Archive of Our Own

Despite Eddie’s facade as a man with all of his ducks in a row, he only ever filled out absolutely necessary paperwork, especially of the medical variety. Buck understands it’s probably out of subconscious spite to the VA, but it occasionally came back to bite Eddie, like when he’d had to ask Buck to help him comb through the questions about his relevant family medical history before an appointment with a new doctor for Christopher. Like, two hours before. 

All of that is to say, Buck doubts he’s ever read far enough on the line for religious preference on hospital forms to notice that there are checkboxes below. 

Buck really needs to force Eddie to set aside an afternoon to properly fill them all out, the two of them side by side with printouts spread between them on the dinner table as he dutifully pens in the date of Eddie’s last tetanus shot: two years and four months ago. They’d gone to get them together. 

Buck knows that trauma patients get their tetanus vaccine updated if it’s not in the system. Buck also knows that, since he hasn't yet forced Eddie to set aside that afternoon, Eddie probably doesn’t have it in the system. 

It’s not that it’s a problem if they did give it, Buck reasons, even though he’s had one recently enough. It’s no harm to Eddie, it would just throw Buck’s vaccination schedule off, because he’d have to push his next appointment off by a year and two months, and convince Eddie to schedule his the same amount early, so they don’t fall out of sync. Maybe he could go later, so Eddie doesn’t overdose on tetanus vaccines. Two years late for him, four months early for Eddie. That may work. 

He hopes the vaccination paperwork they have to submit to work has wiggle room on when they need to turn in the records. He doesn’t mind his being late, the vaccine technically is still active well after the recommended readministration time for the fire department—

The extremely catholic hospital chaplain, wearing the whole kit and caboodle that set Buck off on this train of thought in the first place, clears his throat, tearing Buck from his considerations.  

“I’m sorry,” he’s saying, and he’s saying it to Chimney, who was the first to acknowledge his presence approaching the group, in a low voice. 

It’s all Buck catches of their conversation, and the logical part of his brain doesn’t take those words at their worst-case implication. His knees, though, must receive a different message. They buckle. 

He’s able to catch himself before he’s made any significant progress toward the floor, only catching May’s attention. She’s halfway to her feet when Buck waves her off, not even trying to make an excuse. His face burns. His stomach roils. 

Eddie’s been doing good. Not great, but good. Considering. Doctors both from the trauma team and the emergency department have come in to brief them on their progress multiple times. Eddie’s rib fractures are displaced enough that he would be going to surgery first thing in the morning, but his vitals have been stable, so they decided not to page the on-call team to bring him to the OR emergently. It’s great news, but it also means that Eddie will be stuck upstairs in an ICU bed waiting all night with five crushed up ribs. 

They’re unsure how long the surgery will take in the morning, and their estimate is he’ll be admitted into the ICU for at least two days after. 

In explaining the progress with everything that had been done so far, the doctors had used an odd mix of colleague-professional and bedside-professional, using medical terminology instead of layman’s terms, but with the tact and empathetic parlance usually reserved for those outside of the field. It’s always odd, seeing them out here. Usually those doctors are the ones accepting patients from the 118’s RA unit, and any updates they can scrounge up on a patient—because really, sometimes you need to know to get some sleep at night—are given in the din of the ambulance bay. 

For now, the 118 and family have taken up residence in their usual corner of the waiting room, waiting for him to get assigned an ICU bed. 

But the words I’m sorry are being spoken in a hushed tone, and the world slows around Buck. 

The chaplain continues, not noticing Buck’s near collision with the ground, with the reason for the apology. “Only his wife or immediate family is allowed back right now.” 

And the world rights itself under Buck’s feet. The logical part of his brain, the part which had been listening in the first place, reminds his knees that the doctors would have come to break truly bad news to them, but his knees don’t take this as a learning opportunity, just rejoice in being given permission to hold weight again. 

Immediate family isn’t currently a possibility, as Karen had taken Christopher home with her and Hen just half an hour ago, and even if he wasn’t still a minor, Buck would not have let him go back there by himself anyway. No matter that he’d trusted the medical professionals enough to hand over Eddie to them three hours ago, he wouldn’t have let Chris go in there blind.

Wife, however, leaves a ringing in his ears. He feels something in his chest go taut, then ease, like the fraying edges of an overstretched rubber band a millisecond from snapping. 

And snap it does. 

“I’m his POA,” he blurts. Every jaw in the vicinity drops, save the chaplain. He doesn’t seem to notice, since he’s fully turned his attention to Buck. “That counts, right?” Whether it counts in place of immediate family or wife, he doesn’t clarify. 

The chaplain nods. “I suppose the team may have questions for you.” 

Per one of the emergency residents, one that the 118 has a long-standing friendly rapport with, Eddie’s been off-and-on oriented, better after his blood transfusion and then worse again after they’d put in the chest tube. She’d said both were to be expected. 

Buck doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes as he follows the chaplain toward the security desk to get badged through to the back. He wonders if they know he’s lying. 

Would it be worse if they believed him? If they’d thought this was a piece of Buck and Eddie’s life that had been kept just between the two of them, secret and precious and meaning so much more than what the lines of the legal document read? That’s not what Buck can focus on right now. He trails the chaplain, mouth dry as he mentally scripts a response to a question he feels is now inevitable: can he provide a legal document that proves he is Eddie’s power of attorney?

Of course he can’t. Because he isn’t. But if he thinks about it, and borrows a phrase that Maddie put into his head not so long ago, twisted for his own purpose, it wouldn’t be so crazy. 

Buck knows three things for certain, and one thing for maybe.

Number one: Eddie does not have a POA. 

Number two: if the doctors had come to the waiting room to ask what they thought Eddie’s wishes were, all eyes would’ve turned to Buck. 

Number three: isn’t that what a POA is, really?

The maybe: Eddie would put Buck in his will a second time. 

Buck decides not to consider his slip of the tongue a lie, but instead a future truth. He can see it so clearly in his mind’s eye, twenty years down the line — 

Eddie picks through his will, choosing what to update now that Chris is married, maybe. Something like that. And he calls Buck in from the backyard, because in twenty years they might be living together again, full time, platonically, of course. Buck’s still in love with him, in a blinding, all-consuming way that has morphed his ability to hold down a relationship outside of their family unit irreparably. But he’s made peace with it, tries not to think about how equivalent to nuclear fallout a confession would wreak on their lives. He can live side-by-side with Eddie, even if he will always want more. All he’s wanted for a very long time is Eddie. He has Eddie, right here in front of him, in the bedroom just next door, headboards pressed to either side of the same wall at night. Isn’t that enough?

Eddie taps the paper in front of him. He’d specifically gone to get it printed out instead of correcting it digitally, because he’s nothing if not stubbornly opposed to technology. Still. 

“Buck,” he says, voice scratchy with disuse, older in this universe where the sun shines through the window and catches his gray hairs in the glow. His laugh lines would be deeper, too, cut into shadow on his face. “Can you pay attention?”

Buck’s sure he’d look different in twenty years, too, though he doesn’t put any thought into it. This is about Eddie. Beautiful, aging beautifully, always has been beautiful, Eddie. Buck follows his pointing with his own finger, reading along the lines of text. He squints; his reading glasses are in the living room, resting on top of the book he and Eddie have been switching off reading, leaving notes in the margins for each other each time one surpasses the page the other is on. 

“How long have I been your power of attorney?” Buck asks, as the words sink in. There are other questions to ask, but twenty-years-older-Buck has been working on picking out the important ones first. 

Eddie doesn’t shy away from the question, not this Eddie. Eddie, after over thirty years of being attached at the hip to Buck, is assured in this realm. “Since you lied to the hospital staff when I had a collapsed lung and I had to cover your ass.” 

