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Hen says she’s updating her will. She says it over leftover Thai food, casual as weather, chopsticks clicking against the container. Buck laughs because that’s what you do when someone mentions mortality between bites of pad see ew. “Got to make sure everything’s squared away before we go up,” she says, like she’s checking the O₂ gauge, running inventory. “You’re very calm about your own hypothetical death,” he says, and the noodle sticks to the roof of his mouth.
Hen shrugs. “I’ve been a paramedic for twenty years. Hypothetical death and I are old friends.”
“Never hurts to be prepared,” she adds.
“You mean in case of catastrophic vacuum death?”
“Exactly. You should update yours too." She smiles that calm, surgeon’s smile that always lands like a challenge. It cuts like a scalpel—clean, precise, and somehow leaving a bruise he doesn’t notice until later.
“Why? You planning to take me with you?” The smile that follows tastes hollow.
She gives him that look—the one that says she knows him too well to bother answering. And that’s the thing about Hen. She never tells you what to feel. She just says something practical and leaves you to fill in the rest.
The house feels colder than he anticipated. He breathes through his teeth, runs a hand over the back of his neck. Buck swallows, the echo of Hen’s calm settling in his chest, and wonders what it would feel like if he ever had to leave someone to fill in the blanks after him. The air smells faintly of paint, coffee, the hint of metal from the sink. It still smells like temporary. The hardwood is cool under his feet, clean in the way that means untouched. The kind of clean that’s trying too hard to be something it isn’t yet. The plant by the window leans toward the faint sun as if it knows more about surviving than he does. He drops his keys on the counter. They clatter, loud—a knock at a door no one will answer.
He thinks about the job—how often he’s held someone else’s life in his hands, how sometimes they live and sometimes they don’t, and how the difference always feels smaller than it should. He remembers the sound of a monitor flatlining in the back of the rig, the weight of a wedding ring pressed into his palm by accident, the way the world goes on afterward anyway.
He wonders what people would say if they knew there’s no one listed to clean up his mess afterward.
The laptop screen throws a pale light across the counter, soft blue bleeding into the walls. Create Your Will in 10 Easy Steps! He almost laughs, but the sound that comes out is closer to an exhale with edges. The cursor blinks—steady, expectant, like it’s judging him for hesitating. The problem with paperwork like this is it forces you to look at your life like it’s evidence. A ledger. Who gets what? What even counts as something worth getting?
His pulse ticks under his ribs as he scrolls. Beneficiaries. Executors. Final wishes.
Buck thinks of Bobby first. How grief folds into you like wet sand—filling every crevice, leaving imprints that never dry out. He imagines leaving the, the same echo, and a laugh comes up—bitter, metallic, low. Like a ghost of humor: the only thing worse than dying is dying administratively unprepared. Then Maddie, who’d know exactly what to do with the paperwork but would hate every second of doing it. She’d find his chipped mug, his drawer of coins, his stash of magnets from his travels, and she’d shake her head, swear she never knew he owned any of it. He smiles at that, faint, automatic. She doesn’t need his ghosts taking up counter space.
His fingers hover over the keyboard. It feels like holding a scalpel over the blueprint of his life, deciding which pieces to leave intact and which to let crumble. He types Christopher Diaz before he can think too hard about it.
For a heartbeat, it feels right. It always does. Chris at eight, that small hand pressing into his shoulder, seeking balance and presence, trust and warmth all at once. Chris at ten, laughing so hard milk came out of his nose; Chris at thirteen, trying to hide his grin when Buck teased him. Chris, fifteen now, taller each year, voice cracking in new ways, and Buck feels it in the pit of his stomach—that familiar anxiety tightening into ache. All those mornings he missed—rides to school, late-night homework, pancakes half-burnt because Buck forgot to flip them. The feeling in his chest twists. Not grief exactly, not guilt exactly, but something tangled in the pit of him, pricking him awake. He’s not the first person Chris calls anymore. The absence he knows too well, stacked on top of all the absences before.
Buck’s chest tightens. He erases the name. The room feels emptier for it.
It’s not that Chris shouldn’t be the one—it’s that he shouldn’t have to be. The idea of leaving all his things behind for him feels like another absence for Chris in a shape that Buck can’t bear to look at. The keys under his fingers rattle faintly; he imagines their clatter reaching Chris or Eddie, somewhere beyond the room.
He leans back, eyes burning a little from the screen light. The hum of the fridge catches in his ears. His pulse syncs to it. Eddie comes to mind, steady as ever. Efficient. Practical. He types Eddie Diaz slower, as if the name itself might feel his hesitation. The name that’s already on his emergency forms, the one who knows which meds he’s allergic to, the one who’d remember to water a plant if Buck forgot. It would make sense. It always does, with Eddie. Except nothing about writing Eddie’s name ever feels simple. He imagines Eddie finding this file someday, eyes tight, jaw clenched, pretending the words don’t hurt. The thought alone makes Buck’s throat go tight. He can almost hear Eddie’s voice—steady, measured, calling him an idiot for not asking for help sooner.
