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Eddie quickly finds out that the more he has to lose, the worse the shot stings.
He’s been here before. Enough times to know that he can’t extract this one from where it’s lodged somewhere deep, enough to know that the blood rushing up his windpipe and forcing its way from his open mouth is a sign of something worse. Every blink is a slow fade to black, each step like trudging through quicksand in the rain, the wires in his brain sparking like the aftermath of someone taking a baseball bat to a switchboard. This bullet may be the one that gets him.
That’s the worst of it, really. He can handle the burning in his gut. What he can’t handle, not ever but sure as hell not now, is his life ending right as it was finally starting to come together.
So he keeps fighting. Of course he does.
Maybe his fight is futile. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to end, with God's plan taking him into its grasp and squeezing until all the self-sacrifice has been juiced out.
But with a bloodied hand gripping the wall and another weakly braced over the ridges of his abdomen, Eddie can only pray that whatever he’s got left is enough.
Electricity hums overhead, a flickering light fixture that was worse for wear even before a stray bullet took it out. His vision’s gone blurry but what he can see isn’t much. An empty hallway, a supply cart knocked onto its side. Everyone ran once the guns started firing, and there’s not a chance they’re coming back, either; Eddie counted six guys on this floor alone. He knows they’re looking to finish off what they did to Athena, who’s still battling it out in surgery, and the open wound he’s clutching tells him they want to do the same to him. To Hen. Only an idiot would come back after—
“Oh God, Eddie—”
He tilts his head back as a groan escapes his lips. Either from pain or exasperation.
“You gotta get ‘outta here, Buck.”
It’s more of a formality, really. Eddie knows the only way Buck’s leaving is with Eddie thrown over his shoulder like a bindle. Maybe he’ll attach him to a stick.
Eddie waits for the surprise of Buck easily finding him in a locked down three-story building, yet it never comes. He doesn't doubt that if he were a needle, Buck would cut through the haystack in five minutes flat.
“You're hurt?” Buck’s shout echoes throughout the hallway from where he moves towards him at the other end, loud enough to bring a wince to Eddie’s face. They don't who could still be lurking around the floor with a semi-automatic. “Shit, uh, just hold on!”
Buck unhesitatingly takes up a sprint as Eddie stumbles forward to slap his hand over the elevator buttons, leaving a trail of crimson smeared where his fingers drag against the metal. The elevator beeps once, twice, three times. The doors stay shut and, with what little force he can muster, he hits the button again.
A shock of pain ripples through his body.
Eddie blinks, and then Buck has a thick arm braced around his waist, and he wonders how long his eyes had been shut.
Buck is saying words Eddie’s not capable of hearing over the blood rushing through his ears, but it sounds something like a mixture of You’re gonna be okay and Hang on and C’mere, I got you.
Eddie believes him. Well, he wants to, anyway.
There’s more supplies on the next floor up. All he has to do is get himself and Buck a med kit that hasn’t had bullets fly through it, maybe some gauze, ideally a surgeon who magically hasn’t heard the alarms blaring and is happy to help stitch him up under heavy anesthesia.
Though, he knows Buck could do it, if that’s what it came down to. Dig through his friend’s organs and remove the thing that’s slowly killing him from the inside out. He’s done it enough times. A lease signed, his son in his arms, a weight off his shoulders. Eddie would trust no one else to dissect him, to lay him on his back and pry him open with one hand on the retractor and another gripping the scalpel.
Eddie thinks Buck might even like it, seeing him so open. It certainly would be easier for Eddie to be forced into vulnerability rather than trying and failing so desperately to succumb to it.
He only realizes he’d passed out once he comes to.
Eddie’s head is cushioned by what he immediately recognizes as something belonging to Buck, smelling clean and fresh but still all him. Soft, almost pillow-like, feeling like home even when he’s so far away from it. His breath stutters as he tries to take one in; the blood in the back of his throat has hardened a fraction, choking him on each inhale.
Then, an angel.
