Chapter Text
The sun had been blaring down over Los Angeles for many hours when the next call came in. A multi-vehicle pileup in downtown, unknown injuries. Chairs slide across the floor as the team left the table and rushed to the engine and ambulance. Buck was already in motion before the siren of the engine started to blare. Gear on, check oxygen tanks, a brief smile at Eddie that said something along the lines of ‘we’ve got this’.
He glances at Eddie again, sitting across from him in the cab. Eddies expression was somewhat unsteady, unreadable- that’s soldiers calm that sometimes buck wishes he could borrow.
“You good?” Buck asks.
Eddie looks up. “Yeah, you?”
Buck nodded, and then hesitates. “yeah. Just… just got a feeling today is gonna be intense.”
Eddie chuckles slightly under his breath. “You always say that.”
“Yeah well,” Buck says, trying to hide his grin. “One day I’ll be right.”
The city was chaos when they arrived- metal twisted, smoke rising, people crying out for help. Buck didn’t think- as usual- he just moved. His teams voice cutting through the noise.
“Chimney, with me!” Bobby calls out.
“Hen, check on that Sedan!”
“Buck Eddie- the cab driver!”
Buck and Eddie in sync, cutting through all the debris. inside the cab, a man pinned. Barely conscious.
“Hey, sir, were going to get you out, don’t worry.” Buck said, voice steady. Eddie was already assessing the damage, hands sure, movements efficient. They didn’t need to speak much- they had done this enough times to know each other’s rhythm.
“Pressure’s stable,” Eddie said. “But we need to lift this side.”
“Got it.” Buck braced himself, muscles straining as he leveraged the tool. The metal groaned, shifted — enough for Eddie to pull the man free.
By the time the last victim was loaded into the ambulance, Buck was slick with sweat, lungs burning, heart hammering with the good kind of exhaustion — the kind that came when they’d done their job right.
He looked over to Eddie standing between the ambulance and the engine, wiping the grime off his face with his shirt as best as he can. The sun was higher now, at its peak, catching Eddie’s calm, steady expression.
Buck grins. “You okay Diaz? You look like hell.”
Eddie smirks, shaking his head at Buck. “that’s rich coming from you. You have soot in your hair.”
“Adds character.”
“And fire code violations.” Eddie snickered.
Buck laughs, and for a moment, it was easy- the job was done, adrenaline slowly fading, and yet the city still humming around them.
The sound of gunfire shattered the calm.
A sharp crack split the air. One single shot.
Buck flinched — his brain scrambling to understand what he’d just heard. His eyes found Eddie again, just in time to see the red bloom spreading across his chest.
For a heartbeat, Eddie just stood there, confusion flickering across his face like he didn’t quite believe it either.
Eddie jerked backward, shock flickering across his face before his legs give out and he’s lying on the floor.
“EDDIE!” Bucks voice tore out of his throat before he realised.
The world turned to slow motion. He could feel the bloody splatter across him face. It felt warm and wet, sickening.
“Shots fired! Everyone down!” Bobby’s voice roared.
Buck was shoved down to the ground by a firefighter. He wasn’t really sure who it was- all focus was on Eddie. Lying there. Bleeding out.
His heart hammering, ears ringing. He could see Eddie lying there, out in the open- motionless blood spreading beneath him. His eyes opening and closing before rolling back into his head.
“Firefighter down. I repeat firefighter down!” Bobby shouted into his radio.
Buck pressed himself flat to the asphalt, rolling himself underneath the fire truck. Breath shallow, he started crawling. He wasn’t thinking- not really. Every thought was on Eddie.
The undercarriage of the truck was hot, the ground slick with oil and debris. Bullets sparked off metal somewhere above, but he kept going, dragging himself inch by inch toward Eddie.
His fingers brushed broken glass. His chest scraped pavement. None of it mattered. None of the trauma he had experienced by being crushed under a fire engine. None of the pain. Only Eddie.
Eddie’s hand moved, gravitating towards Buck. Trying to pull himself to safety.
When he finally cleared the other side of the rig, Buck scrambled out from underneath the truck, grabbing Eddie by the shirt, and pulled him in close.
“Hey, hey, I got you,” Buck gasped, pressing a hand to the wound. “You’re okay, Eddie. You’re okay.”
Blood covered his hands instantly.
Bullets rang out again in the distance.
