt it immediately, like a pressure blooming in his chest, fast and dangerous, the way an unexpected gunshot might rattle through your bones.

Buck closed the distance, shook his hand. The grip was brief, controlled, and yet Eddie felt it all the way up his arm.

“So you’re the new probie.” Buck’s voice was casual, detached, but it vibrated in Eddie’s chest like something more.

“Diaz. Eddie.”

That should have been it. That would have been the smart move —turn back, listen to Bobby ramble about breakfast routines, keep his distance until he figured out the rhythm here.

But Eddie couldn’t.

Because Buck looked up, and those blue eyes —too bright, too piercing, too much — met his, and the ground beneath Eddie’s boots shifted. For a split second he was weightless, like gravity itself had forgotten him. His stomach dropped, his knees weakened, and every instinct honed on battlefields whispered the same truth: this was going to change everything.

The first call shattered any chance of calm. A medical emergency at a tire shop.

The ride over was… awkward. 

Hen and Chim peppered him with questions, trying to fold him into their circle. Buck jumped in too, eager, only to be teased into silence by Chim. Eddie noticed the flicker in Buck’s expression —bright confidence dimming into something else. Hurt, maybe. Then discomfort.

The garage reeked of oil and scorched rubber. 

A man sat on the floor, pale, sweating, a compressor lodged viciously in his leg. Bobby barked orders, and instinct carried Eddie forward. Buck moved first, quick as lightning, but Eddie slipped in beside him, steady hands and sharper focus. He caught Buck’s flicker of surprise when Eddie took the catheter, caught the shadow that crossed his face as if Eddie had stolen something from him. But he handed it over anyway.

The job got done. Patient loaded, crisis managed.

As they packed up, Bobby clapped Eddie on the shoulder, Hen gave a nod, Chim tossed out another joke. Eddie took it all in quietly —until Buck passed him with a wry, resigned smile, the kind of expression that tried to shrug itself off even as it landed.

“Yeah. Good call.”

Eddie only nodded, but the image stuck like a flare against the dark —Buck’s reluctant smile burning in his memory.

Later came the fire.

An old downtown building, flames devouring everything. Eddie followed Buck into the smoke, lungs filling with heat, eyes stingingbut still —he saw him. He watched how Buck moved, reckless and relentless, but with an instinct that was almost uncanny. He didn’t think —he knew . Where to go, how to cut through the chaos, how to save.

Eddie matched his rhythm, step for step, like a soldier falling into formation beside someone who already knew the battlefield. 

By the time they staggered out, covered in ash and dripping sweat, Buck was cracking jokes about how bad they all smelled. 

Chim and Hen laughed. 

Eddie laughed too, though not at the joke. It was the way Buck said it, the spark in his voice that made the air feel lighter, like survival was something worth smiling about.

The station quieted as the shift wound down.

One by one, firefighters collected their things, drifting away like smoke. Buck was one of the first to leave, tossing out a joke at Chim and Hen on his way out the door. 

And then he was gone.

Eddie felt the change immediately, subtle but undeniable. It was as if a light had been switched off, leaving the station colder, larger, emptier. Buck’s absence carried weight. For a man he barely knew, Buck had filled the day to its edges —his voice, his energy, his presence like a current running beneath everything.

And now, with him gone, Eddie felt only the echo. The ghost of warmth fading from the room.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder, unsettled by how much the emptiness pressed in. 

He barely knew the guy. He hadn’t even scratched the surface. 

But the truth had already settled deep into his bones, sharp and unrelenting.

Buck wasn’t just another teammate. He wasn’t forgettable.

And that —for a first shift— was far, far too much.

“No sé nada de tu historia, ni de tu filosofía. Hoy te escribo sin pensar y sin ortografía”

“I don’t know anything about your story, nor about your philosophy. Today I write to you without thinking and without spelling.”

The second shift arrived with chaos that couldn’t be forgotten.

A man named Charlie, trapped in a nightmare so surreal it felt ripped from the pages of a war story: a live grenade lodged in his leg, its timer ticking toward the inevitable. The kind of situation where time became elastic—every second stretching long and sharp, yet never enough.

Eddie remembered it with surgical clarity. The sweat running down the back of his neck. The sharp, metallic smell of fear that clung to the air. The way every person in that room breathed shallowly, as if oxygen itself had turned fragile.

And Buck.

His hands didn’t shake. His focus was absolute, his posture coiled but steady as he worked with him, fingers brushing danger like it was an everyday thing. Eddie couldn’t look away from him —the calm intensity, the reckless courage somehow fused into precision. The chaos outside faded, voices dulled to whispers. All that existed was Buck’s presence, the gravity of a man unafraid to stand nose-to-nose with disaster.

When the danger was finally over —when the grenade was gone and the patient alive— Eddie exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He turned to Buck before his brain had the sense to stop him.

“You’re badass under pressure, brother.”

Buck blinked, almost startled. 

“Me?”

“Hell yeah. You can have my back any day.”

And that’s when Eddie saw it. Not the cocky grin from the first day, not the strained smile of someone trying too hard to belong. This was different. A real smile, open and bright, unguarded in a way that hit Eddie right in the chest. Like no one had told Buck the thing he’d needed to hear until just now.

The heat that lit in Eddie’s stomach was sudden, dangerous. It left him breathless.

Buck ducked his head, a small stammer breaking his voice. 

“Yeah. Or —you know— you could have mine.”

The nervous laugh they shared hung between them like a fragile truce, or maybe a vow neither of them fully understood yet.

And then the ambulance they’d been standing beside exploded.

Flames roared upward in a storm of sparks, glass shattering into a thousand shards, the world convulsing with heat and noise. Eddie’s ears rang, his body snapping into action even as his heart still hammered with the echo of Buck’s words.

Later, when the smoke cleared and the adrenaline drained, Bobby’s voice would replay in Eddie’s head —less advice than prophecy. Buck is both fuel and fire.

And Eddie, throat tight, understood. Standing near him was dangerous. Standing near him meant being dragged into disaster, into risk, into something you couldn’t always control. But as the firelight flickered across Buck’s ash-smudged face, Eddie knew with a clarity that scared him more than the explosion.

He’d rather burn at Buck’s side than watch from a safe distance.

Time passed. His third shift, more calls. 

And then came the earthquake.

Hell on earth, buildings collapsing, streets tearing open. Eddie remembered the ground splitting, the sheer terror of realizing Christopher was somewhere out there —and the quiet, steady presence of Buck at his side through it all.

And then, as if the earth’s shaking hadn’t been enough, Buck walked straight into Eddie’s life and made himself at home.

The very next evening, Buck knocked on his front door with a bag of hamburgers in one hand and a grin in place of an apology. His smile wasn’t forced, wasn’t cocky —it was genuine, bright, like he really believed dinner and laughter could fix the cracks in the world. And maybe they could, because Eddie let him in.

Christopher adored him instantly. By the end of the night, the kid had decided Buck was family, no negotiations necessary. Blanket forts, corny jokes, that easy charm —he made the Diaz house feel lighter, safer, in a way four walls never could.

But Eddie noticed the doors Buck kept locked.

Whenever the air grew too intimate, Buck would excuse himself, retreat to the kitchen, shuffle cups around like rearranging them was urgent business. Conversations cut off mid-breath. Questions left hanging unanswered.

Eddie collected fragments anyway. The coffee Buck liked. The song he hummed under his breath when nerves got the better of him. The scar on his knee he never explained. The way he chewed his lip when he lied. The way he laughed with his whole body when Christopher did something ridiculous.

They were crumbs, clues to a map Eddie was desperate to trace.

