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Buck is still thinking about Theo when the first gunshot goes off.
It had been Eddie’s fault, really.
Not the shooting. Not the blood. Not the sharp, terrible pivot the night takes in less than a second. But the thought itself—the one Eddie had slipped into Buck’s head ten minutes earlier, quiet and certain and impossible to shake loose.
I think you should adopt him.
Buck had stopped so abruptly in the hallway that Eddie had nearly walked straight into him.
They’d been standing outside a waiting room on the fourth floor, paper cups of bad vending machine coffee in their hands, the hospital all washed-out light and low voices and sleepless exhaustion. They’d only come in because Maddie had asked Buck to drop off a charger for one of the pediatric nurses she knew, and Eddie had tagged along because, as he’d put it, you looked like you were gonna spiral in the truck by yourself.
Buck had stared at him. “You can’t just say that.”
Eddie had taken a sip of coffee and grimaced like it offended him personally. “Why not?”
“Because that’s—” Buck had broken off, looking down at the floor. “That’s not a casual sentence, Eddie.”
“I know.”
Theo.
Four years old. Brown curls that never stayed neat. Buck’s eyes.
The biological result of one generous decision Buck had made years ago for two close friends who had wanted a child so badly it had seemed easy, back then, to say yes. He’d signed papers. Done tests. Made the whole thing as clinical in his head as he could.
Then they’d actually had Theo, and Buck had still kept a respectful distance, because that was the deal and because Theo had been theirs in every way that mattered.
Until a car accident had taken both of them in one violent, senseless moment and left Buck standing under fluorescent lights while a social worker with careful eyes explained guardianship complications and emergency foster placement and legal next steps in a voice so gentle it made him want to scream.
Theo was safe, everyone kept saying. Safe with a temporary family. Safe while things got sorted.
Temporary.
Buck hadn’t known what to do with that word.
Hadn’t known what to do with the first time Theo had seen him after the accident and climbed straight into his lap in the social worker’s office like Buck was something familiar. Something solid. Something he could keep.
He hadn’t known what to do with the fact that, from that moment on, some part of him had already decided.
Eddie had watched all of it happen.
“You say that like it’s simple,” Buck had muttered.
Eddie’s expression had gone soft in that dangerous way he had, the one that always made Buck feel like he was being looked at too closely. “I didn’t say simple.”
“No, but you said it like it’s obvious.”
“It is obvious.”
Buck had laughed once, thin and frayed. “To you, maybe.”
“To anyone with eyes.”
Buck had looked up at that.
Eddie had held his gaze without flinching. “You already love him,” he’d said. “The hard part’s done.”
Buck had looked away so fast it almost hurt.
Because that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was everything that came after. Court dates. Social workers. Paperwork. Restructuring an entire life around a child who needed permanence. Around a child Buck wanted—so badly it scared him.
And if he was being really honest, the hardest part of all was that every time he let himself picture Theo permanently, the image kept filling in around the edges.
Christopher.
Eddie.
A kitchen that was too noisy. Too full. Homework spread across the table. Theo asleep on the couch. Chris rolling his eyes at Buck’s jokes while secretly smiling. Eddie leaning in the doorway like he’d always known exactly where Buck belonged.
Buck had swallowed and said, “You make it sound easy.”
Eddie had smiled a little. “I think some things just look easier when they’re already home.”
Buck had forgotten how to breathe for one long second.
Then someone screamed from the far end of the corridor.
And the first gunshot went off.
The second shot sends the hallway into chaos.
A nurse ducks behind the reception desk and drags a patient with her. Someone drops flat to the floor. A cart tips over and crashes into the wall, metal clattering across tile. Voices rise all at once, panicked and ragged and wrong.
Buck turns toward the sound before his brain has time to catch up.
“Buck!”
Eddie’s hand slams into his chest and shoves him sideways.
The gun fires again.
Eddie jerks.
For one impossible second he just looks startled. Like he doesn’t understand what happened.
Then he looks down.
His hand is pressed to his abdomen.
When he pulls it away, it’s red.
