Buck’s skin was already crawling at the idea of Eddie going in there alone with someone who wasn’t a part of the 118. The entire time they were getting the bullet proof vests placed on them, Buck’s head was a mess of let me go with him. Please, let me go with him..

He knows Eddie was the best choice for this. That he knew what to do in a situation like this, how to talk to Benjamin. Eddie understood him. Alex had to go in, it was what she was trained to do.

Buck, at the end of the day, had nothing to add to the situation.

Still, a part of him was desperate to be going in there with Eddie. Something told him it was vital that he be in that grocery store. He couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t fight it.

“Cap, let me go in, yeah? Strength in numbers or whatever,” Buck tries begging to Chimney, but it falls on deaf ears.

“Eddie and Alex only, Buck. Stand down, if they need us, we can reassess.”

A firm no, and it eats at him. Eddie and Alex finish strapping in, and then they are walking slowly towards the front door of the store. Buck feels his heart beat quicker and quicker, stretching and shattering, trying to reach an Eddie that grows farther and farther away from him.

Please keep him safe, Buck thinks, praying to who knows, but praying nonetheless. Keep him safe. He has to stay safe.

Buck remains on edge the entire time they are in there, only briefly releasing a sigh of relief when the walkie clicks on and they are granted an ear inside. It was better than nothing, at least he had the constant reassurance of Eddie’s voice.

Eddie was okay, it all sounded like it was going okay. It wouldn’t truly be okay though until Eddie was back outside, safely and intact.

They listen while Eddie lists off the injuries of the security guard. They listen while Eddie calmly informs Benjamin that he was also in the army. They listen and listen and listen. They are all useless, sitting ducks out here who can do nothing to help. He, Chim, and Ravi are a set of ears and nothing more.

A sharp sound comes through their walkies a few minutes later. It rattles Buck’s chest, the feeling traveling into his bones. He cranes his head towards his walkie, trying to hear if Eddie was still talking, or Alex, or anyone. If there was any sound at all.

Nothing. They are completely cut off from whatever is happening inside there now.

Waiting. Now, that was all they were good for. Waiting and seeing what might happen next.

Bullets sound from inside the grocery store and Buck’s entire body is frozen. He’s not convinced his heart hasn’t stopped beating all together. They echo and ring in his ears. Gunshots. Gunshots from the room Eddie is in. Gunshots and his walkie is broken. Eddie, trapped in a room, can’t reach us. Bullets.

Bucks thoughts are fragmented, a mess of processing, each one trying to catch up with the other.

He can taste the phantom remains of Eddie’s blood in his mouth, the terrible metallic taste. He almost wants to wipe at his face, is sure his hand will come away covered in the blood of Eddie. The air smells of smoke, of fire. Buck is no longer at the grocery store where he once fought with Eddie while holding cat laxatives.

No, instead he’s in the middle of the LA streets watching his friend fall. Another bullet echoes in his head and he's back at the hospital, wondering if he’s going to run out and see his best friend's blood splattered along the concrete again.

His brain is the greatest hits of Eddie in danger and Buck unable to do anything to help him. He’s stuck out here. Is he?

Buck does the only thing he can think of. He goes to run. Get to Eddie.

Eddie is hurt. Eddie needs him. Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Two strong arms wrap around him before he can get far from behind the car they were standing behind. Whoever it is catches him off guard, and manages to yank him back completely, almost knocking his feet out from under him. He’s not sure why he didn’t consider someone would try and stop him.

“Let go of me!” Buck screams, trying to fight the arms. Ravi’s, he thinks. Ravi only holds on tighter.

“You’re not going in there, Buck. You’ll only make it worse,” Chim appears in front of him, placing his hands on Buck’s arms. “It’s okay. We don’t know what’s happened. Eddie is probably fine, okay?”

His words are not comforting in the least. Probably okay wasn’t good enough for Buck, not when there have been so many times when Eddie definitely wasn’t okay. Not when Buck had to carry his bleeding body while bullets still flew around them.

Probably okay wasn’t good enough, not when he’s held his blood soaked hands over Eddie’s chest and begged him to hold on.

“You don’t know, so don’t say that,” Buck bites out, “you don’t know if he’s okay. There were gunshots, Chim. Eddie could be… he could be…” He can’t get the words out. They are trapped in his throat, choking him.

“I know, Buck, okay I know. I’m sorry. You still can’t go in.” Chimney looks sad. He’s never been the one who had to stop Buck. That was Bobby’s job. This feeling isn’t new for Buck, not by a long shot, but the position it’s putting Chim in is.