He’d only known him a week, but already Eddie knew the rhythms of Buck’s laugh and the exact way his energy could tilt a room. Sometimes it felt like he’d known him forever; other times, like he hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface. The ignorance itched at him, equal parts curiosity and need.

It wasn’t just attraction —though the spark in his chest every time Buck smiled at him was impossible to ignore. It was the need to understand him . To know him fully. To be more than just a steady presence in the background. Eddie wanted to be the anchor, the one Buck could tie himself to when the storm raged.

So Eddie made a quiet promise, the kind only he would ever hear: he would learn. The bright parts and the broken ones. The habits, the silences, the truths Buck didn’t say out loud. He would learn because he wanted to be the person who stood steady when Buck couldn’t.

Not out of some dramatic vow or scripted destiny. But because it wasn’t enough anymore to just watch. He wanted to be there. To understand, to carry, to catch.

And in the small, private clarity of that promise, Eddie felt something inside himself settle.

On the edge of uncertainty, he made his choice.

He would stay.

“Para aprender a quererte, voy a estudiar cómo se cumplen tus sueños, voy a leerte siempre muy lentamente. Quiero entenderte.”

“To learn to love you, I'm going to study how your dreams are fulfilled. I'm going to read you always very slowly. I want to understand you.”

The truck blow hit Eddie harder than he wanted to admit.

The truck accident wasn’t just an accident —it was a deliberate cruelty, the kind that left smoke in the air and fear lodged deep in the chest. None of them had known there was a bomb hidden inside the firetruck, not until the moment it tore itself apart with a roar that cracked the sky.

That moment split something inside him wide and raw. 

He could still hear it in his bones: the deafening blast, the violent shudder as the truck lurched, the metallic shriek as tons of machinery folded into itself. And then —the worst part— the sight of Buck, trapped beneath twisted steel, his body pinned where no human body should ever be.

Eddie had seen death before, in uniform and in battle. He had buried brothers. He had held his wife’s hand as life slipped away only months earlier. But nothing —nothing— compared to the suffocating terror of seeing Buck under that wreckage, as if the entire world had been balanced on his chest, threatening to crush him into silence.

For most of the team, the explosion was a brutal reminder of the fragility of their lives.

For Eddie, it was different. It was personal. It felt like the ground itself was trying to rip his world out from under him.

It was the sharp knowledge that his world —his son’s world— was tied to whether Buck kept breathing beneath that mountain of metal.

The days that followed weren’t about fire or smoke or immediate danger. They were a slower battle, one waged in quiet rooms that smelled faintly of antiseptic and frustration.

Eddie visited him in the hospital, then at home, and each time he walked through the door, he saw the same reflection in Buck’s eyes: frustration disguised as humor, helplessness hidden beneath jokes, his fists curling against the sheets as if he could fight his own broken body back into service.

For Buck, standing in fire was natural. Being forced to lie still, leg shattered, was unbearable.

It wasn’t just physical pain —it was the helplessness that undid him.

So Eddie made it his mission —not a grand vow, but a quiet, steady decision. What can I do to make it hurt less?

There wasn’t a manual for this. He improvised. Sometimes he sat beside Buck and filled the silence with stories about Christopher, goofy things the boy did at school, the way he mispronounced certain words on purpose to make Eddie laugh. Sometimes Eddie said nothing at all, choosing instead to sit shoulder-to-shoulder, letting Buck feel the weight of his presence without needing to earn it.

And sometimes, when Buck’s frustration threatened to consume him, Eddie brought Christopher along.

Chris had a gift —an easy, natural way of reminding Buck that he mattered. The boy would climb onto the couch, shove a book into Buck’s hands, or beg to build something ridiculous with pillows and blankets. Eddie watched as Buck’s jaw slackened, his shoulders relaxed, the tension draining from him in those small, stolen moments.

Christopher looked at Buck the way only a child could—with unfiltered admiration, as if even on crutches, even scarred and frustrated, he was still the kind of hero worth believing in.

Eddie never corrected him. Because in a way, Chris was right.

And so, somewhere in the quiet between hospital visits and therapy appointments, Eddie began writing an invisible book in his head.

A book titled All About Evan “Buck” Buckley .

Each page held a new discovery, small things no one else might notice:

1. He likes his coffee with cream, even though he insists he can drink it black.
   
   
2. When he truly smiles, the corners of his mouth tremble, like happiness embarrasses him.
   
   
3. He adds two extra spoons of sugar when he’s in a bad mood.
   
   
4. He never admits he needs help, but his eyes soften in gratitude when it’s given anyway.
   
   
5. He tolerates physical pain better than the silence of being sidelined.
   
   
6. Christopher is both his weakness and his salvation.
   
   

Page by page, Eddie read him slowly, carefully, as if Buck were scripture —something holy, fragile, worth memorizing line by line. He didn’t just notice the obvious things, but the spaces in between. The silences. The words Buck didn’t say out loud.

What could I do to remind him he isn’t a burden? What could I say that wouldn’t fall flat? How do I make him see what I already know —that he isn’t just part of the team, he’s its heart?

Sometimes Eddie coaxed him out of the house with excuses. 

A short walk. A movie night with popcorn. A drive with the windows rolled down, letting the wind wash away the claustrophobia of recovery. None of it was dramatic, but Buck breathed differently afterward. Lighter. Less suffocated.

And Eddie, quietly, made a note to himself: Buck doesn’t need grand gestures to feel alive. Sometimes the right company is enough.

The world called this rehabilitation. Eddie knew better. It was study. Patient study. A slow, careful education. Learning Buck, not like learning a skill, but like learning a song you couldn’t stop humming even in your sleep.

Of course, it wasn’t easy.

There were days when Buck seethed with frustration, when the scar seemed to mock him with every glance, when anger poured out of him in sharp, bitter edges. Eddie stayed. Listened. Absorbed it without flinching.

And when the storm passed, he would say simple truths, steady as a soldier’s oath.

“You’ll come back when your body’s ready. Not before. And when you do, I’ll have your back, and you’ll have mine. Same as always.”

Sometimes Buck looked at him like he didn’t believe it —like Eddie’s certainty was too much to take in. But Eddie never doubted. Not once. Because every page of that invisible book confirmed what he already knew: the more he learned of Buck, the more he wanted to stay.

Every time Eddie left Buck’s apartment after a visit, every time he watched him grit his teeth in therapy, he felt it—that deep, insistent pull. It wasn’t just attraction, though God, that was there too. It was something fiercer.

A certainty.

Late at night, after Christopher was asleep, Eddie would lie awake and flip through those invisible pages, tracing the words in his mind. And each time, he made the same promise.

I’ll keep reading. I’ll learn every part of him—his dreams, his fears, the cracks and the light that slips through them. Because understanding him is the only way I can care for him the way he deserves.

And though the world still felt unsteady after the blast that pinned Buck under tons of steel, Eddie carried a strange calm inside. Because he knew, no matter how long it took for Buck to rise again, he’d be there—patiently, stubbornly, learning him, loving him, one page at a time.

“Cuando te vi, tuve un buen presentimiento, de esos que llegan una vez en la vida. Quiero tenerte aunque sea solo un momento y si me dejas tal vez todos los días”

“When I saw you, I had a good feeling, of those that arrive once-in-a-lifetime. I want to have you even if only for a moment, and if you let me maybe every day.”

Eddie told himself he was doing the right thing.

Buck had been drowning for weeks —not in water, but in the stillness of his own body, trapped in the helplessness of an injury that stole from him the very thing he lived for: action, purpose, the sense of being needed. The doctors monitored his progress, measured the healing of flesh and bone, but no one had an instrument to measure the fracture of pride.

