Archive of Our Own

“Oh, you’re kidding me,” Buck groans, forehead thumping into the engine’s window as he takes in the absolute swath of wildfire consuming the woods ahead of them. Eddie rolls his eyes, riding the familiar wave of amused affection that always comes when Buck acts like this.

“The call said ‘backup for a forest fire,’ Buck,” Chim points out. “What were you expecting, exactly?”

“This is way bigger than just some fire in the woods,” Buck complains.

“A ‘forest fire’ is not just some fire in the woods,” Hen provides, though Buck seems to choose not to hear her.

“This is massive,” Buck continues, even as they come to a stop and all start moving to haul out. The scene is chaos, first responders everywhere; the main road up into the woods is blocked off already with a couple of engines spraying water up into the treetops. Firefighters from other stations are already divided between helping with the evacuation or attempting to put out the blaze.

Instantly, Bobby is directing everyone, telling them, “Hen, Chim, you go help with the paramedics, looks like they’re setting up a medical crash tent. Ravi, Buck—”

He’s cut off in a breath by a scream, something frustrated and terrified that tears out of a woman closer to the block in the road where they’ve parked their engine, prepped to help extinguish. In the next moment, she’s shrieking in the face of another captain, demanding, “Let me through—”

Of course, as always, Bobby instinctively moves to step in. Hands-up, peaceful, calm as ever, he retreats from the 118 to interject, “Whoa, okay, okay, what’s going on over here?”

Hen and Chim take off; Ravi lingers behind Buck, who shadows Eddie as always, solid at his side. His presence beside him is something Eddie tries not to take for granted, not now that he has an idea of what it’s like to be without him.

“Our kids are still in there,” the woman tells Bobby, already desperate, begging. She’s with three other women, all of them rumpled, layered with grime and soot; two of them have bandages on their arms. “They were off on a hike together when it started— You have to let us go back!”

“Okay, it’s too dangerous for you to go back in,” Bobby informs the women.

“I have to!” Her scream is back, and it breaks something inside Eddie. If it were Chris still trapped in there—

“I’ll go look,” Buck volunteers, before the words can even leave Eddie’s mouth. He ducks past and around him, jogs right up to Bobby’s side. “Hey, look, I’m already in all my gear, I’ll go in and stay on the radio and find them. I can bring them back.” Bobby’s eyes are fixed hard on Buck’s, reading him thoroughly, before he glances up towards the fire. Evaluating the risk, gauging the reward. “Bobby. C’mon, I can do it.” Lowering his voice, Buck adds, “They’re just kids. They’re probably scared.”

Bobby hesitates another beat. Eddie doesn’t.

“I’ll go with him,” he says, stepping up. “We’ll watch each other’s backs, Cap. It’ll be quick.” Turning to the women, he asks, “How far in were they? Do you know where they were hiking to?”

“Not that far,” one of the bandaged women tells him. “They wanted to hike to that— that rock formation— the one that kind of looks like a lion?”

“Oh, I know that one!” Buck exclaims, perking up. “Cap, I know exactly where that is, I’ve been here a dozen times.”

There’s no time left to think about it. Bobby finally waves them forward, tells them, “Keep your gear on and your line open, I want updates. And if I call for you, you answer, do you hear me?”

“Aye-aye, Cap,” Buck tells him with a grin, that delighted, daredevil grin, like he still thinks nothing bad could ever possibly happen, despite how much bad he has personally seen happen.

Eddie wishes he could feel the same way. Sometimes, all he feels is weighed down by what he’s seen.

“Got it, Cap,” Eddie agrees.

They already have their gear on, over fifty pounds piled on them to keep them safe. Their proximity to the fire has Eddie sweating already as they start heading up the main dirt road into the forest. Though it’s just barely past three o’clock in the afternoon, smoke fills the air to blot out the sun; it’s as dark as dusk, and especially hard to see when they tug their goggles and the masks of their helmets into place. Flames and smoke crowd each other, consuming the trees, obscuring nearly everything; Eddie only trudges forward, keeping his eye on Buck’s back as he steers them, navigating them with sure steps towards wherever this supposed rock formation is.

Buck’s strides don’t falter, his steps never break. His shoulders stay up, squared, firm against the onslaught as always; he does not bow nor bend when the wind changes direction and sends a lick of flame towards them. All he does is come to a halt, arm flying out to still Eddie before he can walk straight into the path of the fire.

His hand colliding with Eddie’s chest, even through the thick layers of insulation and fire-protective clothing and heavy gear, sends a sparkling rush through his system. It happens every time they touch; Eddie keeps thinking he’ll get used to it, but— still hasn’t. Even after their one— one stupid, drunken night together, where all they’d done was touch— and then never talk about again— he’s still desperate for him.

Maybe especially after that, actually. Shit.

Hand coming up instinctively to grab Buck’s, gloved fingers catching one another’s, Eddie shouts over the crackling roar of the fire, “Thanks!”

“Don’t mention it!” Buck’s head is on a swivel, and he points. “There— We’ll go that way instead—”

He’s already walking off, words disappearing with him, and Eddie keeps pace, trusting his path.

Of course, he trusts Buck’s path. He’s Buck, he’s— Eddie’s best friend, his co-parent, his partner in pretty much everything, and Buck knows all of that.

He’s also the love of Eddie’s life.

Pretty sure he doesn’t know about that.

That is Eddie’s fucked-up little secret, one that he didn’t even realize he was keeping until it was way too late. There had been a window, maybe, where he could’ve slipped right in and made himself an available, viable option, but Eddie is long past that. He just— He took too long figuring everything out, spent way too much time on discovering himself before he could even start unearthing what his feelings for Buck meant.

By the time he’d realized everything, Buck was already everything to him, and openly queer, and clearly unavailable, because he wears his heart right there on his sleeve, vulnerable and raw and exposed for all to see, and—

Surely, if he had any serious interest in Eddie, he would’ve said so long before now.

And the one night they’d— they’d gone out together and gotten shit-faced, months ago, and ended up in bed together—

Well, they never talked about it after.

When Eddie had woken up in Buck’s bed the next morning, early enough that the sun wasn’t even up yet, and looked over at him sleeping beside him— God, all he had wanted was to stay.

But he had to get Chris to school, and he was hungover as shit— still a little drunk, if he’s being honest— and he had scrambled out with intentions to talk to Buck later, when he felt better and clearer. When they’d actually seen each other, though, both showing up on shift after Buck ignored every last one of Eddie’s texts and phone calls, Buck had pretended like nothing had happened, like it didn’t matter. He’d even told Eddie, “You don’t have to do this.”

Eddie hadn’t even known what he was doing. He just knows he hasn’t done it since.

It’s been two and a half months since then. Eddie’s practically counted the days, since he’s spent every single one of them wanting to fix this, but he doesn’t know how. At least Buck is talking to him again; at least they’re normal again. If he disrupts that— if it’s too much, too fast, one time too many, he just—

He can’t lose Buck. Losing Buck isn’t an option, it just— isn’t. If he regretted being fucked by him, surely he doesn’t want to know he’s loved by him.

That Eddie is in love with him.

Fuck.

And if Eddie tells him now, Buck is— Buck, he’ll try so hard not to make it awkward, but he would obviously be uncomfortable, which would make Eddie uncomfortable, and once Buck realized that, he would spend less and less time with him, and with Chris, and before he knows it, he’ll only be seeing him at work— and if that, if he doesn’t change shifts or stations or—

—Eddie takes a deep breath of filtered air. Now is not the time for spiraling and catastrophizing about his feelings for Buck. He can do that literally any time, and it’s always distracting.

Right now, he’s got a job to do— an important job— and he needs to focus.

Allowing the cacophony of his love for Buck to become a low-level hum once more, it recedes into the background of his subconscious, where it always exists in some capacity. He’s far too familiar with the feeling of loving Buck every single moment of every single day; he’s gotten regrettably used to just living through it.

“There!” Buck exclaims, cutting hard to the left, his stride elongating as they have to climb a small, steep hill. Once they make it up, though, Eddie sees what they’ve been looking for.

“Huh,” he says. It filters tinnily through their headsets, echoing strange in his ears like it’s rattling about inside his helmet. “That thing does kinda look like a lion.”

The large boulder resembles a lion rearing up on its hind legs in the way that Chris finds the shape of a squirrel in a cloud: it’s there, if Eddie squints and tilts his head and believes it’s there. He’s trying to make sense of the silhouette when he hears Buck’s muffled, “Oh, shit,” come through.

“What?” he asks, already whirling, and finds Buck staring straight downwards into a deep ravine just beyond the formation, where six small forms are huddled. “Oh, shit—”

“Hey!” Buck cuts off Eddie’s echo of his own realization. Waving his arms over his head, he shouts again, “Hey!”

None of them turn to look up at them. A surge of concern rushes through Eddie and leaves a heartbeat later; all of them appear to be moving, just— too far away to hear them or see them, like this.

Buck reaches up to tug his helmet off, pulling apart his mask and goggles, freeing his head and face.

“What the hell are you doing?” Eddie demands. There’s fire everywhere, let alone the smoke he’s inhaling right now, probably burning up the insides of his lungs. “Put your gear back on—”

“They can’t hear me, Eddie,” Buck points out, already tugging off his gloves, too, to cup his hands around his mouth and shout, “Hey, guys!”

This gets their attention. Admittedly, he sounds much louder, and three of the kids turn to see them up on the ridge far over their heads. They start pointing, excited; all six are looking at them in no time, and the tallest— long dark hair, maybe fifteen years old, the spitting image of the woman Bobby had stopped from sprinting back into the fire— cups her hands around her own mouth.