— Buck blinks away this glimpse into his future, if he could even call it that, because it had clearly very quickly devolved into just him fantasizing about the domesticity implicit in the existence of mid-fifties Eddie. It makes it very hard to keep track of the information he’s being told as they walk. He might be going insane. What kind of person daydreams about getting asked to be their best-friend-slash-forever-roommate’s POA as they wind through the halls of an overcrowded emergency room to see the aforementioned best-friend-but-not-currently-roommate? Buck, obviously. And he’s honestly not even surprised at himself. 

Buck supposes, not at all swayed by his vision, that there is a possibility that he is already Eddie’s POA. Not a large possibility, because he is pretty sure Eddie really does have to ask him permission for that. He had also been pretty sure Eddie had to ask permission to put him in his will the first time, so he takes his own considerations with a grain of salt. 

Eddie’s just been assigned a room, the chaplain explains, has been explaining, as they continue toward the windowless door to the trauma bay, he’ll be heading upstairs in ten minutes or so. Buck’s only just got his head back right on his shoulders, the words power of attorney echoing quieter in the back of his skull, when the resident that Buck had spoken to earlier emerges from the door. He’s unable to get a look inside before it shuts behind her. 

“Buck,” she greets as she walks past, “I figured they’d let you come back.” 

He nods with a smile, gritting his teeth against the implication. Immediate family or wife. He braces himself before he opens the door, trying to banish the thousand and one thoughts vying for his brain space. He just wants to see Eddie. Nothing else matters. 

The trauma bay is hot. It’s always hot, a balmy eighty-something on the thermostat, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the sudden oppressive warmth is just as shocking as the blood splattering the floor. Buck stands still in the doorway, the cool air of the rest of the department at his back, the heat of the bay on his face. He can’t stop looking at it, doesn’t stop staring until movement on the bed draws his attention. Eddie’s trying to sit up, unable to see Buck’s arrival, with him being laid flat on the trauma bed. Even partially propped on his right elbow, he still can’t see Buck, not with the perfect angle the c-collar keeps his neck at, but he calls out anyway. “Buck?” He says, just as a familiar nurse, an ex-paramedic that used to work at the 136, though Buck can’t place her name at the second, steps to his side and reminds him to lay back. 

“Don’t break your neck, Diaz,” she says, “your c-spine isn’t cleared yet.” She glances to Buck. “And yes, Buck’s here.”

“My c-spine is fine,” Eddie insists, moving again, but not trying to turn his head. He seems to take a second to process the last thing she’d said. “Buck?” 

That finally kicks Buck into gear. “Eddie,” he answers, and his voice comes out stronger and sterner than any noise he thought he’d be able to produce. He’s at Eddie’s side in a moment, his boots imprinting in Eddie’s blood on the floor. There’s one towel spread across some of the larger splatter of blood, a haphazard protection for those who hadn’t had time to slip the isolation booties over their shoes before coming into the room. Buck doesn’t mind Eddie’s blood on his shoes. Some sick, twisted part of his inner psyche hopes he’s the only person in this room taking Eddie’s blood home in their treads. 

Eddie blinks up at him, battered and beautiful and so overwhelming that Buck’s knees nearly turn traitor again. He has an oxygen cannula in his blood-crusted nose, but Buck can’t hear the whistle of air through the cheap plastic, so it must be set low. One liter, two tops. He finds the lever to let the guardrail down without looking, Eddie’s eyes tracking him as far as possible as he goes. “If you turn your head and break your neck after all of this, I’ll never forgive you,” Buck warns. He sticks one hand out, bracing against the side of his c-collar to support his point. It’s different from the one Hen and Chimney had put on him, softer, made of foam instead of stiff plastic. 

Eddie smiles, half-lazy in the way he smiles after his fifth beer on a night out. Buck uses this as a gauge of how well the pain medicine is working for him; pretty well, clearly. The smile re-splits his lip, and fresh blood drips down his chin. It takes everything Buck has not to wipe it away with his hand. He’s a little scared that with how light headed he feels, he might do something crazy like lick it off. 

“And that would really be so much paperwork,” the nurse chimes in, aggressively changing the subject of Buck’s thoughts. “Please don’t do that to me.” She’s typing at the computer nearest the foot of the bed, not watching Eddie anymore. Buck’s got him. He tries not to let that thought make him reach out to touch the thin stream of blood like a crazy person. 

Eddie lies still, letting his eyes close only after Buck removes his hand from the collar. Buck presses close to the side of the bed and allows himself to look somewhere other than Eddie’s face. He’d tried not to look at the chest tube, and really made a valiant effort too. There’s an occlusive dressing taped a few inches above it, probably covering the wound that had caused the pneumothorax. 

The gauze has blood flecked on it, it probably was the first intervention they’d performed, leaving the dressing exposed to the chaos of the room as they controlled bleeding elsewhere. After taking it in, he’s able to slide his gaze down to the chest tube, and it’s…not nearly as scary as he thought. It’s small, just barely thicker than the ink cartridge in a cheap pen, secured down with a long, wide piece of tape against Eddie’s lower ribs before connecting to the closed drainage system on the other side of the bed. Gauze covers most of the site where the tube inserts, a stark contrast to the deep purple of the bruising covering his ribs, but Buck knows enough to assume there are sutures holding it in place, even though he can’t see them. The area around the gauze looks clean, neat, with the immediately surrounding skin stained orange from the sterile prep swabs. He can’t see if it’s blood or air the drainage system is pulling, since it’s pointed away from Buck. 

His eyes drop lower after making sure he’s seen the worst of it, skimming the scars Eddie’s accumulated over the years, tracing the edge of the mottled bruising that runs from the curve of Eddie’s hip up to his clavicle, and continues across his side, away from Buck, out of sight. Eddie’s covered by a blanket only from the waist down, happy trail to crown of his head bared to the heat—Buck knows the blanket is only there to protect his modesty, since Eddie runs hot and it’s a thousand degrees in the room. He wishes he were more familiar with the layout of the trauma bay, could grab Eddie a gown or a sheet from the cabinet to cover up with instead. He never gets the opportunity to explore, since he’s always helping Eddie and Hen wheel a patient in when he’s here. He doesn’t ask anyone in the room to find one for him. 

Once he’s satisfied with ensuring the stilted rise and fall of Eddie’s chest continues, he speaks again. “How do you feel?” He asks.

Eddie’s eyes slide back open, unfocused. He pointedly does not turn his head as he looks sideways at Buck. “Better than you look. You just come from a fire or something?” 

It’s clearly a joke, but for a moment, Buck is paralyzed with the possibility that Eddie doesn’t remember getting hurt, or anything leading up to it. He tries to match Eddie’s flippancy, but he’s a little shaky. “Someone had to stand vigil for our resident martyr.”

Eddie rolls his eyes so hard that Buck is sure it hurts his head. Buck sees his mouth working on a response, but nothing comes out. 

“Really,” Buck says to fill the silence, “how are you feeling?”

Eddie hums. He knows Buck is serious. He knows Buck was scared for him. He allows his it’s not that bad facade to slip enough to give Buck a comforting smile. Buck hates that Eddie’s the one giving him comfort, like Buck’s the one laid on a trauma stretcher in a neck brace. “Good pain meds,” he says thoughtfully, “hurts different than getting shot.”

Fond warmth curls in Buck’s stomach. He appreciates that Eddie didn’t deflect him, as he so often does. Buck doesn’t like when Eddie’s the one hurt, Eddie would insist that he was fine until he keeled over and died in front of everyone. 

“You need to stop getting hurt on the job,” Buck answers, instead of any of that. He keeps the tone light as he continues, “don’t make me start bubble wrapping you under the turnouts.”

Eddie smiles, clearly withholding a laugh. “I’d like to see you try.” 