Buck’s world drops out from under him.
No.
No, no, no—
“Eddie.”
Eddie’s knees buckle.
Buck catches him on instinct, one arm locked around his waist, the other under his shoulder. More shots crack through the corridor. More screaming. Someone yells for everyone to get down.
Buck turns toward the elevators like they’re the only thing left in the universe.
“Come on,” he gasps, dragging Eddie closer. “Come on, stay with me, stay with me—”
Eddie tries. God, he tries.
But Buck can feel him folding, feel his weight getting heavier by the second, feel the hot seep of blood soaking through his shirt and into Buck’s hand.
They half stumble, half fall toward the elevator bank.
Eddie peels one shaking hand off his abdomen and reaches blindly for the wall panel. His fingers fumble once, twice, then hit the elevator button.
They wait one horrible second.
Then another.
Buck can hear his own breathing. Eddie’s too-thin exhale. The screaming down the hall. The possibility of another shot.
Then the elevator dings.
The doors slide open.
Empty.
Buck could cry from relief.
He gets Eddie inside, stumbles in after him, and Eddie slams a trembling hand against the close button.
The doors start to slide shut.
For one stupid, hopeful second, Buck thinks maybe they made it.
Then the elevator jolts so violently Buck slams into the wall.
The lights cut out.
A second later the emergency lights flicker on, red and dim and wrong.
The elevator has stopped.
Everything goes still.
Behind him, Eddie makes a rough, pained sound.
Buck turns.
Eddie is braced against the wall, one hand over the wound, blood dripping between his fingers. His face is already too pale. His breathing too shallow. His knees start to give.
Buck lunges forward and catches him before he can hit the floor.
He lowers him awkwardly to the elevator floor, ending up on his knees with Eddie half-curled against the wall and half-slumped against him.
“Stay with me,” Buck says, voice shaking so badly the words barely hold together.
He yanks off his overshirt, folds it once, twice, then presses it hard against Eddie’s abdomen.
Eddie cries out.
Buck flinches. “I know, I know, I’m sorry—”
The cloth darkens almost instantly.
Too fast.
Buck’s stomach drops out.
He grabs for his radio with bloody fingers.
“Mayday, mayday, firefighter Buckley trapped in east wing elevator, active shooter on site, officer down, GSW to the abdomen, repeat, GSW to the abdomen—”
Static.
Then Chimney’s voice crackles through, thin and strained but unmistakably there.
“Buck? Say again.”
Buck nearly chokes on relief. “It’s Eddie. He got hit.”
There’s half a second of silence.
Long enough to hear what that does to Chim on the other end.
Then Chim comes back all sharp edges and command. “Which elevator?”
Buck rattles it off.
“We’re moving,” Chim says immediately. “Shooter’s not fully cleared on that floor yet, but we’re moving. Hen’s with me. Keep pressure on the wound. Keep him talking.”
Buck looks down at Eddie, whose head has fallen back against the metal wall, eyes half-lidded.
“Hurry,” Buck says, and hears how wrecked he sounds. “Please.”
“We’re coming,” Chim says. “Stay with him, Buck.”
The radio clicks dead.
Buck drops it beside him and gets both hands back on the bandage, pressing down hard enough to make Eddie gasp.
The elevator is too hot. Too small. It smells like dust and metal and blood—so much blood that Buck can taste it at the back of his throat.
His whole body is shaking.
Eddie notices, because Eddie notices everything.
“Buck,” he whispers.
“Don’t.”
A breath that might once have been a laugh. “Breathe.”
Buck lets out one sharp, ugly sound. “You got shot.”
“Still true.”
Buck nearly laughs, nearly sobs, nearly breaks in half.
Instead he shifts closer on his knees, one hand locked over the wound, the other sliding to cradle the back of Eddie’s neck and hold him upright.
Eddie leans into the touch like it hurts too much not to.
That almost does Buck in all by itself.
“Hey.” Buck swallows hard. “Eyes on me.”
Eddie opens them again. Barely.
“There you go.”
