Archive of Our Own

Eddie leaves the 118. Buck knows why he did it, understands Eddie’s reasoning. That doesn’t mean that Buck doesn’t hate it with every fiber of his being, being out on calls without Eddie at his back. It’s different from when Eddie’s not scheduled with him or when Eddie was shot or out after the well collapse, and it’s because Buck doesn’t know if Eddie’s coming back.

Two weeks later, there’s a massive fire in the warehouse district. Buck can’t – the last time they responded to a call this big, specifically to a warehouse fire, Buck had just found out that he had a brother he never knew about, a brother he was supposed to save and failed. The entire time Buck’s gearing up, in the truck, at the scene, running into the flames head on, he has the same thought running through his head on a loop: Eddie should be here Eddie should be here Eddie should be here.

So Buck’s doing one last sweep of the warehouse when a support beam comes crashing down on him. If this had been two weeks earlier, even a week earlier, maybe even a few days earlier, hell even ten minutes earlier, Buck would have someone watching his back, someone to pull him out of the way or to help him get out from under it before the exhaustion has a chance to set in.

But this is now and Eddie quit two weeks ago and Buck is by himself in the warehouse. There’s a steel beam laying across his chest, the wind knocked out of him, and Buck’s mask got knocked askew by the fall. Even if Buck had the mental capacity to call for help, he can’t.

Instead, Buck lays there, after pushing weakly at the beam and swearing at himself for not being stronger, for not paying attention, and prays to the EMS gods or whatever cosmic entity might be listening to give me some peace. Let me be done. I’ll apologize to Maddie and Chim and Bobby and Hen and Eddie and-and Chris in the next life just give me this.

His vision’s flickering in and out, smoke inhalation getting to him he knows plus having a fucking steel beam laying across his chest, when he thinks no. Let me do it again, make better choices. He thinks of Eddie and Chris. Let me be better for them. Let me love them.

Buck closes his eyes and he doesn’t open them again.

Not in the warehouse anyway.

(The universe takes his second request over his first. It knows how this story is supposed to end, and it doesn’t end in one of them dying of smoke inhalation while the other one cries himself to sleep, wrapped around their son.

So it goes about making things right.)

When Buck opens his eyes, he doesn’t recognize the room. It’s seafoam green and everything’s too soft and light, nothing like the grays and exposed brick of the loft – and that’s when Buck realizes he’s not in the loft. He’s not even in a hospital room (again, his mind supplies).

No, he’s in Abby’s apartment. Which is a more terrifying thought to him before Buck remembers what happened before he woke up – namely, dying. Like actual, no coming back from this dying.

Buck scrambles out of bed, miraculously not tangled in the sheets, a litany of no no no no no no no no going through his head. He’s barely got his feet under him when he realizes that he has a way of checking, of making sure that this isn’t just some elaborate nightmare designed to send him into panic.

He dives for his phone, knocking it off of the nightstand and onto the floor, cable long enough that it doesn’t dangle sadly off of the edge. It takes him a few tries – his phone’s a few models earlier than the one that was in his pocket when he went into that warehouse. But he gets it unlocked and his calendar app open and he just. Stops. Because the date staring back at him? Is August 5th, 2018.

“Holy shit,” Buck whispers.

The next thing he does is pull the leg of his sweatpants up to his knee on his left leg and stare at the smooth, unscarred skin that greets him. No surgery scars, no phantom ache in his ankle, no nothing. Just unbroken bone and skin that’s never had a ladder truck on top of it.

Buck sits on the ground, phone abandoned on the charger next to him, as he considers his choices. One, this is all some horrible dream and he’ll wake up (or not) to find that Eddie’s still gone, Maddie and Chim are still gone, and he’s still alone. Two, he’s actually woken up three and a half years into the past with all of his knowledge of the future intact and that’s. That might actually be worse.

The only time travel media he’s consumed – outside of H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine – are the Back to the Future movies, and that’s only because Christopher had insisted when he found out that Buck had never seen them. The only thing that Buck learned from those movies was that any wrong move could change the future and create an entirely new timeline.

Then, just to make sure that he’s alone, he calls out, “Maddie?” All he gets back is silence and Buck remembers – Maddie shows up at Abby’s apartment the day of Eddie’s first shift which, if Buck’s remembering correctly, is tomorrow, Monday the 6th.

Which, again. Ouch.

There’s probably other things Buck should do today – check his laundry, see if he needs groceries, double and triple check that he’s actually in the past – but Buck settles on breakfast and a shower before losing himself down a research rabbit hole about time travel theories and media.

Turns out there’s multiple choices of time travel besides forwards and backwards – who knew? The most popular media trope seems to be a time loop, and Buck finally understands why Chimney’ll sometimes say something feels like Groundhog Day instead of just saying déjà vu like a regular person. Whatever the other options may be, Buck’s pretty sure he’s just straight up been sent back in time to –

Buck stops short, his fingers hovering over his laptop’s keyboard. Eddie’s first shift is tomorrow. Buck gets to meet Eddie again for the first time in less than 24 hours. “Huh,” he says out loud. Maybe that’s why he was sent back, because the deal he made with the universe was to be better for Eddie and Chris so that Eddie won’t feel so fucking terrified of letting Chris down that he thinks his best, possibly only, solution is to quit the 118.

So maybe Buck doesn’t have to worry about screwing up the timeline and creating a whole new set of events. If the universe has decided to send Buck back specifically to help Eddie and Christopher, then Buck will be damned if he doesn’t take the opportunity to be the best friend that Eddie’s ever had.

There’s just the sticking point of Eddie’s first couple of shifts.

Buck thinks about it while he does all the boring things he’s meant to do on his day off – laundry, grocery shopping, and yes, confirming that he is in fact in the past. The way Buck sees it, he has two options: one, be a dick to Eddie until the grenade or two, say screw it to the locker room measuring contest and just be Eddie’s friend off the bat. On one hand, Buck gets to be Eddie’s friend sooner. On the other hand, Buck knows his team’ll be suspicious if Buck’s nice to a guy who’s obviously so much better and mature than him without any reason. Plus, there’s the tiny matter of Buck still kind of being upset at Eddie for reverting back to old habits and talking to absolutely no one about Chris worrying about his dad dying on him and Eddie’s quick decision to leave the 118 and –

Okay, Buck thinks, making himself a sandwich for lunch, being a dick to Eddie until the grenade is the plan.

Which hurts no small amount because Buck loves Eddie. It’s one of the fundamental truths of Buck’s life now: he’s an LAFD firefighter, he was born to save his dead brother, and he loves Eddie Diaz with his entire being. Even when Buck had been trying to move on from Eddie, find something permanent with Taylor Kelly, every part of him had still been Eddie’s and it had made Eddie leaving the 118 so much worse.

But Buck supposes none of that really matters now, one death later and three and a half years earlier. Now all Buck has to do is not fuck up his friendship with Eddie before it’s even begun.

He eats his sandwich and goes to check his emails. No point in getting caught up in what ifs and has beens. (Buck thinks he should probably see if Dr. Copeland’s taking on new patients. He’d love to start talking to her sooner rather than, y’know, in the middle of a global pandemic.)

For all of the emotional turmoil Buck went through yesterday, he feels great come Monday morning. His DXA scan makes him feel good, just as good as it did the first time Buck got it, and he bounces into the firehouse ready to cheer about it. He’d seen an email yesterday amidst the whole sent back in time thing that reminded him about submissions closing for the Hot Days, Smoldering Nights: Men of the LAFD Wall Calendar in a week and Buck had been, to put it lightly, thrilled. Not just because he knows that Chimney’s going to win but because it’s something so stupid and lighthearted that Buck can be excited about.

It helps that today’s Eddie’s first day, even if Buck is going to have to pretend to hate him the entire time.

So Buck crows about his body fat percentage and ribs Chim and Bobby for their chances of winning, lets Hen think that he’s being an idiot because he’s excited about something as trivial and inherently sexist as a sexy firefighter calendar. (He takes Chim’s teasing even better because he hasn’t seen the man in months, even if, technically, Buck saw Chim like two days ago.)

“Okay, that is a beautiful man,” Chimney says, staring directly into the locker room behind Buck.

It catches Hen’s attention too and yeah, Buck knows what Eddie looks like shirtless, thank you, but it’s still funny to him when Hen says, “Where’s the lie? And I like girls.” Buck humors them and turns and –

And oh, Buck can’t even see Eddie properly from where he’s looking over his shoulder but it is so good to see his best friend. He’s fucking gorgeous is the thing that Buck hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge when he first saw Eddie, stupidly attractive in a way that made Buck want to just take him to bed and learn the ins and outs of Eddie’s pleasure. That Eddie turned out to be a genuinely good man was just the cherry on top.

But no, Buck’s meant to be a dick to his best friend, and he will be because he is still upset that Eddie made a decision that affected all of them without talking to anyone about it first. (Even Buck, when he was planning on transferring because he thought everyone hated him for making Chimney leave, told them before he made any motions towards getting a transfer.)  “Who the hell is that?” he asks, despite knowing Eddie’s name and the names of his sisters, parents, aunt, grandmother, wife, and son.

“That’s Eddie Diaz, new recruit. Graduated at the top of his class just last week,” Bobby says, giving Buck a look when he turns back around. He’s amused, that much Buck could tell the first time around, but there’s something scrutinizing in his expression too, like Bobby’s hoping that Buck isn’t really going to do what he thinks Buck’s about to do.

Unfortunately for Bobby, Buck’s usually pretty good about disappointing him.

“What do we need him for?” Buck asks, remembering how bitter he’d been about Eddie showing up out of the blue like Buck wasn’t their go-to guy for dangerous rescues.

Bobby goes on about Eddie’s two tours and Silver Star and Buck reassures himself that it’s just for a couple of days, he can be Eddie’s friend as soon as they get the grenade out of the guy’s leg. He has to remind himself that there’s nobody on this planet that knows Eddie better than he does, except maybe Carla and Chris.

“C’mon, I’ll introduce you,” Bobby says with a jerk of his head. “He likes to be called Eight Pack.” And Buck has to focus really hard on keeping the frown on his face because he remembers calling Eddie that once and the blush that had threatened to put Eddie’s face on fire was hilarious.

“Wow, Silver Star,” Hen chimes in, already moving towards the locker room.

“Looks like you could stand to lose a little more body fat there, Butch,” Chim adds, patting Buck’s stomach to add to the tease, eyes on Eddie by the time Buck looks at him again.

Bobby’s already started introductions by the time Buck turns towards the locker room, and he lets himself just look for a moment. This is probably the only time for the next two days he’ll be able to look at this group of people that he loves and not have to hate one of them because of a stupid self-imposed rule.

“Buck, come say hi,” Bobby calls through the locker room door, and Buck snaps himself back to the present, where Eddie’s staring at him with this look of affection that confuses Buck to no end because Eddie shouldn’t have any idea of who Buck is yet. He shakes it off though – he’s got a role to play.

Buck summons up every ounce of annoyance he can find – leftover from Eddie fucking leaving despite having a perfectly good reason – and slips back into the skin of the Buck who’d been so insecure and jealous the first time he saw Eddie in the locker rooms. It’s hard, to be a dick so someone Buck loves so dearly, but unfortunately, Buck’s had a lot of practice lashing out at people he cares about.

Breakfast is hardly finished before the bell rings, Bobby saying something about a garage owner impaled on an air compressor nozzle, and Buck remembers this part better than he thought he did because he knows that the poor man’s name is Hector and that he’s supposed to make small talk on the truck on the way there.

Eddie beats him to it though when they’re in the truck. Chimney doesn’t get the chance to ask Eddie about his Silver Star, which Buck knows Eddie hates talking about, because instead of letting anyone else take the small-talk lead, Eddie asks, “So, what’s this I hear about a charity calendar?”

Buck turns to Eddie so fast, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion because it had been Hen who had brought up the calendar as a way to rib at Buck. He’s trying to read the lines of Eddie’s face, but he’s not looking at Buck, instead focusing on Hen and Chim.

Hen grins at Eddie, the big one that Buck knows means he’s getting teased because she thinks he’s being childish. “The hot firefighter calendar,” she says, and Buck rolls his eyes. He knows she loves him, that doesn’t mean he can’t get annoyed. “Submissions are closing next week if you’re hoping to get picked.”

Chimney snaps his gum before adding, with a shit-eating grin of his own, “Yeah, they only pick one firefighter from a house.”

Buck clears his throat – he remembers his next line, even if he finds it weird that Eddie brought up the calendar before Hen had a chance to – and he’s kind of relieved by the way Eddie’s eyes snap to him. “So, is your full name Edmundo?” Buck asks because, yeah, Eddie always hated it whenever any of them called him by his full name. It probably didn’t help that they only did it when they were teasing him.

Eddie gives him a double take and there’s an amused tilt to his lips that Buck wishes he couldn’t read so well. “Good guess,” Eddie says. “Most people think it’s Eduardo.”

Buck panics a little when Eddie says that because shit Buck guessed correctly he was supposed to guess Eduardo shit. “Oh, uh, I knew an Edmundo. In Peru,” Buck lies because shit he’s already fucked up. “Anybody ever call you Diaz?” he asks next because he needs to change the subject now.

Eddie’s shoulders drop a little, losing some of their tension which is admittedly a little weird. “Not if they want me to respond,” Eddie answers.

The breath of relief Buck lets out is easily disguised as one of frustration. “Something’s gotta give. We got Cap, Hen, Chimney, Buck – we can’t just call you Eddie.”

And Eddie just laughs at him, the little shit, pleased and comfortable in his seat on the truck as he turns to Hen with an amused look. “Is he serious?” he asks her, and Buck feels old insecurities burn under his skin at Eddie’s easy dismissal of him. Like Buck wasn’t worth asking directly.  (Buck knows that Eddie’s his best friend, but Eddie doesn’t know him yet.)

“I like to operate under the assumption that nothing he says is serious,” Chim throws in, snapping his gum again before shooting Buck a grin.

Buck knows that they love him, that in several months’ time they’ll drag him out from under a ladder truck that crushes his left leg, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be hurt by their little digs and taunts, especially when he’s being so obviously vulnerable. So he just frowns and stares out the window, ignoring them until they arrive at the garage.

They all hop out of the truck, following Bobby’s orders as he gets info from the employee who’d called 911 in the first place. They get the poor guy – Hector – off of the air nozzle with a hundred psi of air pumped into him, Chim tries to poke him with a needle, and Eddie fails to get any oxygen from the nasal cannula into Hector’s body.

That’s about the point where Buck goes a little off-script. Not on purpose, but not entirely on accident either.

“Buck, get the 14-gauge angiocath,” Bobby says, and Buck has it in his hand before Bobby finishes the sentence, falling into the familiar rhythm of working with Eddie and assisting however he can on medical calls where he knows he is not the best member of the team to take the lead. He holds it out to Eddie who takes it with a practiced hand, prepping it while Buck takes care of the guy’s shirts, unbuttoning the overshirt before cutting away at the undershirt.

It’s only when Eddie’s just about to stick the needle in the guy’s chest that anyone says anything. “Shouldn’t you be aiming for the second intercostal?” Hen asks, a slight furrow between her eyebrows the only thing that matches her confusion. When Buck looks, Chim and Bobby are shooting Eddie similar looks of confusion.

“Chest wall’s thinner at the fifth intercostal at the anterior auxiliary line,” Buck recites, Eddie’s explanation from the first time coming back to him easier than he’d expected.

Eddie shoots him a weird look but he’s nodding anyway. “There’s a decreased chance of injuring any vital organs. I’ve treated guys with collapsed lungs in combat.”

Hen, Chim, and Bobby’s eyes all slide from Eddie to Buck – who’d handed off the chance to do the rescue himself in order for Eddie to take the lead as the more experienced medic shit not again. “I read it somewhere,” Buck lies, and it seems to be good enough for all of them except for Eddie. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on the viewpoint, there’s still a guy with a hundred psi of air pumped into him that Eddie needs to deflate.

Eddie inserts the needle into Hector’s chest, and Hector deflates, all of them breathing in relief as soon as Hector’s taking the slow, shallow breaths that Bobby’s instructing him on. When Buck looks, Eddie’s already shooting him a pleased grin.

It’s hard for Buck to stick to the script after that, not to lean in when he passes Eddie while they’re loading up, Hector rolling into the ambulance. He knows he’s meant to play jealous and insecure for the rest of their shift and well into their next one, but it’s hard when he knows that Eddie’s damn good at the job, even if he hasn’t been doing it very long.

He achieves it mostly by ignoring Eddie for roughly the rest of the next ten and a half hours of their shift, only talking to him when necessary on calls.

It hurts and reminds Buck just a little too much of the lawsuit, when Buck had reached out to anyone and everyone because he missed them as soon as he was back at the station but gotten shot down as soon as he so much as looked at anyone, but he bears it and postures because it’s what he’s meant to do and yeah, Buck’s still a little angry at Eddie. He just can’t tell him because Eddie hasn’t actually done anything yet.

It’s a long shift despite only being twelve hours long and Buck kind of wants to sleep for days when it’s done.

Buck goes home to Abby’s apartment that night, flicking on the light in the kitchen as he walks in, and something settles in his chest when he sees the wine bottle and empty glass sitting on the island. He’s learned from his mistakes though, so he doesn’t immediately assume that Abby’s home and in the shower, and Buck saves himself from having to relive the trauma of trying to join his sister in the shower. (Buck still has nightmares about it. Not as often as, say, being stuck under a ladder truck or in a tsunami or Eddie getting trapped under forty feet of mud or of Eddie getting shot by a sniper in broad daylight or of dying in a factory fire, but they pop up.)

He starts on dinner while he waits on Maddie, just some pasta because Buck really don’t wanna go into all of the effort of making a full meal. He’s learned more than the breakfast he made Maddie her first night in L.A. but it doesn’t really seem worth the effort when Buck’s just spent the better part of the past fourteen hours pretending that he hates the man he’s in love with.

Eventually, Maddie comes out of the bedroom, hair damp around her shoulders, to Buck’s attempt at a surprised face where he’s sitting at the kitchen island over a bowl of pasta. “Maddie?” he asks, and the way his eyes start tearing up isn’t an act.

It’s been months since he’s seen his sister, and even though Buck knew she was okay wherever she was (probably Boston – Buck remains steadfast about the bells he heard), it just reminded him of when she hadn’t been talking to him, when she was trapped in her relationship with Doug. Buck knows now why Maddie didn’t reach out to him and how it plays out in a few months, that even though Doug finds her and tries to take her back Maddie wins, but that doesn’t stop the sharp pang in Buck’s chest at the mere sight of his sister.

“Evan,” Maddie says warmly. Buck’s up and wrapping her in a hug before he knows it, holding her tight to his chest.

“You suck,” Buck says wetly, doing his best to bury his face into Maddie despite her being so much shorter than him. “Three years without a word and you just show up out of nowhere?”

“I know,” Maddie says, pressing herself even more firmly into Buck. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t what I wanted but I couldn’t risk reaching out.”

Buck makes himself step out of the hug, looking down to meet Maddie’s eyes. “Where’s Doug?” he asks, and there’s no way for Maddie to hide the way she tenses up.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” she says, stepping back completely, turning her head with a dismissive gesture that Buck knows is his sister trying to be casual.

Buck looks at her, the way she holds herself and he doesn’t lean into the way he poked a little bit of fun at her when she first came to him. “I’m proud of you, for leaving him,” Buck says, letting Maddie duck his eyes a little longer. He doesn’t – push, though God knows he wants to, wants to get the story out before Doug calls Maddie and threatens to come find her.

Maddie laughs wetly. “Finally, right?” She shakes her head, walking around him to the kitchen island where Buck’s set out two bowls of pasta covered in tomato sauce. Maddie’s has cheese and his doesn’t, and he smiles at the quick look Maddie shoots him when she sees her bowl.

It fades just as fast though, his desire to reassure her that he won’t judge her when he finally does get the story of Doug’s abuse out of her winning out. “I mean it, Maddie. You were with him for a long time. It probably took a lot of courage for you to get yourself out.” Buck knows he’s toeing the line of what he’s supposed to know and what he does know, but he was proud, he is proud, even though he hadn’t known much when Maddie showed up on Abby’s doorstep other than the fact that Doug is a dick.

The look that Maddie sends him is far too calculating for someone who hasn’t seen Buck in three years. “Enough of that,” she says after a long moment of just looking at him, picking up the bowls and leaving Buck to grab the wine behind her. “Tell me about this place – what’s going on here? None of this looks like your style unless you’ve picked up a fondness for seafoam green since the last time we spoke.”

Buck rolls his eyes like he’s supposed to, filling up Maddie’s abandoned wine glass and pulling himself one and filling it before he follows her out to the living room. “It’s my ex-girlfriend’s place – not like that,” Buck says when Maddie opens her mouth. “I’m watching it while she’s off finding herself in Europe. She let me stay until I found a place of my own.”

It’s not completely a lie the same way it’s not completely true since Buck is supposed to be waiting for Abby to come back from Europe so that they can live happily ever after, but Buck is under no impression that he can keep the charade up for that long, not now that he knows the truth.

It also doesn’t change the look that Maddie’s giving him. “You’re staying in your ex-girlfriend’s apartment? Are you sure you aren’t waiting for her to come back so that you can get back together?” Maddie might have had a chance of passing her questions off as casual if Buck didn’t recognize the way that she watches him carefully after she asks.

“Cute,” Buck says instead of saying something absurd like asking her if she got sent back in time with him. It’s absurd enough that it happened to him – Buck won’t risk alienating Maddie if he asks her and she looks at him like he’s crazy. “No, I just – she was the first person I dated seriously.” And Buck owes Abby a lot, mostly for being the push he needed to grow up a little more, like Bobby firing him after sleeping around on the job and stealing the ladder truck wasn’t enough. “She hasn’t really – she hasn’t told me we broke up, but I know,” Buck admits because it’s bound to come out sooner or later. “I told her I’d wait for her at the airport, but now –”

“You haven’t heard from her in a while and figured it was time to cut your losses,” Maddie finishes, nodding her head. She tilts her head, looking at him again, and Buck avoids her eyes by stabbing some penne onto his fork. “You’ve grown up, little brother,” she says, sounding incredibly fond and like she’s on the edge of bursting into tears.

Buck shrugs. “I finally figured out that I might be worth waiting around for,” he says, and he doesn’t mean for it to be a dig at Maddie, he doesn’t, but he won’t deny that that’s kind of what it sounds like. “Sorry,” he adds a second later. “I didn’t mean –”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t mean it,” Maddie says, that kind of solemn/fond look on her face that Buck’s gotten familiar with these past few years. “I know I hurt you, and I didn’t mean to, but I did. And maybe one day I’ll tell you why.”

It’s more than Buck got from Maddie the first time around and it’s certainly more than he meant to get out of her tonight. “So, how long are you staying in L.A.?” Buck asks, letting the two of them sidestep the rest of the heavy stuff for tonight.

Maddie looks thoughtful though, not sad like the first time Buck asked her, the first time he lived through this conversation. “I’m not sure yet. It might be worth hanging around for a while if you get your own place,” she adds with a quick smile, and Buck laughs because he’s relieved.

“Y’know, I have a place in mind, I just haven’t looked to see if it’s open.” Buck loves his loft, loves it, and he hasn’t looked yet to see if it’s available to lease this early. Worst comes to worst, it’ll probably open up after the earthquake terrifies everyone who lives in a building higher than three stories.