So Eddie decided to give him something the doctors couldn’t. Not orders. Not pity. Trust. He told himself it was a practical arrangement, that Carla was “busy,” that Buck spending the day with Christopher was nothing more than a favor. But beneath the excuse was the quiet hope that if Buck could be reminded of who he was in Christopher’s eyes—strong, safe, indispensable —then maybe he’d start to believe it again himself.

Christopher adored him. Eddie trusted him. That was supposed to be enough.

What Eddie hadn’t accounted for was the cruel laughter of fate.

The tsunami came like a god no one believed in until it arrived—violent, merciless, swallowing Santa Monica whole without a moment’s hesitation. Sirens screamed too late, radios crackled warnings drowned by the roar of waves, and the city itself seemed to tilt, as if it too had lost its footing.

Eddie knew about it almost immediately—through the frantic voices over dispatch, the chaos in the streets, the sudden thunder of fear that rolled through Los Angeles. He knew the danger, but he didn’t know the truth. Not yet.

He didn’t know Buck was there.
He didn’t know Buck had taken Christopher to the pier for a day of sun, laughter, and ordinary joy—an attempt to bring some light back into both of their lives.

And that ignorance kept him breathing. Until it didn’t.

The field hospital was chaos. Salt clung to the air, sharp and sour, mixing with the metallic tang of blood and the rot of seawater. People screamed, bodies were pulled from the waves, and everywhere Eddie turned he saw pain —bandages soaked through, shivering survivors, eyes too wide to hold their terror.

Eddie moved among them like a machine. Years of training took over; he checked pulses, lifted stretchers, barked instructions. He forced himself into focus because it was easier than listening to the part of him that had started to whisper a possibility too unbearable to name.

And then he saw him.

Buck.

Alive. Standing, though unsteady. His clothes torn, his skin raw with cuts, his hair plastered to his forehead. He looked like a man pulled directly out of the sea itself, fighting the weight of the water even on dry land. He was clutching a phone in one hand, his gaze scattered and unfocused.

Relief hit Eddie so hard it nearly drove him to his knees. He scanned him without meaning to —bruises, bleeding, shaking hands—but Buck was breathing, and that was all that mattered. For one suspended second, the world narrowed to just that: Buck alive.

But then Eddie saw them. Christopher’s glasses. Hanging from Buck’s neck.

The relief shattered. Horror poured into the cracks.

Where was his son?

“Are you okay? Wait, where’s Christopher?” The words tore out of him before he knew he was speaking. His voice was raw, too sharp, edged with a fear he couldn’t contain. His gaze locked on Buck’s face, searching for an answer, but finding only guilt. “Why do you have his glasses?”

Buck stammered —half explanations, half apologies— but Eddie’s blood was pounding too loud in his ears to process them. His mind spun with every possible ending, and none of them included his boy alive.

Then the crowd shifted. A busload of survivors stumbled in, and among them, a woman carried a small, drenched boy.

Christopher.

Eddie’s body moved before his mind did. He sprinted, shouting his son’s name, and when Christopher’s eyes lit up in recognition, Eddie swore the earth steadied beneath him again. He scooped him into his arms, holding him as though the ocean might come clawing back at any second. He pressed his face to damp curls, inhaling the smell of salt and survival, and promised himself he’d never let go.

But even as he held his son, Eddie’s gaze found Buck again.

Buck, collapsing into Hen and Chimney’s arms, his relief written across every exhausted line of his face. Buck, who had carried Christopher when the sea tried to claim him. Buck, who had nearly broken under the weight of loss, but refused to let go.

It had been him. All of it.

And Eddie knew, with a gratitude too deep for words, that if Christopher had to face the ocean, there was no one else in this world he would have wanted by his side.

The next day, Eddie didn’t wait for an excuse. He brought Christopher back to Buck’s apartment —not because he needed childcare, but because something inside him demanded it.

When the door opened, Buck looked like hell: pale, stiff, still stitched together with exhaustion. But Eddie walked in without asking, the way Buck had walked into his life —uninvited, but irreplaceable.

Christopher ran to him instantly, wrapping small arms around Buck’s waist, as if to prove that yesterday hadn’t broken him. Buck’s expression faltered, confusion flickering across his face, but Eddie ignored it. He unpacked Christopher’s bag, narrating each item as though the normalcy of it could anchor them all.

Buck finally broke the silence, his voice frayed at the edges.

“I lost him, Eddie.”

The words were a confession, a sentence, a punishment he’d carried since the moment the sea closed over their heads.

Eddie turned, steady and unflinching.

“No. You saved him.”

Buck shook his head, already trying to argue, but Eddie cut him off with a glance toward his son.

“That's how he remembers it. And now, it's his turn to do the same for you.”

Buck’s eyes softened, darting toward Christopher, who was happily absorbed in the television, safe, whole, alive. And Eddie felt it then—the certainty settling in his chest like gravity: no one fought harder for Christopher than he did. No one loved him as fiercely. Except Buck.

And for the first time, Eddie let himself say it aloud. His hand rose, steady, and rested on the back of Buck’s neck—gentle, grounding. His voice was quiet, but it carried a weight that left no room for doubt.

“Buck, there's nobody in this world I trust my son more than you.”

Buck blinked, startled, as if the words were too big to fit inside him. But Eddie meant them. Every syllable. And in that moment, something inside him burned —warmth, relief, the kind of fire that doesn’t destroy but remakes.

He wanted him there. Always. Not just for emergencies. Not just on the worst days. He wanted the laughter, the light, the unbearable turned bearable by Buck’s presence.

The world was cruel, and joy fleeting. But Eddie knew this much: if he was given even one more day with Buck by his side, he’d take it without hesitation. And quietly, fiercely, he hoped that day could repeat. Not once. Not fleeting. Every day.

Buck laughed at something Eddie said, soft and unguarded, and Eddie realized the ocean hadn’t drowned him. What was drowning him—what had always drowned him —was the love he’d never dared to name.

And for the first time, Eddie didn’t mind sinking.

“No sé nada de tu historia, ni de tu filosofía. Hoy te escribo sin pensar y sin ortografía”

“I don’t know anything about your story, nor about your philosophy. Today I write to you without thinking and without spelling.”

When Buck filed the lawsuit against the city, Eddie felt it like a bone snapping clean inside him. Not because he didn’t understand the rage behind it —Buck had every right. Rage at having been hurt, at being left behind, at feeling invisible in the very place he had bled for. Eddie understood all of that. But the lawsuit didn’t just put Buck against the department. It took him away.

The station was too quiet without him.

It wasn’t something Eddie could explain. Hen and Chim tried to keep things normal, filling silences with jokes and chatter. Bobby carried on with that steady, immovable tone that always anchored them. But for Eddie, every call, every shift, every breath inside that firehouse was wrong. There was no Buck striding through the door with too much energy, no half-smile lighting up the worst nights. It was as if someone had cut the heat and everyone else refused to admit they were cold.

That absence was slow poison. Not a sudden collapse, but a drip that hollowed him out day after day. He held his jaw tight at roll call, clenched his fists when he went home, and when he couldn’t hold it in anymore —when the silence scraped raw against his ribs— Lena gave him an outlet. Underground fighting.

It wasn’t healing. It wasn’t even relief. But under the roar of fists colliding, the taste of blood in his mouth, the ache in his muscles—it was distraction. A miserable substitute for the war raging in him, but enough to release what he never said aloud: the terror that Buck would never come back, the resentment of being kept at arm’s length, the helplessness of feeling someone he loved slip further away no matter how hard he reached.

