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BThe first thing Eddie becomes aware of is the pain.
Not sharp or all at once, but in waves. They roll over him heavy and slow, like the tide dragging itself across rock over and over again. His whole body feels weighted, pinned somewhere deep under concrete and water and something chemical and warm that makes it hard to think, to even try and focus. He tries to move, the universe punishing him almost immediately, a groan slipping out from between chapped lips before he can even try to stop it.
“Easy.”
The voice is familiar enough that it cuts through the haze before the face does. Eddie cracks his eyes open to fluorescent light and the blurred shape of a water stained ceiling tile. White. Too bright. The smell of antiseptic hits him next, sharp and sterile and wrong in a way that makes his stomach turn.
Hospital.
Again.
God, when will it end?
He blinked hard, fighting through the cotton packed behind his eyes, and turned his head a fraction.
Hen–
No.
Chim. Yea, that's his captain.
Chim sat in the stiff vinyl chair at Eddie’s bedside, elbows on his knees, still dressed in his navy department undershirt and turnout pants, suspenders hanging loose at his hips. His hair was damp with sweat or mist or maybe river water that had dried and left it stuck slightly at his temples. There was a bruise darkening along his jaw. He looked exhausted in a way that made him seem older than Eddie had ever really let himself notice.
“Hey,” Chim said, softer now that Eddie was actually looking at him. “Welcome back, bud.”
Eddie frowned. Or tried to. His face felt slow and uncooperative. Like he was wanting to move but his body wouldn't connect to his mind. “What…”
The word came out cracked and rough, like glass against his esophagus.
Chim reached for the plastic cup on the rolling table and tipped a straw toward him. “Small sips.”
Eddie obeyed mostly because it was easier than arguing. The water fell down his throat slowly, cold so he felt the sting but loosening his throat enough to finally ask.
“What happened?”
Chim gave him a look, long suffering and threaded with pure exhaustion. One Eddie couldn’t quite read through the morphine haze.
“You really don’t remember?”
Eddie tried. He closed his eyes and tilted back, trying to recall. There has been a call. Nothing out of the ordinary. Sunny day, perfectly normal. But he remembers the accident, the scream of twisted metal and the heat.
Sirens.
Screams.
Something about a bridge flashes through his mind and he winces at it. But it starts coming back in pieces. In headlights reflected in slick black water, concrete barriers shattered, the nose of a city bus hanging halfway off the side of the overpass, its back wheels still caught on the crumbling edge. People trapped inside. A kid crying. Dispatch shouting over the radio. Buck yelling his name somewhere too close to the drop.
And Eddie–
Eddie hadn’t been on the cable, wasn't supposed to be at least.
He inhaled too sharply. Pain flared white hot through his ribs.
“Easy,” Chim repeated, already halfway to pressing him back into the bed when Eddie tried to lift himself. “Do not make me have to get them to sedate you, Diaz.”
“The bus,” Eddie said. “The kid–”
“Shes alive.”
Chim sat back down. “You got the last civilian out. Eight-year-old girl. Broken arm, mild hypothermia, but she’s gonna be okay.”
Eddie stared at him as the relief came first. The celebration of a job well done, of the heroics paying off. But then the rest of it hit, rushing into him in fractured pieces, ugly and disjointed and confused.
The cable had snapped.
Or slipped. He wasn't quite sure. Maybe it had simply given way. The bridge railing, maybe. There had been that shriek of metal, the sensation of sudden weightlessness. Buck lunging forward in his peripherals. Chim shouting. Eddie twisting, trying to shove the girl toward the ledge, toward Hen’s hands–
And then the fall.
He felt weightless, like floating. And then impact. A sting. Then darkness.
His breath stuttered around it. Chim must’ve seen something in his face, because his expression shifted, hardening around the edges. Not unkind. Just like he was bracing himself.
“You fell thirty feet,” he said after a moment. “Into the river. Hit part of the support structure on the way down. Cracked three ribs, fractured your left wrist, dislocated your shoulder, and you’ve got enough bruising that you probably aren't gonna like when you get to look in the mirror.”