Buck doesn’t get to respond to that, as a phone rings loudly between the two nurses in the room. The nurse that Buck doesn’t know answers it. Buck turns his head to watch as he “uh-huh”s and “yes”es before he thanks the person on the other end of the line and hangs up. “We’re good to head upstairs,” he says to the ex-medic. 

She starts collecting the papers on the desk while he rises from his chair and crosses to the side of the bed opposite Buck. He puts the portable monitor on Eddie’s bed next to him, then hangs the drainage system from the one raised rail. Buck takes this as his signal to put his own rail back up. 

Buck really kicks himself for not remembering the name of the nurse he’s worked with before, he’s sure it started with a vowel, maybe an A, as she turns to him. 

“We can send someone to bring everyone else up so you can go with us,” she says. Their houses had worked many calls together, meaning she had seen Buck and Eddie at some of their most Buck-and-Eddie. Buck thinks she may have been there for the well collapse, had been manning one of the RA units on standby when Buck was on his hands and knees in the mud. Maybe the lightning strike, too, though admittedly his memories of that day don’t really have defined edges to them, so he could be mistaken. 

Buck almost declines. He has stuff in the waiting room he needs to bring upstairs with him, was going to help bring up the boxes of pizza Maddie’d brought. 

Then he remembers how he’d left the waiting room. 

“Yeah, sure,” he says instead. He tries not to sound choked. 

The other nurse kicks the brake off the bed’s wheels and pushes Eddie from the room. 

Buck follows behind them, letting the people who actually work in the building lead the way upstairs. 

He’s finally able to see the ex-paramedic’s badge as he falls into step next to her. 

Emily. Yes, of course. He almost facepalms. Eddie knew her better than Buck did, back when she was working EMS alongside them. When they’d found out she’d graduated nursing school and was leaving the 136, Eddie’d said it was a shame, that he’d always liked working with her. Her clinical judgement was sharp, and she knew the rig like the back of her hand, could accurately direct a blind stranger on how to find something she needed in her kit without dedicating any thought to it. Buck remembers the jealousy that had flooded him to the core, remembers selfishly being glad she was leaving. 

Buck, tamping down the jealousy that rears in response to the memory, asks how she likes nursing. They chat about the difference between working the two sides of the ambulance bay doors, until they’re pausing outside the ICU. 

“They’ll come get you when he’s settled,” she says, gesturing to the waiting room across the hall. Another waiting room that Buck’s nearly paced a hole in the carpet of, though admittedly he’s been on this floor less than some of the others — this is the waiting room his family and friends had taken shifts in while he was in a coma, he thinks, but he couldn’t be sure. He knows he was on this floor, at least. He checks out the vending machine in the back corner. Not great options, and he always forgets that they only take cash anyway. He makes a mental note to add that to his update text to those planning to visit in the morning. 

Emily pops her head back into the waiting room after they’re done dropping Eddie off, her colleague pushing the empty bed behind her toward the elevator. 

“He wouldn’t stop asking about you, y’know,” is all she says before she’s gone. 

That one sentence hits him like a punch to the face. He doubles over, bracing one hand against the nearest chair as he sucks in a breath, then another. He’s got maybe a minute or two before the rest of the group joins him, which doesn’t give him any time to pluck up some semblance of courage for the conversation they’re bound to have. He needs to compose himself.

He’s able to do that, but not much else, as Maddie is the first to enter the new waiting room. It’s tucked away, across the hall from the ICU doors, and Buck can hear her before he sees her. He takes a deep breath.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says immediately, before he’s even aware his mouth is moving.

She puts both hands up, placating, and finds a chair to slump into. “We’ve had this conversation already,” she says, “you know how I feel.” 

If there’s something that you need to tell Eddie–

Chimney’s next, carrying a small stack of pizza boxes. 

He locks onto Buck immediately, visibly gearing up to start his interrogation. Maddie takes pity on Buck, pointedly looking at her husband. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh,” Chimney says, “we are going to talk about it.” He sets the pizzas down, just as May and Ravi trail in behind him, Ravi carrying in Buck’s work bag that he’d left downstairs. Buck thanks him as he takes it from his hands and dumps it in the nearest chair. It’s just the five of them, now. Buck looks at the clock on the wall. Ten minutes after eleven.

After Buck ignores the first three attempts by Chimney to bring it up, Chimney announces a change of plans. 

“We’ll do this later,” he says, “but only because Eddie’s in the ICU.” 

“Howie,” Maddie scolds.

“What?” He says. “It would be rude not to let Eddie answer my questions too!”

Dread pools in Buck’s stomach. He needs to tell Eddie that he’d lied, so Chimney doesn’t catch him off guard if he tries to corner him and ask about it.

He tries to think of a plan, maybe he should insist he sees Eddie first, by himself, but that would make it obvious as to what he’s doing. The nurse finds them in the waiting room before he’s able to decide what to do.

“Visiting hours are technically over,” she explains, “but since he just got up here, we can let two at a time go in to see him for a few minutes.”

Unfortunately, they know the drill well by now, so they’d all expected this. “One person can stay overnight, yeah?” Chimney asks, receiving a nod in answer. Everyone knows it’ll be Buck. Ravi and May at least have the decency to pretend it’s up for debate, looking imploringly at each other. 

“You up for it?” May asks Buck. “I have clinicals early.” Ravi nods in the seat next to her. 

Buck sits up a little in his chair. “Yeah,” he answers, “yeah, I’m up for it.”

Chimney volunteers himself and Maddie to go first before Buck can. “I told Hen we’d come get the kids from hers once Eddie was upstairs.”

Buck nods in understanding, even though he’s irritated that he won’t get to warn Eddie about his lie. At least Maddie will be there to defend his honor. The remaining three don’t speak much, May and Ravi both on their phones until Chimney and Maddie return to tag them in. Soon, Buck’s by himself. He texts Chris, letting him know that Eddie’s settled in his room for the night. 

Eddie’s neck-brace-free and dressed in a gown when they lead Buck to his room, a pillow wedged under his arm on the chest tube’s side, propping his elbow up to the rail. Probably to prevent Eddie from accidentally pulling on it. 

He’s also completely clean from the dried blood Buck had last seen him covered in. A hot spike of irrational jealousy spears Buck’s middle, dragging him forward until he’s at the side of the bed. He should’ve been the one to wipe the blood from Eddie’s lips, to ease a warm soapy cloth over the road rash on his right cheekbone. He reminds himself that that is not a normal desire for a best friend to have.

“They’re letting me turn my head now,” Eddie says with a tired smile, pointedly turning his head from side to side in demonstration. His breathing is shallow but even, clearly making an effort not to shift the broken ribs and battered muscles, completely still save for the arm on his uninjured side and from the neck up. 

Buck slouches into the first chair he sees, dropping his bag at his feet. He resists the urge to interrogate Eddie, tucking away the sharp edges of his fear so Eddie can’t see it in the way he holds his shoulders. They don’t say anything for a long moment, as Eddie watches him and Buck watches him back. Buck has the idea to Facetime Chris, which they end up doing for a couple minutes before Chris says Eddie should sleep before his surgery, and besides, he needs to get back to the TV show he’s watching with Denny. 

When the nurse comes into the room to give Eddie his scheduled night dose of pain medicine, she tells them that Eddie would be leaving to get prepared for surgery at five, and gives Eddie a stern warning not to eat or drink anything until then. She also explains that they’re measuring all intake and output so they can know if he’s maintaining the fluid balance in his body, and pressed a plastic handheld urinal into Eddie’s hands, telling him to measure if he went to the bathroom.

Buck, a little out-of-his-mind from the events of the last few hours, as well as from having been awake for the last twenty-seven hours straight, wonders deliriously if Eddie would let him hold it for him, since it wasn’t like Eddie could get up and walk to the attached bathroom. 

Luckily, he doesn’t voice that thought. Eddie hooks the empty urinal to the side of the bed closest to Buck. Buck doesn’t take that any sort of way at all. 

