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The argument begins with a name lighting up across Buck's phone.
Liam, whoever Liam is, wants to know if Buck is still awake, and Eddie only sees the message because the phone is lying beside his elbow on the kitchen island when the screen comes alive. He looks away almost immediately, yet something sour has already climbed into his throat, joining the irritation that's been sitting there since Buck mentioned going out tomorrow night.
"Who's Liam?"
Buck glances over from the refrigerator, one hand curled around the door. "A guy I met last weekend. Why?"
"No reason. I thought the guy from Tuesday was called Noah."
The refrigerator closes with a soft thud. Buck stands behind it for a moment, then walks back to the island with a cautious smile.
"He was."
"And now there's Liam."
"That's usually how different names work."
Eddie folds his arms. "So what happened to Noah?"
"Nothing happened to him. We had dinner and we didn't click."
"You slept with him."
Buck's cautious smile disappears. "I didn't realize you were keeping track."
"I'm not keeping track."
"You remembered his name and the day I saw him, so you're doing a pretty convincing impression."
Eddie feels heat push beneath his skin, quick and unreasonable at the same time… He feels caught. "It's kind of hard to forget when there's a new one every week."
Buck's eyebrows lift. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me."
"I want to make sure I did, actually. Are you judging me for having sex now?"
"Maybe somebody should. You do this every time. Somebody looks at you for longer than five seconds, you go home with them, and then you decide it could be a relationship because you can't stand for anything to be casual."
Buck stares at him, his hands settling flat against the countertop, fingers spread. "Stop watching if you're so uncomfortable."
"I would love to, except everybody else has to pick up the pieces whenever one of these people fails to become the 'love of your life'."
He could stop there. He should apologize actually, admit that he is angry because another stranger gets have Buck without thinking while Eddie spent years teaching himself to keep his hands at his sides.
Instead, he makes it worse.
"It's exhausting, Buck. You turn every person willing to take you home into a candidate for forever. Half the time, I don't think you even care who they are. You care that they picked you for one night, and then you start trying to build a whole life around it because you're so damn desperate for someone to want you."
Buck inhales slowly through his nose, his eyes shining beneath the kitchen lights, "So you think I'm pathetic?"
Eddie's anger falters, but the pride keeps him going. "I think you don't know how to be alone."
"At least I know when I'm choosing somebody."
Eddie's arms drop to his sides. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you have one hell of a nerve standing in my kitchen and dissecting my relationships when your own track record is hardly immaculate."
"Leave my relationships out of this."
"You dragged mine into it."
"Because you keep making the same mistake."
"So do you." Buck pushes away from the island and comes around it. "You just make yours last longer because you would rather be miserable for a year than admit you never wanted the person in the first place."
Eddie flinches as if Buck struck him. "Those things aren't the same."
"They are when you use my worst decisions to make yourself feel superior."
"Superior? You think that's what this is? I'm worried about you!"
Buck lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. "You sure have a funny way of showing it."
"What do you want me to say? That it's healthy to keep throwing yourself at strangers because being alone terrifies you? You cheated on Taylor and begged her to stay before you even told her the truth, then you latched onto the next person who made you feel interesting, and then the next one."
"Maybe I keep trying because I actually want something."
"You want anyone who says yes."
Buck recoils half a step. "… Is that really what you think of me?"
It's not.
Eddie should tell him that. He should say that he thinks Buck loves with a courage Eddie has never possessed, that he can still reach for happiness even after being taught over and over that people leave.
What comes out is, "I think you hear the word yes and don't care who says it."
Buck nods, his lips pressed together so tightly they lose their color, and when he speaks again, his voice has acquired a careful flattness that frightens Eddie more than shouting would.
"You want to know the stupid part? I do know how to be alone. I've been alone in every relationship I've ever had, because the person I go home with is never the person I actually want to call."
Eddie's pulse stutters. "Don't do this."
"I call you."
"Buck, don't."
"You call me too. When Christopher is hurt, when you can't sleep, when the house needs fixing… you call me. You let me build my life around the two of you, and then you stand there acting disgusted that I might want to be chosen too."
"I never asked you to do that."
The instant the words leave him, Eddie wants to take them back.
Buck's mouth parts, his face stripped bare of emotion, before swallowing and looking toward the door. "No," he says softly. "I guess you didn't."
"That's not what I meant."
"You said it pretty clearly."
Eddie drives his hands through his hair. "You're taking everything I trusted you with and turning it into proof that we're in some relationship I never agreed to! Driving Christopher somewhere or helping me when I ask doesn't make you my partner. It doesn't mean I owe you this!"
"I never thought you owed me anything!" Buck's control finally cracks, his voice rising loud enough to echo from the ceiling. "I never asked you for repayment. I just showed up because I love you, and you know that! You've always known it."