He scrolls to the next section. List anything else you want your loved ones to know.
He stares at it until the words blur, until the light on the screen turns the room strange and colorless. He wants to write everything, then nothing, then something that isn’t enough. Each option feels too big, too small, too late. Then he types, Tell them I was happy. Tell Chris I meant to call. A small, helpless laugh slips out. “God, that’s bleak.” He deletes it letter by letter. He types, Take care of each other in the box, then erases that too. That’s what they’ve always done, with or without him.
He tells himself it’s just a document, but the empty field where a name should go feels like a pulse that’s missing a beat. The air feels thick. He pushes the chair back and lets himself drift through the house. Every sound is amplified—the low hum of the fridge, the soft groan of the floorboards under his feet, the rustle of the wind against the window.
He touches things as he goes: the worn corner of the counter, the handle of the cabinet, the photo on the fridge. His thumb lands on the picture—him, Eddie, and Chris squinting into the sun. Chris’s grin wide and unguarded. Eddie half-smiling like someone who doesn’t realize yet he’s being looked at. The moment is small and ordinary, and he doesn’t even remember who took it. The photo’s edges are curling, the ink fading, but the memory still hums with heat. He can almost feel it—the sunlight, the way Eddie’s shoulder felt under his arm, the weight of belonging that used to come so easily.
Buck stands there for a long time, thumb tracing the border of that moment, pulse beating somewhere deep and unsteady.
He imagines what this house would look like after him. He notices a smudge on the window, the coins in a jar catching a gleam. A half-finished book on the nightstand, the couch cushions dented in familiar shapes. Would anyone even know which dents were his? The cursor still blinks in the other room. He goes back, types something to capture a feeling he can’t quite name, then deletes it again. The idea both comforts and wrecks him. Maybe that’s the point of a will—to measure your life in the things that outlast you. Tiny, ridiculous things, but they are part of what he has built. They press into him as much as he presses into them.
When he wakes up in the morning, the soft blue glow of the laptop still flickers behind his eyelids, lingering like the fluorescent hum from the station. This is what he leaves behind. The house is his—in pieces, in echoes, in presence. They’ll reconstruct him from the fragments he leaves behind, small, imperfect, living. But he wonders who’s keeping track of all the pieces he’s already given away.
Eddie doesn’t mean to overhear. He’s just walking past the break room when Buck’s voice catches his ear—low, steady, not the usual kind of Buck volume that fills every space he’s in. There’s a tone to it that makes Eddie pause, one hand braced on the doorframe. Inside, Buck and Harry sit at the table, the kind of fluorescent light that makes every corner feel too bright and every shadow too sharp. Two half-finished coffees sit cooling between them. Buck’s leaning back in his chair, legs stretched out, trying for casual. Harry sits forward, elbows on his knees, looking like he’s trying to hold still inside his own skin.
“—I just keep thinking about how much I missed,” Harry says, soft but steady. “With him.”
Buck doesn’t answer right away. He’s sitting on the couch across from Harry, elbows on his knees, gaze fixed on some middle distance like he’s trying to make sense of it too. The station lights catch in his hair, faint and gold, and for a moment Eddie sees not the guy who runs into burning buildings but the kid he must’ve been once—someone who learned early that love and loss can share the same room.
“I get that,” Buck says finally, voice low. “My parents—” He stops, a small, rueful laugh breaking out. Eddie flinches even though he’s alone, caught on the wrong side of a sound meant for another. “They lost my brother before I was born. And no one told me why they were…the way they were. Not until I was grown.” Eddie watches the two of them, and it hits him that of everyone in their orbit, Buck is maybe the only one who could meet Harry exactly where he is. Not with answers, not with neat, grown-up comfort—but with the kind of understanding that comes from surviving the echo of someone else’s grief.
“There isn’t a right way to grieve,” Buck says quietly. “You just do it however you can. And sometimes that means being angry, or confused, or… nothing at all.”
The words aren’t dramatic. They land in the air like dropped tools—small, solid, loud. Eddie can see the faint twitch in Buck’s jaw, the muscle working there—that little tell he gets when he’s holding himself steady. He’s never heard Buck talk about his parents like this. Never heard him sound…not sad exactly, just resigned. Like someone who built a life on the other side of an old wound and still knows where the scar runs. Every word presses in on him. He wants to reach in, to press a hand to the wound to acknowledge it, even if it has already healed over.
Harry looks at Buck differently after that. Not with pity—with recognition. Harry says something about the academy, halting, almost embarrassed. “It’s not just for him,” he mutters. “I think I want… what you guys have.”
Eddie is watching Buck do what Buck always does: find someone’s hurt, name it gently, hand them back a little light. He’s good at it.