Illuminated from behind by a light that’s on the wrong side of too bright, enveloping Eddie in the shadow of its figure. He allows himself to wonder, just for a moment, if God really does believe he deserves this. If God is real himself, casting down a guardian to save Eddie from the shot that took his life in a room dedicated to Him. If this angel that strangely mimics a familiar shape has truly come for Eddie, gazing at him as if he has the capacity to be gentle. Extraordinary. Beautiful.
Something quite unheavenly tightens around his gut, pulled so taut that the sharp cinch of pain snaps Eddie out of whatever the hell that was, and suddenly his lungs are burning, his skin on fire, and then—
“Sorry, Eddie, I’m so sorry.”
—it’s Buck, actually, though Eddie is out of it enough to wonder if he was right the first time.
But there’s something off. Eddie can feel the wrongness of it permeating the air; stuffy, too-hot, tainted with the scent of iron and salt, trapped between the four walls that surround them with only a few feet of space on either side.
Right, elevator. He supposes he’d forgotten where he was trying to go.
When he’s lost, he turns to two people to help guide him home. One of them just so happens to have impeccable timing, and the other is at school. No, their house, probably. Time has gotten a bit lost on him today. In fact, he should definitely check on Christopher, that’s what he should be doing. That’s where he needs to go now.
A strong hand presses against his shoulder, urging him to lay back down. Eddie doesn’t remember sitting up. His gaze follows the hand, up the arm, over the shoulder, and finally up to the person it belongs to.
The look on Buck’s face is—Eddie’s not familiar with this one, actually.
It’s the first thing he sees clearly. Red-rimmed eyes and dry skin splitting on his lower lip as if he’d bitten it too hard, pupils blown and a frantic, almost panicked twitch to his fingers where they press firmly over Eddie’s abdomen. Buck has splatters of blood in his hair, too, his curls tinged with it at the ends. Eddie would reach up to brush it away if he could move.
He can’t, Eddie processes at what is likely the speed of growing molasses.
The hand not pinning him down has Eddie’s wrists held together at his waist.
Eddie tries to swallow. Fails, and coughs.
Even with a gunshot wound to his abdomen, this is what manages to wake him up. Buck’s chest heaves above him, the slight movement allowing the fluorescent lights above to force Eddie’s eyes into a squint. It’s not entirely clear if he’s crying, or pissed off, or worried out of his mind, so Eddie just assumes it’s all three. “You wouldn’t stop…” Buck pauses, like he needs to justify his actions. As if Eddie wouldn’t let him do anything, move him like a ragdoll, situate his limbs wherever he sees fit. “Every time you move, it bleeds. Stay still.”
And who is Eddie to go against direct orders?
At an agonizingly slow pace, Buck releases his wrists. Eddie keeps them in place. A heavy knee rests against his leg, balancing Buck where he’s kneeled over Eddie just as Eddie had been over his abuela’s rosary in the chapel when this all started.
He can’t recall Buck ever being so close for so long; the air of his breath glides along Eddie’s cheek, harsh enough to feel like a solid touch. Buck’s eyeline flickers across Eddie’s face nervously before it finally meets his own.
It’s tough, but Eddie cracks a smile.
“Could buy me dinner first, Buckley.”
A failed attempt at humor in spite of the somewhat-successful attempt on his life, and it’s quickly made clear that he’s the only one who finds it funny.
When Buck’s hands retreat back towards his own body, yet not far enough that they wouldn’t be able to be on Eddie in an instant if needed, he sees the blood. It’s odd, though, because he can see where his blood is fresh on Buck’s fingers; but there’s dried blood under his nails, which are chipped and ragged beyond comprehension. Like Buck had repeatedly scraped them along an unforgiving surface and then done it once more for good measure.
It’s only then that he feels the stability of the elevator. The lack of a mechanical hum, the stillness of the floor beneath him.
“This thing doesn’t feel like it’s moving.”
“Yeah,” Buck agrees, eyes soft but something akin to rage lacing his tone, “it's not.”
Huh. Well that’s not great.
With the minimal space he’s allowed, Eddie glances up at the elevator doors. It’s as if children had climbed up and painted it with streaks of red. Reminds him a bit of the first time Christopher drew a firetruck. Eddie had thought it was the most perfect piece of artwork in existence and wouldn’t have removed it from the fridge even if he was offered millions from the Louvre.