His big sister rolls her eyes like she thinks Buck’s lying to her. “Alright, I’ll lay off. Tell me what you’ve been up to, about being a firefighter,” Maddie says, tucking her legs up under her on the couch, settling in.

Buck grins, open and happy, because he does love being a firefighter, despite everything it’s put him through that hasn’t happened yet. “Okay, so, my captain’s named Bobby, he’s an amazing cook,” Buck starts.

He rambles on about the house while Maddie eats her pasta, pausing every so often to ask a question or comment, and Buck is so happy that he gets to see her smile again, take time just to be with her. Sure, he still has to pretend to be a dick to Eddie tomorrow, but by this time tomorrow night, Buck’ll have his best friend back.

“He’s not that bad,” Hen says the following morning, sitting down next to Buck in the locker room.

Buck sighs, hanging his head a little. Hen doesn’t even have to say his name for Buck to know who she’s talking about, that’s how much of a dick he was yesterday. He knows, he does, he’s in love with the man, but Buck can’t just give up the charade now. “I know,” he admits instead because he doesn’t think any of them know why it bothered him so much when Eddie first showed up.

Hen shoots him a confused frown, her eyebrows drawn together. “So why are you being a dick to him like some sort of frat boy marking his territory?”

Buck picks his head up, turning to look at Hen. “Because he’s better than me,” he says. When Hen opens her mouth, he holds up a hand to stop her. “Do you remember what I was like when I first started? How much of an ass I was?”

“Hard not to,” Hen says but she doesn’t sound like she’s trying to be mean about it.

“You can say I was, it’s okay,” Buck says, the memory of Hen telling him she was sorry that Buck got fired floating into his head. “Sometimes it just feels like I’m still trying to prove to you guys that I’m not that dumb kid anymore.”

Hen nods. “And Eddie walking in here and us joking with him like he’s been here the entire time probably isn’t helping,” she says, and Buck loves that about her. That she’s so emotionally aware and can read between the lines so well.

Buck shrugs a shoulder. “I know you guys care about me. It’s just hard when it feels like I’m being replaced.” He looks back down at his hands, thinking about Eddie dating Ana and the panic attacks and dating Taylor.

“Have you talked to her?” Buck gives Hen a weird look. “Abby,” she says like it should be obvious.

Which, given when in Buck’s life this is, it really should be. “Not recently,” Buck says, which is about as truthful as he can get without saying No, I haven’t spoken to her since after I saved her fiancé from a train derailment.

“You should,” Hen tells him, patting his shoulder as she stands. “Sooner, rather than later.” And with that, she leaves him alone, staring at his hands.

Buck sits there for another minute before pulling out his phone. He unlocks it, opens his contacts, and stares at Abby’s name. It’s barely 8 am in L.A. so Abby should be having dinner in Italy right about now, assuming her Instagram location is still accurate.

After a moment, Buck sighs and presses the call button. There’s a chance she’s met Sam by now anyway, so Abby’ll probably be grateful for the fact that Buck’s being the mature one here and doing the actual breaking up.

It’s not – it’s a difficult conversation to have at any time, but especially at 8am at the beginning of a 24-hour shift. Abby is in fact relieved that Buck is the one reaching out to break up with her. (“I-I met someone,” Abby confesses, and even though Buck has been over her for literal years, it still makes his chest ache, that Abby had met Sam this early and still refused to pick up the phone and just tell him that they were done.) Buck is remarkably mature, not yelling at her for not telling him that she wasn’t coming back or for breaking up with him first, but he plays nice because he doesn’t want to move out of her apartment just yet.

His loft isn’t available– he checked last night right before falling asleep, one arm dangling over the edge of the bed – and Buck would really like to avoid couch-hopping, especially since Maddie only arrived in L.A. the night before. Luckily, Abby agrees to let him stay at her apartment until he finds a place of his own and then she’s free to do whatever she wants with it.

Buck thanks his lucky stars that he wasn’t completely lying when he told Maddie that Abby was letting him stay until he found his own place.

His phone call with Abby leaves Buck unusually quiet when he walks upstairs for breakfast, determinedly ignoring Eddie’s “good morning” and digging into the omelet Bobby sets on a plate in front of him. Just a few more hours, Buck reassures himself all morning when Eddie goes out of his way to do nice things for Buck like his chores and Buck retaliates by doing them better.

By the time Buck’s in the gym, he’s almost gotten over the fact that he’s being a terrible person to the man he’s in love with, if only until after they deal with a live grenade. His confrontation with Eddie goes about the same way he remembers it going the first time (with the minor exception of Buck forgetting how stupidly hot Eddie looked in his submission photos, making him blush like a teenage girl, and sounding so incredibly upset by the fact that Eddie’s pretending he belongs despite the fact that Eddie left without telling  him first), right up until the point when Eddie brings up Abby.

“I know your girlfriend recently broke up with you and you’re coming to terms with that,” Eddie says, and Buck wonders why Eddie looks so upset about that when the only things Eddie knows about Abby are the things that Chimney and Hen have told him. Buck knows he hasn’t said a word to Eddie about her yet.

None of that really ends up mattering because the next thing that comes out of Buck’s mouth is –

“I’m not hung up on my ex-girlfriend,” Buck says, and he’s very glad that he’s not still trying to deadlift when he says it because he probably would’ve dropped the weights on his foot for throwing the script out of the window like that.

Eddie and Chimney look equally gob smacked by that revelation and, well, if Buck wanted to make it clear that he’s definitely not waiting around for Abby, that’s one way to do it. “Then why’re you still living in her apartment?” Chimney asks over on the bars, apparently having recovered from his shock first.

Buck is now doubly thankful that he had his phone call with Abby this morning. “She’s letting me stay until I find a new place.” It’s not a lie anymore and Buck already has his eye on the loft. Besides, it now comes with the added benefit of Hen having told him to talk to Abby. (The fact that Buck and Abby are now officially broken up in such a definitive way – and so much earlier than last time, not to mention the fact that Buck didn’t have to write a fucking letter – is just an added benefit.)

“Ex-girlfriend?” Eddie asks, still sounding like he can’t quite fathom that as the truth.

Buck, stupidly in love but still stubborn as a bull, nods. “Ex-girlfriend,” he repeats, and there’s no reason for Eddie to look so goddamn hopeful at that.

Eddie clears his throat and goes on about how he and Buck are on the same side and how there’s no reason for Buck to feel threatened by him, which Buck knows, he just – he needs to wait until after the grenade to keep them on track. After the grenade, Buck will be the best friend Eddie’s ever had.

For right now, Buck scoffs at Eddie and brushes him off – and if he’s a little more amused than irritated, then that’s nobody’s business but his own. He doesn’t mean to sound flirty when he asks why he’d feel threatened by Eddie, but he knows he uses the same voice he used as Buck 1.0 taking people home left and right.

“Exactly,” Eddie says by way of an answer, sounding more breathless than Buck expected given their current argument. “There’s no need to be. We do the same thing. I’ve just done it while people are shooting at me is all,” Eddie adds with a little smirk.

It would be fine, it was fine the first time around, before Buck knew Eddie’d been shot in Afghanistan, before he’d watched Eddie drop under the force of a sniper’s bullet in front of him. “Right,” Buck manages to say around the sudden tightness in his chest. He turns back to the weights a moment later and listens to Eddie go back to the punching bag.

Buck takes a deep breath. He doesn’t know those things yet; he can’t know those things yet. He just has to keep it together until those things do happen because the alternative is telling Eddie that he got sent back into the past and Buck doesn’t think Eddie would believe him if he tried.

Buck tries not to let his poor treatment of Eddie get to him, but by the time they roll up to Charlie the seventh-grade history teacher’s house – Buck vaguely wonders why he remembers so much about this guy – Buck’s just about ready to drag Eddie up to the balcony at the station, sit him on the couch, and tell him everything. Avoidance only works so well, and all it does is remind Buck of immediately after the stupid lawsuit he filed and how he’d try to reach out to everyone, anyone really, and they all shot him down so fast. (Buck really hated the lawsuit and he really hates this.)

He just really wants to be Eddie’s friend again.

“It’s not that kind of grenade,” Charlie says in what Buck thinks is his study? Office? He goes on about the type of grenade is in his leg – 40 mike-mike, Buck read the Wikipedia article on them as soon as they got back to the station the first time – while Bobby studies the wound.

The two of them are rolling Charlie out to the ambulance and Eddie’s just gotten him in when Bobby turns to Buck and says, “Buck, I want you to ride with him to the hospital.”

Buck is stupidly thrilled about it, but that’s mostly because he’s about half an hour  out from being able to stop being a dick. Still, he puts on a frown and pokes and prods at Eddie’s wounds – gentler than the first time he hopes – until Eddie can see the color of the cap on the grenade and get the ambulance to pull over.

“I guess you’ve seen a lot of shrapnel wounds,” Buck snarks when they’re about two minutes out from the hospital.

Eddie’s response is, predictably, terse. “My share.”

“You ever seen a guy with a length of rebar stuck through his skull?” And yeah, it still kind of stresses Buck out to talk about Chimney’s accident so casually when it had hurt so bad the instant Bobby had called them all into action. Honestly, Buck hadn’t known what kind of shape they’d find Chimney in when they arrived – a miracle survival of rebar through his skull was completely unexpected. But Buck’s getting off-topic, if only in his head.

Eddie huffs, and Buck thinks he’s actually smiling, just a little at the corner of his mouth. “What are we measuring here, Buck?” It shuts Buck up but it’s also because now Buck’s actually seen Eddie naked – hazards of the job. On the cot, Charlie groans, and the hint of a smile on Eddie’s face disappears as he schools it into his “professional medic” face. “Need to change those dressings, they’re soaking through.”

Buck rolls his eyes – he does know some things – as Eddie reassures Charlie. “I’m just saying,” Buck continues, swapping out the dressings and trying not to tense as he catches a glimpse of the grenade, “working the streets of L.A. is not exactly stress-free. May not be the same kind of pressure you have in a war zone, but…”

He lets himself get cut off as Charlie grabs the dressings in his pain, Eddie grabbing Charlie’s wrist and Buck holding his breath. “Hold on,” Eddie says, voice tight and no longer calm. “I thought you said this was a practice round.”

Buck’s eyes are wide, he knows they are, but there’s nothing he can do about it because his life is about to be in danger again and no matter how many times Buck’s had this dream, he’s never been able to squash the fear he’d felt when Eddie had declared the grenade live. “It is,” Charlie protests, and Buck really hopes this guy turned to baseball cards after this happened the first time.

“Practice rounds have blue caps. Gold caps are live,” Eddie explains, and Buck’s too busy trying to remind himself not to give too much away to ask Eddie for more information. Eddie lets go of Charlie’s wrist and turns to bang on the ambulance’s roof. “Pull over!”

Less than fifteen minutes later, Eddie, Buck, and Bobby are standing in the hospital’s parking lot while the bomb squad commander studies the x-ray of Charlie’s leg. “He’s got a live round embedded in his thigh,” Bobby notes, and Buck squashes his desire to call Bobby out on the obviousness of his observation.

Instead, Buck turns to the bomb squad commander because he’s still supposed to be a dumb kid. “I thought this thing already went off,” he says.

“The launch grenade has two components,” Eddie explains, and Buck kind of tunes him out, snapping back about why the grenade didn’t “go boom.” “It’s fitted with a proximity fuse,” Eddie starts.

“A little smart sensor that tells the cap that it’s traveled a safe enough distance from the shooter to explode, yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard the speech,” Buck waves off impatiently because he’s ready to just get in there, save Charlie’s life, and be Eddie’s friend. A second later, Buck realizes exactly what he’s said, and he can’t believe he’s made the same mistake twice in two days, his eyes widening a little.

Eddie nods when Bobby looks at him, and Buck kind of wants to die because Eddie’s watching him like he knows Buck isn’t supposed to know that. “From his hand to his leg probably wasn’t far enough,” Eddie finishes explaining, though he keeps looking at Buck. “Did you read up on grenades as well as how to treat chest wounds?”

The answer is yes, of course Buck did, but only after he got schooled by the probie. “Something like that,” Buck says, turning his full attention to Bobby in the hopes that Eddie will ignore the embarrassed flush on his face.

They go through the same argument Buck remembers – he still doesn’t understand why the bomb squad couldn’t just do it themselves, even if Buck understands the dangers better now that he’s had to experience it for himself.

Just like before, Eddie volunteers to get the grenade out because they don’t have time to wait. And just like before, Buck volunteers to be there with him.

Before Buck quite realizes it, he’s putting the finishing touches on the bomb squad gear he’s wearing, listening to Bobby tell him not to be stupid. “Listen, Buck, you don’t have to do this,” is what Bobby actually says as he follows Buck towards the ambulance.

“You think I’m gonna let the new guy have all the fun?” Buck asks, even though what he means is you think I’m gonna let my partner do this without being at his back? Bobby frowns a little and stops where he is, watching Buck carefully. “Besides,” Buck shoots over his shoulder, “you wanted us to bond. We might end up real close.” He winks at Eddie when he says it because they’re so close c’mon just a little longer. Eddie looks a little confused, but he hands Buck the box anyway.

It’s easy to slip into the ambulance ahead of Eddie, easier than it should be because Buck and Eddie haven’t had their bonding moment yet, haven’t had their lives threatened by a 50-year-old grenade, so why, why does it feel like it did before Buck woke up three years too early? Like Buck could turn around and ask about Christopher’s day at school and Eddie would answer like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Buck doesn’t and instead he focuses on reassuring Eddie that they won’t get blown up in the ambulance. He puts pressure on Charlie’s leg and tries not to steal too much of Eddie’s attention, teasing gently where he thinks he can. What he doesn’t do is kiss Eddie when he pulls the grenade out of Charlie’s leg, but it’s a close thing.

Eddie puts the grenade into the box in Buck’s hands, and Buck gets sloppy, too excited that he’s finally able to smile at Eddie – and he tilts the box, sending the grenade rolling from one end to the other. They both hold their breath, and when it doesn’t go off, Eddie sends Buck a dark look. “You just had to lean the box.”

Buck rolls his eyes but he cannot imagine how dumb it would be if he’d died, got sent back in time, and then died not two days into the past. “Shut up,” he tells Eddie without heat, slowly putting the box down on the bench behind him. Buck nods his head at Charlie, still knocked out and now grenade-less. “Let’s get him out of here.” He’s about to say something else like ask for the chance to meet Christopher in the morning before Buck has to pull himself back. He doesn’t know who Christopher is yet, and they haven’t even made it through the hard part yet. Buck shakes his head, helping Eddie roll Charlie out instead.

They get Charlie out and handed off with no complications, and Buck watches Charlie go with a relieved smile. They’ve gotten through the grenade, Buck’s proved himself to Eddie – god, Buck’s just excited that he can finally be Eddie’s friend. The high doesn’t last too long though; Buck’s still been a dick to Eddie, and there’s no guarantee that Eddie’ll forgive Buck like he did last time. The thought sends a sharp spike of anxiety through Buck’s chest.

And then Eddie turns those bright eyes flush with success to Buck and Buck falls all over again. Eddie doesn’t even have to say anything for Buck’s heart to kick up a notch or two because that’s a look that Buck has seen on Eddie’s face again and again. “You’re badass under pressure, brother,” Eddie tells Buck, and Buck lights up when Eddie meets his eyes with a wide smile.

Buck ducks his head because he knows his cheeks are pink but also because he’s never been good at taking Eddie’s compliments. “Me?” He forgives me, Buck thinks fleetingly.

“Hell yeah. You can have my back any day.”

Buck grins back at Eddie, meeting his eyes again even if he’s still too pink. “Or y’know,” Buck swallows, because there’s really no way to say this without sounding like he’s flirting, “you-you could have mine.” He’s trying to keep his composure but really, he just got his best friend back.

“Deal,” Eddie says, and Buck intends to hold him to it. No stupid lawsuit, no running off when he’s got things he can’t handle, no letting Eddie leave the 118 because he didn’t have a proper conversation with Christopher. Buck watches Eddie’s back, and Eddie watches Buck’s – that’s just how they work.

“Nice work, fellas,” Bobby says, walking over to where Eddie and Buck are still grinning at each other like idiots. “Glad you both made it out of there.”

Buck turns his body to Bobby, but he can’t make himself look away from the smile on Eddie’s face. “Guy’s a professional, Cap. I was never really worried.” And it’s not a lie because he’s said it once and he’ll say it again: Eddie’s damn good at his job.

The ambulance blows up behind them, and Buck and Bobby duck on instinct. Buck kind of forgot about that part, but he didn’t forget about the way Eddie smiled afterwards, childish and pleased. “You guys hungry?” Eddie asks them, and Buck ruthlessly squashes his desire to kiss him, curl of anxiety in his chest be damned.

Maddie’s in the apartment when Buck comes home the following night, having spent the better part of the day getting ribbed by Chimney and Hen for being a territorial frat boy before going grocery shopping. “How was work?” she asks, a sly, knowing smile on her face when she catches sight of the goofy grin on Buck’s.

All Buck can think about is the way he was finally able to sit next to Eddie on the couch at work, their sides plastered together as they watched terrible late-night tv, sitting next to Eddie at breakfast and teasing him about the way he took his eggs. “It was great,” Buck says, even though he’s pretty sure Maddie already knew the answer.

“I haven’t seen that look on your face since you met Joanna Donner in your freshman year of high school,” Maddie teases. “You have a crush on somebody, baby brother?” 

And Buck – Buck doesn’t know if he wants to tell her or not, if it’s too soon to admit that he’s stupidly gone on a man he was meant to only have met a few days ago. As far as she knows, he’s still possibly hung up on the woman whose apartment they’re staying in, no matter what Buck’s told her to the contrary. “L.A.’s starting to feel like the right place to be, is all,” Buck finally settles on. “I mean, you’re here and yeah, I had a pretty great day at work. Did I tell you about the new guy?”

Maddie looks amused, but Buck doesn’t think she’s gonna push the crush thing. If she has any thoughts about it or puts two and two together, i.e., Buck’s great mood and the sudden topic change, she doesn’t say anything about it. “No. I thought you were the new guy at work?”

“Ha ha,” Buck says, rolling his eyes. “Not anymore. There’s this guy – started the day you showed up actually – named Eddie.” Maddie hums, pulling bowls out of the cabinets since Buck’s started towards the refrigerator. “He seems really great and he’s good at the job, for it being his second shift and all.”

“Sounds like a glowing review. Did you just finish your probationary period a little while ago?”

Which, yeah, how did Buck forget? He’d had his shield ceremony the July before Eddie showed up at the station, just a couple of weeks before Eddie graduated the academy. “Yeah,” Buck says eventually, gathering his thoughts while Maddie is the best big sister ever and dishes them both out food – some sort of stir fry, by the looks of it. “I mean, I’ve still been there that much longer than him but – you really did get my postcards, didn’t you?”

It's not like Buck doesn’t know that Maddie got them or that she kept them, his own version of a baby box when their parents were terrible enough human beings to not even consider making him his own. It just hadn’t occurred to him that maybe Maddie remembered the dates those postcards were sent, obviously well enough to know when Buck’s shield ceremony was. Buck didn’t even remember sending a postcard for that one.

Maddie stops though, her shoulders dropping a little and she very carefully puts the bowl in her hands on the counter. Buck closes the fridge door – he hadn’t actually gotten around to looking inside yet – and turns to her. “Of course I got them,” Maddie says, looking up at him. “How else was I supposed to know what you were up to?”

Buck bites back his first response that she could actually respond to any of his texts or calls. “I just – I thought that Doug might’ve seen them. That’s why I sent them to the hospital.”

She’s reading his face, looking for something, and she must come to some sort of decision because Maddie suddenly turns and walks out to the living room heading for the corner where all of her stuff is sitting. Panic creeps into Buck’s chest at the sight of her rifling through her things. What if he pushed too soon? What if Maddie left again? What if –

“I kept them,” Maddie says, coming back into the kitchen with a tied up bundle that Buck’s only seen a few times before, the first time the day that he and Maddie spent talking about Daniel.

She’s holding them out, and it takes Buck a second to realize that she wants him to take them, get a chance to look at them for the first time since he sent them off to her. “You brought them with you?” he asks, even though he already knew she would.

Maddie nods, her eyes wet. “Had to keep you around somehow,” she jokes, and Buck takes them from her hesitantly, strange to think that they’re having this conversation now as opposed to so much later. It gives him hope that maybe things’ll be different this time around, that maybe he will be able to change Eddie’s mind and the future. “C’mon,” Maddie says when Buck just stares at the bundle in his hands. “Let’s get dinner and we can make fun of your wild youth while we eat.”

“It wasn’t that wild,” Buck protests.

“Bartending in Virginia Beach and Peru,” Maddie reminds him and yeah, okay, Buck deserves that. “Besides, you can defend your thought process to me on what made you want to apply for the Navy SEALs.”

Buck rolls his eyes, but he can’t deny that Maddie’s right. He’d half-explained it to Bobby before, after all. Makes sense that Maddie might wanna know. Besides, time with his sister is never a waste. “Alright, but you can’t make that much fun of my mix-ology skills. Took me forever to get some of those drinks right.”

“So, no nickname, huh?” Buck asks, leaning against the pinball machine while Eddie’s playing a game. It’s been two weeks since Eddie started at the 118, and Buck tries not to think about how it’s also two weeks since he died or how the one-month anniversary of Eddie leaving the 118 was this week.

Eddie’s hand slips on the button and the machine makes the losing noises, mocking Eddie for his failure. Buck offers him a weak grin when Eddie turns his eyes to him. “Not unless you’ve come up with something good,” Eddie answers.

“I was thinking G.I., for G.I. Joe,” Buck starts because he can’t believe he ever considered it, “but it sounds too much like gastrointestinal.”

“You’re not wrong,” Hen chimes in from the kitchen.

“So no nickname,” Buck finishes, all but ignoring Hen because he has all of Eddie’s attention on him and he kind of forgot how much he loves it. He grins widely after a moment, shooting Eddie a sunny look. “We could always call you by your first name, Ed –”

Buck doesn’t get the chance to finish his sentence before Eddie slaps a hand over Buck’s mouth. “Sorry, Evan,” Eddie says with a matching mischievous look in his eyes, “but two can play at that game.”

It’s meant to be funny, and it is kind of, but Buck sags a little, losing some of his enthusiasm, because the last time Eddie called him that, Eddie had just told him that Buck becomes Christopher’s legal guardian in the event of Eddie’s untimely death.

Eddie must read the slump of Buck’s shoulders and the way the smile slips on Buck’s face because he turns to face Buck properly, his hand falling back to his side. “Hey,” he says softly. “I didn’t –”

Buck waves him off. “It’s fine, I just – there’s a reason I go by Buck.” It’s an easier excuse than You called me that because you cared once. “Don’t worry about it,” Buck repeats when Eddie just keeps on looking at him with that same concerned look.

Thankfully, that’s about the time Bobby appears to announce the calendar winner.

Buck loses himself in the moment a little, congratulating Chimney, paying Hen for the bet, and then submitting to Athena and Bobby’s teasing about the call with the baby in the wall. He doesn’t mean to bring up the rollercoaster, but it’s where his mind goes next, the first time Athena gave him a piece of advice that wasn’t “get your head out of your ass.” Having Eddie there, letting Eddie learn these things – Buck hadn’t realized he’d never told Eddie these stories – made it better, especially when Eddie reminded him that he had Buck’s back.