Eddie thinks, not for the first time, that Buck never really stopped trying to save people from the kind of silence he grew up in. He thought he’d gotten used to watching Buck do this—offering himself up, again and again, to fix what he didn’t break. But tonight it feels like standing behind glass, watching the same story replay. Harry’s smiling now—small, tentative, the kind that breaks through after a long winter. Buck grins back, a flash of teeth and something bright that doesn’t quite reach his eyes but comes close. Eddie steps back before they see him. His shoulder brushes the doorframe, grounding him in the physical world again. The hallway feels cooler, the air thin.
He tells himself he shouldn’t eavesdrop. That they deserve their moment. But as he walks away, he can still hear Buck’s voice in his head—quiet, sure, carrying all the weight it never used to hold. And underneath it, Eddie feels that familiar ache—the one that comes from seeing someone you love offer pieces of themselves to the world and wondering how much it costs them each time.
Hours later, that same feeling is still there, humming under Eddie’s skin when the alarm sounds.
Eddie presses flat against the metal of the door, knuckles whitening, heart hammering in the way that leaves a dull ache behind the sternum. Through the small window, he sees Buck moving—fluid, deliberate, dangerous in the quiet precision of someone who loves the risk almost too much. Sparks arc in the air, a blue hiss and flare that smell faintly of burnt wire, and Eddie swallows hard. He wants to push the door, throw himself into the fight, pull Buck back, make the world stop—but the thought of distracting him is worse. He holds himself still, counts breaths he doesn’t take, presses his weight into the wall so his hands don’t wobble.
His mind keeps flashing back, despite his best efforts, to the memory of his locked bedroom—Buck at the doorway, breaking through, calm and patient and steady while Eddie crumpled inside himself. He remembers the panic, the suffocating pressure, and the relief that came when Buck simply stayed, simply held a space for him to breathe.
Now, watching him with the haywire robot, Eddie remembers the way Buck’s fingers had brushed over his shoulder that night, the weight of steadiness he can’t replicate, and he feels it again now as he watches him move. He can’t let it show. He can’t let Buck see how much it hurts him to only watch. Buck lunges forward with the axe, grinning wide, teeth bared in the way that makes Eddie’s stomach knot.
And then—stillness. The machine falters, collapses. Buck straightens, chest heaving, shoulders tense. Eddie opens the door just enough for Buck to step out, careful not to startle him, careful not to shift the fragile rhythm of the moment. Buck leans back slightly, letting Eddie see the graze along his arm. Buck hums something like a laugh, half in exhaustion, half in disbelief, letting Eddie know he’s aware but not worried. Eddie’s fingers hover, then move with the precision of years of muscle memory—careful, steady, practiced. He presses gauze over the cut, watches the way Buck flexes slightly against the wrap, tiny tremors running through his forearm.
“Easy,” Eddie says, voice low, measured. He keeps it calm, even as heat floods his face, throat tight. “You’re okay.” Not because Buck isn’t—it’s because Eddie needs the words to be true.
“You’re lucky the thing missed your chest,” Eddie says, voice low, almost casual, because anything more would make him sound like he’s unraveling.
“Yeah,” Buck murmurs, voice low. Not triumphant, not relieved, just a sound that confirms he’s still here. He leans back slightly, letting Eddie adjust the wrap fully, letting himself be tended to, and Eddie studies the tremor of his chest under his hands, the small pulse of life in a body that moves too fast for the world sometimes. Eddie’s fingers tremble slightly. He’s aware, all too aware, of how much of Buck is still untethered to the world around him, and how easily it could crack.
“You think you’ll be okay moving around after this?” Eddie asks, gauze snug between his fingers, voice careful.
Buck shrugs, chin lifted, eyes flicking up. “Yeah… just gotta let it stop buzzing.” A smirk, small and shaky, nothing theatrical, just the faint edge of adrenaline talking.
Eddie nods. He doesn’t reach to brush Buck’s hair back or linger over the wound. He can’t—not yet. But he notices how Buck leans, imperceptibly, into the touch, letting his fingers do what they need to do without fanfare. The quiet tension hums in the room, heavy, layered, alive, the way adrenaline lingers long after danger passes.
Finally, Eddie steps back. The wrap is secure, the arm supported, Buck testing it, shaking out the tremor. There’s a long moment of quiet. Eddie steps back, flexes his hand once as if to shake something off, but the warmth lingers in his palm. Eddie’s pulse slows but not fully; the energy in the room is sticky, lingering in the space between them, the unspoken weight of proximity. “Let’s move,” Eddie says, his voice low but firm. “Chim is waiting.” He gestures toward the door.
Buck nods, testing the arm one last time, then lets Eddie guide him. Out in the corridor, the lights hum, the antiseptic smell sharp but grounding. Eddie’s hand hovers near Buck’s back, not touching, just ready. The tension hasn’t vanished—it never does. They move together, side by side, toward the next call, the next patient, the next bit of chaos.
