Work Text:
Buck couldn’t imagine a normal day anymore. Ever since he was trapped under a ladder truck after a bomb went off underneath it, his whole life felt like it was thrown into a blender.
It wasn’t only the bombing and the crush injury. It wasn’t only the pulmonary embolism and quitting his job. It wasn’t only the tsunami and the terror of losing Christopher. It wasn’t only the lawsuit that alienated him from everyone he loved and made him feel more alone than ever.
Buck couldn’t trust his body anymore. His blood – the thing that gave him life and pumped through his veins – was trying to kill him.
He thought things would be different after he was reinstated. It took some time, and several weeks of the most frigid shifts, but he thought things were returning to normal.
They were more cautious about Buck getting injured, but that was to be expected. He and Eddie squashed their beef on Halloween night, and then later Bobby came running when Buck was in the ER.
That still boggled his mind. He vividly remembered Bobby’s face when he handed him the letter that said Buck was suing him and the department. He looked so haunted, and it still haunted Buck in his dreams.
He never meant to hurt any of them, but that’s what he did. He didn’t think, he never does. That was kind of Bobby’s whole point.
It didn’t matter anymore, though, because they were good. Things were good. His coworkers treated him like a person again. His friends invited him to things again. He regularly got to see Chris again.
The nature of his life was healing, but Buck himself was still plagued with the fact that he had an unchecked weapon surging through his body.
The pills he took every morning did little to comfort him because they created an entirely different problem. Did they break down the platelets that usually combined with the proteins that created life-endangering blood clots? Yes. Did they ensure that he wouldn’t vomit blood at any given time and scare the living daylights out of his friends and family? Yes.
Did they make him dizzy, nauseous, and constantly vigilant of any cut no matter how small that appeared on his body? Absolutely.
He didn’t want to complain, mostly because he didn’t feel like he had any right after everything that happened, but he had a dangerous job. It wasn’t unheard of for him to get cut in the field. It didn’t use to be a big deal. Sure he was clumsy, but the only ones who ever pointed that out were Maddie and Hen.
The last time he was in therapy, regardless of it not working out, she told him that he might have ADHD. Of course, he never saw her again after what happened, but he did do a deep dive into the disorder.
He recognized a lot of the symptoms in himself. The forgetfulness, the hyper-fixations, the rejection sensitivity, and the inability to focus just to name a few. One of the articles he read talked about a dysfunction in postural sway. It basically said the disability affects your balance and could start when you were a kid when your brain wasn’t fully developed.
In hindsight, it tracked. Buck was a clumsy kid and he grew into a clumsy adult. Learning about it now made even more sense because he probably wouldn’t have recognized it with all the injury-inducing things he did to get his parent’s attention.
But now, with his blood problems, it was even more dangerous to be randomly bleeding from a cut he probably didn’t even feel.
That’s not to say he didn’t feel it when the mailer cut deep enough into his finger to draw blood.
“Mother-” Buck yelped, dropping the offending piece of junk mail. A flier from a cable company fluttered to the ground. Even worse, who had cable anymore?
Buck examined his finger watching a bloom of blood drip down his palm. It was too fast and too much for a paper cut. He rolled his eyes sticking the injured digit in his mouth.
It was his second day off after a 24 that felt more like a 48. They were getting further into the winter months. Los Angeles winters weren’t nearly as bad as East Coast winters, but they did have their own issues; namely the rain.
Buck glanced out his loft’s giant windows. It’d been sprinkling for days after an outright downpour that caused its fair share of accidents around the city. When Buck stumbled home the morning before, he only had eyes for his bed.
Fourteen hours later he was finally rested enough to remember to plug in his phone that died right before their last call. A litany of texts piled up as soon as the phone turned back on. He could only be bothered to check for any emergencies.
Bobby texted to make sure he made it home safely. Maddie texted about brunch they were supposed to do sometime during the week. Chim sent a derpy meme. Athena and Hen were talking about something in the group chat. Eddie asked if he wanted to hang out because Chris was staying the night at a friend's. Buck answered that one first.
He always wanted to hang out with Eddie, but even so, Buck knew the invitation came in layers. The first layer was that Chris was sleeping somewhere not under Eddie’s roof. That always freaked the older man out. Buck learned early that Eddie would do whatever he could to distract himself from thinking about how he couldn’t physically see his kid. The second layer was that Buck and Eddie were both trying to get back to where they were before the lawsuit and before Eddie needed to go to Frank for ‘anger issues.’
On Buck’s end, there was also the fact that he would do just about anything to get back into Eddie’s good graces because he was more than half in love with him. He knew nothing would ever happen between them, but he would rather have some of Eddie than none of him at all.
