Work Text:
Buck can't make his brain reconcile the shape in front of him with something that had been carrying hundreds of people through the sky less than an hour ago.
There are pieces everywhere.
Seat cushions bob on the surface among luggage, oxygen masks trail from the torn ceiling inside the wreck, and farther out Buck can see Coast Guard boats cutting white lines through the water while helicopters thunder overhead, but the noise becomes strangely distant, the moment he pulls himself through the open side of the fuselage.
Inside there are people screaming, people crying and people calling names nobody answers.
And there are bodies.
He can see the first one before he even made it three rows inside. A man floating facedown between two seats, suit jacket fanned around him in the water. Buck forces himself around him because there is nothing he can do, not for that man... not anymore.
There is a woman farther ahead making a horrible animal sound because her legs are pinned beneath twisted metal while Bobby crouches beside her. "Easy, easy, I've got you," he tells her. "Buck, get the kid out."
He does.
The little boy has blood on his face and his hands locked around his mother's wrist so tightly Buck has to peel his fingers away while the mother keeps telling him to go, go with the firefighter, baby, look at me, you're going to be okay.
Buck gets the boy against his chest, turns, and carries him through waist deep water toward the opening, where Hen takes him from his arms
This might actually be the worst Thing he's ever seen
There are procedures and limits for this.
There is a point at which the structural instability of a half-destroyed aircraft filling with seawater becomes so dangerous that the rescuers have to stop creating additional victims.
Buck knows all of that.
Then he hears it.
"Please!"
The voice is almost swallowed beneath an ugly metallic shriek from somewhere deep inside the wreck.
Oh no
He turns his head, as water sloshes around his hips, carrying paper and bits of fabric past him while he listens Closer.
Then, hoarse and desperate and very definitely alive, from somewhere behind the rows they have already searched comes another shout again.
"Please, please, I'm back here!"
Buck is moving before Bobby can stop him.
"Buck don't!"
"I've got somebody!"
"You've got sixty seconds before I want you turning around!"
Buck doesn't answer as the floor tilts sharply underneath his boots, the water suddenly up around his waist, and he grabs two seatbacks to keep himself upright before pushing farther toward the tail.
There are more bodies back here.
God.
…
Buck has to physically push one aside to get through.
It's a woman this time, her dark hair floating across her face so that he can't see her Features. Buck swallows something burning in his throat as he slides one hand beneath her shoulder and guides her gently enough to the side that he can squeeze through the narrow aisle.
"I'm coming!" he shouts.
"Here!"
Buck sees movement three rows farther back, barely visible behind a seat that has collapsed sideways into the aisle. A man is fighting with something beneath the water, broad shoulders twisting with every desperate pull as his other hand grips the seat beside him for leverage.
His dark hair is plastered nearly flat against his forehead, his shirt is ripped at the shoulder, and his chest is rising far too quickly.
The second he sees Buck, relief breaks open across his expression.
"Oh, thank God."
"I'm here."
"Thank God."
"I'm here," Buck repeats, because the man looks like he might actually start crying from relief. "I've got you. What's trapped?"
"My leg." The words come fast and breathless. "My right leg, there's something on it, but I can't see what the hell it is. I tried pulling it out and it won't move."
Buck drops into the water beside him, which reaches halfway up his chest immediately.
That's bad.
…
"Okay. I'm gonna feel around. You might feel me pulling on you, but I'm not trying to move the leg until I know what's holding it."
"Yeah."
"What's your name?"
The man blinks at him as if the question is absurd.
"Eddie."
"Last name?"
"Diaz."
Buck's fingers find Eddie's thigh, then his knee, then slide lower until they meet metal.
"All right, Eddie Diaz, I'm Buck."
"Buck?"
"Yeah."
"That's your name?"
"Nickname."
"That's a terrible nickname."
Buck laughs… maybe concussed people insulting him is a good sign.
"Okay, Eddie, you can complain about my name after I get you out of here."
The edge of Eddie's mouth twitches, but it disappears immediately when the plane rolls another few degrees and water surges up to their armpits.