It's easier for Buck to get his breath back when Hen and Chimney come to join their conversation. “I gotta grab something from downstairs. Be right back,” Eddie says, patting Buck’s shoulder before standing and heading for the stairs. Buck just nods, working his way through the way the mention of Devon still brings tears to Buck’s eyes.

Of course, because Buck’s luck is still mostly shit, Bobby comes up to him next.

“I meant to ask,” Bobby starts, Athena turning back to Hen and Chim, Eddie already disappearing down the stairs to the app bay. “How’d you know how Eddie got his Silver Star?”

Buck’s brain runs at a million miles an hour, trying to think back to the first mention of it, working himself out of the daze that the rollercoaster always puts him in. “He mentioned it on the truck on the way to the garage call,” he says after a moment that might’ve been too long. Chim had asked how Eddie got his star, and then Hen had asked about the calendar, and oh no –

Chim hadn’t gotten a chance to ask Eddie how he got his Silver Star because Eddie had brought up the calendar first, halfway there. Buck’d asked about Eddie’s full name, gotten it right on the first try (accidentally), and no one had asked Eddie how he got his Silver Star.

“I mean on the way back,” Buck corrects, trying to think of a plausible time that Eddie might’ve told them that Bobby might believe. “Chim asked him.” Which is true, this time around. Buck’d been sulking and staring out the window and Chim had finally gotten around to asking Eddie about the star.

Buck had almost stopped him because he knows how much Eddie hates the damn thing, but then he remembered that he’s not supposed to know that yet.

“Huh,” Bobby says, looking at Buck. “I must’ve missed that.” He claps Buck on the shoulder before following Athena back to the kitchen.

Buck sighs, slumping his shoulders with the effort. Keeping the past separate from how things were turning out was harder than he thought it’d be. If he keeps making mistakes like this, he might as well just announce to all of them that he was sent from the future.

In the dark hours of Eddie’s first shift, Buck had wondered what he’d done wrong to make Bobby hire someone who was basically Buck but better than Buck could ever be. Now, having lived in Eddie’s pockets both because of quarantine and during Eddie’s recovery from the shooting, Buck still wonders what made Bobby fight so hard for Eddie, especially when Bobby didn’t know that hiring Eddie was going to be one of the best decisions Buck thinks Bobby’s ever made for the station.

“Hey, Cap?” Buck sits down at the kitchen island, Bobby cooking vegetables in a pan. “Can I ask you something?”

Bobby’s got a slight smile on his face when he glances up at Buck. “You just did but go ahead.”

Buck takes a second to pull a what? face before shaking his head. “What made you choose Eddie? ‘Cause I’ve been thinking about it and there’s no way you could’ve known that would turn out the way that it did.” And yeah, Buck’s cheating the universe a little because he’s never gonna get the chance to ask the Bobby who’s seen Buck change and suffer terrible things but Buck wants to know.

Bobby pauses, looking up at Buck properly and leaving the pan open for Buck to steal a piece of broccoli. After he smacks Buck’s hand away, Bobby hums. “I guess I’d hoped for the best, really.” When Buck frowns at him, Bobby continues, turning back to the vegetables. “We didn’t really need anyone else – we’ve got any number of paramedics and qualified firefighters, despite always needing more hands. But I saw his record and I got a chance to talk to him and I guess.” Bobby sighs, putting the wooden spoon down and looking up at Buck. “I guess I wanted him to be to you what Hen and Chim are to each other. Someone to consistently have your back.

“Most people here have that, someone that they’ve been paired up with so often that that’s just who they gravitate towards,” Bobby continues after a brief pause, picking up the spoon again and apparently unaware of the bombshell he’s just dropped onto Buck’s head. “I thought it would be nice if you had a partner as well.”

There’s really nothing Buck can say to that because what? Bobby had hired Eddie…for Buck? Buck, who used to steal the ladder truck for on-shift hook-ups? Buck, who was a cocky little shit and went brawn first into every situation, flirted with almost everyone he came across on calls? Buck, who lived for the thrill of saving someone, pulling them away from death’s door, until the day he lost his first person?

That stupid kid was why Bobby hired Eddie?

“You mean it?” Buck asks when he manages to pull himself together, his eyes wet. He’s definitely been quiet for too long for him to pass his questions off as casual, and by the look on Bobby’s face, he knows that Buck was really aiming for it not to mean as much as it does.

“I meant it when I told Eddie you’re one of our best,” Bobby says, and the look on his face is the one Buck recognizes as Bobby’s I’m being honest because you need to hear it face. “You just…have a tendency to run into situations without thinking them through first.”

And all Buck can think about is the stupid fire that got him into the situation in the first place, trying to clear the factory on his own after Bobby told him to make sure that he had someone at his six. It was far from the first time Buck had done something like that – there had been no way for Buck, for any of them, to know how that call would end. “So Eddie’s supposed to be my impulse control?” Buck jokes, and even as he says it, it strikes Buck how true that is. Buck and Eddie both have that sort of “act now, think later” mentality, but when they’re together, they have a better chance of making it out unharmed.

Bobby smiles at that, turning back to the pan. “If that’s what you want to call it,” he allows, and Buck waits him out. It doesn’t take long for Bobby to continue. “I just want you to realize that you have us, Buck. It’s not just you against the world.”

I always thought it was the two of us versus the two of them, Buck had told Maddie after the truth about Daniel had come out. And here Bobby is, reversing the sentiment before that’s even happened. “Hard to break a lifetime of habits,” Buck quips, and he forgets for a moment that Bobby doesn’t know about his parents yet. He looks up from his hands to Bobby’s face, horror slowly creeping over him at the fact that he just shared something he’s not sure he was ready to.

Bobby’s got his concerned parent face on, and there’s no way Buck thinks he can get away with dropping something like that and running away, no matter that Bobby basically did the same thing with his reason for hiring Eddie. “How’s your sister handling the move?” Bobby asks instead – or maybe because he knows that the two topics aren’t so disconnected.

Buck lets out a breath, not really caring that he’s so obviously relieved about the fact that Bobby didn’t push him. “She’s doing pretty well. Getting a little tired of sleeping on my couch, but you know what rent’s like for apartments around here.”

“Yeah, I remember that from when I moved out here,” Bobby agrees, turning off the heat and putting the lid on the pan. “And the job? How’s she liking training for the 911 operator position?”

“She’s a natural,” Buck says, proud. Which, not that Maddie didn’t pick up being an operator quickly the first time around, is weird because now Maddie slips into it like she’s been doing it forever. If Buck didn’t know any better, he’d say that Maddie’d been sent back too because even though she’d been an ER nurse for twelve years, she still made mistakes. From what Buck’s heard, Maddie’s flying through training faster than anyone expected, including her.

He shakes it off though, certain he’s just remembering things wrong. “That’s good,” Bobby says. “You gonna bring her around to meet everyone at some point?”

Buck doesn’t have to fake the wince that crosses his face. Maddie’s still delicate, not that she’d appreciate Buck describing her as such. She’s cautious about meeting a lot of new people, so Buck thinks he’ll have to bring her to them one by one instead of everyone at once. “We’re working on it,” he says vaguely, and Bobby seems to accept that as an answer.

“Alright, go wash up. Lunch is almost ready.”

There’s definitely a spring in Buck’s step as he walks away, and he doesn’t do Bobby the honor of pretending not to see the smile that crosses Bobby’s face when notices that Buck seems to be in a much better mood now that they’ve had this conversation. Buck’s waited four years and one death to get some answers – he can’t imagine why he should be shy about finally getting them.

Buck’s been reliving the past for about a month and change when he suddenly realizes something.

“Did I ever tell you I’m bi?”

Maddie’s got her feet tucked under Buck’s thigh and the two of them are tucked under a blanket on Abby’s couch, Solo: A Star Wars Story playing on the TV. “No,” Maddie says, but she sounds distracted, like Buck’s question isn’t anything out of the ordinary for her.

Buck spends about two seconds being offended before he figures out the next logical option. “Did you already know?” he asks, and Maddie just throws a piece of popcorn into her mouth.

“Yup.”

Now Buck’s a little irritated. He pauses the movie and turns to face Maddie, who just turns her head to look at him. “How could you possibly know if I never told you?”

“Buck,” Maddie says, and she’s got that look on her face that Buck would see when she was trying not to laugh at him because she could see that he was obviously upset about something but was funny to her. “Your head would turn whether it was a pretty girl or a pretty boy who walked past us anytime we went out when you were sixteen. It wasn’t hard to guess after that.” She sits up, and her smile’s been replaced with a frown so fast that Buck knows something must be showing on his face. “It’s not something I thought you ever had to tell me. I love you for who you are, Buck. I don’t care who you love.” She pauses. “Unless you date another Abby. Then I’ll care.”

Buck blows out a breath. “Sorry,” he says after a moment. “It’s just – I suddenly realized I didn’t know if you knew or not, and after what happened with Eddie, I just wanted to make sure.”

Maddie frowns even deeper, which is the opposite of what Buck wanted to happen. “What happened with Eddie?”

Buck gives her a weird look. “What – oh, I told him I think Daniel Craig’s hot as James Bond. I may have also told him that I understand why Mom and Dad didn’t want us watching Star Wars as kids.” He shoots her a grin. “Young Obi-Wan and Padmé are hot, right?”

His sister rolls her eyes at him, but she slouches back down into the couch. “Thank God. I thought you were gonna say that he said something awful about you being bi,” Maddie says, readjusting to get comfortable.

“That would by hypocritical of him since I’m pretty sure he’s bi too,” Buck says before he really thinks about it.

Maddie jaw drops open as she turns back to him. “Eddie’s bi? When did you find this out?”

“When I told him I was bi? We had a whole conversation about it over a game of pool like his first week at the station,” Buck explains. He doesn’t know why Maddie’s being so weird about this, unless it’s because Buck told Eddie before he made sure that he’d told Maddie, but it’s Eddie. Maddie probably knows that Buck tells Eddie almost everything.

Maddie smacks Buck’s arm. “And you didn’t tell me? I’ve been giving you shit about liking him and you didn’t tell me you had a chance?” And that –

“Mads, I don’t have a chance, he doesn’t like me like that.” Never mind that Buck has been having to remind himself of that fact every time Eddie flirts back at him whenever Buck leans into it. Eddie’s never been into Buck and Buck has been working on accepting his fate as Eddie’s best friend and nothing more.

Buck had never been exactly subtle about his attraction to Eddie anyway, no matter how hard he’d tried his best to act like he wasn’t stupidly in love with Eddie.

Maddie hums at him, turning her attention back to the movie. “Whatever you say, Evan.” Buck frowns but he does the same, turning back to the TV. He’s so busy focusing on the movie and ignoring what Maddie said about Eddie that he doesn’t realize that Maddie’s never given him shit about liking Eddie this time around.

The morning of the earthquake, Buck very seriously considers calling out sick. He’s not out of Abby’s apartment yet but he’s had his eye on his loft for two months, waiting for the instant it goes up for rent, so he just lays in her bed, staring up at the ceiling. He’s got time before he has to start getting ready for work, so Buck replays what he remembers of the earthquake the first time around. The high rise tilting ominously, the climb from the fourth floor to the eleventh, holding his breath and bracing every time the building so much as hinting at shaking, the man falling from the window, reassuring Eddie –

That’s when Buck knows he’s not going to call out, despite knowing that things could change, that he could die today, because there is a chance that nothing will change and Buck will spend ten hours reassuring Eddie that Christopher is fine, is safe at his school. And then, when all is said and done, Buck will offer to drive Eddie to pick up Christopher when Eddie’s truck battery dies.

Buck will get to meet Christopher in roughly thirteen hours, and he cannot wait.

Maddie’s making breakfast when Buck pulls himself out of bed and out of the shower, tapping her fingers against the countertop. “You excited about work today?” Buck asks her instead of asking about her nerves. He doesn’t need to ask about that, her fidgeting gives them away.

“Mostly excited,” Maddie concedes. “Today I’m supposed to be shadowing someone to get a taste of how calls actually go and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.”

Buck grins at her, bumping their sides together. “I’m sure you’ll be a natural.” Maddie hums, not really agreeing with him but not disagreeing either, which is weird considering how well she’s been doing in her training so far.  “When do you wanna head over?”

Maddie checks her watch, stirring the cream of wheat with her right hand. “Mm, sooner rather than later. I know traffic sucks around here,” she says with a wave of her hand like it’s a given that L.A. traffic is terrible at most times of the day and must therefore be worked into any plans.

Buck remembers Hershey pretty well and he’s reasonably certain that he had no idea how traffic worked in large cities until he lived in one, even in a city as big as Boston on the one occasion he went up to visit Maddie at nursing school. Even if it’s been two months, Buck doesn’t think Maddie adjusted to L.A. traffic this fast the first time around. “Well, all the stories are true. How’re you liking the city so far? Bobby was asking about you the other day.”

Judging by the smile his question manages to put on Maddie’s face, he’s willing to bet that Maddie likes L.A. just fine. “It’s great. It’s just – it’s weird that it kind of feels like I’m meant to be here?” Maddie looks up at him like she’s willing him to understand what she means.

Luckily, Buck does understand. “I get it. Seriously, as soon as I started at the 118, it was like I’d finally found what I’m meant to do in my life.” He pulls bowls for them. “You having any thoughts like that about being a dispatcher? It’s not exactly being an O.R. nurse but,” he says, letting his sentence drop off.

Maddie hums, turning back to the cream of wheat. “You sure are asking a lot of questions about my future this morning.” Buck sputters for a second before she laughs at him. “I don’t know, Buck. Maybe it’ll be my perfect job and maybe it won’t.” She bumps him the same way he bumped her. “I didn’t get a chance to have a wild youth like you did and try every job under the sun.”

“Not every job,” Buck protests, and Maddie just laughs at him again.

“No, just a lot of bartending and cattle wrangling and almost becoming a Navy SEAL,” she teases. “C’mon, this is just about done. We should eat so we can head out.” She’s not fidgeting as much anymore, so Buck hopes that he’s managed to kill some of her anxiety about shadowing someone at work.

Now if he could only get himself to stop worrying about the massive earthquake that’ll hit L.A. in a few hours, he’d be great.

Despite how the rest of the day’s gonna go and the fact that L.A. traffic does in fact suck, Buck’s in a pretty good mood when he walks up the stairs to the loft at the station. He waves at the people gathering on the couches and heads over to where it smells like Bobby’s making omelets.

“I have a lot to say,” Hen’s saying as he approaches the kitchen.

Bobby looks at her, surprised. “You draw?”

Hen scoffs. “No, it’s a dream, it’s not supposed to be attainable?” She gestures at Chimney, already digging into his Cap-made food. “Topgun? You can barely drive, rebar head.”

Buck steps up next to them, wondering if he can steal a piece of one of their omelets without getting his hand stabbed by a fork. “Alright, Buckaroo,” Chimney says, dragging Buck into their hypotheticals. “If you were not a member of the LAFD, what would you be doing?”

Lying in bed depressed, Buck thinks. “Uh, I don’t know,” he lies, looking between Chim and Hen. He almost remembers this conversation, or something close to it, he thinks. “I’m not getting fired, am I?” Buck asks almost immediately after. There’s no way they’d fire him, he hasn’t even done anything outrageous recently, that doesn’t mean –

“That’s inevitable,” Chim says under his breath and Buck takes a second to think oh, they’re joking.

“He’d be a golden retriever,” Hen chimes in.

“No, a bartender. No, no, no, bouncer at a bar,” Chim continues, and Buck rolls his eyes. He walks over to the other end of the breakfast bar, picking up an apple and very determinedly not telling them that those are both jobs he’s had before.

“Bouncer at a strip club,” Hen declares, and she and Chimney high five over their dumb jokes that Buck doesn’t really care about because honestly? He’d be a pretty good bouncer at a strip club.

He’s still thinking about it when he sits down on the stool, tossing the apple between his hands absentmindedly. “What’s going on with you, kid?” Bobby asks, and it’s only when Buck looks up that he realizes that Bobby’s put his spatula down – which usually means Bobby’s gearing up for a Talk of some kind.

“Just,” Buck starts, throwing his hands up a little to think of something else to complain about before he starts to remember what he said the first time they had this conversation. “Traffic sucks in this town unless you’re driving ten tons of engine with sirens. It took me almost two hours to get from Abby’s place to the call center downtown then back over here. I just told Maddie she needs to start Ubering.” Which had been true the first time around and it was true now because Buck really hates driving all over L.A. without the engine.

Okay, maybe it isn’t so weird that Maddie’s adjusted to L.A. traffic being terrible so quickly.

Bobby just looks amused by Buck’s complaining when he looks back at the captain, tearing his eyes away from the engines downstairs. “How’s your sister settling in down there?” he asks, picking up his spatula again.

Buck grins a little because he definitely remembers this part and now he knows what he said wrong the first time. It doesn’t mean it isn’t funny. “Well, she’s a Buckley. Practically running the place,” he adds proudly. He has to stifle his laugh when Hen and Chimney stop eating, put down their forks, pick up their plates, and walk away in unison. Bobby’s got his hands on his hips but he still looks amused. “It’s true,” Buck calls after Hen and Chim.

“What’s true?” Eddie asks, walking across the loft to join Buck at the breakfast bar. He sounds a little out of breath, and Buck gets the feeling that Eddie had a hard time getting Christopher to school on time this morning.

“That Maddie’s practically running dispatch,” Buck repeats like the proud baby brother he is. “I mean, she’s no Sue, there’s probably nobody who could ever replace Sue, but Maddie’s been holding her own over there.” Eddie hums, and Bobby slides a plate in front of him, omelet beautifully cooked.

Buck turns to give Bobby a look of mock betrayal. “Hey, no puppy eyes,” Bobby chides, pointing at Buck with the spatula. “Don’t think I don’t know that you get a breakfast at home and then a breakfast here. Besides, I have a feeling Eddie here needed the food more than you did.”

 “That’s because Eddie can’t cook,” Buck teases leaning into the atmosphere.

Bobby and Eddie both give Buck weird looks. “How’d you know I can’t cook?” Eddie asks, and Buck barely has a moment to think shit before scrambling for a reasonable explanation.

“Buck!” Chimney calls from the couches, and Buck has never been more relieved to be summoned. “Come over here and tell the rest of the fine people of this station what you said.”

“Duty calls,” Buck says, trying his best to sound put-upon and not like he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to come up with an answer. He pretends he doesn’t see the look Bobby and Eddie give each other and focuses on accepting the ribbing he’s about to receive from Chimney and Hen.

“Buck,” Bobby says around the seventh time Buck paces the entire length of the loft.

Buck is perfectly aware that he’s restless and he knows why he’s restless too. One of the things he hates most about being sent back into the past is that he knows what’s going to happen and he can’t tell anyone without looking like he’s crazy, no matter what Buck might say about the powers of the moon and the weird phenomena that happen every month. The moon he can get away with – predicting the largest earthquake that SoCal has experienced in like a decade? There’s no way Buck could pass that off as a bad feeling.

Which leaves Buck where he’s at currently: pacing basically the entire station house, waiting for the first rumble to rock the ground beneath his feet. He’s seen the entire team watch him walk by, but none of them have said anything until now.

“Cap, I’m just – I’m ready to go,” Buck says because there’s no way in hell he’s about to jinx it by say he’s bored and waiting for something to happen.

“I’m sure we’ll be sent out eventually. Until then, go burn your energy off somewhere more productive like the gym. You’re riling up the entire station, not just yourself.” Bobby gives Buck a look, and Buck deflates a little, heading down the stairs as fast as he can risk it.

Buck’s not actually gonna change for the gym, not when he knows that there’s an earthquake hitting soon, but he does practically lock himself in the locker room, forcing himself to conserve his energy when he knows he’s gonna be dead on his feet by the time he gets to go home.

Someone else walks in – Jackson, Buck thinks, busying himself with nothing, standing in front of his locker – and that’s when the first rumble shakes the ground beneath Buck’s feet. For a second he thinks that he’s imagined it, that he’s so tense about waiting for it that he willed himself to feel it, and then the shaking starts in earnest.

He turns towards Jackson, both of them losing their balance, with a litany of “Go, go, go,” urging Jackson out of the locker room first. Buck stumbles as soon as Jackson is out and immediately ducks as the glass walls shatter, throwing glass in at him. He shakes it off as soon as he can, managing to get out of the locker room to look around the back of the station. Even though Buck knows that no one else is back there, that doesn’t change the fact that something could’ve changed, someone could’ve slipped by him.

Bobby calls out to him when he rounds the ambulance, heading for the bay doors. “Anybody else back there?”

Buck shakes his head. “No, it’s empty. C’mon, let’s go.” They’re talking over each other for a second, and Buck just yells “Bobby!” before he loses his balance again, stumbling to the side so hard Buck thinks he might fall over.

“Buck!” Bobby’s across the front of the ambulance to catch him in a matter of seconds, and the two of them hobble out through the bay doors, Buck instantly relieved by the sight of the entire station scattered around the parking lot, disoriented and having trouble staying upright, but uninjured.

The quake only lasts another thirty seconds, and then the world reasserts itself, so still that for a second Buck thinks he might still be shaking. “Buck!” Eddie calls, rushing over to where Bobby and Buck are untangling themselves. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good,” Buck says, but Eddie’s already checking him over with a medic’s eye, scanning Buck for visible injuries. He nods to himself when he doesn’t find anything, stepping back to what’s probably an acceptable distance. Buck can’t help the seed of fear in his stomach as he pats Eddie down as soon as he and Bobby are free of each other, checking over and over again that Eddie’s okay. “Are you hurt?”

Eddie shakes his head, and he must be flustered or something because his face is pink. “I’m okay,” he says, and it’s soft and reassuring and unfortunately reminds Buck of nights when Buck would wake up with nightmares and call Eddie and Eddie would tell Buck that he was okay, that they were both okay.

“Are you sure?” Buck checks, meeting Eddie’s eyes. “Eddie, seriously, are you okay?”

“Who are you, my abuela? I’m fine, Buck.” Eddie smiles as he says it. Buck realizes he still has his hands on Eddie’s shoulders and pulls back like he’s been burned. “Hey,” Eddie says as Buck’s trying to figure out a way to brush this off when he doesn’t have the excuse of multiple disasters trying to take Eddie from him. “It’s okay. You’re allowed to worry.”

Buck blows out a breath. “Yeah, tell that to my sister.” He shakes his head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bombard you with that, I just – I wanted to make sure that you didn’t get hurt getting out of the station.”

Eddie’s still smiling at him, and Buck thinks he might say something else when Bobby calls them all back into the station now that the quake’s definitely done. They all file back in, and Buck braces himself for the high-rise, for the dread that curls in his stomach whenever he thinks about it.

Sure enough, they’re not inside for more than two minutes before Bobby calls out for them to gear up. “There’s a high rise,” Bobby says, and Buck just grabs his gear. It’s not like his and Eddie’s relationship hasn’t had its fair share of half-finished conversations anyway.

They all pile into the vehicles, Chim and Hen in the ambulance, a handful of others in the engine, and Bobby taking captain’s chair in the ladder truck while Eddie and Buck sit across from each other, knees almost touching. It’s a disaster zone outside as they drive through the streets, powerlines and trees alike knocked down, not to mention the damage to the buildings.