Eddie was coming over tonight for beer, pizza, and the game. Buck wasn’t even sure if there was a game on, but that wasn’t really the part that mattered.
Since coming back to the 118 and reconciling with his friends, Buck could admit that he’d possibly been a little overly eager to help. He took what Chim said on Halloween to heart. He could do chores and follow instructions.
Had he been just a step below malicious compliance since then? Maybe. But after a few days of watching him buzz around the firehouse like a Mr. Clean/Tasmanian Devil abomination, his friends forced him to slow down.
That was the secret third layer that Buck thought his friends didn’t know he knew about. It quickly went from weeks of cold shoulders and snappy replies to ‘someone needs to check on Buck’ and ‘he can’t possibly be left alone, what if he trips on something and bleeds out?’
The dopamine he got from someone paying attention to him slightly overshadowed the annoyance of being thought of as an idiot who couldn’t possibly survive on his own.
It was a fine line because he spent so much time alone while in recovery and after the lawsuit. He wanted his friends – his family – to spend time with him. He just wanted them to want that and at the same time not think of him as a burden.
He shook his head as he looked for a bandaid. Eddie was definitely not the only one who needed to talk to a professional.
He pulled out a fresh pack of bandaids that Maddie shoved in his medicine cabinet. After his disastrous Welcome Back Party, his big sister went full mama bear/Nurse Jackie. He had first aid kits, styptic powder, and skin glue for days.
He covered the cut and went to check on the pizza. Normally he would've just ordered it, but Eddie was coming over and Buck wanted to go through the trouble for him.
After checking the food wasn’t burned, Buck went to get a drink. He pulled out a water bottle and noticed a red smudge on the door when he closed it. He grabbed some paper towels and saw another red smear on the oven glass.
Buck looked at his hands to see if he was tracking pizza sauce around his kitchen and that’s when he saw that he bled through his bandaid. He threw his hands up in the air. Of course, it was blood. He removed the soaked bandaid and clamped the paper towel around his finger.
He went back to the medicine cabinet in his downstairs bathroom to grab some skin glue. The last time he was at the ER, he asked a PA what the best thing for small cuts was, and she recommended four different cyanoacrylate products.
He checked his watch, Eddie should be there in an hour, and the pizza would be done in 40 minutes. He dug through the box of first aid supplies but couldn’t find what he was looking for. He checked behind the mirror and in the linen closet but decided that he must have taken it to the upstairs bathroom.
He stood to put everything back but miscalculated the distance between his face and the open cabinet. His nose smacked against the metal edge of the mirror, and it hurt like nobody’s business.
“Are you kidding me!” he yelled to his empty apartment. Maybe they were right, maybe he shouldn’t be left alone. Buck firmly closed the mirror while holding his nose. It was hot and tingling, but it wasn’t broken. He cursed when he looked at his reflection and realized there was more blood smeared on the surface. He bled through the paper towel.
The unsteady blonde took a deep breath. He was aggravating the situation. He just needed to go upstairs, fix his finger, clean up the trail of blood, and calm the hell down.
Buck stepped away from the mess, careful not to touch anything with his increasingly bloody hand. He threw the paper towel on the table and stuck his finger back in his mouth. He vaguely remembered reading about how saliva helps with cuts, or maybe it was dog saliva.
“I don’t have a dog so that’s not gonna work,” he said, trekking up the stairs. He tripped halfway up and banged his knee on a solid step. No one would blame him if he simply gave up and rotted away right where he was. He braced himself too late to remember that his finger was still bleeding.
He swiped a hand under his nose because of course his nose was running after banging it on a metal frame. He sighed, thought of how much time he had before Eddie showed up, and limped the rest of the way to his upstairs bathroom.
Flicking on the light, he bent to open the lower cabinet. He rubbed his still throbbing nose, wiping the blood from his finger off with his sleeve. He would need to change before Eddie arrived. He really didn’t feel like convincing his partner he wasn’t bleeding out.
The skin glue sat innocently in a basket of other medical supplies. His nose tingled again which alerted him seconds before he had to sneeze. He reached for some toilet paper but wasn’t fast enough. He knew it was going to hurt like hell.
He tried to head it off but had no hope of stopping two explosive sneezes. A wet glob flew out between his fingers and painted the room. He clenched his eyes shut, trying to will the pain away, but they still instantly burned while filling with tears.
Something wet fell on his lip and he automatically ran his tongue over the area. He expected the salty tinge of a runny nose, but color him surprised when a copper flavor filled his mouth. He opened his eyes confused and almost screamed at the Jackson Pollock of blood that painted the walls of his bathroom.
