Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s not like this is their first disaster, not by any stretch of imagination. Bobby’s back with them, thank god, Buck doesn’t even want to imagine how bad it would be to do an earthquake shift with Gerard. The quake hit at about twenty-one hours into their twenty-four, which means they’re all going to be getting serious overtime. 

It was a 5.5, at most a 6, which isn’t great, but they’ve survived worse. At this point they’ve almost always survived worse.

“It’s kind of like your first day,” he says to Eddie, as they work together to clear rubble away from the fire escape of an apartment building. 

“That was not my first day, and I know you know that,” says Eddie with a smile that turns just a little sour as Buck watches. Probably he too is thinking about that day. About Chris. The aching loss of him, miles away in Texas, is always ever-present. That doesn’t mean the pain doesn’t get that bit sharper, meaner, at any reminder. 

“Close enough,” says Buck, purposefully cheerful, elbowing Eddie lightly to try to distract him.

“You just don't want to remember my actual first day, Mr. Alpha Male.” His grin takes a little effort, but it's real enough. Buck can tell when he's just putting on a brave face versus when he's actually kind of amused despite himself. 

“Ugh, god, shut up," laughs Buck, proving Eddie’s point perfectly correct. It’s mortifying to think of that first shift now, his strutting and posing and pouting while Eddie tried not to laugh in his face. He's honestly so lucky that Eddie didn’t hold it against him, barely even teases him about it now. 

They evacuate the building, and keep moving. There are a bunch of McMansions that are perched on the hillsides that are unstable and not fully evacuated, Bobby says, and Harbor can only take so many of them. 

“Is Tommy working today?” asks Chimney, and Buck pulls a face.

“It’s the last of his four off, we actually overlapped a bit for once, but I bet they’ll have pulled him in for this. Helicopter rescues are so useful in disaster relief."

“Makes sense,” agrees Chim, yawning just a little.

“Sorry your date plans are getting cancelled,” says Hen with a rueful smile. 

He hadn’t really thought about it, but yeah, safe to say that he and Tommy will have to reschedule. It’s not ideal, sure, especially when they don’t work the same shift schedule and so free days often don’t overlap anyway, but it’s one of the best things about dating another first responder: Tommy always just gets it. He’s never worried that Buck's doing something dangerous, or upset that he has to reschedule last minute.

“Hey, all of our day off plans are getting cancelled,” he says easily, “It’ll be fine. We can reschedule.”

They’re getting up into the hills now, and that’s when they hear it. Rain.

It’s kind of funny, Buck thinks, watching his team pale, glance at him. He’s past pretending that dying didn’t fuck him up, is willing to be open and honest with his wounds, at least to these people. That said, this is something that genuinely doesn’t bother him that much. Next to him, Eddie is a line of tension, across from them Chimney is so pale he looks like he’s lost blood, and next to him Hen looks nauseous. Ravi’s driving, cursing under his breath as he puts the wipers on, but next to him Bobby is focused on looking back at them, at Buck. Haunting them all, the drumming of rain on the engine roof, getting louder the more they drive into the hills. 

Obviously it was raining that day, but the thing is, Buck actually missed most of the rain. Hell, he missed most of all of it. That was kind of the problem. The trauma for Buck was inside his own mind, in relearning his own body. His whole team hate the rain now, but Buck honestly doesn’t mind it, except that he can see how it hurts the people he loves.

He leans into Eddie’s side, just slightly, and feels him unwind enough to get a tight grip on Buck’s knee. 

“What about you two?” Buck asks, “Big night off plans that have to be cancelled as we speak?”

Hen blinks once, twice. 

“I think Mara had vague plans for a family movie night,” she says after a long moment. “I suspect we would be watching The Wiz again, it’s a favorite at the moment.”

Chim is stock still, his eyes fixed on Buck like he’s a mirage. Hen elbows him, and they all watch him shift, ripple back into color and motion. 

“I think we were due to have dinner at the Lees before we grab Jee-Yun. She had a sleepover with them last night.”

“And how is my best girl?” prompts Buck, keeping Chimney talking, and together they all try to drown the sound of the rain out for the few more minutes they’re driving. 

———

The rain itself shouldn’t be a problem, it’s not even that heavy, but it’s a bad combination with the earthquake. There's a lot of loose earth, and they’re in the part of town where people have completely uprooted all their trees to have perfect fake lawns. God forbid it looks like they grow things in their gardens. 

“It’s a serious problem,” Buck says to Eddie, as they pick their way closer to this house that seemingly used to be balanced on glass stilts. “It’s low-level deforestation, in places like this, which is bad for the stability of the land even without an earthquake. And even if that wasn't a factor, the monoculture it creates is bad for biodiversity.”

“I'm not disagreeing,” says Eddie, “I’m just saying that’s all very well and good, but it doesn’t make Homeowners Associations any more lenient.”

“Okay, and I’m saying that I’m not even convinced you have a HOA at South Bedford, and that shouldn’t affect putting wildflowers in the backyard at least.”

“If you want to plant wildflowers in the backyard, you’re very welcome,” replies Eddie. “You can even make a herb garden. Knock yourself out. Now come on, how are we even supposed to get up to the nearest entrance of this place, it’s all broken glass.” 

“I actually don’t think we are,” says Buck, as a helicopter circles above them. “I think they’re just lowering them down to us, maybe?” 

———

They’re on that fucking hill for hours, and the rain doesn’t get heavier but it also doesn’t let up at all. It’s honestly pretty fucking miserable, just getting increasingly sodden, and there’s a fear that anyone trapped under debris could drown if they’re really fucking unlucky. They’re trying their best, but a disaster like this? Even under the best conditions, you can't save everyone. These are not the best conditions. 

Thank god for adrenaline, you know? It wasn’t exactly a q-word shift before the quake hit, and they’re running on fumes at this point. That’s how Buck remembers it. That’s how Buck’s always going to fucking remember it. There’s yet another awful fucking McMansion perched on the edge of a hill so that they can get the perfect infinity pool or what the fuck ever, and Buck wouldn’t normally care but, god. The helicopter who had spotted people sheltering on the back patio hadn’t been able to actually lower a ladder because of the wind, so they landed, and Buck wouldn’t normally even think about it, but it means Tommy of all people is right there for everything that follows. 

It’s. He’s. 

It happens like this.

It’s a couple, some L.A. influencer and her actor boyfriend, or possibly he's someone else’s actor boyfriend according to Chim, and they’re too fucking scared to do anything themselves. He shouldn’t. He should. Eddie’s got more medical training, even if he refuses to officially become a paramedic, and so when they decide to see if it’s an injury that's stopping them from climbing down the ladders they’ve set up, it's Eddie who goes.

Eddie climbs up and over onto their stupid fucking back patio, which is hanging out over the actual edge of the cliff, not that Buck knows that right now. He pops back up over the fence with that smile of his that says ‘can you believe this?’, a wriggling form in his arms.

“They didn’t want to leave without their sausage dog, couldn’t climb the ladders holding him,” he says, “C’mere, I’ll lower him down to you.”

Buck huffs a laugh, walks close and reaches up. Eddie leans down, like he’s on a balcony almost, reaching out to Buck below, like this is something different than the ground having shifted to no longer be level with the patio. Buck goes half up the ladder, takes the dog in his arms, and it's whining quietly. He goes back down and retreats a few steps, so there’s room for them all to more easily come down the ladders. 

The boyfriend comes down first, and Buck can honestly say he doesn’t look at all familiar. Maybe Brad would know who he is. He waits at the bottom of the ladder for his maybe girlfriend, and she teeters down oh so slowly. Unfortunately for her, the earthquake hit while she was dressed in one of those beautiful and highly impractical evening dresses that dramatically restricts your movement. She was wearing extremely tall stilettos of some sort, but she's thankfully taken them off and is holding them with one hand and she does her best to get down the ladder at a reasonable speed. Eddie’s waiting at the top, catching Buck’s eyes and trying not to roll his eyes. It makes Buck bite back a smile. Tommy’s by the base of the ladder, holding it steady and trying to encourage the maybe boyfriend to head over to Buck so he can take his fucking dog. It’s. It’s so dumb. Buck’s just standing there, the rain and cold seeping into his bones, this dog whimpering in his arms. He should. Why didn’t he. 

Eddie’s leaning against the side of the patio fence, ready to climb over as soon as she’s off the ladder, talking her through it, and making eye contact with Buck as if to say he recognises just how ridiculous this whole situation is. She’s about halfway down when there’s this odd rumble, and all the hair on the back of Buck’s neck and arms rises, and the dog’s whine gets louder, and Buck feels trapped in his own mind, his own body, too much happening too quickly.

There’s. It’s. 

Aftershocks can be so fucking bad. Tommy swipes at the woman, dragging her off the ladder and away, as the boyfriend runs forward towards Buck. There isn’t.

It’s. The ladder shakes, falling away from the patio.

Buck practically throws the dog at the boyfriend, starts to run forward. 

Eddie’s looking at Buck, his eyes so fucking wide.

The rain is relentless.

There's a rumbling, louder and more bone chilling than anything Buck has ever heard.

There's a wave of loose dirt and mud sweeping down the hill towards them.

Tommy catches Buck around the waist, pulling him away from the wave, from the ladder on the floor, from Eddie.

The whole deck starts shuddering. Eddie’s clinging to the fence still, his knuckles white. The ladder lies on the floor in front of him, being pulled away by a wave of dirt. The patio gets even higher than before, forced up by the dirt moving and shifting below it, Eddie getting more distant.

“Buck!” he cries, and somehow it pierces through the rumbling, cracking, crashing of the moment. 

“Eddie!” he calls back, desperate, fighting the hands on him.

The dog is barking madly, and Buck's so overwhelmed, and then there’s a creak so distinctive it's like all other sounds in the world have somehow stopped.

The patio detaches from the side of the building, and in a single, gut-churning moment, he realizes that it was over the cliff-face. He realizes because it slowly tips, suspended in the air for a moment, a breath, Eddie’s eyes so big and anguished in his face, tilting up and away and over.

Just like that, this becomes a disaster unlike any other. Just like that, Eddie is gone. 

Eddie is gone. Oh god. oh god. ohgodohgodohgodeddie. Eddie. Eddie! EDDIE! 

He’s, he can’t be, it’s not, this is a joke this is a fucking joke this isn’t real this can’t be fucking real let go let go LET GO oh god

Trying to get to the edge, to look over, fucking hands dragging at him, stopping him, pulling him back and away LET THE FUCK GO he needs to see, he needs, he

oh god not Eddie please not Eddie this isn’t fair this can’t be how it happens this can’t be real it’s not real he’s going over, he’s going over too fuck off don’t fucking touch–

“Buck!” says a voice, and he thinks people have been saying that a lot probably, but this came with hands on his shoulders and a firm shake, and even when he used to want to ignore Bobby he never could, and this is no better. “Good, that’s good,” says Bobby as his face slowly comes into focus. “Are you with me?”

“Eddie,” he manages to whimper, “Cap, he– I didn’t– I couldn’t–”

“You couldn’t,” agrees Bobby in a firm tone, “But that doesn’t mean we won’t try now, okay? We’ll do what we can, Buck, you know that.”

The world is slowly coming back into focus, and Buck realizes his ears have been ringing, his own heartbeat pounding in them loud enough to drown everything else out. The actor and the influencer and their stupid loud dog are gone, who knows where, probably safe. Probably safe when it’s Eddie who–

Bobby keeps a firm arm around Buck’s shoulders, so he can't go over to the edge like he wants to, but he can see Chim and Ravi, Ravi on a line and Chim holding it, getting close, Ravi peering over. It’s. 

Ravi looks ashen, when he turns back to face them, and Buck’s world narrows in again.

He feels himself fall to his knees, hit the ground hard. “No,” he says hoarsely, and his voice is ragged, like he’s been screaming himself bloody, like his vocal chords are already giving up on him. “No,” he says again, looking up at Bobby, and that’s worse somehow. Bobby looks down at him, puts a hand on his shoulder, and he looks so fucking sad. So sympathetic, like he gets it, like he. Like. “No,” Buck says again, and then before he can help it, before he can stop himself, his vision blurs with tears and he’s wailing. 

Time passes. 

Hen drags him to the ambulance at some point, puts a silver shock blanket around him, says something to him. He doesn’t know what. He can’t really hear anything, it’s like the whole world is underwater. It’s like. It’s. He’s crying too hard to hear, or speak, or think, or breathe probably. He’s. Maybe this is a nightmare. Maybe the well and the tsunami combined in his head somehow and none of this is fucking real and he won't have to deal with– Oh god. Chris. What is he supposed to do about Chris? 

He cries harder. He cries until he can't breathe and then some. He loses more time. They’re helping with the disaster, he thinks, the others. He should be– They–

At some point he flashes back to himself, unsure of when he left, and he’s got an IV in. It’s ridiculous, because they're in the middle of a natural fucking disaster, they can't be wasting resources on him, but he feels almost hollow with how much he's cried since… Since. Definitely enough to dehydrate himself. 

The back door of the ambulance opens, the light almost blinding for a second, and there’s Chimney, his arm around a teenage girl. Suddenly, noise and light and color all return to the world. 

“This is Buck,” says Chimney gently to the girl.

“And who is this?” Buck asks, his voice hoarse with disuse, with screaming, with sobbing. One of all of those.

“Scarlet,” says the girl, subdued.

“And what are you in for, Scarlet?” asks Buck, trying his best for teasing. Over her shoulder, Chimney blinks at him, wide-eyed and grateful.

“Hurt my shoulder,” says Scarlet, addressing the floor of the ambulance. 

“Dislocated it in the aftershocks,” says Chimney, “Managed to hold onto her dad and stop him from falling straight out the window until we got there.”

“Oh,” says Buck, ignoring the way his vision whites out for a second. If he could have grabbed– If– “A regular hero then, huh?” 

Scarlet looks up at that, blinking rapidly. She’s still in shock, probably, from what she’d gone through. 

“You’re never getting grounded again,” jokes Buck, taking the blanket off of his own shoulders and tossing it to Chim. He wraps it around her, but his eyes are on Buck, relieved and worried all at once. 

Scarlet breaks into a shaky smile, and that’s the point where Buck admits to himself that he needs to get the fuck out of this ambulance. She’s so young. 

He takes the IV out of his arm, puts the equipment away, while Chimney gives her painkillers and immobilises her shoulder for proper treatment later. They leave the ambulance together. 

“Okay,” says Buck, “What’ve we got?"

“Buck,” replies Chimney, hesitant, hurting, and he cannot hear that fucking tone right now. The last time he remembers Chimney talking to one of them like that it was a sunny day and a hit and run, and Buck cannot fucking think about that right now. “Are you–”

“What have we got?" Buck cuts him off, insistent. 

Chimney swallows heavily. 

“We’ve been circling around to the cliff base, but we keep getting held up,” says Chimney, like that isn't the last fucking thing Buck wants to talk about, think about, right now. “This neighborhood is basically just matchsticks now. Ravi and I have been helping Scarlet’s family, the McKennas, but Hen and Bobby seem pretty busy with their neighbors, so once I was done with Scarlet, I was due to head over there.”