The nurse only returns to give Buck a pillow and a warm blanket before bidding them good night and telling them to press the call light if they need anything.

Eddie dozes as Buck prepares for bed, scrubbing shampoo into his hair over the sink. Partially because Buck is ever prepared, and mostly because Harry is awesome, Buck had fresh clothes and toiletries on hand to stay the night. 

When they’d arrived with Eddie, the 118 had known Buck wouldn’t leave the waiting room until he was sure Eddie was alright, so they had taken it upon themselves to return the ladder truck and ambulance back to the station. Maddie’d arrived at the ER by then, Christopher in tow, so the rest of the team left the three of them while they took care of business.  

Buck, watching Eddie shift in bed, wonders who cleaned Eddie’s blood out of the back of the ambulance. Chimney, probably, always one to do something like that himself even though he was captain now. 

The whole extended 118 family arrived and left in pieces while they waited. Food was brought, updates were shared. Just after ten, Harry announced he was going home for the night, promising to bring coffee in the morning. He returned to the waiting room about thirty seconds after he left, brandishing Buck’s work bag. “I totally forgot,” he’d said, “I grabbed your bag from the locker room.”

Buck had almost sobbed into Harry’s shoulder in thanks, half-pulling him into a hug but remembering he was covered in soot and grime from the fire they’d been fighting when Eddie had gone and got himself hit by a car. 

Not that it was Eddie’s fault, as prone as Buck is to blaming him for putting himself in dangerous positions. Eddie’d done everything right, was just walking between emergency vehicles that clearly marked the boundary of the scene when the speeding car struck him. 

Buck remembers the crackle on the radio, but doesn’t remember many details after that, just broad strokes. He’d been on the third floor, he remembers, just cleared the stairway and was about to continue ascending. He always paid attention when it was the 118 on the line, but Eddie’s name had stopped him in his tracks. 

He’d been the one who drove the ambulance. Hen had asked Chimney to get in the back with her, since her partner was on the cot. Chim had then radioed for Buck to come down to drive them, but Buck was already on his way, hustling toward the ambulance, helmet and respirator gripped in one hand. He had enough presence of mind, or at least muscle memory, to not drop them to the ground when he threw the driver’s door open and bodily slammed into the seat. 

“Buck, go,” was all Chimney had to say before Buck was peeling out in the direction of the nearest hospital. 

He hadn’t even gotten a look at Eddie until they’d been rolling him in the doors, a blur of people meeting them. Hen and Chimney had somehow gotten him mostly out of his turnouts without cutting them, but had decimated his undershirt. Blood was everywhere, soaked into the shredded remainder of Eddie’s shirt, haphazardly hacked with Hen’s trauma shears to expose the wound on his chest that spurted blood with every breath Eddie took. 

His eyes didn’t open once.

Buck was not glad that he hadn’t been able to see him until that moment, but hours later, in the silence of Eddie’s room in the ICU, Eddie in and out of restless sleep, he knows that if he had looked through the window to see Eddie in the back on the cot, struggling for breath, he would not have been able to keep his attention on the road. 

He changes quickly, leaving the bathroom door partially open so that he could still see Eddie. He doesn’t change his boxers, too torn between shutting the door so he doesn’t flash Eddie and not shutting it so he could still keep his eyes on him. He feels slightly more human after, with the stench of smoke no longer clinging to his hair. The couch seems to be his best option for sleep, just long enough for him to lay across, if he just slightly bends his knees. 

He’s able to drift off, but only for a few minutes at a time. Unfortunately, the couch is significantly less comfortable than even the cots at the station. Every time he shifts, some wooden bar below the cushion digs into his back. 

He also feels miles from Eddie. The couch faces his injured side, so it’s difficult to see Eddie’s signs of life from here. No movement of the arm, barely a rise of the chest. Buck finds himself standing without thinking about what he’s doing.

Eddie doesn’t stir as he approaches the bed. Buck’d left the light on in the bathroom, casting a warm yellow glow through the room. Not so bright as to disrupt Eddie’s sleep, but plenty enough for Buck to still see him clearly. 

He paces, just watching Eddie breathe. The seconds tick away into a minute, maybe longer, before he remembers himself, and stops. He’s at the foot of the bed, on Eddie’s injured side. He aches to step closer and reach up to brush Eddie’s hair out of his face. He settles for resting his hand on the edge of the bed. 

The mattress is designed with a potentially long-term intubated patient in mind, not too firm, so as to prevent pressure sores, but not too soft that there’s no stability. Buck doesn’t remember what the bed felt like when he was down the hall on this wing. Probably like this. Still different, though, since this is Eddie’s bed, Buck’s hand inches from his covered ankle. He squishes down gently, feeling the odd material against his palm even through the sheets. Some mix of memory foam and trapped air, he thinks. 

“Buck,” comes Eddie’s voice. It’s not groggy with sleep, but clear, solid, though quiet. Clearly awake. He jolts back, withdrawing his hand from the mattress as though it had burned him. 

Eddie laughs, half a breath before he’s wincing at the way it pulls his injured torso. 

“Sorry to scare you,” he says quietly. They don’t need to whisper, the door has only been opened by the nurse who’s come to check the drainage output and measure Eddie’s work of breathing every hour on the hour, and has remained shut every minute between. 

Buck matches his volume anyway. “You didn’t,” he defends, “I just, uh, didn’t know you were awake.” He shuffles back a step, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. 

Eddie hums. He’s watching Buck from his vantage point, sitting in the bed like a throne. It’s easier for him to breathe when sitting upright, with how much pressure his uninjured lung had been put under when he’d been suffering the effects of the tension pneumothorax. He’s still using the nasal cannula, the tubing converging in the hollow of his throat before curling over his shoulder and disappearing over the back of the bed. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just looking at Buck’s face. 

Buck stays stone still, not even daring to breathe.

“What time is it?” Eddie finally asks. 

Buck checks his watch. “Just past one.”

He watches Eddie do the math in his head. “You’re going on twenty-four hours awake.”

Buck doesn’t have the heart to tell him it’s closer to thirty, now. Eddie can probably see it in the twist of his mouth.

“Buck,” Eddie says again. He definitely saw it in the twist of his mouth, the way he can always read Buck, like a book with dog-eared pages and a worn spine. 

“Eddie,” Buck breathes. 

Eddie’s expression, knowing but firm, makes Buck’s heart kick in his chest so hard that his head spins. “Try to get some sleep.” 

“Surprised you aren’t trying to kick me out to go home and sleep in my own bed,” Buck answers, a shield against the vulnerability of looking into Eddie’s big brown eyes. 

“Like you’d listen anyway, it’s a waste of breath.” Eddie rolls his eyes, but it’s fond. It’s always fond. “I have a collapsed lung, remember? I’m supposed to be saving my breath.” 

Buck blanches. “Don’t joke like that.” 

Eddie waves him off. “I’m breathing fine. It’s barely even collapsed.” His eyes narrow. “Stop trying to distract me, and go lay down.” 

Buck glances sidelong at the couch. “It sucks.” 

“Here,” Eddie says, shifting to point across the room with his right hand. “Pull that chair over. It looks comfortable enough.” Buck obliges, dragging it halfway to the bed. Eddie scoffs as he stops. “Closer?” He prompts expectantly. “Where are you going to put your feet?” 

That’s a question Buck didn’t expect. “Uh,” he says, “the floor, I guess.” He glances at another chair, tucked into the corner by the couch. Maybe he can pull it up too, form a sort of makeshift recliner between the two seats. 

Eddie has a different answer. “Get it close enough you can put your feet up on the bed.” He says it like it’s the most obvious solution in the world. 

Buck balks. “I’m not taking over your bed.”

