Chapter Text
It happens just as they finish clearing the house.
“Good work, guys—start evacuation,” comes Bobby’s voice over the radio. It’s subtle, but Buck can hear the tense notes in his voice. He’s upset, even though Buck hasn’t done anything wrong. Really. Eddie’s even with him.
The more Buck works with Bobby and the more Buck learns how to read people, the more Buck realizes that half the time Bobby seems mad at him (even when he hasn’t done anything wrong—especially when he hasn’t done anything wrong), Bobby’s really just mad at the reality of the situation. Like right now: Buck and Eddie are doing their jobs perfectly. They went in to sweep the burning single-family residence, a distraught husband who’d called the fire in as he got home from work begging them to find his wife and 4-year-old son, who were presumably inside. Not the greatest situation, but—a fairly run-of-the-mill call.
The only trip-up they’d run into: dispatch is still trying to get the power company to turn off the gas at this residence, but there’s some sort of communication issue happening. Normally, they never head into a fire until all potential accelerants are catalogued and dealt with, but in this case, with confirmed victims still inside and a potential location (second floor bedroom—if they hadn’t made it out of the house when the blaze started, it’s likely the origin point was on the first floor and the two victims got trapped upstairs), they’d weighed options as a whole team and decided the risk was worth the potential reward.
And Bobby had looked to Buck and Eddie and said, “You guys okay with this?” still double-checking even after they’d agreed, and Buck looked to Eddie. Normally, Buck—pre 4.0 software upgrade, pre-shooting Buck—wouldn’t have looked. He’d have agreed in a heartbeat. But Buck looked to Eddie because it wasn’t just him anymore. And, yeah, both of them being in the same amount of danger at the same time pretty much negated the “back-up plan” idea, but it was more than that: it was Buck taking a second to think, a second to weigh his options, a second to check-in with his partner and make sure they were on the same page (which, most of the time, they were). Buck didn’t miss the enigmatic looks shot his way by Hen, Chim, and Bobby.
“We’re good, Cap,” said Eddie, and he’d turned to Buck for their customary don’t-die fist bump before they geared up to head inside the house.
The woman and her kid were in the second-floor bedroom, the first place they checked, huddled inside the bathtub, hunched down low and breathing through cloth. Buck always felt a little irrationally proud of any victims they saved that were already doing everything right. Buck had scooped the kid out of the mother’s arms, cradled his head against his shoulder to try and protect him from the worst of the smoke inhalation, and Eddie had slipped a hand under the woman’s knees and one arm went around her shoulder, and Buck had radioed to Bobby that they had the victims.
They’re doing everything perfectly. But, of course, it still goes wrong. Classic.
“Copy that. Headed out now,” Buck radios back, before he follows Eddie down the stairs at a fairly brisk jog. The bright square of the front door at the end of the hall approaches, and Buck can just make out the arcing spray of the hoses outside—Bobby probably got the rest of the crew started on suppression while Buck and Eddie were still inside. The fire must really be getting hot, for that to happen. Buck picks up his pace a little.
Eddie makes it out and beelines straight to Hen and Chim waiting at the ambulance, and Buck is just jogging down the front porch steps when it happens, no warning at all.
There’s a boom, Buck is lifted off his feet by the concussive force and he feels the heat at his back, and he has just enough presence of mind to remember the kid in his arms and curl tighter around him before he’s in the air, spinning, and—
He lands, hard, on his left shoulder, and he feels, almost swears he can hear the pop-snap before he rolls a few times across the grass and finally settles, staring up at the blue, blue sky.
Not a cloud in sight. God, he loves L.A.
He feels the kid in his arms crying and burrowing further into his shoulder—his left shoulder, which, fucking ow—so he manages to get his right arm hooked around the kid and moves him back a little bit, which makes his left arm flop to the ground with a sharp pain.
“Buck!” comes a frantic shout from the trucks on the road, and Buck lifts his head enough to see Eddie mid-sprint straight towards him, everyone else still slowly uncurling from where they’d ducked down when the explosion happened.
God, another explosion. What is his life?
“Buck! Are you okay? Buck!” says Eddie as he drops to his knees in the grass and quickly rips Buck’s oxygen mask and helmet off (which isn’t protocol—what if Buck had a head injury?) and puts a hand on Buck’s cheek as he searches his face for… something.
“Shoulder,” Buck gasps, nodding towards his left side.
“Shoulder,” Eddie says, and he immediately moves his hand from Buck’s cheek to look for an injury but—
“Shoulder, Eds, god,” Buck gasps, as Eddie starts pulling at Buck’s coat on that side and inevitably jostles the injury.
“Shit. Shoulder. Right,” says Eddie, and then his hands hover awkwardly over Buck’s body like he’s out of his depth (which he’s definitely not—but he’s not acting like it).
“Sorry about the language, buddy,” Buck says in a breathy voice to the kid that’s still in his arms. “Eddie, can you—”
“Right, yeah, sorry,” Eddie stammers, and he scoops the kid up and passes him off to someone out of Buck’s sight.
Now that he’s got a free arm, Buck starts pushing himself upright, Eddie jumping in to help (thankfully on his right side now).
“Buck.” He feels a hand land on his left knee, and looks up to see Bobby at his feet, jaw tense and eyes searching. “You okay?”
“Yeah, Cap, just think I landed wrong on my shoulder, is all,” says Buck, wiggling his toes just to check that, yeah, his shoulder is the worst of it.