Buck watches Eddie fiddle with his phone, pull up a contact, call it, frown when it doesn’t connect, hang up, put his phone back down, and then do it all over again. He knows what Eddie’s doing, of course, since there’s really only one person Eddie would be this worried about. His Abuela is safe at home, and Pepa’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Buck tries to distract himself by looking out of the window, but he’s always drawn back to Eddie, who’s now resorted to texting.

When they’re about five minutes out from the high rise, Buck gets over himself and just asks. “Is everything okay?”

Eddie looks up at Buck, clutching his phone as though it’ll suddenly be able to work properly again. “Yeah. There’s no service,” he answers, waving his phone a little. “Texts won’t even go through.”

 “Who’re you trying to get ahold of?” Buck asks. He knows the answer, but he wants to make sure – there’s always a chance that something’s different –

“My son,” Eddie answers, no hesitation in either his words or the way he looks up to meet Buck’s eyes. “I’m trying to reach my son.”

Buck gets to light up at the very thought of Christopher, a huge smile crossing his face. “You got a kid?” Up front, Bobby turns around to look at them, but Buck’s too excited by the thought of his favorite kid in the world (Jee-Yun and Christopher are tied for the position, Buck refuses to pick a favorite out of the two of them) to give it much thought.

“Christopher.” Eddie holds out his phone, a picture of Christopher already pulled up because Buck isn’t supposed to know what Eddie’s son looks like. “He’s seven.”

“And super adorable,” Buck says, heart aching at the thought of Christopher being stuck at school and terrified because he has no idea what’s going on. “I-I love kids.”

Eddie takes his phone back, looking down at the screen with the fond look he reserves for Christopher. “I love this one. His mom’s not really in the picture,” Eddie adds on almost as an afterthought.

Buck nods, willing to let it go until he remembers that Eddie’s actually mentioned Shannon before, during the same conversation where they both admitted to liking guys, oddly enough. “Your ex-wife?” Now that Buck thinks about it, he knows that Shannon’s in L.A., or at least somewhere close by. If Eddie and Shannon are already talking, Buck’s a little surprised that Eddie isn’t worried about her too.

Eddie’s surprise is clear when he looks up from his phone. “Yeah. It’s not – she was gone for a while and when she came back, we decided that a divorce would be best for us. I’m getting full custody though.”

She asked for a divorce, Buck remembers Eddie saying one night after Shannon’s death but before the truck bombing. Shannon, when I was trying to propose – when I thought she was pregnant – she –

Buck had just wrapped Eddie up into a hug and let him pretend he wasn’t crying into Buck’s shirt. To be able to hear that Eddie and Shannon are getting a divorce without all of the struggle they went through the first time? It’s huge and Buck can’t tell Eddie how proud he is that Eddie’s doing something for himself, moving on after the hurt that Shannon leaving him did.

Instead of saying any of that, Buck quotes one of Christopher’s favorite episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender. “That’s rough, buddy.”

And a grin splits Eddie’s face so fast that if they weren’t on the truck on their way to a collapsing high-rise after a 7.1 earthquake hit Los Angeles, Buck would keep going just to make Eddie laugh. Unfortunately for them, they are on the truck on their way to a collapsing high-rise and roughly an hour and a half away from watching a man fall to his death on the sidewalk, so Buck just grins back at Eddie and bumps their knees together as a form of reassurance until they arrive and they all clamber out of the truck to stare up at a building that could come crashing down with one really good aftershock.

Buck looks up at it and remembers the swaying, holding onto whatever he could just to keep his balance, barely dodging a fucking falling elevator, and thinks, Yeah. I can do this again.

He looks over and Eddie still looks worried, so Buck bumps their shoulders together. “He’s at school? Your kid,” Buck clarifies when Eddie just frowns at him.

“Chris? Yeah,” Eddie agrees.

“I’m sure he’s fine.” Eddie nods but he still doesn’t look convinced. Then again, Buck supposes, Eddie hasn’t lived through this once already and know that though Christopher is literally the last student at the school, he’s perfectly safe and thrilled to go home when Buck and Eddie arrive to get him.

Eddie’s already turned his head back to the building though, staring at the impossibility of it leaning nearly in half, terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measures. “You guys ever deal with anything like this before?” he asks, and Buck can’t shake the feeling that Eddie sounds almost resigned, like this isn’t the first time he’s had to ask this particular question.

Bobby’s quick “Nope” is drowned out by the parents Buck remembers from the first time around, begging the cops to let them go, to turn back to the building to find their daughter – their daughter who Hen risks her life to find and succeeds. “Her name is Kat!” the mom yells, like if she can get the first responders attending the scene to remember her name, they’ll cause a miracle.

They do, but the mom doesn’t know that yet.

“They seriously think that’s gonna hold it up?” Buck asks, shaking himself out of memories that have yet to happen, watching the other responders prop up the rubble with what Buck thinks are aluminum poles.

Bobby turns from their group, and Buck wonders what he’s thinking, if he’s thinking about that family and his own lost family. “Let’s go find the incident commander,” Bobby orders, and the rest of the follow, Buck thinking things over a lot more seriously than he did the first time around.

Listening to Hen and Bobby worry about their significant others has Buck looking back at Eddie, who’s probably trying his best not to think about the fact that his kid and his ex-wife are somewhere in the city, possibly injured or even dead because of this ‘quake. “Captain,” Chief Williams says, turning Buck’s attention to where she’s come to meet them. “Captain Williams, Incident Commander.” Buck bites back his instinct to greet her by name because they’ve worked with her a couple of times since the quake, just for things that haven’t happened yet. Besides, she’s talking to Bobby, not him.

“Captain Bobby Nash. How can we help you?”

Chief Williams leads them through the maze of survivors, med tents, and other first responders attending the scene, laying out information that Buck wasn’t aware he still had rattling around his head. “Hotel manager said they were between checkout and check-in when the quake hit,” she starts, “so they were light on guests. We’ve made contact with most of those. Multiple evac operations in progress. All but twelve of the sixty-eight staff have been accounted for. It’s been pretty chaotic.”

“That family back there said their little girl is still missing,” Hen stresses, and Buck should’ve known by the way she says it that she was willing to do whatever it took to get that kid out of there. He’d been taken by surprise when he and Eddie had come out of the high-rise with Ali and the poor guy with a spinal injury to find out that Bobby and Chim were disobeying direct orders to get Hen out from where she’d fallen trying to find the kid. That kind of dumb move was Buck’s specialty.

Chief Williams doesn’t look at her. “As long as it’s still safe to do so, we’ll be looking for any survivors.” Off of Bobby’s question about the engineers’ findings, she continues, using the blueprint that they’ve arrived at to help illustrate. “Looks like we had a brittle failure in the pre-stressed concrete section of the building’s underground parking garage, causing it to pancake at an angle. Right now, the reinforced steel is the only thing keeping it from completely collapsing. One good aftershock…”

“And the whole thing could come down,” Bobby finishes, all of them following Chief Williams’s eyes back to the high-rise.

“A high-rise is supposed to be the safest place to be when an earthquake hits,” Buck recites before he can think better of it. It had been one of those statistics that had stuck in his head, even after all this.

Chief Williams doesn’t look down at Buck for the statistic, but she doesn’t ignore it either, which Buck appreciates. “Not when you’re built right on top of a fault line,” she says as they start moving again. “This quake was a 7.1”

Hen and Chim have lived in L.A. the longest, so they’re the ones that rattle off the earthquake stats for the area – the 6.7 earthquake that hit Northridge and the fact that this quake is the largest to hit SoCal in 20 years. “How many crews do you have in there?” Bobby asks Chief Williams.

The look in her eye is answer enough. “Not enough. We’ve put in a request for Heavy Rescue 3, but they’re on their way to a freeway collapse.” Athena, Buck remembers, some random fact rearing its head with the fact that Athena could’ve fallen off of the road. She’d told them all on the anniversary of the quake one year that she’d watched the overpass crumble in front of her and a truck tumble over the edge. “We can use every hand we can get,” Chief Williams continues, again pulling Buck out of his head. Keeping last time and this time apart is hard, especially for a big tragedy like this.

Bobby thanks her and she nods, already getting roped into another conversation. “Okay, listen up. Here’s how you make it to the end of the day,” he starts, and Buck wonders how many times before the 118 Bobby had given some variation of this speech. “You don’t worry about the things that you can’t do anything about. Focus on one task at a time. I can’t order you guys to go inside that building, and I’m not gonna judge you if you decide not to.”

Chimney shifts on his feet, looking at Hen. “Hen, you got a kid, so…”

“Yeah,” Hen agrees. “And I’d hope that if someone whose job it was to save him had the chance, they’d do it. No matter what.” Buck kinda wants to bring up the fact that nobody bothered saying that to Eddie, but nobody knows that Eddie has a kid yet. Still, it’s with that thought that Buck finds himself turning to say something about it to Chimney.

“Where do you want us?” Eddie asks, his voice cutting through Buck’s internal rant.

Eddie’s – Eddie’s antsy, for Eddie anyway, shifting slightly on his feet. When Buck looks, Eddie’s got his head turned towards the side of the building that he and Buck spent most of their time trying to get to the first time around, where Ali was stuck in a room with her boss who, if Buck remembered correctly, was trying to sleep with her.

None of that’s really important at this moment. What is important is the fact that Eddie’s practically leaning in that direction. Buck knows that Bobby, Hen, and Chim wouldn’t be able to tell because Buck had forgotten just how locked up Eddie was when he first started at the 118, but Buck can tell because he knows Eddie. And Buck knows that Eddie really wants to head in that direction. Buck opens his mouth to ask him about it when –

“You guys should come see this,” a police officer says, coming from that direction, and Eddie is the first person behind Bobby to follow the officer.

Lo and behold, there’s the guy pressed against the glass, one aftershock away from falling to his death against the sidewalk beneath him. Buck tries not to think about how hard and Eddie had worked to keep him from falling the first time and the quiet way Ali had asked if he’d still be there when they got down. “We could set up a bag street-side in case that window gives,” Chimney suggests.

Bobby shakes his head. “Nobody works under that side of the building. Somebody’s gonna have to get him from the inside.”

Buck has to remember to breathe. Three, two, one –

“Buck, you say that’s the eleventh floor?”

“I would,” Buck agrees because he’s already done this dance before and the steps are certainly coming back to him, no matter how much he’s dreading having to do it all over again. “We could take the ladder to the fourth floor, cut the distance in half.” He’s a firefighter – this is his job, death-defying feats and all. Besides, he’s got a cute kid to meet when this day’s over.

Based on the way Bobby looks between the two of them, Buck’d bet good money on the fact that he and Eddie just looked at their captain in unison. Chim and Hen don’t seem to notice, or if they do, they keep it to themselves. “Head on up,” Bobby says, the unspoken be careful heard loud and clear.

Buck and Eddie nod, and then they’re off to go set up the ladder and grab the stuff they need – ropes, crowbar, helmets and lights, webbing. It’s so familiar that they don’t actually need to speak as they gather their equipment, only talking out of necessity to the others and announcing the movement of the ladder to the group at large as a warning. They’re at the top of the ladder and at their chosen entry window before Buck realizes that Eddie’s probably stewing in his own worry about Christopher.

“After Northside,” Buck starts after Eddie shatters the glass with the crowbar, clearing it away from the edges, “FEMA spend two hundred million dollars retrofitting every school in the LAUSD. Ceiling tiles, lighting fixtures – Eddie, your kid is in the safest place he can be.”

Eddie turns to grin at Buck over his shoulder, the big shit-eating grin that Buck knows means Eddie’s feeling a little playful. “Thought that was a high-rise,” Eddie says as innocently as possible. Buck takes the opportunity to remind himself that it would be a really bad idea for him to kiss Eddie right now, their current situation being the least of their problems.

Instead, Buck follows Eddie into the stairwell and braces himself for the climb.

A flight and a half up, Buck and Eddie are already panting. “It’s only six flights,” Eddie says, leaning against a wall, “not exactly Mount Everest.”

Buck snorts, carefully taking another couple of steps. “Yeah,” he pants, “except Everest might not tip over and crush you like a bug.” He takes another step and miscalculates, falling forward as the building shakes and catching himself on the wall.

“Buck!” Eddie takes a step back towards him but Buck stops him with a hand. “You good?”

Buck takes a couple of breaths, looking up at all of the stairs ahead of them. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Let’s keep going.” He wants to reassure Eddie that Chris is okay, wants to wipe the worried crease from between Eddie’s eyebrows, but right now Buck has to focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Two flights later, they pause for a minute to catch their breath. “What’s Christopher like?” Buck asks since he’s got the chance and the fact that he gets to meet Christopher at the end of this the light at the end of the tunnel.

Eddie smiles for the first time in at least twenty minutes, since they first stepped foot into the high rise. “He’s a smart kid. Sassy too,” he adds, and Buck grins despite himself.

“Can’t imagine where he gets that from,” Buck deadpans, and he lets Eddie shove his shoulder.

“Asshole,” Eddie says, and Buck smiles sunnily up at him. “C’mon, we’ve got four more floors before we get where we need to be.” They push themselves off of the wall to continue up. Buck allows Eddie to go first so that he can stare at Eddie’s ass for longer than he normally would. “And stop staring at my ass,” Eddie says five steps later.

Buck grins when Eddie looks down at him. “I didn’t say anything when you stared at mine,” he says, just because, but Eddie blushes and Buck spares a second to think holy shit before following Eddie up the stairs.

If that’s not food for thought, Buck doesn’t know what is.

When they finally reach their desired floor, Buck slides down the floor first, catching himself against the wall while Eddie watches from the door to the stairwell. “Hello! LAFD,” Eddie calls when he slides in behind Buck, and Buck tries not to make it look like he knows exactly which door he’s meant to be heading for.

Ali and Harlow – oh that’s his name, Buck thinks absently as he approaches the door – yell from inside the hotel room, variations of In here! and one Please! in Ali’s voice. “This one here,” Buck says, and he wastes no time grabbing the saw off of his back to cut through the lock. Once that’s done, he knocks the door in, Eddie already tying the rope off to something in the hallway. “In you go,” Eddie says when he’s got Buck’s line in hand, holding him steady as Buck steps through the doorway.

Eddie nods to him with Ali and Harlow’s pleas ringing in their ears. “Thank God,” Ali’s voice cuts through, and both of them turn to where she’s gripping the pillar in front of the window for dear life. “Please, please get me out of here.” She’s shifting and Buck watches as her hand slips –

“Whoa, ma’am, I need you to just sit tight,” Buck says, reaching a hand out like he can touch her from where Eddie’s holding him, waiting for his partner to secure him to the building before heading further into the room. “I will come and I will get you, okay?” Ali nods and agrees, sounding no less panicked than before.

“Uh, no offense,” Harlow calls from where he’s pressed up against the mirror, and Buck had forgotten just what a jackass the guy sounded like before he’d been sad about not being able to save the terrible man. “But I think this might be a situation where “women and children first” does not apply!”

Buck doesn’t have to look to know that the look on Ali’s face is one of disgust – he saw it enough times when they were dating. “Did you just say “no offense”?” she demands. “Everything about you is offensive.”

Eddie snorts while Buck secures his line to his harness, holding him steady. “First date?” he jokes, and Buck would swear he winks at Buck like it’s an inside joke when he asks.

“God, he wishes,” Ali cuts in. “Amazingly, that sweaty, fat, pock-marked pig is married with five kids. Didn’t stop him from asking me to shower with him!”

Buck bites back a laugh despite the life-threatening situation they’re in. Ali’s complaining about her boss trying to sleep with her and Buck has the love of his life’s literal life in his hands, testing the knot on the harness before patting Eddie’s side to signal he’s done. “You’re good,” Buck tells Eddie before continuing, louder, “Man, have you not watched the news at all over the past year?”

“Seriously, catch up with the times,” Eddie calls, stepping carefully through the wreckage. Buck knows he’ll be okay – as long as he doesn’t fuck up – but it doesn’t stop Buck from worrying that something’s gonna change this time.

“Alright, fine, so I’m a dinosaur, a forgotten relic of a forgotten age. For God’s sake, just get me the hell out of here!” Harlow yells, and his gasp is audible from where Buck’s bracing himself by the door. “Hurry!"

Eddie turns when he’s close enough and stable enough for Buck to give him some slack, sending him a thumbs up. Buck nods back and, even though he doesn’t want to, puts Eddie’s line down next to him. He turns his attention to Ali, grabbing the other rope he’d prepped. “I’m gonna throw you another rope, okay? I’m gonna need to you to try and secure yourself,” Buck tells her, waiting for her hesitant “okay’s” before making eye contact and nodding. “You ready?” She nods back, and he tosses the line, letting gravity do most of the work for him.

“Don’t move!” Eddie says suddenly, and Buck and Ali freeze on instinct, Buck suddenly registering the sound of glass cracking over the general sound of the building shifting. He turns his head just enough, one hand on Ali’s line, the other on Eddie’s, to be able to see Eddie finish crossing the space to get to Harlow. “Don’t breathe,” Eddie adds, quieter. A couple of seconds later, he resumes throwing things across the room, clearing as much of a path as possible.

“Hurry, it’s starting to crack!” The panic’s worse in Harlow’s voice, and Buck doesn’t let himself watch, instead keeping his eyes on Ali as she ties the rope around her waist.

“I’m gonna come around to you,” Eddie tells Harlow, and Buck risks a glance. “You need to stay totally still, sir. Don’t even talk.”

“Oh God,” Harlow says, doing the exact opposite of what Eddie just said. “Please don’t let this be the end.”

Hopefully, it won’t be, Buck thinks even though he’s getting the worst sense of déjà vu ever. Eddie’s got the webbing out and ready to toss, narrating what he’s about to do while Harlow whimpers from his place pressed up against the glass.

Ali’s got both hands on her rope, and Buck starts to pull her up carefully, trying to angle her so that there’s debris in the way if she falls, that there will be something there to catch her if her knot gives out (again).

Then the building starts to shake, and Buck yells, “Aftershock!” more on instinct than anything else – like there could be anything else making the ground shake beneath his feet. He braces himself against the countertop he’s pressed against, Ali and Eddie’s lines in his other hand.

“Don’t!” Eddie yells, and Buck knows that Harlow’s just pushed off of the glass when –

The glass shatters. Harlow falls. Ali screams and then the knot around her waist comes untied, sending her falling towards the now open window. Eddie’s name is out of Buck’s mouth before he can think about it, and suddenly Eddie’s there, like he knew Ali was gonna fall before it happened.

Eddie pulls Ali back in by her arms, only half of her body hanging out of the window as opposed to all of her. “You’re okay,” Eddie tells her once she’s got both feet back on the ground, holding her tight while Buck tosses him Ali’s line. Eddie ties it back around her, and the two of them lead her to safer ground, away from the window and the debris and what Buck knows to be the portfolio she’d brought in for her meeting with Harlow.

Buck doesn’t ask how Eddie knew to grab Ali before Buck pulled his attention away from where Harlow’d fallen. Eddie doesn’t explain.

The three of them are quiet for the most part as they climb out of Harlow’s hotel room, Ali abandoning her heels to what’s left of what was once a very nice hotel room. Buck and Eddie explain to her the plan to get down using the stairs, and she agrees.

“You’re doing great,” Buck reassures Ali a few staircases down. “You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” He immediately winces. If any of them have done this before, it’s him.

“Yeah, it was my major at the Rhode Island School of Design.” Buck nods to himself – he deserved the hit. “Sorry,” Ali says a moment later. “Sarcasm is my fallback for pretty much everything.”

“His too,” Eddie calls from in front of them. Buck sends him a funny look.

They’re quiet for another few moments. “Do you think he’ll still be on the sidewalk when we get down there?” Ali asks, sounding so small and so guilty for standing up to a now-dead man.

“No,” Buck tells her. “We’re not going out that side anyway.” He looks up to where Eddie’s watching the two of them. “C’mon, we don’t wanna be here for the next aftershock.”

“Wait,” Ali starts, “what do you mean the next aftershock?” Buck and Eddie give her matching looks of stating the obvious, and she groans.

She groans again when they round the next corner and find the stairway blocked by rubble. “We’re not getting out this way,” Eddie says, and Buck bites back a comment about Eddie’s observational skills. “We’ve gotta go back up.”

“Yay,” Buck says dryly. It makes Eddie huff out a laugh though, so Buck’ll take the win.

“Ladder 118, respond,” Bobby’s voice sounds over their radios, and Buck’s stomach drops. Hen. “This is Captain Nash. I need a head count.”

Eddie gets to his radio first. “Ladder 118 responding. Diaz, Buckley, we’re good, Cap.”

“Castillo and Jackson responding.”

“Paulson, Marcus, and Riley responding.”

“Chimney responding.”

Buck holds his breath, quietly hoping that Hen’s radio didn’t get busted by the fall this time around. Instead, the next voice he hears is Bobby’s. “Hen, do you copy? Hen?” Bobby pauses, giving Hen time to respond. “This is Captain Nash for Henrietta Wilson. Do you copy?”

Eddie and Buck are already looking at each other by the time Bobby calls Hen by her full name, and Buck recognizes the grim look on Eddie’s face. Ali looks between the two of them. “Is that a friend of yours?” she asks, and Buck honestly cannot tell if she’s being dense or not.

“Let’s keep moving,” Eddie says, ever the soldier, and Buck kinda wants to borrow some of his determination. He knows that Hen’s okay, that she survived the fall, that she finds the kid she’s been looking for all day – but he doesn’t know what’s been changed, if anything’s been changed. For all he knows, she died in the fall.

The climb back up is just as awful as it was an hour and a half ago, only this time Buck and Eddie have to watch out for new piles of debris or things to fall onto their heads Buck and Eddie, by mutual silent agreement, focus on keeping Ali calm and getting back up to a floor that they know is stable. Buck remembers the poor guy with a spinal injury and his floor is the next one up.

The hallway they fall into is dark, only the building’s emergency lighting their way. Buck takes lead this time, heading for where he knows the north stairwell is, leaving Eddie with Ali. He doesn’t see to look Eddie shoots his way when he realizes what Buck’s done. “There’s an egress on the north stairwell of this floor,” Buck calls back.

“What if it’s blocked too? Can’t you guys get a ladder to one of the windows?” Ali asks.

“It’s too risky. The building’s shifted too much,” Eddie says, his voice floating down to Buck. “Hey, it’s okay. We’ll get you out of here.”

Ali scoffs. “Not really worried about that.” She lands on the wall next to the room service cart, picking up one of the tiny bottles of liquor and downing it. “What, it’s after five. It’s not like it slowed us down.” Buck focuses on listening for the sound of the guy – Batari, that’s his name! – Batari’s voice through the doors. “You got someone waiting for you to get out of here?” he hears Ali ask Eddie.

“My kid,” Eddie says.

“Who is fine, I’m telling you,” Buck calls over his shoulder.

Ali sighs. “Having someone to worry about sounds nice, actually. All I do is work.” Buck freezes in place, turning his head. He could swear he heard –

“Is anyone there?” Batari calls, and Buck doesn’t bother asking for confirmation before he’s barreling towards the room, taking the saw to the door’s lock before prying it open. Eddie’s right there when Buck looks over his shoulder, nodding when Buck checks to see who’s gonna go first. Batari groans when Eddie slides into the room first, Buck hot on his heels. “I knew help would come,” Batari says, and Buck had forgotten what he’d looked like, prone on the floor.