“It’s Eddie,” is all Buck can think to respond.

“I know,” Chimney whispers, before motioning to Ravi to let Buck go, probably deciding he wasn’t a flight risk anymore.

A new car pulled up in the midst of all of this, an older woman climbing out, looking shaky and devastated. A cop holds a phone up to her mouth, and Buck barely hears a word she says, but he understands enough. Benjamin's mother.

Please let this work. Please let this bring him out so he can get to Eddie.

The conversation doesn’t last long. All of a sudden, a flurry of movement occurs and police are flooding the grocery store, guns drawn. They bring out Benjamin in cuffs, and they bring out the security guard of the one gurney they had brought in.

Alex walks out. The cops continue their sweep. Still no sign of Eddie.

Buck holds his breath. Waits.

Their radios all crackle to life.

“Firefighter Diaz is down,” a voice informs, “I repeat, Firefighter Diaz is down. Dispatch we need another ambulance sent to our location.”

The world spins for a moment, those four words on repeat in Buck’s brain. Then, he’s taking off and this time no one tries to stop him, hold him back from getting to Eddie. He runs, can hear the frantic steps of Ravi and Chimney right behind him.

Hopefully they grabbed another med bag.

“Eddie,” Buck screams the second he steps foot in the grocery store. He scans along the floor, searching for Eddie.

He sees a pair of legs sticking out from one of the aisles, blood slowly trickling next to it. “Eddie, Eddie!” Buck sprints toward the blood.

Eddie is laying on the ground, clutching a bunch of rolled up gauze near his neck. His hazy eyes land on Buck, and he smiles a little. There’s blood on his teeth.

“Just a little graze,” he chokes out.

“Don’t talk,” Buck rushes to say, “you’re gonna be okay.”

“I know,” Eddie smiles bigger, but it's wonky. Falling apart at the edges. It’s not Eddie’s usual smile. It makes Buck’s stomach hurt.

Buck drops down on his knees next to Eddie and grabs a bunch of new gauze from the med bag that's laying next to him. Carefully, he moves Eddie’s hand aside and replaces it with his own, applying as much pressure as was safe and ignoring the fact that the blood was still leaking through.

He’s been here before. He wishes he never had to be here again.

Chimney and Ravi finally show up, thankfully with their own medical equipment that Buck neglected to grab.

“Buck,” Chimney rests a hand on his shoulder, “let us in there. I have to check him out.”

The last thing Buck wants to do is move away from Eddie. Look what happened when he let that happen, when he ignored the tightening in his chest and the way his blood sang for Eddie. But Chimney could help him, could stop the rest of him from going ashen in the way he had already started too.

He was losing too much blood, and Buck was standing in the way.

“Okay,” Buck whispers, waiting for Ravi’s gloved hands to replace his own blood covered ones.

Once they change positions, Buck sits back on his heels, his eyes never leaving Eddie. Chimney checks him over, carefully lifting the gauze that Ravi is holding to look at the damage.

“Is he okay?” Buck asks, voice shaky.

“I’m okay, Buck,” comes Eddie’s weak voice. A foot nudges his side, and he looks down to see that it’s Eddies. Without a second thought, Buck wraps a bloody hand around his ankle.

“It’s deep, but it didn’t hit anything important,” Chimney says. “We have to get a proper bandage on it and move him, now.”

They work in a flurry of motion, Buck can barely keep track. All he has to do right now is focus on Eddie. Eddie, who is still breathing, is still alive. Eddie, who is growing colder by the second under Buck’s touch.

Someone brings a gurney and backboard in. Buck doesn’t see who. He doesn’t like the idea of not knowing who’s touching Eddie, who is going to carry him to safety. Not for the first time, he wishes Hen were here.

They bring Eddie onto his side long enough to slide the backboard under him. Buck doesn’t drop his hand from Eddie’s ankle the entire time. When they go to lift him onto the gurney, Buck absentmindedly lends his open hand to help carry the weight.

Eddie barely acknowledges the move. He just continues to stare up at the ceiling. Buck wishes he could crawl inside of him, be in his brain and know what he was thinking. Take over his body, draw any and all pain from him forever. Buck would, he would carry the burden and weight of anything that ails Eddie, he would do it in a heartbeat.

The run to the ambulance feels like the longest one of Buck’s life. Eddie stopped talking, listened to all of us when we told him he had to save his energy. Without his voice, Buck won’t know until it’s too late that Eddie’s left them.

