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“Edmundo Diaz, twenty-seven year old male, hypothermic, he’ll need antibiotics, cognitive assessment was normal, but he had limited oxygen for quite a while. He was in the well when it collapsed, swam out into the channel nearby.”
Eddie is rolled away on the gurney, sitting up and awake, but holding an oxygen mask to his face. They’ll probably just check him out, give him the all-clear, and send him home in a few hours. Buck, however, stands in the middle of the ER intake bay with a cold chill running down his spine.
“Wait, what?”
Hen gives him a funny look. “He’s fine, Buck.”
“No, I— his name,” Buck explains, breathless.
“Edmundo?” She questions, a strange tilt to her voice. “You do know Eddie’s full name, right?”
“Um.” Buck is able to break out of his shocked haze enough to see the multiple pairs of eyes staring at him. “Apparently, I did not.”
And wouldn’t that have been great information to have. The skin right above his heart stings. He can hear the rest of his teammates laughing at him, making rude comments about his intelligence, questioning how he and Eddie can be such great friends and somehow miss that tidbit of information. The sound of it gets drowned out by the beating of his heart.
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” Bobby asks him, the question breaking through the noise in Buck’s head.
Wordlessly, he pulls down the collar of his shirt. If he had time to think it through, he may have kept it a secret until he could bring it up to Eddie. He may have not wanted to reveal this to all of their coworkers first.
But, he pulls down the collar of his shirt, until just where they can all see the skin above his heart that reads Edmundo.
His soulmate.
Everyone around him goes quiet. He thinks he may hear a soft, “Oh, shit,” come from someone.
Most people aren’t in the business of looking at other people’s soul marks unless the mark reads their name. It’s not strange for none of them to have seen Buck’s. It’s almost an unspoken cultural norm. When you meet your soulmate, you’ll learn their name. You don’t need to go around with your shirt off waiting for them to show up. That’s just how it’s supposed to work.
“You didn’t know?” Hen asks him softly, resting a hand on his elbow.
“Of course I didn’t know.”
He runs back through his memories, “This is Eddie Diaz, new recruit,” and “Is your full name Eduardo?” “No.”
Bobby disappears, Chimney gives him a comforting pat on the back, Hen tries to sell him words of encouragement, but all Buck can think now is what if Eddie knows? Eddie must have put together the name on his own chest when he met Buck, but he’s never said anything.
“It makes so much sense, now that I think about it,” Hen comments, “When Karen and I first met, we acted like we had known each other for years. We just clicked. And I knew something about you two felt familiar.”
“What if he doesn’t want–”
“Buck.” Bobby appears from around the corner, a nurse following behind him. “Eddie’s all set up, and she’s going to take you to his room.”
He gestures for Buck to follow the nurse, but he can’t bring himself to take a step. Bobby gives him a moment, then says, “He will.”
Buck follows the nurse through the halls of the hospital, the most quiet he’s probably ever been in his life. She doesn’t give him a second to breathe before she’s opening the door and gently nudging Buck inside of the room.
“Hey,” Eddie greets him casually.
He’s got a small cannula feeding him oxygen, a few bandages covering little spots on his skin, and he’s covered in blankets, but otherwise seems fine.
“Hi,” Buck returns.
He makes his way into the room and he can’t help but notice how Eddie follows every one of his movements. He watches Buck carefully with a softness to his gaze that Buck doesn’t think he lets show very often. He’s hyper aware of it now.
“Thanks for not giving up,” Eddie says.
Buck lowers himself gently into the chair next to the bed. He looks down at his hands, at the dirt still caked in his fingernails, and says, “I could never.”
The rise and fall of Eddie’s chest is a slow and comforting sight.
How on earth had he not known Eddie’s real name? It’s everywhere now, on the whiteboard in the room, on his wristband. He’s always just been Eddie. But, to be fair – and then it dawns on him – Buck has always just been Buck.
“Is something else wrong?” Eddie asks, eyebrows furrowed, clearly sensing something from Buck. “Did the kid–”
“The kid is fine,” Buck says immediately. Eddie relaxes again. “What’s my name?”
“Uh.” Eddie frowns at him. “They’ve done about a million cognitive tests on me, I’m all good.”
“Just, humor me, okay? What’s my name?”
“Buck.”
Buck leans forward, his elbows on his knees, hands in something like a prayer position. He looks at Eddie intently. “My full name.”
“It’s–” Eddie’s eyes widen the moment he seems to realize he doesn’t know the answer.
“Your name is Edmundo,” Buck offers.
“Is there something wrong with me that they missed?” Eddie looks like he’s about to start panicking. “Should I know your full name? You’re just Buck.”
“I found out today that your name is Edmundo.”
Eddie sighs, the panic subsiding. “Okay, that’s kind of funny actually.” He lets out a short chuckle. “We seriously never told each other our names?”
“I think you might already know mine, though.” Buck looks at him through his lashes, then pulls at his collar until he can feel cold air on the skin where his soul mark should be.
Eddie smiles at him vaguely confused, then zeroes in on the mark, his smile fading into something more like awe. “What?”
“What’s my name, Eddie?”
“Are you serious?” He’s breathless. “Are you fucking with me right now? What the hell is your name, Buck?”
“You tell me, I think you know.”
He scooches himself to the end of the chair, as close to Eddie’s side as he can possibly be without falling out. He keeps his shirt collar pulled down, but rests his other elbow on the edge of the bed, barely making contact with Eddie.
“You’re Evan?”
Buck beams. With shaking hands, Eddie pulls down the collar of his hospital gown and shows him a matching mark that reads Evan.
“That would be me.” Eddie reaches forward and pinches Buck on the bicep, hard. “Ow, what the fuck?”
“Are you serious, right now? Why would you never tell me your name?” Eddie scolds, “We’ve been walking around for over a year, pretending to just be best friends, and this could have done all the hard work for us, you asshole.”
“Oh no, this is not all on me, Eddie.”
“You just had to decide to go with a nickname at all times. Were you trying to make this more difficult?”
“Uh, excuse me, can you think of a time when you’ve ever used your real name?”
“That’s different, at least Eddie comes from Edmundo.”
“I asked you.” Buck points a finger in his face. “When we first met, I asked what it was short for and you didn’t tell me!”
“You didn’t ask that, you asked if it was Eduardo, which it is not!”
“And you didn’t think to tell me what it actually was during that conversation?”
Eddie snaps his mouth shut, obviously running out of arguments to make. He narrows his eyes at Buck childishly, then softens. He runs his fingers along Buck’s arms, both of which have come to rest right next to Eddie’s hip on the bed. “I think we’re missing the point here.”
Buck lifts an arm and grabs Eddie’s hand. “You’re my soulmate.”
“And you’re mine.”
“How do you feel about that?” Buck asks.
“Pretty damn good, honestly,” Eddie says, “It’s gonna make putting you as Christopher’s legal guardian in my will so much easier.”
“Wait– what?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Eddie soothes. Buck is absolutely going to worry about that later. “How do you feel?”
“Really good.” Buck brings Eddie’s knuckles to his lips. “Really lucky.”
Eddie hums and squeezes Buck’s hand tighter. When he’s released from the hospital and Buck takes him home, he’ll show him just how great he feels about this, but for now, he figures he shouldn’t restrict his oxygen supply just yet.