“Lead the way,” says Buck firmly, and they break into a jog towards a house that seems to mostly be crater now. 

“Buckley, what are you doing?” calls Bobby, and he sounds so fucking scared. When Buck was younger he would have heard it as angry, or dismissive, or anything but what it is. Anything but raw concern.

“Here to help, Cap,” Buck calls back. 

“You can’t be on a scene right now,” calls Bobby, strained.

They get closer, and it becomes apparent that Bobby is holding up a piece of debris so that Hen and Ravi can wriggle under it, help out a pinned vic of some sort.

“I should be helping,” says Buck, taking his place next to Bobby, easing the debris onto his shoulders too, “Bobby, I need to help.” 

Bobby looks him in the eyes, this section of crumbling plaster across both of their backs. Buck doesn’t know what he sees. Maybe he can tell that Buck doesn’t have any tears left. Maybe he can see that if Buck stays alone now, when he's back in his body, he will shatter into pieces too small to ever fully put back together. 

“Okay,” says Bobby. “Okay, help. If I say to go back to the ambulance you do it with no hesitation, understood?”

“Understood,” agrees Buck, knowing in his heart that this is a day where he will easily and willingly ignore Bobby if he must.

———

It doesn’t come to that, thankfully. 

Buck throws himself into the work. At some point, he realizes that Tommy’s gone, presumably back in his helicopter helping. They’re all focused on the disasters in front of them, they have to be. Buck works. They work and they help, and inch by inch they get closer to the base of that fucking cliff. They save lives, and Buck doesn’t let himself think about, won’t let himself regret, what it might cost them. 

He’s a selfish, possessive, mean-spirited man who has managed to convince people he’s kind and good and friendly, but Buck’s not sure even he could successfully pretend he wouldn't give twenty of these people to make sure that E– He can’t even let himself think it. He can’t admit how bad it is, how deep it goes, how cruel he can be, because then he wouldn't deserve it to go well, and this needs to end well. This needs to be yet another in a long line of inexplicable miracles. This needs to be a cake and a welcome back to shift party as soon as fucking possible, because Buck might not survive any other outcome. They cannot survive a fucking serial killer on their team and not survive a Thursday shift. That cannot be what happens here. 

They’re uncomfortably close to 36 hours by the time they get to the base of the fucking cliff. It’s not quite sheer rockface, just a steep descent into what used to be scrubland, leveling out into a valley filled with yet more residential homes. That’s what it used to be, anyway. The mudslides knocked loose by the aftershocks have cut a swathe through the scrubland, covering and coating the houses below. It’s a horror scene. It doesn’t matter how much Buck looks, he can’t for the life of him see so much of a trace of that fucking patio. He doesn’t even know where he'd begin searching. 

It doesn't stop him trying. 

It feels more immediate now that they’re down here, each second they don't find him ramping up in tension again, like this is the second where it's too late, now this, now this. He’s flooding with adrenaline again, but there’s no real outlet. Where to fucking start, half of this goddamn valley is buried, and he’s just one man, they're just one team. 

Buck digs and calls out and helps as best he fucking can and with every passing second he wants to cry and give up and scream. He has no idea how long they’ve been there.

They don’t call it, exactly, because there are other people here now, other houses helping, and he knows that they all know exactly what's at stake, that somewhere in this valley one of their own is here, has to be here. Buck’s trying his best to keep it together, but his vision keeps blurring and he’s so fucking tired that he's struggling to keep on his feet, overbalancing too much. 

Still, Buck would keep going, would work and dig and search until he finds Eddie or fucking dies trying, but his team won't let him. 

“You’re a hazard on the field right now,” says Bobby gently, walking Buck away from a visible crack in the ground that Buck admittedly had been wavering a little too close to. 

“Eddie,” Buck says, voice ragged, “I can’t– We can’t give up.”

“We’re not, we won’t,” promises Bobby, still one arm around Buck’s shoulders, steering him towards the engine. “But right now, you being out here? It’s not helping. You need to get some sleep, okay?”

“I need to help,” begs Buck, his voice cracking on the last word, and he can see Bobby’s expression crack with it, distantly feels Bobby pull him closer, into a one armed hug. 

“If you get hurt out there, who are you helping?” asks Bobby lowly, hesitating before he continues, “Do you think that's what he’d want? Do you think that helps him?”

Buck shakes his head silently, crying again. It’s stupid and selfish to feel like it has to be him, to feel like only he can pull Eddie from the earth. He can barely walk right now, wouldn’t be able to go straight right now without Bobby's help, what would he even be able to do if he found Eddie? All he’d be doing is delaying Eddie's medical care by collapsing on top of him. He can know that, logically, and still feel every single atom in him rebel at the thought of leaving, of going home and sleeping and acting like Eddie might not be out here, in pain, in need of help. 

“Bobby,” he says, so quiet it's almost a whisper, sadder than he’s maybe ever sounded in his life. 

“I know, kid,” says Bobby, practically lifting him into the back of the engine, and buckling himself in next to Buck, like he doesn't want them to be separated, “I know. We’ve got you.”

“Who’s got him?” asks Buck in a pathetic little whimper, and he starts crying again, unable to stop himself. 

———

Maddie’s waiting when they get back to the station, folds Buck into a hug the second he gets down from the engine. He doesn’t know how she knows, when they contacted the others, what they’ve been told. He just tries not to cry into her shoulder, even though she still smells the exact same since she was comforting him as a little kid, still pats his back in the same way even though he’s so much bigger than she is now. 

Maddie guides Buck and Chim into her car, having silently decided that he’s going home with them. Buck just kind of floats along with it. He doesn't really want to be on his own right now. He doesn’t… He's not sure how he feels, what he feels, if he feels anything right now. He’s not sure he can feel right now. Like maybe he's felt everything he could possibly feel and then some, and he’s overloaded with it, burnt out on feelings of all sorts.

He thinks Maddie and Chim try to get him to eat something before he goes to bed, but they don’t push him. They were on shift for long enough that Jee’s asleep again, and Buck can't help but be grateful because he's too far gone to pretend to be a person right now. He showers mechanically before crashing in their guest room, and against all odds he’s asleep in seconds. 

He sleeps solidly, more solidly than it feels like he should have, than should have been possible even. He doesn’t have nightmares, because he sleeps too deeply to dream, just the complete silence of the truly exhausted. He wakes, groggy and disoriented with how much sleep he’s gotten, and that’s when the nightmare begins. 

There’s this moment, less than a heartbeat, where he thinks it wasn’t real, when he feels looming dread without remembering why, and then. Then, etched into his eyelids, the expression on Eddie’s face as he disappeared over the side of a cliff. Calling Buck’s name like it meant something else, a look in his eyes that Buck couldn’t parse, his knuckles white against the railing even though holding on couldn’t help. Buck hasn’t struggled to read a single one of Eddie’s emotions or expressions in years, not even when one or both of them would maybe prefer if he couldn’t, not even in grocery store arguments or fraught conversations in kitchens. He’s as fluent in Eddie as he is in English, a language he learned easily, naturally. There was something in that fucking moment, suspended over a cliff, which Buck couldn’t quite place. Something he’s missing. The last– God.

He only knows he’s been crying after Maddie comes into the room, quiet and gentle. She brings a cup of coffee with her, but it goes straight onto the bedside table when she sees Buck, tears sliding down his face endlessly. 

“Oh Evan,” she says, and goes to wipe at his cheeks, and that’s how he realizes that at some point he started crying. 

Maddie, he wants to say, wants to beg, Maddie, fix it, you have to fix it, like a child who is yet to discover the truths of the world. He can’t get a single word out, is crying too hard to catch his breath enough to speak. 

Maddie rubs at his back soothingly, and murmurs into his hair that she loves him, and doesn’t promise that things will be okay or that they’ll find Eddie.

This is the problem with everyone he loves being a first responder. No one is going to tell him a kind lie, or make a promise they can’t guarantee. They all know far too well what that can do. 

It takes a while, and more of Maddie’s coaxing, but Buck stops weeping. Pauses, is maybe more accurate. He’s not going to make it through the rest of the day without crying. 

He holds the lukewarm cup of coffee in both hands, leaching its warmth, using sips of it to calm him down further. It’s dark outside, but that could mean anything, and the comfort of it is more than worth the caffeine at whatever time this is. 

“You ready to leave this room?” asks Maddie, like it’s a reasonable thing to ask, like he doesn’t need to pull himself the fuck together. Like whatever answer he gives, she’ll be here, arm around his shoulders, holding him into her side. 

“Yeah,” says Buck hoarsely, “It’s. How do I look?”

Maddie looks at him, disbelieving and bemused.

“If I don’t– If Jee–” he stutters out, and watches Maddie’s eyes soften even further. She’s red-rimmed herself, but nothing like the mess he assumes he looks like.

“You’re okay,” she says, “Jee’s over at the Lees, but even if she wasn’t, she’s always happy to see you.”

“Don't want to scare her,” manages Buck, taking another gulp of coffee. 

“You’re okay,” Maddie says again. “Come on.” 

It takes more effort than it should to nod, take a deep breath, and stand up.

In Maddie’s kitchen is a crowd. Bobby and Athena, standing by the counter. Hen and Karen boxing Chimney in on the couch. Ravi, looking uncomfortable and out of place, yet determined. It takes effort not to cry again. 

He swallows it down. 

“No word?” he asks, because he knows, looking at their faces, but he still needs to hear someone say it.

“Not yet,” says Bobby firmly, not willing to make a promise, but not willing to give up hope either. 

“Okay,” says Buck, like hearing it confirmed it’s a full body blow, like they wouldn’t all have seen his fucking wince. 

He takes a moment, a breath, swallows hard. “What’s the plan?”

“We’re going to keep looking,” assures Chimney, voice fierce. He looks determined, enough to almost distract from how wrecked he looks. Buck forgets, sometimes, how much Chim has lost, how deeply he feels under his careful light-heartedness. Hen holds his hand tightly. “We’re not giving up.”

“I know,” says Buck, huskily, and he may not be crying, but it’s so evident in his voice that he might as well be. “When are we allowed back?”

“They’ve switched to 12 hours on/off to reduce burnout,” says Bobby.

“Twelve hours from now?” asks Ravi, between frustrated and frantic. 

“No,” says Athena, “They’re moving to eight-to-eight for the shift pattern. You swapped out about five hours ago now, but it’s nearly half past eleven now, so you have a good eight and a half hours.”

“Only five?” asks Buck quietly, and Maddie nods at him. “Thought I’d slept more.”

“Four hours at most,” confirms Maddie quietly, then to the room, “Really you should all try to get more sleep now, so that you’re ready for your shift.” She doesn’t sound like she expects any of them to take her up on it. 

“I’m ready now,” says Ravi. He looks like he hasn't slept at all since they got off shift.

“A strong breeze could take you out right now,” says Hen wearily, “I know how it feels, but Maddie’s right.”

“We’ve got seven hours, right?” asks Buck, and he gets nods in response. There’s a moment where he considers not saying anything more. This would be easier, in the following days if he was alone. If he could throw himself into work and the relief effort and the rescue mission and not have to worry about keeping it together, about keeping himself safe. It’ll be easier if he could just sink into it, no matter what, until this is over, one way or another. He can’t, though. It might be easier, but it’s not really an option. Instead, he says, “How are you feeling, Karen?” 

There’s a moment of bewildered silence.

“I’m okay?” says Karen, almost like she’s asking him. “I didn’t have a night shift, so it’s been a bad day, but more rested than all of you?” 

“Perfect,” says Buck with a decisive nod. “Any chance you can give me a lift to LAX?” 

“What?” at least three people ask at the same time, but Karen, bless her, just nods without hesitation. 

“And why do you want to go to LAX, Buckaroo?" asks Athena, brow furrowed in concern. 

Buck takes another deep breath. 

“It’s too early for LAFD to have made a call, especially when we don’t, when there’s no–” He stops, centers himself. It’s hard to say it out loud, but he can’t pretend that it’s not been at the back of his mind this entire time, the yawning dread of what this could mean. Not just, but. The. God. He can barely even think it. “I don’t want him to get a call. I should tell him in person, he should find out in person.”

There’s a beat, and then Hen intakes a breath sharply. “Christopher?” she asks gently, and the following inhale comes from all parts of the room.

“Buck,” says Maddie gently, “You don’t–”

At the same time Bobby says, “Kid, I can call, it doesn’t have to be entirely on you, we’ve got you.”

“No, I know,” says Buck to them both, “It does, though, I do. It should be me. He should hear it in person, and it should be from me.”

“Are you sure?” asks Hen, “I know that you and Chris are close, but…”

There’s half a moment where Buck thinks about telling them about the will, just so that they’ll understand, so they’ll stop questioning him. 

Instead, Ravi looking up from his phone and says, “Okay, there’s one you can make if you leave right now, I’ll book it and send you the details while you’re on the way. How long will you need in El Paso before your return?” Behind him, Karen’s putting her shoes on. 

“At least an hour, hour and a half?” asks Buck. “It’s around a two hour flight, so I could do two and still make it for our shift.”

“Buck!” says Maddie, “You need to sleep if you're going on shift.”

“He can sleep on the plane,” says Chimney, moving to Maddie’s side, stroking her arm reassuringly. 

Karen’s waiting at the front door, serious and sure, and Buck moves to her like he’s outside his own body, like an alternate universe where he’s not seconds away from breaking. He can’t be. He needs to tell Chris, so he needs to keep it together. 

In seconds, it feels like, they’re in the car, and Karen is ruthlessly cutting into traffic to get him to LAX.

Both their phones buzz, so it must be the groupchat. Buck hasn’t seen it since before– He thinks Maddie must have put his phone on to charge, which is a relief, because he’s going to need it for the tickets. Speaking of, that was the buzz. Ravi had sent three plane tickets to the groupchat, one outward, two returns. 

118 strong!

Buck

thanks man

let me know how much i owe u 

Ravi

dw i made them all split it with me 

Hen

he had to be bullied into it 

Buck 

you got two returns.

i don’t. 

chris might not

Ravi

i know

but i figured you might as well have the option

just in case

Buck 

💖 💖 💖

Maddie

let us know when you land, okay?

Buck

i will 

Bobby

I’ll call you if there are any updates.

Buck 

i know 💖

“All good?” asks Karen, as she makes a turn that would be frankly terrifying if Buck had the energy for any other form of fear right now. 

“All good. Everyone chipped in for the tickets, which was sweet,” says Buck absently. 

Karen kind of smiles, like she expected nothing less. 

She’s actually making concerningly good time.

“I appreciate you dropping me off,” says Buck, “But I’m not sure you should have a license.” 

Karen laughs brightly, and despite everything, Buck smiles just a little to hear it. “Hen won’t get in the car with me behind the wheel unless the kids are here too,” she admits, which checks out. 

