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All it takes is a second—
(the ceiling rumbles like distant thunder, turnouts sodden rain-like from a burst pipe some feet away, electrical wires snapping and sparking bright, not quite the blinding white flash when lightning hits you, though it’s close enough)
—but a second is all that stands between life and death. His body locks up in anticipation of a current that will sear flesh and muscle, stopping his heart’s metronome for permanent silence. Beginner’s luck runs out after the first time, after all.
But it’s not lightning that comes down, it’s the ceiling.
And it’s not the ceiling that knocks him off his feet, it’s Eddie.
Eddie, reading the freeze in Buck’s frame as one reads the ripple in a glass of water before destruction, lunges not toward safety but to shove Buck out of the kill zone. The massive slab, however, is indifferent to Eddie’s self-sacrifice; it clips his shoulder, his ribs, and narrowly misses landing on Eddie’s foot.
“Jesus, Buck!”
Awareness returns in a rush. He’s no longer perched on a metal ladder amidst a thunderstorm, having been yanked back into the collapsing building of the moment. The first thing he sees is the shock-panic-relief etched into Eddie’s features, and his eyes blow wide.
“Eddie—”
"I'm good," Eddie interjects quickly, adrenaline likely eating up the brunt of his pain but not enough to smooth the hitch in his breath. Their heads snap up when the rest of the ceiling groans, and Buck curses just as Eddie grabs at his arms, turning him bodily toward the nearest exit. “Go, go, out!”
They run, boots pounding against concrete, bursting into the clear evening air just as a section caves in behind them, coughing up a cloud of dust and mortar.
Eddie’s protests fall on deaf ears as Buck steers them straight to the ambulance, Buck staying silent now that the rush has faded, leaving guilt and shame to fester in its place.
He’d frozen.
A memory from, what? Two years ago? had risen like a sudden tide and locked his limbs, rendering him useless. And it was Eddie who paid the price, Eddie who had to prioritise Buck over himself because Buck was incapable, because for a moment—which was a moment too long—Buck didn’t have Eddie’s back.
He knows there will be no stopping the barrage if he opens his mouth. Knows the guilt will spill out messy and humiliating, and he will cry, and he will abase himself, and he will beg for forgiveness even though he is undeserving of it. So he keeps his jaw clenched and delivers Eddie to Hen instead.
Safer in her arms, surely, than his own.
Eddie, to no one’s surprise, shrugs off the assessment—"Seriously? It’s nothing, I’m fine"—but Hen's not having it. Eight years of knowing Eddie Diaz is enough to get acquainted with how expertly he underplays his injuries, and how goddamn stubborn he is about it. She palpates his ribs, and he hisses through clenched teeth when she hits the tender spot. Hen shoots him a look that Eddie’s lucky to have his eyes squeezed shut for.
The whole time, Buck hovers close. Guilt coils around him like an ugly, evil thing, tightening with every purse of Eddie’s lips and every shaky breath that escapes. He doesn’t know what it’s wringing him dry for; there’s no hope for absolution, no chance to rewind time, no version of events where he didn’t freeze.
Behind Buck’s eyelids, the loop runs mercilessly:
the flashback, the freeze,
the shove,
the dull, sickening thud of Eddie’s body taking the hit meant for him,
the flashback, the freeze, the shove, the thud—
Bobby’s looking at him.
Buck’s never been good at masking the dark stains of shame and self-loathing from his features, which means Bobby knows the truth just as well as Buck does: it’s Buck’s fault that Eddie’s riding to Cedars instead of walking it off.
Still, Bobby allows Buck to ride the ambulance with Eddie.
Hen finds a hematoma blooming across Eddie’s left scapula that she gets Buck to hold an icepack against, and diagnoses fractures—fractures, as in multiple, God—to his rib that needs to be confirmed with a CT scan. When she turns away to dispose of the used supplies, it gives them a sliver of privacy that Eddie uses to look at Buck.