Eddie huffs, frustrated. “Jesus, Buck, I’m not asking you to get in and spoon me.” Buck feels his face flush red-hot. He’s seriously on his last straw, hearing a regular statement from Eddie as flirtatious. He’s delirious with want. He wouldn’t accept if that had been what Eddie was asking, not in the state Eddie’s in, but just the thought makes his head spin. “Just put your feet by mine. There’s room.” 

Buck chews the inside of his lip. “Fine.” He grabs the chair by the back and starts pulling it closer as Eddie watches, bracing his right hand on the rail next to him to give him leverage to shift his hips. Even without the use of his injured side, the movement makes him grimace, hard, and Buck stops maneuvering the chair to step closer. 

“Stop that, you’re going to hurt yourself worse.” 

“I’m fine,” Eddie bites back, though there’s no sting. “Just help me move my legs over.” 

Buck frowns, but he knows Eddie won’t let him refuse; he’d just insist that if Buck wasn’t going to make room for himself, then he’d do it. There’s no solution to this that doesn’t end with Eddie’s feet moving over to allow space for Buck’s on the bed. The only difference is the process of getting to that point, and whether Eddie forces himself to endure the pain of movement. 

“Okay, fine,” Buck yields. He crosses to the other side of the bed, so he’ll be pulling Eddie’s feet toward him instead of pushing away, and uncovers Eddie’s lower legs from the blanket enough to gently tuck his hands under each side of the calves. 

He counts them down, then lifts carefully, pulling Eddie’s legs away from the middle of the bed. Eddie helps, though admittedly not a lot, with minimum grimacing involved on his end. 

Buck calls that a win. “Better?” He asks. 

Eddie looks down at the newly created space on the sheets. “Enough room there?”

“Plenty,” Buck answers, without really looking. He returns to the side of the bed he’s parked the chair at, and resumes his adjusting. He’s got the angle chosen, the chair mostly facing Eddie, but with room for his legs to rest next to the footboard. 

Eddie frowns as Buck examines his work. “No,” he interrupts, “I was thinking like,” Eddie gestures to his side, “closer up.” 

Buck steps back to visualize Eddie’s request. He’d turn the chair around, point it so he and Eddie were facing the same direction, like they would be lying side by side. Is that what Eddie’s asking him to do? 

He stands where Eddie’d gestured, motioning with both hands to indicate the dimensions of the chair. “Here?”

Eddie nods his confirmation. 

Buck examines the side of the bed. The guard rail is much less obtrusive than the ones on the emergency room bed, only extending from the head of the bed to the point where it bends to sit, but it still juts out from the side enough that Buck will probably have to put it down in order to get his chair where Eddie’d indicated. The problem with putting the rail down lies mostly in the plastic handheld urinal that hangs from it. 

There’s no excuse for what Buck does next, no matter how long it’s been since he slept. He unhooks the urinal. “Do you,” he asks, “y’know, uh. Need to use this?” Eddie’s eyebrow twitches, a silent question in return. Buck doesn’t know what he’s asking. He scrambles to save himself. “Like, before I put it over there?” He gestures to the table a few feet away. 

Eddie shakes his head. “I’m good.”

Buck nods. He places the urinal on the table and returns to finish putting the bar down. He could get his chair a half foot closer like this, nearly pressed flush against Eddie’s bed. Eddie’d told him to get closer, he reasons with himself, Eddie’d tell him if this was too close. He pushes it as close as it’ll move. 

Eddie doesn’t say anything as Buck returns to the couch to retrieve his blanket and pillow, then crosses back to the chair. Eddie doesn’t say anything as Buck levers himself into the chair, kicks his feet up onto the bed, and spreads the blanket over his legs. Eddie doesn’t say anything as Buck’s ankle brushes his, with Eddie’s blanket forming one degree of separation between their bare skin.

His head is turned, watching Buck get comfortable. Once he’s determined that the chair is just about as good as he can make it, Buck turns his own head to meet Eddie’s gaze. 

The separation of chair and bed make them feel farther apart than they actually are, just eight or so inches between their noses. Eddie blinks at him. Buck takes a deep breath. 

“Goodnight, Eddie,” he says into the silence.

“Goodnight, Buck.” 

Eddie closes his eyes. Buck doesn’t. Buck watches his expression smooth out, probably trying to think about something to drift off to. Eddie lasts less than ten seconds before he opens his eyes again. 

“Since you’re not going to sleep anyway,” he says pointedly. “I have to ask you something.”

Buck swallows back bile. He and Eddie ask each other questions all the time. This doesn’t mean anything. His heart races, as uncaring to logic as his knees had been earlier. “Shoot,” he’s able to choke out. 

Eddie does not beat around the bush. His voice is still quiet, but steady. “Do you want to be my power of attorney?”

Buck wants to scream. Buck wants to jump up and run from the room. Buck wants to crawl into Eddie’s lap and taste his tongue. Buck does none of that. He takes a shaky breath and licks along the inside of his teeth. “Who told you?” He asks, the response that feels the least like slicing his sternum in half and peeling his ribs back to expose his beating heart. 

Eddie frowns. “Told me…what?”

Buck’s jaw drops. “Uh, that I lied to the chaplain and…” He pauses, the words frozen on his tongue. His face heats. He blurts the rest out, afraid that if he takes his time, the words won’t escape. “I told him I was your POA so that they’d let me see you before you came up here.”  Immediate family or wife.

He doesn’t know how he expected Eddie to respond to that, but it wasn’t a grin so wide it re-splits his lip. Again. And then he laughs. It’s radiant, would be just as radiant even if it wasn’t cleanly breaking up the ambient sounds of the hospital they could hear even through the door. Buck thinks he might not be breathing. 

“So,” Buck pauses, “no one told you?” Buck asks. His voice sounds small even to his own ears.

Eddie’s smile wavers into something so heartwrenchingly, genuinely, perfectly serene, that Buck thinks he may be hallucinating. He’s been hallucinating Eddie, beautiful Eddie, and his behavior toeing well over the line into flirtatious. The corner of Hallucination-Eddie’s mouth, the side without the roadrash, quirks up. “I’ve been thinking about it recently,” is all the answer Buck receives.

Buck stares at him, at a loss for words. He’s sure he’s not hallucinating this; he wouldn’t be so stunned if he was hallucinating. 

Eddie watches Buck, flitting his gaze over Buck’s expression. “So?” He asks. He’s never looked more comfortable while the two of them were having a conversation like this. So sure. He knows Buck won’t refuse him this. What he doesn’t know is that Buck wouldn’t refuse him anything.

Buck wants him to know that. “Eddie,” he starts, and the anxiety of the next sentence, of giving his heart over so freely to Eddie, bleeds away when Eddie makes an encouraging noise in the back of his throat. “I’d say yes to anything you ask of me.” 

In the heartbeat before Eddie opens his mouth to answer, Buck finds himself leaning forward to wipe the blood from his lip before it drips onto his clean gown. The blood smears across Buck’s thumb, bright red. 

Eddie’s eyes watch the blood dry in the low light. “Anything?” He asks. His eyes flick back to Buck. Hold there. 

Buck swallows and shifts a hair closer. Eddie tries to turn his shoulders in toward Buck, but winces as the movement pulls at his injured side. His expression calms as soon as he returns to his previous position. His eyebrows raise imploringly, and Buck remembers he’d been asked a question. “Anything,” he confirms, nodding seriously. The blood is dry now, but he still keeps his thumb slightly away from the rest of his hand where it hangs suspended in the air between him and Eddie. 

Eddie tilts his head. “Can’t really move,” he murmurs, voice pitched low. His shoulders are all but flat against the pillow, head craned so he can keep his eyes on Buck’s. “Could you lean closer? Talking like this is making my neck hurt.”