He feels like he might be sick.

“Buck, ride up front,” Chimney says to him, ordering him. Buck ignores him, climbing in the back of the ambulance with Eddie. The blood on his hand has long dried. He wonders if now he’s stuck to Eddie, if his own blood acted like glue, finally completing them.

“Buckley!” Chim tries again, before letting out a loud sigh. “Ravi, can you drive the ambulance? I have to stay in the back.”

Ravi must nod or say yes, Buck isn’t listening anymore. He’s tuned them out. The only thing he can hear is the slow beeps coming from the machine Eddie’s hooked up to. It’s too slow.

“Alright,” Chimney slams the doors closed, “let’s go.”

The ambulance starts up and the sirens blare. They are off before Buck knows what's happening. Eddie’s eyes fall to Buck, a calm, dazed look in them that wasn’t there the last time he was hurt like this. His bloody mouth is now covered by an oxygen mask. Buck’s secretly grateful for that.

“Hey Eds,” Buck whispers, peeling his bloody hand from Eddie’s pants and moving closer to his head. He lays a careful hand on Eddie’s hair, he’s not sure why.

When he was younger, that sort of thing soothed him, made him feel loved. Eddie deserved that right now, to feel soothed. To feel loved.

“We’re on the way to the hospital,” Buck says just to have something to say, “you’re going to be okay.” He hopes it's the truth. God, please let it be the truth.

Eddie just nods at him, softly and slowly. His eyes flutter a little and his heartbeat slows a fraction more.

“Diaz, you got to stay awake,” Chim says, “Buck, keep him awake okay?”

Buck nods shaky, unsure what he could do in this situation. He was all out of empty promises, platitudes of comfort. The begging worked last time. The pleads to his best friend to hang on. Eddie did, he fought like hell and he stuck around. After everything he’s been through, this would not be the thing to take him out.

“I can’t lose you.” It’s the first thing that pops into his mind. He tries his best to not sound pathetic as he admits this, but he misses by a mile. He should backtrack, say that the 118 can’t lose him, that we were all a family and we needed him.

But he can’t. The dam has broken. The words flow out of him.

“I just got you back,” he chokes, “you’re not leaving now, you hear me?” There is no real strength or authority behind his words, but he sees Eddie smile again underneath the mask, and Buck is rewarded with another small nod.

“We almost there, Ravi?” Chimney calls from the back, and the worry in his voice makes Buck’s heart drop.

“Yeah, two more minutes,” Ravi calls back.

“You hear that, Eds? We’re so close. You just gotta stay with me a little longer okay?” Buck feels like he’s heard these words before. An echo from another time.

They’ve been here before. They will always be here.

Eddie’s hand twitches at his side, and Buck wastes no time rushing to grab it and hold on. It feels right, in the moment. Makes sense. They were BuckandEddie. They fought like hell to keep each other alive. They stayed by each other's sides. One could not exist without the other.

One could not exist without the other.

What would happen, if Eddie slipped, if he let go. What would become of Buck, without Eddie?

He never wanted to find out.

“You still with me?” He has to check, has to be sure. Eddie nods, weaker than the last. Something warm slides down Buck’s face.

“Good,” he laughs, devoid of humor, “good.” He brings Eddie’s freezing cold hand up to his mouth and kisses it. He holds it against his lips and mumbles on repeat that Eddie’ll be okay. Over and over, like saying it against his skin would push it into his bloodstream.

“You’re going to be okay,” Buck promises, placing another kiss. He repeats this until Eddie’s hand starts to take on the warmth of Buck’s. Buck would freeze to death if it meant that Eddie would be warm.

Somewhere, his begging and pleading and promises change. They morph without permission from Buck’s brain. They turn into an endless onslaught of

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” It pours out of him. It becomes the only words he knows. I love you. I love you, Eddie. I love you.

Eddie’s eyes are still trained on him. They give nothing away. Buck almost hopes he can’t hear him, won’t remember this complete breakdown. Buck feels exposed, like he’s said too much, but he can’t stop. It’s everything he’s been holding in since the day he met Eddie.

Love, so much love that he barely noticed it, had shoved it aside so extremely that now, faced with losing him, it was all he could feel.

He loved him.

The ambulance comes to a stop and everyone jumps into motion immediately. The doors bang open and people are grabbing at the gurney, pulling Eddie out from the vehicle and moving to race him into the hospital. Buck still has his hand, though it falls from his lips.