“That’s right. We’re here, we got you, buddy. Don’t move, alright? Just relax. I need you to stay as still as possible,” Eddie soothes, his hands sure and steady as he checks Batari over, pulling the man’s shoes off. “Buck, we gotta roll him over.”

Buck nods, already at Batari’s head. “On three. One, two,” Buck winces in advance, “three.”

Batari screams as they roll him onto his back. “I soiled myself,” he admits, in obvious pain.

“Forget about that, okay?” Buck reassures, watching Eddie check the pulse in Batari’s feet.

“Not my proudest moment,” Batari says anyway, and Buck knows that coping mechanism well, since joking about trauma is one of Eddie’s fallbacks.

Eddie’s frowning where he’s checking Batari’s feet. “Can you wiggle your toes for me?” Batari’s face scrunches up as he tries, and Buck already knows that he won’t be able to. The two of them slide down the room towards the windows. “Numbness in his legs, loss of bladder control,” Eddie lists off.

“Spinal injury,” Buck agrees. He turns to Ali, who’s already reaching for the ironing board. “Anything we can use over there?”

Ali pulls it out with a grin. “Makeshift backboard,” Eddie says, and Buck’s not sure what the look on his face means. “How’re we gonna get him down the stairwell?”

Buck winces again. “I don’t think we’re gonna use the stairwell.”

Eddie frowns. “What does that mean?” Ali asks, leaning on the ironing board.

Ten minutes later, the three of them stare down into the darkness of the elevator shaft. “At least we’re not blocked by any debris,” Buck tries.

“Or an elevator,” Eddie says, sounding unimpressed.

Ali turns to look at the elevator a few floors up. “How much do you think that weighs?”

“2500, 3000 pounds?” Eddie asks, and Buck nods.

“I like our chances,” Buck says with more confidence than he feels, despite knowing that the last time, the elevator didn’t kill them. It came close, but it didn’t kill them.

Eddie snorts softly. “You would. Hey,” he says when Buck just looks at him. “It’s not like I’ve got a better idea, I’m just saying I’ve heard things about your ideas.”

Buck rolls his eyes. “Here I am, trying to be optimistic, and you just have to go and shoot me down. C’mon, let’s get Batari and get out of here. Besides, the faster we get out of here, the faster you get to that kid of yours.” The three of them slide back into the hallway to where they left Batari a few doors down, already secured to the ironing board. “Looks like the elevator shaft is our best bet,” Buck tells him when they get close enough.

“Is the elevator already at the bottom?” Batari asks, which is a fair question.

“Uh, no,” Buck says. He doesn’t say anything else despite the slightly horrified look Batari sends his way. “Eddie, you wanna harness up and get the doors open?”

“What, no fighting for the job?” Eddie jokes, but he’s already pulling the gear off of his back. Ali looks between the two of them, and Buck doesn’t ready too much into her expression. “Can you help get her ready to move?”

Buck’s already got the rope in his hands. “While we’re here, I’m gonna show you a knot that’ll hopefully save your life,” he says, already wrapping the line around her.

“You tie one faulty knot,” Ali says, but she smiles anyway. Buck tries not to read too much into how it doesn’t feel like she’s flirting with him this time, just trying to ease the tension that comes with being in a dangerous situation.

It’s an excruciating few minutes waiting for Eddie to go down and get the elevator doors open below them and then the two of them are helping Ali down. Eddie unties her once she’s on solid ground, and Buck already has Batari hoisted and ready to go. “How you doing, Batari? How you feeling?” Eddie asks from the doorway as Buck lowers him down.

“Not dead yet,” Batari calls back, and Buck concentrates on not letting him drop too fast, his palms sweaty inside of his gloves. Eddie calls out distances and Ali calls out reassurances and before Buck knows it, the weight’s off of his hands because Eddie and Ali have brought Batari into the hallway with them.

“Alright, get down here, Buck,” Eddie calls, and Buck hopes he’s not imagining the thread of concern in Eddie’s voice.

“On my way. You ready?” Eddie agrees, and Buck’s just swung himself into the elevator shaft, already a foot away from the open door when the building starts to shake around them. “Not another one,” Buck groans, moving a little faster. “Good thing you already have that door open, huh?”

“Not the time, Buck,” Eddie calls from the hallway. “Move your ass and get down here!”

Buck’s busy making sure he doesn’t drop himself when he hears the elevator brakes giving way. “Clear the doorway, Eds!” He swings himself down the last few feet and straight into Eddie’s arms just as the elevator comes screeching down the tracks behind him, seconds from taking him with it. All four of them just breathe in the silence that follows it for a few moments. “I told you I liked our chances,” Buck says, Eddie’s hands still vices around his arms.

Eddie shakes his head at him with a smile. “You’re insane. Let’s get them out of here.”

Buck smiles right back at him. “You gotta let me go first,” he says after a second – not that he wants Eddie to let go of him, he never wants Eddie to let go of him, but Ali’s smile is starting to get a little disconcerting.

Just like that, Eddie lets Buck go, and he puts his professional medic face back on. “Buck, help me with Batari. We’ve got a long way to go.”

Over an hour and a lot of reassurances that everyone (including one Christopher Diaz) is okay later, the four of them are out of the building, and Buck doesn’t care if he dies again, he is not reliving that experience a third time. They pass Batari and Ali off to the medics, Batari with a lot of thanks and Ali with a questioning look, before they find Chief Williams waiting for them. “Your captain is very stubborn,” she says, and Buck can’t believe he forgot about Hen. “It looks like he and another member of your station are making their way into the parking garage when I explicitly told them to evacuate.”

Buck and Eddie had heard Bobby’s call for hands and equipment and filed it away as something to come back to. Now, with the reminder of it in their faces, they don’t even look at each other before rushing to the truck to grab whatever they can get their hands on that might help them. “Do you two honestly think that I’m going to let you back in there?” Chief Williams demands, following them.

“Apologies, ma’am,” Eddie says, slinging more equipment onto his shoulders. “Our captain and our station need our help and we’re not about to sit out here when people’s lives are in danger.”

“Especially the lives of one of our own and a little girl whose family has been waiting for her all day,” Buck adds with a nod of his head to where the mom, dad, and brother are all still sitting on a cot.

Chief Williams frowns, but she doesn’t try to stop them as they continue to load up on equipment. “I’ll see who I can get to come with,” she says after a long moment, and she walks away before Buck can process that holy shit, they managed to convince her to go back in with them.

“Didn’t see that coming,” Eddie says, already turning back towards the front doors.

“Me either,” Buck lies. He just didn’t remember it being that easy the first time around. If he remembers correctly, there was a lot more arguing.

There’s a lot more people than Buck was expecting following him and Eddie back into the high rise, and Buck tries not to make it obvious that he knows exactly where he’s going when he’s supposed to pretend that he’s never been there before.

“But I think it’s far enough out that we can get back behind it and push it out the rest of the way,” Bobby’s saying as Buck and Eddie round the corner where he and Chim have hijacked a truck to pull rubble out of the way.

“Looks like we got here just in time then,” Buck quips, exchanging a small smile with Eddie. Bobby and Chim turn to look at them, both of them smiling.

“Yeah, seems like they were planning on having all the fun without us,” Eddie agrees, bumping their shoulders together. “Heard over the radio you needed some equipment and available hands down here.”

Bobby looks both relieved and slightly disappointed to see them. “You know you guys are disobeying a direct order,” he says, and Buck just grins at him as Chief Williams and the rest of the volunteers fill in the space behind them.

“And they’ll be duly reprimanded, as soon as we’re done here,” Chief Williams says, and Buck can’t help but look at Eddie again, proud of them for getting the help Bobby needed.

“Looks like you’re gonna have to reprimand yourself as well,” Bobby says.

“I’m seriously considering it. Your people are very persuasive and persistent,” Chief Williams says, and Buck doesn’t think he’s supposed to take that as a compliment, but he does anyway. “One shot, Captain. Either way, no one’s coming to rescue us.”

Bobby nods. “Then let’s get to work.”

It’s hard and it’s dusty and Buck’s working mostly on autopilot as he clears rubble, not quite believing it when suddenly there’s a hole and nothing but darkness behind it. “Hen?” Buck calls, worried. There’s always a chance something is different this time around, that she didn’t survive the fall. “Hen, are you there?” The dog, Paisley, comes trotting out first, and Buck feels relief wash over him.

Like the angel she is, Hen appears, covered in dust and coughing, but beautifully alive. “Hey, fellas,” she says, and Buck and Eddie are right there to help her and Kat out. Someone takes Kat off of her back, and then they’re all filing back out the way they came, everyone carrying as much equipment as they can handle while helping Hen, Kat, and Paisley.

Once they’re back on solid ground, Buck leaves Hen to Chimney’s capable hands and heads over to Ali’s cot, sitting down next to her wrapped up in her blanket. “She okay?” Ali asks, and Buck nods. “I’m glad.”

Buck looks at Ali, terrified and brusque about it, and understands with a bone-deep certainty that they probably never should’ve dated, especially with the way she handled everything that went down with the earthquake. Friends, Buck could probably do, but if Ali calls him to ask him out this time, he’s gonna have to turn her down but offer friendship in its place.

He makes it clear when he exchanges numbers with her this time, and Ali gives him a kind of sly smile when he says it. “Got your eye on someone else?” she asks, and Buck tries very hard to control the blush that heats his cheeks.

“Something like that,” Buck answers, and Ali doesn’t look disappointed, just amused.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I think he’s into you too,” Ali says, patting his arm with that same smile. Buck’s mouth drops open and Ali gives him a look that says he’s not as subtle as he thinks he is. “Please, whenever you weren’t reassuring me that we weren’t gonna die, you were reassuring him that his kid was gonna be fine. It’s not hard to tell you’ve got a thing for the guy.”

“Yeah, well,” Buck says, ducking his head a little because there’s no way he’s not blushing. “If he could get the message, then I think we’d be okay.”

Ali hums, and Buck makes himself look at her, suffer through that smug smile on her face. “I’m pretty sure he’ll get there. And hey, when he does, let me know, alright? I wanna be one of the people who said I told you so.”

Buck frowns. “One of the people?” She just nods her head towards where Bobby’s checking on his team – Buck’s relieved to see Chimney checking Hen over – to find his captain watching Eddie, his best friend putting stuff away on the truck. “What, you think Bobby thinks there’s more going on?”

“Oh, he definitely knows there’s more going on,” Ali says, wrapping her hands back up into her blanket. “But that’s beside the point.” She leans into him a little. “Give the guy a chance. He might surprise you.” When Buck just gives her a look, she rolls her eyes. “Go on. You’re never gonna win him over if you don’t go say something. Besides, it’s probably time for your reassurances that his kid’s alright.”

Buck pulls out his phone. “Service’s back,” he says, and Ali pushes him off of her cot. “Thanks. See you around?”

“See you around, Buck,” Ali agrees, and Buck bounces over to Eddie, holding up his phone.

At least one good thing is coming out of today. Buck gets to meet Christopher as soon as they’re done cleaning up at the station.

Buck didn’t realize he’d have to pretend not to know where Eddie lives. “So, uh,” he starts after he finishes the story about the guy who agreed to have his head cemented inside of a microwave. “Where’m I heading?”

Eddie rattles off an address that Buck already knows, and Buck goes, trying not to make it seem like this is somewhere he’s driven a million times before. “What did you do at work today?” Christopher asks as soon as they’re on their way and it doesn’t look like Buck’s gonna get them lost. (Buck cannot get them lost, not when he has this route practically memorized. Maybe not from this address, but around L.A. in general.)

“You know those high rises downtown, buddy?” Eddie asks, and Christopher nods. “We spent all day inside of one.”

“Wow,” Christopher whispers loudly. “Was it scary?”

“Absolutely,” Buck cuts in, shooting Eddie a quick smile. “But it was okay because your dad and I were watching each other’s backs to make sure that we’d be okay.” He can see Eddie looking at him out of the corner of his eye and Buck’s really hoping he didn’t just blow everything up. “What about you, Chris? What did you do today?”

And so Chris goes on about all of the teachers herding the kids out of the classrooms and into designated safe areas, games that they played together and the worried looks that the teachers would send Chris as time passed and Eddie still wasn’t there to pick him up. Just when Eddie opens his mouth to apologize, Chris says, “But it’s okay. I told them that my dad was a firefighter and he was helping people. He would come get me when he knew that everyone else was safe.”

“Yeah?” Buck asks, risking a glance at Eddie. “What made you so sure that he was gonna come back?” He doesn’t remember what they talked about on the drive to Eddie’s house the first time, but if there’s something that can be said now that can ease Eddie’s mind later, Buck will take it.

Chris is quiet for long enough that Buck looks for him in the rearview mirror, only to find Chris already looking at him. “Because he always fights to come back to us,” he says, plain as day, and it doesn’t sound like something Chris would say. If Buck remembers correctly from the numerous disasters he and Eddie have lived through together, that’s actually something Eddie has said.

Which makes it weird that Chris says it now.

“Sounds like you’ve got a lot of faith in me there, buddy,” Eddie says, but he sounds soft, the voice he uses when Buck knows he’s trying to reassure Chris.

“It’s what you do, Dad. You go out and save people and you come back,” Chris says. “I know I can’t stop you from getting hurt, but I know you try not to because you know we don’t like seeing you hurt.”

Buck glances at Eddie, who, like his son, is already looking him when Buck looks. “You sure you wanna have this conversation with me here?” he asks quietly, just loud enough for Eddie to hear him. He doesn’t want to overstep, doesn’t want to assume that Eddie’s gonna want him there for a conversation that’s obviously personal. They’ve only known each other for a couple of months, and Buck (technically) only met Christopher today.

Eddie looks at Buck like he’s being ridiculous. “Buck, you just drove me to get my kid because my truck wouldn’t start despite being dead on your feet. I don’t mind you being here.” He opens his mouth to say something else before he shakes his head.

“What’re you guys talking about?” Chris pipes up from the back, either oblivious to or more than willing to barrel through the quiet moment between Buck and Eddie.

“Taxes,” Buck says back, the default response he and Eddie had come up with whenever they needed to talk about something serious and didn’t want to scare Chris.

“You do know I’m gonna learn about taxes one day, right?” Chris sounds so serious about it that Buck and Eddie only last a few seconds before breaking down, laughing the tension of the day away while a seven-year-old talks about taxes of all things.

Eddie claps Buck on the shoulder when they get their breath back, and Buck gives into the temptation to see the bright smile on Eddie’s face. “Guess that means you’ve been roped into the tax conversation,” he says, and Buck tries not to think about how that implies that, even now, Eddie thinks that he and Buck are gonna be friends for that long, that Buck’ll be around when Chris actually has to learn how to do his own taxes.

Buck ignores the warmth in his chest and shoots Eddie a grin. “Hope you’re good at math, Diaz, because I don’t know math at all.”

Eddie snorts. “Guess you’ll just have to get fancy with it then,” he says, and all Buck can think of is –

“I got fancy with the math,” Buck says, tucking his hands into his pockets after handing the paper to Bobby, shy and pleased all at once to be back in the station and with his team, even if it’s just to hand over the results of their fire drill.

“You don’t know math,” Eddie shoots back, coming up beside Bobby to read over his shoulder after grinning at Buck. Buck rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t object because he misses this, the easy teasing. He hasn’t seen any of his team as often as he’d like – he’s seen Eddie more than any of them, but that’s because of Chris, and it’s still not enough.

It’s such a weird thing to think of that it takes Buck a second to get his head back to the present. “It’s fine, Chris is probably better than both of us with math, right Chris?” He doesn’t think he sounds weird, but Eddie must think so based on what little of his expression Buck can see out of the corner of his eye.

Christopher distracts him soon enough, and Buck breathes a little easier when Eddie takes his eyes off of him. It’s nothing, Buck tells himself. Eddie doesn’t know. It’s just me.

It doesn’t stop Buck from entertaining the far-fetched notion that Eddie could remember. It’s just that he’s been burned by hope before, and he’s determined to stick to the facts this time.

The shift after Eddie has a nightmare, Buck has one too. It’s just before the anniversary of the tsunami, and even after all this time, they never get less vivid, less fear-inducing. The funny part is, Buck doesn’t even dream about being in the tsunami.

No, he dreams of dying in the warehouse fire without Eddie at his back. Except this time, Eddie’s just watching him struggle with the beam on his chest, not bothering to help or encourage Buck to keep going, just watching.

After, Buck takes himself to the roof, hides himself away. They’re off at the moment, taking a few precious hours of downtime before the next call comes in. There’s enough overlap in their jurisdiction that Bobby can afford to have dispatch let them get some sleep in.

He can’t wake Eddie about this because he doesn’t have that history with Eddie yet. Technically, Buck didn’t even have a right to push about Eddie’s nightmare because they don’t know each other like that yet. They’ve worked together for what, two months? They’ve barely weathered one disaster together and Buck just met Christopher.

Buck can’t lose him because he pushes too soon.

“You brooding up here?” Eddie’s voice calls from where Buck’s propped the door to the roof open. He’s not quiet as he makes his way over to where Buck’s sitting on the edge, and Buck appreciates that Eddie doesn’t try to sneak up on him.

“Thinking,” Buck answers.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Eddie settles down next to Buck, close enough that their shoulders bump together. “What’re you thinking about? I thought you were getting some sleep with the rest of the station.”

Buck shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep,” he lies. He did sleep but a nightmare interrupted. He glances at Eddie, suddenly worried. “What’re you doing up? Another nightmare?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Couldn’t get my mind to shut down.”

Buck hums. “Do you ever – never mind,” he cuts himself off. He shakes his head. It’s an insane question, even for someone who’s living it.

“Don’t do that, man, don’t shut yourself down like that,” Eddie says, turning his head to look at Buck. “What’s got you all up in your head?”

Buck sighs. “Do you ever think about what you would do if you got sent back in time? Like if you got sent back to before you became a firefighter,” he says. Buck’s not sure if he’s theorizing about before he joined the 118 or if he’s talking about the day he woke up three years in the past, before Eddie joined. Either way, the question’s out there. “If you had a chance to change things but you weren’t sure if it was for the better, what do you think you’d do?”

Eddie stares at Buck for a moment. “I think I’d do what I could,” he says slowly, thinking each word over before it leaves his mouth. “See what I could change, start small and then work my way up to bigger things.”

“Would you tell anyone?”

Buck can practically see the wheels turning in Eddie’s head as he considers it. “If I thought there was someone who would believe me or had been sent back too, then I’d at least consider it.” Eddie turns to face Buck fully, twisting where he’s seated. “Buck, what’s going on? You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Not this, Buck thinks, meeting Eddie’s eyes. I don’t think I can tell you this. “Just some movie Maddie and I watched. We’ve been trying to catch up on stuff, and Chimney’s got a whole list of things that he thinks are essential to my movie knowledge.” Like most things Buck says about time travel, it’s a half-truth. Chimney’s list was long and grueling, but Buck had mostly finished it by the time he died.

“Must be some movie,” Eddie says, pulling Buck out of his head, “if you’re thinking about it instead of sleeping.” He’s still frowning, like the very presence of it on his face will get Buck to tell him everything. “You sure that’s all that’s bothering you?”

Buck nods, even though he knows that a lack of communication was one of their problems and is why Buck and Eddie made each other promise to be honest – especially after the lawsuit. “I’m sure,” Buck says.

Eddie looks at him for a long moment. “Christopher’s been asking to see you,” he says out of the blue. “You free tomorrow to come over after I get Chris from school?”

If this were before, three months ago when Eddie hadn’t left the 118 and Buck hadn’t died, Buck might accuse Eddie of using his son to cheer Buck up the same way he had after Buck had been denied coming back to the station, just before the tsunami. But this is now, two months into the past, and Eddie doesn’t know Buck like that yet. “I think I can make the time,” Buck says, smiling at the thought of spending any time with Christopher. “You good with me coming over and hijacking your afternoon?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t okay with it, Buck. Maybe Chris will stop talking about how cool you are if he hangs out with you a little more,” he teases, and Buck beams.

“He thinks I’m cool?” Which is an absurd question to Buck. He knows that Christopher thinks he’s cool, has ever since they first met, but it’s never failed to brighten Buck’s day just a little, knowing that this child thinks that Buck is a reliable adult and someone Chris can go to if he’s having a problem or a bad day.

“Almost cooler than his dad,” Eddie says, bumping their shoulders together. Buck smiles, looking down at his hands, and the two of them sit in silence for a little bit, listening to the city around them. “You wanna come in yet or are you still thinking about that movie?” Eddie asks quietly, cautious of Buck’s mood in a way that makes Buck’s heart ache.

“In a minute,” Buck says after a moment, looking back up at Eddie. “You wanna go pick a bad movie for us to watch?”

Eddie smiles and shakes his head, but he starts getting up. “Only if you promise not to fall asleep this time,” he teases like Buck hasn’t thought about the way that Eddie let Buck sleep on him after Eddie’s nightmare. It’s a start, but Buck still refuses to push.

He sits out there even after Eddie’s footsteps have disappeared down the stairwell, and he considers it again. What’re the chances that Eddie’s been sent back too, that anyone’s been sent back?

Buck shakes his head. It’s just him, no matter what might be different this time around. He’s almost lost all of them once and he refuses to do it again.

(Sometimes the universe gets so frustrated with Buck because Eddie’s right there, Eddie knows, but Buck refuses to follow the clues.)

Buck gets the loft back.

“Wow,” Maddie says from the top floor. “This place is nice.”

“You said that about Abby’s apartment too,” Buck calls from the kitchen. He’s unloading all of the things he bought – plates, bowls, utensils, appliances – and putting them back in the spots where they lived for two and a half years while Maddie investigates the rest of the apartment. It’s been a week and a half since the earthquake, and the loft opened up for a new tenant three days after the ‘quake. Buck was the first applicant and he’s not sure if that had anything to do with him actually getting it.

“This one feels more like you.” Maddie walks down the stairs, pausing halfway down just to look at him. “It suits you more than all of the green and white.”

Buck snorts. “What, exposed brick and metal is more my style?” He looks around right after he says it and – huh. He kinda gets what Maddie means. It’s not that he hadn’t fit in Abby’s apartment, it’s more – okay, Abby’s apartment felt like Abby. The loft has never been very Abby, partially in that it was picked by Ali, but Buck can’t fault her taste. Ali’s good at her job and she’d actually asked Buck what he wanted in an apartment instead of picking a place that she’d want for her own. It’s one of the reason’s Buck’s stayed here all this time.

Maddie’s looking at him in an “I told you so” way when Buck turns back to her. “You just seem more at home here than you ever did at Abby’s apartment. Plus, it’s actually your name on the lease, so it’s definitely more yours.”

The easy answer here is that of course it feels like Buck is more at home here, he’s lived here for two years and change. “Guess I just like this place more than I like Abby’s,” he says instead, shrugging. “It is kind of terrifying though, having my name on the lease.” And it’s true – the loft is the first place Buck’s rented under his own name instead of sharing with friends, living on an air mattress at Maddie’s apartment, or waiting around in an empty apartment for someone who’s not coming back.