They go straight to short drop off, and as Buck moves to leave the car, Karen puts her hand on his shoulder.

“You’re a good man, and you’re doing a good thing. I know it's going to be hard, but we’ve all got you if you need anything, okay? I’ll be here to collect you in a couple of hours.”

“Karen, you don’t hav–”

“Buck,” she says, serious and solemn in a way that he's rarely seen. “I don’t get to help in many ways when you’re all hurting. Let me do this. Let me help. Please.”

Buck blinks back tears. “Of course,” he says, just as earnest, “Don’t know what we’d do without you, you know?”

“I know,” she smiles back, “Now go, you’re on a schedule!”

Buck doesn’t look back once he’s out the car, just races for the check in. 

———

He doesn’t actually manage to sleep on the plane, but he thinks they all knew that would be the case. He rehearses his case, over and over, tries to think of what to say, how best to explain it. How to offer Chris a ticket home without making it sound like it’s a goodbye, without feeling like he’s forcing him, without ever once mentioning the will. 

He tries to eat something, but it tastes like sawdust in his mouth. He manages to drink water without immediately crying it out. Mostly he sits and doesn’t let himself think. Keeps himself in tight and narrow and safe circles, rehearsing and rehearsing for a conversation he doesn’t really know how to have. 

They land, and the airport is empty and quiet. Ghostly. This is the problem with working 24 hour shifts all the time, you almost forget that the rest of the world turns off at certain times.

Buck’s turning his phone on, trying to figure out how he’ll get to the Diazes, when he sees it. A Lyft driver, holding his phone up like a sign as it reads “Bobby Nash”.

As if on cue, his phone turns back on and immediately pings with new messages.

188 strong!

Bobby

No news.

Booked you a Lyft.

Let us know when you land?

Buck

Landed in El Paso

Thank you

Bobby

❤️

Least we could do. 

He gets in the Lyft, and they drive him to the Diaz household in silence. He gets out and gives them a generous tip and then stands in the dark as they drive off, looking at the house. 

Buck’s been here before, but only once. An hour and a half stopover for a mildly awkward lunch in the backyard, and then they drove two more hours before pulling over to rest. This seems like it’s probably the same house, but honestly who could tell? He’s in suburbia, and the houses all look identical, and he’s here to tell bad news. 

He’d known, logically, that it would be around 3am when he arrived, but it’s one thing knowing that, and a completely different thing standing in a dark street, looking at a dark row of houses, hoping that he’s about to wake up the right people. 

No way to do this well, just have to do it. 

He gets halfway up the drive before he’s struck by a sudden thought. 

118 strong!

Buck

can someone tell pepa?

should have told her already, i was just focused on chris

Bobby

We’ve got you, don’t worry. 

I’ll call her myself.

Buck 

thanks

Maddie

let us know how it goes over there, okay?

Buck

👍

He’s running out of excuses. He walks up to the front door, takes a deep breath or five, and rings the bell. The sound cuts through the dead silence of the night. It’s so quiet here. He wonders how Chris handled it when he moved back at the beginning of summer. 

There’s no sound of stirring inside, and Buck doesn’t want to ring again, but god, what if they didn’t wake up properly?

He splits the difference, gives a firm knock at the door, and now, now he can hear the sounds of people inside.

“What the hell kind of–” comes through muffled, Eddie’s father, and then a shushing noise that seems even louder somehow. 

The door swings open swiftly and with force, Ramon on the other side. He’s wearing a striped set of matching pyjamas, his hair mussed, and his glasses crooked. He looks tired and grumpy, sure, but he also looks old. Buck is flooded with the reminder that these are Eddie’s actual parents. He’s here to tell Chris, but they need to know too. They should. God. 

“What on earth do you think you’re doing, ringing the doorbell at this time of night?” snaps Ramon, and for all that Buck’s been actively furious at Eddie’s parents all summer, he can feel himself deflating, unsure what to do.

“I–” he starts, and then the door opens further, and Helena’s there too.

“Do we even know you?” she asks primly, and then blinks, “Actually, you look familiar.”

“Abuelo? Abuela?” calls Chris’ sleepy voice, and Buck's heart clenches in his chest, spasming with a sudden and unexpected pain. 

“Go back to bed, Chris,” calls Helena, “We’ve got it!” Turning back to Buck, she says, in an unimpressed tone, “He has school tomorrow, you know. Why on earth would you ring the bell at three in the morning?”

“Chris,” Buck manages, voice hoarse. “I need to talk to Chris.”

“What are you talking about? Who are you?” asks Helena shrilly, like Buck is a threat somehow. He is, he guesses. He's here to ruin all their lives. 

“LAFD,” interrupts Ramon, frowning suddenly, “Helena, he’s LAFD,” with a little point at Buck’s clothes. 

He hadn’t thought much about what Maddie gave him to sleep in, but it’s a pair of soft sweatpants and one of his LAFD tees.

“What are you doing here?” asks Helena.

“Is this about Edmundo?” asks Ramon. 

“Please,” says Buck, finding his voice at last, “It’s about Eddie. I need to tell Chris.”

Ramon gestures him in, closes the door behind him, and Buck hadn’t even realized he was still just on the threshold. 

“I’m Evan Buckley,” says Buck shakily, “I’m at the 118, with Eddie. I. I need to talk to Chris.”

“Chris is sleeping,” says Helena significantly. “You can tell us whatever it is you need to, and we can tell Christopher tomorrow.” 

“I won’t be here tomorrow,” says Buck, wretched, “It needs to be now, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be here. Tell us. We can tell Chris.” She’s firm, implacable. 

The thing is, all summer, Buck has been quietly wondering about exactly how much the Diazes have and haven't been telling Chris. Even if he hadn’t been, he knows Chris, he knows he’ll have questions. He deserves to hear it from Buck, from someone who was there. 

“I really think–” starts Buck, and then, then!

The creak of a door, an inhale of breath, the rushing patter of feet, as Chris calls out “Buck!” and runs to him. 

It’s instinct, to turn into him, to pull him close into a hug. They haven’t really talked since that last day in Los Angeles, Buck wanting to follow Chris and Eddie's lead and let Chris initiate contact. Trying not to lament that it never came, because it was so much worse for Eddie. Trying not to miss the kid in his arms more than he was allowed. Failing miserably. 

“Buck,” says Chris, leaning back, “What are you doing here?” Then, with rapidly comprehending horror. “Buck, where’s Dad? What are you doing here? Why isn’t– Buck, where’s my dad?” His breathing is coming too quickly, and Buck sinks to his knee in front of him immediately, all previous thoughts eclipsed by making sure Chris is as okay as he can be in this moment. 

“Breathe, Chris, come on, we’ve done box breathing before, breath with me, just for a moment, okay? In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Do you want to do another round? Okay, come on, in, two, three, four.” 

As he counts with Chris in the middle of the front hall, he’s vaguely aware that the Diaz parents move around them, mutter to each other, probably about him. He can’t bring himself to care or to listen. Chris is, has to be, the priority. They should understand that at least. 

Chris’ breathing has returned somewhat closer to normal, and he looks less out of control than he did even a moment ago. 

“You good?” asks Buck, and Chris nods, brushes it off with an alarming ease as he stumbles back a little to look at Buck piercingly. There's the fleeting question of how long he’s been having panic attacks, whether Eddie knows, and then the pang that brings.

“Buck,” says Chris lowly, like he’s scared to hear the answer. “Why are you here?” 

“It’s. Did you hear the news yesterday?”

Chris shakes his head slowly, looks over to his grandparents, who shake their heads in turn. 

“It was a Sunday,” says Chris, like that explains it. 

“We try to limit devices on Sunday after Church,” says Helena, and it’s admirable, it really is, but god, could no part of this be easier?

“Okay,” says Buck, standing up again, “Okay.” They’re still in the front hall, but he doesn’t want to invite himself into the kitchen or living room. He doesn’t want to delay any further, not with Chris looking at him like that. “In the early hours of yesterday morning, an earthquake hit L.A.,” he starts, and Chris pales, swaying where he stands. “It’s– We were on shift,” says Buck by rote, the words he’d rehearsed on the plane over and over coming to him at last, at least mostly. “In the aftermath of the quake, there were. It had been raining, so there were mudslides, and–”

“Buck,” Chris interrupts, pained, hurting, terrified. 

“We don’t know,” Buck replies, “I’m so sorry, Chris, we don’t know. If I could– If I just– We don’t know, not yet.”

Helena gasps, her hand flying to her chest. Ramon takes his glasses off with one hand so he can pinch his brow tightly. Chris, for his part, just nods, like that was what he’d been expecting. Like it was what he needed to hear. 

“Okay,” says Chris, “Okay. What happened, Buck?”

“There was a mudslide,” repeats Buck. “He’d been helping people to get down from their property, we didn’t. We didn’t know the patio was overhanging the side of the hill, and the mudslide detached it, took it over with Eddie still–” He has to stop, take a deep breath. “We haven’t found him yet, but we’re still looking. It’s. We don’t know, Chris.” 

Chris nods solemnly, then crumples backwards to sit down heavily on the stairs. Immediately, all three of them move towards him, reaching out in unison. 

“You came to tell me?” Chris asks, voice small. 

“I thought you should hear it in person,” agrees Buck, “And I have a good five hours until I'm back on shift looking for him, so.” 

Chris huffs a tiny laugh, the sort of thing that’s really just a vehicle for tears. “So you’re leaving again?”

“I have to be there,” says Buck, “I have to help. I have to do what I can.”

“I know,” says Chris. “I didn’t– Buck, I really didn’t think– I thought there was time,” he manages, biting it off angrily before he can burst into tears, rubbing his hands roughly over his eyes. 

When did he stop letting himself cry?

Buck sinks into a crouch in front of him, putting his hand gently on Christopher’s knee, ignoring their audience. 

“There are some promises I can’t make you, you know that,” says Buck, “But I can promise you this: I can promise you that your dad loves nothing in the world more than you, and if he has any say in the matter, any choice at all, he will fight to come back to you.”

“Still?” Chris asks, in a tiny voice.

“Oh, Chris, always,” Buck replies, unable to do anything but pull him into another close hug. “How much your dad loves you, how much he loves being your dad, that’s one of the first things I knew about him. If he has a chance, or a choice, he’ll fight. If–” Buck’s voice breaks, and he has to swallow it down. “If he can’t, if– It wouldn’t be because he doesn’t love you, and it wouldn’t mean he didn’t want to come back to you, you know that, right?”

Chris is trying not to cry, and Buck’s torn because he wants Chris to feel like he can cry if he wants to, but if he does then Buck will start again, and he’s not sure he can stop if he starts right now. He chases Chris’ eye contact, the way that– He chases Chris’ eye contact, and looks at him seriously. Chris blinks hard, then gives a firm nod.

“I know,” he says, determined, “I know he loves me.”

“Good,” says Buck, just as fierce. 

“When do you go back?” asks Chris.

“My flight’s at 5am,” admits Buck, “I’ll have to leave in about an hour.”

Chris’ face crumples, just a little, then straightens out, determined. “I want to come with you.”

“What?” says Helena immediately, “You can’t!”

Buck ignores her. “Are you sure?” he asks instead, solemn. “If you’re not ready…”

“I’m ready, I already– Buck. I need to be there. If you find him? If you… I need to be there.” 

Buck had thought, perhaps foolishly, that his heart was already broken. Hearing the shake in Chris’ voice, the sheer depth of grief that’s starting to enclose on him? Any remaining fragments shatter. 

“Okay,” replies Buck, “Okay.”

“We can figure something out, Chris,” says Ramon, “We can go there together, it’ll be okay, kid.”

Chris shakes his head, looks straight to Buck. “I need to go back now. Buck, I need to.” He sounds frantic. 

“You’ve got a ticket on my flight,” says Buck calmly, “Just in case you wanted it.”

Immediately, Chris looks so relieved, the ramping tension flooding back out. 

“Why don’t you go to your room, pack a bag?” suggests Buck, finally getting back up to his feet. “I should talk logistics with your grandparents.”

He turns to face Helena and Ramon, who are looking at him with suspicion, anger, and hurt. 

“You can’t just take him,” snaps Helena, and Buck remembers thinking the exact same thing, just two months ago. 

“You heard him, he wants to go,” says Buck, “Look, I don't mean any disrespect, I understand this must be a hard time for you.”

“Can we– Edmundo is missing?” says Ramon, floored.

“I– Yes. He was swept up in a mudslide, and he’s missing. We’re still looking. There are people looking around the clock. If he's– If there’s… We won’t stop until we find him,” Buck says, "No matter what.”

Ramon understands the implicit whatever condition he's in, whether he’s alive or, and nods once, firmly. 

“Okay,” he says, “Okay. You’ll tell us, if you hear? You’ll call us?”

“Of course,” says Buck, “Of course. It was just– It’s still. With things the way they are, with the uncertainty, I thought it was best for it to be in person. Someone Chris knows.”

“So you could take him?” accuses Helena. “You’re telling me that I’ve lost my son, and you’re stealing my grandson?”

“What? No!” exclaims Buck, “I’m not telling you that you've lost your son. It’s. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not a good situation, but I meant what I said to Chris. Eddie’s a fighter. You have to have faith in him.”

“I’ve had this call before,” snaps Helena, “We’ve had the army knock at our door to tell us about Eddie, I know how this goes.”

“He survived!” Buck snaps back in turn. “When he got shot in Afghanistan he survived! Hell, when he got shot in fucking Los Angeles, he survived!”

“Oh he might have survived, but I still lost him,” says Helena, and it's just un-fucking-thinkable right now. Buck can’t fucking do this. 

He turns towards Ramon. “I don’t know if there are still seats left on our flight, but you’re both welcome to come with us.”

“It was Evan, right?” asks Ramon, and Buck nods. “Look, I understand you are my son’s co-worker, I do, but I’m not sure we can leave our grandson alone with you. We can get him another flight in a few days, when you know more.”

If Chris hadn’t explicitly said he wanted to come back, if he hadn’t nearly said he already wanted to come back, Buck would leave it. He really would. They might not be focused on Eddie, but they can’t do anything for Eddie right now, and they love Chris, and this has got to be a waking nightmare for them as well. The thing is, Chris did say he wanted to. He looked at Buck, and he trusted him, and he said he wanted to be there as soon as possible. 

“I understand you don’t know me very well, but if you don’t trust that Eddie and Chris know me, then Isabel and Pepa can vouch for me.”

“You know my mother?” asks Ramon, bemused. 

“Of course I do,” replies Buck, just as confused. “We’re. The 118 are a family, not just co-workers. I would do anything to protect Chris, I can promise he’ll be safe with me.”

“If you try to take him out of this house, I will call the police,” says Helena tremulously. “If you try to take him, I will have you arrested for kidnapping, do you understand?”

Buck pauses, swallows. Chris wants to come back. Chris trusts him. 

He really didn't want– Whatever.

“Did Eddie ever officially give you custody?” asks Buck, like he doesn’t know the fucking answer. “Because kidnapping charges might not go how you expect.”