More than once, Eddie held his phone in his hand. He would dial Buck’s number, wait through the ringing, and hang up before it connected. Because if he had learned anything about Buck, it was this: pressure made him retreat, walls shot up fast and thick. Push him too far and you lost him completely. Eddie told himself silence was the safest choice —even if it meant loneliness.

But fate doesn’t care about caution.

The reunion came out of nowhere, like a detonation in the middle of the most ordinary place: a supermarket aisle. Eddie was reaching for something forgettable when he saw him —Buck— standing between rows of detergent and chips, washed in artificial light. 

He looked exhausted, shadows under his eyes, his expression closed off, weighed down by things Eddie couldn’t yet name. He wasn’t the reckless kid who charged headfirst into fires anymore; he was a man carrying too much.

And Eddie broke. Words spilled, harsh and raw.

"Yeah? What'd you think was gonna happen?"

"Because you're exhausting."

"You know how much Christopher misses you? How could you? You're not around."

"I couldn't even call you to bail me out of jail."

Every sentence was aimed like an accusation, but underneath each was Eddie’s own reflection —fear, guilt, helplessness. The ache of not knowing how to hold on to him. The fury of realizing he hadn’t tried harder. And Buck just stood there, face steady, absorbing the blows, that quiet wound widening in his eyes.

Eddie saw the pain and still couldn’t stop, not until another voice interrupted the argument unraveling beside them.

The news came later. 

That very morning, before Eddie had even found him in the supermarket, Buck had already withdrawn the lawsuit. Everyone else exhaled in relief. Eddie couldn’t. His chest was too tight with self-loathing. He hadn’t stood beside him when Buck needed it most. And when fate finally handed him the chance, he had wasted it on anger.

Halloween came like a pause, a truce draped in orange lights and candy. But Eddie’s anger lived on, simmering, until Bobby finally stepped in and pulled him back from the edge.

It wasn’t until days later, at Buck’s loft, that the walls lowered enough for something real. The TV flickered in the background while Christopher laughed at cartoons. Eddie and Buck stood in the kitchen with beers, the silence heavy but not unbearable. 

Then Buck spoke, voice rough, breaking open in a way Eddie wasn’t ready for.

“You know... I thought no one was with me,” he said quietly. “That if I wanted to fight, I had to do it alone. My whole life’s been like this —proving my worth, even if no one noticed. The lawsuit… it wasn’t just against the department or Bobby. It was my way of shouting that I mattered too. That I deserved the chance to keep going, same as the rest of you did back then.”

Eddie swallowed, throat tight. 

He knew Buck’s coffee order, his favorite pizza toppings, the exact tone he used to reassure Christopher. But he didn’t know this —the darkness that shaped him before L.A., the scars invisible to the eye. 

He’d been studying Buck for years, yet whole chapters remained unread.

When Eddie finally found his voice, it shook.

“I-I failed you. I thought giving you space was the right move, but what I did was abandon you. And then when I saw you again, all I did was throw anger at you instead of saying what I really felt. I’m sorry, Buck. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry I made you think I didn’t trust you.”

Buck’s gaze dropped. His lips pressed together, trembling faintly. He didn’t say I forgive you . But Eddie saw the crack in his armor, small but real. Enough.

“You weren’t the one who had to mend my wounds, Eddie,” Buck whispered. “But… thanks for trying.” 

The weight of it lingered between them, a silence stretched so thin it felt like it might snap. And then Buck —always Buck— reached for levity the way a drowning man claws for air. He dragged them back to safer ground with a crooked smile, resurrecting the memory of underground fights and the time Eddie looked two seconds away from decking him in the middle of the supermarket. 

His eyes lifted, just enough to catch Eddie’s, and mischief, sly and stubborn, slipped through the exhaustion like sunlight through a crack in the blinds.

“Not that you didn’t deserve it,” Eddie shot back, a corner of his mouth twitching with a smile, “but I wouldn’t do that. You’re on blood thinners.”

That got the laugh Buck had been fishing for, and it cracked through the tension like light spilling through blinds. Still, Buck didn’t let go.

“Well,” he said, voice lighter now, “I’d still take you.”

Eddie blinked, caught off guard. “You think so?”

“I know,” Buck countered, the grin finally reaching his eyes as he shifted closer, hands hooked loosely in the waistband of his jeans. “You wanna go for the title?”

For a second, Eddie just stared at him, struck by how ridiculous and reckless Buck could be, even after bleeding out truths that still stung. But that was Buck —turning jagged edges into laughter, finding warmth in the rubble of their confessions. 

Beneath the teasing, Eddie could feel the pulse of something truer: every joke was really a question in disguise. Are we okay? Are you still with me?

And the answer was already written in Eddie’s chest.

He smothered a laugh into his beer, the sharp pull of want hitting him so hard he had to grip the bottle tighter to keep from reaching out. He wanted to silence that teasing smile with his own mouth, to carve away the walls with the truth of his hands. 

Instead, he sat there, listening to the television hum, watching Buck glow faintly in its light, and realized something deeper: Buck wasn’t just a man. He was a language. Complex, layered, endless. And Eddie was already too far gone —too in love with every sentence— not to want to read the whole book.

That night, when Eddie finally tucked Christopher into bed and sat in the dark of his own quiet house, he promised himself something simple. No more waiting until it was too late. No more silence dressed as caution. He would speak, he would show up, he would listen —even clumsily, even imperfectly. Because with Buck, perfection wasn’t the currency. Truth was.

Even if it came broken, misspelled, and raw from the heart.

“Para enseñarte a extrañarme, voy a escribirte mi canción más honesta, darte una vida con más sumas que restas.”

“To teach you to miss me, I'm going to write you my most honest song. Give you a life with more additions than subtractions.”

After that moment, life moved on. But it wasn’t really life —it was just a heartbeat that had been severed, one pulse cut short before the next could come. Because for Eddie, that moment never ended.

What he carried wasn’t normalcy. It was the suffocating darkness of the well. The humid, heavy air pressing against his lungs, the earth clinging to his skin, the taste of iron bleeding into his mouth. 

Every second dragged him further from Christopher… and further from Buck.

Christopher was his light. The memory of his son’s laughter, the warmth of his hugs, the way his eyes held unwavering faith in him —as if Eddie could fix anything, could stop the world from breaking apart— those were the sparks that pushed him to breathe when his chest screamed to stop.

But it wasn’t only Christopher’s face that kept him alive. It was Buck’s too.

Buck, with that stubborn smile, with that voice that had always called him back from the edge. Buck, who had been there on the days Eddie couldn’t carry himself, who found the words when Eddie’s throat was a desert. Buck, who never looked at him as a broken soldier but as a man still worthy of staying.

Eddie couldn’t leave either of them. 

Not his son. Not Buck. 

Not when both were pieces of the same home he had finally allowed himself to believe in.

The pain in his ribs tore his strength away with every movement, but memory became fuel. He clung to the image of Buck holding Christopher’s hand on the walk to school, of his sideways smile, of that maddening gleam in his blue eyes that never let Eddie hide for long.

He promised himself he would return —for Christopher’s arms thrown around his neck, for Buck’s ridiculous laugh echoing in his kitchen, for that fragile, unspoken home they had built together without even realizing it. He promised he would come back because he couldn’t leave Christopher without a father, nor Buck with another ghost to carry.

They can’t lose me. Not now. Not yet.

That thought was a flame in the pit’s darkness, burning hotter than the pain, stronger than the weight of the earth pressing down.