He lunged for the toilet paper, taking way too much, to bunch it under his nose. He scrambled to his feet to look at himself in the mirror. He was covered in blood. He looked like an axe murder victim. His sleeve had streaks of blood that were in various stages of drying. The blood splashed so much of his blue button-down it looked like they were purple polka dots.
He grabbed another roll of toilet paper and thought maybe he was losing a lot of blood. In the few moments it took to replace the paper a river splattered the basin of his charcoal sink.
He couldn’t think straight. He was an EMT, he knew how to get a nosebleed to stop. His eyes looked lost in the mirror. He could picture what he was supposed to do, but his body wouldn’t move.
He rocked his head back and instantly knew that was a mistake as blood drained down his throat. He threw himself forward but already felt sick with how much blood he swallowed.
“Goddamnit,” he cursed, throwing the bloody toilet paper in the sink and replacing it as fast as he could. His face felt hot and tight. He dejectedly sat on the closed toilet lid trying to minimize the mess on every surface.
He could feel the tears streaming down his face but couldn’t stop them without transferring more blood. He leaned forward searching along his nose to find the juncture where he was supposed to clamp it. His head felt heavy and started throbbing in time with his heartbeat.
The nausea only got worse when he tried to sit up so he didn’t even bother. He slipped off the toilet, wanting to get close to the floor in case he lost the battle with what little he ate that day. He’d been objectively nervous about hanging out with Eddie and couldn’t bring himself to eat anything. It didn’t help that the blood thinners also upset his stomach.
More blood dribbled out. It didn’t feel like it was stopping and he knew he wasn’t supposed to pull his hand away to check; that was like nosebleeds 101.
He was miserable, sitting alone in his bathroom, clamping a supercharged bloody nose, while a pounding headache clawed at his skull.
His brain kept trying to tell him there was a time limit for nosebleeds. He just couldn’t remember if it was 20 or 30 minutes. Or maybe it was sooner than that? He pulled the drenched toilet paper away and switched to the bath towel hanging on the towel hook.
Everything he wore was ruined, he might as well be sustainable and destroy a towel instead of more toilet paper. Buck lost track of time. He might have blacked out a little, but he couldn’t be sure. Even if he wanted to call for help, he couldn’t. His phone was downstairs somewhere, and he didn’t have the energy to get it.
A deep thrum was lighting up the space just below his left eye. He felt like more blood went down his throat than out his nose. At one point he panicked when hot liquid bubbled out of his mouth, but it didn’t take long to realize he wasn’t leaning forward enough.
He started to get worried when blinking got harder. Am I losing too much blood? What if it never stops?
His thoughts spiraled so much he missed the knocking coming from his front door. He also couldn’t hear the scraping of a key opening said door, he was too far away. He blinked slowly at the wall completely unaware that his guest arrived.
—
Eddie was early. It wasn’t like he had anything else to do. Christopher was safely tucked away at a friend’s house for the night, and he had plans. He had ‘Buck Plans’, which made him nervous from the moment he sent the text.
He knew the proposed hangout would be good for their healing friendship, but bad for his heart. Since Buck was reinstated and they reconciled over Halloween, it was like his feelings got 10 times worse.
It was hard to look at the man sometimes. There was just so much in his eyes. There was pain and regret for the longest time, but Eddie couldn’t recognize it because of his own anger and stubbornness.
There was a whole week Buck hadn’t sat down once while they were on shift which filled Eddie with worry and guilt. He didn’t want Buck to suffer or to be sorry, he just wanted Buck to be okay.
During their last shift together, Eddie could see the life draining out of his best friend. They were all dog-tired so he knew last night would have been a bad time to ask, but he had to do something. He suddenly needed a ‘Plan’ to see Buck, which he hated.
He wanted to go back to when they would just show up at each other’s houses and could sense when the other needed something. He loved Buck and wanted to get to a place where he could say that out loud.
Step one of that plan was to hang out. So, Eddie was early.
When he knocked and nobody answered, he assumed Buck was busy or in the shower. The mental image that thought provided made his hand stutter on the second knock. He shook his head. They weren’t there, they weren’t there, yet.
Eddie checked his phone to see if their plans were canceled. He didn’t see anything, though, and his last text that he was coming over was left on read.
He contemplated for a second, fiddling with his keys. No matter what happened, he still had Buck’s house key. He didn’t want to jump the gun and invade his space, but he also didn’t want to think too hard about it.
The key was turning the lock a second later. He wanted to get back to normal with Buck. Normal Eddie would use Buck’s key, so that’s what he did.