When he looks back to Buck, he’s already being watched.
“How long was I out?”
“Too long.” Another sigh hits his cheek, and it’s only when he’s leaning into the warmth of it that he feels how his body involuntarily shivers. “I, uh, I guess they cut the electrical for the lockdown, and when they turned it back on, some wire got fried and… we’re stuck, basically.”
In all honesty, he doesn't really care about himself. Not when— “What else have you heard?”
Buck bites the inside of his cheek. “Athena’s still in surgery. Everyone else is fine. Uh, the 118, I mean. Gabi finally got her guy into the prison to interview the migrants, hopefully get ‘em out of there. Maddie’s gonna call me back when she knows more.” Buck’s brow pinches. “And I guess they caught one of the guys who… you know.”
“Shot me?”
“Yeah,” he eyes Eddie’s face, like he can see something Eddie can’t. “Said he took a couple of nasty hits. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“Worth it.” If he didn't know any better, Eddie would think he just shot Buck based on the way he flinches. “But, ah, good. That’s good. Everyone’s good.”
“Not everyone.”
Buck’s eyes are on his stomach again, staring hard like the force of it will stop the bleeding all on its own. Eddie watches Buck’s fingers twitch, sees that two of them are broken, and feels an ache so deep in his gut that it couldn’t have been caused by the bullet. He blinks, eyelids heavy, and reaches out to hold them despite the burn of his skin when he does. He doesn’t want to think about how hard Buck was working to pry open the doors. He’s too scared to think about how bad it must be if it came down to that so early on. “You’re hurt.”
Something in those baby blues cracks open like damaged stained glass.
“Eddie.” Buck whispers his name like a prayer. “I’m sorry, I...”
Before he can question why the hell that’s the case, Eddie coughs again, fresh blood pooling in the back of his throat once more. He hears Buck choke on his words, and then Eddie chokes, is turned onto his side, spilling what could easily be his actual guts onto the cold elevator floor. The movement shifts whatever it is that Buck’s Macgyver-ed into a tourniquet, digging into his wound rather than putting pressure on it. Any semblance of relief he’d felt vanishes as quickly as the searing, guttural, mind-numbing pain comes back at full force.
Eddie can’t be certain, but he’s pretty sure that through the blood in his mouth, he screams.
Buck jumps, falling onto both knees, cradling Eddie’s head with a softness so unfamiliar it almost hurts more than the wound. “I know, I know, I’m sorry, just… you’re gonna… you’re gonna be okay, yeah?”
A weak cry is just about all he can get out.
This is the one that gets him, isn’t it?
There’s familiar hands on him again, bare yet grabbing the wound hard enough that Eddie wonders if it’s hurting more than it’s helping. His vision whites out, legs kicking on instinct even though he knows it’ll only make it worse, but he needs to stay awake because if he closes his eyes he isn’t sure that he’ll ever open them again. At least he’s done his duty, if this is really how it ends. Got shot so others wouldn’t, saved lives even if he couldn’t save his own. All he’d ever wanted was to feel like he was doing enough, that he was enough, that he properly repented for sins he committed but never truly understood.
It was foolish to think that he could make it out of the spiral. Temptation, sin, guilt, atonement. Repeated from cradle to grave, built into the fabric of who he is.
Even in death, he doesn't have it figured out. Eddie knows it was close, is the worst part. The understanding of it all. Like he’s finally broken down the door he’d been fighting to get into all his life only for a brick wall to be what's on the other side. If he had the time or tools, he may have been able to break through; now, it’ll remain intact forever, because he has neither.
Eddie thinks it would have been nice to see the other side.
“Eddie? Hey, stay with me, please. Please just… please. They’re coming, okay? We’re gonna get you out of here. Just keep your eyes open. I… I’m gonna get you home.”
“Buck,” Eddie gasps, spitting out blood that’s calcified over, “I need to… you gotta tell Chris that—”
“No.”
“Buck, please.”