When he finally broke the surface —gasping, covered in mud, with lungs on fire and eyes stinging— Eddie understood something he had never put into words: there is no force stronger than the desire to return. And for him, that force had a name. It had Buck’s laughter, Buck’s stubbornness, Buck’s silences that meant more than entire conversations. It had Christopher’s smile, his faith, his love.

Every subtraction in Eddie’s life had found its sum at Buck’s side.

He wasn’t a man of big declarations, but as he held onto Buck in the cold, shivering and exhausted, he made a vow. As long as there was breath in him, as long as there was a road back, he would keep walking toward them. Toward Christopher. Toward Buck. 

Toward the truth he finally allowed himself to claim. 

This is my life. My home.

Eddie had learned Buck in fragments —half-smiles, loaded silences, sharp edges softened by warmth. He had pieced him together through glimpses, never the whole. But now the fragments fell away, and for the first time Eddie saw the truth in its entirety, heavy and unflinching.

He hadn’t understood, not then, why Buck had stopped fighting during the fire. Why his eyes had dulled into resignation when they pulled him out. Why his voice had cracked in the ambulance.

“I almost gave up. If you guys hadn’t come in, then…”

He hadn’t understood. Not until Buck told him the story from the beginning.

Daniel. The brother who never got to grow up. The shadow stitched into every day of Buck’s childhood. The cruel weight of parents who had him, not for what he was, but for what he could do.

Eddie’s breath had caught when he heard it. A brother lost. A boy condemned to live under the shadow of what he could not achieve. Buck speaking in that low, unsteady tone, hands clenched together like he needed to anchor himself to the present, to Eddie’s living room, and not the prison of his childhood home.

“They had me to save him,” Buck whispered, eyes unfocused, voice breaking. “I was never what they wanted. I was just… I was just defective parts, some shadow in a home that wasn’t mine.”

The words cut Eddie like shrapnel. Fury simmered in him, cold and sharp, but beneath it bloomed the deeper ache —the desperate urge to protect him, to gather him close and build walls against every wound carved into him by people who had failed to see his light.

“And in Maddie’s living room, I told them my job wasn’t dangerous,” Buck’s voice trembled, “not when I’d walked through fire every day of my life thanks to them. All my life, Eddie. And I still wasn’t enough for them.”

The blow landed straight in Eddie’s chest. He couldn’t breathe, imagining Buck as a boy, small hands reaching for affection and receiving only grief, attention only when he was hurt. The thought made Eddie sick with rage.

Without thinking, he leaned closer, pulled by that instinct that Buck had awakened in him from the very beginning.

“You didn’t have to walk through anything to prove who you are,” Eddie whispered, his hand finding Buck’s shoulder. His voice shook but didn’t falter. “They didn’t see you. Not the way I see you. Every day. The way you save people. The way you take care of Christopher. The way you fill a room just by being in it. You’re not defective parts. You’re not a shadow, Buck. You never were. If fire made you walk, it was only to bring you here. To us. Because now… now you’re home.”

Buck looked at him then. Eyes wet, lips parted, something raw and unfinished trembling in his expression. Eddie held that gaze and didn’t flinch, offering him every ounce of truth he had, even if his words were clumsy, even if what he gave was silence, steadfast and waiting.

“If you ever doubt your place in the world,” Eddie said softly, his voice breaking at the edges, “look at us. That’s where you are. With us.”

And there were no more questions after that. Because the answer had always been there —in Buck’s laugh, in his scars, in his relentless resilience. Eddie understood, finally and completely, that loving Buck meant embracing every wound, every fracture, every shadow. And he wanted all of it. He wanted all of him.

“No descansaré, solo quiero tenerte a mi lado. Ruego que mi voz te demuestre lo que te he esperado”

“I will not rest, I just want to have you by my side. I pray that my voice shows you that I've waited for you.”

Life seemed to steady itself after the storm of Buck’s parents. It wasn’t peace exactly —peace was too fragile, too foreign for them— but there was something softer in the air, like the world had finally decided to let Buck breathe again. 

Eddie noticed it in the smallest things: the curve of Buck’s smile as he poured coffee at the station, the way his laugh filled the quiet spaces that had once felt too heavy, the way his presence seemed to ease everyone’s steps, like gravity was kinder when Buck was around.

It wasn’t that the scars had vanished. Eddie could still see them, etched beneath the surface, in the pauses between Buck’s jokes, in the way his voice sometimes tightened before it smoothed out again. But the weight on his shoulders had shifted, lightened somehow, and Eddie caught himself smiling every time Buck laughed —as though that sound could stitch together wounds Eddie hadn’t even realized were there.

And yet, Eddie knew calm was never permanent. Not in their world. Not in his life.

The day of the shooting shattered that illusion.

The call had come in like any other. Eddie did what he always did—ran straight into danger, all his focus on getting Charlie out. And for a moment, he thought he had done it. The boy was safe, getting into an ambulance to be checked out, and Eddie finally allowed himself a breath.

Then came the sound. A gunshot, sharp and unforgiving, splitting the air like a crack of thunder.

The burn in his shoulder was immediate, a violent sting that seared through muscle and bone. His breath caught, and the world collapsed into a dizzying blur of adrenaline and pain.

And Buck.

He was there —suddenly, impossibly— in front of him. Eddie’s vision struggled to focus, but he saw enough: Buck’s face spattered with drops of red, his eyes locked onto his like an anchor holding him in place. Not letting go. Not now. Not ever.

Eddie could feel himself slipping, his strength draining as the blood pooled beneath him, but then Buck’s hand was there —gripping his, refusing to let him drift away. He saw him move beneath the massive firetruck, that same machine that had once nearly ended Buck’s own life, pulling Eddie toward him with a desperation that looked superhuman. Then Buck’s body curved over his like a shield, as if Eddie’s life meant more than his own.

Through the chaos, Eddie tried to reach for him. His fingers twitched, aching to touch Buck’s cheek, to ground himself in something more than pain and fear. His voice came out broken, ragged.

“A-Are you hurt?”

And then darkness.

When he woke, the world was nothing but blurred edges and sterile light. The hospital ceiling loomed above him, and the first voice he heard was Hen’s —steady, calm, the kind of voice that tethered you back to earth. Later, Chim came, her words gentler than Eddie thought possible, telling him what Buck had done in those days when Eddie couldn’t be there.

“Either he was with Chris, or he was with you,” they said.

The words struck harder than any bullet. Because Eddie knew no one else would’ve stepped into that role with such relentless devotion. 

No one but Buck.

When Buck finally walked into the room, Eddie felt breathless for reasons that had nothing to do with the wound. He wore guilt like armor, exhaustion painted across his face as though he’d been the one lying in the bed. Buck launched straight into stories about Christopher —how he had refused to let him stay with anyone else, how hard it had been to tell him about the shooting. Eddie listened, each word carving deeper into him, each detail another reminder of how much Buck carried without complaint.

And then came the words that nearly broke him.

“Still,” Buck whispered, voice thick with a desperation Eddie wanted to wrestle out of him, “I think it might have been better for him if I was the one who got shot.”

Eddie shook his head, but he didn’t have time to say what he needed, not when Abuela and Pepa swept into the room, and Buck slipped away like he always did —hiding his own hurt behind duty.

Buck stayed through the rest of his recovery, though, hovering at the edges. Too close, too far. When Eddie was finally discharged, Buck returned with a smile that never reached his eyes, a storm still lingering in him. Eddie wanted to shake him, to drag the truth out of him. Instead, he sighed and said quietly:

“Hey, since we got a minute…”

Buck sat beside him, the distance careful, measured. Eddie’s heart pounded with everything he’d left unsaid, but this —this he couldn’t hold back anymore.

