"You good?" Eddie asks, lowly, knee nudging Buck's. They're used to being quiet at night, now it's Buck's couch, Buck's house, Buck's kid down the hall.
Clearing his throat, Buck bobs his head. "Ye- yeah. I'm good."
Eddie shoots him a sceptical look. "You sure? Cause you keep staring at my ha-" he stops, and Buck's eyes flick to his face and follow Eddie's dark gaze to his beer bottle. "Sorry," he mutters, thighs tensing as he starts to stand, "hard today, huh?"
Shaking his head, Buck looks into those whisky brown eyes. "Not in the way you're thinking," he mumbles, rolling his bottle, fatter, stouter, and greener, than Eddie's between his palms. "It's the after."
"After?" Eddie queries, settling back into the couch.
"When we'd get drunk and- and- sleep toge-" Buck coughs awkwardly. "Fall asleep. In the same bed. It's just-" he shrugs. Buck knows himself well enough to know that he's touch starved. He's so used to having people touch him, a body pressed against him, whether it's in his bed or someone else's, in a club, on the couch.
*
Buck misses drunk cuddling Eddie. He didn't realise that they did more.
The room is dark, curtains drawn shut. It's stuffy and stifling. Chris isn't playing video games. He's just sitting on his bed, shoulders hunched and head bowed.
Gingerly, Buck sits next to him. "I miss him too, buddy."
"He wasn't your dad," Chris says flatly. There's no spark of anything in him anymore and Buck doesn't know how to help him. Too much of his time is taken up by Theo that Chris gets lost in his grief.
"No," Buck says slowly, "but he was my best friend and we both love him."
Head bobbing, Chris lets out a bitter laugh as Theo cries out Buck's name. "Your kid needs you," Chris says.
"You're my kid too," Buck rasps, eyes wet and hot.
With a careless shrug, Chris mutters, "only 'cause both my parents are dead. And his." He peers up at Buck, eyes dry, face impassive. "Evan Buckley, collector of orphans."
***
Eddie disappears leaving behind a pool of blood in an elevator. Buck is left to pick up the pieces.
eddie diaz deserves to have his face peppered in kisses every morning by one evan buckley and not as a precursor to sex or anything but just because buck loves him so much he can't help it, he's going to kiss eddie all over his stupidly beautiful face and eddie will laugh every time & his heart will be so full of love and affection for this ridiculous man & everything will be beautiful & nothing will hurt okay thanks for coming to my tedtalk
yeah, yeah, eddietheo opening emergency would be great, but i think buck, eddie, chris, and theo should all be out together when an emergency happens. maybe eddie is taking theo to the bathroom, and they get separated from buck and chris. we would get eddie taking care of theo while trying to get them out of the situation, and buck and chris working together as they looked for eddie and theo
take up arms, take my hand, let us waltz for the dead
(9x18 spec based on @fraddit's post about Eddie walking Buck through field operations on him. not quite surgery because I looked through a few articles and went 'i can't write this properly i don't think,' but blood transfusion compelled me. also thanks to @lesbucks for enabling me in all things buddie inappropriate painplay <3)
"Shit- fuck--"
"Sorry, sorry--" the tips of Buck's fingers tremble as they flinch away at the sound of Eddie's voice, even as the rest of him stays steady in the way that only seems to come to him naturally when everything around him is falling apart.
Eddie watches him from the best seats in the house, back against the sweat-warmed metal of the elevator wall, the rest of him a willing dummy under Buck's hands.
Willing on his part, anyways.
"No," he says, trying not to sound too strained. "No, you-- you're doing good."
"I'm hurting you, Eddie," Buck's words are flat, his eyes trained on the mess that is Eddie's side.
"It's a bullet, Buck," his words are dry, only the threadiness of his voice giving away that anything is wrong at all. "It's not going to feel like a walk in the park."
"Oh, fuck off," Buck replies, matching his tone the way he always does. Eddie watches his sea-storm eyes flicker, close, the way he pulls all the big feelings threatening to spill from his seams inwards in a second. Eddie knows, bone-deep, that whatever happens next, Buck will blame himself for this second later.
Right now, though, his eyes open, sharp, and his fingers press gently at the edges of Eddie's ragged wound. This time, Eddie bites back the swears, only letting out a hiss as Buck's fingers smear away the blood around the opening to get a better look at the ugly mess beneath.
"Doesn't look like it hit any organs," Buck says, professional and clinical. "But the blood loss--"
"Isn't great." Eddie finishes, letting his head loll back to hit the wall. Buck's eyes flicker over to his for a moment, and Eddie can see the panic underneath the steadiness.
Buck doesn't answer, just tears away more of Eddie's shirt to expose the ragged hole in his body more clearly, the skin flushed and hot to the touch. He takes out a wad of gauze from his turnouts, presses it firmly to Eddie's wound, and the pain is like a current through Eddie's spine, lighting up every nerve of his body. He groans, and Buck's fingers twist slightly. They both watch the way the blood rapidly soaks through the bandages.
"They know to come with blood bags," Buck almost says it to himself, like a prayer.
Eddie watches him, something like sorrow filling his chest. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. He wishes Buck was pressing into his wound with his bare hands instead of bandages, he wishes he can feel Buck's skin touching his flesh, muscle, organ, bone before he-- "Buck."
"Hen will have enough--"
"Buck--"
"And they're looking for us, they know we're missing, they're--"
"Buck." Eddie says, because he loves to hear Buck's voice but he needs him to listen. Buck's lips fall shut. He looks at Eddie with the kind of wild defiance that precedes preemptive grief. Eddie takes a breath, another. It surprises him every time, how easily he forgets that he's never guaranteed the next. "They're not gonna get here in time."