Eye contact comes easy, given that Buck hasn’t stopped staring since they loaded Eddie in and slammed the ambulance doors shut. He’s been cataloguing every proof of life, counting them like rosary beads during prayer: the way Eddie’s pupils track Hen’s movements, lips moving in effortless speech, hand feathering over bare and bruised ribs, abs clenching with every stifled breath. All because he’s alive.
He could’ve not been. He could’ve died and it would've been Buck’s fault.
A second is all it would’ve taken.
“Buck,” Eddie says. The tone suggests it’s not the first attempt.
“I’m sorry,” Buck blurts out, the first words spoken since Eddie got hurt, since he saw the wild eyed terror in Eddie’s eyes. “I don’t—” know what happened, but he does. Lying to Eddie only comes easy when it’s about the depth of his feelings.
“For what?” Eddie’s brows knit, confusion clouding the hazel of his eyes, as though the apology is a foreign object dropped into his palm. Buck stares at Eddie, then at Hen, who’s paused mid-motion and very shamelessly watching the interaction.
“Did you check him for a concussion?”
Hen moves immediately, gloved hands angling Eddie’s head back to her. “Why didn’t you tell me—”
“I didn’t hit my head,” Eddie shakes his head free with an irritated huff and shoots Buck a glare. “Stop deflecting. What the hell are you sorry for?”
(the flashback, the freeze,
the shove,
the dull, sickening thud of Eddie’s body taking the hit meant for him)
Buck swallows; where does he even begin?
“You took that hit because I—”
“Because I saw the ceiling coming down and reacted,” Eddie says, laying what is essentially a thick coat of sugar over the truth. They both know Buck froze. Eddie wouldn’t have done what he did if he hadn’t known it. “You would’ve done the same. That’s what we do.”
“And look where that got you!” Buck snaps. It’s aimed mostly inward, self-impaled on a trident forged of anger, shame and guilt—at himself, his hesitation, his feet refusing to move, his failure written in ugly blooms across Eddie's skin. His eyes trace the bruising. “You shouldn’t have had to. You could’ve died, Eddie.”
“I didn’t,” Eddie says simply.
I didn’t. The words are strangely nice to hear, syllables falling like cool water on fevered skin while Eddie himself confirms it: I didn’t die.
“But,” Eddie adds, a weight to the conjunction that pulls Buck’s attention to his eyes, “you would have. And I prefer me injured over you in a body bag, Buck.”
Buck’s jaw flexes. He meets Hen’s eyes for a beat, sees the tiniest tip of her head that says he has a point, then pointedly looks out the back windows of the ambulance, his teeth still clenched.
He knows, as long as someone else is privy to this conversation, it’ll always be two against Buck’s one.
It’s well past midnight when the hospital discharges Eddie. A CT scan confirms hairline fractures along his left posterior sixth and seventh ribs, with clear lungs and no other complications that would require keeping him overnight. The attending uses words like close call and lucky too many times for Buck’s liking.
Lucky, Buck thinks, would have been if nothing had happened to Eddie at all. Lucky would be if Buck never froze in the first place.
Instead, here is Eddie: being instructed on pain management, deep-breathing exercises, icepacks, no heavy lifting or strenuous activity, and light duty for the next few weeks until a follow-up clearance. The all-too-familiar mulishness on Eddie’s face makes it clear that half those things will be treated as polite suggestions, and so Buck commits to a six-week move to 4995 South Bedford Street.
Bobby, Hen, Chim, and Ravi peeled off earlier to finish off the shift, and as Buck and Eddie make their way toward the exit, Buck thumbs out a quick update to the group chat, and then another one to Pepa that it’ll be him picking Chris up in the morning. Bobby, bless him, had arranged for someone to drive Buck's Jeep over from the station, and so Buck gets to take Eddie straight home without the added circus of getting a cab or extra transfers to pick his Jeep up.
Eddie’s first real day back—and by real, Buck means no more light-duty constrictions—drops them straight into a three-alarm fire on the edge of Koreatown. 118’s first on the scene with Bobby taking immediate command and assigning orders: triage, fire containment on floors five and six, and search & rescue on the remaining floors.