“We are Chris’ grandparents,” says Helena, outraged.

“And Eddie let him go with you for the summer,” agrees Buck, measured, his own rage and grief rising in the back of his mind, “But he never gave you custody.” 

“No,” says Ramon, “He didn’t. He didn’t need to, we’re family.”

“That’s fine if you have an informal agreement with a relative, but if you call the cops, I’m warning you now, that can’t exactly be confirmed right now.”

“Given Eddie’s missing,” says Helena, “Custody of Chris would revert to his next of kin. So we do have custody right now, and I am telling you, you are not–”

“Actually,” interrupts Buck, “If– With Eddie missing or incapacitated, custody goes to whoever is listed in his will as Christopher’s legal guardian, and that’s me.”

There’s a beat of silence.

“What?” asks Helena, small and shattered, “What do you mean?” 

“I– In the event–” He has to take a deep breath, even thinking about this makes him nauseous, and right now? It’s as close to the worst case scenario as they’ve ever been, and thinking about it too much makes Buck want to scream and curse and cry, but this is not the fucking moment for that. “I’m legally Chris’ guardian right now, until we find Eddie. I’m. In Eddie’s will, I’m Chris’ guardian. Call the cops if you want, but it’ll just be a waste of time and resources. If you want to come to L.A. with us, that’s fine, if you want to wait until we know more, that’s your call, if it’ll make you feel better to call Isabel and get a character reference, go for it. You came to Los Angeles to take Chris here, because it was what he wanted, and I’m sorry, but now he wants to come back to L.A. with me, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

There’s a long silence, broken only by Chris coming out of his room, backpack over one shoulder. He puts it by the front door, and looks up at Buck, far too serious for one so young. “It’s sorted, right? I’m going with you?” 

“Yeah, bud,” says Buck, “You’re coming with me. We’ve got some time before we need to head to the airport. What do you wanna do?” 

Chris looks between his grandparents and Buck. He has no idea how much of all that Chris heard, but he’s sure it wasn’t none of it. 

“Would you make us hot chocolates, abuela?” asks Chris, like butter wouldn’t melt, and Helena blinks twice, nods, and walks into the kitchen, gesturing for Chris to follow. 

“Are you sure?” she asks, before the door swings shut, and Buck waits in the front hall to give them some space.

“You’re in his will?” asks Ramon quietly, and Buck nods. “Not a co-worker then, huh?”

“I told you,” says Buck, “We’re a family.”

Ramon nods thoughtfully. “I’m going to call Isabel and Pepa,” he says, straight-forward, and Buck nods. It’s beyond reasonable. 

Ramon’s got the phone ringing, but he nods Buck through the door that Helena and Chris had gone through. “You should join them,” he says, and then, before Buck can question that, “Mama, lo siento, sé que es tarde pero es por Eddie…”

Buck tries to telegraph opening the door as much as he can, and Helena throws him a dirty look as he enters, but she’s talking gently to Chris, and she hands him a mug of the hot chocolate when it’s ready. 

It’s an uncomfortable half hour, but Ramon slips back into the kitchen after about ten minutes with a quiet nod to Helena, and they all try to get through this gently, for Chris’ sake. 

“We won’t be on your flight,” says Ramon, “But we’ll be there soon.” It’s a warning as much as it’s anything else, and Buck nods seriously. 

“Let me give you my phone number,” he says, “In case you need anything. And I’ll call the second we have news about Eddie.”

Ramon nods in return, and they exchange numbers. 

“You take care of my boy,” says Helena to Buck when they’re at the door, somewhere between scared and furious, and Buck nods again.

“I promise,” he says, for how little it must mean to them. He doesn’t. There’s no point asking which boy she means, there’s no point getting into how little they seem to be reacting to what’s happened to Eddie. They just heard. It’s probably denial. If Buck hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen it? Well. Who knows how he’d be reacting now. It barely feels real as it is. 

“And you call me when you land,” says Helena to Chris, holding him tightly in a hug. 

“I will,” says Chris. 

“Okay,” says Helena, letting him go reluctantly, brushing a kiss against his head. “I love you.”

“Love you too,” says Chris, and then their Lyft driver pulls up. 

Buck gives them an awkward brisk nod, he thinks, as they leave. He’s not exactly sure. There’s a part of him still hoping this is a fever dream, maybe he got taken out by a mudslide and this is another coma. Please god let this be another coma, because the repercussions of showing up in El Paso at three in the morning are definitely going to come. 

———

Chris is quiet. It’s late, obviously, and it’s too close to the worst case scenario that any of them could ever have imagined, but still. He’s quiet.

They got on the plane at 5am, watched the sunrise as they took off. Really, Chris should be sleeping. Really, Buck should be too. In practice, they’re sitting in silence, so far from sleep it would be laughable in any other circumstance, looking out the window and watching dawn wind back. 

There’s a part of Buck that is still feeling his stomach lurch as the ground shifted, is still watching a wave of mud take Eddie over the edge and away from him. It’s been happening the whole time, but he wasn’t as consciously aware of it before. Something about his tiredness, the liminality of this space, his aching heart, all keys him into it. The shudder of the ground, which he could feel in his feet, the way he automatically compensated not just for himself but for that stupid dog. It was a good dog, sweet and scared, and Buck hates that he resents it but there’s a part of him that can’t help it. Eddie got the fucking dog safe, but he was still– 

He’s feeling the lurch in his body still, trying to ignore it, push through, when he realizes that Chris isn’t just awake, isn’t just looking out of the window, but is silently crying.

“Hey,” he says, quiet but urgent, suddenly jolted into the present, “Chris? How can I help?”

There’s no point in asking if he’s okay, and Buck knows that because how could he be? How could anyone be, in this moment? Hopefully, though, he can at least help a little. 

Chris doesn’t seem to hear him at first, blinking rapidly at the still rising sun over the clouds while tears pour silently down his face. 

“Hey,” says Buck again, gentler even, nudging Chris with his arm, “You know better than to keep staring at the sun, even like this.”

Chris closes his eyes, leans his head back to rest on Buck’s shoulder. Buck freezes, never more aware of how precious this trust is. 

“How can I help?” asks Buck again, quietly, and Chris’ face crumples. 

“I’m sorry I haven’t been messaging you,” he whispers, like Buck could begin to care about that right now. 

“It’s okay, Chris,” he says, as soothingly as he can manage, “It’s okay.”

“I missed you,” says Chris, voice so small he sounds at least three years younger. Buck’s heart hurts to hear it. 

"I missed you too,” promises Buck, putting an arm around Chris’ shoulder to pull him in to rest on his shoulder more heavily. 

A few heaving breaths later, and Buck knows what he’s going to say before he says it, but it still hurts to hear Chris’ quiet and devastated little admission.

“I miss Dad.”

“I know you do,” says Buck, pausing because he doesn’t want to put salt in the wound, but it’s important that Chris hears it, he thinks. “He misses you too.”

“What if–” Chris starts and then breaks off into a sob.

Buck kind of wants to sob himself, but that’s not what Chris needs. It’s so much easier to be even keeled, to force himself through all of this, with Chris here, nestled into him, needing him. 

He’d wondered, a long time ago now, if he’d be able to do it. He’d lain on Eddie’s couch and stared up at the ceiling all night instead of sleeping, thinking about an admission Eddie had made to him just six hours before, thinking about how he’d cried in front of Chris telling him the news just a few days before that, and he’d wondered. Eddie had been okay, had survived, and he couldn’t even keep it together, so part of him had wondered if Eddie had chosen badly, if he’d survive the worst case scenario to look after Chris. 

He knows, now. He hadn’t thought he’d be able to do it, but he would. If he has to, he will. If there’s no other choice, Buck will keep going. He’ll be whatever Chris needs, and he’ll do it without complaint. He might never recover, not fully, but he could do it. He could survive it. 

Now, he brushes a kiss into Chris’ hair, and holds him close.

“He loves you, Chris. No matter what, he loves you and he knows you love him,” he reassures, and Chris shakes under his arm. 

“Why didn't he come after me?” asks Chris after several minutes of heart-breaking sobs. 

“Oh, Chris,” says Buck, heartsick with it. “He wanted to be with you, he wanted nothing more, but he thought you still wanted space. He’s been waiting for you to ask him to come, or to say you want to come home.”

“What if it’s too late to come home?” asks Chris, and Buck has to blink back tears.

“We’ll be in L.A. in under an hour,” says Buck, knowing that’s not what Chris means. “You’ve got me, no matter what, and I’m not going to stop until I find him, you know that, right?”

Chris nods, and he’s still obviously hurting, but it’s something to see even that small amount of faith. 

“Come on,” says Buck gently, “Why don’t you try for some sleep before we land, hmm?”

Chris sort of shrugs, but he stays pressed up against Buck’s side, and after a while his breathing eases out. 

Out the window, the sun continues to rise.

———

Karen’s waiting at the arrivals for them, pale and drawn, refreshing something on her phone. When she looks up and sees Chris, she visibly sighs in relief. 

“It’s good to see you,” she says to him, one hand on his shoulder, and then, gauging he’d be okay with the contact, giving Chris a hug.

They walk to the car together, mostly silent, while Buck checks his phone for messages that would have come through on their flight. There’s no word from Bobby still. There’s no missed call from a hospital, or from anyone worse.

Buck’s not so convinced that no news is good news, but he’d love to believe it.

The groupchat’s been mostly silent, just messages every hour or so to say that there’s been no update. It suggests that everyone else has slept about as much as Buck has after all. 

There’s a message from Tommy at about 5.30am. He wakes at 5am most days, goes for a run before he actually starts the day. After yesterday, though, that can't be it.

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

Where are you? I went by the loft, but you didn’t open the door…

Evan

i was actually in texas

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

Are you serious right now?

Evan

yes?

back in la now

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

Right. I’m going to come by before shift starts.

Evan

okay cool

come to eddie’s

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

What?

Evan

i won’t be at the loft, i’ll be at eddie’s

you know the address, right?

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

Are you serious?

Evan

??? 

Yes.

Tommy ❤️‍🔥

Of course. Yes, Evan, I have the address. 

It’s a weird interaction, but honestly Buck’s too tired to figure out in precisely what way. He’ll talk about whatever it is when he sees Tommy. He’s probably shaken up too, and he didn’t have the rest of the 118 with him to help after… Yesterday, after. 

“All good?” asks Karen from the driver’s seat, where she’s been side-eyeing Buck as he texts. In the backseat, Chris is passed out again, a small mercy. He’ll probably sleep most of the day away, after the night they’ve had, and Buck can’t be anything but thankful for it. 

“As good as it can be,” says Buck honestly, and Karen reaches over to squeeze his hand gently. “You’re right, by the way,” he says after a minute or two, “You’re a much better driver with a kid in the car.”

“I’m always a good driver,” says Karen airily, but he can hear a hint of amusement in her voice. “Are we going to Eddie’s house?”

Buck nods, then looks in the rearview to check on Chris. Still sleeping.

“He could do with his own bed,” says Buck, and Karen makes a noise of agreement. 

The rest of the ride passes in an easy, tired, silence.

“Do you need me to give you a ride to work?” asks Karen as she turns onto Eddie’s street, and Buck frowns in thought.

“I should be fine, I think Tommy’s coming by, so I can get a lift from him,” he says, and Karen nods silently, mouth tight, as she pulls up at Eddie’s house.

“If you change your mind, just call,” says Karen, and Buck gives her a wan smile before getting out of the car to go wake Chris. She gives them both a wave and a sad smile before she drives away. 

They turn, and there, on the porch of the house on South Bedford Street, stands Pepa. She enfolds Chris into the biggest hug as soon as he’s close enough, a hand on the back of his head as she cradles him, someone so dear, so precious. Buck stands back, waiting for a castigation. She releases Chris, looks up at him with narrowed eyes, and then closes her eyes and exhales heavily.

“Come here,” she says, suddenly so weary, and Buck takes a wary step forward, only to be dragged into a hug just as tight as the one given to Chris. “You’re a good man, Buck, I’m so glad my boys have you,” she whispers into his ear, and Buck feels himself shake with the effort of not crying in response. 

“Come on,” she says, letting them both go. “I cooked breakfast, then it’s work and sleep for the two of you respectively.”

“Not sure I have time for breakfast,” says Buck honestly, and Pepa gives him an unimpressed scowl. Luckily for him, his phone starts to buzz, and he uses the excuse of the call to turn away before he can be properly told off

It’s Tommy.

“Hey Evan, just pulling up now. Can we talk?”

“Sure,” says Buck, “Give me a minute, and then I’m all yours.”

He turns back to Chris and Pepa as they all walk into the house. 

“Look, I’m going to head out. I’ll be on shift for eight hours, and then I’ll come back here, okay?”

Chris looks up at him, brow furrowed with concern. 

“You’ll call me if something happens?” he asks, voice shot with worry.

“I’ll call you," agrees Buck. “I’ll keep my phone with me the whole time.”

“And–” Chris’ voice breaks, just a little, “And you’ll be careful?”

Buck goes down to one knee in front of him, catches and holds his gaze in the way that Eddie always likes to do. Nothing makes you feel more listened to, Buck’s found. 

“I’ll be careful,” promises Buck. “I’ll see you in eight hours, okay kid?”

Chris nods briskly, eyes watering just a little. 

“I love you,” says Buck, because it’s been true for years, and he thinks maybe Chris needs to hear it more. Maybe he needs to say it more.

Chris steps closer, pulls him into a brief but hard hug. 

“Love you too, Buck,” says Chris, muffled into Buck’s shoulder, but no less truthful for it. “You have to come home.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” says Buck, because today of all days he can’t make a false promise. 

“Okay,” agrees Chris, traipsing further into the house in search of breakfast. 

“You take care of yourself, okay?” says Pepa, “I will take care of Christopher.”

“Thank you,” breathes Buck, and Pepa waves an exasperated hand at him. 

“The least I can do for my nieto,” says Pepa dismissively. “This is nothing to thank me for.”

“And yet, I’m still grateful,” says Buck. “You’ll have to learn to live with it.”

Pepa chucks him under the chin with a smile, saying, “We can both be grateful, huh?”, and Buck ducks his head in concession and an upswell of affection.

There’s a brief flash of a moment where Buck wonders if this is always what it feels like to have a grandma or an aunt. Pepa’s not his family, not really, and he knows that, but. Sometimes, it feels like they could be. This just isn’t the way he ever wanted that to happen. 

Buck heads back out, and there’s Tommy, leaning up against the front of his truck. He’s got an unreadable expression, sort of pinched and wan, his arms crossed.

“Hey,” says Buck, as he walks up, and before he can try to figure out what the move is, whether they kiss or hug when yesterday was so awful, when Tommy’s looking so closed off, Tommy just gives him a kind of weird nod.

“Shall we go inside to talk?” he asks, and Buck would feel some level of dread for what this talk is supposed to be after all, but he’s used up all his dread. He’s used up almost all of his emotions, really, is just a thin veneer over a gaping hollow. 