A flash of something like fury, but Buck has never been the type to cut someone else when he's scared. Only himself. He looks down at Eddie's medkit. "I'm gonna start on a chest seal."
Eddie closes his eyes, feels the weight of the chain across his neck.
"Gotta--" Eddie takes a breath with a sudden wave of nauseous pain, dark spots dancing over his vision as Buck's hands leave his wound for a moment. The absence of touch aches more than the blood. "Gotta dry the skin first, bud."
Buck nods, sharp, smearing the gauze over the skin around the hole in Eddie's abdomen, drying it as best he can. It's gentle, and it feels like sandpaper over his skin. Eddie focuses on the brief moments that Buck's fingers brush his chest, his torso, memorizing the difference between the back of his and and the joint of his pinkie.
Then, Buck reaches into the medkit, pulls out the sealed package with efficient movements. Tear, peel, apply, the plastic suctioning itself over the hum of blood and agony. Eddie immediately resents it, for not being Buck's hands. He looks at those hands, wet with Eddie's blood, callused and fearless and safe. He wants, he wants--
"Eddie-- Eddie--"
They're on his face, and Eddie can feel his blood drying between them, like it, too, wants Buck to be pressed against him forever. "Buck," he says, because he can't quite think of what else to say.
"Eddie, you have to stay with me," Buck tells him, in that firm voice that makes Eddie want to follow him wherever he goes.
But-- "Can' do that, bud," he murmurs, trying for a smile. It only makes something in Buck's expression crumple, which is the last thing Eddie wants. The thing is, though-- "Bleedin'."
"I know, I know," Buck's fingers press in on his face harder, and Eddie's eyes flutter. He wonders if his corpse will have bruises in the shape of Buck's handprints on them. He wonders if he can die being held. Buck would do it, if he asked.
Buck shakes him slightly, and Eddie blinks his eyes open at him. When did his eyes close? "Eddie," he says. "I found the field transfusion packs in your kit."
The words don't quite sink in. Eddie just blinks at him again, slower. Hold me, hold me.
"You have to walk me through it, Eddie," Buck pleads. "Eddie, come on, I can-- I'll give it to you, alright? I'll give you everything. But you have to tell me how."
And, oh. That tone of Buck's voice. That's the tone he uses when he really needs Eddie. Buck needs him. Eddie has to-- he has to--
"Eddie, please--"
"G-get the swabs out." Buck jolts, red-rimmed eyes widening for a moment before he shakes into motion. "An'-- the constrictor band."
Eddie watches the way he digs into the kit, eyes scanning impatiently over the contents as his fingers press bloodstains over the fabric. He comes out with both, a thin strip of blue and the paper squares of alcohol wipes.
"Tie the-- the band. Over the bicep." Buck secures one end with his teeth as he twists the rubber over his arm. "Low' your arm-- can't be above the heart."
Buck tries. His fingers slip, sticky with blood, once, twice. Almost instinctively, Buck presses his thumb to his mouth, tongue a flash of pink against carmine. Flakes of Eddie's blood scrape over his teeth, gum, for the second it takes before his eyes widen and his hand twists away to wipe over his pant leg instead. Eddie's eyes catch at the smudge of red at the corner of his lip, the way Buck's throat bobs, the dark pupils of his eyes as his lashes flutter over them.
Eddie wants to say something, wants to beg Buck to-- what, press his mouth to Eddie's wound? He doesn't, just watches the red on Buck's lips as he speaks again.
"Yeah, okay," Buck nods, curls bobbing, wired through with the beginnings of silver, the slight tack of sweat. "And then?"
"Y'know how to--" Eddie exhales slightly on a laugh. "C'mon, Buck, I know y've trained in drawing blood."
Buck's eyes are soft on his, and if it weren't for the pain and and panic and the smell of stale air and blood between them he could almost pretend they were in the station. That Buck was leaning against the ambulance with his bright curiosity and easy admiration and the way his regard always made you feel like a bonfire on a summer night.
"Yeah, but I gotta make sure you're still paying attention somehow, right?" Between blinks, Buck has slipped the needle into his arm, blood moving down the tube and filling the bag.
"'M always paying attention," Eddie tells him, too soft and half-involuntary. Buck's mouth falls open, a small o, and Eddie watches as he licks his lips nervously, catching the flakes of blood -- Eddie's blood -- at the edges of his lips. The blood held together with plastic at Eddie's side flares, bright, as he watches. When he inhales, it's with a soft shudder.
Buck's hand is on his arm, a needle, a prick. "Hey, E- Eddie-- come on, you have to tell me if I'm doing this right."
Eddie blinks slowly at the needle. "Saline," he reminds Buck. "Flush it first. Got-- gotta han' it up."
Instead of a stand, Buck just holds it above Eddie, switching out the saline for the bag of blood (Buck's blood, Buck's blood that is going to be in Eddie's veins--). Even though it's impossible, Eddie swears that he can feel the blood as it runs down the tube, as the first drop enters his veins. It feels--
"'s you," Eddie murmurs, wondering, as Buck's face fills his eyes, the sharpest thing around a world that is going hazy at the edges.
"Eddie," Buck says. "There's blood seeping into the vents, I have to change it out, I'm gonna fill more, I'm gonna make sure-- you have to-- Eddie--"
Cool air on the skin of his pulsing wound. Sharp, clarifying pain. Buck's hands pressing down, down, down, agony that feels like a revelation. Eddie looks at Buck, the edge of the transfusion bag held between his teeth as he uses both hands to press down on Eddie's exposed muscle and tendon, organ and bone.
Thank god, he thinks, as the lights flicker, as Buck's blood seeps into his veins and his own spills on Buck's fingers. Thank god, thank god, thank god. Thank god I can feel him touching me before I die.