Eddie gasps and grabs Buck's shoulder, who braces himself against the seats until the motion stops.
From farther up the fuselage, Bobby shouts,
"Buck!"
"Still working!"
"Thirty seconds!"
He ducks his head beneath the surface, where Everything becomes murky green and gray.
He follows Eddie's leg with both hands, working by touch because visibility is almost nonexistent, until his fingers find the Problem. A section of seat frame has collapsed across Eddie's lower leg, pinning his ankle against the Floor.
Buck pulls, but Nothing moves, so he changes his grip and pulls harder.
The frame moves perhaps half an inch and snaps back.
Buck surfaces.
Eddie is waiting for him with fear written across every inch of his face.
"How bad?"
"I've seen worse."
"That's firefighter for bad isn't it?"
"It's firefighter for shut up and let me work."
The water is almost at his shoulders now and Buck can feel Eddie trembling through the hand still gripping his arm.
"Hey. Eyes here." Buck tells him.
"I'm fine."
That's such a lie.
Buck gets his fingers beneath the twisted seat brace again and strains upward.
This time it moves.
A little.
"Okay, Eddie, when I tell you, I want you pulling your leg straight back."
"Got it."
Buck digs his feet against the floor and heaves.
The second the metal shifts, Eddie pulls but then cries out so sharply Buck releases it immediately.
"Stop, stop, stop."
"Fuck."
"No, I felt it move."
Buck's head snaps up.
"What?"
"My foot. It moved."
Water laps at the base of Eddie's neck just as Bobby's voice comes again, much closer and much angrier.
"BUCKLEY!"
Buck turns enough to see him several rows away, still beside the trapped woman, water nearly at Bobby's chest too.
"Buck, this thing is going down!"
"I almost have him!"
"You don't have time!"
Buck looks back at Eddie and sees something cold settles into his expression.
"Buck."
"No."
"Buck, you have to go."
"And I'm telling you no."
"You—"
"Stop wasting oxygen arguing with me."
The water reaches Eddie's mouth when the plane Lurches and for one terrifying second they both disappear beneath it. Buck feels Eddie's fingers lock around him underwater before the fuselage rocks the other direction and gives them air again.
Eddie comes up coughing and Buck grabs the back of his neck forcing his head a few more Inches Above the water,
"Breathe, Eddie."
Eddie sucks in a ragged breath.
"Oh God," he cries. "my son doesn't have anybody else."
Buck's stomach drops.
"Your son?"
Eddie is staring straight at him now, and the terror Buck sees there has almost nothing to do with drowning.
"Christopher. His mother left."
"Eddie."
"She left us, and my parents have him right now, but I'm supposed to be back tomorrow and he thinks I'm coming."
"Eddie, stop."
"I need somebody to tell him-"
"No."
Buck grabs Eddie's face with both hands before he can think about whether that's remotely appropriate to do to a stranger, thumbs against wet cheeks, forcing those brown eyes to stay on him.
"Don't start saying goodbye to your kid while I'm still standing here."
Eddie's breathing stutters.
"Buck-"
The wreck groans around them.
"You hear me?"
Water washes over Buck's chin.
"Chris needs his dad. Fine. That's all the reason I need. I'm getting you out."
Something in Eddie's face crumples, but Buck lets go and fills his lungs.
"I need one more dive."
"Buck."
"One more."
Buck takes another breath, filling every part of his lungs he can.
The water has climbed so high that both of them have to tilt their heads back now, and there is another tremendous metallic crack from somewhere beneath them.
Eddie's hand closes around Buck's wrist.
"Thank you."
Buck shakes his head.
"Tell me when we're on the beach."
Then the water closes over them and Buck dives.
His hands find the frame immediately because he knows exactly where it is now, and this time he doesn't try to lift it carefully.
He wedges one boot against the floor, hooks both hands beneath the metal and pulls with everything he has.
Pain tears through his shoulders, but when he feels the frame shift he only pulls harder. Something catches his glove and rips through the material into his palm, but he ignores it.