Eddie looked down automatically.
Bandages. Sling. His left arm immobilized against his chest, his fingers wiggling helplessly. Tape and IV lines. The ugly swell of pain wrapped around his torso with every breath.
“Lucky,” Chim added dryly and Eddie let out a laugh that came out more like a wince.
“Yeah.”
For a second, the room was quiet except for the steady beep of the monitor at his side.
Then Eddie asked the question he should have asked first. The one he was there worried about but didn't fully know how to verbalize.
“Buck?”
Something flickered across Chim’s face. Gone too quickly to name.
“He’s okay.”
It's not enough.
Eddie swallowed. “He fell too?”
“No.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Minor smoke inhalation from the pileup before the bus, some scrapes, maybe a sprained wrist. He’s fine.”
Eddie’s shoulders loosened a fraction.
That was when he realized Buck wasn’t here.
If Buck was fine—if Buck was really and truly fine—then why wasn’t he here?The thought snagged and lodged somewhere unpleasant in his chest.
“Where is he?”
Chim was silent long enough that Eddie dragged his eyes back to him, terrified by what he might see.
The look on his captain’s face had changed again. It wasn’t just exhaustion now. It was something heavier. Something Eddie had only seen on Chim a handful of times, usually in the wake of funerals or when the department decided to make an example out of somebody. The bad feeling curled low in Eddie's stomach, nausea rolling through him in unforgiving waves
“Chim?”
The captain leaned back in the chair and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Before we get to that, there’s something I need to ask you.”
That was… not better.
Even drugged half to hell, Eddie could tell the tone in Chim’s voice had shifted from friend to captain. Not cold, exactly. But deliberate.
Eddie licked dry lips. “Okay.”
Chim held his gaze. “Why do you keep doing this?”
Eddie blinked.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Eddie frowned, trying exactly how to put his finger in the right answer. “Doing what?”
“Throwing yourself into the worst possible position on every scene like you’ve got a personal vendetta against self-preservation.”
“Chim—”
“No.” Chim sat forward, forearms braced on his knees, voice still low but edged now. “I’m serious. I need you to answer me.”
The room felt too bright all of a sudden, too hot. Eddie shifted, pain flashing across his ribs and down into his arms.
“This was a rescue,” he muttered. “It’s my job.”
Chim’s mouth tightened. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t give me the line.” His voice didn’t rise, but something in it cracked just enough to make Eddie look at him again. “I know it was your job. I was there. I also watched you override my call for a stabilized extraction because you saw that kid and decided you could get to her faster. I watched you step onto a compromised structure with a live current running through the support beams and half the bridge threatening to come down. I watched Buck nearly dive after you when the cable snapped.”
Eddie stared at him, heart thudding painfully against bandaged ribs.
Eddie wanted to interrupt, to defend himself, but Chim kept going.
“And before today? The jump in October. The hostage situation in January. The chemical plant in March. The warehouse fire last month where you ignored a mayday because you were already inside and thought you could handle it alone and you disregarded every instruction to stand down. You keep taking the hit. You keep being the one who runs straight at the thing everyone else is trying to get around, and for someone who shouts ‘chain of command’ at Buck every damn day, you sure do a good job of being a hypocrite about it ”
His jaw flexed. “So I’m asking you, as your captain and as a friend who is very, very tired of seeing you bleeding in hospital beds…why?”
Eddie opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because what was he supposed to say? Because he was good at it. Because somebody had to. Because if he moved fast enough, hard enough, maybe no one else had to get hurt.
Because if he was the one hanging off the edge, then Buck was on solid ground. And he wasn't sure if that truth was something he should be saying out loud yet. At least not when he still hasn't measured it in his own mind.
The morphine makes everything loose at the edges. Thoughts that were usually packed away tight and nailed shut, were suddenly floating too close to the surface. Eddie could feel them slipping, could feel the effort it would take to shove them back down where they belonged. And he was just so…tired. That was the problem wasn't it.