Buck and Eddie, naturally, are sent in for the latter.
The floor they’re assigned to is a furnace—heat saturates the air, crawling under their gear and prickling them with sweat. Each step down the corridor intensifies the assault; flames have already claimed the far stairwell, orange tongues snapping out like flags in a gale. The roar continues to build as they shove open doors, sweep rooms, and shout for occupants.
“LAFD! Call out!”
“Clear!”
Eddie shoulders open the next apartment door. It slams against the wall with a groan—a deep, structural vibration that cracks dark veins into the ceiling, resonating like a tuning fork against Buck’s bones.
Ice seeps into his veins. No. No. Nonononono—
“Buck!”
Eddie moves, but again, not away. Never away. Why does he do that? Why does he always choose—
The force of Eddie’s palms sends Buck sprawling across the floor as the ceiling comes down in a roar of collapsing beams and drywall.
“Eddie!”
Buck scrambles forward on his hands and knees, hands shaking, grabbing at the debris—
“Eddie?!”
Dust billows thick, acrid, laced with the searing promise of fire advancing upon them—
“Oh god, Eddie!”
Pinned beneath the wreckage, only a portion of his head is visible within the rubble, hair greyed under a blanket of cement dust, helmet having been knocked away in the collapse.
“No, no, no—” Buck digs, bare hands clawing at concrete and splintered wood without registering the burns, the splinters driving under nails, the skin tearing in red stripes. More of Eddie is revealed, and so is the blood—
It spreads outward from Eddie in a glossy, obsidian lake. Buck splits open the turnout coat, pushes up the blood-wet undershirt, desperate to identify the source. Blood slicks his palms, warm and thick, complicating his attempts to staunch the flow, any flow. Eddie’s breathing is wrong—wet, gurgling, each inhale ending in a cough that sprays red.
“Stay with me,” Buck begs, voice breaking. “Eddie, h-hey, look at me, look at me.”
Eddie does. His mouth moves, but his throat is caught on something—God, blood, maybe, thick in the passages—clicking with effort, and his eyes are glassy, tears cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks.
“I froze,” Buck chokes out. “I’m sorry, I-I froze, I didn’t—”
Eddie coughs again. Blood bubbles at the corners of his mouth, tracing a path down his chin and pooling at the hollow of his throat. When he speaks, it’s thick and wet; a man drowning in his own blood.
“You… always do.”
“No. No, I—” Buck shakes his head violently, “I won’t again. Please don’t— I’m sorry, Eddie, I’m sorry—”
Eddie’s bloodied hand clamps Buck’s wrist over his sleeve, and Buck gasps at the shockingly strong grip of it, ironclad despite it bleeding out of him in waves. Dust and heat stings his eyes, mingling with the tears and wetting his cheeks. Snot runs unchecked, salting his top lip. At the blurred centre of his vision, Eddie’s eyes find Buck’s and hold, cutting through the haze.
“It’s your fault,” Eddie whispers, and his grip slackens.
A high, thin ringing pierces Buck’s skull, soon drowned out by the scream that tears from his chest, raw and animalistic, shredding his vocal cords. Eddie’s eyes remain open, lifeless, staring past Buck into a void; the spark that once animated every glance and teasing smile extinguished.
All it took was a second.
Flames now crawl along the corridor in languid, predatory increments, heat pricking into his exposed skin like a thousand needles. His scream breaks off into a hoarse gasp, trying to shield Eddie’s body from the encroaching fire that—
—is suddenly not there.
Heat still clings. Sweat still slicks. His ears still ring, but it descends in pitch—warps and reshapes into a low, familiar whir. For a long, horrible second, nothing comes into focus. Darkness, thick and muffling, engulfs him like smoke.
Then,
Sensation returns in fragments: the whir of the ceiling fan, the smell of room freshener over faint traces of Biofreeze, the mattress dipping under the weight of a body next to him, covers slipped off of Eddie’s legs from how hard Buck jostled them. Eddie.