The tunnels smell like rust and water and something electrical burning out. Their boots echo down the concrete steps, too loud in the half-dark. The sound of dripping water builds into a rhythm that matches Buck’s pulse.
The train is a wreck of steel and glass, folded into itself like it can’t decide what shape it wants to be. A woman’s voice cuts through the chaos, sharp and urgent, each syllable like glass breaking. Her husband kneels beside her, hands useless against the two ton weight trapping her leg.
Buck drops to a crouch beside the debris before he can think, hands moving instinctively. The water creeps higher, cold enough to bite into his bones. Eddie’s flashlight swings across the mangled metal, the thin line of blood spreading through the soaked fabric, highlighting angles of the wreckage that make him flinch. It slices through the roar of rushing water, the groan of twisted metal, the shouting and splashing and chaos. Not clean. Not clinical. A word with teeth, and it bites straight to the chest. Buck freezes, glove braced against the steel, water creeping up to his knees. For a second, the world contracts until he’s somewhere else entirely: under a firetruck, ribs pressing against iron, lungs aching, panic screaming up his throat. He wants to argue. But he can’t. Because this is different. He’s not the one under the weight anymore.
He blinks, shakes his head, and the tunnel snaps back around him.
Across the car, knee-deep in water, Eddie calls again. Voice steady, sharp, impossible to ignore. “Her leg’s trapped. Circulation’s gone.”
Buck’s chest tightens. The syllables land heavy, too final. The water laps around his knees. Buck wants to throw out every memory, every promise, the way he once would have reached and grasped for another route. We’ll find another way, he thinks. But the words stick, lodged somewhere behind his teeth.
Eddie’s across the subway, soaked, staring at the wreckage like he’s trying to map every failure and success in the same moment. His voice cuts through, steady. “We’re running out of time.” His tone is clinical, but his eyes aren’t. They flick toward Buck for a second too long. It’s not a question. Not permission either. Just the truth laid bare: there’s no other option. Buck swallows hard. His throat feels raw. He looks at the woman pinned under the debris—barely thirty, her breath coming shallow and fast. There’s a ring on her finger, a memory of a man’s voice breaking as he was escorted away, repeating her name like it’ll anchor her here.
The girl’s face is pale, her lips gray. And Eddie looks to her, his jaw tight, eyes flicking with something Buck can’t name—guilt, resolve, memory. He envies it. Fears it.
The cut is made. The smell hits first: scorched metal, wet fabric, blood. The water churns pink. Buck breathes through it anyway, hands still gripping the wreckage, every muscle wired. When it’s over, the silence is worse than the chaos, leaving only the hiss of water and the ragged breathing of the girl, alive. Relief floats in the tunnel, but Buck can’t claim it.
The sight of the saw makes Buck flinch. It carries through the tunnel, through the water, past the shock and fear and blood, straight into memory. He remembers being pinned. Remembered pain made real again, in a different shape. And Eddie—Eddie’s hand over his, firm, grounding, a single tether in the storm of pain. Don’t let go. Every inch of him wants to reach for that same certainty—but he can’t. Eddie’s hand isn’t there now but Buck can almost feel it anyway. The memory presses against the present, a reminder of what it meant to be saved—and what it now means to be powerless in the face of another choice.
Then someone calls for another pair of hands. The moment shatters. Buck exhales, gloves tightening against his palms, eyes sliding away, heart still thrumming like it might burst. But the memory stays, lodged deep, and Eddie stays in the corner of it, leaving only the echo.
They pile into the truck as it hums beneath them, steady and low. Streetlights spill across the windshield in gold fragments, catching on the edge of Buck’s jaw before dissolving into dark again. The air smells faintly of oil and wet asphalt. Someone’s radio chatter filters through the speakers, distant and tinny, but neither of them speaks. Buck watches the blur of the city slide by. Every stoplight, every shadowed storefront, feels like a place he’s already been. His palms rest open on his thighs, rough skin catching against the fabric of his pants. There’s still the faint pulse of adrenaline in his fingertips, that aftershock that doesn’t know where to go.
Across from him, Eddie looks out the window with that quiet focus that looks like calm until you’ve known him long enough to see the edges. His shoulders stay tight, jaw locked just a fraction too hard. Buck can feel it from where he’s sitting—that strain of someone trying to hold still when everything inside wants to move.
They don’t talk about the call. The silence between them hums with the same low frequency as the engine, steady and unbearable.
The station smells like old coffee and disinfectant, a sharp mix that makes Eddie want to inhale and gag at the same time. The hum of the fluorescent lights overhead is steady, like the pulse he can’t seem to find in his chest. He sits at the table in the kitchen, hands curled around a half-empty mug of juice. The ceramic is cool under his palms, but not enough. He runs a thumb along the rim, tracing the tiny chips, the scratches that make it feel used—owned. He almost doesn’t notice when Buck moves behind him, leaning against the counter with that familiar, unspoken weight.