Outside the elevator, the hospital is still chaos muffled by steel. Sirens in the distance. Feet pounding the corridors. Voices barked sharp and frightened.
Inside, there is only this.
Buck. Eddie. The emergency red light. Buck’s blood-slick hands trying and failing to keep Eddie here by force.
“Talk to me,” Buck whispers.
For a moment, Eddie says nothing. He just looks at Buck with that exhausted, too-clear gaze that always makes Buck feel like his insides are visible.
Then Eddie says, very softly, “You should adopt him.”
Buck blinks. “What?”
“Theo.”
Buck’s throat tightens instantly.
“Eddie—”
“I mean it.” Eddie swallows hard, face tightening with pain. “I should’ve said more before.”
Buck shakes his head hard. “This is not the time.”
“No,” Eddie says, and his voice frays around the edges. “That’s kind of the point.”
Fresh panic floods Buck cold and sharp.
“Don’t talk like that.”
But Eddie keeps going, because of course he does. Because even bleeding out on an elevator floor, Eddie Diaz can still bulldoze right through Buck’s defenses if he wants to.
“I kept thinking there’d be a better moment,” Eddie says. “For a lot of things.”
Buck stares at him.
Eddie’s breathing catches, then steadies again, thin and shaky. “Theo… he’s already yours in all the ways that matter.”
Buck’s face crumples. “Biology doesn’t make somebody yours.”
Eddie’s eyes stay on his. “No. You do.”
Buck has to close his eyes for one second.
Just one.
When he opens them again, Eddie looks worse.
“Stay with me,” Buck says immediately.
Eddie’s lashes flicker.
“I am.”
Buck doesn’t believe him.
“Tell me something else,” he says. “Anything.”
A pause.
Then Eddie says, “Christopher’s gonna be mad.”
Buck lets out a broken, incredulous breath. “Because you got shot?”
A tiny movement at the corner of Eddie’s mouth. “Because I told him I’d call him back.”
That lands like a knife.
“You still will,” Buck says, too fast. “You still will, okay?”
Eddie doesn’t answer that. Instead his eyes drag slowly over Buck’s face, taking him in with a kind of aching attention that makes Buck’s heart slam itself bloody against his ribs.
“I should’ve told you more things,” Eddie whispers.
Buck goes cold.
“Eddie—”
“I thought I had time.”
“Stop.”
“I kept thinking later,” Eddie murmurs. “After shift. Tomorrow. When things settled down. I think I’ve been saying that for years.”
“Stop talking like that.”
Eddie barely seems to hear him.
His voice is getting weaker now. Softer. Every word sounds like it costs him something.
“I should’ve said more about Theo,” he whispers. “Should’ve told you I meant it. That I think he should be with you. That I think you’d be good at it.”
A breath, sharp and shallow.
“Better than good.”
Buck is crying now. He can feel it, hot on his face, dropping off his jaw onto Eddie’s shirt.
“Please,” he says, and hates how small it sounds.
Eddie’s gaze catches on his face and softens into something Buck has no defense against.
“You’d have your hands full,” Eddie says.
Buck already knows.
He still feels it hit.
“With two kids.”
No.
“Chris,” Eddie whispers. “And Theo.”
Buck’s face folds in on itself.
“No.”
Eddie’s expression is tired, too open, painfully fond. Like he’s looking at something beautiful and inevitable all at once.
“We would’ve made a beautiful family.”
The elevator goes silent.
The words settle between them like a lit match.
Not you’ll be okay.
Not you’ll manage.
We.
Buck feels the world tilt.
Because the worst part is that it isn’t crazy. It isn’t impossible. It isn’t even new.
Some treacherous part of him has known that for so long he can’t remember what it felt like before.
He bows forward for one desperate second, forehead knocking lightly against Eddie’s shoulder, then jerks back.
“Don’t say that unless you’re staying,” he chokes out. “Don’t say things like that and then leave me here.”
Eddie’s eyes flutter.
Buck’s hand flies from the back of his neck to cup his cheek. “Hey. No. No, no— stay with me.”