He was tired in his bones. In the marrow. Tired in the place beneath his sternum that had been clenched tight for so long he’d forgotten what it felt like not to be braced for impact. Tired of nearly dying. Tired of watching Buck nearly die. Tired of pretending every reckless choice he made was just instinct or training or duty when there was a much uglier truth underneath it.
Chim was still looking at him, waiting. Wanting an answer that he wasn't sure he knew how to give.
“Eddie,” he said quietly again. “Why?”
Eddie laughed once. It sounded wrecked, scratching his throat raw with emotion.
“You really wanna know?”
“Yes.”
It should have been enough warning. Chim could’ve stopped him. Could’ve told him to sleep it off, to answer tomorrow, to wait until the drugs wore off and Eddie could put the walls back up. But he didn't.
And Eddie–
Eddie broke.
“It’s Buck.”
The words were barely above a whisper when he forced them out.
Chim’s brows drew together. “What about Buck?”
Eddie shut his eyes. If he couldn’t see Chim, maybe he could pretend none of this was happening.
“It’s always Buck.”
His throat tightened so hard it hurt. He could hear the monitor to the left as the beeping spend up, his anxiety spiking with every passing moment.
“I can’t. ” He swallowed. Tried again. “I can’t do it if it’s him.”
“Do what?”
“Stand back.” The words came out ragged, angry at himself more than anything. “I can’t stand back and wait and trust the rope or the team or the timing when it’s him. I can’t. I know I’m supposed to, I know–” He sucked in a breath that went sharp with pain, everything blurring around the edges. “But every time something happens, every time he’s in the line of fire or too close to the edge or running toward something that can take him away from me, I just–”
His voice cracked and he felt the room go still around him. He stared at the ceiling because it was easier than the alternative. Of looking at Chim and feeling the scrutiny that would be reflected back.
“I see him there and all I can think is not again.”
Because when he sees Buck on the precipice he sees everything they've been through. The blood clots and the ladder truck. The shooting and the well where Buck threw himself into the line of fire for Eddie. The lighting that broke them in ways he's still not sure they've recovered from.
The tsunami, where he almost lost the two most important things in his life. The kidnapping from only a few months ago, so fresh he can still feel the dessert sun on the back of his neck. He thinks of every impossible thing that had ever reached for Buck like the universe kept trying to prove it could take him if it wanted.
“Not him,” Eddie whispered. “Anybody but him.”
He scrubbed at his face with the heel of his good hand, suddenly furious to find it wet.
“I know it’s stupid.”
“Eddie–”
“I know,” he said again, harsher this time. “I know it makes me a bad firefighter, okay? I know I’m supposed to treat every victim the same and trust my team and follow the plan, but the second it’s Buck, I can’t think straight. I just need him safe. I just need to know he's okay, Chim.”
He could hear himself and he knew how bad it sounded. Knew, distantly, that he was saying too much, being too honest, with nothing between his thoughts and his mouth but narcotics and exhaustion.
Still, he couldn’t stop. It was a dam that had opened, just a small crack in the facade. And yet everything came pouring out at once, unable to be stopped.
“Because if something happens to him…” He laughed again, thin and awful and painful all at once. “If something happens to him, I don’t know how to do this anymore.”
He's met with silence. And then after a moment, Chim's voice, careful and measured,, “do what?”
“Any of it.”
The answer came out instantly, like there was no barrier to it, no alternative truth. Like there was no Eddie without Buck. And it had taken Eddie years to realize that was true, that he can't do it without Buck. Work. Home. Just living. He's not sure if he could do it
Eddie turned his head at last, just enough to meet Chim’s eyes. And there it was. No taking it back now. No hiding from it, not with the truth already sitting between them, alive and electric and unable to be buried any longer.
He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the ache behind his ribs, putting the last nail in the coffin, destroying any ability to back away, to tamp it down.
“I love him.”
Three words.
Quiet and simple in their ultimate devastation.
Chim exhaled through his nose, slow and long, like a man who had just been handed exactly the answer he’d expected and still somehow wasn’t prepared for. Almost as if he'd been hoping that it wasn't this, that maybe would have just told him he wanted to be reckless, wanted to do something new and fun, overly heroic.