“We can’t,” says Buck, “Chris is inside.”

“I see,” says Tommy.

“I was actually going to ask, could you give me a lift to the station? My Jeep’s still there.”

“Right,” says Tommy. “Sure.”

They get in the car, and the silence is awkward. 

“What did you want to talk about?” asks Buck, because he thinks maybe he knows, but also surely he’s fucking wrong. This is going to turn out to be about the date they would have to reschedule, and Buck’s going to feel like an idiot for the way his anxiety is starting to ramp up.

“It can wait until we get to the station,” says Tommy dismissively, and Buck’s stomach churns. He wishes he’d had time for whatever it was Pepa had cooked. He’s going to have to make sure to grab a protein shake before they head out, and Bobby’s going to give him a disappointed look. 

“Okay,” says Buck, uncomfortable, and then he lapses into silence. 

He’s not always good with silence, but he’s too exhausted, both literally and emotionally to try to start conversation. It unsettles Tommy, he thinks, because he keeps glancing over at Buck in the passenger seat. 

“So,” says Tommy while they’re stuck at a red light. “Texas, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Buck after a moment. “I went to tell Chris about– To tell him what happened.” Now that Chris isn’t actually present, it’s harder not to get choked up thinking about it, remembering the fear on his face, Buck’s own ongoing horror.

“And you brought him back to L.A.,” Tommy states it, rather than asking, but Buck still nods. “You and his grandparents?”

“No, they’re still in El Paso for the moment, going to come down soon,” says Buck, heaving a heavy sigh. He’s already kind of dreading it. 

“You got home from that shift, and flew straight to Texas to take Eddie’s kid from his grandparents?” asks Tommy, in that dry sort of way that he likes to do, where Buck’s not quite sure if he’s meant to be joking or teasing or not. This isn't exactly something he wants to be teased about.

“I flew to El Paso to tell him what happened," says Buck sternly. “It was up to him whether he wanted to stay there until we knew more.”

“He was with his family, Evan,” says Tommy, and it’s suddenly so clear he was deadly serious.

“I’m his family too,” Buck says fiercely. It’s not something he could have said so sure and strong just a few days ago, but right now? While he’s Chris’ legal fucking guardian?

“His real family,” corrects Tommy with a sigh.

Buck has to rein in a scowl. “I’m not doing this with you again,” he says, “We talked about this after Bobby’s house fire. There’s nothing more real about it.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s the same thing,” says Tommy, angry now, and Buck could not tell you fucking why. 

It is the same thing. It’s maybe difficult to look in the eyes how much it’s the same fucking thing, some days. Buck came to L.A. and found Bobby and the 118 and felt settled, has found, in Bobby, someone who loves him unconditionally, who has watched him grow up. Sure, Chris already had a real father, more of one than Buck had ever had, but that doesn't mean Buck doesn't love him like Chris is his. For the moment, in the worst possible way, he actually is.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Buck asks, and hey, he’s not numb anymore. He’s somewhere between annoyed and angry, and he's going to cling to it with all his might, because it’s better than being swallowed by his grief.

“This is exactly why I said we needed to talk,” says Tommy scathingly. He pulls into the 118 lot at exactly the right moment to turn to Buck and look at him seriously. “Look, Evan, I think we both know this has run its course.”

For a moment, confusion overtakes even the anger.

“What?” asks Buck, “Wait, what?”

“We both know this was never really going to be forever,” says Tommy easily, like that was in fact a thing they both knew. “But after yesterday, I don’t think we should keep trying.”

“After yesterday?” asks Buck, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He thinks maybe, but surely not, he’s misunderstanding, he has to be misunderstanding this. 

“I mean, come on,” says Tommy, rolling his eyes a little. “Are you really going to make me say it?”

“Tommy,” says Buck, through gritted teeth, his anger rushing back in like a wave, like the rising tide, like a fucking tsunami. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying I have some fucking pride!” snaps Tommy, “I’m saying that I knew this wasn’t forever but I have enough fucking pride not to date someone so fucking devastated over another man!”

“Sorry,” says Buck dangerously, “You’re breaking up with me because I was upset that my best friend was in danger? Is missing? That’s what you’re fucking saying right now?”

“Your best friend?" scoffs Tommy, incredulous, “I know you’re upset, but that’s not how you behave about a fucking friend, you were acting like you’d been fucking widowed.”

“He’s not fucking dead!” 

It’s more of a yell than Buck’s comfortable with, his voice ragged, his throat raw. Pain in every syllable. 

“God, of course that's your take away from this," responds Tommy.

"Given you’re breaking up with me because I don’t want my best friend to fucking die, I’m not actually that cut up about the break up,” snaps Buck in return, hastily undoing his seatbelt and opening the door to get the fuck out. “God, what is wrong with you? Who fucking does this?"

“Oh, yeah, I’m the one being unreasonable,” Tommy responds, “You don't even understand how fucking humiliating it is to have your own fucking boyfriend so obviously in love with another man.”

“I’m sorry,” says Buck acidly, “I’m genuinely sorry that caring about people is apparently so fucking foreign to you that you’d have to be in love to care about someone– About your best friend–” Buck’s voice breaks, which somewhat undercuts him, but god. God. “Thanks for the lift,” he says instead, and slams the car door, storming towards the station.

“You’ll thank me one day,” calls Tommy out of the window of his Jeep, and Buck doesn’t turn around, just flips him off and keeps walking, fuelled by his own righteous fury. 

Ravi and Hen wait at the front doors of the station, frowning at Buck as he walks up.

“Dude, what was that?” asks Ravi, concerned.

“I think I just got dumped because I had the audacity to be upset about Eddie,” says Buck, more furious the more he thinks about it. Ravi and Hen exchange a glance, and then simultaneously shake their heads.

“He didn’t deserve you,” says Hen, authoritative. 

“He said me being upset yesterday embarrassed him,” says Buck, his anger wavering, suddenly on the knife edge of tears. “It was humiliating for him.”

Ravi claps a hand to Buck’s shoulder, looking at him seriously. “He can go fuck himself then,” he says.

“Who can go fuck themself?” asks Chim as he and Bobby walk up.

“Tommy just dumped me,” says Buck, and watches their eyebrows shoot up.

“Right now?” asks Bobby, between disbelieving and unimpressed. 

“Well, you know, I had the nerve to be upset after…” Buck trails off, unwilling to say it again. He’s not being entirely fair, maybe, but this doesn’t fucking feel fair either. Who dumps someone in a moment like this? Who gets mad when you care about your friends? Like, yeah he loves Eddie, of course he loves Eddie, but that doesn’t mean he’s in love, he can just be fucking upset, it was awful, anyone would think it's awful, and–

Chim cuts off his internal spiral with a forcibly cheery, "Wow, yeah, he can go fuck himself.”

“And Christopher?” asks Bobby as they move straight for the engine, which does well to bring Buck fully out of that headspace. 

“He’s with Pepa right now, hopefully going to sleep most of the day. He’s upset, obviously, but handling it all better than anyone his age should have to.”

“He’s a resilient kid,” says Hen, and it’s clear from her voice what a burden that is, that he’s had to gain that skill so young. 

“His grandparents?” asks Bobby.

“Not pleased, but they didn’t actually call the cops on me, so it could have been worse,” says Buck with a wry and entirely unamused smile. 

“Still in El Paso?” asks Hen delicately, but with just enough of an eyebrow raise to signal her own feelings on the matter.

“For the moment, they say,” says Buck. “I sort of assume they’re talking to a lawyer before they come here, but we’ll see, I guess.”

“Well,” says Ravi after a moment, “If you end up needing a lawyer, my fiancée is ruthless.”

Buck blinks twice, slowly, looking round at the rest of the engine, but they all seem just as  entirely flummoxed as he himself feels. He makes eye contact with Hen, then Chim, and it’s blindingly clear that they also didn’t know Ravi was seeing anyone, let alone engaged. 

“Good to know,” he says slowly, and then Ravi is saved from further explanations by them pulling up. 

He's not sure how Bobby managed to arrange for them to prioritise the rescue missions on that very same hillside, but he's not going to question it in the circumstances. 

Time to get to work. 

———

Maybe two hours in, Buck feels himself swaying and realizes that he never did eat anything. Before he can make a call either way, Chimney nudges into his side, and hands him a Luna bar and some kind of peanut butter based energy snack. 

“There are bananas in the ambulance, if you need,” he says quietly, and Buck just nods. 

He eats as he works, and they find people who’ve been trapped since the first tremors, and they find people who survived the quake but were affected by the mudslide, and they find people entirely uninjured, and they practically run out of black tags. They work for hours, and they save lives, and they don’t fucking find Eddie. They don’t even find a sign of him. Buck’s not sure what sign he’s looking for, but he needs something. A breadcrumb. Fucking anything. 

Eddie might not believe in signs from the universe, but Buck would give anything for one right now. 

It’s been over twenty-four hours since Eddie went over the edge, and there’s a timer in Buck’s brain that keeps counting down. Three days without water. Best case scenario, they have two days left. Less, already. 

There’s still time. They still have time. Buck can just feel it slipping away, the odds ever worsening.

They do good work. They find a whole basketball team of teenagers who’d taken shelter in their friend’s indoor court, and then the whole house had been buried. They dig them out, and help them get to people who can hopefully contact their parents. One of them, the eight year old little brother of one of the players, can’t stop crying.

“I don’t get it,” one of the teenagers says to Buck as he cleans a superficial cut over his eyebrow, “He was so brave the whole time, he was practically chill! What’s there to cry about now?” 

“He’s safe now,” says Buck, “So it’s easier to admit he was scared then.”

“Yeah, I guess," says the kid, and then, quietly, a confession he doesn’t quite know how to make, “It was really fucking scary, man.”

Buck gives him a tight smile through his own ongoing, constant fear, “I bet it was. You guys have all been so brave.”

The kid smiles at him, just a little, and he’s really just so young. He’s got to be not far off Chris’ age. 

Buck wants to resent every second they don’t find Eddie, but he can’t. He can’t. 

“I’m gonna go check on them,” says the teen, nodding towards his friend’s little brother, who’s still weeping into his big brother’s shoulder, and Buck claps him on the shoulder in support, approval, one of those little gestures that Bobby’s ingrained into all of the rest of them. 

At some point, Bobby drags him into the back of the ambulance to eat a sandwich. It’s good, he’s sure, because Bobby made them all sandwiches, so they’re not going to be anything other than good, but still. Buck couldn’t tell you what it tastes of. 

They eat in silence. Companionable, but with the yawning fear and sadness echoing through every motion. It’s got to be 29 hours by now. He texts Chris, wanting to keep him in the loop, hating to hurt him all over again with the lack of news.

He takes to occasionally calling out for Eddie on the radio, just in case. The radios are short-wave, they’d have to be close for it to work, and that's assuming it didn’t get broken in the flow, but it’s something to try.

They trade off their lunch break with Ravi and Hen, and get back to work. Bobby sticks close by his side for the next few hours.

They keep going. They keep going. They keep– 

There are so many people caught up in this, is the thing. It’s a residential neighbourhood, and the quake hit at three in the morning and fucking nobody seemed to have evacuated. The mudslide didn’t happen for hours, not until ten in the goddamn morning, but too many people were still trapped when it happened. Too many people live in this goddamn area of town, maybe. Too many people need help. 

They help and they help and there’s no reprieve. There’s always someone else who needs help. There’s always someone else, and it’s never Eddie. 

Buck hears them before he knows what they mean. Sirens. Reinforcements. 

“It’s eight o’clock,” calls Bobby, across the dried and cracked mud and debris that used to be someone’s home. 

Buck would stay, but Chris is at home, waiting for him. 

“The 136 have got this,” says Chimney, leaning into Buck as they sit together in the engine, the comfort of human contact the only balm that can really be offered right now. “They’ll call us the second– They’ll call us.”

“Yeah,” says Buck, but it sounds defeated, empty. The more time passes, the more he dreads what the call would even say. 

———

He unlocks the door at South Bedford, and has to see the hope in Chris’ eyes die as a result, watch him crumple into himself, just a ball on the couch. 

“No word?” asks Chris quietly, like he didn’t already know, like Buck wouldn’t have called him in seconds.

Buck shakes his head solemnly, and Chris nods in response, head high and fierce. Determined to soldier on. It makes Buck want to give up, to curl up and hide. How is he already letting Chris down? How is he already failing Eddie?

“We saved you dinner,” says Chris, “Come on.”

He leads the way through the dining room to the kitchen, like Buck hasn’t walked this exact path a thousand thousand times. Like this house isn’t more familiar and beloved to him than his own loft. It helps, somehow, following along behind Chris. 

At the kitchen table sits Pepa and Maddie, talking quietly and earnestly. 

“There he is,” says Pepa, the second Buck appears in the doorway, and heads to the oven to pull out a plate. “We made enchiladas from scratch.”

“They look amazing,” says Buck, sitting down heavily at the table. They do. They smell even better, sparking just the faintest hint of hunger, the first he’s felt in days. 

“Good,” says Pepa, then as Buck just sits there, “Now, eat.”

Buck eats.

“We’re on a different shift pattern to you at Dispatch,” says Maddie, “So I thought I’d come over, see if there’s anything I could do to help.”

“She’s been a great help,” smiles Pepa. It’s not a gentle smile, not exactly happy, but more positive than Buck feels in this moment. More than Chris looks, sitting across from him, the bags under his eyes dark, his eyes red-rimmed, his expression so desolate. 

“You’ve got overnight oats for breakfast tomorrow,” says Maddie, “You better actually eat them.”

“I will,” promises Buck, trying not to wince at how rough his voice sounds. He focuses instead on shovelling the last of the enchiladas into his mouth. 

“If you need anything, Evan,” says Maddie, “You just call, you know that.”

“I do,” agrees Buck. “Hey, I don’t know if Chimney messaged you about it yet, but Tommy broke up with me.”

“He what?” asks Maddie, voice high and tight. “When?”

“First thing this morning,” says Buck with a tired smile. 

“You’re joking,” says Maddie.

“Dad’s friend Tommy?” Chris asks, tilting his head to the side. “Your date to the wedding, right?”

“Yeah,” says Buck. “That Tommy.”

“You guys were pretty serious?” Chris asks, and it’s a pang, to have this reminder that this is something he’s mostly missed. 

Everything with Kim was so soon after Buck’s first date with Tommy, and he never even really had an opportunity to come out to Chris properly. He just kind of nods. His first ever boyfriend felt like a pretty serious thing, for all that Tommy suggested there’d always been an expiration date on it. 

“And he broke up with you?” Chris asks, so Buck nods again. “He sucked,” says Chris matter-of-factly, and Buck doesn’t mean to, but he barks out a laugh. Chris doesn’t know how many times he’s played that evening over in his head, Chris raving about how cool Tommy was, how funny, even after Buck was dating the guy there were moments where he let it run on repeat in his head, sharpened the knife of how much he missed Chris with it. 

