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Eddie’s grin fades and his head falls to his chest in absolute, utter relief. “God, Buck,” he says, letting the steady rise and fall of the other man’s breathing settle his unspent rage. “I thought—”
“It’s okay,” Buck says quietly, his hand resting on Eddie’s good arm. “We’re okay.”
He lets that settle like the dust carved into their skin. Like he hadn’t nearly killed someone thinking the exact opposite, thinking he was too late.
“You’re warm,” Eddie says instead, moving his hand to Buck’s forehead. The other stays pressed against the thrumming pulse in his neck, a steady ba-dum of a-live, a-live, a-live.
There’s a flash of blue and Buck jerks away, suddenly alert.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he raises his hands, “It’s okay.”
Fuck. Fuck. What did they do to him?
A radio nearby crackles. “Ambulance is on the way,” the younger deputy says.
“How long?”
“20 minutes.”
Eddie huffs. “Fantastic.” He can’t do nothing. “You got a first aid kit in there?” he asks, jerking his head toward the cruiser.
“In the trunk.”
“Can you unlock it?”
The deputy hesitates, looking between him and the older man on the ground.
“You guys are a little busy,” Eddie points out. The sheriff is by the house with the waitress, a firm hand around her arm. He can only imagine the story she’s spinning, how easy it would be to stage an angry guy like him as the villain.
“You know what you’re doin’?”
“We’re firefighters. I’m a paramedic.”
“Oh,” he says, eyes flitting toward the sheriff, “It’s uh, it’s unlocked.”
“Great.” Eddie looks back to Buck. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
Buck grunts in acknowledgment.
Eddie pushes to his feet, biting back a groan. He pops the trunk of the cruiser and pulls out a surprisingly hefty kit. Or, not surprisingly, for a town this spread out with one fucking ambulance. There’s more police sirens in the distance and Eddie swallows his anger at them calling for backup on the way instead of something actually useful.
He carries the kit back to Buck, easing himself more gently to his knees this time. “I’m back,” he announces, even though the groaning must have given it away. He snaps on a pair of gloves. “I’m gonna check your pulse again.” Tachy, but not thready. Probably not bleeding out internally. Probably.
“How’re you feeling?” he asks. Just another patient, he tells himself, trying to still the shake in his hands. Just Buck.
“Like I got hit by a truck,” he rasps, lips cracked and dry and painful.
Eddie wipes his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. “You’re breathing kinda shallow,” he observes, unwinding a stethoscope. “Feel like you’re getting enough air?”
“Think I cracked a rib.”
He touches the hem of the striped shirt— and where had he gotten that?— and tries and fails to catch Buck’s eye. “I’m gonna roll this up, okay?” At a nod, Eddie lifts it as gently as he can, but it’s so tight it stops around the base of his ribs. “How’d you even get this on?”
“Only passed out once.”
Eddie’s already pulling out the shears. “I’m gonna cut it down the middle, okay? So I can see what’s going on. Jesus.” The shirt falls away and there’s deep stripes of bruising wrapped around the right side of his ribs. “That’s gotta hurt.”
Buck grunts in agreement. “You okay?”
“I’m fine, Buck,” Eddie answers, “I’m gonna check your lungs. Deep as you can,” he instructs, and Buck complies with a wince as he zigzags the scope across his chest. “Good,” he says, “Just like that. Good breath sounds bilaterally,” he tells Buck. “A little crackling. You haven’t been breathing deep enough.”
“Trying my best,” he says tightly.
“I know.”
“Your arm—”
“I’m fine, Buck.”
“Y’should be in the hospital.”
“I was.” He reaches for the dip between Buck’s collarbones and hesitates.
“You don't have to announce,” Buck says. “I’m okay. It’s you.”
He finishes his airway assessment, then skates over the ribs as lightly as he can, pressing a little more when Buck lets out a groan. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, “You’re right about a fracture but it doesn’t seem displaced.”
“You check out AMA?”
“Does jumping out a window count?” he asks absentmindedly as he leans over Buck’s face to inspect the damage.
“Eddie—” he tries to sit up, but Eddie stops him with a firm hand.
“These need irrigation but seem mostly superficial. You bleeding anywhere else I should know about?” he asks, already sweeping his hands up and down the length of him. His clothes look clean, but who knows how long he’s actually been in them.
“Buck. I’m fine,” Eddie says, heading off the storm of concern and guilt he can already see brewing. “Nothing a few stitches and some painkillers can’t fix. You’ve been missing for almost twenty-four hours without medical attention. Let me take care of you.”
Buck sighs, acquiescing for the moment, but Eddie knows he’ll never hear the end of it once they’re home, that Buck’ll throw it back in his face the next time he’s hurt. Oh that’s right, he can already hear, you’d rather jump out of a window than listen to a doctor.
He pulls a small flashlight from the kit. “Open your eyes for me.”
Buck’s eyes flutter all the way open, bright and dazed and alive. “Pupils equal and reactive. You feeling nauseous?” Buck nods. “Any vision trouble?”
“Blurry. S’too bright.”