“I didn’t—” He winced as the panic rose up, causing sharp pains to ricochet through his body. “I didn’t mean–”
“Yeah,” Chim said, interrupting fie the first time. But he didn't sound shocked or even confused. He just seemed…tired.
Eddie stared at him. “That’s it?”
Chim lifted one shoulder into a lazy form of a shrug. “You’re not exactly subtle.”
A disbelieving noise escaped Eddie before pain cut it off.
“You already knew?”
“Hen knows.” Chim considered. “Maddie definitely knows. Bobby suspected or at least that's what the paperwork in the bottom of my desk drawer says. I think Ravi figured it out sometime around that time you all went to that club back over the winter. The only person this would apparently be a revelation to is Buck.”
Heat flared up Eddie’s neck despite everything. “Jesus.”
“Mm.”
Eddie closed his eyes again, mortified enough to wish the morphine would drag him under out of sheer mercy.
“I didn’t mean to say it.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious, Chim.”
“So am I.”
Eddie let out a shaky breath. “You can’t tell him.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Promise me.”
Chim was quiet for a moment. “I can promise I’m not gonna out you in a hospital room while you’re high on enough painkillers to confess your love life to a vending machine.”
That was not a real promise, but Eddie didn’t have the strength to fight him on it. All he could do was swallow and hope that Chim could maybe keep a secret for the first time in his adult life. “He can’t–he can't know. At least not like this “
For the first time since Eddie had woken up, Chim’s expression softened completely. “Then maybe tell him some other way.”
Eddie huffed a humorless laugh. “That would require there being another way.”
Something in Chim’s face shuttered and the bad feeling in Eddie's gut sharpened into something that felt like pure panic, the monitor next to him beeping erratically.
“Chim,” he said, slower now. “Where is Buck?”
Chim sat back and for a moment he looked less like a captain and more like a man trying to decide how much damage one patient could take in a single shift.
Then he said, “He’s back at the station. Internal Affairs is here.”
Every muscle in Eddie’s body went taut.
“What?”
“The bridge rescue is under review.”
“Okay…that’s–thats normal.”
“Not like this.”
The words dropped like stones, making Eddie's mouth go dry.
Chim’s gaze didn’t waver. “The city’s calling it a pattern.”
No.
No, no, no.
“Chim–”
“This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Eddie stared at him, not understanding and understanding all at once in the worst possible way. The station was under scrutiny, the near misses, headlines, and court appearances drawing the attention of the brass in all the wrong ways. They were always doing the heroic thing, but maybe not the most respected. Every time they clawed themselves back to normal, something would happen and again it would all fall apart. And if he's honest with himself, Eddie knows that no chain of command would look at their station and think that they were successful. Especially not since last year.
The 118 had always been a family. Always been more than just a station. Just a number.
And families survived.
Didn’t they?
“They disbanded us, Eddie.”
The monitor spikes.
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” Eddie tried to sit up and immediately gasped as pain tore through his ribs and shoulder. “No, they can’t–”
“They already did.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is.”
Chim was on his feet now, one hand braced against Eddie’s good shoulder, keeping him from hurting himself worse. His voice stayed calm, maddeningly calm.
“Orders came down from the chief while they were still getting you out of imaging. Effective immediately pending investigation, but I was told unofficially not to expect reinstatement. They’re reassigning the house. Splitting the team.”
Eddie felt like the room had tilted, like he was grasping for purchase that wasn't available, that he couldn't find no matter how hard he grappled.
“No,” he said again, weaker this time. “No, that’s–that’s insane.”
“Yeah.”
“We saved people.”
“Yes.”
“The girl—”
“Alive because of you.”
“Then how can they–”
“Because you almost died.” Chim’s composure cracked at last. Just a little. Enough.
“Because Buck nearly went over after you. Because Hen and I had to physically restrain him while the bridge was still unstable. Because there are already three videos online of our team hanging off a collapsing overpass while the news anchors ask if LAFD has lost its damn mind. What do you want me to do, Diaz? Keep tossing team members over a bridge until morale improves? ”
Eddie flinched.