“Thanks, bud,” he says, and Chris gives him one of those sideways smiles that Eddie has perfected for when he’s sort of making fun of you but wants you to know how much he still genuinely cares. 

Buck has to swallow it down. 

Maddie and Pepa both head out not too long after Buck’s finished eating, and he and Chris sit in silence for a long, heavy moment after it’s just the two of them. 

“Okay,” he says, “Movie before bed?” 

“Movie sounds good," agrees Chris, and maybe they’re both just avoiding being alone with their thoughts, but if that works, even just for tonight, then maybe that’s worth it. 

They agree on Pacific Rim, which they’d watched years ago, when Chris was still in Robotics Club with Denny, and which they both vaguely remember enjoying. 

It’s good, and fun, and Buck has to try very fucking hard not to think too hard about drift compatibility. About having a partner who knows you so well that you’re practically an extension of each other, that you practically think in unison. About what it would do to lose that person, have them wrenched away from you, and feel the gaping open wound for the rest of your life. 

There’s a moment during Mako’s flashbacks where Chris tenses up against his side, and Buck looks at the shattered cityscape and thinks he should have insisted on a comedy. It helps that it’s giant monsters, not an earthquake, but still. Still. They look at a pile of building debris and know that Mako’s parents are dead, and Buck can feel both himself and Chris forcibly lower their shoulders. 

The movie goes on, and they get caught up again, but there’s a part of Buck still stuck in that moment, and he wouldn't be surprised if the same was true for Chris.

It’s getting late, and he’s been running on fumes for too long, and he should suggest they go to bed, but it’s impossible to want to be alone in this moment. 

“Hey Buck?” asks Chris, shy, like he thinks he shouldn’t ask. “I– Can I sleep with you tonight? I know it’s dumb, but I keep having nightmares, and–”

“It’s not dumb,” says Buck, cutting him off as quickly as he can. “It’s not dumb. I’ve just been on the couch, but I could bring the cushions into your room?”

Chris gives him a speaking look, not quite pleading, but not entirely far from it either. It’s. There’s something about his face that looks so much younger than usual, like he’s finally letting himself admit that he’s just a kid. 

“Or we could share your Dad’s bed,” says Buck with a smile, “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”

“That sounds good,” says Chris, just a touch fragile. 

Honestly, Buck has been avoiding entering Eddie’s room. Chris goes to get ready for bed in his own bedroom and Buck thinks vaguely that it’ll be easier if he does this first, before Chris can see his reaction. That would probably be true if he could just open the fucking door. 

He stands there, trying not to breathe too heavily, trying not to think about drift-compatibility or how young Chris really is still, or any number of things that boils down to trying not to think about Eddie. 

Three, two, one, he counts down internally, then pushes the door open. It’s a trick that Dr. Copeland taught him what feels like forever ago now, a way to kickstart your brain and body into doing something. He hasn’t needed it in years. 

Eddie’s room looks so fucking normal. His bed is unmade, which would have been jarring before Chris left, before he grew his stupid, pretty mustache, before he let himself stop doing army precision bedsheets every morning even though he’s told Buck before that he hates sheets too tight. 

It smells of Eddie, even from the threshold, just the faint scent of one of the most recognisable people in the world to Buck. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that Eddie’s standing right next to him. There’s a half drunk glass of water on the bedside table, and Eddie’s charger is splayed out across the floor, like he didn’t unplug his phone properly before he was getting out of bed for that fateful shift. He finds the sweatpants that Eddie sleeps in shoved haphazardly under a pillow, and just stands there, holding them like a lunatic. He should throw them in the laundry, but what if Eddie needs them soon? What if Eddie never needs them again? What’s the fucking point in washing them? 

Chris clatters past the bedroom on the way to the bathroom to brush his teeth, and it startles Buck out of it. He folds the sweatpants up, puts them on top of the chest of drawers, and doesn’t let himself think about it. He changes into a tee and sweatpants of his own that live in Eddie’s bottom drawer. There are signs of himself all around this room, throughout this house. He tries not to let himself think about that either, when just a few months ago Eddie was panicking at his girlfriend moving in with him. 

Instead, he joins Chris brushing his teeth at the mirror, tries to keep himself light-hearted. 

It doesn’t really work. 

They enter Eddie’s bedroom again together, and Buck pretends he can’t hear Chris’ breath hitch. 

It should feel weirder, probably, climbing into Eddie’s bed for the first time, Chris curling up beside him. Mostly, it makes him feel like maybe this is what being a parent really feels like. Like you’d carve your own heart out without flinching if you knew it would help them. 

Lying down, the scent on Eddie’s pillow hits him like a bullet, like a bolt of lightning, stopping his heart for just a second. 

Beside him, Chris is breathing too evenly to be okay. 

“Night, Buck,” he says after a while, voice just as carefully even. 

“Night, Chris,” replies Buck, and then they both lie there in silence, not sleeping, Eddie’s scent surrounding them like he’s hugging them. 

“Hey Buck?” Chris asks quietly, what’s got to be at least half an hour later.

“Yeah?” Buck asks back, just as quiet, like by speaking at a normal volume he will somehow ruin whatever this is. 

“What are the odds that you find him?” asks Chris, and Buck closes his eyes in pain.

Chris knows that he used to look up all sorts of natural disasters after the tsunami, seemingly knows that Buck’s been doing his best to lock that information away in a vault, trying his hardest not to fucking think about it. 

“Eddie’s smart,” says Buck after a moment, “And we train for natural disasters.”

“Buck,” begs Chris.

“We need to find him soon,” admits Buck quietly. “We have to.”

“How soon is soon?” asks Chris, just as quietly. So quiet that even next to one another, in the deadly silence of Eddie’s room, Buck barely hears him. 

“We have time,” says Buck, something catching in his throat. “We still have time. I’m going to keep looking, you know that, right? I won’t ever stop looking, just like Eddie won’t ever stop trying to come back to you.”

There’s the faint noise of Chris nodding, just a little, and then slowly, ever so slowly, curling into Buck’s side. It reminds him of a hundred thousand movie nights which had ended with Chris asleep against him on the couch. It reminds him of how they’d held each other close during the tsunami, after the shooting. Good times and bad times, and this time. The worst time, maybe. The best time, maybe. Neither and both. Schrodinger’s cat of a fucking time.

It’s the not knowing that’s killing him, and suddenly he can understand better why everyone in his life refuses to talk about his coma. 

He wraps an arm around Chris, and breathes in unison with him until Chris’ breaths get deep and slow with sleep. There’s nothing more precious in the world than the kid, the teenager, under his arm, and if he has to keep going for Chris’ sake, he will. He will. He dreads the thought of it, but he will. He’ll have to. 

The statistics he’s been trying so hard not to think about are spinning through his head. 

Eddie’s got a better chance than most, by nature of being a first responder, by being trained, by having had Buck quiz him and the rest of the 118 on every natural disaster he could think of. Still. Being in a refuge, just being upstairs, would have increased his odds by a factor of twelve. Instead, he was outside, on a deck, that itself was caught in the flow. There was no way he could have gone inside, no easy way to take refuge. The data sets all say that men have a higher mortality rate in events like this, but they’re also just over-represented in the data. Only twenty-five to fifty people die in the United States from a mudslide or landslide per year, which doesn’t seem like that many given how many thousand die globally, but also. Buck doesn’t know what the death toll from this one is so far. Fifty people is more than enough people that…

The thing he’s been trying not to think for two days now is that if Eddie got buried it’s probably all over. It’s probably been over. Survival rate for burials drops to 1 in 3 after an hour. It’s been two fucking days. 

He tries to focus on Chris’ breathing, the hitching snores that he would deny, instead of the half-remembered facts he’d learnt about mudslides and landslides years ago now. Maybe he’s remembering wrong anyway. Either way it doesn’t really matter. If anyone is going to beat the odds, it’s going to be Eddie. It has to be Eddie. 

Somehow, despite everything, despite his fear and sadness and the lingering anger from his fight with Tommy, there’s something so soothing about hearing Chris breathing that Buck falls into a deep and dreamless sleep surprisingly quickly. 

———

They have twenty-four hours, is what Buck keeps thinking as he heads to his shift in the morning. Three weeks, three days, three minutes, the golden timings for survival. 

He’s not frantic, not exactly, instead he slips into a mindless effectiveness that probably would have served him well if he’d wanted to stay with the Navy. He moves on autopilot, clearing areas, tagging the bodies, when they’re lucky, helping survivors.

It’s probably been at least a good fifty hours since Eddie went missing when he hears a faint rhythmic thumping. 

“Survivor around here, Cap,” he calls, and Hen and Chim immediately flank him, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. 

They’re about a mile out from the base of the cliff, off on a weird diagonal, but the flow had gone all directions, so just in case, Buck rings out on the radio.

“Firefighter Diaz, come in,” he calls for maybe the sixth time today. He does his best to ignore the way Ravi flinches, the pitying look that Chim throws his way. 

There’s a beat, and Buck’s about to call out in person, see if whoever was banging something can hear him, and then, like a miracle.

“—Buck?”

It’s crackly and he sounds so rough, but that’s definitely Eddie’s voice. That’s, oh god, is he hallucinating? Buck looks desperately around at Hen and Chimney, but their eyes are wide and wet, and he just knows they heard it too.

“I’m alive down here,” crackles the radio, “Please, I’m alive down here.”

Buck feels faint. He feels like he’s dreaming. He's back on that hillside, watching Eddie disappear over the side again.

“Buck?” calls Eddie again, and it shakes him out of it. This is real. 

“I’m here,” he says, “I’ve got your back, Eddie, I– Help is on the way, okay? We’ve got you.”

They fan out, trying to pinpoint Eddie’s location.

“Where are you, Eddie?” asks Buck, urgent, “Was that you thumping? Can you make some more noise for us?”

“That was me,” says Eddie, his voice over the radio still a fucking miracle. “I'm in this box, was kicking the sides.”

“We'll circle back to the box later,” says Chimney into his radio, voice full of humor and relief, “Just start kicking again.”

The thumping picks up again, but Buck can barely hear it over the sound coming over the radio pressed up against his ear: Eddie, breathing. 

“Sit rep, Diaz,” he says, halfway between a tease and a genuine order.

“I’m okay, Buck, I am,” says Eddie, like that's anywhere close to believable in the circumstances. 

“A box, right?” calls Ravi loudly, “I think I’ve got him!” and Buck races over to where he crouches. In the mud before them pokes the corner of some sort of grey faux-lattice furniture, hard wood and woven together tightly enough that the mud seemingly hasn’t seeped through it entirely. 

“Eddie?” asks Buck, frantic with it, and then the corner rattles just slightly as someone inside kicks the side hard. 

“You got me?” asks Eddie over the radio, barely even a question he’s so confident. 

“We got you,” Buck confirms. 

“I need an actual medical sit-rep while the boys work on digging you out," says Hen, entirely non-nonsense, “If you try any of that ‘I’m fine’ nonsense on me then you will regret it, understood?”

“Sir, yes sir,” jokes Eddie over the radio, and his voice is a little shaky, a little weak, but it’s there. It’s real. “I got thrown around a fair bit, lot of bruising, but nothing broken, no serious injuries.”

Despite the rain a few days ago, it’s been hot ever since, so they’ll have to be careful. The mud has fully dried, entombing Eddie into it. Saws are probably the way to go, but they can’t risk sparks. Thankfully, Eddie being inside something means that the weight of the earth isn’t pressing onto him, causing him to asphyxiate. It’s the only reason he’s even still alive, which Buck tries hard not to think about. He takes a shovel from Chim silently, and starts digging. 

Beside him, Hen continues her interrogation. “Didn’t slam your head into the sides or anything?”

“It used to be some kind of towel storage, so it’s been pretty cushioned, actually."

“Only you,” says Hen fondly. “So bruising, dehydration, the beginnings of starvation I’m assuming, unless this pool bin came fully stocked.”

“Alas,” says Eddie, and every second he’s joking with Hen is a second that Buck can breathe a little deeper. He has a moment to take one deep breath, his first in days it feels like, and then Eddie says “I’m mostly upside-down, though.”

“How upside-down?” asks Hen immediately, her voice suddenly tense again, and Buck can feel himself tighten up in dread, in anticipation. Of course it wasn’t this easy.

“Not too bad,” says Eddie quickly, “Maybe 30-40%? I’ve done what I can to prop my chest up, but breathing’s definitely been getting harder.”

“Oxygen levels?” asks Hen with a frown.

“Could be better,” admits Eddie, and Buck looks to Bobby sharply. 

Bobby looks down at the corner of the chest that Eddie’s inside, just barely poking out of the ground, and passes Buck an axe, nodding silently. 

“Hey Eddie,” says Buck, hefting the axe above him, “Arms and legs inside the ride, yeah?”

“Oh? One sec, okay, clear,” says Eddie, because he’s always on the same page as Buck, thank god. 

He swings down, once, twice, and breaks through. He keeps going until the corner is entirely gone, an immediate inflow of fresh air and enough of a hole that they should be able to lower Eddie oxygen and fluids if he needs them. First, though, Buck falls to his knees, presses his face straight against the gap, looks at Eddie. He’s bundled up, towels folded up and padding around his head and shoulders, his knees pressed uncomfortably to his chest to give Buck room with the axe, mud-streaked from what did make it through this insane little pool bin. The bags under his eyes are deep, his cheeks are already gaunter than usual, his smile is so bright that it makes Buck rock back just a little. He feels like he's been spinning wildly, out of orbit, too fast to slow, and suddenly, he’s caught, steadied, just through that single look. 

“Hey man,” says Eddie, all gentle and smiling, and Buck wants to burst back into helpless tears.

Eddie needs him though. 

“Hey,” he says, just as soft, “Give us just a few more minutes.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” says Eddie with a smile, because he's truly the worst person that Buck has ever met. 

He shakes his head, tries not to smile, and gets back to his shovel. If he has to wipe the back of his hand roughly over his eyes, no one on the 118 is ever going to say anything.

They focus on digging out the top of the chest enough to saw at more of it, get enough of an opening to pull Eddie out. 

He looks too thin already somehow, his cheeks gaunt, his eyes hollow. It takes time to get him out, they’re moving carefully, unwilling to do any more damage to him. His bruises are so dark, his skin itself fragile somehow, his eyes even bigger than usual somehow. He blinks rapidly when he’s finally out, like the sunlight itself is too much to bear. Despite all this, Buck’s never seen anything better than the rise and fall of his chest. Hen and Chim get him started on IV fluids right there on the dry mud, berating him gently and with love for having the audacity to get hurt. 

“Bobby,” says Buck, just once, voice low. 

“Ride with him,” says Bobby without hesitating, “Call Chris, you’re off for the rest of this shift.”

Buck looks at him, wanting to ask if he’s sure, it's all hands on deck, not wanting to second-guess him for a moment, wanting to take permission and run with it.