“Help us!” she calls up to them. “We can’t climb out, we keep sliding!” Pointing downwards at one of the smaller children, she shouts, “My cousin broke his ankle!”

The young boy she’s gesturing towards can’t be more than ten years old, but the children are all roughly close to the same size— climbing out of this ravine while carrying him would be near to impossible for any of these kids on a good day, let alone one where they’re inhaling smoke, actively in danger, and probably absolutely terrified.

“We’re gonna come down to you!” Buck shouts back. “Stay there, we’re coming!”

His eyes cast about, looking for a better point that they can use to get to the children. He’s only looking down, and so Eddie moves past him, searching beyond—

“Hey, look at that,” Eddie points out. “It gets shallow up ahead.” Pointing towards the start of the ravine, farther away but closer to their level before it starts to dip over a harsh ledge into the deep ditch the children have found themselves in, he suggests, “We can go around to the narrow part and take them out that way. It’ll probably be safer than sliding down there and climbing back up, right?”

Buck hesitates, looking between the start to the ravine and the kids below them. Eddie can practically watch the wheels spinning in his head, but there’s no time to think, only time to do; the fire is getting closer, not yet extinguished, and the children can’t escape without them.

“I don’t know,” he hedges. “I can scale this, Eddie. It’ll take a couple minutes to get them all up here, but—”

“What if you get stuck down there, too?” Eddie points out. “I’ll have to go around anyway.” He can see Buck’s still uncertain, so he argues, “We gotta pick something, Buck. We can carry them all out the other way, we can just walk together and help them over the ledge on the shallow end.”

There’s no way the children can get up over the ledge on their own, but it’ll be much easier to pass them up between each other over there than here. It’s an obvious truth; still, Buck lingers for another moment, so much like Bobby’s hesitation earlier, before he allows, “Okay. Okay, we’ll go around.”

He shoves off first, long steps taking him further faster than Eddie.

When the flames erupt through the trees, Eddie is still on the other side of the massive lion-rock.

Buck is not.

A tremendous flare of flame bursts from the wall of fire consuming the trees, knocking Buck forward onto his knees with the force of it. His helmet and gloves spill from his hands as they shoot out to catch himself; he’s on all fours when Eddie hears the echoing crack that seems to fill the entire world around them.

“Buck!” he screams, already starting to move, but he’s nowhere near fast enough.

He can’t defy gravity, he can’t move any quicker than he is, and he can’t do anything except watch as the fire eats through the base of the tree and sends it careening down towards him.

In the chaos of burning leaves and licking flames and the earth-shaking collision of the tree with the ground, Eddie swiftly loses track of Buck. Somewhere— Somewhere in the flames, somewhere under the tree, he has to still be there, but Eddie can’t see him—

Panic seizes him in an instant swallow. He has to recalibrate, to push his emotions down, like he trained for so long and so hard to be so good at doing.

But—

God, it’s Buck.

“Buck! Oh, God—” Eddie is still running, before he’s forced to come to a halt as the flames consuming the tree burst again. The children scream behind, below him; he can hear them like a ringing in his ears, an alarm rousing him from sleep, distant but pressing and important.

Eddie knows better than to run straight into the flames. He knows better, but—

Buck is in there.

Buck.

Tearing at the burning branches, breaking them off with great cracks that send ash spilling upwards and raining down over him, he screams, “Buck! Answer me, just— Buck, where are you, come on, come on—”

No answer comes from any place in front of him. In his helmet, though, his radio crackles to life, asking, “Diaz, Buckley, respond. What’s going on?”

“Tree came down, Cap,” Eddie answers Bobby, heart thundering so furiously inside him that he can hardly hear his own voice. “Took Buck out with it, I can’t find him.”

There’s a crackling moment of silence over the radio.

Then, “Where are you?”

“Fifteen minutes north, eight minutes east,” Eddie recites, a fragment of his brain focused on question-and-answer while the rest propels him to keep tearing through the burning tree. Flames try to bite through his gear, and sweat rolls down his face beneath his helmet, but he can’t stop.

“Do you have eyes on the kids?” Bobby asks.

Eddie chances a glance over his shoulder at the children: still where they were, still screaming, still trapped.

“Yeah,” he answers, before licking dry lips and repeating louder, clearer, “Yes, I see them.”

“Can you get to them?”

Eddie doesn’t pause for longer than a heartbeat. “But— Buck is—”

“Can you get to them, Diaz?” Bobby repeats, his voice taking on that hard, authoritative edge he has to hold onto in moments like these. God, Eddie hates it when he sounds like this.

“Yes,” Eddie answers, obedient.

“Then go to them first,” Bobby instructs him. Eddie’s hands are still tearing, nearly to the trunk now. “Eddie—”

Whatever he says next disappears when Eddie finds Buck’s helmet beneath the trunk of the tree. Smashed between the tree and the ground below, the supposedly solid structure of his helmet is crushed beneath the trunk, flattened and obscured so significantly Eddie can barely recognize it.

He does, though. He’d recognize Buck’s helmet anywhere— He’d recognize Buck anywhere, and his stomach gives a sickening lurch.

Falling to his knees, he chokes up, “No,” then starts— yanking, hands ripping at the visible edge of Buck’s destroyed helmet, pulling and tugging and tearing until he finally manages to free what remains of it, tatters that spill into his hands. His heart rockets up into his throat; he doesn’t understand how it doesn’t exit his body, how he can still even— exist right now—

“God,” he groans, staggering back to his feet; his knees feel like air, his head spinning, and his insides— They just start crumbling, falling away from him, untethered. It’s like he’s in a dream, a non-stop round of no, no, no running through his head, because Buck can’t be just— gone, he can’t be gone, this is a nightmare and he’s about to wake up and—

“Eddie?”

It’s almost inaudible, but not to Eddie, who would recognize Buck anywhere right down to the rasp of his voice beneath a starving, roaring wildfire.

“Buck!” Eddie exclaims, drawn towards the sound by one step, two, breaking off another branch, another— “Buck, keep talking, where—”

A huge branch, weakened by the blaze, cracks and falls to the earth, its leaves being eaten up by the flames the second it hits the ground. Those cindered leaves fall away and finally— finally, there he is—

“No.” Eddie isn’t even aware of the word leaving his mouth; it does so of his own accord as he staggers the last couple of steps forward towards Buck’s upper body. It’s all he can see of him, face-down, visible only from his chest to the top of his head; everything else is buried under a massive branch off the tree, nearly half as thick as the trunk, pinning him into the dirt below.

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck mumbles upwards, cheek pressed to the mud— mud, Eddie clocks, not dirt. Why is there mud here, where there is no moisture left except the sweat slicking Eddie’s skin—

Blood, he realizes, when Buck tries to lift his head and open his eyes to look at him. The side of his face that had been pressed down is slick with a thick layer of blood, coating from his singed hair down to his throat, apparently pooling in the loose soil beneath him. And under the blood—

Eddie’s stomach turns. There’s so much burnt flesh, the right half of Buck’s face a mess, and he has to look away.

Just the attempt at movement is too much for Buck, whose groan of effort quickly becomes a sharp gasp of pain before his head is smacking back down, drawing Eddie’s attention to him once more, unable to stop himself from trying to help.

“Buck— Okay, stop— Stop moving, you can’t—” Eddie drops Buck’s crushed helmet, and his freed hands fly everywhere— over Buck’s face, his shoulders, then up, over the branch. It’s not burning, not yet, but it will be soon, and it’s far too thick to break with his hands, he needs an axe, he needs a saw, he needs to get this off of Buck—

Moving quickly, Eddie gets in position, shoves his hands under the branch, and heaves. It lifts about half an inch before Eddie can feel the muscles in his back and legs straining to snap, and his arms force him to drop it back down.

The animal noise Buck makes when the slight give vanishes and the full weight of the tree’s tremendous branch slams back down into him, the tiny release of tension he had been granted now disappearing under a new wave of heavy pain—

Eddie doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it.

The horrible sound scars itself into his ears as he crouches down beside Buck again, gloved hand against his face. “Hey— Buck, look at me. It’s too big, it’s all— It’s all still attached, okay? I can’t get any leverage, it’s just gonna keep hurting you worse if I roll it like that. You need to help me—”

Buck’s face crumples up, something pained and frustrated all at once that Eddie can’t begin to parse.

“No,” Buck manages, eyes still closed. Eddie’s thumb sweeps over his birthmark, glides along beside his eye, coaxes them back open. When Buck squints up at him, he says it again, repeats, “No, you— Eddie, you have to go—”

“Are you fucking insane?” Eddie demands. “I am not—”

“Diaz, answer me,” Bobby’s voice filters through, and Eddie wonders how many times he’s had to say it. Based on his tone— terrified and tense— and his raised volume, he’d guess a few. “What is going on up there?”

“I found— I found Buck,” Eddie manages. He has to swallow thick to speak, nearly choked. “He’s— Cap, he’s pinned beneath the tree that came down, and it’s burning up fast. We gotta get him out of here, you— You gotta send somebody up, we need— axes, saws, men, I don’t know, he’s stuck—”

Beneath his hands, Buck’s breath starts coming faster, sharper, shallower. One of his arms is trapped beneath his body, but the other is free to claw at the mud in front of his face, scrambling to try and escape.

“No, no, no,” Buck begs, attempting to unpin himself, and—

“Fuck,” Eddie curses out loud. “F— Cap, it’s just— It’s just like the truck, I think it’s making him lose it a little—”

“Eddie,” Buck gasps out, and Eddie crouches down in front of his face again, trying to put himself in his line of vision so he’ll stop moving. “Eddie— You— You gotta—”

“I’m gonna get you out of here, I promise,” Eddie swears. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not, okay? I’m—”

One of the children screams again, desperate and high, scraping at Eddie’s hindbrain. His instincts claw at him, demanding that he go to them, protect them, save them, his job and his duty and—

“Eddie,” Buck chokes out again. When Eddie focuses on him, he sees a clearer coherence in his expression than he had just moments ago, rattled out by the scream. “You have to go.”