"I know you love me. That doesn't mean—"
"You know what I mean."
Eddie's chest heaves, the room suddenly feeling airless, "You don't get to decide what I know."
Buck gives a short laugh. "Fine. Then tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you never looked at me and wondered why this feels more like a marriage than any relationship either of us has managed to keep!"
"Stop talking."
"Tell me, Eddie."
"I said stop!"
"No. You started this because some guy texted me. You stand there and called me desperate because it's easier than admitting you care who I sleep with."
"I don't care!"
Buck's laugh breaks in the middle. "You're a terrible liar."
"You sleep your way across LA because you can't stand one night alone, and now you've decided I'm the 'grand love story' that explains all of it? Do you hear how that sounds?"
"I decided that years ago," Buck says, the anger faltering "I've just been stupid enough to keep hoping you'd catch up."
Fear moves faster than thought and Eddie reaches for the cruelest weapon he has. "I don't love you, Buck! I don't want whatever this is that you keep trying to turn us into. If that's why you've stayed all these years, maybe you shouldn't have."
Buck doesn't move. His eyes remain fixed on him, and Eddie watches the hope in them go out with a hopelessness that wil haunt him for the rest of his life.
"Okay," he says after a long moment. "Then get out."
Eddie's throat closes around the apology already trying to break free. "Maybe I should."
"Yeah."
He waits for him to take it back. Eddie knows he is waiting, just as he knows that Buck would forgive him if he crossed the space between them and admitted that every word had been a lie shaped by panic.
Eddie grabs his jacket instead and slams the door behind him hard enough to rattle the windows.
For the next four days, Buck is perfectly normal.
And it feels unbearable.
Buck laughs at Chimney's jokes, argues with Ravi about the inventory sheet and sits across from him at the station table without once letting his knee bump Eddie's. He passes him the salt when asked, answers every question, moves beside him during and like usually anticipates Eddie's choices before he makes them.
But apart from that… He never touches him unless the job requires it and up until now, he never actually realized how often Buck reached for him until he stopped.
There is no hand between his shoulder blades when they climb into the engine, no fingers closing around his wrist to get his attention, no warm weight pressed along his side while Buck leans across him to steal something from his plate.
…
By the fifth day, Eddie is unraveling beneath the silence.
He misses Buck.
He misses him with a desperation that makes the words he used that day feel increasingly hollow.
Then the call comes.
It should've been Routine. A maintenance worker reported missing near a storm-water diversion tunnel after flash flooding rolled through the eastern end of the city. The rain has stopped by the time the 118 arrives, but runoff continues pouring through the channels beneath the streets, the water rising way faster than the city crews had initially predicted.
Chim divides them into teams. Hen and Ravi head toward the access point downstream while Buck and Eddie follow the worker's last known route into the tunnel, safety lines clipped to their harnesses and flashlights cutting narrow paths through the dark.
…
They find the worker wedged on a maintenance ledge above the water, injured and terrified but conscious nonetheless. Buck reaches him first, while Eddie secures the line.
A city rescue crew reaches them from the opposite access point and between them, they transfer the worker onto a basket and begin hauling him toward the exit.
It should end there.
But then something groans deep inside the tunnel, making both of them look back.
The sound comes again, louder, and Buck's head snaps toward the far wall just as a pressure gauge shudders violently against its mount.
"Eddie, move!"
The pipe ruptures.
Water explodes into the corridor with enough force to tear the railing from its bolts. Buck slams both hands into Eddie's chest, throwing him backward onto the narrow concrete shelf bordering the channel and Eddie hits the wall hard enough to drive the breath from his body. His safety line catches, jerking him sideways, but Buck's line whips past him without tension, its frayed end vanishing into the torrent. Eddie reaches out blindly, their fingertips missing by Inches before he dissapears into the churning waters.
"BUCK!"
no, no, no!
Buck surfaces several yards downstream, his arms breaking through the water as he fights for balance, his mouth opening around a gasp Eddie can't hear above the roar. His helmet is gone and blood runs from somewhere near his temple, bright against his skin before the current washes it away.
"Buck!"
Buck turns toward his voice, just as a section of the metal barrier spins through the water and strikes him across the shoulder, making his head snaps back and he disappears beneath the Surface again.
His line won’t reach Buck… and Eddie knows exactly he's about to create a second victim, but releases it anyway, not wasting any more time, as he plunges after him.
The water is freezing and black, the current wrenching at every piece of equipment still strapped to his body.
His lungs begin to burn after a only few seconds as he's wrenched from side to side. His hands find a pipe, then empty water again, and terror claws through his chest so violently he nearly opens his mouth to scream Buck's name beneath the surface.
But then something finally brushes his wrist and Eddie desperately grabs it.
An arm.
Buck's arm.