“Don’t break your neck,” Buck scolds as he complies. He scoots forward in the chair and rearranges his limbs so that he’s able to shift his weight onto his left hip and face Eddie fully. He’s unable to face him square-on without climbing into Eddie’s lap, not that he would hypothetically be opposed to that; just not here, not with Eddie’s collapsed lung and stitches and surgery at sunrise. Eddie reduces the dramatic angle he had his head turned at, not even close to parallel with the line of his shoulder anymore. They’re closer than they were before, Buck all but leaning on the bed as he allows himself one small act of selfishness and braces his unbloodied hand on the mattress next to Eddie. 

“Close enough?” Buck breathes. His heart is thumping hard against his ribs, loud enough in his ears that he hopes Eddie can’t hear it too. 

Eddie doesn’t answer, instead stretching his arm, the one without the chest-tube-related restricted movement, across the blanket toward him. Buck pointedly does not look down at Eddie’s hand, or his own hands, or their combined hands. 

Eddie’s close, now, so close to Buck. 

Really, Buck was close to Eddie, since Eddie hadn’t moved significantly since waking at all, instead directing Buck to do all of the movement; the chair, the feet, now Buck’s body itself. The idea that this closeness was something that Eddie wanted too, enough to ask Buck to help him facilitate it, makes Buck a little dizzy. 

Eddie’s eyes flick down to his mouth, and draw back up slowly. His lip shines with blood, his pupils dilated. Buck doesn’t think they were that dilated five seconds ago. That thought rockets down his spine in a way not dissimilar to the feeling of getting struck by lightning. 

Buck licks his lips. Eddie’s eyes shoot back down. Buck leans closer. He needs to stop blaming sleep deprivation for making him give into his impulsivity, he knows he’s never truly been able to control how he behaves about Eddie. If he moves any closer he will actually be crawling onto the bed, the hand on the mattress supporting his upper body fully from how far he’s leaned. 

They’re sharing breath now, locked together like two planets in each other’s orbit. They’re going to crash together sooner or later. Buck isn’t so sure anymore that it will be a bad crash. He’s certain he’s not hallucinating, but not certain he’s reading the signals correctly, instead reading into the intimacy of their friendship, putting intentions behind Eddie’s actions that Eddie would never mean the way Buck wants. 

“One more thing,” Eddie murmurs, as though sensing Buck’s spiraling train of thought. He’s so close that Buck can feel his breath against his lips. 

Buck blinks. “Anything,” he whispers, an echo of his previous declaration.

Eddie smiles. “Kiss me.”

Buck spends three very long seconds processing those two words. Eddie doesn’t move, just watches the gears turn. 

Buck closes the gap. He moves his hand from the edge of the bed to Eddie’s pillow, leveraging himself close enough to press their mouths together without jostling Eddie in the bed or putting any weight on him. Eddie closes his eyes before Buck does, still smiling as their lips meet.

Their first kiss is chaste, gentle. Buck, more scared of hurting Eddie than he is desperate to taste the inside of his mouth, pulls back after only a few seconds. His lower lip is wet, he notices, his tongue slipping out to lick it automatically.

It’s not saliva, like Buck had assumed. It’s blood. Eddie’s blood, Buck remembers with a jolt, from his split lip. Eddie’s eyes are open again, hooded as he watches Buck lick his lips a second time. Buck remembers earlier, when he’d been convinced that if he wiped Eddie’s mouth, that he would have a fleeting moment of insanity and lick the blood away. It’s ironic, in hindsight, because this is not a moment of insanity at all. It’s so different than he’d imagined, Eddie’s gaze heady and intoxicating on him – Buck hadn’t thought about how Eddie would react to it earlier. 

Buck must also have some sort of wire crossed in the pleasure centers of his brain because a wave of arousal hits him like a fucking truck. They both lean back in at the same time, Eddie about a quarter of the way as far as Buck, considering his decreased range of motion, and come crashing together.

Their first kiss had nothing on this, was too chaste to properly send static crackling through Buck’s every cell the way he feels when his mouth reconnects with Eddie’s. He feels like someone tucked his head into a steel bucket and then hit the side with a hammer. His ears ring. He’s sure he wouldn’t be able to see straight if his eyes were open.

Buck feels Eddie’s sigh in his mouth more than he hears it. Carefully, Eddie’s hand reaches up, cradling the back of his head, so warm and gentle against Buck’s hair. Buck thanks his lucky stars that he’d had to reschedule his last barber’s appointment as Eddie’s fingers twine into the slightly overgrown curls at the back of his scalp. Eddie’s mouth opens against his, urging Buck deeper. He licks along Eddie’s lip, feeling the open cut against his tongue, tasting the sharp metallic tang. He’s unable to stop the noise that the back of his throat produces at the visceral wave of want that springs up in his chest. Buck’s never felt happier in his life. He’s also never been so devastated with the universe’s timing in his life. Eddie has one usable arm and one usable lung, not to mention his frequently re-splitting lip, and Buck has never wanted to jump someone’s bones so badly. In his life. 

An unbidden image comes to mind, Eddie’s perceived reaction to if he’d said jump someone’s bones aloud, making Buck actually laugh out loud, teeth clacking against Eddie’s. He pulls back so fast he almost falls backwards out of the chair. 

“Jesus,” he hisses, one hand covering his mouth. It hadn’t hurt, just surprised him. “Eddie, I’m so sorry,” he says quickly, raising his other hand to reach toward Eddie’s mouth, “are you okay?” 

Eddie, who’d somehow kept his hand on Buck’s nape when they separated, moves his lips experimentally. “All good here.” He grins, raises an eyebrow. “Are you okay?”

Buck flushes. He’s glad he’s not holding himself up over Eddie anymore, he would have collapsed on top of him. “I had a thought that made me laugh—” he stops, realizing how that could come across, then clarifies, “—I wanted to jump your bones so bad.” 

Eddie pulls back and makes the exact face Buck had pictured, down to the wrinkles on his scrunched nose. “Don’t say it like that.”

Buck barks out a laugh. “Yes, that!” He sobers as he remembers himself, that he’d potentially hurt Eddie while he was lying in a fucking ICU bed with surgery in three hours, and groans. “I’m so sorry, really, are you okay? Did I hurt your head?” He reaches out and gently cups each of Eddie’s cheeks in his hands.

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’m okay, my head’s fine.” He presses his cheek into Buck’s right palm, turning his head away. He looks up at Buck out of the corner of his eye. “One more, then we need to sleep.” Buck can’t stop himself from pouting, even though he knows Eddie’s right. Eddie pulls his head back and frowns. “I know you won’t sleep the whole time I’m under,” he lifts his hand to point accusingly at Buck, “which I do not approve of.” 

Buck, feeling reprimanded, huffs. “You’re crazy if you don’t think I know you’d do the same thing.” 

Eddie’s mouth twists, a sure sign that Buck was winning the argument. “Fine,” he says after a moment, “two, then sleep.” 

Buck nods sagely. “I wasn’t negotiating, but I agree that outcome is favorable to me.”

Eddie breathes a laugh, a short, warm thing. It’s stunning, the way Eddie’s face is still so catching even when scraped and bruised. “Please tell me I’m not hallucinating right now,” he says, remembering how he’d thought Eddie was so beautiful that he was hallucinating earlier, “this is real, right?”

Eddie walks his hand up Buck’s arm, slides his palm across Buck’s shoulder and up his neck, then tucks his fingers back into Buck’s curls. He tightens his grip, using Buck’s hair to pull him in. Not rough, Eddie doesn’t have the energy for that, but not quite gentle either. Doesn’t help the list of things that Buck wants right now. 

“You’re not hallucinating.” Eddie confirms, holding Buck just out of kissing reach. 

“Eddie,” Buck keens, unable to verbalize how badly he needs Eddie’s tongue. In his mouth. Now. 

Eddie, who surely didn’t get the message word for word, at least understands the gist, and pulls him the rest of the way in. “I know,” he kisses into Buck’s mouth, “I know.” 