“Buck—”

“Listen to him, Eddie,” Bobby instructs him through his radio. “Get the kids and get out of there.”

Eddie shakes his head, vehement. “I promised—”

“You’ll come back,” Buck cuts him off, every word a wheeze. There’s a tremor that wants to rattle Eddie like an earthquake; it’s taking all his strength to keep it back. “Hey. You’ll come back for me, right? I know it. I know you will.”

The way he’s looking up at him, eyes all earnest and bright blue still, even with his face so bloodied and burnt—

“I can’t,” Eddie whispers. He wonders if Buck can even hear him, but he can’t make himself any louder. “I can’t, I can’t just leave you—”

“You have to,” Buck tells him, a new edge in his voice. “Eddie. Please, you have to.” There’s a fraction of a heartbeat, a fragment of a second, before he asks, “What— What if it was Chris down there?”

The wave of nausea Eddie feels almost takes him out. “Don’t. Buck, don’t you— Don’t you dare.”

Buck doesn’t say anything back. His muscles relax, and he slumps into the mud again, just staring up at him with the one eye not pressed downward. He doesn’t need to put any more energy into the argument; he knows his point is made. More than that, he knows he’s already won.

Eddie rocks back, then forth, unable to actually make himself stand for a second before he throws himself backwards to his feet with a furious, wordless yell. He feels useless— less than useless, less than— This is all his fault, and he has to just— just leave Buck here, he made him come this way and he promised he wouldn’t leave him here and he’s— he’s—

Buck is going to die because of him, and Eddie almost doesn’t get his helmet off in time before he’s stumbling away to vomit up acid.

“No,” Buck groans. “Eddie. Eddie, it’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Eddie bites out. He spits at the ground, then shouts, “It is not okay, Buck!”

The silence that follows is deafening. Even the roar of the fire seems quiet in comparison to the absence of the words Buck isn’t saying.

“I love you,” Buck offers.

Eddie wants to wake up.

“Don’t,” he manages. “Buck—”

“It’s okay,” Buck tells him. “Hey. Eddie, it’s okay. I love you. I’ll be— I’ll wait right here for you, okay? I trust you. I know you’ll come back.” There’s a beat, and then he adds, “You don’t— You don’t have to—”

“I love you,” Eddie tells him, because he’s said it a million times and he thought he had a million times more and—

And Buck doesn’t even get it. He doesn’t understand— and now, now, he never will.

“You’ll come back,” Buck tells him. When Eddie turns back to look at him again, he’s smiling. Smiling. God— Goddamn him.

Wake up, wake up, wake up.

Eddie swallows. The back of his tongue is still bitter with bile.

“I’ll come back,” he repeats.

He kneels in his blood and the mud and the ash and bows over him, pressing his forehead to Buck’s. Beneath him, Buck’s eyes flutter shut, and he sighs, an exhale Eddie feels in a soft, feather-light fan over his lips. The touch is so warm; he can feel it even through the heat of the fire.

“Go,” Buck tells him. He can almost feel the movement of his lips, they’re so close. “Eddie. Please.”

Eddie isn’t entirely sure where he gets the strength to stand. Everything inside of him is screaming at him to stay here, to beat at the branch with his fists and tear at it and rage until it is gone and Buck is free and he is taking him away from here, far away, to someplace clean and safe and—

And instead, hating himself with every step, he grabs Buck’s flattened helmet, replaces his own on his head, and slides down into the ravine.

It’s not easy work. With the shallow path he had chosen now blocked off by the fallen tree— stupid, stupid, stupid, he should have let Buck slide down, he should have chosen differently, he should have— Eddie has no choice but to lift each child up onto his shoulders and hoist them as high as he can until they can haul themselves up to the top of the small cliff, up by the rock formation.

He comforts them, calms them enough to listen to him, enlists the older kids to go up first and help pull the younger ones up. His body operates on autopilot; later— and even in the moment— he wouldn’t be able to describe a single thing he did or said. All he is aware of is removing one child, another, another, until he is down to the last little boy, whose ankle is definitely broken and his little face smeared with tears and soot.

This, Eddie will remember. It carves into him when he kneels beside the boy and asks, “Hey, it’s okay. What’s your name?” and that little boy looks up at him, all blue eyes through the grimy mess on his face, and tearfully answers, “Evan.”

Eddie takes it like a blow to the chest, doesn’t let it stop him. “Okay, Evan. I’m going to get you out of here back to your moms, and everything will be just fine, you hear me?”

The dark-haired boy nods up at him, sniffling. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Eddie repeats. “Hey. Hold onto this for my friend, okay? I need both hands.”

He passes Buck’s destroyed helmet over to Evan, freeing his arms so he can bow down, scoop the boy up, and carry him out. It’s not easy to make his way up the steep hillside, but the two oldest teens lean over the edge, supported by the other three braced at their waists, to help haul them up the rest of the way.

“What about your friend?” Evan asks over the crackling roar of the fire.

He shouldn’t look back, he shouldn’t, he shouldn’t—

And he does anyway, and sees Buck like a— like a stage prop, like a dropped doll, like a Halloween decoration, just laying there beneath the tree. He’s not moving, and too far away for Eddie to tell if his eyes are awake. If he’s breathing.

If he’s alive.

“I’m going to come back for him,” Eddie promises him— promises both of them— promises himself. “First, I’m getting you out of here.”

It would be easier to get back if Buck had been leading again. He’s the one who knows the way; Eddie has to guess based on what he remembers of the path they took up, and even that is practically useless, already obscured by the way the wildfire is rapidly changing the landscape.

Still, the children are real fighters, sticking close to him and holding their shirts over their faces and crouching down low. He transfers his own mask to Evan’s face, helps him breathe in the filtered air as they stumble through the woods together, like a Boy Scout troop and their leader after the beginning of the War of the Worlds.

It’s a relief in so many ways when Eddie makes out the flashing lights of the engines and ladders again, directing the children back onto the main road and out of the forest.

One of their mothers spots them first, calling out, “Sadie! Oh, God— Evan—”

All of the children are running a heartbeat later, and their mothers sprinting to them, a collision right there in the ash-blackened grass beside the road and the barricade. Hen is already jogging to meet him, as is the woman who had shouted Evan’s name, both of them moving to take him from Eddie.

Evan passes Buck’s helmet back to Eddie’s hands. It doesn’t make sense that something so much smaller should feel so much heavier.

“Oh, God, thank you, thank you so much,” his mother says, her words meant for Eddie though all of her attention is focused down on her son. “Evan— Oh, my God, what happened to you?”

Hen lifts the boy out of Eddie’s arms and directly onto a gurney. They’re gone in a heartbeat, and, in a normal situation, Eddie would probably— follow after them, maybe, or take a second to just breathe.

Instead, he’s spinning to find Bobby, locates him directing Ravi on a hose line, and tells him, “I have to go back— We need a few guys, axes, saws, maybe the jaws, I don’t know, Cap— Bobby—”

“Hey, hey, slow down,” Bobby stops him, as if— as if it’s not—

“It’s Buck up there!” Eddie is well aware he’s shouting, and Bobby would be more than correct in shouting back, and even in reprimanding him, but all that happens is his face crumples.

“I know that,” Bobby answers. “I know that, don’t— Don’t you think I— I know that, he’s—” Bobby takes a breath, hands over his face. When he pulls them away, his eyes catch downwards, and Eddie watches the moment he actually stops breathing for a second.

He’s looking right at Buck’s crushed helmet in Eddie’s hands.

In a snap, Bobby seems to pull himself together, though his attention doesn’t leave Buck’s helmet.

“Please,” Eddie begs him. “I’ll go back alone if I have to, I can’t— I can’t leave him, Bobby. I promised, I— Please, I just— Please. I promised. We can't leave him.”

Bobby’s eyes finally return to Eddie’s face for a moment that feels like it lasts forever, and likely only lasts a second, before he allows, “Okay,” and Eddie is already turning to run back into the blaze.

“You know,” Buck mumbles aloud to nobody, the words a mushy mess anyway, “I think there— that there should really be a limit to how many times you can get stuck under something this big.”

His attempt at humor doesn’t do much, but at least it’s better than panicking— and panic is already so, so close at hand.

Buck swallows, eyes flickering overhead again, hoping to see someone cutting through the flames, coming for him. Waiting for Eddie’s shape, for Bobby’s, for anyone.

Nobody comes.

The woods around him are slowly being swallowed by orange, the flames consuming everything. It’s a hell of a wildfire; Buck almost feels bad for complaining when they first got here. If he didn’t think he now has more than every right to complain about this forest fire, he would feel bad, but— as it is, they’re not exactly getting along right now.

Still, it’s spectacular. Buck’s groggy, confused mind is hypnotized by the flames. It’s easier to watch them than it is to close his eyes, anyway, and remember being trapped under the truck— or feel the licking heat— or process the pain that’s coursing through him, full-body.

Fuck, everything hurts.

Everything just— it all just hurts so, so much, every inch of him in agony. It’s hard to distinguish the individual pains from one another, and the crushing weight of the tree is swallowing up most other sensations he could possibly process.

It’s the worst he thinks he’s ever felt, which is saying something. He’d thought getting struck by lightning would be the worst he’d endure— or the tsunami— or the lawsuit— or Eddie leaving him— or being essentially abandoned by his entire family— or almost losing Bobby— or—

Well. He’s had a lot of horrible, terrible feelings in his life, he’s felt so much pain, and yet this, this—

This is incomparable.

