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There’s probably something to be said about the way Eddie’s heart lurches into his throat and then promptly stops pumping blood round his body the moment he sees the roof of the building start caving in, Buck still inside.
Because of course Buck was inside.
Despite Chim ordering him, specifically, to stay put. Despite him being the one with the bad leg, the one who’s had the most near misses with death out of all of them at this point.
Despite him being the one person who’s ever been given the terrifying honour of owning Eddie’s heart, body and soul.
Not that Buck knows that. Not that Eddie has ever— will ever, burden him with that knowledge. Buck deserves to find someone good for him, someone with no baggage who can give him everything he needs.
He does, however, kind of need to be alive to be able to do that. And to keep Eddie alive with him. Just by being there. Being his best friend. His person. Even if Eddie wants more.
Even if he can never have more, he needs to have Buck. In whatever capacity that’s allowed to him by this godforsaken universe. And yet, he’s watching the roof give way and fall in on the structural hold of the apartment block they’d been evacuating.
The one Buck is currently still inside of. The one Harry and Ravi are actively holding him back from. Even as he’s thrashing in their arms, hitting at whatever he can reach and screaming. Screaming. Guttural, raw sounds of pure pain and grief.
Eddie needs to get in. Needs to get to Buck, even if that means he leaves this world in the process. He needs Buck to be safe. Chris needs Buck to be safe. Their family would fall apart without him.
He falls to his knees, distantly aware that he’s making some sort of awful, pathetic noise. Aware that there’s smoke and plumes of flame billowing around them. Aware, as much as he wishes he wasn’t, that Hen has come round the front of him and pulled him in, and he’s whispering ‘I love him, I love him, I loved him DAMN IT!’ Voice hoarse and broken against her shoulder as Harry and Ravi keep him pinned to the spot.
Chim’s on the radio, yelling into it for Buck desperately. There’s no response. Just the crackle and heat of fire. Static.
It’s the sound of wood and brick splintering and crashing into the ground at full force that finally has Eddie snapping his head upwards. The building is fully down, a storm of dust and red inferno drowning everything in its sight. Buck…
Except for the shadowy figure walking, or more like stumbling, towards them. With a much smaller, much more squirmy figure in its hold.
Buck. And the stupid fucking cat he’d run back to rescue.
Eddie damn near tackles him to the floor as Ravi and Harry release their hold on him. Pushes Hen clean off himself with the strength he surges forward towards Buck with.
The cat screeches and dashes off sideways, right into the arms of what must be its sobbing owner, but Eddie can’t bring himself to care about it. All he knows is Buck is alive. Alive and right in front of him after superhero rescuing a defenceless cat in typical Buck fashion.
They lay there in a pile of limbs on the ground, chests heaving as Eddie lets himself relish the in the feeling of Buck alive and solid against him, before Buck seizes up with a mighty cough and Eddie is scrambling off him with super human speed.
“YOU FUCKING IDIOT! You could have died!” He doesn’t even recognize his own voice, doesn’t know how his fingers ended up in Buck’s face, shaking with a mix of rage and terror. Doesn’t care frankly.
And then Buck responds in the most Buck way possible and Eddie’s entire soul compresses into his heart as he hears Buck’s weak and breathy “didn’t though”.
The smug bastard. Eddie wants to eat him alive.
Someone’s pulling him off Buck now. Gentle, oh so gentle. Hen. “I need to check him out. He’s inhaled a lot of smoke.”
As fucking if. Eddie swats her off him. Crueler than he should be. He’ll regret it later. Not now though. Now all that exists to him is Buck and the wild need to make sure he’s okay. To be the one who keeps him safe.
“I’m a paramedic too you know. I’ve got him.”
He doesn’t care if he sounds crazy. Doesn’t care what it looks like. Eddie gets up and yanks Buck up by his turnouts, dragging him towards the ambulance.
Blissfully no one follows. Eddie doesn’t know what he’d do if they didn’t give him space right now.
No matter how much he loves the 118, and he does, that’s his family damnit, Eddie’s fairly sure he’s functioning with about as much logic as a rabid dog right now.
He needs space to breathe. He needs Buck.
Once they get to the ambulance Eddie scruffs Buck like a naughty puppy, which he might as well be, and gets him sat.
Buck straps the oxygen mask to his face dutifully, but he’s refusing to meet Eddie’s eyes. Which might be for the best right now.
If Eddie has to make direct eye contact with this bright blue eyes, framed by that gorgeous birth mark and covered in soot? He might go insane and like, throw up his heart directly into Buck’s lap.
Or just kiss him. Which isn’t even a physical possibility because Buck’s mouth and nose are physically covered, and he needs help with his breathing, and Eddie needs to get the fuck away and maybe scream so loud the police might get called.
