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“Wait…you all think he’s dead.”
“Nobody thinks that,” Bobby says at once, but there’s a weird tone to his voice — too forceful, almost stilted — and when Buck scans the rest of their group, Chimney won’t meet his eyes, and the guy from USAR gazes back at him with a look that can only be described as pitying.
Buck’s breath comes in sharp, painful gasps, and he clutches the side of his chest. Is he having another pulmonary embolism? If so, it’s the worst possible timing. All of their attention needs to be focused on Eddie, who definitely is not dead.
He can’t be.
“That’s not — he’s still down there, we just have to find him — we have to get him out!” Buck lurches forward, pushing past Chimney to stagger down the porch steps. They don’t understand — they just don’t know Eddie like he does. They weren’t in the back of the ambulance when he calmly pulled a live grenade out of a man’s leg; they didn’t see him in the collapsed high-rise after the earthquake, when he was able to compartmentalize his worry about Christopher to pull off not one, but two daring rescues. They don’t realize how resourceful Eddie is — how determined.
Determination doesn’t matter in the face of thirty feet of mud.
Buck spins, trying to decide which direction to go. The reservoir, he thinks — there must be access tunnels that lead to the well, even if they don’t have a map of them. He stumbles a little as he starts toward the water, but Bobby holds him back with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“I’m pulling you out, kid,” he says softly. “You’re too close to this.”
That doesn’t make sense. That’s what Bobby says when someone is dealing with their own family. Buck isn’t Eddie’s family.
There’s nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you.
Buck squeezes his eyes shut, trying and failing to push Christopher from his mind. Family or not, he knows he’ll be the one to have to tell Christopher what happened. The kid’s already been through so much — it hasn’t even been a year since he lost his mom, and now Buck’s going to have to tell him that his dad is — that Eddie’s —
“I can’t. Bobby, I can’t,” Buck whispers, trembling from head to toe as he opens his eyes. His lungs burn, and he can’t seem to take a full breath, but he shrugs off Bobby’s hand and takes another step toward the reservoir. “I — I need to find him. I’m — I —”
“I know,” Bobby says, then shifts his gaze over Buck’s shoulder, jerking his head in a nod.
“Really sorry about this, Buckaroo,” Hen says, suddenly right behind him.
There’s a sharp pinch on the side of his neck, and Bobby slips out of focus as the world fades to black.
***
Eddie surfaces with a gasp, then takes another, and another, vowing to never take fresh air for granted again. He flails around, trying to reorient himself — how fucking far did he swim? — until he finally spots the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles in the distance and staggers out of the water to start toward them.
As he gets closer, sounds begin to solidify into words.
“— try to pick up Diaz’s heat signature —”
“Won’t be easy,” Eddie rasps, his voice so ragged he hardly recognizes it. “I’m pretty cold.”
His legs give out and he starts to collapse, but Bobby is in front of him in an instant, followed closely by Chim and Hen. Eddie scans over their heads, looking for Buck. It’s not that he expected Buck to be the first one to greet him — except yeah, okay, maybe he kind of did. But he supposes it makes sense that the medics on their team would need to look him over first.
“Let’s get you checked out, buddy,” Hen says, pulling one of his arms over her shoulder, “so we can get you home.”
“Yeah,” Eddie chokes out, shaking violently, his adrenaline crashing now that he knows he’s safe. “I’ve got a big date Friday…I can’t miss it.”
They lead him over to an RA unit, and Eddie kind of loses track of things for a while as Chim and Hen strip him out of his soaked clothes and help him change into a spare uniform, starting a line of warm saline and wrapping him in a thermal blanket. It’s only once his body temperature begins to return to normal and the fog gradually clears from his brain, that he realizes once again what — or rather, who — is missing.
“Where’s Buck?” he asks, gritting his teeth a little to keep them from chattering.
Hen and Chim exchange a look, and the bottom drops out of Eddie’s stomach. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that something might have happened to Buck too. But — what if he had been on his way down to bring Eddie a line — what if he had also been caught in the collapse — what if he’s still trapped down there, or what if — what if he’s —
“He isn’t…he’s not….” Eddie can’t finish the sentence.