Not only that, but—

It’s made so, so much worse by the fact that Eddie had to leave him here.

Of course, he had to. There wasn’t a choice. The children needed them, and they need Eddie more now than Buck does. They’re young, they’re vulnerable, they’re lost; Buck takes on a certain responsibility when he puts on his gear. It’s part of the job. People are his priority, they have to be.

That doesn’t make any of this hurt less.

Buck swallows down his growing nausea. He worries he wouldn’t be able to turn his head enough, and the last thing he needs right now is to choke on his own vomit. If he’s dying, he’s dying in the fire— or under the tree—

A whimper escapes him. Honestly, he’s just glad he’s not screaming and sobbing. It’s all he wants to do, really, but he’s not sure it would help— and besides, if—

When Eddie comes back, Buck doesn’t want to be hysterical. He’s going to get it together.

The last thing he wants is to seem less than— well, just— less than, in front of Eddie. It was bad enough when he’d woken up after their one— one!— night together, hoping that Eddie would still be there in bed beside him, ready to confess his feelings the same way Buck was, and he’d been gone. Bed empty, sheets cold, Eddie vanished.

He’d gotten the message, really, and it’d been fine. Really. It had been smart of Eddie to do that, honestly. Avoid the problem all together, and nothing has to change, right? And the idea of losing Eddie is the most horrifying thought Buck could have; pushing the issue and not having him as his best friend anymore— or Chris, or their intertwined life, he just— he couldn’t take it. He just couldn’t.

Now—

Well, now, he wishes he’d told him the truth. The whole truth. Staring down the barrel of never seeing Eddie again, part of him wants him to know just how loved he is, even if it meant their friendship would have collapsed. It’s not like Buck will be around much longer anyway. Maybe Eddie should know that Buck loves him— that he is in love with him— before he goes.

He’d tried to tell him before he left, but it didn’t seem like Eddie understood.

And now, he’s gone again, and Buck—

Buck remembers being with Eddie, because he doesn’t want to focus on anything else. Not the flames eating their way up the tree, starting to consume the massive branch that’s crushing him into the earth; not the bloodied mud that fills half of his vision, his face pushed into the dirt, his body too weak to lift it away; not the memory of being pinned under the truck; not the fact that he is alone, again, at the end of his life; not the fact that he is starting to feel so much less pain and so much less heat by the second, which should be good but instead seems very, very bad.

Instead, he focuses only and exclusively on Eddie.

Eddie, snuggled up on one side of him while Chris is on the other, Buck sandwiched by them on Eddie’s couch while they watch a movie together;

Eddie, reaching for him, hauling him up out of a burning building without a thought for his own well-being;

Eddie, sitting across from him during family dinner at the firehouse, kicking him under the table and giving him a smirk that makes Buck’s blood run hot;

Eddie, drawing him to his feet at a bar, the both of them drunk and silly as Buck is led out onto the dance floor and into Eddie’s arms;

Eddie, pinning Buck to his bed, driving into his cunt, everywhere their skin touches burning with how badly Buck wants to be held by him and always be held by him—

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, and Buck loses himself in the thoughts, drifting away from the unimaginable pain in his body. It’s too much to process, and he’d much rather be with Eddie right now. The happiest Buck has ever been was after Eddie fell asleep next to him, wrapped around him from behind— arms and legs both— like he was Buck’s backpack, while Buck felt the intense burn of being held by him, and imagined— imagined being loved by him always, imagined living with that love, imagined waking up the next day and being told Eddie loves him and being Chris’s dad dad and maybe marrying Eddie someday and—

A sob chokes up and out of Buck’s throat.

He’s not going to have any of that. He never was going to have any of that.

But, when he closes his eyes for a while, he can imagine.

It’s not so hot, here. It’s not so painful. And Chris is here, hanging onto Buck’s side, smiling up at him— and Eddie’s right there, too, holding Buck’s hand, kissing the back of it in a way he only ever did once, drunk and dancing with him and giving him a little bow before his lips meet Buck’s hand and—

Buck exhales, smiling. It doesn’t really hurt at all anymore.

It would’ve been nice if he could’ve told Eddie how he felt, but it’s okay. Eddie had to leave when he did, or else he and the kids might not have gotten out okay, alive, all in one piece.

Besides, he thinks Eddie knows the important things. He knows that they’re partners, that they’re co-parents, that they’re best friends. He knows Buck loves him and Chris both. He might not know he’s in love with him, or that Buck wants to be his everything the way Eddie is his everything, or that he wants to touch him and be touched by him so badly that it feels like an actual aching pain inside of him— but, he knows most things.

When Buck forces his eyes open again, all he sees are flames.

God, he wishes he could see Eddie.

He doesn’t think he’ll come back. It hurts him, a little, but he’s mostly happy about it. If he did come back, that means he would die, too— and Eddie can’t die, too. He can’t. One of them has to live— one of them has to go home to Chris— and he would always rather it be Eddie. Always.

It’s not entirely clear how much time passes. It could be one minute, stretched out like taffy; it could be one year, tripping and jumping all over itself. All Buck knows is that he’s under the tree, alone, in the flames, for what seems to be an eternity, so long he’s sure he’ll die there. He’s sure of it. It aches— it hurts— but it’s hurting less and less with every second, really. Every single second.

Maybe he should be more concerned about that. He can’t manage that much anymore, either, though.

It’s just nice thinking about Eddie.

Buck closes his eyes and thinks about family dinner. Eddie’s sitting across from him; every time he looks up, he gets a smile, and Eddie keeps tangling their ankles together, and Buck feels more in love than he ever has before. Chris is next to him, right there in the firehouse, stealing a buttered roll away from Denny and laughing, with that smile that looks like Eddie’s but is simultaneously all his own. Hen is reaching for the salad Ravi made, teasing him over it as she portions some out to Karen; beside her, Maddie and Chim offer bites of mashed potatoes to Jee and Little Bobby both.

At the head of the table, while Athena eats a bite off his plate, Bobby lifts a glass of water in Buck’s direction, as if in toast to him. Buck lifts his own glass in return, smiling. He’s never felt happier.

Eddie’s voice cuts through, and Buck looks away from the long table— the long, long, long table, all of his family seated at it, everyone he’s ever loved stretching down in two twin lines— to see Eddie standing up from it.

“Eddie?” he asks, but the words come out mushed. He didn’t realize he had food in his mouth, God, he’s embarrassed. “Sorry—”

“Don’t try to talk, Buck,” Eddie tells him.

Shame rushes through Buck. He’s doing that badly, that Eddie doesn’t want him to talk? Was he drinking? Is that why he feels so dizzy and disoriented?

Blinking, Buck mumbles, “What…?” but it comes out in a smear.

“It’s okay,” Eddie tells him.

A hand meets his face—

Eddie’s hand meets his face, and Buck sighs, relaxing into him. It’s a full-body experience, a rush that lets him relax, and he slumps against his touch.

“Mm,” he rumbles, senseless.

Another hand cups his opposite cheek, Eddie’s familiar bare palms against his skin.

“Hi,” Buck manages, turning into him, eyes closed. “Are you still hungry?”

The words come out all smushed together. A frown comes across Buck’s face; he feels it more than he even makes it, a frustrated surge through his body.

Eddie’s thumbs sweep over his cheeks. Everything else evaporates, and Buck’s frown dissolves into a smile, content to relax into his hands. If only Eddie would do this all the time. He’s not sure how he could convince him without giving away how Eddie actually makes him feel, but— they do everything else, right? He’ll figure out a way.

“Buck,” Eddie’s voice comes from so far away. “Buck, look at me.”

That’s no hardship. Buck loves looking at Eddie.

Except—

Opening his eyes is taking monumental effort.

His entire head throbs with the attempt, lightning bolts of pain that originate in his retinas and scream through his skull. It’s like his brain is trying to escape through the holes in his face.

This feels important enough that he should try and tell Eddie— he probably wouldn’t like it if Buck’s brains got all over his bare hands— but he can’t manage to speak any more than he’s capable of opening his eyes. Everything feels like it’s slipping away, getting further, more distant, less real.

Eddie’s grip on him tightens. It feels so good, the only thing that does, and Buck is so hungry for more of him that he tries to get closer.

The pain explodes.

Buck doesn’t even think he moves at all, he can’t imagine why everything is hurting so much worse. The world burns through his closed eyelids, thick heat burning orange into the darkness.

Eddie’s hands disappear, but his voice keeps going. Buck’s heart breaks at the loss, even as he struggles to listen to Eddie, to make out the words he’s shouting from so close by. He barely understands him, and that— that’s not good, not at all, because it’s Eddie, and Buck always wants to know what he’s saying. Always. Even if he’s upset with him.

God, he hopes Eddie isn’t upset with him. Why would Eddie be upset with him? Is that why he stopped holding him? Where—

Where the hell is he? Why does everything hurt so much—

Buck sucks in a sudden shocked breath as the massive weight compressing his body, crushing him into the earth, vanishes all at once.

Hands are on him again— too many to just be Eddie’s, but Buck thinks he can tell that two of them are his. He’s being dragged, hauled, moved; his eyelids are forced open, and he sees a bright light, then Hen, then another bright light, then Hen again.

“Uneven pupilary response,” are the first words he can actually make out in this new chaos. “Expecting head trauma—”

With the weight off of his body, Buck feels like his lungs can fully expand, and he uses his newly rediscovered air to breathe, “Eddie—”

“Hey, there you are, Buckaroo,” Hen greets him. Buck groans at the light returning to his eyes, letting them close again.

“Eddie?” he asks again.

Hen’s voice sighs. “Yeah, figures.” Her voice moves and raises in volume as she calls, “Eddie? He’s asking for— Yup, here he comes.”