Oh god, Eddie.
He lies on his back, one arm flung over his bare stomach, left ribs kinesiotaped to alleviate the pain for the first couple nights. His face is slack with peaceful sleep, forehead smooth and unlined, lashes resting dark against his cheeks, lips parted in breath.
Buck leans forward without thinking. His hand pauses, hovering above Eddie’s chest—above the steady thump-thump beneath pectoral muscle—afraid to make contact, afraid the warmth will prove illusory, that touch will shatter the vision and return them to fire and blood and falling sky. Instead, he stares at the slow rise and fall of Eddie’s chest, counting three full breaths before he dares to trust it.
Alive.
Air gushes out of his lungs, escapes his mouth in a wrecked sob. He jams the heels of both hands against his eyes, hard enough to summon phosphenes, but they feel wet, slick, against his eyelids. For a split second, his stomach drops— blood—
Sweat.
It’s just sweat.
Jesus.
Buck makes it to the bathroom on unsteady legs. The light is too bright when he flicks it on, and he stares woefully at his reflection—skin ghostly pale, curls damp and clinging to his forehead in half question marks, eyes rimmed red and lashes clumped from tears.
He turns on the tap, letting cool water rush over hands his mind still insists are coated red. The water runs clear. Untainted. He scrubs anyway, nails raking painfully across his palms, over the creases where dust and grime usually gather, like he can scour away the phantom blood, like he can peel away the memory of Eddie’s life fading beneath his hands. Scrubs and scrubs and scrubs and—
“Buck?”
Buck startles at the sound, hands jerking in the sink, water sloshing over the porcelain and splashing dark spots across his shirt.
Eddie stands in the doorway, hair mussed into gel-free tufts, eyes narrowed against the bathroom light. His squint widens into swift concern when he takes inventory of Buck’s face: the pallor, the red-rimmed eyes, the quiver of his mouth, the terror splashed across his features.
“Hey, what’s—?” He crosses the distance to curve a warm hand over Buck’s shoulder, eyes flicking across Buck’s face. “What happened?”
“Eddie,” Buck breathes, relieved at the touch, the proximity, the attention. Tears gather at his waterline, not spilling yet, but swelling with the threat of it.
A thumb presses into Buck’s carotid. “Okay. Hey– hey,” Eddie stresses when Buck breaks eye contact, demanding it back with a single syllable. “I’m here. Tell me what happened.”
“Sorry,” Buck blurts automatically—that I killed you, that I woke you, that I can’t get it together—“Sorry, I-I’m okay. We should— you should get back to sleep. It was just a nightmare. I’m fine.”
Buck feels the pressure of Eddie’s thumb against his swallow; just as Eddie must feel the swallow against his thumb.
“Yeah? What about?”
‘Eddie—”
“If you’re fine,” Eddie cuts in, gentle in his persistence, “and it’s okay, then tell me.”
Buck inhales. He knows this velveteen tone like the back of his hand, the one that always follows flimsy I’m fine’s and It’s nothing’s, the one that never lets a dismissal sit. Eddie will nudge and press and pry until Buck is stripped down to honesty.
“You… you died,” he says. It’s a wrecking ball to his ribs and a crushing weight off his chest all at once, and he chases it, that agonising relief. “You told me it was my fault.”
Eddie stills.
Only for the second it takes to absorb the words, because then his grip tightens on Buck’s shoulder. “Hey,” he says, firm. “Look at me.”
The instinctive, childish part of him resists being seen, but he’s never been good at denying Eddie. Eddie waits until their gazes lock, until he can drill the words into Buck through sight alone.
Then, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Buck shakes his head in weak disagreement. “I froze.”
“Maybe you did, I don’t know,” Eddie concedes, “but what happened is not your fault.” He pauses to make sure the words settle as fact. “We look out for each other. Today I looked out for you, and tomorrow you look out for me.”