Move.
Move!
Move!!!
The metal gives suddenly enough that Buck nearly slams backward into the opposite row.
He grabs Eddie's ankle immediately and pulls—.
It sticks.
No!
Buck reaches farther down, finds the fabric caught around the jagged Edge of the hull of the plane, yanks it until Eddie's pants tear open along the calf, and then pulls again.
Oh thank God.
Eddie's leg finally comes free and Buck instantly grabs him around the waist.
Go.
They surge upward together, heads breaking the surface, both men inhaling the last bit of air still trapped.
Half a breath.
That's all they get, because half a second laterl there is a tremendous shudder beneath them and the entire plane starts dropping.
Eddie makes a startled sound, Buck hears Bobby screaming his name somewhere ahead, and then the floor is no longer beneath his boots because the plane is descending into the ocean with them still inside.
Fuck.
The Water punches over his head again and the world disappears.
Buck's shoulder smashes into a seat and his grip slips, Eddie beginning to tear away from him.
No!
Buck catches a fistful of his shirt and yanks him back so violently that Eddie's body collides against his chest.
The pull of the sinking aircraft is terrifying.
It drags everything downward and backward at once, loose debris whipping through the flooded cabin, oxygen masks streaming toward the rear, while clothing and paper and pieces of plastic spin past Buck's face as the broken plane settles deeper into the Pacific.
Buck can't see the exit.
He can't see anything actually, except flashes of gray light and dark shapes.
…
He wraps one arm around Eddie's chest and starts swimming.
Eddie is moving too, trying to help, but his movements are already weak and badly coordinated, one arm reaching forward while the other clutches Buck's forearm across his chest.
There.
Light.
He starts kicking toward it, but the current pulls them sideways.
His lungs are burning now, pressure building behind his ribs until every cell in his body is screaming at him to breathe.
Come on—
Eddie starts jerking in his arms.
Oh shit!
No no no!
Buck knows what that is.
Panic.
The body's demand for air.
He squeezes Eddie against him and kicks harder.
Come on!
Almost there.
The opening seems impossibly far away even though Buck knows it can't be more than a handful of yards.
Against his chest he can feel how Eddie's body convulses and bubbles burst from his mouth, Streaming past their faces and upwards.
No, Fuck!
Buck's heart starts slamming 100 miles a minute.
Eddie tries to clamp his lips shut again, but Buck can feel the fight draining from him in real time, every movement becoming smaller.
Don't you dare.
When he gets them around a torn section of wall, his shoulder accidentaly clips metal and pain flashes White hot down his arm.
Eddie stops kicking at the same time-
No, don't quit on me now!
Buck pulls him higher against his chest, one arm locked beneath his armpit, and kicks with everything left in his legs.
Christopher
Waiting for his dad to come home tomorrow.
Absolutely fucking not.
Buck sees floodlight and drives toward it as he feels his own lungs beginning to spasm and his vision pulses dark around the edges.
Eddie is dead weight.
…
Buck gets one hand through the opening.
Then his head.
Then shoulders.
He drags Eddie after him, metal scraping across Buck's back as the wreck continues downward, and suddenly they are outside the plane but still far beneath the surface with the sinking wreckage pulling at the water around them and sending Bubbles upward.
He follows them.
Kicks.
Pulls Eddie.
Kicks again.
His lungs contract painfully.
No air.
He needs air.
But Eddie needs it more.
...
Just as he starts loosing the fight with his own need to breathe, the surface explodes around them and he gasps so violently that seawater goes into his mouth.
He coughs, choking, barely able to keep Eddie's face above the waves while his own body tries to remember how breathing works.
"Help!"
The word tears out of him.
"HELP!"
Eddie's head rolls against Buck's shoulder, his lips gray-blue.
"Bobby!"
His captain is twenty feet away, one arm hooked over a rescue float while the woman he had been working to free lies draped across it, a Coast Guard swimmer supporting her from the other side.
"BUCK!"
Bucks legs start to struggle.