“I’m sure you’ll get used to it,” Maddie teases gently, bringing him back to her. She’s quiet for another moment before – “I’ve found a place of my own.”

The sheer instinctive panic at Maddie leaving, of his big sister being somewhere not in Buck’s general vicinity, strikes hard and fast, the same way it had the first time Maddie had said she’d found an apartment and for a very different reason. The first time, Maddie had been running from an abusive husband. This time, Buck’s been missing his big sister for four very long months, never mind that she’s been back and living with him for two months.

Buck shoves it down, fights back the urge to throw up a little. “Yeah? Anywhere around here?” he jokes.

“Actually, yeah,” Maddie says, and Buck swears his heart stops for a minute. “There’s another apartment complex a couple of blocks away – security guards and cameras everywhere.” She shrugs when Buck looks at her. “Think it’s too much?”

Buck breathes a little easier – not that he thinks Doug’ll be unwilling to stab someone else. “I think it’ll be great. So, am I gonna have to face stairs when I inevitably help you move in or are you on the ground floor?”

Maddie rolls her eyes. “Ground floor, you drama queen. It’s facing the inside, with the courtyard though, so I think I’ll be okay. Wouldn’t want you to have to carry the couch up too many flights.” She fidgets for a second, just on the other side of the breakfast bar, before she crosses into the kitchen proper. “Do you think I’m moving out too soon?”

Of all of the questions Buck might’ve expected Maddie to ask, this wasn’t one of them. He considers it, considers if he’d actually thought Maddie was moving too fast when she’d first told him that she’d found a place. “Can I come look at it?” Buck thinks it might give him some peace of mind if he can confirm that the security is better than the original place that Maddie found, where all Doug had to do was slip in the gate behind Chimney. Besides, if Maddie’s asking his opinion, there’s no way Buck’s gonna be the one to tell her no.

“Of course,” Maddie says, her shoulders slumping like she’s relieved that’s all Buck’s asking for. “I thought you were gonna say that you weren’t ready for me to get my own place.”

“I’ll never be ready for that,” Buck waves off, putting the pot in his hand on the counter. “But if you are, then I can’t stop you. I just want to make sure you’ll be safe.”

Maddie hums, looking up at him. “You really have grown up, Evan,” she says softly, and Buck melts a little at that.

“Hopefully I’ve learned some things from the station,” Buck quips, but his voice is too fond for it to be anything other than Buck being stupidly touched by the fact that Maddie’s treating him like a real adult and not just her baby brother. They smile at each other for a second before Buck turns back to the boxes. “So, do you want to unpack the living room or do you want to help me unpack the kitchen?”

“Living room,” Maddie says, walking back out to the stairs. “I’m not touching anything over there – you get really picky about where everything goes.”

Which is true, but Buck didn’t think Maddie remembered that. Still, he lets it go, pulling out his phone to play some music while they unpack. He’s gonna enjoy these quiet moments for as long as the two of them are still living together. Maybe it’ll make Maddie reconsider how much she wants to tell him about, well, anything.

“An empty apartment complex?” Chim asks over the headset the following morning. They’re all piled up in the engine, another set of paramedics taking the ambulance. “They don’t even have any tenants yet – what could possibly be wrong when they just opened?”

Hen snorts. “You’d be surprised,” she says, and Chim snaps his mouth shut like he thinks they’ve just been jinxed. Bobby doesn’t say anything, and Eddie and Buck just look at each other with a smile like they both know what’s coming.

Eddie doesn’t, of course, but Buck does – at least, he thinks he does.

When they all hop out, they just follow the crowd of onlookers to find the guy, Bobby clearing the area with an “LAFD, step back.”

“Please help me,” the security guard moans from where he’s stuck up between the buildings. “Please help me! Someone help me, please.”

“Whoa,” Chim says, and Buck really shouldn’t find it funny that he’s the first to respond. “Whatever you do, brother, don’t suck in that gut.” Hen rolls her eyes and Bobby shoots Chim a look, leading all of them into the apartment complex.

They find out from the day guard that the man’s name is George and that he works the night shift. “He’s been talking about these ninja artists that have been vandalizing the roof,” John the day guard tells them. “Last we heard from him was a bunch of static late last night.”

“Nobody thought to go looking for him?” Hen asks, sounding exactly as offended as Buck expected from her.

“We tried, but we were all still on duty, ma’am,” John answers. Judging by the look on Hen’s face, she doesn’t think that it’s nearly enough.

They split up into two groups, Eddie and Hen up to the parking garage and Bobby, Chim, and Buck all into the apartment complex, shedding their turnouts on the way up to carry them. They’re not exactly comfortable, and they don’t really need to be wearing them while they assess the guard’s condition.

“How we doing, George?” Bobby asks, leaning over the roof railing. Buck stands between him and Chimney, and he frowns down over the edge.

George’s been doing well so far – as well as a man can be when he’s being held between two buildings by his sheer mass – so none of them blame him when he sounds like he’s crying when he responds. “I can’t…I can’t feel my legs. And I think my ankle’s broken,” he adds, yelling up to them.

“Sir,” Hen calls, “do you have any idea how long you’ve been down there?”

“I saw the sun come up,” George answers, and he’s definitely crying this time.

Buck blows out a breath, and he can’t help but state the obvious. “Well, he’s wedged in there pretty good.”

“How’s your breathing?” Hen calls down after giving Buck a look that says he really didn’t need to share that information with the class.

“I can’t really take a deep breath.”

“Hey George,” Buck calls, because yes Hen, he can be helpful, even if he’s pretty sure he remembers what the answer is. “Can you show us how high up you can reach?” When all of them just look at him, Buck turns to Bobby with a little shrug. “If we can drop him a line, we might be able to pull him up.”

George inches his right hand up, all of them reassuring him to go slow and be careful. When he starts to slip, they all jerk, like they could climb down and catch him. “George, just – keep hanging in there,” Bobby says, and Chim snorts behind Buck. “We will get you out.”

Eddie leans a little further out of the window he and Hen have commandeered, all of them watching Bobby. “What’re you thinking, Cap?”

Bobby purses his lips after a moment. “Anyone know what apartment he’s closest to?”

Turns out, John the day guard does know which apartment George is closest to. “They’re having a showing right now,” he says, and Buck gets flashes of a remarkably angry real estate agent telling them that they weren’t allowed to come in.

“Good, someone’ll be there to open the door,” Chim says, and Buck smothers the smile that Chim’s particular brand of humor is good at pulling out of him.

Ten minutes later, drills and sledgehammer and saw in hands, Bobby knocks on the apartment door. “Yes?” the real estate agent asks when she opens it, polite in the detached way that Buck associates with people who have to cater to snobby people all day.

Bobby is, thankfully, immune. Or just really good at ignoring it, Buck thinks. “Ma’am, we need to access this unit,” he says, and he gestures for Buck to slip in ahead of him, Buck already headed for the wall below George’s feet.

He bangs on it a couple of times, reassured when he hears/feels George kicking weakly back, too afraid of shifting himself. Buck nods, ignoring the agent’s complaints about them interrupting her show and Bobby’s explanation about the walls here versus the walls of the parking garage. When Chim appears next to him after a quick “hi” to the agent, the two of them start shifting furniture out of the way, Jones and Martinez doing the same to other parts of the room. Someone ushers the people being shown the apartment out, and Bobby joins them once the room’s clear enough, picking up the drill.

“Uh, Bobby, Bobby,” Buck says, just before Bobby starts to drill into the wall, bit pressed into the drywall. “You might wanna, uh, go down a few inches. Better safe than sorry,” he says when Bobby just looks at him over his shoulder.

Bobby doesn’t say anything, but he does move the drill tip further down the wall. When he drills through, the poor guy doesn’t yell, so Buck takes it as a win that Bobby didn’t brush the guy’s leg with the bit this time. Bobby pulls out a marker and draws a big black X on the wall, turning to Buck. “That’s your target.”

Buck grins, adjusting the sledgehammer in his hands. Sure, it’s a little childish that he wants to destroy things sometimes, but at least it’s a healthy way of working through some of his issues. “Why couldn’t you go through the wall of the other building?” Buck hears the outraged realtor ask.

“Ma’am,” Bobby says in his calm-the-civilian voice. “As I explained before, the wall in the other building is twice as thick. It would take twice as much time, and this is all gonna be taken care of.”

The realtor doesn’t look any more appeased when Buck turns around, a much larger hole now taking the place of where Bobby had drawn the X. “It’s good to go, Cap,” Buck says after poking his head through to find George’s feet maybe six inches above his face.

He and Bobby shift so that Bobby can be the one looking through the hole, Buck stepping back to put the hammer down, grinning at Chim when Chim just raises an eyebrow at him. “Alright, George,” Bobby says, looking up. “I’m gonna need you to control your breathing and take shallow breaths.” He jerks his head, and Chimney steps in, clearing out the ragged edges and various bits that George could get caught on.

As soon as the drill starts up again, Buck winces because George kicks the wall to the best of his ability. He and Eddie exchange a look as they set up the gurney for when they pull George in, Hen keeping the hallway clear. “I think you should talk to me!” the poor guy yells down at them.

Chim grabs the last of the drywall bits and steps back. “I think we’re in the clear.”

Bobby nods, retaking his spot from earlier at the hole, poking his head further out to look up at George. “We’re almost there, George. How you holding up?”

“Please hurry,” George says, and Buck remembers what he’s about to say about a second before he says it. “’Cause…I gotta take a leak.”

Buck resolutely does not laugh when Bobby hurriedly pulls his head back in, looking alarmed. Buck does however cough into his hand. (The look on Chimney and Eddie’s faces say they don’t believe it for a second.) “Okay, maybe hold off on that for a minute,” Bobby calls up. Eddie steps up to the other side of the hole, Chim and Buck rolling the gurney into place just under it. “Okay, George, we’re gonna start to pull you in here, but in order to do that, we’re gonna have to pull on you pretty hard. So, you’re probably gonna feel like you’re falling, but you’re not. If you start to panic and struggle, it’s gonna be hard for us to get you in here. Do you understand?” There’s no hesitation in Bobby’s instructions, just calm and steady tones, and it’s just another thing Buck admires about him.

“Just don’t dro-don’t drop me please, I don’t wanna die,” George cries, and Buck just grips the gurney a little tighter. He tunes out a little while Bobby reassures George that, no, he isn’t going to die if he could just relax and remain calm then everything’ll be okay.

On Bobby’s “One, two, three, pull,” Buck steps out from behind the gurney while Bobby and Eddie navigate pulling George into the apartment. Hen steps up – she and Chim must’ve swapped hallway duty – and the two of them help Bobby and Eddie get George onto the gurney once he’s fully inside.  Buck steps back as George thanks them, Hen and Riley strapping George on. He grabs the equipment and heads out ahead of them. He’s almost out of the apartment when he hears George ask, “Who knew having a gut was gonna save my life?”

Buck shakes his head, trying to bite down his grin. Just another day in L.A.

You would think that a man being stuck between two buildings would actually help Buck remember the rest of what happened on this day roughly three years and change ago (probably still three and a half, given how long Buck’s been in the past), but it does not. Partially because so much has happened in those three years, but also because Buck sometimes gets things jumbled up. Like he’ll remember that they happened, but the exact time of their happening escapes him occasionally.

So when Maddie texts him and says, The call you’re on your way to – I already told Bobby, but the girl has her head stuck in a tailpipe. I’m not quite sure how, Buck doesn’t really think anything of it. It’s only when they park and one of the victim’s drunk friends takes one look at them and goes “Whoa, you’re really hot” does it really strike Buck which call they’re at.

“Okay guys, the strippers are here,” the other friend calls as they lead the crew through the terribly cowboy themed bar, and Buck just thinks, It’s like 11 in the morning. I don’t remember getting wasted this early. And then he considers that he may not remember it when he was that age because he had been wasted at 11AM and proceeds to stop judging them so hard.

He is still a little mean about it when he makes his way through though. Doesn’t mean he has to like it when a bunch of drunk women try to feel him up while he’s at work. Buck 1.0? He was fine with it. Buck whatever.0? Not so much.

Bobby’s much nicer about navigating the drunk women attempting to feel up his team, but Buck can see him clenching his jaw every time someone’s hand drifts too close.

“Hi,” Chimney says when they step outside to find a woman on her hands and knees head, indeed, stuck in a ridiculously large tailpipe. He’s stopped in front of a dude who, if Buck remembers correctly, spent way too much on a custom tailpipe. “What’s her name?”

“Betty,” the proud truck owner says.

“Jennifer,” the drunk woman corrects, her voice muffled by the tailpipe.

The truck owner looks completely unapologetic when they all turn back to him. “Sorry, I thought you meant my truck.”

Bobby’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “This is your truck?”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I backed into her.” The truck owner holds his hands up like they’re suddenly about to start accusing him of forcing the woman – Jennifer – to put her head in there. “She did this out of her own free will.”

“You dared her to,” the drunk friend who’d greeted them as they came out of the truck says, and Buck just scoots himself under the truck, reaffirming his somewhat hazy memories of this call.

“We were flirting.” Buck shakes his head with a shake of his head and a quiet “oh man” as he measures Jennifer’s head. If he adds a couple of extra inches to the safety height, no one needs to know. He marks the tailpipe with a knife, making sure the marks are just visible enough for Bobby to see cleanly.

“Your idea of flirting with a girl is daring her to stick her head in your tailpipe?” Eddie asks, and if Buck didn’t know better, he’d think his best friend was unamused. As it is, this entire thing is frankly hilarious, and Buck knows he is not alone in that assessment.

Chimney squats down as Buck comes out from under the truck, dusting himself off. He and Hen go through their checks, Hen checking Jennifer’s neck while Chim gets a feel for how much pain is cutting through Jennifer’s drunken state. “Why is this tailpipe so large?” Hen asks, even though Buck’s sure it was either him or Eddie who asked the first time around.

Eddie, who’s grabbing the lube while Bobby is still mulling over how to get Jennifer out.

“It’s custom,” the truck guy says when Buck tunes back in.

Not two seconds later, Bobby spots Jennifer’s victory bruises from the bull-machine. “Where’d she get these bruises?”

Truck guy’s eyes go wide. “That wasn’t me.”

“They’re from the bull,” the victim’s other drunk friend says, the one who hits on Eddie if Buck’s memory serves. "She rode it like five times."

Hen shakes her head when Bobby looks at her. “There’s no way we’re gonna get a collar on her,” she says, answering the unspoken question.

“I got it,” Chim says before disappearing back into the bar to cut back to the truck for the saw.

Bobby stands up from where he’d been squatting down next to Jennifer, out of Hen and Chim’s way but close enough that he could get a better look at the situation. “These things are meant to increase the power to the engine,” he says, throwing the fact out like he’s trying to be buddy-buddy with the truck owner.

“Yup,” Buck agrees, and he makes sure to make eye contact with the truck owner before he continues. “TSA 230 saw should do the job.”

“Oh yeah, like a knife through better. Chim?” Bobby asks, completely ignoring the horrified look on the truck owner’s face. Buck bumps Eddie’s side at the sight, and he has to bite down a laugh when he sees a matching amused look on Eddie’s face.

At that moment, Chim reappears through the crowd with the TSA 230 saw and Bobby’s turnout and helmet. “Way ahead of you, Cap,” Chim says, handing them over to Bobby. Bobby wastes no time sliding his turnout on, taking his helmet as soon as he has an arm through.

“What?” the truck owner yells. Buck and Eddie ignore him, Eddie taking the extra turnout from Chim to lay it over Jennifer, setting it up to protect her from the sparks and metal shavings. “No, I spent twelve hundred bucks on that tailpipe!”

“You might wanna close your eyes during this part,” Hen quips, her hands steady around Jennifer’s head and neck.

Eddie’s barely stood back up when one of the victim’s friend, the one who had greeted them at the door, practically presses herself up against Buck’s side. “Just type your number in my phone,” she says, nearly shoving her phone in his face, “and I’ll text you so you have mine.”

“Thanks, but –” Buck starts, and he hesitates because he doesn’t have a girlfriend this time so how’s he gonna get out of this now? “I’m into guys,” he continues when during his momentary panic, his eyes land on Eddie. “Besides, I need to focus right now so my captain doesn’t cut your friend’s head off.” The woman frowns, but she does give Buck an inch of space that wasn’t there before, so Buck’ll take the win.

“Do you have Snapchat?” one of the victim’s drunk friends asks Eddie, and Buck can’t help the way he looks over at them.

Eddie hardly looks at her, other than a quick uncomfortable glance. “Uh, no. And I don’t think I’m what you’re looking for. I have a son.”

“Oh cool, so do I,” she says back like that’s just something they have in common and therefore in her favor.

“I think I’m gonna puke,” Jennifer moans from inside of the tailpipe, and Buck kind of agrees with her if he has to watch these random beautiful women flirt with Eddie any longer. It’s not like Buck thinks any of them have a chance with Eddie, it’s just that Eddie looks super uncomfortable and yeah, okay, Buck’s a little jealous.

“You better not,” the one who was flirting with Buck calls. “These fire guys are totally hot.” If Buck had been Buck 1.0 when they’d had this call, Buck probably would’ve flirted back. Buck is not Buck 1.0 and he wasn’t even when he lived through this the first time around, and as such, he is incredibly grateful when Chim steps in.

“Alright,” Chim says, ushering the victim’s two drunk friends away from Buck and Eddie. “What say we move the peanut gallery a few steps over this way. Thank you.” He raises his voice slightly, ushering the onlookers as a whole back. “Everybody back a little bit, thank you.” Buck gives Chim a little nod of thanks when he turns back around, and Chim just snaps his gum back with a grin.

“Jennifer, keep your head completely still,” Hen says, all of them watching Bobby position himself under the truck. “You’re gonna hear a lot of noise, but everything is fine.”

Of course, as soon as Bobby starts cutting into the tailpipe, the sound of Jennifer squealing cuts through the air. “What are you doing?” she screeches, which is never something Buck thought he’d hear a person actually do, let alone when they had an oversized tailpipe on their head.

As soon as the tailpipe is cut, Buck and Eddie are there to help Hen get Jennifer to sit up, Eddie with the lube in hand before the words even leave Buck’s mouth. Eddie squirts some on Jennifer’s head, spreading it out towards the metal. Slowly, the two of them work the tailpipe off of Jennifer’s head, Hen still holding her neck, until it’s off completely, leaving Jennifer to drunkenly stare up at them while their audience applauds. “Wow, you really are hot,” Jennifer says, and Buck can’t blame her when she blinks slowly up at Eddie.

Given the chance, he’s sure he’d stare at Eddie too.

Bobby’s already leaning over to make sure Jennifer’s looking at him when he asks if she’d like them to transport her to the hospital, only to be cut off by Buck’s admirer insisting all she needs is another drink. “No,” Bobby says patiently, and again, Buck is constantly amazed by Bobby’s tolerance. “What she needs to do is go home. All three of you do, in a cab.” He turns back to Jennifer, and Buck is fully aware that she retains absolutely none of Bobby’s very serious speech telling her that if her head hurts when she sobers up, she needs to go to the hospital.

His knowledge is only confirmed when Jennifer just giggles when Bobby’s done talking.

“Condolences on Betty,” Hen tells the truck owner, handing over the piece of tailpipe they’d cut off, and Buck turns slowly enough that he thinks he gets away with pretending it’s not because he really wants to laugh.

“Is Christopher the real reason you don’t date?” Buck asks as Eddie falls into step next to him. Eddie hadn’t given him a straight answer the first time around, but Buck, knowing what he knows now, is pretty sure that Eddie didn’t actually date because he’d still been married to Shannon at the time, even if they were separated.

Eddie’s quiet for a long moment, and Buck lets him gather his thoughts. “He’s part of it,” he finally answers. “It’s hard when you’re a single parent since you do have to take your kid into account.” All Buck can think about is Ana Flores and the way Eddie had said, almost resigned, “My kid loves her” like that was all Eddie needed to try to make their relationship work.

Buck’s about to say something about how yes, it is important to take your child into account, but Eddie shouldn’t try to force himself into a relationship that makes him unhappy when he gets interrupted. Eddie’s phone rings, and that’s the instant that Buck remembers that Eddie’s abuela breaks her hip today.

Buck’s next thought is oh cool, Christopher gets to come to the station, which is kind of selfish and ultimately shitty for Eddie that he doesn’t have any other options than to bring his seven-year-old son with him to work because his grandmother’s been injured.

“Bobby!” Buck calls, catching Bobby’s attention from where he’s still trying to convince the women that, yes, they should really go home and sleep off those hangovers before they get them. “Eddie’s got some sort of emergency. Can I –?”

Bobby’s already waving him off. “Go on, get him there.” He frowns after a second, and Buck knows exactly where his mind went. “It’s not his son, is it?”

Buck shakes his head. “His grandmother. She’s in the hospital.”

“His kid?”

“Was with her,” Buck confirms.

Bobby hums. “He have any other childcare options?”

“Not as far as I know of. Cap, in case he has nowhere else, I was wondering if –”

“Christopher would be more than welcome at the station,” Bobby says before Buck can even get the question out. It’s times like this Buck’s really grateful that Bobby had a family and understands that Eddie’s having a hard time juggling everything, even if he doesn’t know the full story. “Now go with him before he tries to get Hen and Chim to drop him off in the ambulance.”

Buck turns to see that yes, Eddie is talking to Hen and Chimney with his worried face on. “I’ll get us an Uber,” he says before heading for Eddie. “I got him,” Buck cuts Eddie off in the middle of what sounds like Eddie explaining why he needs the ambulance in a slightly panicked mixture of English and Spanish. “Eds,” Buck starts patiently, “you’re scaring them.”

Eddie snaps his mouth shut, and Buck suddenly recognizes the way Eddie’s holding himself too still and that his hands are shaking. Buck doesn’t remember Eddie having a panic attack the first time around – or almost having a panic attack, Buck amends when he sees Eddie’s nails digging into his palms – but Buck’s already acknowledged this his memory of the day is hazy.

“Eddie,” Buck says lowly, and he pulls Eddie aside, away from the crowd and away from Hen and Chim after giving them a quick nod to let them know that he’s got this. “Eddie, listen to me. Christopher is fine. I don’t know what’s going on,” which is a lie, but a lie Buck has to tell, “but I’m sure he’s fine. I’m gonna order us an Uber, and then you can see it for yourself.”

It takes longer than Buck’s comfortable with, but Eddie eventually nods. Buck pulls out his phone to order them an Uber, and by the time it gets there, Eddie’s breathing’s evened out. “Thanks,” Eddie says quietly as they walk up to the car, Eddie knocking into Buck’s shoulder.

“Hey, what’re best friends for?” Buck asks. He kind of hates that this isn’t the first time he’s written this overwhelming desire to help Edie and Christopher off as some best friend thing. Buck would burn down the world for the Diaz boys and he doesn’t think they ever knew.

Eddie rushes into the hospital almost before the car stops moving, and Buck makes a mental note to tip the driver well as he clambers out after Eddie. “Eddie, slow down.” Buck jogs after Eddie – jesus – and only catches up to him when Eddie’s waiting for the elevator doors to open. “Gunning for a marathon, Staff Sergeant?” Buck teases, and it apparently does the trick.

Eddie shoots Buck a sheepish smile. “Sorry, Buck, I just – what if Chris is hurt?”