“He’s fine,” Hen says quickly. “He just….” She trails off, looking back at Chimney for assistance.
Eddie really doesn’t understand what’s happening here. If Buck is fine, why won’t they look him in the eye? “Just what?”
Chim and Hen seem to be having some kind of silent argument, which Chimney apparently loses, because he sighs and looks back at Eddie. “He just kind of completely lost his mind when the well collapsed on top of you?” he says, forcing the words out quickly, like he’s ripping off a verbal bandaid.
Eddie’s chest constricts painfully. “He — what?”
Chimney glances away again. “Yeah…he, uh, kinda started trying to dig you out with his bare hands? And then we just didn’t really trust that he wouldn’t hurt himself looking for you — I mean, you know how he gets — so we….we, uh….”
“You what?” Eddie looks from Chim to Hen, who looks back at him a little too gently for Eddie’s liking.
“We had to sedate him,” she says, pointing out the back window at a second ambulance parked a few yards away. “He’s in that RA unit there.”
Eddie stares at the closed doors of the other ambulance, trying to make sense of what they’re telling him. He knows Buck has a history of reckless behavior on calls, but from what he’s heard, and from what he’s seen, that was more of a Buck 1.0 thing. The last time he can remember Buck rushing headfirst into a situation without thinking was when Maddie was kidnapped — are they really telling him that Buck had a similar reaction at the prospect of losing Eddie? That he’d been so desperate, their team had felt the need to knock him out to keep him from doing something drastic?
“I need to see him,” Eddie says suddenly, starting to get up from the gurney.
“Eddie, no — we need to get you to the hospital. And you’re still hooked up to an IV, you can’t just walk over there,” Hen says, placing both hands on his shoulders.
Eddie yanks the tube out of his arm. “I need to see him,” he says again.
Hen stares at him for a moment and then sighs, shaking her head. “What did I say earlier?” she says to Chimney. “Two cut lines.”
Eddie doesn’t have the brain power right now to even begin to parse out what that means, but it doesn’t seem to matter once Hen stands and opens the door, holding out her hand to help Eddie down. Chimney darts ahead of them to open the doors into the second ambulance, and as soon as Eddie climbs inside, he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Buck is there, lying unconscious on a gurney, but otherwise apparently unharmed. There are a few streaks of dried mud on the side of his face, and Eddie flashes back to what Chimney said, about Buck trying to dig him out with his bare hands. Without thinking, he reaches forward, brushing his thumb over Buck’s jaw to try to wipe the mud away.
“We’ll, uh, give you a minute,” Hen says softly. “But then we really do need to get you to the hospital.”
Eddie nods as she closes the doors again, leaving him alone with Buck. His eyes burn as he stares down at his best friend, such a strong wave of affection rising within him that it almost makes him dizzy. The need to do something with his hands makes his palms itch, so he rifles through the drawers until he finds antiseptic wipes, then resumes gently cleaning Buck’s face.
After a minute or so, Buck starts to stir, his eyes squeezing shut and then slowly drifting open. He stares straight up at the ceiling for a moment before his eyes travel around the space, widening when they land on Eddie.
He jolts upward immediately.
“Eddie!” Buck gasps, reaching for him and nearly falling off the gurney in the process. “Oh my god — Eddie!”
“Whoa, easy there.” Eddie catches him with one hand on his shoulder and the other on his ribs.
“You’re here — you’re okay.” Buck stares at him with something like wonder, one hand hovering in front of Eddie’s face like he’s afraid Eddie’s a hologram that will disappear if he touches him. Eddie can feel him shaking through his turnout gear.
“I’m okay,” Eddie manages past the lump in his throat.
Buck gazes at him hungrily for a few more seconds before he seems to register the rest of their surroundings, his brow furrowing in confusion. Eddie chuckles.