Chim scrubbed a hand down his face again, suddenly looking every second of the day he’d had.
“I’m not saying it’s right,” he said. “I’m saying it’s done.”
Eddie stared at the blanket over his legs like if he looked hard enough he could make it disappear, make the cold impersonal hospital room his bed at home with his son asleep down the hall and Buck sitting on the edge, making sure he was comfortable.
Disbanded.
The 118.
No more Chimin the captain’s chair with his coffee and he griped about paperwork then doing it anyway because somebody had to.
No more Hen rolling her eyes while she saves everyone in a ten-mile radius as if she didn't even have to lift a finger to do so.
No more Buck at his shoulder, steady and infuriating and impossible.
No more home.
A laugh clawed its way up Eddie’s throat and died there.
“This is my fault.”
Chim went still.
“Eddie—”
“It is.”
“No.”
“I’m the one who fell.”
“You’re the one who saved a kid.”
“I’m the one who pushed the call.”
“And at the end of the day I let it happen. As your captain, I didn't do my job.”
“Because I pushed!”
The words tore out of him louder than he meant, pain and panic making them ugly. Tears burned hot behind his eyes and he hated that too, hated being this open, this raw, this helpless in front of someone who had already seen too much.
“If I had just listened—if I’d waited—if I hadn’t made it about—”
“About Buck?”
Eddie flinched like he’d been struck by something, stopping him short.
Chim’s voice gentled again, but he didn’t back down.
“You think the department is disbanding the 118 because you’re in love with your best friend?”
Eddie’s jaw clenched.
“They're disbanding the 118 because we’ve spent the last year running ourselves into the ground and calling it heroism. Bobby died and we were buried with him and none of us are willing to truly talk about what that means, what that looks like in the field. And you don't need to put it all on your shoulders. Don't carry it alone.”
The problem was, Eddie didn't know how. His whole life, blame had been easier to carry than fear. Easier than grief. Easier than admitting he wanted things he maybe didn’t get to have. He could take responsibility. He could take punishment. He could build a life out of penance if he had to.
What he didn’t know how to do was sit in a hospital bed, broken open and drugged and terrified, and accept that maybe some disasters weren’t his to own. That maybe he didn't do anything wrong, didn't have any blame.
He whispered, “What happens now?”
Chim let out a breath at that.
“I don’t know.”
Honesty. Brutal and bare. Like a man who truly didn't have a single answer.
“Hen’s downstairs talking to Karen. Last I talked to Athena she and Harry were with the chief and IA. Ravi got sent home after they checked him out. Buck refused to leave until IA made him and I know Maddie was with him last I checked.”
That pierced through the fog immediately.
“He refused?”
Chim gave him a look. “Eddie.”
Right.
Of course he did.
Eddie could picture it too clearly. He could see Buck, soaked through, wild-eyed, hands bloodied from rope burn or concrete or both, trying to push past medics and cops and anyone stupid enough to get in his way. He’d been on the bridge. He’d seen Eddie fall. He’d probably seen the water close over his head and his body rag doll against unforgiving concrete.
Something twisted painfully in Eddie’s chest that had nothing to do with broken ribs.
“He saw?”
“All of it.”
The words came gentle this time, as if Chim knew exactly where to place the knife that dug directly into his heart.
Eddie shut his eyes.
He remembered the last thing, now.
Not the impact.
Before that.
Buck on the edge, one hand stretched toward him, shouting something Eddie couldn’t hear over the noise of the city, with terror on his face so naked and absolute it had cut through even Eddie’s own adrenaline.
Buck had looked at him like the world was ending. And maybe, in some ways, it had.
“I’m sorry.”
Chim frowned. “For what?”
“For putting him through that. For putting you all through it.”
It came out so instinctive, so immediate, that Chim’s face did something unreadable.
“You know,” he said after a beat, “most people, when they almost die, spend at least five minutes being upset on their own behalf.”
Eddie would’ve smiled if it didn’t hurt. “Working on it.”
“Terrible showing. Two out of ten.”
Silence settled again, quieter this time. A little more fragile than before but not openly hostile. Eddie still wouldn't call it comfortable yet.