“No.” Buck’s unbroken fingers gently tap the side of his face, something Eddie will definitely hold over his head as a full slap if by some miracle he really does make it out of here, and he grips Eddie’s chin when he fails to keep himself upright. “You are going to tell Chris how much you love him when you get out of here, and you’re gonna hug him and cry like a baby and not let him out of your sight for a week, okay? You are going to tell Chris, not me, because you are not dying.”
“Wha’ else you call this?’
“I call it, you got shot again.”
“Creative.”
Buck resolutely ignores him, instead placing his palm flat against Eddie’s cheek. At the touch, all safecomforthome, Eddie allows his eyes to flutter closed, before remembering they're supposed to stay open. As if that alone will keep him alive. Quietly, Buck repeats, “You’ll be okay.” It’s not clear if he’s trying to convince Eddie or himself, but the tone soothes him all the same. “You're gonna get out, Eddie.”
And that.
That may be the worst part.
Eddie has never known where he’s stuck, only that he is. Eddie never knows why he can’t get out, just that he can't.
He supposed he’s never looked into it too much, too afraid that he won’t be able to escape what he finds. The walls have started tearing themselves down recently, seemingly of their own accord, and he’s started to wonder if all his cowardice has been for nothing. All this time he’d anticipated some sort of hellfire. Maybe knives. When the light shines through the cracks, it’s only warm.
Buck’s got two fingers on his pulse, and when Eddie finds the strength to look up at him, his mouth is moving. He always thought it was unfair how pretty Buck’s mouth is. He spots the near constant pout that sometimes makes Eddie want to squish Buck’s cheeks together and flick his wrist really fast like one of those shake well protein drinks. Pretty mouth. Pretty guy. Pretty. Buck. Buck is pretty.
Buck. Buck Buck Buck Buck.
Buck is looking at him weird, now.
His mouth keeps moving, angled towards something on the ground. His phone? Yeah, Buck’s talking into the phone. Pretty phone. Pretty Buck.
“Yeah, Mads, he keeps saying pretty, so I'm a little worried he’s about to go into the light—no, not in ten, they need to get here now!”
“Nah, j’st you,” Eddie grins. He sure hopes he licked all the blood off his teeth. “Pretty.”
Buck kinda looks like Eddie just took off all his clothes and started doing a chicken dance. “Uh, what?”
Eddie only hums, finding this development very inconveniently timed but also not all that surprising. Of course Buck is handsome, anyone with eyes can see that, but—he’s pretty too. Kind of reminds Eddie of the moon glowing over the ocean, so bright it could almost be confused for the sun. Eddie knows that he, for one, has used him as a guide more than once, steering towards him and instinctively knowing that his path is forward.
When he’s gone, Christopher will need the same light. Eddie hopes Buck will keep it.
“I, uh,” Eddie admits, “I don’t think they’re comin’ in time.”
“They are,” Buck argues. He sucks in a sharp breath when Eddie moves a fraction and his gunshot wound spits blood. “Stay still. They’re coming, okay? I just talked to Maddie, they’ll be here any minute. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not. Worried.” It’s not a lie. Devastated, sure, but not worried. He ensured his son would be taken care of years ago, entrusted the man beside him with his whole world and then some and has never once regretted it. Anyone who doubts his judgement once he’s gone will have his will to answer to, along with the letters tucked safely in his bottom drawer. Eddie’s prepared. Nothing in the world matters to him more than his son, but Buck is a close second, and he’ll be damned if he leaves them a custody battle alongside all the grief. “You… you’ve got my back, right?”
Buck’s determination cracks at the edges, overtaken by something so heartbreaking that Eddie wants to look away. He doesn’t. “Any day.”
There he is.
“Good, ‘cause I… I’m gettin’ pretty tired, bud.”
All at once, waves crash into Buck’s irises, tears spilling over, crystalizing the blue into something pale and despondent. Pretty. Eddie wants to tell him not to blame himself for his incapability to do more, to not look back on this moment as one where he gave up, but instead as when he grew strong enough to face the music—accept that Eddie is dying is in his arms, that he can’t fix it, that it isn’t his fault, that he can take care of Chris, that he’ll be okay. But he knows Buck won’t hear it over the squelching of blood and Eddie’s short, audibly pained gasps.
Eddie doesn’t want to go, but if he has to, there’s nowhere he’d rather be.