“You been here long?” Buck’s voice is soft, but firm. Not accusatory, just noticing.
“Long enough,” Eddie says, not looking up. His voice sounds flat to him, too measured, like it’s wearing a uniform of its own.
Buck doesn’t push. He tilts his head, watches Eddie trace circles in the ancient coffee rings on the table, the way his fingers flex and flex again, like he’s trying to shape something that won’t take form.
“You’re still—” Buck pauses, swallows, then rephrases, “—carrying it.”
Eddie lets out a sound that’s halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Carrying what?” He doesn’t really want an answer.
“The weight,” Buck says quietly. “Of all of it. Still.”
Eddie’s chest tightens. He thinks about the subway, the water rising around them, the way Buck had been a hair’s breadth from panic. About how he couldn’t look at him—not just in that moment, but in all the moments before that—because every time he blinked, every time he measured the distance between them, he could feel how close it all had been to falling apart. He knows he’s been forgetting his place on the team lately, acting like he’s a paramedic and heavy rescue all at once, a one-man shift of the 118.
Eddie has always been just as reckless as Buck, he’s just managed to hide it better.
He sets the cup down. The ceramic clatters lightly against the table, a note that makes him flinch. “I just… can’t let it—” His words catch. He swallows the rest. “…get away from me. I keep replaying it,” he admits, voice low. “Every move, every decision… like I missed something. Every time.” Buck’s eyes flick to him. Not judgmental. Just…watching. Like he always does, like he’s threading the seams Eddie doesn’t want him to touch. “I see,” he says.
Eddie wants to deflect, wants to hide it behind sarcasm, behind the veneer of control he’s built. But the tremor in his hands, the tension in his shoulders, the shallow rhythm of his breathing—all betray him. He almost doesn’t notice Buck stepping closer, the scrape of the boot against the tile small but deliberate. “You’re thinking about everything at once,” Buck says. “And nothing. And still moving faster than anyone can keep up.”
Eddie’s throat tightens. The memory rises: water sloshing around his boots after he jumped from a bridge, the metallic smell of iron and oil, the sound of a man screaming somewhere above, somewhere under, everywhere. “I don’t… I can’t stop,” he admits finally, voice low, rough. “Not when it’s that close. Not when—” He stops. Words are inadequate. Meaning collapses in his mouth.
Buck watches him, doesn’t speak, just lets him have the silence. And somehow, that is more grounding than any phrase Eddie could conjure. The quiet hum of the station, the low ticking of the clock, the distant shuffling of boots—they anchor him. Buck leans against the counter, closer now, the light catching the curve of his shoulder. “You don’t have to handle it all alone.” He doesn’t move any closer. Eddie swallows again. The pulse in his ears, the lingering adrenaline, they all hum together, a dissonant chord he can’t untangle. “You… you ever feel like if you just do one more thing—just one more—you can make it right?”
Buck huffs out something that isn’t quite a laugh. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s how you burn out.”
“Yeah.” Eddie nods. “Guess I’m getting close.”
Buck tilts his head. “Then stop lighting the match.”
Eddie almost smiles. It’s faint, crooked, but real. “You’re full of wisdom tonight.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Buck says, but his voice softens.
Eddie nods, the sound of his own heartbeat settling into something quieter. The station feels less empty now, like the air has shifted back into place. He’s still braced—but maybe less alone in it. Buck moves to leave, and Eddie watches him, memorizing the curve of his shoulder, the quiet cadence of his movement. His juice has hit room temperature, but he finishes it anyway.
The nightmare Buck has the night of the call is almost deceptively simple. He wakes under the firetruck—ribs pressed against cold steel, the smell of oil thick in his nose, the world narrowing to the hiss of hydraulics and the sharp inhale of someone shouting. His hands scrabble for grip, nails scraping the rough metal, but there’s nothing to hold. The panic is immediate, gut-tight, and when he thrashes against the weight, it only presses harder. Even in waking hours, his chest still tightens, fingers twitch when he touches anything heavy or unsteady, the echo of pressure lingering in his bones.
The second night, water presses past his knees, icy, unrelenting, swirling around him with a metallic tang that sticks to his tongue. The woman trapped beneath the beam gasps, her small hand pressing into his gloved one in panic that isn’t real, but somehow is. Her husband shakes uselessly against the steel. He can smell rust, wet concrete, scorched wires. Every movement is slowed, delayed by a pulse of panic that seems to echo through every joint. By the time he wakes, sheets tangled around him, he flinches at running water in the sink, every splash echoing like the hiss of the subway flooding.
On the third night, Buck is pinned again, but it’s never the same place for long.