“Okay, well, Hen and Chim are with our patients over there,” Bobby says, with a nod to where the two victims sit on the back of the ambulance, the mother’s arm wrapped around her kid and the father’s arms wrapped around both of them. Buck feels the knot that twists in his chest every time he knows they’ve got people in danger loosen a bit. “So, we’ll help you over away from the house, and then Eddie’s gonna check you out.” Bobby says this last part with a pointed look over Buck’s right side, where Eddie has positioned himself with one hand resting protectively on Buck’s good shoulder and the other curled around his wrist in a vaguely distracting way.
Bobby keeps looking at Eddie, like he’s doing that thing where he communicates with just his eyes. He mostly does that with Buck, and usually the look is saying, “Buck, no,” but Buck can’t figure out what this look is saying. But evidently Eddie can, because when Buck twists his neck a little (which causes his shoulder to twinge) and looks over, Eddie’s giving a stiff nod and saying, “I’ve got it, Cap.”
Buck feels like he’s missed a step.
Eddie pulls Buck’s right arm over his shoulder while Bobby helps Buck get his feet under him, and something about being upright, and seeing the still-raging blaze of the fire, and feeling Eddie’s hand come up to squeeze Buck’s own where it’s draped over Eddie’s shoulder makes a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck.
Another goddamn close call.
Also—the pain is his shoulder is steadily increasing now, and Buck is also becoming increasing sure this is a little more serious than a bruised joint, which—well, that’s just gonna be annoying to deal with.
When they make it over to the ambulance, Eddie sits him down on the bumper and starts working on the buttons of his turnout.
“Just gotta keep proving you’re a cat, right? Nine lives,” says Chimney, kicking Buck’s foot as he passes with one of their med bags, dropping it off in the passenger seat before he comes back over. “Our two vics are in pretty good shape, just some mild smoke inhalation that we want checked out at the hospital. You coming with us, Buck?”
“Do I have to?” Buck says with a sheepish smile, shrugging his right shoulder out of his turnout coat, and gritting his teeth when Eddie begins slowly working the sleeve down his left arm. (They’ve gotten pretty used to working clothing around shoulder injuries in the past few months, but usually it’s the other way around.)
“Other two patients are loaded up and ready to go,” says Hen from inside the cab behind them. She comes to the edge, crouching behind Buck and resting her hand on the back of his neck, which actually goes a long way in helping him focus on something other than the pain. “What are we looking at here, Diaz?”
“Not sure. Can you help me get his shirt off?” Eddie says, and he’s unhooking Buck’s suspenders from his pants.
Buck’s just about to pick the low-hanging fruit and make a joke, but Hen must know him too well, because she beats him to it.
“Think we’ve bought you dinner enough times to be at this stage, Buckaroo,”
“That’s probably true,” he concedes, twisting his head to grin at her, and his face must do something when he sees the big surgical scissors she’s holding, because her face softens.
“Just for your shirt. I’ll be gentle.” She tilts his head to the side and slides the scissors into the neckline of his shirt, but it’s tight against Buck’s skin and she has to pull the fabric away to avoid cutting his skin, which makes him move his shoulder and it’s really starting to hurt now, so he turns his head and grimaces into his right shoulder. Eddie grips his hand and presses their thighs together. Hen keeps her other hand gently resting on Buck’s head and she strokes her thumb just behind his ear.
“Maybe this’ll convince you to get shirts that actually fit those biceps,” Chim jokes, squeezing Buck’s knee where he’s squatting in front of them, trying with absolutely no subtlety to distract him.
And Buck is—just very grateful that he’s surrounded by his team right now. The ladder truck, the tsunami, the shooting, the last time he hurt his shoulder on his motorcycle when he was nineteen, felt like things he had to deal with alone, things he was on his own during. But now? His team is taking care of him, and he sees Bobby making his way across the street towards them, and he almost can’t help but smile.
Almost. It still hurts like a bitch.
When the shirt falls away from his shoulder, both Eddie and Chim suck in little gasps, and it feels like Buck’s heart leaps straight into his throat. “What is it? Guys?”
“Protruding fracture of the clavicle. That’s gonna be a bitch to set,” says Chimney.
“Protruding?” squeaks Buck, and his right hand makes it about a third of the way to where he was going to poke at his shoulder, but Eddie tightens his grip.
“It didn’t break skin, Buck. You’ve just got—” Eddie swallows, makes a face (which is weird, because he’s seen worse and never been queasy before). “There’s a bump… right about in the middle of the bone. Looks like a displaced fracture, probably oblique.”
“Really? I would have guessed transverse, with that displacement,” says Chim.
“Yeah, but it was an impact injury—the stress of the landing would break it on an angle,” says Hen.
“Guys,” says Bobby.
“Okay. Fuck, okay,” says Buck, and he sucks a breath in through his teeth.
“Looks like a hospital trip for you, bud,” says Hen, with a little clap to his good shoulder. “Hey, bright side—you get the good drugs!”
“Yay,” Buck says weakly.
“Alright, Buck, looks like you’re riding with our vics. Hen, Chim, hand them off, then come drop the rig back at the station before you’re off—this call ran over our shift, so we’re done as soon as we’re back. Yes, Eddie, you can ride with him. Keep us updated. We’ll meet you guys there.” Eddie blows out a breath like he’s annoyed, but he had been raising his hand to probably ask just that. Buck feels a little warm and gooey inside, but—Hen did just inject morphine into the I.V. she’d stuck him with.
“You got them back here, guys?” asks Chim, and at Hen and Eddie’s affirmative, he hops up, ruffles Buck’s hair, and jogs to the driver’s side.
Eddie helps Buck stand and Hen is about to pull him up into the cab when Bobby stops them.
“Hey. Good job today, guys.” He gently pats Buck on the right side of his back. “Glad you’re okay, kid,” he says, and then walks off to the ladder truck.
Buck feels a little misty-eyed. He tells himself it’s the drugs.