“Those baby blues aren’t meant for the desert sun,” God, where did that come from? “Can you tell me the date and where we are?”
“Hen’s birthday. New Mexico. The window?”
“Couldn’t go out the door.” His fingers ghost over Buck’s cheekbone, around his eye, one hand cradling the back of his head. He can feel Deputy Torros’s attention on them, but tries his best to ignore it. “Possible fracture but hard to tell with the edema….” he drifts off. The skin is tight and swollen with no bruising. If this was from the crash it would be black and blue by now. “That’s fresh, Buck.”
“Tried to run.”
Maybe he should’ve shot them after all. “How long were you out?”
“Not long. Remember…dragging me out to the shed.”
“They hurt you anywhere else?”
His gaze falls to the stun baton he’d dropped earlier and Eddie bites back a growl.
“How many times?” Muscle breakdown, kidney failure, metabolic acidosis, cardiac risk, electrical burns, yeah he definitely should’ve shot them—
“Just two.”
Eddie finds the pulse at Buck’s wrist, a slow and steady lifeline beneath his fingertips. “Okay. They’ll have to run some tests at the hospital.” He shifts his grip. “Can you squeeze my hand? Good. Other one too? Good. You definitely have a concussion but if it was worse than that we’d probably know by now.”
“I had a fever,” Buck asks shakily. “Internal bleeding? Clots?”
“Could also be post-traumatic inflammation or dehydration,” he assures them both, grabbing a thermometer from the kit. “100.6. Not great, could be worse.”
Eddie presses his hands against the concave of Buck’s belly. “No rigidity or distending. Some guarding around the upper right, probably from the rib pain.”
“Not bleeding out?”
“Can’t say without an ultrasound. But probably not.”
“Can I have some water?” he asks, his voice mostly a whisper.
“Gotta wait for an IV.” Eddie digs around the kit, finds a water bottle and some gauze and wets it, the excess splashing in the dusty grass. “Here, this should help.” He dabs it around the cracked skin of Buck’s lips and the raw corners of his mouth, letting a little bit of it drip inside to wet his tongue and cheeks. “Better?”
Buck nods, chases a drop of water on his lips with his tongue. “Better.”
Eddie sinks back on his heels like he just finished a sprint. Buck is battered and bruised and dehydrated but alive, safe, not anywhere near those—
Suddenly there are more cruisers, more guns, more officers yelling at Eddie.
“Oh come on,” he says, raising his hands again. “Sheriff, really? I’m in the middle of an exam.”
“Stand down boys,” the sheriff orders. “Keep an eye on Bonnie and Earl. They’ve got some explaining to do down at the station.”
The officers exchange glances but disperse with their orders. Torros hands off the old man and disappears somewhere behind the cruisers.
“As do you, son,” the sheriff says, looming over them both.
“You can’t still think I’m a suspect.”
“I meant your boy.”
“He needs fluids. CT. Ultrasound. Blood tests,” he spits in reply, “At a hospital.”
“I can take a full statement there. But the gist would be helpful. What I’m looking at here ain’t making a whole lotta sense.”
Fucking kneel to our level you power-tripping—
“You wanna sit up?” he asks Buck. “Should be easier to breathe.” Buck nods, and Eddie leans down to wrap him in some facsimile of a hug and ease him upright.
Buck slumps a bit against Eddie’s chest and he curls an arm around Buck’s shoulders. For a brief, insane moment, he feels like pressing a kiss against the blonde curls tucked under his chin.
“You’re Evan Buckley, correct?”
How did everyone know?
“Yeah.”
Was it really that obvious?
“You wanna tell me how you got here?”
“Got run off the road. It was a big truck with lights. I remember being upside down. Got pulled out,” he closes his eyes, shaking his head, “I thought it was a medic.”
He remembers it in splinters, crushed glass and gasoline and something coppery on his tongue, reaching out for his other half and finding nothing but the air—
“You think she dragged you out of the car?”
“They were both there,” he shrugs. “I passed out. Woke up in her son’s bedroom.”
“Derek?”
Buck nods again.
“How’d she keep you there?”
“He’s hurt,” Eddie says through his teeth, no longer floating somewhere above this conversation. “He’s got a rib fracture and a concussion,” He imagines the sheriff’s face at the end of his fist and takes a deep breath. “And they were obviously armed." He jerks his head in disgust toward the confiscated weapons.
“It was a cell,” Buck continues, like he has to get it all out right now. “There were bars on the door and windows.”
“A cell,” the sheriff repeats.
The desert air coagulates in his lungs and Eddie can’t seem to pull enough of it in. He can hear the tightness in Buck’s throat as he confesses I think they’ve done this before.
“Done what, exactly?”
Eddie doesn’t want to put the pieces together either.
“She said I looked like him. Talked to me like I was him. Her son. I tried to play along—” he rubs his neck, “but after I tried to run they— brought me out to the shed. Said I wasn’t right after all. She was about to shoot me when—when you showed up,” his eyes flit briefly to Eddie and the ripple of his clenched jaw.