"BOBBY, HE'S NOT BREATHING!"
Bobby is moving before he even finishes shouting.
He gets his hand underneath Eddie's jaw and tips his face back, trying desperately to keep his nose and mouth clear while waves slap around them.
"Eddie, come on!"
Buck presses his ear close to Eddie's mouth, listening.
There is something.
A tiny wet flutter.
"He's got weak respirations," Buck gasps as Bobby reaches them.
"Get his airway open!" Bobby orders, as he takes Eddie's weight from one side, stabilizing them against the rescue float while Buck hooks an arm beneath Eddie's shoulders.
"Hey, Eddie, wake up!"
Not fucking Happening, you're not doing this!
Buck tilts his head, pinches his nose and seals his mouth over Eddie's.
Breathes.
Eddie's chest rises weakly against the water.
Nothing.
Another breath.
"Come on."
He can taste salt and his hands are shaking so badly that Bobby has to steady his wrist.
"Eddie, come on, man."
The waves push them apart and back together, but Buck keeps Eddie's mouth above water, eyes locked on a face he hadn't even known existed ten minutes ago and suddenly become the most important one in the Pacific Ocean.
Buck breathes for him.
"Don't make me tell your kid you didn't make it."
Bobby's eyes flick toward him, but he barely registers it.
"Wake up!"
Eddie's chest lifts, falls, but stays still afterwards and Buck's panic spikes so violently his vision tunnels.
"No, no, come on."
"Buck, keep going."
"I am."
He seals their mouths together again, breathes and this time Eddie's body suddenly bucks in his arms, his throat contracting under Buck's fingers as a rough, broken gag catches between them.
Buck jerks his head back.
"Eddie?"
A weak cough finally tears out of the man in his arms, water spilling past his lips as Buck immediately turns him partly against Bobby and keeps one arm locked around his chest so he can't slip beneath the Surface again.
Buck nearly folds over him from relief.
"Yes! There you go."
Eddie's body seizes again as more water spills from his mouth, then drags in a thin, wheezing breath that sounds terrible, but Buck has never heard anything better in his life.
"That's it."
Buck supports his jaw, keeping his airway positioned.
"Stay with me."
Eddie's eyes open a fraction, slide past Buck and over the night sky, then back again.
"Bck?" he gets out, his voice raspy and broken.
Buck almost laughs and almost cries at the same time.
"Yeah, it's me."
Eddie's fingers move against his arm, but they can't quite close around him.
"Chris."
Buck presses their foreheads together for one brief, furious second.
"You're going back to him."
Eddie makes a broken sound that might be a sob, sagging farther into him.
Before Buck can say anyhing else Bobby nidges his shoulder.
"Boat's coming."
It reaches them quickly, two Coast Guard rescuers leaning over the side as Bobby calls out what happened.
"Adult male, submersion, trapped inside the wreckage, brief respiratory arrest and possible head injury."
Hands reach down.
"Give him to me."
Buck keeps one hand behind Eddie's neck until another rescuer takes over, then he and Bobby are hauled into the boat after him.
The second he's over the side, he crawls straight back toward Eddie, where someone tries to push him into a seated position.
"I'm fine."
"Sir, you're bleeding."
"I'm fine! "
His palm is dripping blood onto the deck and there is a tear in his turnout across one shoulder.
But he doesn't care.
Eddie lies flat with oxygen pressed over his face, soaked clothes clinging to him and his chest rising in shallow uneven movements while a medic checks his pupils.
"Sir, can you tell me your name?"
His gaze moves past the medic and finds Buck.
"Eddie Diaz."
"Good. Eddie, do you know where you are?"
"Ocean."
"Unfortunately, yeah."
Eddie's eyes stay on him as the boat accelerates toward shore and Buck drops onto his knees beside the stretcher because there is nowhere else he can make himself go Right
"Chris," he whispers through the oxygen mask.
Buck leans closer.
"What about him?"
"My phone."
"Your phone is probably living with the fishes."