The first time, it’s the subway car. Water presses into his knees, icy, relentless, tugging at his clothes, curling through his fingers like it remembers every scrape he’s ever taken. Metal edges bite into his palms and forearms, slick with water and blood that isn’t his. The smell of rust and scorched wiring curls in his nose, thick and metallic. Her shallow breaths—quick, uneven—mix with the groan of twisted steel. Her husband shakes, pressing futilely against the beam. Buck claws at the metal, wants to lift it, but his fingers close on nothing but air. The panic coils in his stomach, sharp, immediate. He tastes iron in his mouth, cold and bitter.
Then the walls shift. The water swells, carrying him under the firetruck he remembers. Leg crushed against cold steel. Lungs seize. The air hisses around him, heavy with hydraulic fluid and exhaust. Screams echo: his own? someone else’s? He can’t tell. Every joint is raw; every tendon tightens with memory. He thrashes, trying to escape weight he knows will never yield. His chest burns; lungs claw; teeth grit.
The dream fractures, becoming something he thought he’d buried. The water rises higher, cold and violent, and he’s back on the pier, years ago, Chris laughing beside him, small hand in his own. Then the swell comes too fast. He’s not fast enough. The wave grabs, pulls, and for an unbearable instant, the water hides Chris, erases him from reach. Panic coils again, twisting his stomach into knots, bringing up the memory like bile. The taste of salt, the sting of sand in cuts, the helplessness—it all presses against him, familiar and unrelenting.
He thrashes harder, lungs burning, blood in his mouth. The subway merges with the firetruck, the tsunami, all of it pressing into a single unbearable weight. Water slaps his chest and thighs, his ribs threaten to crack under pressure he can feel in his bones. Screams echo, indistinct, overlapping; every sound sharp, every shadow pressing like a memory he can’t shake. He’s the woman pinned, he’s under the truck, he’s a father watching his son disappear beneath a wave—his own panic, someone else’s, all the same.
When he finally wakes, he does so in a body thrumming with tension. Sweat drenches his chest, tangling in his hair. Muscles ache from being coiled for hours he doesn’t remember passing. His sheets are twisted, damp from sweat, from water that never existed but feels like it. Ordinary sounds—fridge hum, distant traffic, dripping sink—strike too sharply, each echo a threat. His pulse still rattles against his ribs. Fingers curl into the mattress, seeking purchase, any tether to solidity.
He sits there, chest heaving, tasting iron and salt and fear. He closes his eyes and sees all of it at once: subway car, firetruck, beach, wave, water, steel, blood. The timeline collapses, trauma folding over itself. And the fear doesn’t fade. It lodges, coils, pulses, a reminder that the weight never truly lifts. Even when daylight comes, muscles twitch without command, reflexes catch at shadows, and the taste of panic lingers like metal on the tongue.
The bar hums with easy noise—laughter, glass against wood, the low thrum of music that’s just shy of being too loud. Someone’s spilled beer on the corner of the table, and Hen’s giving Chim a look that could power an entire shift by itself. Maddie’s talking to May, her face soft and open in a way Buck doesn’t see often enough. It’s warm in here—the kind of warmth that comes from bodies, sound, familiarity. Buck sits a little outside of it. Not physically, not obviously—he’s laughing when someone makes a joke, nodding when Eddie says something to him—but there’s a slant to him tonight, a subtle misalignment. His hands keep moving: glass, coaster, napkin, glass again. The condensation ring grows darker each time he lifts it, the shape blurring, reforming, a faint orbit of motion he can’t quite stop watching.
Eddie always watches Buck, more than he’s ever watched anyone. He doesn’t ask anything. Doesn’t poke or prod. He just turns his chair a few degrees toward Buck, closing the distance by instinct.
Buck doesn’t look at him at first. He’s watching the bar lights instead—the way they scatter across the bottles, bending gold and green into shapes that don’t quite hold. There’s something calming about it, this half-chaos of reflection. Eddie says softly, “You okay?”
Buck huffs out a laugh, low, automatic. The kind that buys him a second before the real answer tries to form. “I think so.”
“You’ve been quieter lately,” Eddie says, almost like it’s a shared secret. “Different.” Buck stops fiddling for a second, glancing up just above Eddie’s head. “Nightmares,” he admits, voice low. Not a big reveal, just the simplest truth.
“I keep thinking,” Buck murmurs finally, voice nearly lost under a chorus of clinks and shouts, “if I step too close to all of it, I’ll…” He lets the thought dissolve. “You’d drown?” Eddie asks. Casual, almost teasing, but not quite. Buck meets his gaze, just for a second. “Maybe.” He taps his glass, then traces a finger along the rim, thinking about all the times Eddie’s been underwater, in body or mind. “But not in the way I used to. Not completely.”
“Not completely,” Eddie echoes. He leans back, weight shifting in his chair. “You’re still breathing, Buck.” Buck exhales like the words loosen something in him. “Yeah.”
“For what it’s worth,” Eddie says, quieter now, “you seem like you’re keeping your head above water.”