“Hey, Buck,” Eddie says, there again, and Buck forces his eyes back open.

It really is Eddie.

He’s smeared in ash and soot and grime and blood—

“Blood?” Buck asks, distress rocketing through him. Lifting his arm to reach for Eddie’s face, staticky agony prickles up from his fingertips and into his entire skeleton; he has to let his arm fall back down, breath coming fast and hard. “What— Eddie? What’s—” His words feel like they’re collapsing again when he asks, “What’s happening?”

“You’re okay,” Eddie reassures him. “Hey. I said I’d come back, didn’t I? You’re okay now, I’ve got you. Don’t worry about a thing.”

Buck fights to remember what he’s talking about. What would he be worrying over? Why did Eddie say he’d come back? Is he going to leave him?

“Don’t go,” he mumbles, eyes drifting shut again. “Eddie— Please—”

“Okay, we have to get a collar on him, get him out of here,” Hen instructs— Eddie, maybe. Somebody, for sure, because Buck’s being shuffled around by too many hands again about a second later, and he fights to stifle the involuntary cry of pain that whimpers up into his throat.

“Careful,” Eddie’s voice snaps, but he’s not there. He would be careful. Why doesn’t he move him?

“Eddie,” Buck forces out, begging them to understand. The hands move him, bodies everywhere when he tries to open his eyes, but Eddie’s face doesn’t come to him. Tears burn up into him, a confused hysteria starting to seize him. Lifted up, carried, set down on something— and then he’s moving, moving away from Eddie. “No, no— Eddie— Eddie—”

Distantly, Buck’s aware that he’s sobbing, Eddie’s name repeating in a bleeding mess pouring out of his mouth, over and over and over again. There are flames everywhere around him, as if he is plunging into Hell, and he just can’t stop begging for Eddie; in his delirium, all he wants is Eddie, to be back with Eddie, to be held by Eddie, so desperately it feels like he’s losing his mind over it.

The world moves in fits and starts; through the confusion, the fire disappears, replaced by a blank field of silver. All the sounds and bodies and chaos vanish, too, and the abrupt shift shocks Buck into tripping over his sobs, breath hitching.

A hand grabs his; Buck tries to pull it away, but another hand grips his wrist, and he knows that touch.

“Eddie,” he exhales, letting it drip off his tongue. He doesn’t have the energy for much else.

“Right here,” Eddie promises him. He squeezes his hand, and it hurts, but Buck wouldn’t want anything else. “I’m right here—”

“Don’t leave,” Buck begs him. “Please. Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Buck, I swear.” Eddie’s voice sounds as wrecked as Buck feels, but he can’t manage to keep his eyes open long enough to check his expression, too. “I swear.”

“Don’t go.” Buck can feel him leaving— can feel everything leaving— and he’s terrified. “Don’t— Don’t go, please, Eddie—”

“I’m not leaving,” Eddie repeats, at the bottom of the ocean. Why is he so far away? “I promise. I’m not going to let anything else happen to you, I won’t leave again. Buck— I’m so, so sorry, I—”

Whatever he says next disappears with the rest of the world. The last thing Buck is aware of is Eddie’s hand in his, his voice rolling over him, apologies and promises and hitching breaths until there is just— nothing at all.

Eddie doesn’t want to let go of Buck’s hand.

Even as Hen and Chim swoop in over him, their voices reduced to a buzz, he doesn’t let go of Buck’s hand. He can’t— he won’t.

The back of the ambulance is filled with the medicinal sounds of machines screaming out Buck’s crashing vitals. Blood pressure bottoming out, heart stopping in a singular whine of a flatline, Buck almost seems to leave his body, hand going limp in Eddie’s.

Still, Eddie won’t let go.

Not until Hen forcibly removes his hand with a genuinely apologetic, “Sorry, I need this,” before she’s filling Eddie’s field of vision, Buck disappearing for an instant while she takes over.

The ambulance jostles on the road beneath them; Hen and Chim steady themselves before they keep working, and Eddie tries not to shove himself in between them, reminds himself that not only are they capable, but they love Buck, too—

Just—

Not like he does.

Eddie shuffles himself backwards. He knows he can’t put his shaking hands into the mix here, but he can’t stand not being able to see Buck. It’s all he can do to cram himself in the corner and just watch over him as Hen and Chim scramble to save his life.

He looks— bad. He looks horrendous, just— fucked, and Eddie’s breath catches in his chest again, another hitching sob that wants to fight free. He’s been trying to stifle them since he managed to get everyone back to Buck, when he’d found him getting licked by flames eating their way up the tree and had thought— for a few seconds, for too long, he had thought—

And now—

“Come on, Buck,” he whispers, knowing he’ll hear him if he can. “Come on. Don’t do this.” Tears roll down his cheeks, cutting tracks through the grime and Buck’s blood, smeared all over his face. “I’m so sorry—”

He can’t— He can’t die, Buck can’t die. He’s— Too many times, he’s almost died, but that’s— That’s what he does, he always comes back. He’s the one person that Eddie has always known wouldn’t leave; he’s the one person that always begs everyone to stay.

Eddie should have stayed.

Jamming the heels of his hands into his eyesockets, Eddie tries to shove the tears back in. A furious rage at himself is bubbling up inside, and his hands keep going upwards, tracking into his hair and gripping tight.

Buck’s still—

His heart’s not beating, and Eddie— Eddie can’t even be surprised, just— just looking at him, all he sees is— is blood. His face is a disaster of nasty open burns that lick all the way down his right side. His gear and the tree itself protected him from a lot of the flame, but the obvious crush injuries from the blow— the dark bruising already blossoming all over him when Hen rips open his jacket and underclothes to get to his bare skin, his left leg absolutely fractured, his right arm and shoulder bent out of shape— just compound to make him look terrifying. The fact that he has survived this long is the shocking part.

Fear seizes Eddie in a way it hasn’t since he thought he had lost Chris in the tsunami, the dropping-out of his stomach and the cold seeping through him and the sheer impossibility of the loss. It’s too much, too much to lose, he can’t.

“Please,” Eddie feels slip out of his mouth. It’s a prayer, a plea to God, but it’s more than that, desperate, unbidden. He doesn’t mean to say it; he doesn’t feel in control of his body as he begs, “Please, please, Buck, please—”

He never should have left him there, he never should have been there in the first place, they— they never should have gone to the wildfire, they never should have lived in Los Angeles, they never should have met, because then Buck would be okay right now and Eddie wouldn’t have to feel this pain, this agony that he knows will never end.

All he has is watching Buck die, and listening to him die, and knowing he is dead because of him.

One of the machines erupts into an irregular beat, cutting off the unbroken monotony of his flatline. Over the noise— Eddie’s new favorite sound— Chim laughs, a little hysterical.

“There we go,” he exclaims. “There we go, Buck, good job. Stay with us, brother, come on—”

Eddie wants to go to him, to take Buck in his arms and hold him and tell him that he fucked up, that he’s sorry, that he should have stayed— he should have stayed every time, he should have stayed with him at the tree, and he should have stayed with him in bed, and he should have stayed with him in Los Angeles.

He knows better, now. He knows what it feels like to lose Buck; he doesn’t want to feel that way ever again, hates that he’s made Buck feel that way so many times.

Buck’s pulse is erratic, too slow and too irregular; by the time they’re coming to a slamming stop in the ambulance bay outside the nearest trauma center, he’s alive, but only barely.

Hen and Chim are met by what seems to be this hospital’s entire emergency department, a swarm of pre-warned doctors and nurses and machines that swallow Buck up inside of them. He’s swept out of the ambulance as if he is a leaf dropped into a rushing river, and then Eddie’s just— there, alone.

Staggering out of the ambulance, scrambling in after them, Eddie can’t catch up. He sprints, and Buck still disappears through a heavy set of doors that Eddie can’t go through, a nurse catching him by the shoulder to halt his progress.

“We’ll take care of him from here,” she tells him.

Eddie shoves away from her, argues, “No, I have to go with him! I promised—”

“Eddie, Eddie, hey,” Hen stops him, trying to grip his upper arms. He tears away from her, too, and her hands fly up, palms-out. “Okay, got it. Eddie, listen to me— He’s going to be okay. He needs to be back there right now—”

“And I should be with him!” Eddie shouts. He doesn’t know how to make them understand, Hen should understand, she has tears down her own cheeks and Buck had died in front of her, too, and she— she didn’t even promise not to leave, he promised not to leave him. “Hen, I— I promised, I said I wouldn’t— I— I wouldn’t—”

“I know,” Hen says, soft. Her voice breaks when she repeats, “I know, Eddie.”

His shoulders slump. The raging fire inside of him is starting to cool down into prickling, cold dread.

“What if he wakes up without me?” he asks. He’s shaking, he thinks. Shock, maybe.

“Then he’s awake,” Hen says, still crying, “and he knows he’ll see us again soon. He’ll know you’re here.”

Eddie’s certain he’s shaking, now. The tremors are wracking him full-body, and his next words are mostly a sob, bursting out of him. “What if he doesn’t wake up?”

“Oh, Eddie,” is all Hen says before he’s crashing forward into her. She winds her arms around him, takes a step back to keep her balance; at his side, Chim wraps them both up in his embrace, chest hitching with his own suppressed crying.

They’re still there, folded together in an off-balance knot, reeking of smoke and blood and death, when Bobby comes crashing in through the doors to the emergency department. He’s still in full gear, though his helmet is gone; distantly, Eddie wonders where Buck’s crushed helmet ended up, but it only starts a new round of shivering, thinking of it flattened and crushed and—

“Where is he?” Bobby demands, sprinting as soon as he catches sight of them. “What—” They unfold, just a little bit, and Eddie catches the terrified realization starting to make its way across Bobby’s face. “He’s— He’s not—”

“His heart was beating when they took him,” Chim tells him, wiping under his eyes.