Sue him, his best friend is pretty special to him. And also an insane, reckless, dumbass.
Eddie is hopelessly, irrevocably in love with said dumbass. It’s rooted so deep in him he might just collapse inwards on himself and implode like a black hole or some shit.
Which is why he stumbles away from the ambulance and back to the engine as soon as he’s done triple checking Buck’s vitals without saying a single goddamn word.
That’s Eddie Diaz for you— always running.
-
The rest of their shift is shrouded in tightly coiled tension, Buck avoids him like the plague, and everyone else tries to stay out of their way like they’re both freshly lit sticks of dynamite.
Honestly? They might be. At least Eddie certainly feels like one. But they’ve got a job to do, though thankfully the rest of the shift is just low grade calls that don’t put them in too much danger.
Eddie isn’t sure he’d let Buck walk into another fire right now. Which is dangerous, fucking hell Eddie knows it’s dangerous. His whole thing with Buck is just that. Danger.
It all finally boils over as their shift ends and Buck hightails it out the station like his ass is on fire, irony not intended nor numerous in the current moment.
Ravi is saying something, asking Eddie something probably. He doesn’t hear any of it. All he here’s in the ringing in his ears as he watches Buck speed walk away.
“Oh hell no.” Is all he gets out under his breath before he’s chasing after him. Because that’s what Eddie’s been doing since the day he met Buck, isn’t it? Chasing after him.
Chasing after Chris, after his job, after any shred of validation and safety and security he can sink his fingertips into, desperate to hold on.
So he chases. Ignores Ravi’s strangled protests from behind, just goes. Follows after Buck like gravity itself is reeling him in.
Buck’s truck is already peeling out the station parking lot when Eddie makes it outside. He kicks a trash can, screams “fuck” way louder than he should into the quiet of the night.
Then he floors it ten miles over the speed limit all the way to Buck’s house.
-
He doesn’t even bother fiddling with his keys to Buck’s when he gets there, just crashes through the front door in a fit of rage.
It’s unlocked. Just like he knew it would be. Buck knew he’d follow. Of course he knew. Eddie always follows.
The lights are dim, but there’s a faint glow from the kitchen so Eddie blindly stumbles towards it, not even caring that he knocks over the shoe rack and a pile of Amazon boxes in the doorway as he goes.
All the fear and the fury and the love comes crashing over him again and Eddie is flying through the doorway, running on pure adrenaline.
He stops dead when he sees Buck. He’s washed golden in the soft kitchen light, grey sweatpants low on his hips, shirt too tight round the chest and shoulders.
Probably because it’s one of Eddie’s. He tries to tamp down on the pang of arousal that shoots through his body. He’s here to tell Buck off, not pop a boner.
His dick is a traitor though, and it’s having other opinions apparently. That is right until Buck goes “look Eddie, I don’t wanna hear it okay. I’m reckless blah blah, I know okay? Just drop it.”
Except somewhere between the fast loop of rage and preemptive grief that he had felt earlier this arousal mixes in with it and it all somehow fixates on ‘dick’ and ‘I’m so angry at you’ and he’s closer to Buck than he had realised because the next thing he knows is he’s kneeing Buck directly in the crotch.
And Buck? Buck moans.
Then he seems to catch himself, eyes flashing wide as he bites out “Eddie what the fuck?! That hurt!”
His voice is breathy and strangled, higher pitched than Eddie has ever heard it and that’s making it really, really fucking hard for Eddie to think straight.
Or like— at all.
So what comes tumbling out his mouth next is “good! Maybe now you’ll feel a fraction of how much it hurt me to watch that building go down thinking you weren’t coming out of it!”
Buck flinches, then makes a face that tells Eddie he’s not getting the severity of it at all. Not in the slightest.
By some twist or the evil fates Eddie is apparently insane now, so he swings forward and slaps Buck directly across his cock again.
His cock which isn’t soft anymore.
Eddie doesn’t have enough brain cells to focus on that right now.
What he does have enough brain cells for though is for his mouth to keep running without any active input from his brain.
He listens to Buck whimper again at the impact, and then he pushes forward. “Yeah. That’s how I felt earlier when I thought you fucking died Buck. Except in my chest. And not just for myself, do you have any idea how much Christopher would miss you?!”
Buck just gapes at him, panting heavily. There’s barely any space between them now and Eddie honestly has no fucking clue when that happened.
Fear and arousal taste pretty fucking similar at this point. He doesn’t know which emotion is dominant at this point.
All he knows is his dick is hard, so is Buck’s, and he is so damn terrified and angry that he doesn’t know where the hell to put any of it. A faint voice in the back of his head is screaming that a confessional might be where.