“Wondering what you’re doing in here?” he asks, and Buck nods. “Apparently your reaction when the well collapsed was a little…intense…and they were worried you might hurt yourself looking for me, so…Hen sedated you.”
Color blooms on Buck’s cheeks and he squeezes his eyes shut again as Eddie speaks. “Wow…that’s embarrassing,” he grumbles, then his eyes fly back open. “But wait — how are you here? How did you get out?”
Eddie smiles, thinking of Christopher. “I just kept swimming.”
Buck lets out a hysterical laugh that almost immediately turns into a sob and surges forward, wrapping Eddie in his arms. Eddie finds his face buried in the crook of Buck’s neck and freezes — they’ve hugged before, but not like this, not when emotions have been running this high — but Buck doesn’t seem willing to let him go any time soon, so after a moment, Eddie lets himself relax into Buck’s hold, slipping his own arms around Buck’s back beneath his turnout coat.
“You’re warm,” Eddie murmurs, his lips moving against Buck’s skin. He feels the hitch in Buck’s breath, the beat his pulse skips in his neck.
Buck leans back just enough to gaze into Eddie’s eyes, searching, a question written all over his face.
A question that, after a moment of hesitation, Eddie answers by pressing his lips to Buck’s.
A small sound of surprise escapes Buck’s throat, but he doesn’t pull away. For a few seconds, they both stay still, and then Buck slowly begins to move his lips against Eddie’s, tentative in a way that’s rare for him. Eddie can’t suppress a low moan as Buck slides one hand up to cup his jaw, and then —
Then it’s like the floodgates open.
Buck more or less drags Eddie onto the gurney, which creaks threateningly under their combined weight, but neither of them care. Eddie gets one knee balanced precariously between Buck’s thighs and shoves his hands beneath Buck’s undershirt, seeking out more of his warmth, as Buck trails his lips from the corner of Eddie’s mouth to his ear and down the side of his neck, breathing Eddie’s name the entire time. Eddie feels moisture against his skin, realizes Buck is still crying, and something seizes and cracks open in his chest at the revelation that Buck cares so goddamn much.
He pulls back slightly so he can take Buck’s face in his hands and forces him to look up at him. “Buck, I —”
He doesn’t really know what he was planning to say, but that’s just as well, because a knock sounds on the back of ambulance and the doors fling open before either of them can react.
Eddie might not be able to see Hen and Chimney’s stunned expressions, but he can feel them. He stays perfectly still, like that might somehow make him invisible, but Buck peers around his shoulder, and Eddie knows that, even if their position alone weren’t compromising enough, one glance at Buck’s flushed face and swollen lips will confirm exactly what they were doing.
In the end, it’s Chimney who breaks the silence.
“I probably should be more surprised than I am right now, right?” he says wearily.
“No,” Hen answers without any hesitation. “No, you really shouldn’t.”
A sheepish grin spreads itself across Buck’s face, but he looks pleased, and Eddie can’t help but smile back down at him.
“Sorry, guys,” Buck says. “We’ll keep it down back here, I promise. You won’t notice a thing.”
“God, this is going to be terrible,” Chimney says cheerfully.
“Yep,” Hen agrees. “We’ve got to get Eddie to the hospital now. Buck, I trust that you can keep him warm until we get there?”
Buck looks up at Eddie with too many emotions in his eyes to name. “Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, that I can do.”
“Works for me,” Eddie says. The burst of energy that had propelled him onto the gurney starts to fail him, and he lowers himself down to rest his full weight on top of Buck, letting his head drop onto Buck’s shoulder. Buck’s lips find his temple as Chim and Hen close the doors again and make their way to the front seat.
I love him, Eddie realizes. That’s what he was going to say, what all the memories that had flooded his mind while he was trapped underground had been trying to show, and the words almost bubble up again now, but no — it’s not the right time. He needs to wait until the threat of his death isn’t looming over them like a physical presence. When Buck will know how much he really means it.
The ambulance starts to move, and Eddie lets himself drift, confident that Buck will tether him.
He’ll tell him soon.