Eddie's brow creases and Buck grimaces in return.
"Sorry. Bad timing."
Somehow, incredibly, Eddie's mouth moves faintly beneath the mask and Buck decides right then and there, that he'd like to see what that looks like when Eddie isn't half drowned.
"I need to call him."
"We'll call him, don't worry."
"He'll be scared."
"Then we'll tell him you're okay."
The boat hits shallow water a few seconds later.
Buck can see dozens of emergency vehicles along the sand and roadway beyond it, survivors wrapped in foil blankets and paramedics moving stretchers between triage areas.
The moment the boat reaches a point where they can transfer, Buck is out first, jumping into thigh deep water and helping guide Eddie's stretcher toward the beach until more hands close around the rails.
Paramedics.
Coast Guard.
Firefighters from half a dozen companies.
Survivors wrapped in silver emergency blankets while television helicopters circle high overhead and ambulances sit lined up along the road with their rear doors thrown open.
Buck stays beside Eddie until someone catches him by the shoulder.
"Sir, we need room."
Buck looks down and sees Eddie's eyes are open beneath the oxygen mask, but barely, exhaustion making them heavy as the paramedics wheel him toward one of the waiting ambulances.
"Chris," he manages.
Buck connects the dots immediatelly.
"I'm getting you a phone."
His own isn't lost after all.
He remembers shoving it into the locked compartment on the engine before they went into the water.
…
The engine is farther up the beach, parked among a line of emergency vehicles with hoses, medical bags and rescue equipment scattered around it. He starts toward it at a half run despite the ache beginning to creep into every muscle now that the adrenaline is dropping.
He makes it maybe ten yards.
"Buck!"
Hen intercepts him before he can reach the truck, stepping directly into his path and catching him by the uninjured forearm.
"Whoa, no. Absolutely not."
"I'm fine."
Her eyes drop immediately to his other hand, where blood is running steadily from his palm, slipping over his wrist and disappearing beneath the soaked cuff of his turnout, and there is a long tear across one shoulder where the metal inside the fuselage caught him.
"You're bleeding."
"I'm aware."
"Then sit down."
"No, I need my phone."
"You need stitches."
"Phone first."
"Buck-"
"Hen!"
Something in his voice makes her pause.
Buck looks back toward the ambulances, trying to pick Eddie's stretcher out through the moving crowd.
"The guy I pulled out has a son waiting for him in Texas."
Hen's grip on his arm loosens slightly as she looks toward the ambulances too.
Buck's voice comes rougher when he adds,
"Kid thinks his dad is coming home tomorrow."
That stops her completely.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"He doesn't know about the crash?"
"I don't know. Maybe he does by now. Eddie said his parents have him, but his phone went down with the plane."
Hen exhales slowly.
"And you've decided this has to happen before anyone looks at the giant hole in your hand."
Buck lifts the injured hand slightly.
"I've had worse."
"That sentence should be banned from the fire service."
"Hen please."
"Fine." She points toward the engine. "Phone. Then I'm cleaning that hand whether you like it or not."
Buck is already moving again.
"Love you."
"Don't try to charm me."
"It wasn't charm. It was gratitude."
"Still getting stitches!" she calls after him.
Buck reaches the engine, yanks open the compartment and digs through the gear until his fingers close around his phone exactly where he left it.
"Yes."
—————
He finds Eddie on a stretcher directly in front of the open ambulance doors, one paramedic crouched beside him attaching leads beneath the remains of his shirt while another works an IV into his arm.
The oxygen mask is still strapped over his face and his skin has a horrible gray cast beneath the blood and seawater, hair drying in uneven dark clumps against his forehead, but his eyes immediately find Buck.
"Got one." Buck lifts the phone as he crouches beside the stretcher. "Number?"
Eddie just stares at him so Long Buck starts thinking that maybe the question didn't register through the exhaustion and oxygen, but then Eddie's eyebrows pull together and his eyes drop to the phone in his hand before snapping back to his face.
"You-"
His voice catches.
"What?"
