Chapter Text
Everything hurts. Buck groans and the kitten meows and it's insane and stupid, but Buck feels relieved because the little thing seems to be safe and sound. It's one of those ginger fluffy kittens that would be the star in some Instagram account if it wasn't so thin, wet and covered with dust and blood. Some blood is dark and dry, some are the result of the awful barbed wire than some future psychopath put as a necklace around the little guy (or girl) neck and still was there, around its neck, and some was Buck's blood.
Buck knew he couldn't do a lot while he himself was hurt and had a nail through his hand, and he probably should be worried about it and all the possible infections he could get because of that shit, but the kitten meows were getting weaker and weaker, and he couldn't just ignore it.
He was dizzy and his vision was blurred, but he could feel the thorns punching his skin and its skin, he could feel the nail moving through the palm of his hands, but the kitten was still, and Buck was determined, so in the end he was able to get the fucking barbed wire out of the way, and then, just like that he blacked out.
He came to his sense later on, awake because of the desperate meows and the weird feeling of the cat tongue on his face. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it made him weirdly aware of the real situation here. He had blacked out for some unknown amount of time, which meant he had a concussion, he also had a thing through his hand that he knew he couldn't take off without bleeding out (fucking blood thinners), some tiny little bloody wounds that would need to be taken care off, and who knows what else. And yeah, of course, a kitten, who was also bloody, scared, probably hungry and thirsty. So he did the second most stupid thing he could have done to save himself, he asked for an Uber
A new ding sounded, so Eddie took his phone and opened the app.
Eddie hated it. The going around with all kind of people, the traffic, the stupid small talks with people he didn't know and didn't care, the dings of the app with comments that weren't always positive or fair, the dings with new directions and new tasks and new stupid people with stupid small talks and stupid shit that made him want to punch them in the face until they stopped worrying about mundane shit that didn't matter to anyone with a little bit of common sense. But he had to do it because he bought a stupidly expensive trunk that he didn't totally pay because he counted with more money from the Street Fighting, but then he stopped Street Fighting so now he has to be a stupid Uber driver and go around the city with stupid people with stupid problems instead of being at home with his son.
The location was in the middle of nowhere, and usually, he wouldn't take such a weird ask, but this was the first ask of a very long night, and he really needed it. And if there was someone there looking for problems, well, let's say there was a part of Eddie that was more than happy to oblige
When Eddie got to the place it was hard to see anything besides his car lights and the few weak streetlights along the road. He was about to leave the place, angry and disappointed when he heard it, a weak yet sharp meow and a series of coughs that sounded way too painful and wet... And then a voice that he recognized o too well...
Using his phone as a lamp he was able to find the source of the sounds. It took him the longest two minutes of his life. And there he was. He looked terrible, sitting back against an old tree, he was covered with leaves, branches, cuts and scrapes, he was pale, and when he said hello with the hand he saw the hugest nail he had seen in all his life going through his hand. But Eddie was way worrier about the things he couldn't see, because that cough sounded like a rib pounding into a lung, and the way he was now protecting his eyes from the light was screaming concussion to Eddie.
"I need to go to the hospital" he said blatantly, as if it wasn't the most obvious statement of the world
"And why haven't you called and ambulance, you idiot!"
It took Buck way too long to catch up with the conversation and recognize Eddie's voice, at least that was what Eddie thought while he knelt down to check Buck better
"Eddie?..."
"Yeah" he answered trying to no freak out when he found out the bleeding wound on the back of Buck's head.
"I thought I called an Uber"
"And you did, although you should have called an ambulance," he said keeping the pressure on the wound with a jacket with one hand while he started to mark the ambulance number with the other
"NO" Buck yelled weakly "I don't need an ambulance, I just need to get to the hospital, if you call an ambulance they'll call Bobby and all the squad..."
"And you think I won't you idiota"
"There is no need, I don't want them to worry, Bobby has enough in his plate..."
"Just shut up, okay..." he said furiously because the phone was picked up on the other side, so Eddie spoke to the 911 operator delivering the information quickly and efficiently. When it was done, he left the line open
He could see that Buck was having a hard time staying awake, which meant he had to keep a conversation going and freak out later
"Care to tell me what the hell happened?"
"I had to save this little guy" Buck answered feebly. That was when Eddie saw he had something inside his jacket, something that was moving and making noises. Then he reminded the meows he had heard earlier on, the leaves and the branches, and he put two and two together.
"You climbed the tree to rescue a kitten?" he asked with disbelief in his voice. It would have been fun if Buck was so hurt and the kitten didn't look as bad as him. It was such a Buck thing to do, to turn the firefighter cliché into a big catastrophic disaster, but of course, Buck being Buck seemed more worried about the kitten than himself.
"Yeah. It wasn't too high so it seemed easy enough. But some punk had put a barbed wire around its neck and well, I wasn't expecting that, when I grabbed it, it took me by surprise and well, I felt..." Every now and then, Buck had to stop the narration of his misadventures because of some coughing or because he needed to take some air, so Eddie was ecstatic when he saw the ambulance lights. He knew things were getting really bad for his best friend.
Those lights seemed to be Buck cue, because he started to drift away, but before he closed his eyes he asked to take care of the kitten, and then he whispered something to Eddie that would haunt him for a long time because there was so much there, in the way he said it, the tone, the single one perfect tear in his eye
"Don't leave me"