Eddie drags his eyes open again.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Buck stares at him. “For what?”
A weak breath. “For not saying more. For… maybe running out of time before I got to tell you what you’ve been to me.”
Something inside Buck tears clean through.
“Eddie.”
Eddie’s hand twitches weakly against the floor. Buck catches it and presses it to the center of his own chest without thinking. Eddie’s fingers curl there, just barely.
“You have to stop,” Buck whispers. “Please don’t talk to me like this.”
But Eddie keeps looking at him with that awful, devastating openness. Like pain has worn him down to nothing but truth.
“You’ve been…” He trails off, breath catching. Starts again, quieter. “You’ve been the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Buck makes a broken sound.
It isn’t denial. It isn’t protest.
It’s grief.
Terror.
Prayer.
Eddie keeps going anyway, because apparently tonight is the night he decides to ruin Buck forever.
“You and Chris,” Eddie says softly. “You and all your noise. All your heart. The way you never do anything halfway.”
The ghost of a smile trembles over his mouth.
“You’ve been the most beautiful part of my life.”
Buck is openly crying now, no hiding it, no stopping it.
“I can’t do this without you,” he says, raw and shaking. “Do you hear me? You’re my best friend. You’re my best friend and I cannot do this without you. I can’t go out there without you. I can’t tell Chris. I can’t figure out Theo. I can’t have you say things like this and then be gone.”
Eddie stares at him like he’s hearing everything Buck can’t quite bring himself to say.
“I know,” he whispers.
Buck shakes his head violently. “No, I don’t think you do.”
A breath-thin smile.
“I do.”
The radio crackles beside Buck’s knee.
“Buck!” Chimney’s voice, closer now. “We’re almost there!”
Buck snatches it up. “Hurry!”
Then he drops it again immediately and turns back so fast it makes him dizzy.
Eddie’s eyes are slipping.
“No. No, no, stay with me.”
Eddie tries.
God, he tries.
His gaze finds Buck one more time.
“Buck.”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m here.”
Another shallow breath.
“Wish I’d had more time,” Eddie whispers. “To tell you.”
Buck’s whole body goes cold.
“You will,” he says, voice cracking. “You can tell me later. You can tell me everything later, okay? Just— just stay.”
Eddie’s eyes soften.
His thumb moves once, faint against Buck’s sternum.
“Always you,” he murmurs.
And then his head goes heavy against the wall.
Buck freezes.
“Eddie?”
Nothing.
“Eddie.”
He grabs Eddie’s face with both hands and instantly has to throw one back to the wound because he can’t lose pressure, he can’t lose him, he can’t—
“Eddie!” His voice cracks into something ugly and panicked. “Eddie, no, no, no, open your eyes—”
His breath comes apart. His hands shake violently. He pats at Eddie’s cheek, presses trembling fingers to his neck, barely feeling his own body anymore.
“Please,” Buck sobs. “Please, please don’t do this. Eddie, come on. Come on—”
The elevator doors shriek as they’re forced apart.
Light floods in.
Hen is through the opening first, trauma bag in hand. Chim is right behind her, pale and sharp-eyed and trying not to look panicked in the way captains never should.
Buck looks up at them, wrecked and shaking and covered in Eddie’s blood.
“He won’t wake up,” he says, and his voice breaks on the last word.
Hen drops to her knees immediately. “Buck, keep pressure there. Good. Don’t move.”
He obeys on instinct alone.
Chim crouches by Eddie’s shoulder. “Hey, Eddie. Stay with us.”
No response.
Buck thinks he might die.
Hen works fast—gloved hands replacing Buck’s, dressing the wound, checking vitals, issuing clipped instructions. Her face stays terrifyingly calm.
“He’s got a pulse,” she says, and Buck nearly collapses from the force of hearing it. “Weak, but there.”
Chim exhales harshly through his nose.
“He’s lost too much blood,” Hen says. “We move now.”
Buck physically has to unclench his fingers from Eddie’s shirt.
Then they’re lifting him onto a board, easing him toward the split-open doors. Eddie is limp. Too still.
