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“Eddieeeeee,” Buck shouted, almost bouncing into Eddie’s bedroom before dawn. Sometimes Eddie regretted giving him keys. What in the world could be so important that Buck had to wake him up when even the birds were still asleep, Eddie couldn’t be sure. But here he was, far too early on the second day of their three days off.
“Eddie, come on.” Buck whined, flopping down on the bed beside him. This? This was preferable to whatever had Buck so worked up, maybe they could just lay here in quiet comfort and wake up when it was already daylight. Eddie reached out an arm and threw it over his best approximation of Buck’s stomach without looking.
“Later. Daylight. Sleep.” Eddie groaned, trying to hook Buck into his side.
If he could get Buck to calm down, he would see the benefits of sleep for sure.
“Nope, not today. That’s what you said last time we had a couple days off and you didn’t want to watch the sunrise with me,” Buck pouted. Actually pouted, Eddie realized as he cracked open his eyes to look over at his best friend. “Come on, you promised me a hike, and a sunrise.”
Eddie did some math in his head, wondering how he could get out of it this time. He knew that the only excuse he hadn’t used was something to do with Chris. But Chris was in Texas, and Buck would call him on his B.S.
“Fine, but I am laying here until you make coffee.” He gave in to his best friend. If he went this time he could probably have a few weeks of peace.
~~~
The hike ended up being really nice, and to no one’s surprise, Buck had packed a few pastries in his bag for them to snack on at the top of the cliff they had hiked up.
It was peaceful. The sunrise had been beautiful. Buck hadn’t stopped telling him the most ridiculous facts about every tree they saw.
It was honestly a perfect morning. Both of them had gotten to run from the ghosts that haunted them, and pretend that they weren’t real for a little while.
“See, I told you, this was the way to spend the morning.” Buck cheered, laughing and throwing an arm around Eddie once they stood up to go back the way they came.
Eddie couldn’t help but agree. He would agree just a fraction more once they were able to get down the hillside to Buck’s jeep, uninjured. But even now. It was perfect.
~~~
Halfway. They had made it halfway back when the earth began to shake underneath them. Buck looked terrified, as he grabbed Eddie’s hand, glancing around for a clearing. In a cliffside forest was probably not the best place to be during an earthquake.
At least, that’s what Eddie thought it was, until he was able to look at his phone with perfect cell service and see that he hadn’t gotten any notifications about an earthquake hitting LA.
He had just enough time to wonder what that meant as the earth below them dropped.
Suddenly the hand grabbing into his was the only thing that felt real. They had hiked that trail a hundred times before. It was safe. It had always been safe. He knew the trail, probably could’ve walked it blindfolded.
“Eddie,” he heard Buck yell as the hand he was grasping onto felt like it was starting to slip. “No no no, please, just hold on. Eddie.”
Eddie couldn’t think to respond as he felt himself land. He didn’t, however, hear the thud that he would have expected if Buck had landed near him.
Adrenaline flooded his system. Which was both a problem and a good thing. He needed to find Buck. He also needed to not injure himself further. If something was wrong with Buck, then he needed to get them both out of there.
That’s when he realized that he wasn’t holding Buck’s hand anymore. Buck was gone.
Eddie scrambled to find him, pushing closer to the direction Buck had been. As he crawled, trying to keep low to the ground, he found a new edge. Less than two feet away from where he landed. Which meant.
“Buck,” Eddie screamed, peering over the edge he had landed on. “No, no no no, come back. You can’t. You’ve gotta.” For a moment, Eddie considered throwing himself over the edge. If it meant he could find Buck. If it meant they could at least suffer together.
Then he realized he couldn’t figure out where Buck had landed. Or where the bottom was. There had been a rock slide. Buck was probably buried somewhere in there.
“ Buck! ”
Eddie was sobbing by then. He stood up, looking around. Where they had been hiking collapsed when the rocks below tumbled down the mountain. It may have been some kind of micro quake that led to it. Buck would have known. Eddie found a way down. A way to get down to the newly formed mounds of rocks and gravel and more or less boulders that had probably trapped his best friend.
He climbed down. Well, he tried. He made it maybe ten of the twenty feet before his foot slipped, grip strength giving out in him.
He fell again, this time without something to grab for. Without the safety of Buck to fall back on.
The rocks below him punched the air out of his chest as he felt his head crack back, warmth spreading down his neck. It was fine. He could get through this.
“ BUCK! ”
Buck’s name played on repeat in his head as he screamed. As he pulled blindly at the rocks below his feet. Buck was gone. He was gone. He was gone.
“You. Can’t. Die. On. Me.” Eddie yelled, pulling in a breath between each word.
He pushed against one of the larger boulders with every ounce of strength he had, trying desperately to move it when he heard rustling to his left. Under a mound of smaller rocks. More moveable rocks.
He ran to the noise. It had to be Buck. He had to be under these ones. Not crushed under the ones he couldn’t move.
Eddie dropped to his knees, pulling at the stones and pebbles below him. “BUCK.”
A hand grabbed onto him. “Buck?” He whispered, grasping at the hand that stuck out of the rocks.
He kept digging, one handed now, the other holding onto Buck’s hand desperately. He couldn’t lose Buck. He felt like he was going to lose himself.
He was getting dizzy, his throat felt raw from the constant yelling.
He wasn’t making progress. Every time he moved rocks out of the way, more piled in on top.