Eddie forces his eyes open against the blurry water and sees him limp beneath the current. His harness has snagged on a twisted length of rebar jutting from the Bottom of the canal, so Eddie braces one boot against the concrete and pulls, but the strap refuses to move.
When Buck's head drifts back all Eddie sees is closed eyes and a thin stream of silver bubbles that slip from between his lips.
No. No, come on!
He yanks at the harness, but it jams beneath the pressure of the current, so Eddie pulls his rescue knife free and saws through the strap.
Don't do this, don't do this, don't—
The second the material finally splits, Buck starts getting pulled by the current, but Eddie catches him around the chest and kicks upward, dragging them both toward the pale distortion of light above.
He gives himself half a Moment to gasp once they've reached the Surface, before he tightens his arm beneath Buck's jaw and begins fighting toward the narrow maintenance platform along the side of the tunnel.
"Come on, Buck. Come on!"
Buck's head lolls against his shoulder, unresponsive. There is no answering movement, no cough, no desperate attempt to breathe.
"Stay with me. Please stay with me." Eddie pants.
When he finally reaches a platform, he nearly loses Buck while trying to lift him, his boots skidding against the submerged concrete as he catches the mans turnout coat and drags until Buck's chest finally clears the edge, then claws his own way onto the ledge beside him.
…
Buck's skin is gray beneath the tunnel lights.
Eddie drops beside him and rips off his gloves, his hands shaking so badly that his fingers catch against the straps beneath Buck's chin.
"Buck, can you hear me?"
He tears the remaining gear away, presses his fingers to Buck's neck and lowers his ear toward Buck's mouth, but there is no breath against his cheek and the pulse beneath his fingertips is so faint Eddie can't tell whether it's actually real.
"No. You're not doing this!"
He tilts Buck's head to the side, clearing water before tilting it back to pinch his nose closed and seals their mouths together.
His first breath goes in badly, escaping around the side because his lips are shaking too hard to hold the seal, so he adjusts and tries again, pressing down with enough force their teeth knock together shortly.
This time Buck's chest rises and relief tries to surge through Eddie, but the chest falls and remains still.
"Breathe, Buck."
Eddie gives him another breath, then moves over him and drives the heel of his hand against the center of his chest.
"Come on. Come on, Buck."
He presses down, lets the chest recoil and presses again, Buck's head rocking faintly with each movement, water shining in his hair and running in thin streams beneath his neck.
Eddie reaches thirty tilts Buck's head again, pinches his nose and forces another breath into his lungs.
"Please."
Nothing.
The radio at Eddie's shoulder crackles, damaged by the water and filled with static. He tears one hand away from Buck long enough to grab it while pressing two fingers firmly against his carotid artery with the other.
"Mayday, mayday, mayday. Chim, answer me!"
Static hisses against his ear.
"Eddie?" Chim's voice finally breaks through, faint and distorted. "Go ahead."
"Buck was swept into the channel and submerged for maybe two minutes! Possible head injury, no spontaneous breathing, and I can't confirm a pulse. I've started CPR." Eddie shifts his fingers against Buck's neck, pressing harder. "We're on the north maintenance ledge beside the ruptured pipe, about forty yards upstream from your access point. Send help down the tunnel. I need you here now!"
"We have your position," Chim answers through another burst of static. Eddie can hear him shouting instructions to Hen and the city crew in the background. "We're coming in from downstream."
Eddie releases the radio and immediately stacks both hands over Buck's sternum again. "This isn't how this ends," he starts, each word forced out as he starts compressions again. "You can't do this."
Buck remains still.
His arms begin to ache and his injured shoulder screams every time he pushes down, but the pain has become distant.
Twenty-six. Twenty-seven. Twenty-eight.
"I'm sorry."
Twenty-nine. Thirty.
Eddie bends over him, tilts his head back and breathes into his mouth, the lips below his feeling unnaturally cold.
He lifts his head.
"Buck, please."
The second breath ends, but Eddie's lips don't leave immediately. For one small moment, the contact becomes something other than resuscitation, a tiny, trembling kiss given to someone who might never know it happened.
Eddie tears himself away with a broken sound.
"BUCK!"
He grips Buck's jaw harder, fingers digging into the hinges, and straightens his airway farther. Maybe the angle is wrong. Maybe Eddie missed something. Maybe one more adjustment, one more breath, one more attempt will be the thing that brings him back.
"Breathe, Buck, please!"
Eddie covers Buck's mouth again and gives another breath, then returns to compressions, and this time he can't hold the words back.
"I love you."
His hands drive down against Buck's sternum.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
"I was scared, okay?" Eddie chokes out. "I was scared, and I couldn't—I didn't know how to—"
Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Eddie's vision blurs. He blinks hard, but the tears spill down his face anyway, hot against skin chilled by the water.
He reaches thirty and checks the pulse again.
Nothing… or nothing he can trust through the numbness in his fingers.