"You actually..." Eddie swallows hard, looking genuinely stunned. "You got me a phone?"
"Of course I did, man."
Eddie keeps staring like somehow this is the part he can't make sense of.
Not Buck dragging him through a wreckage filling with seawater or breathing for him in the middle of the Pacific.
This.
…
"You said you needed to call your kid," Buck says, "I'm not gonna forget that."
Something shifts in Eddie's expression.
"Thank you."
"Yeah." Buck gives him a small smile. "You can thank me after we actually get him on the phone."
Eddie's eyes shine suddenly, and he looks away toward the ocean for half a second before forcing himself back under control.
Buck pretends not to notice. "Your mom's number," he prompts gently.
Eddie nods.
"Nine one five..."
Buck enters each number carefully, repeating them back one by one while Eddie watches him with that same strange, disbelieving softness in his face, as if he still can't quite understand why this firefighter he met less than an hour ago keeps helping him.
…
When he presses call, his stomach twists unexpectedly, but it barely gets through the second ring.
"Hello?"
A woman's voice, breathless and terrified.
"Mrs. Diaz?"
Silence.
Then, immediately sharper,
"Who is this?"
"My name's Evan Buckley. I'm a firefighter with the Los Angeles Fire Department."
"Oh my God."
"Mrs. Diaz-"
"Oh my God, Edmundo."
She starts crying before Buck can say anything else. Well, not quiet tears, more like a choked, horrified sob that tells Buck instantly that she already knows something happened.
"We saw it," she gasps. "We saw the plane on television. They said it was the flight from El Paso, and we've been calling him, we've been calling and calling, and nobody would tell us anything. Is he-"
"He's alive." Buck Interrupts before she can spiral any further.
On the stretcher, Eddie shuts his eyes as his whole face twists and tears run sideways toward his temples.
There is a noise on the other end of the call, somebody asking something urgently in the background, and then Mrs. Diaz cries out, "He's alive. Ramon, he's alive!"
Jesus.
Then another voice comes through the phone, smaller and higher than those before, already crying.
"Abuela?"
Buck looks straight back at Eddie, whose eyes fly open instatly.
"Chris?"
Buck's throat closes. He taps the speaker button and carefully lowers the phone beside Eddie's head, who drags a shaking Hand towards the phone.
"Mrs. Diaz, I'm putting you on speaker. Your son's right here."
There is complete silence from the other end.
"Mom?"
"Edmundo!" Her son's name dissolves into sobbing. "Oh, mi hijo, oh God, we thought-"
"I'm okay."
It's an obvious lie.
Eddie is lying on a stretcher with oxygen over his face, an IV being taped into his arm, blood dried down the side of his head and one leg immobilized while seawater still drips from the edges of the mattress onto the pavement.
But Buck understands why he says it.
"I'm okay, Mom."
"Don't tell me you're okay, I can hear that you're not!"
Something very close to a laugh trembles out of Eddie.
"Yeah."
Then there is a sudden frantic rustling on the other end.
"Give me the phone!"
Chris.
Buck feels Eddie's hand clamp around the edge of the stretcher.
"Chris?"
"Dad?"
The word comes apart.
Buck has heard frightened children all day. Hell, he carried some of them out of an airplane while they screamed for parents Buck already knew were dead, but something about the sound of Christopher Diaz crying for his father reaches straight into him and twists.
"Dad!"
"I'm here, mijo."
Chris is crying so hard Buck can barely understand him.
"I saw your plane, Dad! It crashed!"
Eddie's face crumples.
"I know, baby."
"Grandpa kept calling people and nobody knew where you were and they showed it in the water and-"
Chris can't finish as his breathing turns into little hiccuping sobs through the speaker.
"Buddy," Eddie says, voice cracking. "Hey, listen to me. I'm here."
"I thought you died."
Buck sees Eddie stop breathing for a second.
"Oh, mijo."
"I thought you died!"
Eddie's eyes squeeze shut.
"I didn't. I'm right here."
Chris sobs and Buck feels something inside his chest twist so hard that he actually has to look away from the phone.