Buck nods. He gets it, he does. Anytime there’s so much as a hint of danger around Christopher, his anxiety ratchets up like three notches. “You’ve gotta keep your head on straight,” Buck says, and even as he says it, he thinks, ha, straight. “It’s just your grandma, right? If it was Chris, they would’ve told you.”

Eddie bites his lip, and Buck thinks that Eddie wants to agree but he can’t tell because Eddie’s bouncing his head too much for Buck to be able to tell if he’s nodding or not. His restless energy keeps up while they get into the elevator, and Eddie uses it to practically launch himself out as soon as the doors open. Buck can tell the instant he spots Pepa, shooting a quick “my aunt” over his shoulder as Buck follows him. “Tía. ¿Qué pasó? Is Christopher okay?”

Pepa raises her eyebrows as Eddie and Buck approach her, sparing Buck a glance before focusing on her worried nephew. “You mean Prince Charming, hm? He’s peachy.” She gestures behind them, and Buck and Eddie both turn on instinct to find Christopher laughing with a few nurses. “It’s your abuela, she broke her hip.”

Buck winces even though he already knew that. Eddie doesn’t get any less worried though, his hands planted on his hips. “What? How?” Never mind that Pepa had told Eddie on the phone before they even got into the Uber that it was his abuela. Buck attributes that to Eddie’s stress being focused on the possibility of Chris being hurt.

“She was out back on the steps, calling him to come inside. She lost her balance,” Pepa explains, and Buck doesn’t miss Eddie’s wince. “Christopher called 911,” she adds, pride creeping into her voice. “The rescue got there really quick. And before you say anything, your abuela’s sleeping now.” Eddie’s mouth snaps shut from where he’d had it open to demand to see Abuela. Pepa turns to Buck then, a small smile curling at the corner of her mouth. “And who is this?”

“This is Buck,” Eddie says, and Buck waves awkwardly at a woman he’s known for three years. “We work together.”

Pepa’s smile doesn’t fade – if anything, it grows. “And I thought you just dressed alike,” she quips, and something about her reminds Buck of easy days at Abuela’s house where Buck had been invited to spend the day with the family.

Eddie rolls his eyes a little, turning back to Buck. “This is my aunt, Josefina.” He pauses midway through turning back and adds, “Pepa.” It dawns on Buck this second time around that even now, Eddie’s letting Buck in, introducing his aunt by her nickname instead of just leaving it at her first name. Buck tries not to think about the warm feeling the thought gives him.

“You can’t keep doing this, Eddie,” Pepa says, drawing their attention back to her. “You cannot keep leaving him with her. She’s not up to it.”

Eddie rubs his forehead and Buck digs his nails into his hands to keep from reaching out to him. “I know, I know, and I’m sorry. I’m looking for permanent help, it’s just – it’s so many forms. It’s worse than the V.A.,” he adds with a slight laugh. “Never thought anything would be worse than V.A. paperwork.”

Pepa rubs a hand up Eddie’s arm, frowning. “I’m sorry, Eddie. Do you know where you’re going to take Christopher?” she asks, and Buck can’t help but blink at her. There is a distinct lack of hostility towards Shannon this time, but that might be because Shannon and Eddie are getting a divorce already. Eddie opens his mouth, and Pepa just laughs at him. “You don’t have to go back to work?” Eddie winces and Buck makes himself stay quiet, at least until he and Eddie are alone. “I’ll take him for tonight,” Pepa graciously offers, “but you need to get this figured out.”

Christopher calls Eddie over, and Buck watches the two of them reunite, like it’s been longer than a handful of hours since they saw each other last. “Must be rough,” Buck says, even though he understands so much better now than he did the first time this happened. He understands that it’s not any of their faults, not really, not even Shannon’s – life is hard, and finding childcare for a child with disabilities is part of that.

"Raising any child is rough," Pepa says, and Buck’s ears catch on the distinct lack of the word alone in that sentence. “My nephew is a saint, but I pray for him anyway.” She turns back to Buck, that same smile from earlier curling in the corner of her mouth. “Take care of him. For me and the rest of his family,” she continues before Buck can say anything else.

Buck’s sure he looks like an idiot standing there with his mouth open until Eddie and Chris come back for Chris to say his goodbyes to Pepa. Eddie’s frowning again, obviously thinking about what to do, and Buck can’t help the way he just wants to help. It kind of kills him to do it, but Buck asks, “What about Christopher’s mom, your ex-wife? Would she be able to take him?”

Eddie shakes his head, still deep in thought. “No, Shannon’s out of town for work.” He runs his hand down his face.

If Buck didn’t know any better, he’d say Eddie looked panicked, which is what makes it easy for Buck to say, “Bring him to the station with us. It’ll be fine, I’ll make sure of it,” he adds when Eddie doesn’t look convinced. It helps that Bobby already knows since Buck kind of gave him the whole rundown when trying to get to the hospital in the first place.

And for a second Buck thinks Eddie might argue – Eddie definitely tried to argue the first time around – but Eddie shuts his mouth a second later. “If Bobby yells at me, I’m telling him you told me to bring him,” Eddie says instead of arguing, and Buck doesn’t even try to stop the grin that crosses his face because he gets to spend the better part of the day with Christopher.

The three of them take an Uber back to the station, Chris staring up at it in awe when he steps out of the car. “It’s big,” Chris says, and Buck laughs a little at the obvious statement.

“It sure is, buddy. You wanna tour inside?” Buck asks, and Chris nods so fast that Buck thinks if Chris’s glasses weren’t literally attached to his head, they’d go flying off. He leads Chris into the station, measuring his steps so that he doesn’t leave Chris behind but not slow enough that Chris feels like he’s being babied. It’s a fine line that Buck’s perfected over the years, and he keeps his pace steady as he shows Chris all of the nooks and crannies.

“And this,” Buck continues once they reach the loft, “is where the fun stuff happens.” Chris would never say it, but Buck can tell that he’s getting tired of walking, so Buck leads him to the couches. Hen and Chim are watching from the kitchen, and they cross the loft in a few steps once they see Chris. “Ah, I see you’ve got your first visitors.”

Eddie rolls his eyes at Buck as he sits down next to his son on the couch. “What’s this, Buck? Finally find some friends your own age?” Chimney asks, rounding the corner. Buck knows he’s meant to play offended but he loves Chris too much to even pretend to be mad that Chim called Chris his friend.

“Please, I’m sure he’s way more mature than Buck,” Hen teases, bumping Buck’s shoulder gently before holding a hand out to Chris. “I’m Hen.”

Chris doesn’t even look at Eddie for confirmation before shaking Hen’s hand. “I’m Christopher,” he introduces. He pauses then points at Eddie with, “That’s my dad.”

Hen’s smile gets even bigger, and she turns to look at Eddie. “So this is the kid that Buck spent the entire earthquake reassuring you was okay?”

“Not the entire earthquake,” Buck argues.

“Yup, this is Christopher,” Eddie says over Buck, wrapping an arm around Chris and shaking him affectionately. “His abuelita got hurt, so he’s come to hang out with us until my aunt can take him.”

“An excellent idea if I ever heard one,” Chim says, settling on the arm of the other couch, clapping his hands together. “My name’s Chimney. Don’t believe a word your dad’s said about me.”

“It’s all talk anyway,” Hen shoots at her best friend, looking at Chris. “He talks too much – you’ll see.”

Chim’s mouth drops open in mock offense, and Eddie, Buck, and Hen just start laughing because why not? There’s a seven-year-old to entertain and an easy way to do that is to make fun of one of their closest friends, all in good taste. “You do talk a lot,” Chris pipes up, and that is it.

Chimney’s looking around at them like he can’t believe that just came out of Chris’s mouth and the rest of them nearly double over laughing. Buck had forgotten how easily Chris had become comfortable around the rest of them, taking cues from their comfort level with each other to poke fun at them like he’s known them for ages.

“I do this too much?” Chim asks over their laughter, making the talking gesture with his hand. Christopher buries his face in his hands, trying to stifle his laughter and absolutely failing at it.

Hen catches her breath first. “We all agree, believe me,” she shoots from her perch on the coffee table, setting Chris off again.

“Christopher,” Chimney fake-whines, “I thought we were friends.” He’s smiling along with the rest of them, and Buck’s chest suddenly aches with the reminder that Chim is a fantastic father – will be a fantastic father, assuming he and Maddie get together again and have a baby.

Buck’s so wrapped up in has-beens and will-be’s that he doesn’t see Bobby join them until he’s literally next to them. “What’s this? I don’t remember asking the chief for reinforcements,” he jokes and Buck watches as Eddie stills, Chris still trying to get his laugther under control. “You any good with a hose, kid?”

“I can try,” Christopher answers with a wide smile.

“No,” Chris says, turning away from the water to smile at Buck. “A firefighter!”

It’s such a strange thing to be thinking about – Chris reassuring Buck just before the tsunami – that it takes Buck a second to realize that Eddie’s practically thrown himself off of the couch to start apologizing to Bobby. “I didn’t know where to take him,” Eddie says.

“Yeah, you did, right here,” Bobby answers easily. “Buck gave me a heads-up. I already cleared it with the chief.” Eddie turns to look at Buck, his mouth hanging open, and Buck nods back at him, a silent I’ve got your back in the gesture. It almost looks like Eddie’s gonna say something when the alarm goes off, and Bobby claps his hands together. “Alright, let’s go, let’s go!”

Chim and Hen are the first ones to follow Bobby to the pole, Buck lingering behind. “You coming, Chris?” he asks, and he smiles when the tension drains out of Eddie’s shoulders.

“Let’s go, buddy!” Eddie picks Chris up, making him laugh again, and Buck forces himself to turn away from them instead of doing something stupid like kissing Eddie in the middle of the station.

Obviously word’s gotten around about Chris being there because nobody looks at him weird or asks Bobby why there’s a kid in the station as they grab their turnouts and head into the trucks. Eddie tucks Chris into his turnout, making more than one person “aww” quietly at the sight. Buck is one of them, and he resolves to get a picture of it later.

Hen helps Eddie get Chris into the engine, Bobby already heading for the captain’s car. Buck pulls himself into the captain’s chair while Eddie gets Chris buckled in back, sitting his son next to him in the back. They peal out onto the road as Eddie gets the headsets on himself and on Chris, adjusting it before pulling Chris close.

“These are great,” Chim says, tapping lightly on the mic wire. “See, ‘cause we can talk to each other.” He leans forward and Buck rolls his eyes up front, remembering what comes next. “Though sometimes I wish I had a mute button for Buck.”

With an amazing gift for timing, Marvin honks the engine’s horn twice. “Oh, I’m sorry,” Buck says, twisting to look at Chim. “Were you saying something?”

Chris laughs before turning to Chimney. “You have a scar on your head.”

“That’s very observant,” Chim says. “I had an accident. Got a big metal rod stuck in my head, but the doctor took care of it. You ever have surgery?”

“Three times,” Chris answers proudly.

“Well, you got me beat. Now I feel kind of lame.”

“Because you are,” Hen chimes in, and Chris laughs again, his joy practically infectious.

“You are not allowed to tell him why he’s called Chimney,” Eddie says a moment later, laughing along with Chris. Hen just waves him off, telling him that he’s no fun, but Buck. Buck doesn’t quite remember it that way.

He shrugs it off. It’s been a busy day – he’s lucky he remembered to tell Bobby not to almost drill into the guy’s leg this morning.

It’s a car accident, and it’s not hard, just a matter of shifting the vehicles so that they can get to the car that’s had its door bent in just enough that the driver can’t get out. She thanks them profusely as Hen and Buck pull her out, the jaws still in Eddie’s hands from where he’d pried the door open.

The driver turns her head once she’s on the gurney, and she frowns, which means she’s caught sight of Chris. “Is that a kid?” she asks Buck.

“My son,” Eddie answers. “Don’t worry, he knows the drill.”

“Must be hard,” the driver says while they roll her to the ambulance. “Having a Bring Your Kid to Work day while working at a fire station.”

“Could be worse,” Buck offers, and he can see the instant Eddie realizes what he’s about to say. “Could be another earthquake.”

Eddie smacks him, but it makes the driver smile so Buck doesn’t feel too bad.

Once they’re back at the station, Hen and Chim steal Chris away, Chim setting him up with the pinball machine and Hen sitting him at the video games. Bobby even makes him a grilled cheese sandwich, which is where Buck and Eddie find him, literally growling while he shoves the sandwich in his mouth.

“That good, huh, buddy?” Chris nods, and Eddie shakes his head, coming around the table to press a kiss to Chris’s head.

“Cap,” Chris starts once he’s swallowed his bite. “Can you teach Buck how to make this?”

Bobby nods but his smile is the confused one, looking between Eddie and Buck. “Of course, but wouldn’t you rather I taught your dad so he could make it for you?”

Chris scrunches up his nose. “Dad can’t cook,” he says confidently, and Eddie slaps a hand to his chest, miming a fatal blow while Buck tries to turn his laugh into a cough. “Besides, Buck can make it when he comes over.”

“Yeah?” Bobby looks between Buck and Eddie again, this time with that look he had on his face just after the earthquake. “Buck come over to your house a lot?”

“All the time,” Chris agrees, and Buck feels himself flush.

“Hey Chris,” he says on the wrong side of too loud. “You wanna slide down the pole? We can get Hen and Chim to help out too.”

Chris cheers and Bobby helps him up, waiting patiently for Chris to grab his crutches before the two of them head off in search of Hen and Chim to be roped into their next activity. “Smooth, Buckley,” Eddie says as they watch them walk away.

Buck sputters for a second. “What, you mean you wanted Cap to know how often I come over to your house?” Eddie just smiles at him before following Chris and Bobby, and Buck groans. He’s not ashamed of how much he loves the Diazes – far from it – but Buck was hoping for more than two months to solidify his place as Eddie and Christopher’s friend before the inevitable teasing about Buck’s “boy crush” as Maddie had put it.

Hen and Chim are appropriately thrilled about helping Chris down the pole, and they shoo Eddie and Buck away to be the ones to catch Chris, Hen handing Buck Chris’s crutches with a knowing look in her eye that makes him blush again.

They cheer and ooh and aah as Chris slides down the pole, and Eddie looks up when Chris has both feet on the ground, catching Buck’s eye. For a split second, Buck swears that Eddie looks down at his lips before he’s laughing with Chris about how fun it was.

It helps that Pepa chooses that moment to show up for Chris. That way Buck doesn’t give into the impulse to kiss Eddie (an impulse that is always there but gets worse in moments like these).

“Alright, fun’s over,” Eddie says, handing Chris back his crutches while Hen and Chimney make sad noises above them. Chris hugs Buck before he lets Eddie lead him towards Pepa, Buck, Hen, and Chim calling their goodbyes after him.

Bobby’s the last one, standing aside where he’d been watching Chris. “Good job today, kiddo,” he calls after the two of them.

“You too, Cap,” Chris says over his shoulder, and Buck can’t help the smile that crosses his face when he watches them go, leaning against the pole. It’s inevitable then that when Eddie turns around to hug and thank Bobby, Pepa taking Chris’s hands, that he catches Buck’s eye.

Buck can’t shake the feeling that while Eddie was thanking Bobby, he was thanking Buck too. He gets caught up in it, not realizing that he’s not alone anymore until Hen bumps their shoulders together. “Good at his job, huh?” she asks, and it takes him a second to realize that she’s referring to their talk from Eddie’s second shift.

“Something like that,” Buck says with a fond smile.

Hen shakes her head. “Chim,” she calls, “I need backup down here! Buck’s got a crush!”

And there’s the teasing Buck was waiting for.

“I have a confession to make,” Maddie says when Buck comes home, still riding the high of having Christopher at the station. He’s already called Carla and is prepared to have Maddie as a sounding board for that decision, even though he knows it’s the right move.

His sister’s standing just in front of his dining room table, wringing her hands together, obviously waiting for Buck to come home. “O-kay?” Buck closes the door behind him, dropping his gear bag in the same place he’s dropped it for the past three years. (God, Buck loves having the loft again. He got the rent so much cheaper this time too because he started the lease so soon after the earthquake.)

Maddie takes a deep breath, stilling her hands but not dropping them. “I know you want to talk about Christopher and Eddie because Christopher had to come to the station today,” she says in a rush, and Buck wants to say of course, I told you that. Maddie continues with, “I know you’re going to contact Abby’s mom’s nurse Carla to see if she can help Eddie through all of the paperwork he needs in order to get Christopher the help he needs, which’ll probably come in handy because Christopher loves the new school.”

For a second, Buck thinks all the air’s been sucked out of the room. It’s either that or he’s been sucker-punched because what? “Maddie?” he asks, and he doesn’t mean to sound small, he doesn’t, but if Maddie’s saying what he thinks that she’s saying then that means –

“I think I’ve traveled back in time,” Maddie says.

And Buck just – that’s huge because for the past few months, Buck thought it was just him, no matter what inkling or hopeful notions he may have had that tried to tell him otherwise. “What’s the name Doug uses to get close to Chimney?” Sure, there’s probably more efficient ways of making Buck not sound like a crazy person but there’s only a few ways of making sure that Maddie’s telling the truth.

Maddie’s breath catches and yeah, they’re both about two seconds away from crying into each other’s arms. “Jason Bailey,” she says, her voice sticking in her throat. “You too?”

Buck crosses the room and pulls Maddie into a tight hug instead of answering her, the same way he’d hugged her when he saw her in Abby’s apartment the night after Eddie’s first shift. “Jeez, Mads, I’ve been so worried about not screwing all of this up.”

“God, me too.” She hugs him back just as tightly. “How long have you known?”

“Since the day before you showed up in L.A.,” Buck admits, pulling out of the hug enough to look at Maddie while he says it. “You?”

Maddie nods. “Same.” She wipes at her eyes, but she’s got the face on that means she’s trying to keep from breaking down completely. “Evan, I don’t – what’s the last thing you remember?”

If this had been the first time around, Buck might’ve missed the way Maddie bites her tongue, tries not to say everything that’s happened between the two of them since she’s been in L.A. after leaving Doug. “Dying in a warehouse fire,” Buck says because he really doubts Maddie went on to live a long and fulfilling life after hearing about that. He doesn’t know who would’ve called her – Bobby probably or maybe Athena – only that she probably heard the news.

Maddie chokes out a sob. “I should’ve been there,” she says, tears falling down her face. “Instead, I was so worried about Jee and getting it wrong that I ran –”

“Hey, no.” Buck pulls her back in for another hug, letting her get snot and tears all over his shirt. “You were doing what was best for you. And besides,” he continues, “you stayed this time, even with all that stuff in your head.”

Maddie might laugh or she might be sobbing, Buck’s not really sure. What he does know is that she clenches his shirt in her hands, her fingers pressed to his sides. “I should’ve known you remembered,” she says a few minutes later when her breathing’s evened out a little bit more. “You’re in the loft and out of Abby’s apartment so much sooner than you were the first time.”

“I should’ve known,” Buck counters. “You picked up being a 911 operator even faster than you did the first time. I keep hearing about this rookie operator who’s directing houses and officers like a seasoned pro.”

She sniffs, but she pulls her face out of Buck’s shirt, leaving it, as Buck suspected, damp in a couple of places. “Sorry about your shirt. I just – it’s been hard, trying to deal with all of this by myself.”

Buck nods. “I get it, believe me. You wanna see something wild?” Maddie frowns but she lets Buck step back completely, kneeling to roll up his left pant leg. “Ta-da!”

Maddie brings a hand up to her mouth to cover her gasp. “It makes sense, but Buck –”

“I know,” he says, standing back up. “Three years with the scars and now nothing? It’s more than a little weird.” Buck wipes his eyes, sliding his hands into his pockets after. “So why now? What about today made you decide to tell me?”

There’s a second where Buck doesn’t think she’s gonna tell him, wiping at her eyes and looking up at him carefully, and then – “Christopher,” Maddie says. “You talked about Christopher, and I figured it was time.”

Wait, what?

“What?” Buck asks. It’s not that Buck doesn’t love Christopher like his own child – he does, it’s kind of insane actually for him to think of it like that – but the fact that just by talking about Chris, Buck somehow got Maddie to talk about the fact that she’d been sent back in time?”

Maddie smiles up at him, that same frustrating smile that means she thinks he’s being intentionally dense. “C’mon, let’s get dinner. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving after all that crying.”

It’s a hard left in conversational topics, and Buck’s kind of glad for the break because he might have to reset his brain after this. If Maddie wants food before she continues to break him, Buck’s perfectly fine with that.

“So,” Maddie starts, tucking her feet up under her, her plate abandoned on the coffee table.

Buck pauses where he’s taking a sip from his glass – water because they’d both cried a lot earlier and they agreed that if they had wine, they were just gonna cry again. “So?”

Maddie’s giving him her patented Older Sister Look™ and now that they both know that they’ve been sent back in time, there are so many things that Maddie could be dying to talk to him about. “Eddie,” she says when Buck’s put the glass back down. She probably thought that Buck would do something like choke on his water or drop the glass, which Buck thinks is fair because he has to work very hard to keep himself from doing anything ridiculous like freeze or choke on his own spit.

“Is my best friend,” Buck answers instead of doing anything else that might give away how stupidly gone on the man he is. The biggest issue now is that Maddie is well aware of the fact that Buck was dating Taylor Kelly before he died and woke up three years earlier.

“And you co-parented his child after the death of his wife, even a little before,” Maddie continues like they’re discussing the weather. “So, what were you doing dating Taylor?” She’s still giving him the Look™ and Buck sighs.

“Not ruining the best relationship I’ve ever had outside of you just to try to date my straight best friend,” Buck answers because, okay, if they’re doing this, Buck isn’t going to beat around the bush. He knows exactly why Eddie hadn’t shown any interest in him and even if he’d known Eddie was interested in guys, Buck’s been a long-term-relationship type guy exactly twice. (Yes, he’s counting Taylor even if it was hard for him to rely on her the same way he relies on Eddie. Whatever.) (It’s a good thing he’s not planning on flirting with her when her helicopter falls out of the sky in a couple of weeks.)

“But you said Eddie’s not straight,” Maddie says. “You guys had that little flirtation over a pool game right after he started.” She raises an eyebrow at him. “Also, Star Wars, really? At least Eddie and Shannon have some taste with Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.”

“I’m not saying Harrison Ford isn’t attractive as Indiana Jones,” Buck shoots back which is ridiculous, they’ve had this argument before, “I’m just saying that Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan is pretty good-looking.” Maddie rolls her eyes, and Buck takes the opportunity to put his glass down, tucking his hands between his thighs. “It’s – we didn’t have that conversation until now,” he starts. “Before – well, everything really – we hadn’t talked about the fact that we both like guys. I only knew about Shannon and Ana, and I guess he only knew about Abby, Ali, and Taylor.” Buck shrugs. “It made sense to try to not be the cliché.”

Maddie hums. “So, you two didn’t have that game of pool the first time around?”

Buck thinks about it and tries to remember that far back (god, that’s a long time ago now.) “I don’t think so? I mean, if we did, we didn’t talk about guys. We were still getting to know each other.”

“Wasn’t it like Eddie’s third shift when you two had that conversation?” Maddie has that passably-innocent look on her face when Buck looks at her. “I’m just saying, maybe there’s a reason you had that conversation this time when you didn’t have it the first time.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I got sent back and time and said that Daniel Craig is sexy.”