Eventually, Chim sat back down, his hands falling from Eddie's body to extend a fragile thread of trust.
For a while, neither of them spoke. Eddie drifted in and out of the edges of sleep, held there by pain and medication and the relentless loop of what now, what now, what now.
At some point a nurse came in to check vitals and scold him for trying to sit up. Chim answered most of the questions because Eddie was too busy pretending he wasn’t listening for footsteps in the hall.
He waited. He listened.
Buck didn't come.
Time got strange in hospitals. It stretched and folded. The light outside the narrow window shifted from flat afternoon gray toward something warmer, dimmer, edging toward evening.
Chim took a phone call in the hallway. When he came back, there was a fresh line of tension between his brows.
“What?” Eddie asked immediately.
Chim hesitated.
“What happened?”
“Nothing happened.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Chim sighed. “IA wants statements from everybody who was on scene.”
“Now?”
“Soon.”
Eddie’s stomach dropped. “I’m not even—”
“You’re not giving one tonight,” Chim cut in. “Doctor already said no.”
“Buck?”
That hesitation again.
“Buck’s giving his. Or, he gave it earlier. Maddie drove him down to the station after lunch.”
Of course.
Eddie could picture that too, he could always picture what the other man was doing. How he looked. Buck pacing some fluorescent conference room in damp turnouts, furious and scared and trying not to burn the whole building down with sheer force of will.
Or maybe not pacing.
Maybe still. Too still.
That was worse.
Eddie swallowed. “How bad is he?”
Chim’s face softened in a way that told Eddie more than the answer did.
“He thinks he watched you die.”
Eddie stared at the ceiling because if he looked at Chim, he might actually fall apart.
“He didn’t,” he said after a moment, voice hoarse.
“No,” Chim said quietly. “But try telling his nervous system that.”
Guilt crashed over him. It was an immediate feeling but useless all the same.
He should be with Buck.
Buck should be here with him or they should be at Eddie's house, nursing minor scrapes and bruises from a normal shift, not separated by Internal Affairs and the concrete walls of St. Sinai.
Everything about this was wrong.
Eddie turned his head toward the door again, hating how obvious he must be. Hating how Chim definitely noticed and didn’t say anything.
After a while, he asked, “Have you talked to anyone else?”
“About what?”
“The… disbanding.”
Chim’s laugh was short and sharp. “You mean before or after I told the deputy chief he could take the reassignment and shove it?”
Despite everything, Eddie barked out a startled laugh.
“Seriously?”
“Almost word for word.”
That sounded enough like Chim under pressure that Eddie could almost see it, could almost feel the strange comfort of it.
“You’ll fight it,” Eddie murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Will it matter?”
Chim didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But I'll fight it anyway.”
That, more than anything, nearly undid Eddie.
Because of course Chim would. Of course he’d stand there, bleeding or exhausted or furious, and keep trying to hold the line for all of them even after the department had already decided they were too much trouble to keep intact. Because Chim understood. He knew what the station meant to them all, what Bobby's memory meant.
Eddie’s eyes burned.
“This is home,” he whispered.
“I know.”
“We just got back.”
He hadn’t meant it to sound so small.
Back from Texas. Back from distance. Back from all the ways he’d tried to carve himself into something simpler and safer and failed. Back from being pulled under and drowned by grief. Back from the hell of new Mexico and fresh new traumas that he still hasn't fully processed, didn't fully understand.
He had barely let himself believe he could stay this time. That he could be part of the shape of things again instead of a ghost at the edge.
And now–
Now the house was being ripped apart around them.
Chim leaned back in the chair, looking every bit as wrecked as Eddie felt.
“You know what Hen said?”
Eddie shook his head.
“She said if they split us up, half the city’s about to be in a lot more trouble.”
A watery laugh escaped Eddie.
“That sounds like Hen.”
“Mm.”
“And what did you say?”
Chim considered. “I said whoever gets Buck better have a really solid understanding of emotional support arson.”
That one got a real laugh out of Eddie, brief and painful and worth it.
“Jesus.”
“I’m not wrong.”