Eddie kisses like a god. Eddie kisses like he needs Buck or else he’ll die, like this is something he’s desperate for. Eddie kisses like he could go all night. Buck wants him. Apparently, Eddie wants him too. It’s a lot to process, the new possibility presented to him. 

Eddie pulls away too soon, his breathing a little uneven. He winces as his ribs pull with an inhale.

“Eddie—” Buck starts, but Eddie waves him off. 

“My fault,” he says between little pants, “held my breath too long.”

Buck reaches for the call light where it sits on the table beside the chair, keeping it at the ready.

Eddie shakes his head. “What are you going to tell them,” he hisses, able to fit more words between breaths now, “we were getting hot and heavy?”

Buck grimaces. “Fine,” he concedes. He watches Eddie as his breathing levels out, until it’s back to the even, if a little shallow, breaths he’d been taking earlier. It only takes twenty seconds or so. Not as long as Buck thought it would take. “Better? He asks. 

Eddie nods. “One more.”

Buck vows not to let himself get carried away this time as he repositions a little to move back in. 

The two of them move in such easy synchronicity, a perfect balance of give and take, that Buck can’t believe this is their first time. Buck, as many times as he’d thought of making out with Eddie, had never imagined that it would be this good. Even here in a hospital bed, unable to touch the way he wants. 

He cuts them off, only having remembered his vow when he’d started imagining where else Eddie’s mouth might find perfect synchronicity.

Eddie frowns. “Could’ve gone longer.” 

“You have a chest tube,” Buck argues.

Eddie opens his mouth to respond, but gives in. “When I no longer have a chest tube, I’ll show you how long I can go.” 

The double entendre makes Buck feel like he’s having an out of body experience. He imagines Eddie over him, Eddie under him, Eddie’s tongue and teeth and—all without stopping—

He almost crumples with how quickly his blood floods south. “I’m going to barf,” he blurts out, then immediately slaps a hand over his mouth, mortified at his lack of filter. 

“What?” Eddie asks. His eyebrows draw in, serious, “are you okay?”

Buck moves his hand up to feel his forehead. His skin feels hot to the touch. “I’m so hard I’m nauseous,” he explains.

“Oh,” Eddie says, clearly not expecting that to be what Buck was alluding to. “Well,” he starts, but Buck cuts him off with a shake of his head.

“I know we can’t,” he sighs, “you can’t even move.”

Eddie looks torn, eyebrows furrowed as he opens his mouth to answer, then closes it again. He tries a second time. “I don’t have to move,” he says thoughtfully, “but you need to sleep.” He takes a measured breath, as though testing his bad lung. “How’s after surgery?”

Buck stalls out. “After surgery? Eddie, listen to yourself. You’re in a fucking ICU bed.”

Eddie waves him off. “Only met ICU admission criteria on a technicality, anyways.”

“Uh, no, you didn’t,” Buck argues, “you have a chest tube.”

Eddie nods. “That’s the technicality.”

“That’s not a technicality,” Buck shoots back, but just earns a one-shouldered shrug. “You’re impossible.”

“Go to sleep, Buck.” Is all the answer he gets. Once Buck is fully relaxed back into the chair, having tucked his pillow back where it should be, Eddie speaks again, reaching to grasp Buck’s hand in his on the bed. “I love you,” he says into the silence. “I meant to say that earlier.”

Buck feels the words consume him, so overwhelmed by the intensity of his feelings for Eddie that he almost can’t respond. “Eddie,” he chokes out, sitting back up and staring at Eddie, who looks like the picture of serenity, eyes closed and relaxed against his pillows, “I’m in love with you.”

Eddie opens one eye to squint at him. “Don’t try to one-up me, Buckley.”

—

Buck dozes until the nurse comes to take Eddie for surgery, shoved so close to the side of the bed that he’s sure he’s going to have a bruise on his hip from how hard the arm of the chair had dug into it. Eddie presses his goodbye into Buck’s mouth. 

Maddie and Harry are already in the waiting room for the OR when he makes his way downstairs from Eddie’s room, feeling like a dead man walking. Feeling like half of a whole person without Eddie’s presence. 

“Third waiting room we’ve held down for Eddie in twelve hours,” Maddie greets him, as Harry pushes a cup of coffee into Buck’s hands, “must be a new record for us, right?”

Buck grunts his response, scoping out a chair near the attendant’s desk so he can be close by when they get updates. He falls into it, his hip aching. The coffee scalds his mouth, but he needs the caffeine, tipping it back and chugging the burning, bitter liquid. 

“Gah,” he shakes his head as he empties the cup and sets it on the table nearest him. The sun is rising, sending golden rays in through the waiting room windows across from Buck. The early morning quiet, usually grounding for Buck, weighs heavy on his shoulders. 

Hen arrives with Christopher next, who’s yawning as he claims the chair next to Buck. He starts talking to Buck about the TV show he’d stayed up all night watching with Denny last night, as casual as though they were sitting and waiting on Eddie to return from the bathroom, not from surgery. When he’s done with the recap, he falls asleep, head on Buck’s shoulder. Buck, unable to move without waking him, and therefore not able to get up to keep his blood flowing, follows soon after. 

He must not snore when he sleeps sitting up, because Chris is still asleep, unbothered, on his shoulder when he comes back to consciousness. It takes everything he has in him not to jump from the chair as he realizes he’d been out. 

Chimney catches his eye as he glances around the room. The sun is no longer visible through the window, high enough in the sky that Buck assumes it’s approaching midday. He checks his watch. Just past ten. 

“You let me sleep for three hours?” He feels more than a little frantic. Had they gotten any updates while Buck was asleep? How’s Eddie? He opens his mouth to start verbalizing the questions from the top, but he’s cut off.

“Good morning,” Chimney says, evilly, “did Eddie’s power of attorney not sleep well in his room last night?”

Buck flushes. He pins Chimney and his teasing grin with a glare. “I’ll have you know,” he hisses, “that I was lying so I could go see him.”

“Normal thing for a best friend to do,” Chimney argues back, “why didn’t you just say you were his husband?” 

“Chim,” Hen scolds, “not fair.” She shakes her head. “That was a full-on Catholic priest, and he specified ‘wife’.”

“It’s Los Angeles!” Chimney exclaims, loud enough that Chris shifts, waking up. “And not all Catholic priests are homophobic!”

“All I’m saying,” Hen adds, and Buck should’ve known that she hadn’t been coming to his defense, “is Buck could’ve said he was Eddie’s wife.” 

“You weren’t even there,” Buck splutters, “how do you know that—” 

Hen just shrugs. 

“Chimney and Hen are so cancelled,” Chris mutters to Buck through a yawn as he straightens up. He stretches and then turns to Hen, fully alert. “Can I have my twenty bucks?” 

Buck’s thankful for the distraction. “Twenty bucks?” He echoes, looking between them. 

Hen doesn’t bother pretending she’s embarrassed to be caught. “So he’d fall asleep on you and make you take a nap.”

Buck turns back to Christopher with a gasp. “Et tu, Chris?” He puts his hands to his chest, like he’s feeling for a stab wound. “I wasted my coffee,” he scowls.

“Decaf,” Chimney says.

“Decaf?” Buck repeats, then remembers that Harry had given him the coffee this morning, not Chimney. “Wait, how many of you were in on this?” 

“Um,” Chris says next to him, “all of us?”

Buck huffs. “What, you guys all have a group chat or something? Nevermind, I don’t even want to know.” He waves his hand dismissively. “Don’t even tell me.” He stretches his legs out in front of him and pulls himself up to stand. 

He’s saved from either confirmation or denial of his question by the staff-only door behind the attendant’s desk opening. Everyone turns, watching the surgeon enter the room. She’s smiling as she finds the group. 

“Visitors for Diaz?” She asks. “He’s awake.”