“Eddie, you could’ve died looking out for me,” Buck presses. “And what? I’m– I’m supposed to live with that?”
Does he not understand? Does he not get that Buck can’t live without him? Does he not know what the well collapse did to Buck, what the sniper did?
“And you would’ve died if I hadn’t,” Eddie counters, matching Buck’s intensity without missing a beat. “You think I could live with that?”
“That’s different.”
“It’s really not.”
“Eddie—”
“Buck.”
“I would’ve deserved it,” Buck tells him, certain of it, the verdict long delivered in the private court of his mind. The images flash in his mind, every moment its own kind of purgatory, and it spills out of him faster now, panic and shame accelerating his pulse.
“I was— I couldn’t— I didn’t move, Eddie. In the dream I-I just stood there—”
(the freeze, the shove, the slab, the thud,
the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood)
“—and then you were under it, and there was—so much blood, and I-I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t fix it. I was holding you and you– you were dying and there was nothing I could do.”
Eddie curses softly under his breath and steps closer, close enough to crowd Buck’s space and eclipse the bathroom light. His palms rise to cradle Buck’s face, stilling the tremble of his jaw, coaxing Buck into eye contact until he can’t be anything but enveloped in the warmth of Eddie’s eyes.
“Hey,” Eddie murmurs, voice pitched soft. His thumbs brush beneath Buck’s eyes, wiping away the wet path of a tear long fallen. “I’m here, okay? I’m right here. I’m okay.”
Buck believes it; the proof is before him. The words ring true from the warmth seeping out of Eddie’s palms to Buck’s cheek, knows it’s true from the breath fanning over Buck’s skin, and if he were to lean forward, if he closes the last few inches between them, he’ll know it’s true from the press of his lips against Eddie’s.
And then he knows it’s true, because Eddie’s lips are as warm as life itself, lightly chapped from never drinking enough water no matter how often Buck reminds him, but soft all the same.
Eddie doesn’t pull away—Buck was hoping he wouldn’t—but he doesn’t push forward either, not that Buck was expecting him to. He stands there and allows the kiss to unfold at Buck’s pace: a not-kiss that is nevertheless a kiss, keeping his mouth pliant so Buck may latch onto his lower lip, sucking, tasting, clinging to proof of life.
Buck’s hands slide up, fingers curling into the warm skin of Eddie’s waist, and Eddie exhales through his nose, tilting his head the tiniest degree, easing the angle so Buck can stay there longer if he needs to. Giving without demand, offering without expectation, so Buck may take what he needs.
(Giving, giving, giving, so Buck can take, take, take.)
He wants to stay in this moment, deepen it, slip his tongue in and trace the cavern of Eddie’s mouth and lose himself there, but restraint arrives with a cold hand around his nape. He has to stop. He has to pull away. This is one inch given, he can’t take a mile out of it.
Buck eases back, their lips parting with a soft sound. His gaze lifts to find Eddie already watching, eyes moving left-right-left-right between Buck’s, something unreadable settling there.
Something like—rejection, maybe. Disappointment. The possibility sparks panic in Buck’s chest, flaring white-hot even as he pitches forward to subdue it.
“Eddie, I’m—”
“It’s okay,” Eddie cuts in quickly, almost urgently, intercepting the apology before it can fully form. “It’s okay.”
“—I wasn’t thinking—”
“I know.” Eddie’s hands slide down from Buck’s jaw to hover between them, half-raised in a placating gesture. “You were coming down from a nightmare. I get it, it’s okay.”
Buck nods, clinging to the explanation like a rope tossed into open water. His gaze drops before he can stop it, to Eddie’s mouth, to the faint shine coating his bottom lip.
Buck put it there.
“Did it help?” Eddie asks, tentative almost.
“Uh, yeah.” The answer leaves him more breath than voice. “Yeah.” And because he can’t just let his theft sit without an apology, regardless of Eddie cutting him off, “Sorry.”