“No,” Eddie admitted. “You’re not.”
They sat in that for a second, the joke fragile and bright in the middle of everything else.
Then the door burst open. Not politely or careful. Without even a knock. It slammed hard enough against the stopper that both Eddie and Chim jerked toward it. And when they did, Buck stood there like he'd outrun the apocalypse to get there.
Still in his turnouts.
His coat hung open, reflective stripes dulled by soot and river grime, one sleeve torn at the cuff. His helmet was gone, hair damp and matted to his forehead, face streaked with something that might have been water once and was now just dried salt and grit. There was a smear of blood–his or someone else’s, Eddie wasn't aure–high on one cheekbone. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild and locked on Eddie with such ferocious, naked relief that Eddie forgot how to breathe.
For one suspended second, nobody moved.
Then Buck crossed the room.
He was fast and unsteady with it, Like he’d been running on adrenaline for hours and his body had finally realized it was allowed to shake.
“Buck–”
He didn’t let Eddie finish.
Buck reached the bed and stopped just short of crashing into it, both hands gripping the rail so hard his knuckles went white. He stared down at Eddie like he was cataloging every visible injury, every bandage, every subtle sign of life.
“You’re awake.”
It came out wrecked, barely a voice at all and Eddie's chest tightened with it..
“Yeah,” he said, softer than he meant to. “Hey.”
Buck made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob and yet neither at the same time. He ran a hand over his face, then seemed to think better of it halfway through, maybe because it would smear more dirt around, maybe because he didn’t trust himself.
“You—” He stopped. Started again. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Eddie looked at him, really looked, and understood with sudden clarity that scared was nowhere near the word for what Buck had been through today.
The river.
The fall.
The wait.
The not knowing.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, the 118 being torn apart around them and him being forced to sit in an isolated room with IA giving statements and separated from his phone with no way to know what happened, if Eddie was okay, if he'd get to go home. And all at once the guilt slammed into Eddie full force, knocking the air out of him. Something warmer and far more dangerous was threaded with it though, flooding him with thoughts of Buck and Christopher and their relationship and the horror of them thinking that Eddie was gone. That they were alone.
“I’m sorry.”
Buck’s head snapped up. “No,” the force of it startled them both.
Buck swallowed, visibly reining himself in, but when he spoke again his voice was still shaking.
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t–you don’t get to apologize for almost dying, Eddie.”
Eddie opened his mouth, then closed it.
Because what could he even say to that?
Buck’s gaze dropped to the sling, the bruising visible above the gown, the bandages, and something ugly flashed across his face.
“He said you were fine,” Buck muttered, like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t in the room. “They kept saying fine and minor injuries, but they wouldn’t let me up here and then IA–”
His jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumped.
Eddie felt Chim stand from the chair beside him, the quiet shift of weight and fabric.
“I’m gonna go find out if anyone’s actually made the chief cry yet,” Chim said, tone carefully casual.
Buck startled, like he’d forgotten Chim was even there.
“Cap–”
“It's fine, Buck.”
Chim’s eyes flicked once to Eddie. A whole conversation in a glance.
Then he slipped out, pulling the door shut behind him. And in their quiet, it was just them. Alone and together, everything that Eddie wanted to say was simmering around them. It was just them and the beeping monitor in a strike room on the cusp of a conversation neither of them knew how to start.
Buck exhaled hard and dragged the visitor’s chair closer with his boot, the legs screeching against the floor. He dropped into it like his knees might give out if he didn’t.
Then, almost without thinking, he reached for Eddie. His hand found the mattress first, then Eddie’s right hand where it rested near the blanket. Warm, callused fingers closing around Eddie’s like they belonged there.
Like they always had.
Eddie looked down at their joined hands.
Then back up at Buck, who's eyes were far too bright.
“Hi,” he said, quieter now.
A ridiculous lump rose in Eddie’s throat.
“Hi.”
Buck huffed out a breath that might’ve been a laugh if there’d been any air in the room for one.
“You look terrible.”
“Feel worse.”
“Good.” Buck’s mouth twitched, then flattened again. “Serves you right.”