His lips feel cold, empty.

Buck tries to keep a hold on Eddie, but he’s pulled away by a swirl of doctors and Buck is held back by his team. The second their hands separate, Buck shatters. Every wall that had been built up, every part of him that had to fight to keep it together, explodes.

He stumbles at first, the ground rising to meet him, but is last second manoeuvred to a chair somewhere in the room. A broken, aborted sob claws its way out of Buck’s chest. Then another. Before he knows it, he’s sobbing into his blood-stained hands, into Eddie’s blood.

He’s crying and he can’t find it in him to stop. The months of loss, of confusion, of burying everything so deep that he was sure he would explode finally catch up with him.

He loves Eddie, and he has to realize when Eddie is being taken from him again.

Buck had months to realize this, years even. He feels cheated, wronged. They could’ve had forever, but instead all he gets is more blood, covering him and seeping into him. He gets fire and hopelessness. An hourglass running out. Time’s up.

—

Eddie wakes to a bright room and the sound of steady beeping. It takes everything in him to pry his eyes open, his eyelashes fighting to stay crusted together. The world is briefly blurry while his vision adjusts to everything around him.

He turns his head, coughing slightly. A burst of pain radiates throughout his entire body at the movement and he’s forced to settle his head back on the pillow under it.

“Eddie?” Buck. It’s Buck’s voice. He could place it anywhere.

Buck’s face pops into his line of vision. He looks exhausted, bags under his puffy eyes and tear stains on his cheeks. Eddie doubts he’s slept in a while.

“Hey, don’t try to move,” Buck rushes out, his words still gentle, “your neck is stitched up, you don’t want to rip them.”

Eddie nods, not trusting his voice just yet to come out. His throat was too dry. How long had he been asleep?

The events come back to him in snapshots. Going into the grocery store. Losing control of the situation. A blinding pain. The ambulance.

His face must do something funny, because Buck’s eyes practically pop out of his head and then he’s off, speaking so fast Eddie almost struggles to keep up with him.

“Chris is with Pepa,” Buck says, eyes crazed. “He’s okay, waiting for me to call so he can come visit. The rest of the 118 are out in the waiting room, doctors said only one person so,” he gestures to himself. “The doctors said you got lucky, that one tiny inch over and…” he stops there, his eyes flooding with tears.

Buck scrunches his face and then opens his mouth to say more, but Eddie cuts him off. He has his own thing to clarify, thank you very much, and he could tell Buck was dancing around it.

“You love me.” His voice sounds gravely and his throat hurts, but he ignores it. This was too important.

Buck’s entire face goes bright red. He looks caught, like he didn’t expect Eddie to remember anything from the ambulance.

Eddie couldn’t, not really, but the one thing he does remember is Buck. Buck, and his gentle kisses. Buck, and his love burning a hole in Eddie’s skin. This love that had been building for years, finding its way into Eddie’s bloodstream and making it sing.

“Listen, I was scared, so we can pretend I never said that,” Buck rushes out, “I know you’re straight and our friendship is too important so—”

“You love me,” Eddie says again, his voice more sure this time.

Buck’s face only gets redder, and his mouth snaps shut. He nods, sheepish.

Eddie smiles at him, and feels it all fall into place. Buck loves him. It makes sense. Of course he does. And Eddie… Eddie is starting to realize that he loves him too. How could he not? After all these years, after every moment they’ve spent together and all they’ve done for each other.

How could Edmundo Diaz’s heart not beat for Evan Buckley?

“I’m sorry,” Buck whispers.

Eddie shakes his head. “Buck,” he coughs and wishes he could sit up for this moment. Instead, he settles on reaching the hand that doesn’t have an IV in it and waits for Buck to take it. He wonders if it's the same one Buck kissed in the back of the ambulance.

Buck takes it, holds it carefully.

“I love you,” Eddie says, giving Buck’s hand a hard squeeze.

“You love me?” Buck sputters out, his own hand squeezing back.

“And you love me,” Eddie smiles.

More tears fill Buck’s eyes and oh that won’t do. This is happy. This is them getting what they finally deserve. This is joy and peace and everything in between.

“Kiss me,” Eddie whispers.

Buck only pauses for a minute before he leans in and places a soft, much too soft, kiss right on Eddie’s chapped lips. It doesn’t last long, a few seconds at most, but it feels like the most important thing to ever happen. It feels like the right thing.

It completes him. He is complete.