“After the last time, when that well collapsed on top of me,” Eddie began, before looking at Buck when he interrupted, easing the edges of his words. Eddie smiled briefly, then pressed on. “After that… it got me thinking. You know, what would happen to Christopher if I hadn't?”

Buck’s gaze sharpened, serious, unblinking.

“So, someday, if, I, uh… Didn’t make it... Christopher would be taken care of. By you.”

Shock rippled across Buck’s face, disbelief mingled with emotion he couldn’t disguise. Eddie didn’t flinch. “It's in my will, if I die, you become Christopher's legal guardian.”

Buck’s voice wavered as he asked the same questions Eddie’s Abuela had once asked him, but Eddie’s answers were steady. Until Buck whispered the inevitable.

“Well, you say you did this last year… W-Why are just telling me now?”

Eddie met his eyes, steady, unflinching.

“Because, Evan, you came in here the other day and said you thought it would have been better if it have been you who was shot.” His voice shook but didn’t falter. “You act like you’re expendable. But you’re wrong.”

Silence hung between them —not heavy, not uncomfortable, but thick with truth. Naked and unyielding.

Recovery at home was harder than Eddie had ever imagined. Every movement, every breath was a reminder of how close he had come to losing everything. But Buck was there. Always there.

With infinite patience, with hands steady enough to change bandages and shoulders strong enough to hold him upright when the pain threatened to break him. He helped Eddie dress, helped him bathe, helped him survive the long nights when the pain refused to let him sleep.

And that intimacy —God, it was almost unbearable.

The first time Buck helped him bathe, Eddie nearly lost control. Not because of the pain, but because of the closeness, the gentleness. Every touch was a reminder of what Eddie wanted but couldn’t yet say. Every brush of Buck’s hand across his skin threatened to tear down the wall he’d spent years building.

He wanted to tell him. Every day, every moment. That his silence wasn’t indifference, it was fear —fear of loving too much, of losing too much. But with every gesture, every laugh, every sleepless night Buck spent on his couch, Eddie’s love only grew louder.

At night, when Christopher slept and the house quieted, Eddie would watch him. Buck, dozing off on the armchair, or distracted by some late-night rerun, unaware he was being looked at like a miracle. And Eddie would realize he was already too far gone. Already in love with every part of him.

And maybe —for the first time in his life— that didn’t terrify him.

Because beneath the pain, beneath the silences and the scars, there was hope. A slow, steady hope that whispered of something inevitable. A prelude to the leap they were both destined to take.

Eddie knew they weren’t there yet. The wounds were still too raw, the words still lodged in their throats. But he could feel it, in the silence of those dawns: step by step, they were walking toward it.

The moment when they would stop resisting. The moment when everything they had held back would finally come crashing down.

And when it did, Eddie knew —it wouldn’t be falling.

It would be coming home.

“Antes de estar junto a ti por toda la vida, quiero aprender a quererte, quiero estudiar cómo se cumplen tus sueños. Voy a leerte siempre muy lentamente, quiero entenderte”

“Before being with you for all my life, I want to learn to love you, I want to study how your dreams are fulfilled. I'm going to read you always very slowly, I want to understand you.”

The words weren’t spoken aloud. Not yet. But Eddie had been carrying them inside his chest like scripture, burning against his ribs, demanding release. Days had piled up with that certainty pressing down on him, louder than any call siren, clearer than any order on the radio.

They had been too close to losing each other—again—and Eddie knew he couldn’t wait anymore. Every brush of Buck’s shoulder against his, every glance that lingered just a second too long, every grin that set Eddie’s heart alight like dry kindling—it was all too much to keep locked away. Buck was already his home, his refuge, his impossible miracle. And Eddie was done pretending otherwise.

He made himself a quiet promise. After this shift, after they closed their gear lockers and drove away from the firehouse, he would tell him. Everything. That he had loved him long before he understood what that love was. That he wasn’t afraid anymore. That he wanted to build something—messy, beautiful, endless—together. He would stammer through it if he had to, voice breaking, words clumsy, but honest. He’d stop him, look him in the eyes, and leap. Net or no net.

But fate was faster than Eddie’s resolve.

Buck turned toward him before climbing the ladder, flashing that bright, wide smile that seemed to ignite everything in its orbit. And Eddie thought, God, how easy it would be to stay lost in that light forever.

And then it happened.

The blast.

A roar split the sky, violent and merciless. One moment was laughter, the next was thunder. The truck shook, shuddered, tore apart. Eddie felt the force slam into his body, sending him flying out of the truck, ears ringing, limbs buzzing with electricity.

When his vision cleared, the world had already changed.

Buck was slumped under the ladder, body slack, limp and hanging in a way that stole the air from Eddie’s lungs.

Time stopped.

The scream clawed up Eddie’s throat but got caught somewhere behind his teeth as he lunged forward, heedless of security, of fire, of anything that wasn’t Buck. He climbed, hauling himself toward him, his chest splitting open with terror. His hands gripped Buck's rope, desperate to drag him back, desperate to keep him. But his body was heavy, unyielding, and Eddie’s own strength failed him.

“Buck!” His voice cracked like glass, raw and furious. He lowered him down inch by brutal inch until Bobby was there, arms steady, pulling Buck into them.

Back on the ground, Eddie couldn’t look away —not from Chimney’s compressions, not from Hen’s voice steadying herself against the chaos, not from the silence of a chest that wouldn’t rise. His entire world was narrowed to the absence of a heartbeat.

Bobby shoved him into the driver’s seat. Eddie drove like the road was an enemy to conquer, his foot an iron weight on the gas. He barely saw the street ahead of him —he only heard Chimney’s hands striking Buck’s chest, only felt Hen’s desperate calls, only prayed to a God he wasn’t sure listened anymore.

At the hospital, Eddie replaced Chimney’s hands with his own, pressing down hard, ribs cracking beneath his palms. Each push was a plea. Each second a bargain. He forced rhythm into Buck’s body until at last —at last — Chimney shouted, “Fibrillation!” and then, “We’ve got a pulse!”

Three minutes. Seventeen seconds.

That was how long it took to drag him back.

Eddie counted every one, branding them into his bones like tally marks on a prison wall. For three minutes and seventeen seconds, Evan Buckley was dead. For three minutes and seventeen seconds, Eddie stopped existing too.

Because Eddie Diaz didn’t know how to live in a world where Buck wasn’t breathing.

And somewhere beyond, Buck dreamed.

Or maybe not a dream —maybe a temptation. A life dangled in front of him like bait.

Daniel was alive. His brother’s eyes were warm, steady, filled with a love that had never been cut short. Maddie was still with Doug, but she was diminished, trapped in that old, suffocating life. Their parents smiled at him, proud, supportive, unrecognizable in their easy love.

Buck himself was different. 

He wasn’t a firefighter. His hands weren’t scarred by rope burns or fire. They were chalk-stained, moving across blackboards, teaching children who looked up at him with shining eyes. A teacher. A man of safety and quiet. A man untouched by disaster.

It was everything he once thought he wanted. Peace. Stability. Acceptance.

And yet it felt wrong. Too quiet. Too hollow.

The first crack came when he realized Bobby was gone —dead, forgotten, the heart of the 118 missing.

The second was Christopher. Eddie’s boy wasn’t his boy here. He was with grandparents, faceless and far away. Eddie existed, but not like his Eddie. Not the man who teased and anchored him, not the father whose son Buck loved like his own. The emptiness of that loss sliced deeper than fire ever could.

The third crack came when Bobby appeared again —but not all his Bobby. A stranger with Bobby’s face.

And then came the glass.