That, more than anything else, felt like normal. Felt like the shape of them, jagged humor wrapped around terror because neither of them knew how else to survive it.
Eddie squeezed his hand as much as he could.
Buck’s grip tightened instantly.
Neither of them let go.
After a moment, Buck looked at the floor.
“They told you?”
Eddie knew exactly what he meant. “Yeah.”
Buck nodded once, sharp and miserable, and for a second he looked younger than Eddie had seen him in years. Stripped down to something raw and uncertain and furious underneath.
“I left for two hours” Buck said, staring at the scuffed linoleum. “Two hours so I wouldn't get arrested in by IA, and when I got back, they said you were awake and I–”
His breath hitched and Eddie’s entire body went still. Buck shook his head, jaw working Like he was trying to find the right words.
“I thought if I came up here and you still weren’t–” He stopped. Tried again. “I thought if I saw the bed and it was empty, I was gonna lose my mind.”
“Buck.”
The name came out like a plea.
Buck looked up.
And there it was again, that terrible open fear. The thing Eddie had seen on the bridge right before he fell. The thing that made all the careful distance he’d tried to keep feel suddenly impossible.
He loved this man and he was helpless against it. It was in all the ways that had already reshaped his entire life without permission.
And now the world was burning down around them. The house they loved was gone, their family splintering. Their captain was fighting a battle none of them might win.
And Buck was here anyway, filthy and shaking and still in his turnouts, sitting at Eddie’s bedside like there was nowhere else on earth he could possibly be.
“How are we supposed to do this?” Eddie asked, the question slipping out before he could stop it.
Buck frowned. “Do what?”
Eddie looked at him, then at their hands, then at the room around them like maybe the answer was hidden somewhere in the fluorescent hum.
“Any of it.”
His voice cracked on the last word.
Buck went very still.
The silence stretched.
Then Buck leaned forward, forearms braced carefully on the mattress edge, hand still wrapped around Eddie’s.
And with all the certainty in the world, like he was stating something as obvious as gravity, he said,
“We do what we always do.”
Eddie let out a shaky breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh and Buck’s mouth tipped at one corner.
“We survive,” he said.
Outside the room, somewhere down the hall, a code alarm sounded and was answered. Footsteps rushed past. Voices rose and fell. The hospital kept moving, indifferent to the fact that Eddie’s whole world had just been ripped out by the roots.
Inside the room, Buck stayed exactly where he was.
Soot-streaked. Exhausted. Terrified.
Home.
Eddie looked at him and thought, with sudden awful clarity, that maybe survival had never actually been the hard part.
The hard part was going to be what came after.
The investigations.
The reassignment orders.
The empty bunks and different stations and the hollowed-out shell of a firehouse that had once been theirs.
The way Chim would carry the blame. The way Hen would rage. The way Ravi would try to hold everyone together while pretending he wasn’t splintering too. The way Buck would pretend he was fine right up until he wasn’t.
The way Eddie would have to decide whether loving Buck was still something he could keep buried when everything else they depended on was already collapsing.
He didn’t know how they were going to survive this.
He didn’t know if surviving was enough.
But Buck was here, fingers threaded through his, refusing to let go.
And for tonight—for this one terrible, impossible night—that had to be enough.
Eddie tightened his grip, ignoring the pull in his shoulder, the ache in his ribs, the way the future yawned open and uncertain in front of them.
Buck looked up immediately, eyes catching on his.
Neither of them spoke.
They didn’t need to. At least not yet.
Not with the taste of river water and hospital antiseptic still lingering at the back of Eddie’s throat. Not with the 118 in pieces and the city still smoldering outside. Not with Buck still wearing the proof of the day all over his skin.
There would be time later for questions. For grief. For whatever impossible shape came next. For conversations and starting something that neither of them were willing to say out loud but showed through actions, through the simplest of moments.
For now, Buck sat in the chair beside him, and took his place at Eddie’s bedside like he always would.
And Eddie, staring at the man he loved while the ruins of their world settled around them, could only think one thing…
How the hell were they all ever going to survive this?