Eddie’s mouth still can’t stop spilling its own confessions without permission. “I fucking LOVE you, Buck. And you don’t even care. You’ll throw my entire world into an inferno for a cat and not think twice. How do you think I feel?! How do you think Chris feels?”
Balking. Buck just gapes at him like a fucking goldfish. Eddie has no clue what to do with that. He has no clue what to do with the fact they’re both currently hard either.
He steps back. Puts distance between them.
Wrong move. Buck makes a tragic, tinny noise at that, and Eddie wants to get launched to another planet.
Or cum in his pants. Immediately.
He does neither, just keeps himself held at a less than respectable distance and waits.
And waits, and waits, and waits.
His idiot of a best friend says nothing, just breathes heavy and hot into the space between them, breaking Eddie’s resolve more and more with every second.
Finally, after what seems like a lifetime, Buck speaks up.
Broken, hoarse and dripping with everything they’ve been avoiding for the bigger part of a decade. Buck goes “hhhnghh.”
Which isn’t really saying anything, it’s just a noise. Eddie grabs on to it like a kid whose candy might be ripped away at any moment.
“Use your fucking words Buckley. You’re hard. Now tell me why or I’ll leave, so help me God.”
Buck doesn’t use his words. He folds right into Eddie’s shoulder, drooling against it. Then lolls there for a minute or so. It’s maddening in the best way possible.
Finally— finally, after what seems like an eternity of heavy breathing and tension, Buck manages an actual sentence. Somewhat.
“You’re touching my dick and saying you love me. I’m a bit confused here bud, okay?”
No, Eddie is not okay. Instead of saying that he says “I’m not touching your dick very nicely”
Buck moans into his shoulder again, drooling still.
Where the fuck do they even go from here? They’re still in Buck’s kitchen, pressed against the counter near the fridge. Typical. Oh so fucking typical for them.
Yet entirely novel. Entirely brave in a way Eddie had never intended to be tonight.
Nor ever. This was a secret he had been planning to take to the grave with him. Something Buck would never know so he would stay free. Stay uncomplicated. Stay Buck.
Where they go from here, apparently, is Buck canting his hips forward. Grinding against thin air and making the most broken, wrecked noise.
“Eddie.”
That’s all it takes. A man can only have so much self control, and Eddie has done his penance having way too much his entire life.
Especially in his eight years of knowing Buck.
Tonight is the night it snaps.
He rips the sweats that have been hugging Buck’s hips so nicely down, and there’s nothing beneath them. Because of. fucking. course.
How absolutely Buck of him. Doesn’t matter if it’s making saliva pool in Eddie’s mouth. Screw Buck for his sex appeal when Eddie came over to be fucking mad at him.
There’s a steady drool of pre leaking round his tip. Dark grey stain on his sweats that’s now glistening in the faint kitchen light against his happy trail.
Eddie would have to be held at gunpoint to admit this, but God is he happy that Buck has stopped shaving.
All he’s wanted recently is to press his nose to Buck’s navel and lower and smell.
It’s primal and potentially gross, but it’s so deeply human. So them, after as many calls as they’ve lived through together, that it honestly doesn’t even register as strange.
A cricket croaks behind the fridge. Probably an issue for tomorrow that Buck will freak out over.
There’s no acknowledgement of it now though. Eddie spits on his palm and wraps it round Buck’s length.
It takes a total of eight strokes for Buck to bite down on his collar bone and whine that he’s close.
Eddie drags his pinky through the slit of Buck’s dick. He jerks. Starts to spill. Eddie reaches down lower and pinches his balls.
Aiming for painful. Aiming for meaningful. Aiming for something.
Buck blows his load all over Eddie’s hand the same time Eddie comes in his pants like a fucking teenager, desperate for his best friend.
It’s sticky. Messy.
Eddie smashes his mouth against Buck’s in the most disgusting kiss of his fucking life.
Their first kiss is a disaster. It’s them. It’s perfect in every way they have not been.
There’s anger, there’s fear. So much fear.
They heave against each other coming down. Eddie still has a hand on Buck. He’s softening, but not getting much smaller and Eddie is hit with the sickening realisation that this is all he wants for the rest of forever.
-
There’s a forever of silence, skin against skin while they breathe through the aftershocks, and then Buck rubs a hand over his front. Feels the wetness.
“I love you too”
Silence for another few minutes. Bucks hand resting against his crotch, feeling the evidence. Stillness together that they should talk about.
Eddie’s voice is broken to all shit when he brings himself to say something, to offer a wishbone.
“Chris is at a sleepover tonight.”
Buck tugs him towards his bedroom after that. Kisses him sweet after he wipes them down somewhat clean. Tucks his thigh between Eddie’s.