“Bonnie.” The sheriff says in disbelief.
“He said he didn’t like the killing part.”
Eddie’s grip tightens on Buck’s shoulder. “Fuck.”
“You should be looking for bodies.”
The sheriff’s head is shaking. “Let me get this straight. You’re saying Bonnie and Earl Sheets ran you off the road, abducted you, and pretended you were their comatose son? And that they’re what, serial killers?”
Buck nods and Eddie can feel his entire body shaking.
“Son, I don’t know—”
“Sheriff,” Deputy Torros calls out, his voice strained. He holds up a blacklight. “I checked the shed.”
“And?”
“Lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Eddie sucks in a gust of air that doesn’t feel like it ever hits his lungs.
The deputy says some more things that he doesn’t hear. Doesn’t want to hear.
“It’s not mine,” Buck says quietly.
“It could’ve been. I thought—”
“Call Albuquerque” the sheriff says, smug look finally wiped from his face. “Have them send a crime lab. You two— uh,” he adjusts his belt, looks over his shoulder at the approaching ambulance, “we’ll be by the hospital to take your official statements. Don’t leave town.” He turns toward his officers and the Sheets with a terse nod.
“You were a suspect?” Buck asks against his chest.
“It’s always the husband,” Eddie says, trying and failing to say it lightly.
Buck pulls back to look at him. “Eddie, I’m—”
“Until I found that truck, I thought— I thought it was those guys from the diner. That they took you and—” he can’t find it in him to say it. That he thought he’d find Buck beaten and humiliated and dead because somehow everyone in this godforsaken town can see the bleeding heart on Eddie’s sleeve.
“Oh,” Buck exhales, shrinking in on himself. “That must’ve been scary.”
“I was scared for you. I can’t imagine—”
“But it wasn’t them.”
“Yeah, just a couple of serial killers.”
The paramedics roll toward them with a gurney. “Dispatch said there’s an off-duty paramedic on site?”
Eddie nods and begins rattling off his assessment. “34 year old male, high velocity MVC at approximately 8pm last night. Confinement and assault with additional head trauma and CEW use. Loss of consciousness for unknown time with a GCS of 14.”
Bars on the fucking windows.
“Primary concern is the lungs given shallow tidal volume. Point tenderness and crepitus on the right 6th and 7th ribs. Heart rate is tachy but other vitals are stable. Signs of moderate dehydration with poor skin turgor.” He takes a dizzying breath. “He’s allergic to naproxen and has a history of blood clots.”
“Got it,” the captain says, “let’s get him on the gurney.”
“I can stand,” Buck insists.
The captain looks to Eddie, and with a nod they leverage him to his feet and onto the bed. “Garcia, bolus fluids. Rodriguez, run a 12-lead.” He squeezes Eddie’s good arm. “We got him from here. Can one of my guys look you over?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay,” the captain says. “We’re here if you change your mind.”
Eddie hangs back to let the paramedics do their job but he still can’t look away. He might never look away again, now that he can finally, finally see what’s been right in front of him this whole time.
Somewhere in the periphery there are officers loading the waitress and the cook into the back of a cruiser. Somewhere, there’s evidence bags and crime scene tape and flashlights in the dark windows of the house.
The deputy approaches him. “He gonna be okay?”
Anger rolls through him in waves. “No thanks to you guys.” Anger, guilt, fear, love, anger anger anger.
“Look, I’m sorry man. Clearly we—”
Eddie’s nostrils flare. “You’re lucky I found him. You’re lucky you got here when you did.” He’d had every intention of shooting the people keeping him from Buck.
“I know.”
“You save everyone. That’s the job.”
At least the deputy has the decency to look guilty. “You drive here?” he asks.
Eddie nods, still watching the paramedics flit around Buck.
“I can bring the car if you want to ride along.”
“I bought it at the gas station an hour ago, it’s a piece of shit.” His shoulders drop, and he digs the keys out of his pocket. “Yeah, please. You got a phone with service?”
The deputy hands him a satellite phone.
“Mr. Diaz?” The captain calls, “He’s asking for you.”
“Is everything okay?”
Buck looks better already, the IV clearly doing its job. “Yeah,” he says, “Can you check him over too?”
“Buck, I already told you—”
“Path of least resistance, remember?”
“Fine,” he says, dialing Chimney’s number on the sat phone, “But you’re calling Maddie. She’ll want to hear your voice.”
“Deal.”
Later, when Buck hands back the phone and Maddie tells him he’s got everything he needs, now, just bring him home—
Later, when the nurse catches his hand in Buck’s and doesn’t kick him out after visitor hours—
Later, when the sun is warm on their skin and Buck is half asleep against the window and Eddie finally manages to crack a smile out of him, all he can think is: don’t ruin this. This thing between them that neither of them can name and everyone can see.
Already he can feel the threads of it twisting, the distance across the center console so small their shoulders are touching and so impossibly large they can hardly look each other in the eye. Already he can feel Buck retreating, pushing it down in a slurry of guilt and shame and fear.
Don’t ruin this.
God, but he wants to.