Through it, Buck saw them. His family, his real family. Hen, broken-eyed but unyielding. Chimney talking nonstop to fill the silence. Maddie, torn apart, begging silently. Bobby, praying like faith could bargain with death. Athena, holding them together with steel and softness.

And then Christopher. His little Superman. His voice carried into the dream, small but fierce, begging him to come back. Buck felt the tug of that hand on his arm, felt Chris’s love bleeding through the veil, real enough to burn.

And then Eddie.

Eddie, wrecked in a way Buck had never seen. Shoulders shaking, tears running unchecked, hands trembling as if they didn’t know what to hold without him. His face was devastation itself, raw and cracked open, pleading without words.

And that was when Buck understood.

This place was never home. It was an echo, a lie. Because home wasn’t perfection —it was chaos and laughter and fear and fire. Home was Christopher’s hand tugging him back. Home was Eddie’s broken voice begging without sound.

Home was them.

His heart, his life, his everything —it was with them. With Eddie.

And so he fought.

With every remembered laugh, every brush of shoulders, every look too long to be casual. With every promise Eddie didn’t know he’d made. Buck clawed his way back, shoving against the dark, screaming silently, No, not yet, I’m not done, I’m not leaving him.

The glass trembled. 

Cracks spiderwebbed through it. 

And then, with a surge of will, it shattered.

“Para enseñarte a extrañarme, voy a escribirte mi canción más honesta. Darte una vida con más sumas que restas.”

“To teach you to miss me, I'm going to write you my most honest song. Give you a life with more additions than subtractions.”

Eddie hadn’t felt such absolute terror since the war.

The waiting room was too bright, too quiet, the kind of sterile silence that only hospitals knew how to breed. He sat there with Christopher curled on his lap, small arms wrapped tightly around his neck, when the doctors delivered their verdict to Maddie and Buck’s parents: they would try to get Buck breathing on his own.

To anyone else, that might have sounded like hope. Progress. A light at the end of a tunnel.

But to Eddie, it was a cliff edge. Because "try" was not a promise, and "breathing on his own" meant the fight wasn’t won. If Buck failed—if his body gave out, if the machines had to take over again—then Eddie knew with an awful certainty that something inside him would splinter beyond repair.

Christopher looked up at him with eyes too wide, too wet for a child his age, and Eddie held him close, almost crushingly so, because letting go felt like the same as losing everything.

“Everything will be okay, mijo,” Eddie whispered, though his voice cracked around the edges, betraying the truth. “Our Buck is strong. He always comes back.”

The words sounded steady, but inside he felt like a man clinging to the thinnest thread. He prayed —not to a name, not to a god, but to the universe itself, desperate for anything that might listen. He couldn’t raise his son in a world that had lost Buck.

The hours stretched like razors.

Every machine, every beep, every pause between breaths stabbed needle-sharp into Eddie’s chest. The uncertainty hollowed him out. He kept one arm locked around Christopher, terrified that if he let go, the world itself might break apart.

And then, the news.

Buck had breathed on his own. Buck had begun to wake.

The relief came so suddenly, so violently, that Eddie’s knees buckled, the air rushing back into his lungs as if he’d been holding his breath ever since lightning struck his partner.

He led Christopher to the hospital room, hand trembling in his son’s. The boy ran ahead, eager to see his hero, while Eddie lagged behind, afraid the whole thing would vanish if he moved too quickly. But there was Buck—in bed, alive, his eyes open, exhaustion and light mingling in them at once.

Eddie stopped at the doorway. Watching. Waiting.

Buck’s weak smile —just the barest curve of his lips— was enough to tear down every wall Eddie had built just to survive these past days. His throat closed up, and he had to look away so no one would see how close he was to breaking.

The days that followed felt… lighter. As if the earth itself had exhaled. Buck was healing. Christopher was laughing again. And Eddie —for the first time in years— felt something align inside of him, as if all the scattered pieces of his life had found their way back into place.

The night Buck was discharged, Eddie couldn’t stay away.

The thought of Buck alone in his loft, even with Maddie and his parents hovering, twisted something unbearable in his chest. So he called Tía Pepa to watch Christopher, grabbed some food as an excuse, and drove over with his heart hammering so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

Maddie answered the door, her smile too knowing. Behind her, Buck’s parents sat stiffly on the couch, pretending to watch a muted TV program while their eyes tracked Eddie like he was carrying contraband into the apartment.

Buck was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, a glass of water in his hand. His hair was mussed, his face drawn, but he was upright. Breathing. Alive. So alive Eddie’s heart nearly stopped from the sheer sight of him.

“You came,” Buck murmured, his voice small but steady.

Eddie let out a soft laugh, the kind that tried to disguise the quake in his chest.

“Of course I came. Like I’d ever stay away.”

The silence stretched, thick with everything neither of them knew how to say. Eddie was the one who broke it.

“I thought I was losing you,” he confessed, the words ripping raw from his throat. “I was afraid you'd leave and leave me here, with all this emptiness. And I don't know… I don't know how I'd live in a world without you.”

Buck looked down, his fingers tightening on the glass, lips curving in a shy, defensive half-smile that was more armor than comfort. 

“You don’t have to worry so much, Eddie. I’m fine. I’m not… I’m not as important as you think.”

The words hit Eddie like a bullet. Not because he believed them, but because he knew Buck did.

Without thinking, Eddie stepped closer, crossing a line he had always been careful to respect. His voice dropped, fierce and certain. 

“Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that again. You matter, Buck. To Chris. To the team. To me.”

Buck’s eyes darted up, blue and burning with fear. His voice cracked. 

“What if you knew all of me? Every broken part I try to hide. What if you leave once you really see who I am?”

Eddie leaned in, bracing his palm flat against the counter, his hand inches from Buck’s. 

“Then let me prove you wrong. Because I’ve already seen more of you than you realize. And I stayed.”

He let the words tumble out, steady and relentless, every syllable a truth too heavy to hold back anymore. 

“I know your silences. I know the scars you don’t talk about. I know how your brow creases when you think too hard, how you shut down when you need help, how you carry every burden alone because you think you don’t deserve anyone else to carry it with you. And I’ve been watching you all this time, Buck. Learning you.”

Buck’s lips parted, trembling, his eyes wet with something he couldn’t disguise. Eddie pressed on.

“That’s what I want —for the rest of my life. To keep learning you. Because nothing in this world matters more than being at your side. I’ve lived without hearing your laugh, without seeing you walk into the firehouse, without knowing if you’ll come home. I don’t ever want to learn that lesson again.”

In the living room, Maddie, Margaret, and Philiph held their breath, all too aware of what was happening in that kitchen.

Eddie didn't see them. He didn't feel them. There was only Buck, there, in front of him, the weight of the lightning still on his skin and life shining in his eyes.

And Buck understood that Eddie wasn't talking about simple fear. He was talking about a love so deep it could rebuild everything.

The air between them was electric, humming with the weight of everything Eddie had laid bare.

And then Buck moved.

The kiss was soft, trembling, tentative —like a man terrified of being shut out but too desperate not to try. Eddie answered without hesitation. It was brief, almost fragile, but it carried years of longing, silence, and every moment they had stolen from themselves.

The world contracted into the press of their lips, the breath they shared—

“Yes!”

The shout from the hall cracked the spell. They jerked apart like guilty teenagers to see Maddie in front of the stairs, hand over her mouth, eyes gleaming with tears and barely-suppressed joy.

“Maddie!” Buck yelped, his cheeks so pink they blended with the red of his birthmark.

But before she could say another word, Margaret and Philip appeared behind her, stiff and flustered. 