Buck ducked, instinctively curling over Eddie’s body, shielding him with his own. His heart was pounding so hard it hurt.
He looked back at the engine — safety, maybe fifteen feet away. It might as well have been a mile, but leaving Eddie on the ground wasn’t an option.
“I’ve got you,” Buck whispered, voice trembling. “Hang on.”
He slid his arms under Eddie’s shoulders, gritting his teeth as he lifted him over his shoulder. The weight hit him hard — solid, heavy, and terrifyingly limp. Eddie’s blood soaked through Buck’s shirt, hot and sticky against his chest.
“Almost there,” he gasped, staggering to his feet. “Almost there, buddy.”
Another shot cracked — Buck ducked instinctively, shielding Eddie as he half-ran, half-stumbled toward the fire engine. His legs screamed from the effort, but he didn’t stop.
He couldn’t stop.
Buck hauled Eddie onto the engine, laying him down across the seat he had been sitting in only an hour ago.
His hands went straight back to the wound, pressing hard, blood pooling between his fingers. Eddie lay pale, his uniform soaked through, his blood still warm against Buck’s hands.
“Hey, look at me,” Buck said, voice breaking. “You’re not going anywhere, okay? You’re gonna be fine.”
The truck immediately drove of when Eddie was inside. No time to think- to tell anyone what was happening.
Eddie’s eyes squinted open, his hand slightly raising up to grab hold of Buck. “Are you hurt?”
“No.. No no.” Buck has to look down at his shirt for a second, just to make sure. “I’m good, you just hang on.”
“Hey! Come on! Come on!” Buck yells to whoever was driving. This ride was beginning to feel like lifetimes.
The engine jolted over a bump, and Eddie winced. Buck’s heart clenched.
“We’re only three minutes away. We’re so close Ed’s, I need you to hang on… just hang on.” Buck tried to be reassuring but his voice cracked, his hands were shaking, breathes fast and uneven.
Eddie’s face had become so pale, eyes trying to stay open but he was unsuccessful. His breathing was so slow at this point, Buck didn’t even think he was still alive. He might not have been.
He could see the hospital lights now. Relief hit like a punch to the chest.
The engine pulled up so fast the tires screamed against the pavement. Firefighters were rushing out the truck before it had even come to a full stop. He could see the doctors with a stretcher racing towards them.
Buck slid his arms under him, ignoring how slippery with blood everything was, and lifted him out of the truck and onto the stretcher.
Buck barely felt his own body anymore. Everything was noise — shouts, sirens, the squeal of gurney wheels on asphalt — but none of it reached him.
He stared at Eddie’s face as the doctors closed in, their hands already working, shouting numbers and orders he couldn’t understand.
Gone.
The word hit him like the bullet had hit Eddie — sudden, brutal, unreal.
Buck stumbled backward, his arms still sticky with blood, his hands trembling. The world tilted, sound muffled as if he were underwater.
“You okay Buckley?” one of the firefighters asked him, clearly not showing as much emotion on his face as Buck is right now.
There was a long pause, Buck just staring for a while where Eddie had just been taken in. The firefighter had walked away in this time. He’d carried Eddie all this way. He’d felt the weight of him — the heat, the life — and then, all at once, it had been gone.
“No.” He whispered, more to himself then anyone around him.
Hen’s voice cut through the haze, sharp and grounding. “Buck!”
He turned, dazed, and realised she was there — when had she gotten there? Her eyes widened at the sight of him, at the blood on his arms, his chest, his face.
“They’re taking him in now,” she said quickly, guiding him by the shoulders toward the curb. “Let them do their job.”
Buck’s feet dragged against the pavement as Hen guided him back, but he wasn’t really there. His eyes stayed locked on the doors Eddie had disappeared through, as if staring hard enough could pull him back.
“I can’t just stand here,” he muttered, his voice breaking. “Hen, he—he wasn’t breathing.”
“I know,” she said softly. “And now he’s got a team of people making sure he starts again.”
Buck shook his head, chest heaving. “I should’ve— I don’t know, done more. Something.”
Hen stopped him right there, hands on his arms. “You got him here, Buck. You saved his life. Don’t you forget that.”
The words should’ve helped, but they didn’t. The world around him was too bright, too loud now — sirens still wailing somewhere in the distance, the smell of smoke and blood thick in the air. His uniform clung to him, heavy and wet.
