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“What!? No! That’s - - that’s ridiculous.”
“You don’t see it?”
“Do I see a caterpillar, Eddie? No. No, I don’t, because it’s clearly a walrus.”
“I don’t see it. Looks caterpillary to me.”
Buck scoffs. “A caterpillar.”
“Kinda see a turtle, too.”
“A turtle!” Buck squawks. “WHERE?”
“Yeah. Right there. The big blob.”
“You’re doing this on purpose. I know you are. You’re messing with me.”
“I just don’t see a walrus.”
“It’s the side profile of a walrus. See? The chunky body. The flipper. I’ll also concede to any sub-species of seal. I will not concede to caterpillar or turtle. You need to get your eyes checked.”
“That one next to it kind of looks like Chris. But sideways.”
Buck tries to cock his head to the side. The concrete is cold beneath him now. That’s good.
“Oh I kind of see it. The sticky-out bits are his crutches?”
“Yeah.”
“Chris would agree that it’s a walrus.”
Eddie laughs. He chokes on it. “Ow.”
“Sorry.”
“All he seems to do these days is disagree with me, so you’re probably right.”
The building groans around them. The concrete slab shifts as the roof collapses just a little further into the level below. The world shifts with it — their view of the sky tilting and narrowing.
Miraculously, they don’t slide off.
Buck’s good arm tightens around Eddie. His screaming ribs make it hard to sit up enough to check Eddie’s leg, but it looks like the make-shift tourniquet is still there. Still not quite stopping the blood.
“Oh. You know what?” Eddie whispers. “From this angle, I kind of see it.”
Buck snorts. Ow. He falls back against the concrete. It’s better now. It was worse when it was hot. It means they’re close. Means they’re coming.
“Told you.”
“Buck.”
“What else do you see?”
“Buck.”
“I can kind of see a love heart. Like a wonky one? You see it?”
“Buck. Please.”
The wonky love heart blurs as fresh tears sting his eyes. He shakes his head.
“We’re lower now. You’ll make it.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m bleeding out.”
“They’re coming.”
The building creaks and groans. He holds his breath. Their concrete slab remains.
“I need you to go. For Christopher.”
The burning in his chest is more than just a few cracked ribs now. It’s an ache. Serrated. Stabbing. Screaming.
“I’m not leaving you.” He can’t look at Eddie. If he looks at Eddie, he’ll do whatever he asks him to.
“Oh. Yeah. I see the wonky heart. That’s nice.”
Buck’s heart has always felt wonky — too big for the space carved out for it and too much for anyone he’s tried to hand it to. It's all jagged edges and battle scars and a reckless, unflinching thump-thump thump-thump thump-thump that beats for someone it’s not supposed to.
Eddie’s beats for Christopher.
Buck is the most selfish person he knows.
He looks at the clouds so he doesn’t have to look at Eddie.
“Buck?”
He squeezes his eyes shut. He knows that, at best, his arm is broken, he’s cracked a few ribs, he’s concussed, and he fucked his bad ankle. Right now, he can’t feel any of it. All he feels is terror.
“You don’t have to say anything, I just need you to listen, okay?” Eddie whispers. Buck hates it. “You tell Christopher that I love him more than anything. Always will. Always. He’ll need you. You’ll need each other.”
The groan of steel and crack of concrete sucks the air out of the room.
“And you - - you, Buck. Okay? You - - you’re the - - I think it might’ve been you. I think it might be. So I need you to go. I need you to go.”
Buck rips his eyes from the wonky heart to look at Eddie. Eddie who is concussed and losing too much blood and saying things that sound like - - like he might be saying - -
Eddie’s looking at him how he’s only ever seen him look at Christopher.
“What?” Buck whispers.
“I need you to go. Go to him.”
You’d think most things would seem less scary when you’re dangling over a steep drop into the collapsed building below you, the love of your life slowly bleeding out from the steel beam that’s crushing their leg and trapping them with no way out. Turns out, telling your best friend you’re in love with them is terrifying kind of whenever you do it.
“Eddie, I’m in love with you.”
Eddie laughs. When he smiles, his teeth are stained with blood. “Yeah, that’s - -” he hiccups. “That’s what I was trying to say.”
The concrete slab shifts and freefalls for three terrifying seconds. Where Buck was expecting to plummet into the abyss below them, it catches on a bent beam. In a haze of terror and adrenaline and the fucking insane high of your dying best friend confessing his love to you, he notes that he can’t see the sky anymore — the wonky heart cloud lost somewhere above them.
It’s dark, and the air is thick with smoke, and he can’t really see Eddie, even though he’s right next to him. He knows he’s still right next to him because he’s holding onto him like his life depends on it — and it does.
“You have fucked up timing. You know that, right?” Buck huffs. “You’re not going to death-bed confession me. Fuck you for trying to. You don’t get to die.”
“Sorry,” he hears Eddie offer weakly from the darkness.
But Eddie is not dying today. No one is dying today. Buck can’t think about any of the other things that just happened, because none of them matter if Eddie dies today. So, priority number one: Eddie not dying today.
Buck loosens his hold on Eddie just enough to feel his way down his body, towards his leg. “Take-a-guyta… dinner fsst,” Eddie slurs. Buck ignores him, desperately feeling around for the steel beam that had been crushing Eddie’s leg. He can’t fucking find it.