Which is a bit of a lie, because he’d really rather not die in an elevator, but when life gives you lemons, right?
“No, no, you need to stay awake,” Buck shakes his head, his cheeks flushed red with whatever it is Eddie can feel him holding back. “I just got you back, you don’t get to… you don’t get to leave again.”
“I don’t want to,” he tells him, because it’s true.
“So don’t,” Buck all but shouts, adjusting his grip on Eddie’s face when he coughs up more blood, nearly black in color, chunks of it that are too solid to be anything but a horrible sign of something even worse. “Don’t leave. Chris needs you, I need you.”
Fondness swells in Eddie’s chest, or maybe it’s his lungs constricting, but it feels all the same. It hurts less when he rolls onto his back, but he doesn’t want to choke again, so he nudges Buck’s hand away from his head until he can move it properly into his lap. Buck collapses in on himself, on Eddie, with a sob.
A hand cards through Eddie’s hair, sticking to the strands and pulling uncomfortably from the tackiness of the blood on his fingers. He keeps Eddie’s chin tilted up as if trying to protect him from the sight of his own debauchery. He’s lost so much blood. It really is only a matter of minutes for him now, but Buck’s touch is tender, and Eddie almost believes they have all the time in the world.
Eddie was right before. There’s an angelic quality to Buck, looming softly, head tilted over his own so the light doesn’t catch on his tears. But Eddie was wrong before, too. Pretty isn’t a good enough word, doesn’t nearly cover everything Buck is, inside and out. Eddie knows his own are splayed out around them. He can only pray they’re half as beautiful as the man in front of him.
His eyes droop. Gently, wordlessly, Buck coaxes them back open.
“You’ll live, Eddie,” he whispers. A tear falls from his cheek and hits Eddie’s nose. “You’ll live, and you’ll heal, and you’ll get so old that you need reading glasses and complain about how the rain hurts your knees and watch Christopher go off to college and brag about how he’s gonna become a rocket scientist or museum curator or something. Okay?”
“‘M not, Buck,” Eddie tries to shake his head, but all he can do is twitch. “Not okay.”
“You will be.”
“No one’s coming.” Dead silence surrounds them. If Eddie’s breaths weren’t so labored, if Buck’s sniffles weren’t so loud, it would be eerie. Trapped alone in a box, hovering midair, no escape, only a bullet and his best friend for company. If anyone was working on getting them out, they’d hear a saw or two. If anyone was working on it, he wouldn’t be able to separate the rapid beats of Buck’s heart from his own weaker ones. “Not in time, at least.”
Buck’s phone has been long discarded, or maybe just out of Eddie’s line of sight, but he at least hopes someone is listening on the other end. He’s got a lot of goodbyes that he won’t get to give.
“Stop saying that.” Eddie can hear the anger behind the softness.
“Before I… I need to tell you, um.”
Eddie stops himself when a slew of insanity crosses his mind.
Because that must be what it is. Delusion from blood loss, the final nail in the coffin, something of the sort. As he stares up at Buck, all wide-eyed and terrified and so, so fucking sad, only one word echoes between his ears. One he’s felt some variation of for Buck from the second he met him but never assigned a title to. A word that should scare him to Hell and back, because that might be where he’s going if he says it out loud, but instead rolls the stone off his chest that’s been trapping him in for as long as he can remember. Lightens the weight off his body, pulls him up in a way he can only imagine is an act of God, and reveals to him that—
Oh. That makes a lot of sense, actually.
Of course Buck is the one.
Of course he’s gay. Of course.
Despite mourning the life he won’t get, Eddie smiles something fierce. He got out.
Buck tilts his head, lip twitching at the grin but visibly cautious of what it could mean. Eddie revels in how he now knows the source of that funny feeling he’s gotten every other time Buck does such a thing. It’s a bit like giving a dog chocolate before it’s put down, letting it experience something beautiful right before it all ends for good. It’s humane, that he’s been allowed a glimpse at what he could’ve had in another life where he’s more brave.
“Eddie?”
“Buck.”
Eddie feels a calloused thumb brush beneath his eye, running over the mole he’s had since birth. It’s only when the cool air stings that he registers his own tears.
