Work Text:
"Dreamboat incoming."
It's Gloria Delgado's first week on the job at Cedars-Sinai, but Leo's comment carries enough significance that she lowers the chart she was reviewing and watches the entrance, ready for the show. She's worked in a lot of emergency rooms in her twenty years as a nurse, but none have been as satisfying as this.
The doors slide open to reveal the object of Leo and, if she's honest with herself, everyone else's well-earned affections.
"Three times in one week, handsome," Leo purrs. He saunters over to where Eddie Diaz stands like a vision in the mouth of trauma bay four and playfully puts his hand on the hip he cocks. "If you missed me you could have just asked for my number."
"You're impossible to miss, Dr. Moretti." Eddie winks when he says it, and Leo throws his head back theatrically and groans. Eddie is joined by his partner, Hen, who everyone in the ER seems to know and love. They are, unanimously, everyone's favorite pair of paramedics, and Gloria can see why. Charisma rolls off both of them in waves, and the way they work together screams of efficiency and mutual respect.
A whimper from the gurney that Hen rolled in reminds them all of why they're there.
"Bimalleolar fractures to both legs," Eddie informs clinically to the room at large as they move further into the bay. "Jonathan Sanders, twenty-four. He fell from a traffic light outside of the Beverly Center." He gives Gloria a side eye and a conspiratorial grin. "TikTok gone wrong."
Leo gasps behind them. "The Maui Wowie?"
Hen smirks. "He doesn't know what that is. I had to tell him what a TikTok trend was in the rig."
"He is right here," Eddie mutters, a delightfully red blush blooming across the apples of his cheeks.
Leo catches Gloria admiring him and mouths, So hot, while fanning himself. She can't find it in herself to disagree, but gets to work on Jonathan while the doors close behind Eddie and Hen's retreating backs.
"Two live ones, coming in!"
Every head in the busy trauma bay turns towards the deep voice as it enters the space. Someone fires off a, "We sure hope so, Eddie," and Gloria is slightly ashamed to admit that she adjusts her bangs before turning to greet him.
"Edmundo," she nods in his direction, affection laced in her tone. He's flanked by Hen and two other men, one with milky brown skin and the bone structure usually reserved for Disney princes, and the other one tall with legs for miles and a riot of curls atop his head.
Eddie places a hand over his heart and mock-swoons as he approaches her. "Gloria, as I live and breathe."
"Leo is going to be devastated that he missed his chance with you," she jokes while reaching out to straighten his collar. He is so handsome she forgets to feel any shame for the action.
She notices the Tall One halt mid-stride out of the corner of her eye. He tracks the movement of her hand while asking in Eddie's direction, "Who's Leo?" He looks between them both, waiting for an answer.
Eddie snorts, the strand of hair hanging across his forehead moving with the motion. He helps transfer one of the patients into the bay and is walking backwards with an empty gurney when he calls out, "Leo wouldn't know what to do with me if he had me."
The Tall One looks stricken by that response, but follows close on Eddie's heels as he passes through the door. As they fade from view Gloria hears him ask again with a little more urgency laced in his tone, "Eddie, who's Leo?"
The sliding doors are automatic but they seem to slam open.
A gurney is wheeled in quickly, three bodies with long strides hurrying alongside it, Eddie at the helm. He begins to talk, no hint of the usual charming smile on his face. "Gun shot wound to the chest. Multiple lacerations, defensive wounds to the hands, blunt force trauma to the head." Every head in the bay turns to look at him, but he lifts his head and locks eyes with Gloria. His brown eyes are solemn as he continues, as if speaking directly to her. "She crashed in the rig, but we got her back. Pulse is thready. Husband in custody."
Gloria's spine straightens, stomach sinking, but she bursts into motion at the same time as everyone else, a choreographed dance. The three first responders step away to make room, and when Gloria turns to give Eddie a parting glance her eyes lock on the Tall One instead.
Buck, she remembers Eddie telling her, lines by his crinkling eyes when he talked about him.
I've never had a friend like him, Eddie confessed on a quiet night.
Gorgeous? Gloria teased. She remembers feeling suffused in total satisfaction by the way his eyes went glassy when he smiled, his pink cheeks glowing under the fluorescent lights.
Selfless, Eddie said, steadfast. He chuckled to himself, and Gloria felt like she was miles away from him in that moment. A little selfish, too. She watched him bite his lip and shake his head. He's something. She had never heard the word sound so revered.
Buck is standing there now and staring at them beginning to work with a haunted look on his face. Eddie steps in, a hand raised that fits on the other man's collarbone perfectly, like it belongs there. She watches that hand flex, squeeze, and life breathes back into Buck's face. She immediately feels like she's watching something personal, and has to force herself to turn away for fear of intruding on something that belongs to just them.