“I’ll call More in early, he’s already on alert for it,” says Bobby, so matter-of-fact. “You take care of him, of them both, okay? We’ll be by the second we’re off shift.”

Buck nods, blinks back the tears at being so well known, so well cared for.

Ravi has brought over a gurney, and Eddie’s complaining that he can walk even as he sways where he sits, while Chimney and Ravi get him up onto the gurney. Next to him, still visible, the gaping dark hole in the ground that had entombed him. The coffin he’d nearly stayed in. 

Buck forces himself to take a deep breath, walks over to the gurney, and takes Eddie’s hand silently. 

Eddie falls silent, all complaints out the window, as he looks up at Buck. 

“Okay,” he says fondly, voice so rough and hoarse, “I’ll stop complaining about the stupid gurney.”

Chimney rolls his eyes, “Of course now you’ll stop complaining,” he says, but his smile is bright and wide in a way that it hasn’t been in nearly three days.

In the ambulance, it's a struggle to move away from Eddie, to let Hen check his vitals while she rattles off things to Chim as he drives. He probably wouldn’t actually be able to, honestly, if he didn’t have an even more important job to do. 

“Hey, where are you going?” asks Eddie the second he leans back far enough to get his cell phone out from inside his turnouts. 

“I’m literally right here,” says Buck teasingly, bumping his knee against Eddie’s gurney. What a joy, to be able to tease him again. “I’ve got to make an important call, one sec.”

Eddie pouts as much as he can over Hen checking his ribs, trying to make sure his bruises don’t hide a more serious internal bleed. 

Buck rolls his eyes at him, aware suddenly that he can’t actually stop smiling, and hits call.

“Chris?” he says, the second the line picks up, and sees Eddie melt in his periphery.

“Buck?” asks Chris, immediately frantic, “Did you find him? Is he okay?” 

“I've got him, he’s okay," says Buck immediately, and hears Chris’ breathless laugh, hovering just a beat away from tears. “He’s going to be okay, we’re heading to the hospital now. Can you pass me to Pepa?”

“He’s okay?” asks Chris in his ear, tremulous. 

“He will be, okay? I’ve got him.”

“Okay,” says Chris, “Okay, I’m gonna go get my stuff together, here’s Pepa.”

“He’s okay?" asks Pepa, frantic, the second she has the phone.

“He will be,” promises Buck, “He’s dehydrated, probably going to have to overnight at the hospital?” he asks to the ambulance, and Hen nods at him. “But doing improbably well, otherwise.”

“That's our Eddie,” says Pepa, laughing a little in relief. 

“Sure is,” says Buck fondly, eyes unable to stop tracing Eddie’s form, his quirked eyebrow, his smile. 

“Which hospital are you heading to?” asks Pepa, “We’ll meet you there.”

“Good question. Hey Chim?” he moves the phone further away from his mouth to call out, “Cedars-Sinai or First Pres?”

“Cedars,” Chim calls back, “ETA like four more minutes.”

“We’ll be at Cedars-Sinai,” says Buck, “I’ll text you the room number when we have it.”

“Sounds good, we’ll see you soon, Evancito. Take care of Eddie for us.”

“Always do,” smiles Buck, “See you and Chris soon.”

He hangs up, and it’s such a fucking relief to have been able to give Chris good news that he slumps back against the wall of the ambulance a little, rests his head against the cool, sure metal.

“Chris is in L.A.?” asks Eddie quietly, and when Buck looks up at him, he’s looking straight at Buck, his eyes wide and wet. 

Buck feels himself melt just a little. There’s something about the concentrated force of Eddie’s unbroken gaze. 

“Yeah,” he says, “Of course he is. There isn’t anywhere else he'd want to be.”

Eddie blinks once, twice, and then swallows hard. 

“Does that–” he starts, and then Hen raps him gently on the shoulder. 

“That’s more than enough talking for the moment,” she says, firm but gentle. “I’ve been too nice, but you need to rest and rehydrate. Buck can fill you in properly when we’ve had you checked out.” 

Eddie gives her the look of a man who wants to fight advice he knows is good, and then sighs, subsiding. 

“Here,” she says, “We’ve got some of Buck’s awful electrolyte drinks, you can have some of that on top of your IV.”

Eddie takes the bottle she hands him, but his arms shake, and she takes it back to open it, to help him drink. 

There’s something about that, how human Eddie is, the reminder that he’s alive but he’s not okay, that has Buck's breath a little shaky. He tightens his control on himself. 

They pull into the hospital in that moment, and he's leaping out to help, explaining to the ER staff. 

Honestly, as survivors go, Eddie’s in remarkably good shape. They say they’ll have to double check for internal bleeds, to be safe, but it seems like his main treatment will be for severe dehydration. 

Hen and Chimney head back to the others, promising to swing by the second their shift is over, and then Buck is racing alongside Eddie’s gurney as they bring him to a free room. 

It’s been three days since the quake, so there are more free rooms than Buck wants to think about. People who were never going to make it home, and maybe even people who have already been allowed to go home. He thought. He really thought. 

A doctor comes by, gently taps at Eddie’s ribs and abdomen, proclaims him fine.

It feels inexplicable. It feels like a miracle. 

Possibly, by now, they are owed some miracles. 

There’s no better miracle than when they both hear the rapid-fire staccato of crutches at speed. Eddie looks up, bright, just as Chris freezes in the doorway. 

“Dad!” he says, and then bursts into tears. 

Eddie goes to jump out of his bed, never mind his IV cables or general unsteadiness, and Buck has to keep a firm hand on his shoulder, pinning him in place. 

“C’mon, Chris,” says Buck gently, “He can’t come to you, so you have to put him out of his misery.”

Chris hustles over, and immediately tucks himself up on the bed, where Eddie can pull him close, one arm protectively cradled around him. 

It’s so thin. 

Pepa arrives in the doorway too now, and immediately takes a place next to Eddie, tears in her eyes.

“How are you here?” Eddie asks, Chris, still held close to him. 

“Buck came and got me,” he says into Eddie's shoulder, like it was a foregone conclusion. Maybe it should have been. 

Eddie looks at him over the top of Christopher’s head, his eyes wide and wild with something that Buck can't place. 

“I should actually call your parents," he says awkwardly, getting up to head into the corridor. 

“I told them already,” dismisses Pepa, eyes still on Eddie. 

“Still,” says Buck, “I promised,” because he can’t say that suddenly he needs to leave this room. Suddenly he needs to be anywhere but here, and he can’t understand why himself. “I’ll be back in a minute or two.”

He barely makes it around the corner of the hospital corridor before he sinks to the floor, back pressed up against the wall. It feels not a little like his chest is caving in. 

People walk up and down the corridor, and no one really pays him any mind, which makes sense, because people are dealing with the worst news they could ever hear all over this hospital, so seeing someone in the fetal position to the side of the hallway can’t be that unusual. Buck hasn’t gotten the worst news he could ever hear, though, practically the opposite, so why the fuck is he sitting here, struggling to breath?

It takes an unknown number of minutes and some box breathing before Buck can bring himself to dig his phone out of his pocket. It doesn’t matter if he wants to shatter, it doesn’t matter why. He has responsibilities. That doesn't stop just because Eddie is miraculously breathing and laughing just a few rooms away.

He calls Ramon. He couldn't actually say how the conversation goes, stilted with the discomfort of formality, of the argument they never quite had. Buck’s mind is skating away from being in his brain as much as it possibly can, but he still recognizes the sharp inhale when he says that Eddie should be released within two days at most. The faint tremble in Ramon’s voice that he tries to deepen his voice to hide, something he's heard both of his boys do over the years. As much as some days he'd like to ignore the claim that Ramon and Helena have over two of his favorite people in the world, he can’t ignore the influences when they’re so blatant. 

“He’s really okay?” asks Ramon, voice soft, disbelieving. Part of Buck wants to be angry, like this is just another indicator of how Eddie's parents don’t trust him enough, but he can’t pretend it’s not a fair question in the circumstances. He shouldn’t be okay.

“He really is,” says Buck, deepening his own voice just a little, to try to hide the tremor. 

“Good,” says Ramon brusquely. “I’ll talk to Helena, we’ll be in touch.”

“Okay,” says Buck. Who knows what that means. 

He sends a text to the groupchat to let everyone know the room number, and that Eddie will be released in a day or two. 

He sits there a bit more. Standing up feels insurmountable, which is crazy. They’ve already surmounted the worst fucking odds. He gets his phone out again.

Buck

he’s okay

 Maddie

he is

I’m so glad 💕

Buck

yeah

i feel really bad again 

idk why 

i think maybe i’m a bad friend

Maddie

woah, buck

Buck

who gets unhappy when their friend is okay???

Maddie?

are you? are you unhappy that Eddie’s okay?

Buck 

of course not!!

but i feel so so bad 

like i might be sick

even tho this is good?? 

Maddie

I don’t think you're a bad friend, Evan

Buck

i feel like one

Maddie

I think maybe you pushed a lot down, when it was happening, and now you’re having a delayed reaction, that's all

Buck 

i know for a fact that chim told you i lost it when it happened

u SAW me that day

and i wasn't like this with the shooting

though that also sucked

Maddie

okay, maybe you didn’t push down everything, but Chimney’s also told me about how you’ve been the last few days, and I know that you’ve been being strong for Christopher

plus the shooting was awful but it was fast 

we knew pretty immediately what had happened, and how he was

especially with all of the uncertainty, it’s been a really scary few days, but it’s okay now

it makes sense you’d feel worse now you know it's safe to feel that way

Buck

i guess.

i should go back, probably, check on eddie

Maddie

okay 💕 I know you’ll look after him, but promise me that you’ll look after yourself as well?

Buck 

🤙

Maddie

Buck, I love you, for the last time that is call me and not a pinkie promise

Buck 

🤙

Maddie

🙄

🤙

Buck lets his head thump back once against the wall, and then pulls himself together. 

When he ducks back into the room, Chris and Eddie seem to be asleep against each other, Pepa sitting back in a chair next to the bed, watching them fondly.

“You okay, Evancito?” she asks, and Buck can feel the telltale prickle race across his eyelids. 

“I will be now,” he says firmly, determined to keep it together. “Ramon said something about being in touch, not sure if that means they plan to come here after all or not.”

“Ah,” says Pepa, sighing a little. “I will talk to him, but if he's set on it then I can host them.”

“You sure?” asks Buck, not unaware that her relationship with her brother and his wife can be tumultuous. 

“Well I assume you’ll be on the couch,” she says with a faint smile. 

Buck smiles just a little. “That’s my plan, yeah.” 

“We really are lucky to have you,” she says with a smile, reaching her hand out to him. Buck takes it in both of his, squeezing gently.

“I’m gonna maintain that I’m the lucky one,” he says fondly, and she tuts at him good-naturedly. 

When he looks back to Eddie and Chris, nestled into one another, Eddie’s eyes are cracked open, watching him warmly. Who knows how long he’s been awake. He smiles when Buck’s eyes are on him, and then his eyes flutter closed again. Buck smiles back, and settles in to watch over them.

———

The entire 118 are in and out over the next few days. Thankfully the rescue efforts have been wrapping up, and everyone at the station has been understanding about shift-swapping so that Buck can look after Chris, keep checking in on Eddie. 

They release Eddie after a day and a half. He still looks a little thin, but his skin is back to normal and bright, not the dry and wan shade that it was before. His eyes fit in his own skull more, his mustache seems less outsized for his face, even his arms seem less thin. 

He looked so fragile when they found him that it kept turning Buck's stomach, but now he looks like he’s recovering from a fever maybe. A little paler than usual, a little delicate, but not far off normal. 

Buck wheels him to the hospital doors, Chris talking away next to them. 

They had some sort of serious talk yesterday, while Buck was taking an extended coffee break. He’d come back and from the hallway heard Chris apologizing through tears, Eddie doing the same, and just turned right back around. 

“He’s going to stay,” Eddie had said excitedly to Buck and Pepa while Chris was out of the room. For all that he’d still been bruised and tired, he’d looked more alive than he has all summer so far, something bright glowing from inside him that had been dimmed while Chris was in El Paso. 

“Good,” Buck had said fiercely in return, and Eddie had turned a bright smile on him, and Buck had felt the sudden need to get up and pace, leave the room, run. He’d restrained himself to going to the end of Eddie’s bed and rereading his chart for the fiftieth time. 

Now, he makes himself busy with wheeling Eddie to the Jeep, with returning the wheelchair to the hospital, with driving the Diaz boys home. 

South Bedford Street is quiet and dark as they pull up to it, and Eddie looks directly at him.

“If this is about to be a surprise party, then legally you have to tell me,” he says, voice serious, but eyes sparkling. 

In the backseat, Chris audibly stifles a laugh.

“Legally,” says Buck, undoing his seatbelt and opening his car door, “If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?"

“He’s got you there," says Chris cheerily, getting out of the car himself.

It is, of course, a surprise party inside. 

It’s halfway between a celebration of Eddie’s miraculous survival, and a welcome home party for Christopher, now that everyone’s actually in the mood to celebrate it. The entire and extended 118 crowd, Pepa and whichever of her kids she saw fit to invite, and various of the friends that Eddie has made, easy as breathing, in whatever scraps of spare time he has. 

Buck gets Eddie situated on the couch, puts a drink in his hand, still so conscious of how hydrated Eddie looks at any given moment, and then gives himself over to Bobby as sous chef. 

It's a good excuse, honestly. 

He knows he’s not quite back to normal with Eddie yet, but he doesn't know how to be, not right now, not when looking at him seems to leave an afterimage on his eyelids. When he can feel his blood moving around his body, can feel Eddie’s gaze on him like a brand against the skin. He'll get himself together, he’ll get back to normal, and he’ll be able to be in Eddie’s orbit again soon, just not yet. He needs just a little more time. 

“What can I do?” he asks Bobby, and is immediately rewarded with a long list of prep tasks that he can dive into, keep his mind and hands busy. He chops and grates and mixes, and between them they have an array of bites and dips and salads to go with the ribs that Bobby’s had in the oven since before they even arrived. 

He makes up a plate for Eddie, and then the second he’s handed it off, he takes the opportunity to get food for Jee-Yun as well to leave the living room. 

Eddie’s holding court, telling a rapt audience of Chim, Karen, Rosie his friend from poker, and two people who are either from Dispatch or from pick up basketball about the mudslide. 

“Luckily,” he was saying as Buck headed towards him, “They had this bench storage thing for towels and pool umbrellas, so I threw all the umbrellas out, hopped in, and– Oh, thanks, Buck,” as he took his plate. Even now, with a smaller smile, it feels blinding. Eddie had shifted, just a little, like he was about to make room for Buck to sit next to him, so Buck had immediately turned his attention to Chim and asked if he’d like Buck to handle Jee’s lunch. When Chim agreed happily, Buck had nodded, given Eddie a little shrug, and turned away.

Behind him, Karen had asked, “How did you stop it from opening as you fell?”

“Used some of the gauze in my turnouts," Eddie replied, “Looped it around the outside of the door and then pulled with all my might.”