The noise of the bar stretches between them for a moment—laughter, music, a burst of clapping from somewhere near the jukebox. “They look happy,” Buck says, nodding toward the rest of the group. Hen and Karen are sharing a plate of fries, Karen stealing the ones Hen clearly wants. Chim’s trying to tell a story over them and failing. Maddie’s half-listening, smiling into her drink. “They are,” Eddie says, eyes soft. “They deserve it.” Buck hums in agreement, the sound low. “Feels like everyone’s… settled. You know? Like they found something solid.” Eddie takes a sip, then sets his glass down with a quiet thud. “You have too.” Buck looks over, the hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. “You think?” Eddie nods once, slow. “You just… don’t always notice it when it’s you.”
Buck laughs under his breath, small and uncertain. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
“Maybe,” Eddie says. He doesn’t push it. “Or maybe you’re just looking for the wrong kind of proof.”
Buck frowns a little, curious despite himself. “What kind would that be?” Eddie shrugs. “The kind that has to look finished.” Buck sits with that. Finished. The word rattles somewhere inside him, knocking heavily against his ribs. He glances toward the others again. Hen’s laughing hard now, head thrown back, the kind of laugh that pulls everyone else into its gravity. Chimney grins like a man who knows he’s lucky. Maddie leans closer to Karen to say something, her voice too soft to catch. Ravi’s somewhere across the room, now arguing with May about soccer. They’re all here. All still here. And Buck—he’s part of it, whether or not he knows where to place himself in the picture.
He leans back, the edge of his shoulder brushing Eddie’s for half a second before pulling away again. “You ever think,” he says quietly, “about how we got here? Like… all of us?” Eddie huffs a quiet laugh. “Often.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Eddie’s gaze drifts over the table. “It’s a lot, you know? All the calls, all the mess, the times we almost didn’t make it. And yet…” He gestures lightly toward the group. “Here we are.”
Buck studies him, something thoughtful settling in his expression. “You ever think about what happens if we’re not?”
Eddie looks at him, and there’s a beat—just long enough for it to mean something. “All the time,” he says, softly. “Doesn’t stop me from showing up anyway.”
There’s a moment where the noise fades—not quiet, just distant. Hen’s laughter rings from somewhere behind them; the jukebox flips tracks with a mechanical sigh. Eddie leans back in his seat, watching Buck like he’s working something out. “You ever think we should’ve been therapists instead?” Buck says finally, light enough to sound like a joke. Eddie raises an eyebrow. “We’d have to talk about our feelings.”
“Yeah, disaster waiting to happen.”
“Exactly.”
And yet, it’s exactly what they’re doing. Eddie’s smiling now, the small, reluctant kind that softens him all at once. Buck looks down before he can get caught staring. The neon light over the bar flickers between red and gold, throwing their shadows across the table—one reaching, one steady. Buck’s throat tightens. “Yeah,” he says again. The word feels different this time—heavier, but steadier too. Buck swallows, lets the words settle in, and for a long moment, all the noise fades around him. He looks back at the group, at the ordinary, chaotic, alive motion of them, and the weight of the nightmares eases a fraction. Eddie doesn’t add anything. He doesn’t have to. He reaches over, grabs a fry from Buck’s plate, eats it with casual efficiency, and watches for a reaction. Buck glances up, eyes flicking to him. “You could ask,” he says, tone light but pointed. “Where’s the fun in that?” Eddie replies, eyes steady, absorbing the smallest shift in Buck’s expression—the half-smile, the brief lifting of a brow, the way he blinks slower, like he’s trying to anchor himself.
Buck shakes his head, small laugh escaping. “You’re an ass.”
“Maybe,” Eddie says, wiping his mouth with a napkin, still watching him. The gesture is ordinary, but the attention is deliberate. “But you’re still here.” Around them, the world keeps moving, loud and fast. Glasses clink, music hums, laughter spills. But in this corner, with the air thick with half-smoke and fried food, and the light catching the little rivers down Buck’s glass, Eddie listens. Buck looks down at his glass again. The ring of condensation has dried. He presses his thumb into the mark it left, like he can feel proof that something was there. He glances back up.
Hen’s waving at them to join a group photo. Maddie’s laughing, trying to herd everyone into one frame. Eddie sighs and stands, motioning for Buck to get up. “Come on,” he says. “Before Chim decides he’s the photographer again.”
Buck rolls his eyes but follows, sliding into the frame between Eddie and Hen. Someone behind the bar counts them down—three, two, one—and Buck doesn’t bother forcing a smile. It comes on its own, small but real. Afterward, when the flash fades, Eddie’s hand lands briefly on his shoulder. A squeeze, light and absentminded, but enough to anchor him.