After the group makes their rounds visiting Eddie in the post-anesthesia care unit, everyone but Buck heads home, promising to inform everyone who wasn’t there that Eddie’s surgery went well and he was going back upstairs. 

Eddie spends only part of the afternoon in his ICU room, an ever revolving door of visitors stopping by. Buck doesn’t move from his chair, which he’d pulled to Eddie’s injured side when they’d returned to the room, as more than a dozen people cycle in and out. Sometimes he has something relevant to add to Eddie and the visitors’ conversation, but mostly he dozes.

Eddie’s nurse comes in just as Josh and his boyfriend are leaving, letting the pair know that she has news. 

“You’re getting downgraded to the step-down unit overnight,” she explains, “if you do well, you’ll probably get moved to a general bed for observation. Maybe even discharged by tomorrow night. They’ll pull your chest tube in the morning if your new CT looks good.” A good prognosis. Buck, despite the earlier doctors’ estimates, had been under the impression that Eddie would be fully ICU for much longer. 

Emily’s the last visitor Eddie receives before he gets moved to the new unit, entering the room with her scrubs and employee badge on. 

Buck jumps up from his chair to greet her and give her his thanks for taking care of Eddie. She beams at him. 

“I can’t believe it,” she says, “finally!” 

“Finally?” Eddie echoes, speaking for both of them. 

She continues beaming. “Kate, your nurse from this morning, works ER part time with me. She was telling me in the cafeteria she had the cutest couple posted up in this room, and I said—” she gives herself a lofty affectation, “—is it the trauma from last night?” She returns to speaking normally, “and she said yes! Oh, Eddie, Buck, I’m so happy for you!”

Buck’s jaw doesn’t drop, but it’s a close thing.

“Eddie, our cover’s been blown,” he stage whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

“I think we’re going to have to kill her,” Eddie answers, serious as the grave.

All three of them bust into laughter.

“Anyway,” she says through her laughter, “I just wanted to congratulate you guys. I have to get back down though, the place is probably burning down without me.” Her smile is warm as she makes her way back to the door. “Best of luck to you guys, really. I hope I don’t see either of you on my trauma bay stretcher ever again.”  

Buck shoots Eddie a look. “I hope so too,” he says. 

She turns to leave, making to pull the curtain shut behind her, but Buck remembers he had a question for her. 

“Emily, before you go,” he asks, “do you remember if you guys gave him his tetanus last night?”

She thinks for a moment. “Yeah, we did. Pharmacy said they didn’t have one on file.”

Buck turns back to impart Eddie with a glare. “Our vaccination schedules are fucked,” he hisses at Eddie, then takes a calming breath and returns to smiling at Emily. “Thank you,” he says, giving her a little wave, “have a good rest of your shift!”

—

The step down unit’s bed is not dissimilar from the ICU’s, but the chairs certainly are. Day slips away, and with it the visiting hours. After Chris leaves for the night to stay at Hen’s again, Buck sidles up in a significantly-more-uncomfortable chair, and props his feet up next to Eddie’s on the bed.

He sighs, letting his head roll onto his shoulder to look at Eddie. It still doesn’t feel quite real, the new dynamic him and Eddie have slipped into. 

“When do you want to tell him?” Eddie asks. He doesn’t need the oxygen cannula anymore, one of the reasons he’d been able to leave the ICU. 

Buck hums. “As soon as you’re home,” he thinks aloud, “or do you think earlier?” He knows Eddie’s probably worried about Chris finding out from someone other than them, but another day or two wouldn’t hurt. 

“I don’t want to do it here.” 

Buck hums his agreement. “We should figure out what we’re going to tell him,” he considers. 

“Well, I’m not your boyfriend,” Eddie says with a shake of his head. 

With anybody else, that would’ve been a statement that gave Buck pause. But Buck knows Eddie just as well as Eddie knows him. Boyfriend doesn’t convey even half of what Buck and Eddie are to each other. 

Buck gestures between the both of them. “I mean, we’re Buck and Eddie right? Like it’s just us.” It has been just the two of them as a team for a long time now, even though their difficulties, like when Eddie was eight hundred miles away, or how their status as work partners is currently on hiatus. 

“Just us,” Eddie echoes. 

“And I’d give you everything,” Buck elaborates, “under one condition.”

Eddie’s eyebrows pull together in trepidation. “What condition?”

“As long as we do this, you promise never to move to a different state without asking me to come with you again.” He knows Eddie can see the hurt in his eyes. 

“I do.” The way Eddie says it, serious as though he’s at the altar, makes Buck think he’s actually going to faint. Eddie continues, “I have one as well.”

Buck, though knowing where this is going, nods. 

Eddie’s voice lowers, so quiet. “And you promise not to refuse to ask me for help when you need it?”

Buck steels himself against the wave of guilt that crashes over him. He’d gotten off lucky in that. He could’ve gone to Eddie, and he chose not to. Not from lack of trust, but because the idea of baring that truth about himself to Eddie had been equally as painful as the idea of open heart surgery with no anesthesia. He doesn’t think he’d make that choice again. 

“I do,” he answers. 

They grin at each other, and all Buck wants is to be laying side by side in Eddie’s bed on South Bedford Street. Their bed, soon. If Eddie takes him up on his offer of everything. 

After a moment, Eddie’s smile softens into sheepish. “By the way,” he starts, “I, uh, kind of already have you as my power of attorney.” 

Buck’s just barely able to contain the involuntary noise that attempts to claw out of his throat. He thinks of his sleep deprivation induced daydream from the night before. He’d actually been onto something. “How long?” He asks. Maybe working on asking important questions first is not just for twenty-years-older Buck. He’s remembering a conversation from what feels like a lifetime ago, a conversation he’s replayed in his mind easily hundreds of times, in the too-quiet loneliness of his loft after Eddie and Chris have left for the night, and, just as often, in the days filled to bursting with joy, just the three of them. 

My attorney said you could refuse.

You know I wouldn’t. 

Nah, I know you wouldn’t.

Then, the moment that really keeps Buck awake at night, no one will ever fight for my son as hard as you.

Buck feels the pieces connect, feels the notarized paper that he’s never seen fold tight around his heart. No one would ever fight for Eddie as hard as him, either. 

“New Mexico,” Eddie answers. Buck freezes. “I was in that hospital bed, and you weren’t there, and—” he pauses, trying to find the words.

“They thought you killed me,” Buck fills in. He knows this. It makes his stomach turn, still. Probably always will.

“Not just that,” Eddie breathes. “There was more. They kept referring to us like we were–together–” He stops again. “Not that it mattered, then, and obviously they’d be right, now, but it was the way they said it.” His face scrunches in disgust. “They all but called you my wife. Like it was a bad thing.”

Wife. It was becoming a common theme. It hurts less now, with Buck’s body so close to Eddie’s, with permission to stay this close forever. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks, his throat dry. 

A wry smile works onto Eddie’s lips. “I wasn’t ready for you to figure out that I’m in love with you.”

It takes everything he has not to throw himself at Eddie, so overwhelmed with how much love and devotion he harbors that he feels it pulsating through his arteries, as essential to his survival as the hemoglobin that carries oxygen to his brain.

Instead, he takes Eddie’s face gently in his hands and leans in to kiss him, long and slow. 

“I’d marry you,” Buck murmurs against his lips, not on-topic but not exactly off-topic, “if you asked.” 

Eddie tilts his chin to separate them. Buck leans back enough to see Eddie’s face, the early stages of healing bruises and road rash and cuts and scrapes scattered across it, the soft curve of his smile. “Take me out for dinner first,” he teases. His right hand comes up to pull Buck back in by the nape, his lips connecting with Buck’s ear. His breath is hot on the sensitive skin, sending a thrill down Buck’s spine. “Might have a question to ask you there.”