“Eddie. Eddie? When did the beam move? Was it just now? Why didn’t you say something!”
“Hmm?”
Okay. Fuck. The tourniquet feels like it’s still in place. It’s probably doing fuckall, but it’s still there. They feel steadier now, where the slab has collided with the beam. Carefully, so so carefully, Buck uses the side of the building to pull himself up into a standing position. It’s fucking excruciating, but so is watching Eddie slowly die beside him, so he makes it work.
He pats along the wall and feels a ledge, just above them.
“Eddie. You still have your torch?”
Eddie groans. He hears shuffling. Then a torch flicks on. He holds it up weakly towards him.
Buck grabs it. With the light, he can see the ledge leads to a hallway. A hallway that isn’t on fire or seconds from apparent collapse. A hallway that gives them a fucking chance.
“We’re getting out of here.”
“Tired.”
“I know. I know, me too. But we have to go home to Christopher, remember?”
“Christopher?”
“Yeah.” Buck bends down and gets his working arm around Eddie. “Need you to stand up so we can go see Chris.”
With everything he has, Buck pulls Eddie to his feet. He sags into him immediately. He’s lost so much blood.
“That’s it. That’s it. Alright - - I’m gonna hoist you up there. It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker for both of us.”
“Hmmkay.”
Eddie is essentially dead weight against him, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Buck’s ribs scream as he gets his bad shoulder under Eddie’s butt, using his working arm to keep him from toppling over. He hoists him up in line with the hallway, and pushes him up.
Eddie face plants in the hallway.
It’s utterly unbearable, but this next part is about to be worse.
He shines the torch up at the ledge — it’s not that far up, but Buck is heavy, and he has one working arm and a bunch of broken ribs. His prime pulling-himself-up tools are, for lack of a better word, fucked.
Eddie Diaz is, allegedly, in love with him, though. So he’s going to do it.
He puts the torch in his mouth and grabs hold of the ledge with his good arm. He tries to pull himself up. His ribs scream. His other arm lays limp beside him, useless. Eddie groans above him, and then the building groans, and then a loud crack echoes through the building as something beneath them shifts. Like dominoes, whatever shifts causes everything else to shift with it. The concrete slab beneath his feet topples and smashes into the abyss below.
He hangs, one-handed, from the ledge and tries not to think about how Eddie could’ve gone down with it. He also thinks about how grateful he is for never skipping arm day at the gym.
He swings his hips to try and gain some momentum to pull himself the rest of the way up. He just needs to kick a leg up there and he’ll be golden. It’s just, very slightly harder than it sounds.
He hears Eddie groan something from above him and looks up, the torch in his mouth lighting up the ledge to see a bleary Eddie reaching a weak hand out over the ledge.
“Nuh-uh,” Buck grunts, torch impeding his ability to tell Eddie to get as far away from the ledge as possible. He thinks Eddie probably gets what he means anyway. He doesn’t listen. Instead, he reaches out just enough to place his hand over Buck’s where he’s desperately gripping the ledge. He squeezes Buck’s hand, then passes out.
Fuck.
Fueled by a burning distaste for deathbed confessions, he all but defies the laws of gravity and physics and the human body and swings a leg up, hooking an ankle on the ledge and pulling the rest of his body up.
As he collapses next to Eddie, the world going blurry and sideways, he hears footsteps running towards them. He thinks maybe someone calls out his and Eddie’s names, too. That’s nice. Their names sound nice together, he thinks, as all the pain slowly slips just out of his reach.
“I think it looks like a dragon!” Chris suggests, pressing his nose up against the car window.
“I can see that,” Buck agrees, tilting his head. “Or like a dinosaur.”
“Aren’t dinosaurs and dragons the same thing?” Eddie offers from the passenger seat.
“No,” Buck and Christopher sigh at the same time.
“Okay, well I think it looks like an elephant.”
Christopher groans.
Buck gapes. “An elephant?”
“Yeah! He’s standing on a ball.”
“I know the doctors cleared you but we should take you back. Get you checked.”
Eddie rolls his eyes. “You’re just jealous of my creativity.”
Buck reaches over and pats Eddie’s thigh supportively. “Sure I am, honey.”
He keeps his hand there. Eddie covers it with his own. He squeezes.
“Oh, hey, look!” Eddie grins, pointing at a shapeless blob in the sky. “A wonky heart!”
Christopher scoffs behind them. “You always say everything looks like a wonky heart. It never looks like a wonky heart.”
“No, I see it!’ Buck lies.
“Shocking,” Christopher offers sarcastically.
Buck chuckles, turning to share the laugh with Eddie, but Eddie’s already looking at him — a soft, disbelieving smile on his face. He winks at Buck. Buck isn’t even embarrassed to admit he blushes.
“You’re just not looking hard enough, kid,” Eddie explains. “Did we ever tell you about the time we saw a cloud that looked just like you?”
Christopher groans dramatically. “Yes, dad. Like, a thousand times.”
Eddie chuckles, lifting Buck’s hand to his lips and pressing a kiss to his palm. “Had your crutches and everything.”