Maddie rolls her eyes again. “But why did you say Daniel Craig is sexy?”

“Cause it’s true,” Buck says, and Maddie gives him the Look again. She thinks he’s being dense, and okay, maybe he is, but Buck humors her and thinks about it. He’d asked Eddie who Eddie thought was gonna win the calendar contest, even though he knew it was Chim, and Eddie had said Bobby and then –

“They say a man is at his sexiest when he reaches 50,” Bobby had teased, and Buck hadn’t even humored him, played along with the concept that Bobby and Chim had no chance of winning the calendar spot for the 118.

Not five minutes later, he’d turned around to the sight of Eddie’s abs and, well, got distracted.

That’d been Bobby’s line, even this time around. There’s no reason Eddie should’ve been able to repeat it word-for-word unless he’d heard it somewhere.

“Maddie,” Buck warns, and she at least has the decency to look a little sheepish.

“It could be true!” Maddie says back, though he knows that she knows that Buck is fairly certain it’s only the two of them that’ve been sent back in time.

“I’ve thought about it, okay? The fact that you got sent back too is already insane. I don’t need to go around asking everybody I’ve ever met if they’ve been sent back in time. I didn’t even think I could get away with asking you if you’d been sent back without you thinking that I’d gone nuts.”  Buck slumps back into the couch. “I can’t risk losing him and Chris, the same way I couldn’t risk losing you.”

Maddie sighs. “Evan,” she says, and Buck tries not to feel like an eight-year-old all over again. “You won’t know unless you try. Besides, there’s gotta be other ways to see if it’s true or if it’s just a weird coincidence.” She rubs Buck’s arm. “I’m not saying walk up to him and kiss him out of the blue. I’m just saying that you may not want to write him off just yet. I was afraid to talk to you too, remember? It just took a leap of faith.”

Buck frowns. “I haven’t had much luck with leaps of faith.”

Maddie shrugs, picking up her water. “Maybe this one’ll be different.”

Buck doesn’t think so, given his track record, but he’s willing to humor his big sister, even for a little bit. “So, tell me,” he says, shifting on the couch. “What’s different at dispatch this time around?”

She lets him get away with the change in conversation, but Buck doesn’t think she’s going to give it up completely. Buck doesn’t mind, not really. It’s nice to know that Maddie’s looking on the bright side of things after everything she’s gone through.

Shannon Diaz is standing outside of the station. Buck shouldn’t know who she is yet, but Eddie’s not scheduled to work today and Buck is having Eddie come over to the loft tomorrow to help Maddie move her stuff out which is really about Eddie meeting Carla and it shouldn’t matter but –

Shannon Diaz is looking at Buck like she knows exactly who he is, and Buck has a creeping feeling that it’s not just him and Maddie who remember. Which means that Buck really owes Maddie an apology.

“Hi,” he says, stepping out of the app bay to greet her properly. “Can I help you?”

Shannon takes a couple of steps forward, hands wrapped around her purse strap. “I’m Shannon, Eddie’s ex-wife.” She doesn’t, he notes, offer any sort of explanation for showing up at the firehouse.

Buck struggles for a second to think of something to say that isn’t I know. “He’s mentioned you a couple of times. Christopher’s mom, right?” Shannon nods and Buck belatedly holds his hand out, figuring that it’s the polite thing to do. “I’m Buck. Christopher’s a great kid.”

Thankfully, Shannon shakes his hand and doesn’t leave Buck hanging. “Thank you, though I think you know I can’t take credit for him being as wonderful as he is.” She takes her hand back and Buck slides his into his back pockets, waiting for Shannon to get around to admitting why she showed up on one of Eddie’s days off. “I was actually hoping that I would find you here,” Shannon says, and Buck wants to be surprised, but she’s been watching him since she caught sight of him through the open doors.

“Not Eddie?”

“Not Eddie,” Shannon confirms. “He and Chris are spending the day with his abuela in the hospital.” She chews on her bottom lip for a moment, like she’s debating with herself about how to move forward from this point. “I’ve seen you, in Christopher’s drawings. He’s really taken a liking to you.”

Buck has seen said drawings and he can’t say that Shannon’s wrong. “Kid’s got good taste,” Buck says, immediately wincing because what? He’s not hitting on her, he’s in love with her ex-husband.

“So does Eddie,” Shannon says which what? “He told me about the firefighter who spent the first couple of shifts peacocking his way around the station. He also told me,” she continues when Buck curls his shoulders in a little bit, “about the firefighter who drove him to Christopher’s school the day of the earthquake.”

Oh god, Buck didn’t know Eddie’d told Shannon any of that. “That’s, uh, very nice of you to say, but I was only doing the right thing.” Buck winces again. He’s not going to be able to escape this conversation unscathed and he’s pretty sure that if Future!Eddie were here, he’d be laughing at Buck.

“Then you’re not in love with Eddie?” Shannon grins widely as Buck feels his face flush, his mouth hanging open as he stares at her. “I’m sorry,” she says, looking anything but. “I didn’t mean to startle you, I just wanted to confirm a theory of mine.”

Buck blinks, trying to get his composure back. He briefly considers telling Shannon that he’s not, but the two of them are getting a divorce and, really, the only person who doesn’t know he’s in love with Eddie is Eddie. “No, you’re good, you just took me by surprise. What, uh, what makes you think I’m in love with Eddie?”

Shannon hums, still grinning up at him. “Let me ask you a question, Buck.” She leans in, gesturing for him to do the same with a finger. “When I first showed up at the station,” she starts in a low voice, “how surprised were you to see me at the toy drive?”

Apparently, Buck and Maddie aren’t the only ones who woke up in the past.

“Uh,” Buck says eloquently. “More surprised than I had any right to be, I think.” It’s only when Shannon leans back that Buck realizes all she wanted was confirmation about his knowledge of the future.

“So, you do remember,” Shannon says, and Buck doesn’t think that she should be this happy about that fact. “For how long?”

Buck’s not entirely certain how he went from being positive that only he and Maddie were sent back in time to being questioned by Eddie’s dead/ex-wife about being sent back in time. “The beginning of August?”

“Just before Eddie’s first shift.” Buck would really like to know how Shannon knows any of this but he’s also fairly certain that the universe moves in mysterious ways and is never going to give him a straight answer about the whole time travel thing. “That’s when I woke up too,” Shannon explains.

“Was it when you died too?” Buck blurts because yeah, Maddie was sent back but Maddie was sent back because of some insane amount of grief. Shannon died, last Buck knew, so if she got sent back in time, it was probably just after her death.

Shannon’s grin dims then, but it doesn’t fade completely. “Yes,” she says after a long moment. “I went from dying in the ambulance to waking up in my own bed.” She looks up at him, her eyes flicking across his face. “I heard about the factory fire. I’m sorry,” Shannon says softly, and Buck really wants to ask her how she could possibly know about something that happened after her death, but really, who’s he to question the universe?

Buck does his best to not look uncomfortable. “Thanks. It’s – it’s weird sometimes, remembering that I’ve actually died before.”

Shannon huffs out a laugh, and that’s when Buck figures that she’s probably the one person he knows who understands exactly how he feels. “Tell me about it.” She pauses then adds, “Do you ever get phantom pains? Like –”

“All the time,” Buck agrees. It’s not just the crushing weight of the beam across his chest either – it’s his leg, the tsunami, the hand sanitizer factory. “For a lot of different injuries,” he adds.

“Oh God, I’m so sorry if I brought up something you didn’t want to talk about,” Shannon says after a moment, a brief look of horror crossing her face. “You’ve probably gone through a lot, and here I am, bringing up the one horrible injury that I sustained.”

“To be fair, it did kill you,” Buck points out. Shannon laughs at that, the kind of laugh Buck knows means that she can’t quite believe he said that – which is fair, given that Buck can’t quite believe it came out of his mouth. “So, uh,” he starts again, suddenly desperate to change the topic. “Why’d you think – what made you come here? To look for me, I mean.”

Shannon looks up at Buck, still smiling. “I didn’t get the chance to meet you last time. I mean, we did meet technically when I stormed into the station to accuse Eddie of not letting me back into Chris’s life,” she adds on hastily, “but we never met properly.” Her eyes flick across his face like she’s looking for something, and she shrugs. “I guess I just wanted to fix that this time around. Eddie and Chris talk about you all the time, and I guess I just wanted to see it for myself, not just hear about it secondhand.”

Buck has had a few thoughts about Shannon over the years he’s known Eddie and Chris, mostly not understanding how a mother could run away from her own child but whenever Buck has that thought, he thinks about his own parents and the fact that he and Maddie might’ve been better off if they’d left their children to be raised by strangers instead of burdening them with a grief that they wouldn’t even talk about. Eddie and Chris had gotten to the point where she could be talked about fondly, sunshine moments shared together, and Eddie, when he was dating Ana Flores, would talk about dates he and Shannon went on before they were married.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Buck says. He pulls out his phone and opens up his contacts, hitting the New Contact option before holding it out. “If we swap numbers, I can tell you embarrassing things Eddie does at work that you and Chris can make fun of him for.”

“I’m all for embarrassing my ex-husband,” Shannon agrees after a moment, pulling her own phone out of her purse for Buck to put his information in. They swap phones, and it takes less than a minute for Buck to become a name in Shannon’s phone and for her to become a name in his.

Buck wonders if there’s a second meaning in that somewhere. “Were you, uh. Did you wanna come in?” he asks when he realizes that the two of them have been standing outside of the station for at least five minutes to have this conversation. “We might have to explain who you are to everyone else, but I’m sure they’d be glad to meet you.”

Shannon shakes her head. “No, I have to get going. I told Eddie that I’d meet him and Chris at the hospital with his abuela after I ran a few errands.”

Buck raises his eyebrows. “Meeting me was an errand?” She rolls her eyes at him and Buck grins.

“It was nice meeting you properly, Buck,” Shannon says. “I hope that Eddie’ll get his head together soon and all four of us can hang out at some point.”

It takes a second for Buck to think about it, especially about how he never hung out with Eddie and Chris while they were hanging out with Ana Flores, and he thinks that it could go well. “That would be nice.” He takes a step back towards the station. “See you around?”

“Definitely,” Shannon agrees. “Besides, you have embarrassing stories to pass on and I have blackmail photos to send.”

Buck smiles so wide his face hurts, and he waves Shannon off, watching as she walks back to her car. He smiles so long that Chim asks him what’s got him in such a good mood when he walks back inside, Chim squinting at him like Buck being happy is an abnormality. “Did you meet someone?” Chim demands, and Buck kinda wants to roll his eyes.

“I made a friend,” is all Buck says, and he lets Chim make his disbelieving noise. Whatever. Buck’s allowed to be happy because everything looks like it’s turning out okay. Eddie’ll meet Carla tomorrow, there’s no danger of Shannon being mad about Buck’s place in Eddie and Chris’s lives, plus if Buck understood correctly, Shannon’s promised adorable photos of two of Buck’s favorite people. It’s a win-win situation.

Now all Buck has to do is make sure that Eddie comes over to meet Carla.

Buck has absolutely zero expectations when it comes to introducing Eddie and Carla this time. Carla’d taken the news of Buck and Abby breaking up well, which Buck isn’t sure is a good thing or not, but she’d also sounded more than happy to help Eddie out with figuring stuff out for Christopher. So, when Eddie shows up at his loft to meet Carla, Buck has a hard time keeping it secret.

Buck’s at the door almost as soon as Eddie knocks on it, opening it when Eddie’s still mid-knock. “You that anxious to get your sister out of your apartment? I thought you didn’t want her going somewhere when she’s still so new to the area,” Eddie jokes.

“I can’t blame her – my couch isn’t exactly the most comfortable place to sleep.” Buck steps aside and tenses a little – waiting for Eddie to step on the older floorboards that he needs to save up to fix – but Eddie sidesteps them without even looking down, his eyes flicking across the apartment.

“So,” Eddie starts once he’s inside, obviously snooping without trying to look like he’s snooping. “Where’s the stuff? I thought I was helping you pack up all of Maddie’s stuff for her to take to the new place.” He raises an eyebrow at Buck, sliding his hands into his back pockets, and Buck can’t shake the feeling that Eddie’s playing a game here, the same way Buck has been for these past few months – especially now that Buck knows that Shannon was sent back too.

“Maddie only actually has a couple suitcases worth of stuff,” Buck admits. “We Buckleys, we tend to live light.” Which is a wholly depressing thought but now Buck’s thinking about all of the stuff he accrued in the loft that he actually wanted there – it had definitely been more than he’d come to L.A. with but certainly not a lot by most people’s standards.

Eddie frowns. “What’m I doing here then, Buck?”

And just like that, Buck’s enthusiasm is back. “I want you to meet someone. Here me out,” he adds when Eddie opens his mouth. “She’s not a date, I swear, but she is exactly what you need.”

Carla knocks on the door, like the goddess that she is, gifted with wonderful timing. Buck grins at Eddie, hardly taking his eyes off of him to answer the door properly. “Buckaroo!” she cheers, opening her arms for a hug, which Buck gladly leans down to give. “Baby, goodness, I missed your face.”

Buck laughs because Carla will be Carla and he loves her for it. “I missed you too. Come on in.” He steps aside to let Carla in, wincing when she steps directly onto the creaky spot in the floor right by the door. He turns back to Eddie, who’s wearing a small smile of his own, obviously amused by this turn of events. “Eddie, this is my friend Carla.”

Carla takes one look at Eddie and immediately gives Buck a look with both of her eyebrows raised. “Nice to meet you, Eddie,” she says a moment later, putting her hand out for Eddie to shake, leaving Buck fully aware that he and Carla are going to have a conversation at some point about how the first time Buck reaches out in months is to introduce her to a hot firefighter. It was a conversation that had embarrassed Buck a little the first time around. Now, Buck can openly agree because it isn’t like he hasn’t had multiple dreams featuring Eddie.

Eddie shakes her hand with a quick “Likewise” and then looks at Buck. “Carla is L.A.’s finest home healthcare aid,” Buck explains, looking at Carla to make sure he gets this right. “She has years of experience navigating giant bureaucracies, and I thought she could help you figure out how to get Christopher what he needs.”

Carla’s still smiling and nodding along, so Buck figures he can’t be too far off. “I’m red tape’s worst nightmare,” Carla tells Eddie with a laugh. “I’ll get you through this in no time. Now, let’s go sit down and let’s see what you’re working with.” She makes a noise as she passes Eddie, heading for the couch. “Besides that perfect bone structure,” she adds, and Eddie and Buck exchange amused looks.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, but Buck cuts him off with a nod, gesturing for him to follow Carla. “Go on. Tell Carla that I’ll make her coffee the way she likes it if she promises not to go too hard on you,” he jokes, just loud enough for Carla to hear and for her to respond with a quick laugh. “We can talk after, if it bothers you so much,” Buck adds in a lower tone when all Eddie does is keep looking at him.

That seems to be enough to send Eddie after Carla, taking up the spot on the couch next to her and closest to the kitchen. Buck watches Carla pull a handful of papers out of her purse before he makes himself look away, turning away to make the promised coffee.

He tries not to eavesdrop on the two of them, but it’s a small apartment and it’s not like they’re talking quietly. So Buck gets to listen to Eddie talk about Chris and Carla talk about options like he doesn’t already know that the best option here is hiring Carla to help out and getting Chris into the fancy private school that he’s been attending for three years.

Buck joins them in the living room as soon as the coffee’s ready, setting their mugs in front of them on the coffee table – Eddie smiling at him while Carla gives him a quick thanks – and then sitting himself in one of his dining room chairs turned out towards them, scrolling through his phone.

A few minutes later, Carla’s rummaging through her bag for something, pulling half of her things out in her search. “Do you have a pen around here I could use? Mine seem to have grown legs and walked away,” Carla asks Buck, who’s already halfway to standing.

“I got it,” Eddie says, getting to his feet and crossing to the kitchen. Buck watches, frozen half out of his seat, as Eddie walks into his kitchen and opens one of the drawers – specifically the drawer where Buck keeps all of his junk including a handful of pens. His collection’s not as big as it used to be, or will be rather, but Buck just started throwing things there when he moved in.

Long story short, Eddie shouldn’t know about that drawer, let alone that Buck keeps pens there.

Carla’s raised her eyebrows at him when Buck turns to look at her, and he’s not entirely sure how he feels about the smile she’s giving him. “Thank you, Eddie,” she says when Eddie walks back to the couch, pen in hand.

Now how could he know where that was? a voice that sounds suspiciously like Maddie says in Buck’s head.

Buck doesn’t shake it off like he has every other thing that hasn’t matched up with his memory. He knows he’s screwed up a couple of times with things he shouldn’t have known and things he’s done differently – even being in the loft this early – but Eddie. Eddie’s done things that Buck had nothing to do with, Eddie’s pushed and hinted and now he can maneuver his way around the loft like he’s been there a million times before.

But he hasn’t. Not yet anyway.

Buck thinks about it over the next hour-ish as Carla and Eddie hash out plans and Eddie’s ideas and the “what have you done, what haven’t you done” of having a child with special needs. He plays the good host, makes sure that they have all the paper and water and space they need to go over everything, and doesn’t push when Carla finally makes to stand.

“You know I love seeing your pretty face, Buck, but I’ve gotta get home. Lord knows my husband owes me a dinner after the things he pulled last week,” Carla says, gathering her things together. Buck can’t help but raise his eyebrows in the universal “go on” gesture. Carla just laughs when she sees it, waving her hand. “You’re cute, baby, but not tonight.” She pulls him into a hug, whispering, “Besides, I think your boy’s got some things he wants to talk to you about.”

He can’t help the way his eyes snap to Eddie at that, and Buck barely looks back at Carla in time as she pulls out of their hug, smiling up at him mischievously. “We’ll get lunch sometime, catch up,” Buck says, squeezing her arms.

Carla hums. “I have a feeling I’m going to be seeing you pretty regularly again.” She turns to Eddie. “Well, like I said, it was a pleasure meeting you, Eddie. That’s one cute kid you’ve got there.” Buck grins when Carla pulls Eddie into the same hug she gave Buck, whispering something in Eddie’s ear that has his eyes snapping to Buck the same way Buck’s snapped to him.

“It was good to meet you too,” Eddie says when Carla steps back, and Buck walks her to the door. She smiles at him knowingly one last time before they exchange goodbyes and Buck closes the door behind her, not quite fast enough to block out the sound of her laughter echoing down the hallway.

Buck goes and gathers the mugs from the coffee table and generally tries to tidy up while Eddie just stands awkwardly next to the stairs where he’d hugged Carla. “I thought you were still living with your invisible ex-girlfriend,” Eddie says, and Buck thinks he’s trying to tease him, but it doesn’t quite sound right.

He shoots Eddie that scrutinizing look he’s gotten really good at these past few months, stepping back out from his kitchen to grab his own mug off of the dining room table. “Nah, I moved out of Abby’s place just after the earthquake,” Buck says, aiming for casual. He doesn’t think he makes it.

Eddie nods and Buck waits him out, depositing the mugs in the dishwasher and then coming out to lean on one of the chairs. “You didn’t have to call her,” Eddie says, gesturing to the couch behind him. “She’s amazing and exactly what I needed to make sense of all the paperwork.”

“I thought she might be,” Buck agrees with a wide, knowing smile. “She was Abby’s mom’s nurse so I thought she might be able to help you out with the paperwork and stuff.” Eddie hums, and Buck doesn’t really know where to go from here, so he falls back into old patterns, turning back to the kitchen. “Beer?”

“Sure,” Eddie says, and Buck’s really trying to ignore the weird tension in the air as Eddie follows him into the kitchen.

Buck grabs two longnecks out of his fridge and hands one over to Eddie – who pops off the cap and tosses it into the recycling bin hidden in the cabinet under the sink without asking where it was. “Alright,” Buck starts, putting his beer down on the island, “how did you know where my recycling was?”

Eddie freezes, two seconds away from taking his first sip. “It seems like an obvious place to keep it,” he tries, putting the bottle down on the counter next to him, and Buck knows that it’s a try because it had taken Eddie at least a month to remember where Buck’s recycling bin was the first time around. Not on purpose, but it had still taken him a while.

“Really?” Buck crosses his arms and he lists of all of the things that Eddie knows about the loft, including the squeaky floorboards, and he shakes his head when Eddie lies and says that he keeps pens in his kitchen drawers too. (He doesn’t. All of his pens live in a cup that Chris made in art class. Still in the kitchen, just not in drawers.) “You know where things are and I need you to tell me why,” Buck says firmly because –

Because Buck has Maddie in his head, asking if she’s right, and Buck can’t stand not knowing anymore.

After a long moment where Eddie just looks at him, he crosses the kitchen and puts his hand on Buck’s shoulder, the same place it went when Eddie brought Chris over after the tsunami, and says, “There’s nobody in the world I trust with my son more than you. No one will ever fight for my son as hard as you.”

And Buck thinks he might breakdown right then and there because holy shit Maddie was right. “You forgave me on Halloween. I watched you get shot. You left,” Buck manages to say before Eddie pulls him into a hug.

Buck cries because Maddie was right, because this whole time Buck was worried about pushing too soon and Eddie must’ve been worried about the same thing. When Buck finally stops crying, Eddie does one last check that Buck remembers, and then Eddie kisses him like he’s been waiting years for it too.

It’s – overwhelming in a good way, and Buck doesn’t really want to leave this pocket they’ve found themselves in at the moment, but he knows that Eddie has to go get Chris from Pepa’s house when Eddie says, “I’m not the only one who remembers.”

Which, okay, Buck’s conversation with Shannon suddenly makes a lot more sense. “We’re not the only ones? Shannon?” he asks anyway with a frown.

“Yes, but not who I was talking about,” Eddie answers with a small smile on his face.

Buck bounces his head a couple of times, running through names in his head before it dawns on him that there’s really only one person that Eddie could be talking about and he gasps. “You’re kidding,” Buck says, and Eddie’s grin is answer enough.

“You wanna come with me to get him?” Eddie asks, and Buck kisses him again, stupidly happy.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Buck says when he manages to pull himself away from Eddie’s mouth. “Of course I wanna be there when you tell him.”

Chris is, predictably, thrilled. He wraps his arms around Buck’s neck and refuses to let go, even when all of them are safely back in Pepa’s house. “Dad wouldn’t believe me when I asked him if you could remember too,” Chris says when the two of them sit down on Pepa’s couch.

“To be fair, I didn’t believe that anyone but me remembered,” Buck says, only partially in Eddie’s defense.

“That’s a limited view,” Pepa says from the doorway to her kitchen, and Buck, Eddie, and Chris all turn to look at her with identical expressions of concern. “What, you thought that you all were the only ones able to bargain with the universe? Ha!” She disappears back into the kitchen.

Eddie and Buck look at each other. “I think your aunt remembers,” Buck says, and Eddie’s slowly dawning look of horror probably means that they’re in agreement.

Chris shakes his arms, getting Buck’s attention again. “You said Maddie remembers too, right?” Buck nods. “Do you think she and Mom have met?”

Buck opens his mouth. He thinks about it, and then he closes his mouth. “Maddie and Shannon might’ve met,” he says a moment later. “Maddie’s been really insistent that you guys remember too.”

“Oh good,” Eddie says, and Buck suddenly understands why he looked so shocked that Pepa remembered. “Your sister and my ex-wife. What could possibly go wrong about that friendship?”