All he can feel now are the hands that hold him, the lap he rests upon, the burning gaze that hasn’t left him once. It should be concerning how the pain in his gut has vanished, but he can’t find it in himself to care.
Buck wipes away another tear, taps him once on the temple, and asks, “What’s going on in there?”
Eddie exhales, leans into the touch, and confesses, “Thinkin’ about how much I love you.”
As if the gunman has been lurking in the corner this entire time, waiting for this exact moment, Buck jolts like a gunshot has just been fired through his skull. Even on Eddie’s deathbed, it turns out, he’s still a bit of a dork.
“What did you just… Eddie, what?”
“Sorry I didn’t… say it sooner, I…” Eddie licks his lips and immediately regrets it. The blood only makes him want to throw up more, but he’s kind of in the middle of a crazy important impromptu speech with probably only a minute or two to live, so he swallows it down by force. “I kinda just found out myself, so, ah. Sorry. But I… I do. Love you. Romantically. Like, raise my… my son with you for eight years and, um, call it platonic, romantic.”
Eddie isn’t sure if he’s hallucinating, or if Buck’s eyes have always been so comically large. He looks like a cartoon character. A very cute one who Eddie would love nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with, and wow, he wants to marry him. It would make him laugh, all these lightning-round speed epiphanies, if he knew that he could have it one day. His nausea is getting worse instead.
Buck blinks owlishly. “What.”
Eddie swallows more blood. “I’m actually… not that sorry. I lied.”
A beat, and Buck’s pulling him forward by a big caked-with-blood hand on either side of his face, not quite squishing his cheeks but holding him so tight there isn’t a chance in Hell he could slip away.
“Eddie Diaz. You do not get to tell me you’re in love with me and then die, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Buck’s gaze rapidly flicks between each of Eddie’s half-lidded eyes, his face far too close to look at both. Eddie lets out what would be a laugh if he was capable of it at the wording. What’s wrong with him really depends on who’s being asked. Catching on quickly, Buck scoffs, stumbling over his words with a rushed, “Not—there’s nothing wrong with you, obviously, that’s not what I meant—but I—Eddie.”
“S’rry.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yeah,” he allows himself to take in all of Buck, the parts he never let himself gaze at too closely, the parts he’ll never get to see fully before the clock runs out. “‘M not.”
Finally, fucking finally, he gets a laugh out of him.
Buck cradles him, almost, moves Eddie’s head to rest gently in the crevice of his elbow. He doesn’t stop touching him, feather-light all over, from his cheek to his hair to his waist to his thigh and all the way back up again. Like he’s trying to fit a lifetime of love in a single movement. Like he’s finally starting to accept that this is all they’ve been allowed. Like he can see the color draining from Eddie’s face despite him just having been shocked back to life.
“You know I love you back.” Buck isn’t asking.
Eddie can’t stop grinning. He never understood how anyone could truly die happy until now. He never thought it was possible for this feeling to exist within his body at all. Nothing hurts anymore, inside or out. The lights are getting brighter. Buck’s touch is fading despite the tension in his muscles. He’s sobbing now, face flushed, eyes the picture of sorrow, and Eddie can’t stop it. Can't save him from what’s next. “I know.”
“This isn’t fair.”
“I know, Buck.”
A short breath in, an even shorter breath out.
If Eddie only has one final prayer, a last Hail Mary, it’s got to be a good one.
“I wanna kiss you,” he finds the strength to say in spite of his weakening limbs. “Forever, but ‘specially right now. Wanna kiss you, but I…there’s blood on my lips.”
Buck shushes him, already leaning in. “I’ve tasted it before.”
Then he’s on him like a man starving, and for what is likely the last time, Eddie allows his eyes to close. Buck’s lips are fever-hot against his cold ones, and he can’t be sure if he’s still on earth or not. If he’s left his body or if Buck is keeping him anchored to it, if the release he feels is his soul leaving his body or escaping damnation.
Somewhere in the background there’s a bang, and another, and another, but Eddie’s already too far gone to find his way back.
Darkness, and then light.
Eddie should've known Buck wouldn't let him go so easy.