Buck looks around the table, at all of them gathered together—faces he’s bled with, laughed with, built his life around. The air feels easier in his lungs. The night wears down, conversation thinning, chairs scraping as people leave in twos and threes. Eddie stays until Buck stands, like he always does. It’s the same thing it’s always been: Eddie across from him, steady as gravity, Buck trying not to fall any further in. Outside, the air’s cooler, sharper. They walk toward their cars without speaking. The neon sign slashes pink across their hands. At the edge of the lot, Buck pauses. “Thanks,” he says, not looking directly at Eddie. Eddie gives a small nod, eyes steady on him. “Anytime.” Buck kicks a loose pebble into the street. Eddie watches it bounce ahead of them. “See you tomorrow,” Eddie says. It’s nothing, but Buck feels steadier than he has all week.
They part there—Eddie heading left, Buck right.
By the time Buck gets home, he’s still thinking about what Eddie said: You’re still breathing. It follows him inside, soft and quiet. The house hums around him. Pipes shift. Wind nudges the blinds. A faint scrape from a chair in the next room. The kind of ordinary sounds that used to feel like emptiness now feel like punctuation in his life. Buck walks slowly, fingers brushing the edges of furniture, tracing nicks in the wood.
He sits again at the counter, laptop open, cursor blinking patiently. He thinks of Maddie first. Jee and Nash are probably asleep somewhere in their own rooms, small bodies curled in blankets. He can picture Nash’s messy hair in the morning, Jee’s serious frown when she’s concentrating on some new task, and how Maddie corrals them both with a mixture of patience and exasperation that somehow always works. He types her name. He doesn’t hesitate. She’ll handle the details. She’ll laugh at the coins and the chipped mugs, and he smiles faintly. He leans back, thinking of Chim. His voice in the comms, steady and sure, never overbearing, always there. He remembers how Chimney lets him be, how he trusts him to handle his own chaos. Reliable, stubborn, loud when it matters, and capable of holding the world steady with when needed. He would probably come by and rearrange the furniture just to optimize the space.
May and Harry hover in his mind next. May with her quiet resilience, the way she notices the small details of everyone around her, Harry with the small bursts of confidence that sometimes make Buck feel like he’s standing beside a younger version of himself. He can picture the two of them on a Monday, Harry balancing carefully on the edge of the couch, May sitting next to him with a gentle shove, Buck watching from the doorway.
His thoughts drift back to Eddie, steady as always. He can see Eddie’s shoulder bumping against his shoulder in passing, familiar, almost unconscious, and it tugs at something gentle in Buck’s chest. The ache is there, soft now, manageable. Chris comes next. Not as an absence, but alive, full of morning chaos, late-night laughter, half-burned pancakes, scraped knees that somehow always find their way to him. When Buck types Chris’s name into his will, the hollow in his chest tightens, then eases slightly at a memory he hadn’t thought of in a while: Eddie had done this too, only a bit over a year after they met—quietly, with that careful practicality that made him seem always one step ahead. Chris would be safe, Eddie had decided, no fanfare, just a signature and a trust Buck had never questioned. The cursor blinks. He breathes, slow and steady. Chris doesn’t need the will. He just needs Buck present, and Buck will be. Even when he’s not.
He scrolls down to the “Anything Else?” section. The words come unbidden.
Keep the plant by the window. It likes the light in the mornings.
He smiles faintly. Then: Tell Chris I was proud. Tell Maddie to let Jee boss Nash around sometimes. Tell Chim not to rearrange my kitchen.
The house is alive around him now, not empty. The hum of the fridge, the creak of the floorboards, the distant dog—each one a small pulse, a tiny presence that makes the space feel less like absence. Buck closes his eyes for a moment. Hen’s calm settles in his chest, the way she always had a measure of certainty that could anchor him when everything else floated. He imagines her voice soft, telling him he’s done enough, that the people who matter already carry pieces of him without needing a legal document.
He opens his eyes, looks at the photograph on the fridge: Chris laughing, Eddie half-smiling, him caught somewhere in between. A memory frozen in sunlight, warmth folded into each other like a secret. He traces the edge of it with his thumb.
He returns to the counter and types one final note:
I was happy. I am happy. I love you all.
He leans back, letting the chair tip slightly. The hum of the fridge, the whisper of the wind, the distant creak—they all fold into a quiet harmony. Buck closes the laptop, letting the glow fade. He stands for a moment in the soft lamplight, breath even, chest expanding and contracting. He is still here. He is still breathing. The couch cushions, the nightstand, the coins in their jar. Half-read books, the faint curl of a sticky note, the neighborhood stray cat stubborn in its sunbeam on his back porch. He has left pieces behind, yes—but pieces of himself have already been scattered across every life he touches.
For the first time in a while, the thought of what comes after feels less sharp, less like a cliff edge. Maybe it isn’t about being ready for everything. Maybe it’s about knowing what matters, holding onto it while he can, and letting the rest fold gently into those who already carry it.
Buck moves toward the window, leaning on the sill. The house is quiet but not empty. He breathes, slow and steady, letting each pulse of life around him be a reminder: presence, love, care.
Small, ridiculous, persistent, real.