He reopens Buck's airway, fingers digging along the hinge of his jaw. "I lied when I said I didn't care."
He gives another breath.
"I lied when I said I didn't want you."
Another.
"I don't know what I am. I don't care what it makes me... and I ruined it, but I love you."
His shaking hand cups the side of Buck's face. "You can hate me, but you have to breathe first."
Eddie's grief tears out of him as a sound too raw to resemble an actual word. He places his hands over Buck's chest again and pushes down, harder now as anger and terror burn together inside him.
"Breathe!"
Buck's body yields beneath his hands.
"Breathe, damn it!"
Eddie compresses again and again, losing the count, finding it, the losing it once more.
"I'm a coward. I'm sorry, Buck. I'm so sorry."
His elbows begin to shake.
"I love you. Do you hear me? I love you."
Thirty compressions.
…
He breathes and Buck's chest rises, but when Eddie lifts his head to pull in another breath, water suddenly bubbles between Buck's parted lips, a thin stream spilling over his lower lip then runs down his cheek.
For one frozen heartbeat, Eddie can only stare, but then a wet gurgle catches deep in Buck's throat. "Oh God, Buck, no, don't choke on it."
Eddie scrambles to move him, sliding one hand beneath the back of his skull while the other catches his far shoulder. Buck is heavy and completely uncoordinated beneath him, limbs dragging across the concrete as Eddie hauls him onto his side, keeping his mouth clear.
"Come on, get it out. I've got you."
Buck's body curls sharply around the first cough as more water spills from his lips and spatters against the concrete, followed by another strangled rush when his chest convulses again, his entire body shaking against Eddie's hold.
"That's it," he tries to say, but the words collapse into a sob.
Eddie keeps him on his side, holding him steady while each attempt to breathe scrapes through his lungs. He feels the pulse beating weakly beneath the skin of Buck's throat and every frantic movement of air against his hand.
His remaining strength abandons him and he bows until his forehead comes to rest against Buck's shoulder.
"Thank God," he whispers as his entire body begins to shake. "Thank God. Thank God."
Each inhale of the man beneath him is shallow and wet, followed by a trembling exhale, but he's breathing.
He's alive.
Eddie closes his eyes and braces his head more firmly against Buck's shoulder because lifting it feels impossible Right now.
Buck' eyes open to narrow, unfocused slits eventually, then drift shut again. His brows furrow and a hoarse sound strains against his throat without becoming actual language.
Eddie lifts his head only enough to see him.
Buck's eyes open and move without finding anything, tracking across the darkness above them before stopping vaguely on Eddie's face. Confusion gathers in them, and his lips part, but the attempt at speech produces only a thin rasp that makes his chest seize in return.
Eddie shakes his head and presses his palm gently against Buck's sternum, feeling the unsteady beat beneath it.
He can't speak either.
Anything he says now will be too much, and Eddie has already thrown too many words at Buck while he lay silent beneath his hands. So he stays there, tears running unchecked into the collar of his uniform.
Buck blinks slowly and drags a Hand across the wet concrete between them, his fingers gathering weakly in the fabric of Eddie's sleeve near his chest.
The touch nearly folds Eddie in half again, but he still covers Buck's hand with his own.
"Y'..." The sound is scraped raw by water and forced breaths and his eyes struggle to remain open. "Y' said..."
Eddie's heart stops.
Buck draws in another thin breath, and his fingers tighten by a fraction. "L-love me...?"
The last word loses its ending, dissolving into a cough that shakes Buck's whole body. Eddie steadies him until it passes.
"Yeah," Eddie whispers, his voice refusing to rise above the water surrounding them. "I love you."
"I was..." He presses his lips together, but another sob breaks through them nonetheless. "I was an asshole. I had no right to judge you, Buck, and I don't think you're pathetic. I..."
…
"I love you," he whispers. "I do. I do."
A tear slips from the corner of Buck's eye then and disappears into his wet hair, just before he Closes his eyes again.
The sight makes panic punch through Eddie, but Buck exhales against his arm and draws in another shallow breath as a faint trace of his usual humor pulls at one corner of his mouth.
"Yeah..." He struggles for another breath. "You're... an assh—"
A broken laugh tears out of Eddie, tangled so tightly with another sob that he can barely tell the difference.
"Yeah," he admits."I really was."
Buck's fingers tighten further around his sleeve. "I'm... sorry too," he forces out. "I said things... because I knew they'd hurt."
"We'll fix it," Eddie promises. "Both of us. We'll fix all of it."
"Okay," Buck breathes in response.
Eddie curls farther around him, holding Buck's securely against him while every fragile breath moves through them both.
Somewhere beyond the bend, voices begin shouting their names, and flashlights cut through the tunnel darkness, still distant but moving closer.
But until they reach them, Eddie holds him and counts every uneven inhale.