“Unbelievable,” crowed Chim.

“You talk a big game, Phineas Gage,” Eddie teased back, and Buck had needed to duck out the back door for just a moment. 

If he hadn’t seen Eddie’s face, he wouldn’t have seen the moment of hurt and confusion, the clear sign that Eddie’s noticed that something’s up with Buck, that somehow even though Eddie’s okay and Chris is home, Buck's not actually doing okay. 

He sits on the porch and breathes through it, even though he’s not quite sure what ‘it’ is. 

“Hey Buckaroo,” says Athena softly, and Buck tries his best not to startle. 

“Hey,” he says, “Having a good time?"

“Always,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice, “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay,” Buck says, and then sits in the silence of the lie. Athena’s always known how to wait him out. “I’m not great, actually,” he says after a while. 

“That makes sense,” says Athena gently. 

“Does it? Because everything’s good now. He’s safe, and okay. He’s joking inside on the fucking couch.”

“Did Bobby ever talk to you much about Jeffrey Hudson?” she asks, and it takes Buck a minute to place the name before paling, and snapping around to look at her. She’s looking back at him, sure and steady. 

“I mean. I know what happened?” asks Buck, unsure. 

“That first time, when he jumped me, I was so determined to move past it that it took me too long to realize that it had affected Bobby too. That seeing or hearing or knowing that something bad has happened to your loved one can hurt just as much as the physical pain, more maybe, because at least if it's happening to you, you know how bad it is.” 

“I don’t–” starts Buck, and then cuts himself off, because he has no idea where or how that sentence could possibly finish. 

“It’s not a competition,” says Athena, still gentle but almost a touch amused, “You don't have to make a decision about who’s more hurt by it, or who should be.”

Buck huffs a laugh. “Not really a competition anyone at the 118 should get into, huh?”

“You are all remarkably unlucky," agrees Athena, then pauses, nods towards the cracked backdoor, music and chatter and laughter filtering through to the backyard. “Or remarkably lucky, I suppose.” 

“Yeah,” says Buck quietly, fond despite it all. “Lucky, I think." 

They wait a beat or two more, listening to the muffled sounds of life inside. 

“Shall we go back inside?” asks Athena, and when Buck nods she claps a hand to his shoulder, pushes off of it to standing. 

“I've got to get lunch for Jee,” says Buck, as he stands up himself. “Probably already kept her waiting too long.”

“Oh," laughs Athena, “Good luck with that!”

As she pulls the door open, Buck cups a hand around her arm for just a moment to grab her attention. “Thanks, Athena, for checking on me.”

“Come now,” says Athena with that fond smile that means she thinks he’s being an idiot, “What else is family for?”

———

When everyone has left, Buck makes a point of doing the washing up. 

“I can help, you know,” says Eddie, and Buck just rolls his eyes.

“Maybe when you haven't just gotten out of hospital,” he says in return, and before Eddie can complain Chris agrees, so that’s that. 

“I could dry from here,” offers Eddie, sitting at the dining table.

“If it’ll stop you complaining,” teases Buck, to make Chris laugh, and hands Eddie a dishcloth.

“Got to admit, kind of surprised that Tommy wasn’t here tonight,” says Eddie, and Buck can feel his spine stiffen up. “Was he on shift, or?”

“Why would Tommy be here?” asks Chris in poorly disguised derision. 

“Oh, uh,” says Eddie, awkward, and Buck realizes what’s happening just a second too late, “Well, I don’t know if you remember at Maddie and Chimney’s wedding, but–”

“I remember,” interrupts Chris, “But that doesn’t mean he’d be here.”

Buck sighs, turns around to look at Eddie properly.

“Tommy and I broke up,” he says, before either of them can continue. “So I think he probably wouldn’t have come to a party I was throwing.”

“What? When?” asks Eddie, “It’s only been a few days.” He looks so serious, and maybe even a little frustrated.

“And yet!” says Buck, turning back to the dishes. 

“It was just after we got back from El Paso,” says Chris, like a narc, and Eddie inhales sharply. 

“It was the right move,” says Buck, “He wasn’t who I thought he was, so. We wouldn’t have worked, long term.” 

“Okay, Buck,” says Eddie, but the next time Buck turns to hand him a stack of plates to dry he’s looking at him so assessingly. Buck’s not sure what Eddie can read on his face, especially not with that slightly pinched look to him, but he powers through. There are dishes to be done. 

He finishes the dishes, then takes the trash out. He puts the remaining food in tupperware. He vacuums, just a little. Chris says he’s going to his room, and Buck takes the opportunity to hold him close, for just a moment. 

“Are you staying tonight?” asks Chris quietly, and Buck holds him closer, tighter. 

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” promises Buck, just as quiet. He’s not sure he’d actually sleep if he was anywhere else in L.A. tonight, unable to check both his Diaz boys are still breathing. 

With Chris in his room, and the more obvious chores all done, Buck is suddenly so very aware that it’s just the two of them left. 

“You okay?” asks Eddie, and when Buck looks up, he’s leaning in the archway between the living and dining rooms, his arms crossed, eyes fixed on Buck.

“Yeah,” says Buck, and it comes out more than a little hoarse. “Yeah, just tired. I think I’ll crash early tonight.” He heads to the airing cupboard to get the sheets he usually uses to make up the bed, and then remembers that he and Chris have been in Eddie’s room the last few nights. The clothes he sleeps in are still tucked under the pillow. He’d meant to change it all this morning, before Eddie got released, but between getting ingredients for the party and his own disconcerting unease, he’d completely forgotten. “I just, uh, need to grab some things from your room,” he says, awkward in a way that he’s not used to being around Eddie.

“Okay,” says Eddie easily, but then he pads behind Buck the entire way. Not speaking, but watching, waiting. 

The second they’re in Eddie’s room, he strikes, closing the door quietly. Buck hears it like it rings through the room. 

“Actually, can we talk?” asks Eddie. The trap closes.

“I– Sure,” says Buck, turning around to look at him. “What do you want to talk about?”

Eddie leans against his own bedroom door, looking at him. Just looking. Buck had thought, hadn't thought, hadn’t let himself think–

He didn’t know that he’d be here again, in this house feeling like a home again, Eddie’s eyes on him again. 

“I miss you,” says Eddie simply. and Buck can’t help but look straight into his eyes, concerned, caught. 

“I… I missed you too,” says Buck, voice harsh with how true it is. 

“Not then,” says Eddie, and then he sighs, shakes his head a little, “Well, yes, then too, but now. I miss you now.”

“I’m right here,” says Buck, like he doesn’t know. Like he hasn’t been ducking out of rooms and avoiding eye contact and feeling sick with it. 

“Buck,” says Eddie, a plea, and Buck feels himself crumple with it, staggering forward a few steps in the same moment as Eddie, always in sync, just a step away from each other. 

Eddie looks down at their feet for a long moment, then visibly screws up his courage. He looks up at Buck, his eyes so stupidly big in his face, his hand unerringly finding its way to that point on Buck’s collarbone that feels like it’s been reserved just for him, a fingerprint on Buck’s very bones. 

“I had a lot of time to think, down there,” says Eddie, and Buck feels his heart shatter.

“Eddie,” he says, helpless, just so struck with the idea of it, of Eddie alone and trapped, in a box underground, nothing to do but think and wait and hope.

“It’s okay,” says Eddie gently, like he’s soothing a wild animal. It’s a little like how Buck feels. “We’re okay, I’m okay.”

Buck nods, but his eyes well up with tears anyway. Eddie leans forward even closer, thunking their foreheads together gently. 

“I’m right here,” he promises, and Buck nods his head as best he can pressed against Eddie’s.

“I thought you weren’t,” confesses Buck, the thing he hadn’t even wanted to admit to himself. “I really thought that this time–” He cuts off, too choked up, and Eddie’s other hand comes up to cradle the back of his head.

“I probably shouldn’t be,” says Eddie, stroking Buck’s head gently at the pained whine that provokes. “But I am, okay, I came back to you. You came for me.”

“I always will, I always would,” promises Buck immediately, “You know that, right?”

“I know,” agrees Eddie. “I know.”

They stand there, so close they’re practically breathing each other’s air, until reality starts to seep in, and Buck feels embarrassed at his own desperation, his own hurt feelings, when Eddie is right here. 

“Still miss me?” he asks, with a teasing little smile, intending to break the tension.

Eddie looks at him seriously, eye contact from less than an inch away, and then he says solemnly, “Always.”

The rest of the room could be disintegrating around them, and Buck would never know. 

“I thought about you, you and Chris, the entire time, you know that?” 

They don’t do this, is the thing. They nearly die, or actually die, and they recover, and they never ever fucking talk about it. Not for more than a minute or two, and certainly not so soon afterwards. 

“Yeah?” asks Buck anyway.

“Of course,” says Eddie, breaking away from Buck to laugh a little, the hand on the back of his neck sliding down to his shoulder. Heat and cold crawl through him. “I was thinking I had to get back to you, to both of you. That I couldn’t leave when things were bad with Chris, that I had to make sure he got home to me, to you, to us both. I thought I was dreaming when I heard you, you know, thought maybe that was it, my brain shutting down.”

“Wow,” says Buck, faux-offended, because if he thinks about that too seriously, about how close it had been and how Eddie had nearly given up, he won’t ever stop screaming. “You hear my voice and immediately think you’re feverish? Real nice, Diaz."

Eddie uses the hands on his shoulders to shake him, just a little. “I thought you were too good to be true, Buckley, take the compliment.”

Buck laughs a little, disbelieving. 

“I thought about the life I wanted, if I got out,” says Eddie, serious again, earnest more than anything. “And then you found me, and I already had it.”

Buck furrows his brows, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a simple man,” says Eddie, like he's not the most complicated, interesting, layered person that Buck’s ever met. Like he hasn’t spent seven years trying to know every detail about him, and he's not still being surprised by things. Like someone as gloriously complicated as Eddie Diaz could ever be described as a ‘simple man’. Eddie smiles at him, like he can sense Buck’s disagreement without a word being said. “This is the life I want, Buck, you brought Chris home to me, and you’re here, in my house, in my room.”

“Eddie,” says Buck, and it’s meant to be a question, but it comes out too breathless for that. 

“You were so distant, though,” says Eddie, a touch of concern in his brow, “You weren’t my Buck, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Didn't know how to handle you avoiding me when we’re in the same room. I don’t like being shut out like that, not by you."

“I'm sorry,” says Buck, “I didn’t mean to, I just…”

Eddie pauses, the most hesitant he’s looked all night. “I… What you said about you and Tommy, is it… Was that what’s been upsetting you?”

“No,” admits Buck, even with the option of an easy out. “No, it's not about him, I just– You scared me, Eddie. You really scared me. I know you’re safe now, I know, but I still see you disappearing over that fucking cliff every time I close my eyes. I don't know how to hold it all in.”

Eddie nods, like he doesn’t blame Buck, like he understands. 

“Here,” he says, taking one of Buck’s hands, placing it firmly over his heart, so he can feel the heartbeat. “I get it, I do.”

Buck gives him a look, and Eddie huffs a little laugh.

“I couldn't look at you, when you were in that coma, did you know that?”

Buck shakes his head slowly. Maybe a week ago, he’d be hurt to hear it, but now he understands. 

“I didn’t know how to let go of my fear and hurt, and I didn’t know how to look at you and not think of what we’d nearly lost, what we might still lose.”

“How did you, in the end?” asks Buck, hushed, and Eddie smiles wryly at him.

“You fell asleep on my couch," he says, “And it reminded me that you were home, and I didn’t want to lose time with you because I was still scared.”

Buck nods, just a little, sways just a little to feel the hold Eddie still has on him, focuses on Eddie’s heart beating under his palm. 

“I lost it,” Buck admits, “When you went over.”

“Yeah?” asks Eddie, sounding entirely understanding, like he can picture it exactly, like he’s been on the other side of it himself. 

“Oh yeah, full breakdown,” says Buck, “Weeping, wailing, losing time, the whole nine yards.”

“You’re sweet,” says Eddie fondly.

“Mmmm, my boyfriend didn't think so,” replies Buck, just a little glib. 

If anything, Eddie looks almost smug. 

“Oh?” he asks, arch.

“Dumped me over it,” says Buck, and watches Eddie try to beat back victory and fury in the same moment. “Apparently it was embarrassing for him, watching me act like another man’s widow.” 

“Hmm,” says Eddie, noncommittal. “That kind of sucks.”

“Honestly, I didn’t really care, I’d just gotten back from El Paso. Didn't have the bandwidth, you know?”

Eddie’s eyes go molten. He steers them over to sit on the side of the bed, keeping Buck’s collarbone under his hand. Buck goes, lets himself be sat down. 

“I can’t believe you went to El Paso to get him, I can’t thank you enough.”

“You say that now,” says Buck, his turn to be wry, “But your parents know about the will now, so that might change…”

Eddie grins, a quick shared joke of a thing. “I think we can probably take on my parents.”

Buck can’t help his smile in return. “Sure, if you want.”

“Buck, I’m serious, thank you.”

“I just gave him the option,” says Buck earnestly, it’s important that Eddie knows this, internalises it, “He wanted to come home, he always wanted to come home.”

“And you made it so he could,” insists Eddie, “You had my back, even when…”

“Yeah,” says Buck, “Always.” It comes out like a confession of something, and maybe Buck would be more scared, maybe he’d be shying away from looking at what that something could be head on if he could, but Eddie’s eyes are brightening, his smile widening. 

“So,” says Eddie, reaching with his spare hand to take one of Buck’s from where it rests in his lap. “Chris came home, and I came home. You gonna come home too?” 

The tide is rising inside Buck steady and inexorable. 

“Eddie,” he says, futilely trying to hold it back, “Say what you mean.”

“I mean I had nothing to do but think about my life, and in all aspects of it, you’re there. I want you there, with me, in every way you’ll have me. I want you in my home and my bed and my family. I want to be happy, and the key to that is you and Chris. Has been for years.”

The air leaves Buck’s lungs, the wave crashing over him, submerging him in one swift moment. It’s love. It’s been love, this whole time. That’s what he couldn’t look at, that’s what he couldn’t let himself think about, that’s why the thought of Eddie gone has been tearing his nervous system into shreds. 

“I love you,” he says, interrupting whatever insane romantic thing that Eddie was about to say next, unable to hold it in for even a second now that he knows. “I’m in love with you.”

“Good,” grins Eddie, using the hand on his shoulder, the thumb against his collarbone, to pull him closer, “Because I love you too.”

It’s a shorter first kiss than Buck never let himself imagine because neither of them can stop smiling for long.

“You’re coming home, right?” murmurs Eddie against his jaw, pulling Buck slowly down to the bed so that they can keep kissing, keep holding each other, keep each other close. 

“I am home, aren’t I?” teases Buck in response, and the warmth of the look in Eddie’s eyes is unlike anything he’s ever seen. 

“Yeah, you are, you are,” promises Eddie.