The relief that washes over Bobby is palpable. It nearly looks like he buckles before catching himself, taking a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says, then— firmer, “Okay. He’s going to be just fine.”

Eddie doesn’t understand how he can just— just say that, just believe it, and a distant part of him knows he needs to say it— that he needs to believe it— but right now—

“He’s not fine, he died,” Eddie says, and the truth of it slams into him. Buck has— technically been dead before, but it never felt like this, never felt so real. “Oh, God, it’s my fault—”

“No,” Hen stops him right away. “No, it’s—”

“I told him to go that way!” Eddie exclaims. “And then I left him there! Fuck— Goddamnit—”

Bobby’s hands come to Eddie’s shoulders, this time. Eddie jerks, but Bobby doesn’t let go, tightening his grip and ducking his head, forcing Eddie to meet his eye.

“You did what you were supposed to do,” Bobby tells him. “You couldn’t have known what would happen. You wouldn’t have gotten him hurt on purpose, he knows that. You didn’t do anything wrong, Eddie. You saved those kids, you saved Buck— You did everything right. It’s not your fault what happened.”

“Yes, it is,” Eddie says, softer now. “You don’t get it—”

“No, it’s not,” Bobby tells him. He’s firm, solid, unyielding. “Buck isn’t going to want you thinking it is.”

Hearing that—

It’s like Eddie’s chest has been fracturing since the tree came down, and now it’s cracking open.

“I love him,” he whispers up to Bobby.

“I know you do, kid,” Bobby says.

“No, I—” Eddie’s breath catches, and he’s crying again when he tells him, “I love him.”

Bobby’s expression looks so heartbroken and pitying that Eddie crushes his eyes closed. He can see Buck behind his eyelids, and he sucks in a shuddering breath as if he’s been stabbed in the stomach.

Tugging him in, Bobby wraps Eddie up in a tight embrace. Eddie stumbles forward blindly into him, hugging him as hard as he can in return. Shame burns through him when he can’t stop himself from sobbing, but he can’t help it. It’s all he can do.

“I know,” Bobby repeats. “I know you do.”

Buck startles awake with a sharp inhale.

It’s dark.

Why is it so dark?

His groggy mind struggles to think. Everything is unclear, foggy, like he’s trying to squint through a thunderstorm. Maybe he got drunk last night? But he doesn’t remember going out; he remembers—

Trying to make his confused brain put the pieces together has his head throbbing, but Buck still tries it.

He remembers—

He remembers Eddie, and he relaxes a little bit. That’s a good thing, probably.

No—

No, he remembers—

Fire, and confusion, and pain. Eddie’s face— Hen’s face, Chim’s— the inside ceiling of the ambulance—

Then, just—

Darkness, and quiet.

Not unlike where he is now.

Panic begins to replace confusion. His chest starts heaving, but the feeling is strange; Buck lifts his hand to his chest, attempts to swallow, and realizes he can’t. There’s something in his throat, something in his nose, and something restraining his hand.

Startling, Buck yanks at his hand, looking over just in time to realize he has pulled himself right out of Eddie’s hold.

Eddie.

Eddie, right next to him, slumped forward in a stiff chair over the edge of the bed— over the edge of the hospital bed, he’s in a dark hospital room, why, and Buck’s heartbeat kicks up, audibly fast through the whole room.

Still waking up, Eddie asks, “What—?” before he’s gasping, “Buck,” and shooting to his feet. “You’re awake— Oh, shit— Buck, calm down—”

Buck tries to grab at the tube in his throat, between his lips, the mask over his face. Quick as a flash, Eddie snatches his wrists; Buck writhes in his grip, confused and panicking and scared, unable to even ask what’s happening to him, and it hurts.

“Buck, please,” Eddie begs him. “It’s okay, you’re okay. It’s helping you right now— Fuck—”

Still, the panic is seizing him, and Buck can’t stop trying to fight against him. Eddie looks him over like he’s a wild animal before he seems to make a decision. He releases Buck’s wrists for a split second, just long enough for him to drop down in the bed and wrap his arms all the way around him. He has to be careful, moving around the tubes and wires and lines running to Buck’s body, but he takes hold of him, and Buck—

The fight escapes him like he’s deflating.

The feeling of Eddie wrapped around him like this is— is so good, incomparably good, and he closes his eyes, willing the pain and fear to back off so he can enjoy this.

A nurse comes rushing in, and Buck is falling asleep again before he can even really process her presence. He dips back into the darkness of unconsciousness with Eddie holding him tight, and feels so much better for it.

When he wakes up the next time, the tube in his throat is gone, replaced with a different, smaller mask fit over his mouth and nose. His brain feels less groggily confused, his body less pained and panicked; everything is just kind of— floaty, and distant. It’s nice. There’s still more pain than he’d like, but— it could be worse, he supposes.

Buck hums, just to test. His throat is sore, but— nope, no tube. He smiles under his mask, tipping his head, looking for Eddie.

His heart skips a beat as he processes that he’s not there anymore. He can’t help the way the smile slips off his face at the realization that Eddie isn’t spooning him, or holding his hand, or even sitting at his bedside.

“Eddie?” he asks, unable to further articulate the thoughts rushing through his head.

“Sorry, kid,” Bobby replies, and Buck’s head snaps to the other side. “Hey, careful. You hit your head pretty good.”

Buck squints at Bobby, watching him as he rises from the uncomfortable-looking hospital couch he’s dragged up beside Buck’s bed. He’s tapping on his phone before he sends something and pockets it again, crossing to him, giving him his full focus.

“No, I think the tree hit my head pretty good,” Buck tells him.

Bobby laughs, stopping at his bedside to pat his shoulder. It’s a light touch; Buck barely registers it, he’s so gentle with him.

“Yup, it’s still you,” Bobby says, drawing a grin up out of Buck.

“I don’t think people actually get amnesia from getting hit on the head,” Buck says, then frowns a little. “Wait. Can they?”

“Only if a coconut falls out of a tree,” Bobby tells him, still smiling a little. “Not when whole trees fall on them.”

Buck knows he’s meant to laugh, but he can only grimace at the memory. His body flinches automatically at the thought of the tree cracking, the sight of it starting to come down—

“Hey, Buck, look at me,” Bobby instructs him, and Buck does as told, wild eyes flying up to him. “You’re safe now. You’re okay. You’re in the hospital, and you’re a little banged up, but you’re going to be okay.”

Taking a deep breath, Buck nods. It aches, in a distant way. He takes another breath, another, another; the filtered air in the mask is stale, but clean and clear and easy to breathe.

“The fire?” he asks, his voice muffled slightly.

“It’s out,” Bobby tells him, and Buck nods again, relieved by that, at least.

After a moment, though, he groans.

“What’s wrong?” Bobby asks. “Does something hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” Buck tells him, even though it’s a strange kind of hurt right now. “No, I just realized you’re gonna have me off the truck forever.”

Bobby huffs at him. “Buck, you got crushed by a tree. That was on fire. After it exploded in your face.”

“So?”

“You died,” Bobby tells him.

That draws Buck up short. It takes a second to process— and he knows he’ll have a lot more processing ahead of him— but his response in the immediate is, “I didn’t stay dead.”

The look Bobby gives him is familiar. Buck expects the, “Something is seriously wrong with you,” just as much as he expects the, “Love you, kid,” that follows.

Usually, though, that’s where Bobby would ruffle his hair or clap his shoulder or something. He doesn’t touch him, this time.

“How bad is it?” Buck asks him, a little more serious, and watches the resulting grave shift in Bobby’s expression, as well. Cold dread pools in his stomach; he feels queasy when Bobby sits on the edge of his bed, reaching to take Buck’s hand in his, ginger with the IV line poked into the back.

“They said they’d go through everything with you— and whoever you want here— when you woke up,” Bobby explains. “But I can tell you— You got some pretty bad burns, mostly all on your right side.” Buck tries to lift his other hand, to touch his face and assess the damage, but his arm is strapped against his chest. He’s frowning down at it when Bobby tells him, “Broken shoulder, fractured radius. You broke four ribs and fractured six more. Fractured your left fibula, broke both knees. Surprising lack of internal trauma and organ damage, they guess because of how you hit the ground curled-up. Defensive pose. Still— Still got a— A pretty severe concussion, and, uhh—”

Bobby clears his throat, his clinical tone dissolving the further down the list he gets. His voice catches, and Buck frowns. “Cap, I’m sorry, you don’t have to—”

“No, just—” Bobby takes a breath, then tells him, “Smoke inhalation. Burns in your airway.” Explains the pain in his chest and his throat, too, Buck realizes. “Buck— You shouldn’t even be here.”

Buck knows what he means, but he has no filter right now, loosened by wooziness and  this whole insane experience. “Don’t I know it.”

Something pained comes into Bobby’s expression. “That’s not what I meant. I’m just— This would’ve killed anybody else, Buck.”

Offering him a lopsided smile, Buck tells him, “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not anybody else, then. Right?”

Bobby laughs. It’s wet, a little watery. Buck understands.

“Right,” he agrees. “God. Only you, Buck. You don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

“You know me,” Buck replies. “I’m a go-getter.” After a beat, he allows himself to ask the question that’s been on the tip of his tongue since he opened his eyes. “Is— Where’s Eddie?”

“Chris wouldn’t go home and sleep in his own bed if Eddie didn’t go with him,” Bobby tells him, and Buck needs no more explanation. It’s the best one he could’ve gotten, really; he relaxes back into his crinkling hospital-issued pillow just hearing it.