Buck moves with them because he genuinely thinks if he stops, Eddie will die.
“I’m right here,” he keeps saying. “I’m right here.”
Whether Eddie hears him or not, Buck says it anyway.
After that, the world breaks into fragments.
The hallway. Too bright.
Smoke.
Antiseptic.
Someone crying near the nurses’ station.
Hen calling vitals.
Chim on the radio, voice clipped and controlled and just a little too tight.
A security officer trying to hold Buck back until Chim snaps, “He stays.”
The gurney wheels rattling over tile.
The OR doors.
The way they close.
The silence after.
Buck stands there with his hands hanging useless at his sides, Eddie’s blood drying on his skin, and feels like every bone in his body has been replaced with glass.
Hen finds him there ten minutes later.
“Buck.”
He looks at her.
She looks wrecked too, around the edges. Tired. Furious at the universe. But grounded in the way Hen always is when everything else is falling apart.
“He made it to surgery alive,” she says. “That matters.”
Buck opens his mouth.
The only thing that comes out is, “He said we would’ve made a family.”
Hen goes still.
For one beat, just one, something very soft passes over her face.
Then she steps closer and squeezes his shoulder hard.
“Okay,” she says quietly. “Then let him wake up and say it again.”
Waiting is its own kind of violence.
Chim sits with him for a while in silence, elbows on his knees, hands clasped hard enough to go pale. Karen comes. Ravi appears with coffee nobody drinks. Maddie calls and Buck answers because not answering would be crueler.
Christopher calls later.
Buck somehow gets through it.
“He got hurt,” Buck says, keeping his voice as steady as he can. “But the doctors are helping him.”
Christopher goes very quiet.
Then, in a voice far too controlled for fourteen, he says, “Stay with him.”
Buck has to turn away. Cover his mouth. Gather himself piece by piece.
“I will,” he manages. “I promise.”
He doesn’t say Theo’s name to anyone.
Not yet.
But he thinks it over and over as the hours crawl by.
Theo.
Christopher.
Eddie.
The shape of a life he had not let himself want too clearly because wanting it meant risking everything.
Hours later, the surgeon comes out and says stable.
Buck nearly folds in half.
Chim exhales beside him, long and wrecked. Hen closes her eyes for one second and nods like she expected nothing less. Buck puts his face in his hands and shakes with relief.
Stable.
Alive.
Still here.
It’s nearly dawn when they finally let Buck into Eddie’s room.
The hospital has fallen into that eerie, exhausted hush that comes after disaster, like the building itself is trying to forget what happened inside it.
Eddie is pale against the sheets, bruised and bandaged and hooked up to more monitors than Buck wants to look at too closely. But he is breathing. Steady. Real.
Alive.
Buck stands in the doorway and just looks at him.
Then he crosses the room and sits in the chair by the bed.
He takes Eddie’s hand.
Waits.
It takes a while.
Eventually Eddie stirs.
His eyes open slowly, unfocused at first, then settling on Buck.
For one horrible second, Buck is afraid he won’t remember.
Then Eddie blinks and rasps, “You look awful.”
Buck laughs so hard it almost turns into crying again. “Yeah? You look worse.”
That gets the tiniest twitch of Eddie’s mouth.
Silence settles between them.
Not empty. Never empty.
Full of the elevator. The blood. The things they said because they thought they were running out of time.
Buck tightens his grip on Eddie’s hand.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
Eddie watches him quietly. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
A sleepy blink. “Fair.”
Buck scrubs a hand over his face, then leans forward a little in the chair. “Do you remember what you said?”
A pause.
Then Eddie nods faintly. “Most of it.”
“And?”
Eddie’s gaze stays on his. “And I meant it.”
Buck’s pulse jumps.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Buck nods once. Then again.
The room feels very still.
“Good,” he says, and his voice cracks around the word.
Eddie studies his face for a long moment. Tired. Soft. Careful.
Then he says, “I meant everything in the elevator.”
Buck’s throat tightens.
“The family,” Eddie says quietly. “Theo. Chris. You.”
