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It always amazed Eddie how small Buck could make himself, how insignificant he could be when he wanted to be.
Sure, when they were out on a call he inhabited all the space you’d expect of a 6’2” 200lb guy in peak physical fitness with the lungs to bellow across even the loudest of disasters. (“We have radios for a reason, Buck, try using yours next time.”) You couldn’t miss him on a call, no matter what he was doing. And even back at the firehouse, when the attention was on him he was larger than life, completely unmissable even when he was being a total train wreck. Then when he was spending time with Christopher, he was the goofball older brother-slash-fun uncle that the kid needed in his life.
But Eddie saw him in the quiet moments too, the times when he just faded into the background of everyone else’s lives. The times when he seemed to shrink in on himself, his personality falling back and making him seem small, and he let himself go unnoticed while others had fun around him. Times when he sat back, watching them with a dark look in his eye and a mournful expression that only Eddie seemed to notice, because only Eddie was watching him in the quiet moments as well as the loud ones. As soon as the attention swung back to him, he was cheerful Buck again, a smile plastered on his face and his personality expanding back out to fill the same space as his body.
He’d been quiet that morning, sitting curled up on the couch in the firehouse, staring silently into his coffee until Chim had yelled for his opinion on whatever debate was going on. He’d had an air of resignation that Eddie hadn’t dared ask him about, fearing whatever the answer would be.
Eddie thought this as he sat, reluctantly, on the edge of a gurney, hissing as Hen dabbed at the gash on the back of his head. The scenario had shifted so fast, so violently, that Eddie hadn’t had time to process it before he was being flattened by his own Halligan. One second they’d been forcing entry to a wreck, the next Eddie was on a gurney while LAPD SWAT and hostage negotiators took over the scene.
And Eddie was looking around, despite Hen’s admonitions to stay still, and he couldn’t see Buck. He’d been right there, with Eddie, trying to crack the car door open alongside him. He’d scrambled over with the saw that Bobby had just finished with, a grin splitting his face as he set it to the metal of the car, nudging Eddie and his Halligan to the side. And Eddie had been smacked over the head, but Buck…
“He’s on the bus,” Hen said, quietly. “He’s still alive, still talking on the radio, but…”
Eddie’s heart skipped. Buck was on the bus. The bus that they’d already cleared most of the passengers from. The bus that held three dead passengers and a dying driver who’d told them to ‘go help someone you can save’.
“It’s the driver’s son,” Hen continued. “He wants us to save his dad, he’s trying to make Buck treat him.”
They’d left the driver because there wasn’t any way to save him. The side of the bus had shredded on impact, a large piece of metal cutting through the driver and lodging into his seat behind him, almost cutting him in half. He’d waved a wrist bearing a DNR bracelet at them, and commanded them to leave, to do some good elsewhere.
‘I’m not worth saving, not now. I should have known when I beat that cancer that the Good Lord would come for me a different way,’ he’d said, waving them off.
“He wouldn’t even let us make him comfortable,” Eddie said. “He told us not to waste resources on a hopeless case.”
“And was he?”
Eddie nodded. He opened his mouth to explain why, when a scream of rage and grief and the snap of gunfire filled the air.
The driver hadn’t thought himself worth saving. As SWAT stormed towards the bus, medics close on their heels, Eddie hoped that Buck didn’t feel the same way.