“Good,” Buck sighs. “He should rest.” Hesitating, he voices the fear churning up in his head, asks, “Is he okay?”

Bobby squeezes his hand. “He’s okay. He’ll be better when he gets a chance to talk to you, I think.”

“He kept apologizing to me,” Buck says, remembering Eddie’s unending stream of sorries to him before he lost consciousness. “It’s not his fault, Bobby, I mean it. He did what any of us would have d—”

“Hey, kid, calm down,” Bobby stops him. “I know it’s not his fault. He just doesn’t know it.”

Buck’s pulse starts to speed up again. “When is he coming back? I should talk to him.”

“Well, I texted him when you woke up, so, I’m assuming you’ve got maybe five more minutes, maximum, before he’s here,” Bobby tells him.

The smile that spreads on Buck’s face is automatic. “Thanks, Bobby.”

“No problem,” Bobby tells him. “Hey, I’m going to get a nurse, though. Your doctor asked us to tell her when you woke up, and I think you’re due for more painkillers soon.”

“Good,” Buck replies. He can feel too much of the pain, he thinks, and he groans when he shifts. The more he wakes up, the more the floaty feeling dissolves. Reality is too hard and sharp-edged and painful. “God, whatever they’re giving me isn’t anywhere near enough.”

“Tell them that,” Bobby insists, earnest, before he’s going out into the hall to flag down a nurse.

It’s only a matter of minutes before a nurse is at Buck’s bedside, taking his vitals, and another changes a bandage on the side of his head, all while several younger doctors record notes off the readings coloring the monitors around him, hooked up to him. His primary doctor is a woman who actually kind of looks like the mom he’d helped earlier today, and he smiles at her when she comes in.

“Hey, Doc,” he greets her. “Thanks for saving me.”

“I had very little to do with that,” she replies. “That was your friends. And mine, in trauma surgery.” She pulls her wheeling stool from beside the wall where it waits and takes a seat at Buck’s bedside. “I actually want to thank you.”

Buck’s brow furrows. It stings, makes his head ache; he wonders just how bad his face is, but doesn’t want to prod at it in front of all the doctors. “For what?”

“I got a call from my sister earlier,” she explains. “I’d been waiting to hear from her and her wife and their friends, because I knew they were hiking out where the forest fire started.” Realization hits Buck after a belated second, only confirmed when she tells him, “You and your friends saved my niece and nephews. Thank you.”

Heat fills Buck’s face. “I didn’t do anything except get crushed by a tree. Eddie’s the one who saved them.”

“And I have thanked him profusely,” she assures him. “But you went up there for them. Your Captain told me you said to save them before you.” Something shines in her dark eyes. This close, he realizes just how much she looks like her sister. “Thank you.”

“It’s my job,” Buck answers, his throat thick for more reasons than one.

She nods, then laughs, apparently amused by herself. “Sorry— I’m Dr. Greta Rao. My sister, Sydney— she’s the one you helped.”

“The one screaming in Cap’s face to save her kids,” Buck says, a pinch of amused, mostly impressed.

Fond affection rushes over his doctor’s expression, and she agrees, “That sounds like her. And I’m glad she did.”

“Me, too,” Buck says. “We might not have known otherwise.”

It feels strange to be glad that the reason he was crushed by a tree still happened, but— He is. If none of that had happened, those kids might’ve died stuck out there. No matter what happens to Buck, that is always the worse option.

“Well,” Dr. Rao tells him, “I can’t thank you enough. But, I can start by going over what happened, and how we patched you back together. Sound fair?”

“Sounds like a plan, Doc,” Buck agrees, just as the door crashes in and Eddie barrels through it, breathless and heaving and still in his pajamas, sleep shirt faded and shorts loose on his hips.

“Buck.” His name is an exhalation, the last of Eddie’s air before he’s stumbling over to his bedside.

However bad Buck’s face is, it’s not so bad that Eddie isn’t willing to catch his head between his hands, shove his mask out of the way, and push into a kiss with him.

Buck’s heart leaps up into his burned throat. The growing pain doesn’t even bother him that much when he has Eddie to focus on— Eddie kissing him to focus on, Eddie is kissing him.

A confused, happy sound comes out of Buck, dissolved into their kiss, a question and an exclamation, wordless. Eddie withdraws, letting their foreheads rest lightly together for a moment before he lifts his chin to kiss him between the eyes.

“Sorry,” he murmurs. “I couldn’t wait any longer to do that.”

“Nothing to apologize for,” Buck whispers upwards. Eddie slides the mask back into place over his mouth and nose without a word. “Hey. I mean it, Eddie.” It’s suddenly important he tell him this right now, even with their audience, and Buck insists, “It’s not your fault. What happened— It’s not your fault, Eddie, okay?”

The look on Eddie’s face speaks volumes, tells Buck he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying.

“I thought I lost you,” Eddie tells him, his voice just as quiet, desperate, raw between them. His hands keep roving, like he can’t touch him enough but he’s still afraid to hurt him; everywhere he grazes, Buck lights up, until he just wants to be grabbed and held. “I’m— I’m so sorry, I— I shouldn’t have directed you to the shallow side—”

“Eddie—” Buck tries to interrupt him, still a little muffled by talking through his mask, but Eddie is unstoppable.

“—I shouldn’t have left you behind, in the woods, in the— in the fire, I shouldn’t have left you alone here, I shouldn’t have—” He swallows, thick. “I shouldn’t have left, that morning.”

Buck’s heart flips.

“I shouldn’t have ever left you, Buck,” Eddie insists to him. “I shouldn’t have let you die—”

“Eddie—”

“I shouldn’t have— have kissed you without asking just now,” Eddie keeps going, until Buck reaches up and puts his good hand over his mouth to stop him himself. Mumbling around his fingers, “Buck—”

“No, I don’t want to hear it,” Buck tells him. “And I’m the one in the hospital bed, so. You have to listen to me.”

Eddie huffs, but he doesn’t start up again.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Buck assures him, and means it. “Nothing. Hey,” he warns him, when Eddie starts opening his mouth; he snaps it shut. “You saved those kids. That’s what I wanted.”

“But—”

“There is no but, Eddie,” he protests, and doesn’t even get a chance to stop and laugh at his wording. “You did the right thing. And you came back and saved me. That’s all that matters to me.”

Eddie lets this sink in before he starts to say, “But—”

“For the love of God,” Buck cuts him off, tugging his mask down and pushing himself upward the last few inches between them to silence him with a kiss this time, just to make his point clear.

Kissing Eddie is as good as it has been every time, but even better now. Better than silly spin-the-bottle party kisses, better than drunk fumbling in the dark, better than a friendly press against his cheek— this is Eddie kissing him, sober and intentional and in front of people, and Buck feels so held by him that he could just die happy.

He’s glad he won’t. But he could.

“I love you,” Eddie tells him when they separate.

Buck slides his mask back into place, giving himself clean oxygen again. “I know.”

Eddie snorts. “You’re kidding m—”

“I love you, too,” Buck stops him. “I just— Y’know, I had to. You can’t set me up like that.”

“Yeah, I really can’t.” Eddie’s thumbs sweep under Buck’s eyes. His touch feels different on the right compared to the left; Buck’s dreading looking in a mirror to see the extent of the damage. “You know what I mean, though. Don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Buck echoes. “I’m in love with you, too.”

Eddie’s grin is so bright it lights up the darkened hospital room. Buck’s surprised it doesn’t hurt his eyes or make his concussion headache flare.

Bobby clears his throat, pointed, and they part. Buck blushes, rushing with heat, sheepish; Eddie only glances back at him and asks, “What?”

“This is really sweet,” Bobby tells him, “and I am happy for you both, really, I am. This has been— way too long coming, you’re both very obvious.”

“Hey—”

“I am not—”

“But,” Bobby speaks over them, “Maybe let Dr. Rao finish first and then you can have a— uhh, personal visit.”

This does actually seem to sink into Eddie, and he nods, moving to stand, saying, “Sorry, Dr. Rao,” but Buck grabs for his hand, won’t let him go.

“He can stay, right?” Buck asks.

Dr. Rao laughs. “Yes, your partner can stay.” Buck’s eyes fly to Eddie’s, but neither of them protest the term, and Buck finds himself smiling again. “He’ll probably be happy to hear what I’ve got to tell you, too.”

“What, my stupid long list of injuries?” Buck asks. “Not really Eddie’s thing, I think.”

“No, not that,” Dr. Rao corrects him, smiling. “No, I wanted to wait to tell you both until I had all the paperwork back from the surgeons that worked on you. They sent the results from their ultrasound, your baby is perfectly okay. I’m not sure how you managed it, Mr. Buckley, but their heartbeat is strong, there’s no signs of trauma. My best guess is that the way you fell managed to basically force your body into a protective shell around them, but— Even that, I don’t quite understand— but, all this to say, the important thing is—”

“My baby,” Buck interrupts her. Everything she said after the words ‘your baby’ kind of dissolved, though they’re attempting to sink through into his understanding.

There’s a moment of stillness and silence.

Then, Dr. Rao says, slower this time, “Yes. Your baby is okay.” She hesitates; Buck can barely see her. Everything is narrowing down to ‘your baby,’ ‘your baby,’ ‘your baby.’ “Did you not—”

“No,” Buck answers. “I didn’t— I didn’t know, I—” He looks to Eddie, finds him already looking back, his eyes blown dark and his mouth a little open and generally appearing as if he’s just been unexpectedly shot through the chest. “I had no idea, I— Eddie. I’m so sorry—”

Eddie crashes into him, gathering Buck up tight in his arms. He doesn’t speak; Buck gets it. He’s too overwhelmed to verbalize anything else, his head spinning.