When he stepped into the loft, the first thing he noticed was that something smelled burnt. Eddie could feel the heat from the burning oven almost immediately. It was so hot he needed a potholder for the scorching handle. Once open, a blast of dark smoke billowed out.
Buck was baking pizza, but it was beyond baked. It looked more like something Eddie would’ve attempted. He fought with the burned food to get it in the sink. Thankfully, it hadn’t started on fire. That was just what they needed.
“Buck?” Eddie called while cracking open a window, dealing with the blaring smoke alarm, and turning on the kitchen fan. “Hey, are you here? The pizza is incredibly done.”
No one answered and that started a simmering of fear. Buck could be flighty, but he wasn’t an idiot. He would never leave an active oven unattended.
“Buck?” Eddie called again.
An unopened water bottle sat on the island and a flier for a cable package littered the ground. He grabbed his phone to call the other man but stopped when he saw the phone on the dining table near a bloody paper towel.
The tingling fear spread to his fingers and toes. “Buck, where the hell are you?”
It was then he noticed a small trail of dried blood from the first-floor bathroom going up the stairs. Eddie wasted no time climbing them, he might have even skipped a few steps in his rush.
“Buck, c’mon man, please be here,” Eddie said, his eyes finding the neatly made bed empty. He opened the bathroom door while scanning his phone for Bobby’s number.
A shout of horror caught in his throat when the door swung open. He found Buck in the middle of a crime scene. The towering man was slumped on the floor, scrunched between the toilet and bathtub, deathly still.
"Dios mío", Spilled from his lips as he took in the blood-streaked walls.
He stumbled into the room, unable to avoid stepping in spots of drying blood to drop next to his best friend. “No, no, no, hey, wake up! Mierda, por favor , Buck.”
Buck blinked awake, interrupting his pleas with a groan. His unfocused eyes opened slowly, looking confused. Despite his worrying position, his hand was clamped over his face holding a blood-stained towel.
“Hey, hey, Buck can you hear me?” Eddie dragged Buck’s stiff hand away. The blonde groaned again trying to fight him, but lost the battle almost immediately.
“Eddie?” Buck asked nasally.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He pulled the towel back to see the source of the bleeding. Buck’s nose and the entire bottom half of his face were covered. It was particularly horrific seeing how much blood he was still losing.
“Eddie?” Buck asked again, his voice stronger than before.
Eddie checked his pulse, which was a little slow, but steady nonetheless. He would wager Buck’s blood pressure was pretty low considering how he found him.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Eddie said while dialing and keeping the towel firmly in place.
“W-wait, wait!” Buck exclaimed, struggling to sit up. “I’m okay, it’s just a nosebleed.”
“Just-” Eddie stared at him incredulously. "Jesucristo , are you kidding me right now?”
“Yeah, I-I know, it’s a mess, I’m a mess , but I’m okay, it’s just blood.” Buck weakly grabbed Eddie’s wrist, the one that was holding the towel. “It’s just blood.”
Eddie sighed, pushing back wave after wave of anxiety. “How long have you been bleeding? What happened?”
Buck shook his head, regretted it immediately, and took a deep breath through his mouth. “I cut myself.”
“Buck, for the love of- Your nose is bleeding,” Eddie said, irritation creeping into his voice.
“No, I mean, yes, it is, but my finger was bleeding,” he explained, holding up his previously injured finger, which had mercifully stopped bleeding. It was kind of hard to tell with all the other blood, but it felt like it stopped.
“Okay?” Eddie pocketed his phone to cup the back of Buck’s neck. He pulled him forward gently so he wouldn’t swallow any blood. It made him feel better to leave his hand there, so he did.
“I was looking for the skin glue,” Buck said, relishing in Eddie’s warmth. “I hit my nose on the e-edge of the mirror downstairs and it started bleeding.”
“What happened in here?” Eddie asked.
Buck would blush if he could, but all the blood in his body was going out his nose.
“I sneezed,” he muttered.
“You sneezed?”
“Twice.”
Eddie didn’t mean to laugh, especially considering he was worried for Buck’s life only a few moments before, but the build-up of fear, anxiety, and exasperation bubbled out. His shoulders shook and he had to look away from the betrayal on Buck’s pale face.
“Laugh it up, Diaz,” Buck grumbled, but he couldn’t help a bloody smile that was thankfully hidden by the towel.
“Sorry, sorry, I just,” Eddie stopped laughing to stare into Buck’s bright blue eyes. “Only you.”
He stroked the cool skin on the nape of Buck’s neck. They froze in that moment, just watching each other. If Eddie knew how to say what he wanted, and if Buck thought Eddie could ever return his feelings, they could have solved everything.