"Hey, hey, mijo," Eddie says gently,"Listen to me, okay? I had help."
Christopher's breathing catches wetly through the speaker.
"What kind of help?"
Buck watches the corner of Eddie's mouth twitch beneath the oxygen mask.
"A firefighter."
"A firefighter was in there with you?"
"Yeah."
Buck presses his lips together because technically that's a very generous description of what happened, considering Bobby had been screaming at him to get the hell out while he ignored nearly every reasonable survival instinct he possesses.
Christopher makes another little sniffing sound.
"Was he nice?"
Eddie's eyes crease faintly at the corners.
"Yeah," he says. "He was very nice."
Buck raises his eyebrows.
Very nice?
The man infront of him looks far too pleased with himself for somebody currently wearing oxygen and being held together by medical tape.
Christopher lets out a trembling breath.
"Okay."
That's it.
Buck doesn't know why that one tiny word gets him worse than anything else has.
Maybe because Christopher didn't ask whether the firefighter saved him or pulled him out or made him breathe again once they reached the surface, and he doesn't know whether a kid that age even understands those parts yet.
…
The paramedic beside the stretcher has been giving them more time than Buck suspects she probably should, but now she leans forward to check the monitor again and frowns.
"Sir, I need you breathing through that mask."
Eddie nods, adjusting it properly over his nose and mouth, but he gets through maybe two breaths before his chest hitches.
The cough catches him pf gueard and Eddie's shoulders jerk off the stretcher, one hand flying toward his ribs while the paramedic immediately steadies him and keeps him from trying to sit all the way up.
"Dad?"
Christopher's voice jumps sharply.
He coughs again, wet enough that Buck's stomach drops straight through the pavement.
"Dad?!"
"I'm okay," Eddie manages between coughs.
"No, you're not!"
Under any other circumstances Buck might laugh, because the kid has apparently inherited Eddie's complete intolerance for obvious bullshit, but Eddie coughs again before he can answer and the paramedic's expression changes.
"We need to go."
Eddie immediately shakes his head.
"Just another minute."
"You've already had several minutes."
"Please."
The paramedic hesitates, then softens just enough that Buck knows she understands exactly what this call is.
"You need to say goodbye for now."
Goodbye?
Buck hears Eddie's voice inside the wreck again.
My son doesn't have anybody else.
I need somebody to tell him—
Buck leans closer before he thinks about doing it.
"For now," he says quietly.
He turns back toward the phone.
"Chris?"
"I'm here."
Christopher sounds smaller again.
"They have to take me to the hospital now."
"Why?"
"Because I swallowed some water and they want to make sure everything's okay."
Buck glances at the paramedic, who very deliberately says nothing about just how much Eddie is minimizing this.
"Are you?"
Eddie hesitates for maybe half a second.
"Yeah, mijo. I'm gonna be okay."
"You promise?"
His eyes flick toward Buck again before returning to the phone.
"I promise I'm gonna do everything the doctors tell me to do."
Buck has to bite back a smile because that's the most parent shaped dodge he ever heard.
Christopher seems to consider it.
"Can I call you at the hospital?"
"Yeah."
"Right when you get there?"
"If they let me."
"Make them."
A tiny laugh escapes Eddie, immediately followed by another cough that has the paramedic giving him a warning look.
"Okay," he rasps once he gets enough air back. "I'll make them."
There is rustling on the other end and Helena says something Buck can't quite make out, followed immediately by Christopher protesting that he's not finished talking yet.
Eddie's eyes close briefly.
"Chris."
"What?"
"I love you."
"I love you too, Dad."
Buck looks down.
He really should move.
This is between them.
Except the phone is his, Eddie is barely strong enough to hold his own head up without the stretcher beneath him, and Buck promised himself inside that wreck that Christopher Diaz was getting his father back, so he stays exactly where he is and keeps the phone close.
"I love you more than anything," Eddie says.
"I know."
"You stay with Abuela and Abuelo tonight, okay?"