“Sorry, sorry… We didn’t mean to, uh, interrupt…” Margaret stammered, already ushering Maddie backward. “We’ll, uh, go check on Jee. Yes. Jee-Yun. Definitely Jee.”

“Yes, fresh air,” Philip echoed, pushing them through the door as if the building itself were on fire. “Good idea.”

The three of them vanished with the worst excuse ever invented.

The door closed. Silence returned.

And then Eddie laughed —nervous, incredulous, giddy. Buck dropped his face into his hands, groaning, before Eddie tugged them gently away.

“I'm sorry,” Buck murmured, his voice low, still trembling.

“Don’t apologize,” Eddie whispered, voice fierce and tender as he brushed his thumb along Buck’s cheek. “If it were up to me… this is just the beginning.”

And though the kiss had been cut short, its echo lingered —alive, thrumming between them like a promise neither had any intention of breaking.

“Si tú me dejas, no habrá preguntas, solo respuestas.”

“If you let me, there won’t be questions, only answers.”

The words left Eddie before he had even realized he’d said them, a quiet slip of truth that seemed too heavy for the soft night.

The house was still, wrapped in the kind of silence that doesn’t come often in Los Angeles. Outside, the city roared in its usual way —sirens wailing faintly, engines rumbling somewhere distant, the low hum of nightlife carrying on as if the world didn’t just tilt. But here, inside these walls, everything felt suspended. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.

The dim light of the living room spilled warm and golden, pooling over the furniture and painting the edges of Buck’s profile in soft glow. The television buzzed faintly in the background, forgotten, just another noise swallowed by the weight of the moment.

Chris had gone to bed hours ago, his room quiet and safe, and Eddie thought that should have been the end of it —the house shutting down into its nightly routine. But Buck was still moving about the kitchen, clearing glasses and humming absently to himself.

It was nothing out of the ordinary. And maybe that was why Eddie couldn’t look away.

He sat at the edge of the couch, elbows braced on his knees, eyes fixed on the shape of Buck’s hands as he moved. Ordinary things —hands that had held him in darker hours, hands that had pulled him out of wreckage and laughter alike— now carrying dishes to the sink as if none of that history weighed them down. Buck dried his palms on his jeans instead of the towel hanging right there, a small, careless gesture Eddie had seen a hundred times. And yet tonight it stole his breath.

They were home .

God , he thought. This is it. This is what I want.

Not the calls. Not the sirens. Not the bone-deep exhaustion that came with saving strangers. He wanted this: Buck in his kitchen, Buck humming low, Buck in all his careless, ridiculous, beautiful domesticity.

It felt like a revelation, and at the same time, it felt like something he’d always known.

“Buck.”

The word broke from him before he could swallow it down. His voice was low but steady enough to make Buck glance up, one brow arching in curiosity.

“What’s wrong?”

Eddie pushed himself up from the sofa. His body felt heavier than it should, every step weighted with the enormity of what he was about to do. He crossed the small space to the kitchen and stopped two feet from him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his skin. His heart thundered, but for once, he didn’t back away from the beat of it.

“I need to tell you something.” His voice caught, thick, but he didn’t search for the right words. Truth didn’t need polish. It just needed air. 

“I’m not going to ask you if you want to marry me,” Eddie began, the words tumbling rough and imperfect. “Not because I don’t want to, but because this doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like a certainty. So I’m going to give you reasons to marry me.”

Buck froze, glasses forgotten on the counter. His expression faltered, like his brain hadn’t caught up yet with what Eddie had just said.

But Eddie didn’t stop. He couldn’t.

“I want you to marry me because you’re the first person I think of when I wake up, and the last one before I fall asleep. Because Chris smiles differently when you’re here —bigger, freer, like you give him air I didn’t even realize he was missing. Because our life is better — happier — with you in it. And because even when I was drowning, you held me up without asking for anything back. You never let me fall. Not once. Not even when I thought I deserved it.”

Buck’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, his breath short and uneven. He didn’t move, didn’t interrupt.

Eddie pressed forward anyway, his chest tight. 

“I want you to marry me because with you, life doesn’t have to be complicated to be infinite. Because you taught me love doesn’t have to hurt. Because I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. And because… yeah, we’ll screw up, both of us. But none of that matters as long as we keep choosing each other.”

His voice lowered, almost conspiratorial, as if it were something fragile, meant for Buck alone. 

“And most importantly… I want you to marry me because I want to spend the rest of my life discovering new things about you. I’ll never get tired of learning you, Buck. Never.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was thick, brimming, so full it almost had a sound of its own.

Buck stared at him, wide-eyed, breathless, his chest rising and falling with something Eddie couldn’t name. His eyes gleamed wet in the golden light, and for once in his life, Buck looked completely, utterly undone.

Eddie’s hand trembled as he held it out, palm open, offering everything he was without armor or pretense.

Buck let out a broken laugh, shaking his head as if disbelief was the only thing holding him upright. He stepped forward, taking that hand and pressing it against his chest, right where his heart hammered frantically.

“You’re an idiot,” Buck whispered, his voice cracking under the weight of it. “The biggest idiot in the world.”

And then his mouth found Eddie’s.

The kiss wasn’t desperate, wasn’t rushed. It was steady, grounding, as though sealing a promise already written into their bones. Eddie melted into it, closing his eyes and surrendering to the inevitable truth: their future had just begun here, in the middle of his kitchen.

A soft noise in the hallway pulled them apart. Chris stood there, rumpled and yawning, scratching at his hair. 

“Why are you looking at each other weird?”

Eddie and Buck couldn’t help it —they laughed. Eddie crouched, gathering Chris into his arms, kissing his son’s hair. Buck leaned in, arms wrapping around both of them without hesitation, closing the circle.

“Nothing strange, mijo,” Eddie murmured into Chris’s hair. “We were just… talking about important things.”

“Like what?” Chris asked, voice thick with sleep.

Eddie’s eyes found Buck’s over their son’s head. The tears were still shining there, but the smile was steady.

“Like we’re not going to stop being together,” Eddie said firmly, a promise more than an explanation.

That night, in a kitchen glowing gold and quiet, the three of them understood: they were home.

When Chris drifted back to sleep, Eddie lingered by his bedside, watching his son breathe with the peace of someone who knows he is safe. For the first time in years, Eddie felt the same peace. He kissed Chris’s hair, closed the door softly, and walked back out with something burning in his chest.

Buck was waiting, leaning against the doorframe, a mix of nerves and tenderness etched into his smile. Dried tears clung to his cheeks, but his eyes gleamed with something unshakable.

Eddie’s hand trembled as he dug into his pocket. The small, worn box was simple, unremarkable —except to him. It had waited too long in the shadows.

“Is that…?” Buck whispered.

Eddie opened it. A plain ring, a single engraving. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“I wasn’t planning on this tonight,” Eddie admitted with a shaky laugh. “But after everything I said… After everything we’ve lived… it feels wrong to keep hiding it.”

He pressed the ring into Buck’s palm.

“It’s not a question. You already know the answer. It’s just… A reminder of what we already are. Of what we’re always going to be.”

Buck’s laugh broke on a sob as he slid it onto his finger like it had been waiting for him all along.

“Did you really think you were going to get rid of me that easily?”

Eddie pulled him into his arms, forehead to forehead.

“I never wanted to get rid of you. Not for a single second.”

The kiss that followed was different —no longer a beginning, but a vow. Outside, the city continued to roar. Inside, there was only silence, warmth, and the shape of forever.

And when they finally pulled apart, hands still clasped tight, Eddie knew one thing with absolute certainty: this was the night their lives had changed for good.