“Buck, please,” he whispered through strangling tears. “Please, come back.”
He pulled more rocks out of the tiny hole he was making when he brushed against something soft.
Eddie focused his attention on pulling the smaller, more gravel-like stones out from where he brushed against the thing.
Hair. He had found the top of Buck’s head. He would recognize those curls anywhere.
He moved down. Skin. His forehead. Down further and he was pulling rocks off of Buck’s face.
“Please be alive,” he whispered, trying to hold in the rest of his tears.
“Eddie. You found me,” Buck’s voice came out broken and cracked. His eyes fluttered closed. “Help?”
“Buck, I’ve gotta let go of your hand. I need to get you out from under there.”
“No, Eddie,” he gasped out. “Call.” He gestured with his eyes towards one of the smaller boulders Eddie had been eyeing.
“Please, Buck, please. No. That’s not- not on you?”
“Not anymore,” Buck attempted a chuckle, closing his eyes again. “Arm hurts though.”
Eddie pushed a breath out. How had he not called 9-1-1 yet? He had had bars right before they fell. He was too panicked. Too worried about finding Buck.
“Yeah, one second. Had to find you first.”
Eddie reached around to his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen was shattered but it turned on.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” Maddie’s voice came through the line.
“Maddie?” Eddie gasped out.
“Eddie?”
“Maddie. Maddie, it’s- Buck, we went hiking. There was a rock slide, or something. I- he- we fell.” Eddie smacked himself in his own head. He was being the worst kind of 9-1-1 caller.
He quickly filled her in on the details of the home they had taken. Where they had fallen, the best way to get to them.
“Buck, can you, can you tell Maddie what happened?” Buck nodded as Eddie put the phone on speaker and set it down next to Buck.
He heard Buck talking but not what he said, as he moved down to clear more rubble from his legs.
As he pulled the last of the debris off of Buck, pulling him out as much as he could without disturbing him.
Buck had stopped talking but Eddie could hear Maddie still talking through the phone.
“Maddie?” Eddie asked.
“Is he still breathing?” Maddie asked quietly. “Is he-“ her voice stopped on a sob. Eddie grabbed the hand he had been holding before, taking his pulse.
“He’s got a pulse, I can feel him breathing, it’s weak but it’s there. I’ll keep him alive Maddie, we just, we need someone here as soon as they can.”
He hung up the call. He knew that he could stay on with Maddie. Keep her informed about what was happening with her brother, but he didn’t want her to hear what he was about to say. What might happen with Buck.
“Buck, stay with me. Please. Come on, man. You have to stay with me. Talk to me, please.” Eddie was suddenly not above begging. Not above praying. Not above anything if it kept Buck with him.
He sat there, talking to Buck, wishing Buck would talk back, until an air-evac helicopter got to them, paramedics strapping a c-collar around Buck’s neck and lifting him onto a backboard, another one coming down to grab Eddie once they had buck stabilized in the helicopter.
“I’m fine, I- just take care of him.” Eddie got a withering look in return.
“You, if you hadn’t noticed, are bleeding from the back of your skull. And I’m going to take a look at it before you try to tell me you’re fine again.” The paramedic said. “Don’t care that they told us you’re firefighters, you have to play patient for now.”
The rest of the ride to the hospital was quiet as Eddie let the paramedic do what he needed. He and Buck were both carted down the elevators and split up. He grabbed for his phone, to call someone, anyone really, before he realized he left it next to where Buck had been laying, half covered in rocks and debris.
Once Eddie was cleared, the wait was torture. He should’ve told Maddie to call someone. Anyone. It didn’t matter that it was still early.
Eddie sat in the waiting room, the small cut to the back of his head stitched up.
“Eddie.” He turned around at the sound of the voice.
“Hen.” Eddie had never been so relieved to see someone in his life. Other than maybe Buck when he finally uncovered him.
“How’s he doing?”
“Don’t know yet,” Eddie replied. “I was still getting checked over when they wheeled him back. I think he’s in surgery. At the very least broke his arm. Pulse was weak and breathing was shallow before airevac got to us.”
“He’ll be okay, he always is.” Hen reassured him before pulling out her phone to send off a text.
“Hen, can I borrow your phone? Mine is somewhere under a rock slide.” Hen lifted an eyebrow at him but handed it over anyway, watching on as he punched in Chris’ phone number. Sending off a text that explained the situation before handing the phone back.
“Family of Evan Buckley?” A doctor called out. Had it really been that long? In and out of surgery already.
Eddie walked over to the doctor. “Yeah. That’d be me.”
The doctor filled him in, but everything he heard vanished when he was told that he could go back and see Buck. See with his own two eyes that Buck was alive. Breathing on his own. He wasn’t going to be on a vent again.
When Eddie walked into the room. He broke down crying. The tears that he had held back from the moment he got his shit together on that 9-1-1 call with Maddie, came crashing around him.
“I love you,” he whispered to the air. “I love you, and I’m not sure that I know what that means right now, but I can’t do this without you. So please don’t leave me.” He grabbed Buck’s hand and squeezed it.
“I love you, and I’m never letting go.” Eddie didn’t need to know if this was some huge revelation he should’ve had in therapy, or if it was just a fundamental truth of his being.
He just knew that when Buck opened his eyes six hours later and stared straight through his soul, a piece of him that he thought irreparably damaged found a new place in his heart to call home.