“Is—” Eddie starts to ask, buried in Buck’s throat, muffled, and Buck nods with a jerk. His grip on Buck tightens, and Buck doesn’t care that it makes his ribs scream; he hugs him back with his one good arm, hanging on tight, fingers wrapped up in the back of Eddie’s soft sleep shirt.

‘Your baby.’

His baby.

Fuck— his baby, their baby, his baby with Eddie, his baby that— that he didn’t even know was there, his baby that he— he ran into a forest fire with, got crushed by a tree with, and they still survived, still here—

“You’re sure?” Buck asks Dr. Rao, though he doesn’t release Eddie to do so.

There’s a beat before Dr. Rao says, “Oh, you’re talking to m— Yes, I’m sure. Both that you’re pregnant, and that your baby is okay.” She leans over and taps at one of the screens; Buck and Eddie separate just enough to watch her, though they’re still clinging close. “Do you hear this sound?”

She turns up the volume on the side of the device, and one of the quieter sounds magnifies, grows louder and louder until it is impossible to ignore, a rapid-pace fluttering that sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

“That’s your baby’s heartbeat,” she tells them. “Looking at the results from the ultrasound they performed, we would place them around ten weeks along. I can bring you copies, too. You can see for yourself.”

Buck didn’t need to be told they’re ten weeks along. He remembers the exact night he and Eddie slept together, and Eddie had been gone the next day, and—

A flash of unsettled hurt rushes through Buck’s system, and he looks to Eddie, a little panicked. As if he can read his mind, Eddie cradles Buck’s face in one hand, cupping his cheek, his thumb running along his lower lip while the pad of his middle finger settles in the center of his birthmark.

“I’m right here,” Eddie tells him.

“Please,” Buck starts, but he can’t make himself say the rest, to beg him not to leave him again. It’s too much— and if he says no—

“I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Eddie insists. “I promise. I said I’m not leaving you, and I’m not.”

“But—”

“Buck,” Eddie stops him. “I thought— You could have—” Tears spill over, and Eddie always tries so, so hard not to cry, even when Buck always insists it’s okay and good for him to let it out. His heart hurts. “I could have lost both of you— Buck, God—”

Eddie breaks down in between Buck and God, head bowing over him as real sobs start to rip up and out of him. It’s only a second before Buck has tears of his own burning up, and he yanks Eddie back in to hide his face in him when he starts to cry, too.

A hand on the top of his head comforts him, a little, before Bobby tells him, “I’ll be right outside whenever you’re ready, kid. I’ll tell people you’re awake, but— You can do the rest.” His fingers brush through the remains of Buck’s hair. “Congratulations. You really don’t do anything by halves, do you?”

A soft, wet laugh from Buck, a comforting touch of Bobby’s hand to Eddie’s hair, and then Bobby is gone. He’s not the only one who goes. Buck can hear, past Eddie’s crying and his own hitching breaths and the blood roaring in his ears, that Dr. Rao and her small fleet of doctors and nurses follow after him; the room empties until it is only them, the door shutting with a quiet click, much softer than the slam Eddie had opened it with.

It takes a while for Eddie to calm down. Whenever Buck’s tears slow, Eddie’s kick him right back up again. It’s like he can’t stop.

Buck gets it.

“I’m sorry,” Buck finally manages to whisper into Eddie’s hair.

Eddie jerks upright. His face is all red and wet, his eyes swollen and bloodshot. He still insists, “You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing—”

“They could’ve died, too,” Buck argues, and saying the words makes him feel sick. “It would’ve been my fault—”

“No—”

“Eddie—”

“You listen to me,” Eddie stops him, forcing Buck to look at him. He must be a mess, but Eddie only looks at him like he’s Buck. “If it weren’t for you, they wouldn’t be here at all. You kept them safe.”

“I—”

“Just like you kept those kids safe,” Eddie continues, and more tears burn up into Buck’s eyes. “Just like you keep everybody safe, just like— Just like you’ve kept Chris safe. Like you’ve kept me safe, Buck. You didn’t do anything wrong, you did everything right.”

At the mention of Chris, the more practical side of what’s happening starts leaking into Buck’s thoughts, and he asks, “What— What are we gonna do?”

Eddie looks confused, for some reason. “What do you mean?”

“About us,” Buck clarifies, but Eddie doesn’t seem any clearer. “And the baby?”

“What?” Eddie asks. “Like— Where you want to live? We can find a new place if you want—”

“Wait,” Buck stops him. “No, sorry, just— You want— this? All of this?”

That draws Eddie up short. He opens his mouth, like he’s going to speak, then closes it. For a long, tense beat, he’s silent; then, he reopens his mouth to ask, “You don’t?”

“No— I mean, yes? No, I mean— Yes, I want them, and— all of this, and you, I just—” Buck falters just short of asking, ‘Do you?’ or, perhaps even more disastrously, ‘Why do you?’

Eddie seems to hear his questions all the same anyway, and his face crumples.

“Oh, Buck,” he sighs, and Buck’s insides swoop. This is it, this is the end, and—

Tilting down, Eddie kisses him through the mask, this time.

“Breathe,” Eddie instructs him.

“I am,” Buck mumbles against him and the mask.

“Let me be very clear to you,” Eddie says, lifting up only a little. “Because I know that’s not our strong suit when it comes to this stuff. But I— Buck, I never should have left that morning, not the way I did. And I should have talked to you about it after, I just got so scared.”

“Scared?” Buck asks, incredulous. What the hell does Eddie have to be scared of? “Of me?”

“Of losing you,” Eddie clarifies. “But then—” He looks down at Buck’s lips to say this, rather than his eyes. “I found out what it really feels like to love you and lose you.” His huff of a laugh is unamused. “It all seems so stupid now.”

“Not stupid,” Buck argues. “It just took us a little while.” He reaches up to put his good hand over Eddie’s against his face. “You’re not going to lose me.”

“I better not.” Eddie kisses his forehead. “I told you, I’m not leaving you. I’ll always come back. Even if I have to walk into Hell for you.”

“What, I’m not going to Heaven?” Buck asks.

“Oh, probably not,” Eddie tells him. “But neither am I, so.”

Buck smiles a little. After a moment, he tells Eddie, “I’m still sorry.” Before he can argue again, he rushes to add, “I didn’t mean to hurt you or scare you, but I did. And I’m really sorry.”

Eddie looks him over for a long moment, like he’s drinking him in or memorizing him.

“Me, too,” Eddie echoes.

Buck’s smile grows. “Can I have a hug?”

“Can you— Of course, you can have a hug, Buck,” Eddie says, and it’s the greatest news Buck’s ever gotten.

Well. Second greatest, he thinks. Still very good.

It takes some maneuvering, but Eddie manages to fit himself upright in bed behind Buck, situating him between his thighs. Buck relaxes against him, his back to Eddie’s front, and sighs, letting his eyes close.

Eddie’s arms wind around him, holding him as tight and close as he can without hurting him. Buck reaches up to put his own arms over Eddie’s, tugging his grip to tighten it a little; he doesn’t mind a bit of pain in return.

When Eddie’s thumb starts to stroke up and down, slow and steady, over Buck’s bandaged stomach, through his hospital gown, Buck’s heart jumps again.

It’s reflected on the monitors, and Eddie’s smile can be felt when he presses a kiss to the crown of Buck’s head.

“Relax,” he murmurs, punctuated by another kiss. “Everything’s okay.”

It wasn’t— so, so recently, it was not okay, and Buck was crushed beneath a flaming tree, just waiting to die, but—

But, now, he’s safe and recovering in the hospital; the forest fire is out, and the kids were saved; Eddie is here, and in love with him, and they’re having a baby.

And Eddie is holding him so, so tight.

Buck focuses on the movement of Eddie’s thumb, lets himself narrow down to that point of touch and nothing more. He can feel Eddie’s hold everywhere, surrounding him, and it’s the best medicine he could ever ask for. All he wants is to be held as much as he can, as close as he can, even as injured as he is.

“Chris is going to be so excited,” Eddie mumbles into his hair.

Buck rouses a bit. “Really? Are you sure?”

“You’re already his favorite person in the world, Buck,” Eddie reminds him.

“I don’t know about th—”

“I do,” Eddie interrupts him, firm. “And you are. Plus, he’s always wanted to be a big brother.”

Big brother. Because Buck is giving him a little sibling.

He turns his head, watching the faster of the two pulse monitors, listening to their baby’s heart as it beats.

“It kind of feels like I’m dreaming,” Buck confesses.

“The last couple days have felt like that,” Eddie admits. “One long nightmare. At least now it’s more of a dream.”

Buck is caught on, “The last couple days?”

Eddie smiles against the top of his head again.

“Relax,” he repeats. “We can talk about it more later. Just relax for now.”

And when Eddie’s holding him like this, so soft and so secure, with his gently-stroking hand and his fully-surrounding warmth and his freely-given love—

How could Buck not?

“I love you,” Buck whispers upwards, letting his eyes close for a moment. There’s still so much to do; he still has to talk with Dr. Rao, and Maddie is probably waiting to see him, and the rest of his family with the 118 will come, and Eddie will have to get Chris so they can talk to him first, and— and then there’s everything else, everything that comes after that—

“I love you,” Eddie echoes, kissing the side of Buck’s head, rocking him a little. His grip tightens, and Buck forgets about everything else again. No treatment plans, no doctor visits, no breaking news, no exploding forests or falling trees or pain or fear or anything.

Just Eddie. Just the way he likes it.

“I know,” Buck murmurs, letting himself drift in the exhalation of Eddie’s laughter above him and the warmth of his arms around him, knowing that they will be okay, that Eddie will hold him, that he isn’t going to leave him, not again, not ever.