Christopher sniffles.
"The firefighter is still there?"
"Yeah," Eddie says. "He's still here."
"Okay."
Buck has absolutely no idea what to do with that.
"Goodnight, mijo."
"Goodnight, Dad."
Neither one of them hangs up tho.
Buck watches the call timer continue counting while Eddie stares at the phone and Christopher breathes quietly through the speaker, and for several seconds nobody seems willing to be the person who actually ends it.
…
Eventually Helena's voice returns, still shaky but more controlled now.
"Edmundo, we'll find out which hospital they're taking you to and call there."
"Okay."
"We love you."
"Love you too, Mom."
"We'll talk soon."
"Yeah."
There is another hesitation, then the line clicks dead and Buck lowers the phone slowly, the screen going dark in his hand.
Something about the sudden silence seems to take whatever strenght Eddie had left, because his eyes close and his whole face loosens.
The paramedic reaches over to settle the oxygen mask properly again and adjusts something on the IV tubing before grabbing the stretcher rail.
"All right, we're moving now."
Buck nods even tho nobody asked him anything and pushes himself upright.
His knees immediately remind him that he spent the last hour climbing through wreckage, fighting underwater currents and hauling another adult human being through a sinking airplane, while his shoulder gives an ugly throb and his palm burns badly enough that Hen is going to have every right to murder him when she finally catches him.
He takes one step back, bit fingers close around his wrist at the same time.
Buck freezes.
The grip is so weak he could pull free without even trying, but the second he looks down and sees the hand wrapped around him, he crouches again.
"Hey." Eddie opens his eyes. "Thank you."
Buck exhales, some of the tension finally escaping with it.
"You keep it up and I'm gonna start thinking you actually like me."
Something almost like amusement passes through Eddie's exhausted expression, but it disappears again when he says, "For staying."
He looks down at Eddie's hand around his wrist.
"Wasn't gonna leave you in there."
"I told you to."
"Yeah, well, you were trapped underwater, probably concussed and making objectively terrible decisions, so I decided not to take your advice."
The corner of Eddie's mouth lifts beneath the oxygen mask.
"Asshole."
Buck laughs before he can stop himself, the sound a Little stiffled from seawater and exhaustion but genuine enough that Eddie's eyes crease faintly at the corners in response.
For some reason that gets to him almost as much as the insult itself.
Unbelievable
The guy is apparently already comfortable enough with Buck to call him an asshole without even hesitating.
The paramedic clears her throat loudly enough that both of them look at her.
"I hate to interrupt whatever this is, but I need to get him into the ambulance."
Buck immediately releases the stretcher rail and starts backing away and Eddie lets go of his wrist, the sudden absence of his hand feeling strangely noticeable.
He remains there while the paramedics lift the stretcher, lock it into place and start loading Eddie into the back of the ambulance, and he tells himself that this is the part where he finally steps aside because Eddie is safe now, Christopher knows he's alive, and there are probably fifty other things happening on this beach that require actual firefighters who aren't standing around staring after one patient.
"Hey, Diaz!"
Eddie turns his head on the stretcher just before the paramedic can pull the door shut, tired brown eyes finding him immediately.
"We'll see each other again under better circumstances!"
"Couldn't get much worse than this." Eddie answers with a smile on his face.
Buck laughs, shaking his head.
"That's a terrible thing to say to a firefighter."
The paramedic gives Buck a look that clearly says she's done indulging whatever this has become, and he raises both hands in surrender as she finally starts pulling the door closed.
"Take care of yourself, Diaz."
Eddie manages to lift one hand from the stretcher.
"You too, Buck."
Then the doors meet between them with a heavy metallic thud.
Buck stands there for another second as the ambulance pulls away, watching the red lights flash across the wet pavement until they disappear into the stream of emergency vehicles heading toward the road.
Better circumstances.
He has absolutely no idea whether that's actually going to happen.
Still, Buck finds himself smiling as he finally turns away.
Somehow, he has a feeling this isn't the last time he's going to see Eddie Diaz.