“He looked at me,” Buck said suddenly, his voice small, almost childlike. “Right before… before he went out. He looked at me, and I couldn’t— I couldn’t do anything.”
Hen’s expression softened. “You did. You stayed. You never left him. That’s what we do.”
Buck blinked, his eyes burning, his throat too tight to speak. The hospital doors swung open again — a flash of scrubs, the rush of stretchers — but no sign of Eddie.
He couldn’t stand it.
“I need to see him,” Buck said, stepping forward, but Hen held her ground.
“Not yet,” she said firmly. “Let them stabilise him. You can’t help him in there right now.”
Buck’s chest ached. The word stabilise hit like another punch. He didn’t even know if Eddie still had a heartbeat to stabilise.
He turned away before Hen could see the tears finally spill over. His hands were shaking uncontrollably, blood drying in dark streaks down his arms.
All that adrenaline, all that purpose — gone.
Now there was just silence, and the empty ache of waiting.
“Buck,” Hen said gently, stepping beside him again. “You should sit down.”
He didn’t. He couldn’t. His eyes stayed on those ER doors.
“I promised him,” Buck murmured, voice barely audible. “Told him he’d be okay. Told him I’d get him here.”
Hen’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “And you did.”
Buck let out a shaky laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. “Then why does it feel like I didn’t?”
Hen didn’t have an answer.
The automatic doors hissed open again, letting in a gust of cold, sterile air that smelled like antiseptic and blood. A nurse passed by, murmuring something about “trauma one,” and Buck’s heart jumped.
He looked back at the doors — wide, white, indifferent — and whispered, “Come on, Eddie. Please don’t make me a liar.”
Time blurred after that.
He didn’t remember when Hen left — maybe she went to clean up, maybe Bobby called her back to the scene — but suddenly it was just Buck, sitting in a hard plastic chair outside the trauma ward, staring at the floor.
Every sound in the hospital made him flinch.
Every time a pair of footsteps passed, he lifted his head, hoping it was someone coming to tell him Eddie was okay.
It never was.
His hands had gone stiff; the blood was drying, tacky and dark, in the lines of his palms. He should’ve washed it off. He couldn’t.
A nurse had offered him water at some point.
He didn’t drink it.
He just waited.
“Evan Buckley?”
Buck’s head snapped up so fast his neck ached. The doctor standing in front of him looked worn, his scrubs spattered, his expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and reassurance.
“He made it through surgery,” the doctor said. “The bullet missed the heart, but it caused a lot of damage. He lost a significant amount of blood, but he’s stable for now.”
For now.
Buck didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
His breath came out in a sharp, shuddering exhale as his body finally remembered how to move. “Can I— can I see him?”
The doctor nodded. “One minute. He’s sedated, but—yes.”
Buck was on his feet before the man had even finished the sentence. His legs felt unsteady as he followed him down the hall, the rhythmic beeping of monitors growing louder with every step.
When he stepped into the room, everything went quiet.
Eddie lay pale against the sheets, machines surrounding him, a tube running into his arm. His chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of the ventilator.
For the first time since the gunshot, Buck let himself breathe.
He took a step closer. Then another.
“Hey,” he whispered, voice barely there. “You’re really outdoing yourself, Diaz.”
No answer, of course. Just the slow, mechanical rhythm of life being kept alive.
Buck’s eyes burned as he reached for the railing beside the bed. His fingers hovered there for a second, unsure, then finally settled around Eddie’s hand. It was warm — warmer than it had any right to be, after everything.
He brushed his thumb across Eddie’s knuckles.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said softly.
“Do you know that? You’re supposed to be the calm one. The one who keeps it together when everything goes to hell.”
Silence. Machines. The steady beep of Eddie’s heart on the monitor.
“I carried you,” Buck went on quietly. “All the way here. Thought I lost you in that truck. I didn’t know what to do. I just—” His voice cracked. “I couldn’t let go.”
He sat down heavily in the chair beside the bed, his shoulders slumping. The tension that had kept him upright for hours finally drained away, leaving nothing but exhaustion.
“Christopher needs you,” he murmured, his fingers still wrapped around Eddie’s. “You can’t… you can’t just not come back from this, okay?”
A pause. Then another shaky breath.
Buck leaned forward, resting his forehead gently against the edge of the bed.
“Please, Eddie,” he whispered. “You’ve gotta come back.”
The only answer was the steady hum of the machines, but somehow, it was enough.
For now.