Instead, Eddie stopped looking, and Buck blinked and it was gone.
“Okay, we need to get you out of here, do you think you can stand?” Eddie asked.
Buck wanted to say, ‘Just leave me here to die’, but he thought maybe Eddie wasn’t in the mood for passive suicidal ideation. He nodded and was not helpful at all when Eddie pulled him up so he could sit on the toilet.
After that, it was a matter of getting Buck cleaned up enough that he wouldn’t be dragging blood around his loft, and getting the loft cleaned up enough that Buck wouldn’t be worrying about it while Eddie was there.
“Why didn’t you use the clotting powder?” Eddie asked after helping Buck clean the blood off his hands. He grabbed a bandaid for Buck’s finger, even though the bleeding stopped. He saw the clotting powder with the other medicine in the cabinet.
Buck would have facepalmed if he wasn’t worried that it would splash more blood all over everything including Eddie.
“I knew there was something I could use for this,” he said sullenly. “I could only remember the part about not swallowing too much blood and pinching your nostrils.”
Eddie nodded sympathetically. “Hen will never know.”
“I don’t deserve you,” Buck said jokingly, but also kind of for real. Luckily, Eddie just laughed.
“Let me mix this up real quick, don’t move.”
“Don’t worry, I would vomit if I did,” Buck replied, only then remembering he was in fact cooking something. “Hey, did you see if the pizza was done?”
Eddie heard him on the stairs, “Oh, it’s done.”
“Shit,” Buck said, knowing that tone and feeling very lucky he hadn’t burned down the entire complex.
First aid and cleanup didn’t take too long. After the nosebleed officially stopped, Buck was adamant he could take it from there, and even though Eddie was worried he would slip and brain himself, he left him to it.
Truth be told, Eddie’s head might have exploded if he had to help Buck in the shower. He’d seen his friend in various states of undress, but that was before he loved him so much it made his throat hurt when he thought about it. He didn’t count the times they saw each other at work, their showers were so quick and clinical it was like being back in school.
Buck took a shower in the downstairs bathroom, so Eddie spent his time and sexual frustration cleaning upstairs. He was done before Buck was.
The only way Eddie agreed to him showering by himself was if the door was cracked in case he needed help. He heard Buck’s muffled footsteps just before asking if he was alright for the twelfth time.
Buck came out looking tired and soft in worn sweats and a firefighter hoodie. The wild curls of his ungelled hair stuck wetly to his forehead. He was a little pale, but Eddie honestly thought he hadn’t ever seen anything so beautiful.
Buck shuffled to the kitchen sink groaning at the burned mess. Eddie stopped next to him with a half-full garbage bag stuffed with bloody scraps.
“I’m sure it would have been great,” Eddie said, scooping up the remains and throwing them in the bag.
“I made it from scratch, Bobby’s recipe.”
Eddie tied the garbage bag and patted Buck’s back as he passed him to put it by the door. He knew how proud Buck was of learning recipes from his pseudo-father.
“I can’t wait to try it next time,” Eddie said. He was fiddling with his phone so he didn’t see the color in Buck’s cheeks flare a bright red at the thought of next time.
“O-okay,” he said.
“Go lay down on the couch, I’m getting us Thai food and oranges,” Eddie said.
Buck didn’t question the instructions, he was far too tired. He shuffled to his couch, limping occasionally, and flopped down as gently as he could. His head was still killing him, and his sinuses, as Eddie so helpfully explained, were inflamed and on fire.
It didn’t take long before Eddie walked over with a beer and a glass of water. He made Buck sit up and drink at least half the glass and take some pain pills before he could lay back down.
Eddie lifted Buck’s legs, which spanned almost the entire couch, to slip under them. He noticed Buck limping and wanted to check that his bad leg wasn’t acting up on top of everything else.
“No, I tripped on the stairs earlier and banged it on a step. It’s fine,” Buck said, his voice muffled by the pillow where his face was buried.
“You just can’t catch a break, can you?” Eddie said, gently massaging the leg anyway.
“You’re here, that’s good enough for me,” Buck muttered, his eyes slipping closed as he sank into a light doze.
Eddie’s hands stuttered, but only for a second. The shell around his heart that had been covered and overcome with anger and guilt was finally starting to crack. It might have been his sessions with Frank, it might have been the time he got to spend with his amazing kid, or it might have been being close to the person he loved more than anything in the world.
They would talk, eat Thai food and oranges, go back to how things were, or they might even go further than that someday.
Eddie was just happy that he got to be with Buck. “Good enough for me, too,” he said, settling back and waiting for whatever came next.
-fin-