“None of that,” Eddie shakes his head. “You’ve beaten yourself up enough. Don’t add this to the pile, okay? I didn’t mind— I mean. I don’t mind, if you want to—”
“I don’t,” Buck assures quickly, as if he would dare do this to Eddie again, as if he would dare demand another not-kiss from him, no matter how easily it silenced the storm in his head. “I won’t, I-I promise.”
“Right,” Eddie says, curt, eyes dropping. “Okay. That’s— yeah.”
Buck’s eyes drift yet again to Eddie’s mouth, the faint shine now dried, lips turned a soft matte under the bathroom light. His lower lip is still faintly flushed from Buck’s brief ambush. And then, as if aware of the scrutiny, Eddie’s tongue darts out and wets them. Buck glances up, feeling equal parts caught and embarrassed, only Eddie’s not even looking at Buck. Not Buck’s eyes anyway, somewhere lower, almost like—
“I can take the couch,” Buck blurts.
Eddie’s head snaps up from Buck’s mouth?chin?neck?, eyes wide. “What?”
“So you can have space.” Buck makes a move to step back, but he’s right up against the sink, porcelain digging into his lower spine. He waves a hand between them instead. “Don’t wanna, uh, elbow you in the ribs. Or make anything weird.”
“Weird?” Eddie frowns.
Buck winces. “Not– not weird. Just. I mean, you’re hurt. And I—” He swallows. “I don’t want to crowd you. While you’re hurt.”
Eddie’s still frowning at him.
“So, the couch?” Buck tries again, pointing uselessly toward the hallway. “I can—”
“No,” Eddie interrupts, like the idea itself is ridiculous. “Buck, you just—” He exhales, shaking his head. “You haven’t reacted to a nightmare like that in years. You really think I want you on the couch?”
“I mean,” Buck hedges, “I’m okay now.”
Eddie snorts softly. “Sorry, bud, don’t believe that for a second.”
“But—”
“Butts are for sitting,” Eddie intercepts, predicting the protest and looking too smug over it, like Buck hasn’t heard that exact line a hundred times before. Then he reaches out, fingers closing around Buck’s wrist. His expression softens, voice even softer when he says, “come here.”
Buck goes easily, lets Eddie’s gentle tug guide him out of the too-bright bathroom and into the warmth of the bedroom. It’s not dark anymore; Eddie having turned on the bedside lamp before following the sound of running water to where Buck was.
They settle into bed; Eddie lowers himself onto his back with a soft grunt, careful of his shoulder and ribs, and Buck follows a beat later, mirroring the supine position without thinking twice.
Eddie flicks the lamp off, and they’re dunked into darkness. Buck keeps his eyes open, vision adjusting until the ceiling fan comes into view, blades carving circles overhead. He folds his hands over his stomach, then lets them fall to his sides. After a long minute of restless shifting, he gives up and rolls onto his side.
“Sorry,” Buck says, when he sees Eddie still awake, head turned to the side and an amused witness to Buck’s fidgeting.
Eddie tuts at the apology. “Stop that.”
“‘Kay.” As if.
Buck’s gaze drifts to Eddie’s chest, where one hand rests easy over his sternum. He glances up, catches the soft smile curving Eddie’s lips, and looks down again. Before he can overthink it, Buck lifts his own hand and lays it over Eddie’s.
They stay that way for a minute, maybe two, just looking at each other, feeling the soft rise and fall of Eddie’s chest. Then Eddie shifts, lifting his hand so Buck’s rises with it, and—keeping their eyes locked—presses his lips to the back of Buck’s hand. Warmth blooms where mouth meets skin; an action so deliberately intimate it leaves Buck breathless.
Eddie guides their joined hands back to his chest, settling them right over his heart. The ugly, evil thing coiling his chest loosens its hold on Buck. The blood, the smoke, the guilt—it all recedes.
“Sweet dreams, Buck,” Eddie says.
Buck’s eyes are already closed, but the smile in Eddie’s words is audible. He huffs at the pointed phrasing and squeezes Eddie’s hand, grateful for the contact.
“Night, Eddie.”