Gloria walks into the bay after her lunch break and is greeted with the backs of Eddie and Buck. They're walking towards the exit together, the cadence of their steps in sync and bringing their shoulders to brush as they move forward.
"It couldn't be more obvious," she hears Buck stress. "She practically unbuttoned her top in front of you!"
Gloria's breath catches when Eddie turns to look at Buck. She can't look away from the sheer fondness she sees etched across his face. She doesn't know how Buck doesn't crumble under a gaze so profound.
"Her scrubs didn't have buttons, Buck."
"Oh," Buck responds, suddenly sounding exasperated. "You noticed?"
The doors whir closed behind them and Gloria finds herself chuckling as she gets back to work.
They get a few minutes advanced notice: Multiple car collision on the 101, all nearby units responding, prepare ER for triage. A minute later, a different call comes in from dispatch: First responder injured on the scene, incoming.
The trauma bay is a flurry of motion as they prepare for action, but nothing could have prepared them for Eddie, their Eddie, being the one wheeled in. Gloria doesn't recognize everyone rushing in with him at first, but she sees Buck keeping pace with his gurney as it's rolled in. His face is slack, worry taking up a permanent residence.
"What happened?" Gloria asks, taking in Eddie's unconscious form and his sleeve that is saturated with blood.
"His hand slipped between the jaws and the door of a car," Hen answers as she steps into Gloria's periphery. "Middle finger crushed, he's been in and out." Gloria and her team move quickly, checking Eddie's vitals while they quickly prep a bag.
Leo, face serious and eyes laser-focused, approaches Eddie on his stretcher and says, "Let's motor, Dreamboat," and then they're gone.
Gloria watches Buck as he watches Eddie be wheeled away, and she doesn't know this man, but she is compelled to move by his side. She reaches out and squeezes his elbow between two of her fingers, and when he looks down at her she nudges her head to the side, an invitation. He accepts, and they move out of the way of intake for a moment.
"Are you okay?" she asks.
Buck looks bewildered by the question. "Of course I am. It's, it's Eddie that —"
Gloria cuts him off. "He's lucky you were with him."
"Oh, I wasn't." Gloria raises her eyebrows at him, imploring him to continue. "With him. I wasn't with him. Ravi, my partner, I think you've met him?" Gloria says nothing, but that doesn't matter, he continues. "Ravi and I were a few cars up, and I don't know what it was. Something made me turn, something made me look. What's it called when you lose an arm? When you lose an arm and you have an itch all of a sudden and you can't scratch it because it's not actually there?"
She's certain he's talking to himself, lost in the maze of his own mind, but still she softly supplies, "A phantom limb."
"Yes, that. I felt him like a phantom limb. I turned and I looked and as soon as I did he was," Buck shakes his head. "Eddie was falling. I don't remember what happened next. I think — I think I vaulted over a car?"
The doors slide open and the first of the car accident victims arrive and Gloria looks at Buck, about to open her mouth, but he snaps back into first responder mode and urges, "Go, go, go," and jogs away.
Gloria's shift is almost over when there's a commotion outside of trauma bay four. She looks up in equal parts alarm and dread, and is instantly relieved when she's met with the sight of Eddie Diaz, uninjured and walking, in a white henley and a pair of painted-on blue jeans.
"Look what the cat dragged in," Leo calls as he sutures a patient. Eddie blushes instantly.
"Yeah, yeah," he replies with a laugh, and he sounds light, happy. "I come bearing gifts." Eddie lifts a plastic-wrapped tray in his non-bandaged hand as an offering. "Snickerdoodles," he supplies to Gloria, who has made her way towards him on tired feet.
"You bake, Edmundo?" She means it to be teasing, and delights when Eddie's blush intensifies.
"Ah, no, that's Buck," Eddie says. "He's been perfecting the recipe for a while now."
"Hm," Gloria hums. "And where is our Buck now?"
"My Buck," he emphasizes, "is outside waiting in the truck."
There's a beat, Gloria thinks she could hear a pin drop in the usually chaotic trauma bay, and then it erupts.
"Did he say —"
"HIS Buck?"
"Oh, finally!"
And then, hilariously, at the top of his lungs, Leo exclaims, "It's like we meant nothing, Dreamboat!"
"Not nothing," Eddie assures. He passes the tray off to Gloria with a smile warmer than the sun-baked pavement at the hospital's front doors. "I hope you like them," he nods at the tray she's now holding. "I was hesitant at first, but, uh," he laughs, shrugs, "they won me over."
"I'm sure it was the cookies," Leo drawls from across the bay.
Eddie drops his chin towards his chest and laughs, his canines peeking out from behind his upper lip. He looks at Gloria through his lashes and shakes his head, an inside joke.
"See you later," Eddie says warmly, giving the room a jaunty wave with his bandaged hand before turning and being swallowed by the late afternoon sun as he makes his way out the sliding glass doors.