Buck can’t look away.
Eddie swallows. His voice is rougher now, but steadier than it was in the elevator. More certain.
“I meant that I should’ve said things sooner.” A faint breath. “I meant that I ran out of courage for a long time and almost ran out of time too.”
Buck’s eyes burn.
“Eddie—”
“No, let me.” Eddie’s fingers tighten weakly around Buck’s hand. “Because if I stop now, I’ll probably talk myself out of it again.”
That pulls a helpless huff of laughter out of Buck despite everything.
Eddie’s mouth twitches.
Then his expression shifts. Softens into something so open it hurts to look at.
“I love you, Buck.”
The room goes completely silent.
Buck stares at him.
Eddie’s eyes don’t leave his.
“I’ve loved you for a long time,” Eddie says, each word careful and certain. “Long enough that I forgot what my life looked like before it. Long enough that imagining Chris growing up without you stopped making sense. Long enough that when Theo happened, all I could think was that you were already halfway to being theirs and all the way to being mine.”
Buck makes a sound like he’s been hit.
Eddie’s voice drops softer. “I’m in love with you. I think I have been for years. And I’m done pretending that almost dying is the only thing that could make me say it.”
Buck laughs, and this time it really does spill into tears.
“Okay,” he says, because it’s the only word he can find.
A sleepy, fond little smile. “That bad?”
Buck shakes his head fast. “No. No, I just—” He drags a shaking hand over his mouth. “You really had to go and do it first, huh?”
Eddie’s smile deepens just enough to undo him completely. “Someone had to.”
Buck lets out another helpless laugh and stands, moving closer to the bed.
For a second he just looks down at Eddie. At the bruises, the bandages, the exhausted softness in his face. At the fact that he is here. That Buck still gets to hear his voice.
Then he says quietly, “I love you too.”
Eddie closes his eyes briefly, relief moving over his face like a wave.
Buck’s own voice goes thinner around the edges. “I didn’t say it in the elevator because if I said it out loud then… then it meant too much. It meant there was too much to lose.”
Eddie opens his eyes again.
Buck swallows hard. “But I was saying it. Every stupid thing I said, I was saying it.”
“I know,” Eddie whispers.
That almost breaks him all over again.
Buck steps closer still. “Can I kiss you?”
Eddie’s answer is immediate.
“Please.”
It is nothing like panic. Nothing like fear. Nothing like the elevator.
Buck cups Eddie’s face carefully, mindful of bruises and exhaustion and everything that still hurts, and bends until their mouths meet.
The kiss is soft.
Slow.
A little trembling at the edges.
Years of almosts seem to collapse into it all at once—every look held a beat too long, every touch that lingered, every quiet choice to stay close without naming why.
Eddie kisses him back with everything he has left.
When they part, their foreheads rest together.
Buck laughs softly, shakily. “You really decided to confess after getting shot in a hospital elevator.”
Eddie’s eyes stay closed, but he smiles. “Felt efficient.”
Buck huffs out a laugh. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” Eddie murmurs.
Buck brushes his thumb over Eddie’s cheekbone.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “But you’re mine.”
Eddie opens his eyes.
Warm. Wrecked. Alive.
“Yours,” he says.
Buck closes his eyes for one second against the force of it.
Then he pulls the chair closer until it’s pressed right against the bed and sits down without letting go of Eddie’s hand.
After a while, Eddie says, voice drowsy now, “We’ll figure Theo out.”
Buck looks up.
Eddie’s gaze is heavy with exhaustion, but steady. “And Chris. And us.”
Buck’s throat tightens.
Outside the room, the hospital keeps moving. Monitors beep. Shoes squeak in the hallway. Somewhere far away a cart rattles over tile.
Inside, Buck squeezes Eddie’s hand and feels, for the first time in hours, like the future is not just something terrifying.
It is something they might actually get to keep.
He bows his head and presses a kiss to Eddie’s knuckles.
“Okay,” he whispers.
Eddie’s mouth curves faintly.
“Okay,” he agrees.
And this time, Buck believes it.