Chapter Text
Eddie spent most of his life learning how not to look at his own skin.
It is a strange thing, really, because the mark sits somewhere rather obvious, somewhere impossible to forget and easy to hide at the same time, printed in dark, stubborn ink along the inside of his forearm where anyone could see it if he were to wear short sleeves.
Most people have one line.
One cruel little prophecy written before they even know what language is.
Everyone is born carrying the words their soulmate will say to them at the moment the bond becomes undeniable.
That's how people usually explain it to children, because it sounds kinder than the truth, because it makes the whole thing seem romantic instead of terrifying.
For most people, it works that way. The words are spoken, the mark burns, and the ink fades into something softer, a pale scar or a warm shadow beneath the skin, sometimes even a small symbol that represents their bond.
But everyone knows the other version too.
Everyone knows that if the bond is never recognized in time, if fear or distance or stubbornness or bad luck keeps two people from understanding what they are to each other, then the words do not mark the beginning.
They mark the end.
They become the last words your soulmate ever says to you.
…
Eddie has two.
You worry too much. I’ll be fine.
and
You look terrible
—————
People go quiet when they see it. He remembers being seven and standing barefoot on the cold tile of the bathroom while his mother held his wrist under the light, her thumb pressing near the mark, her mouth drawn thin and frightened while she rubbed at the ink with a damp cloth even though she knew it wouldn't come off.
He remembers asking if everyone got two but no one had answered quickly enough.
He remembers a priest his parents dragged him to, telling him that God’s will was not always written in a language human beings could understand, which had sounded wise to everyone except the terrified child clutching his sleeve down over his forearm.
He hadn't wanted wisdom, he wanted someone to tell him that the second line didn't mean he would have to lose someone twice.
The soul therapist had been the first adult who didn't look at him like he was a puzzle to solve.
“Sometimes a mark changes because someone gets a second chance,” she had said. “Sometimes the first words are the moment you almost lose them, and the second words are the moment fate gives them back.”
Eddie had swallowed hard.
“But not always?”
“No,” she had said gently. “Not always. A second chance is not a promise.”
…
Later, he learned that most children didn't hide theirs.
Most children showed them off the second they understood what the words meant.
They compared them at school with the same careless excitement they used for loose teeth and scraped knees, sleeves pushed up over lunch tables or collars tugged aside to reveal little lines of ink written across ribs, shoulders, wrists or Palms.
Some of them were sweet.
Some were embarrassing.
Some were strange enough to make everyone giggle because no one could imagine how a person was supposed to fall in love after hearing 'you have mustard on your face' or 'that's not how you hold a lizard' or 'please tell me that isn’t your car.'
But many of them were beautiful.
I’ve been looking for you.
I knew it was you.
I love you too.
The girls in his class whispered over those ones like they were holding pieces of a fairy tale, already dreaming up the faces that might someday match the words.
The boys pretended not to care, but Eddie saw the way some of them smiled down at their own skin when they thought no one was watching.
Everyone wanted proof that somewhere in the world, someone was already carrying the words only meant only for them.
Eddie wanted that too and he hated that he did.
…
Because whenever someone shoved a wrist under his nose or asked to see his in return, dread crawled cold and slow up the back of his neck. He learned to laugh and shrug and say his parents didn't like him showing it, learned to tug his sleeve lower before anyone could ask again.
...
No one else had two.
Not in his class. Not in his school.
…
Not the neighborhood kids who traded soulmark stories like baseball cards.
He remembers a girl in third grade touching the inside of her wrist and telling him her mark said 'there you are', like the words had been kissed into her skin.
Then she had asked what his said and Eddie had pulled his sleeve down so hard the cuff stretched around his hand.
He remembers the way her smile faded then.
…
He remembers knowing, even then, that soulmates were supposed to be a promise… but his felt like a countdown.
He learned to keep his sleeve down after that.
—————
Then Buck happened.
He happened with too much noise and too much feeling and Eddie’s life rearranged around him.
He stopped looking at his mark then. Because the line on his arm had nothing to do with the life he was building with his best friend, because whatever fate had written into him had to be separate from the man who knew where he kept the cereal and had Christopher’s laugh tucked into his bones.
Buck had shown him his once, years ago with crooked grin and a shrugged shoulder. His mark sat along his ribs, half-hidden beneath the hem of his shirt when he lifted it just enough for Eddie to see and Eddie remembered thinking, with a strange cold twist in his stomach, that they are horribly ordinary.
Can you hear me?
Four words.
The kind anyone could say.
A dispatcher could say them through a radio. A doctor could say them over a hospital bed or stranger could shout them after an accident.
“Kind of ominous, right?” he had said, dropping his shirt back down, “They sound like I’m gonna get taken out by bad cell service.”
Eddie had smiled then because Buck expected him to.
And when he showed him his…
Buck had stared at them just long enough that he'd started regretting it, his fingers already twitching toward his sleeve before Buck caught his wrist that made the panic stumble inside his chest.
“Well,” Buck had said, “at least one of them has taste.”
Eddie had huffed despite himself, and Buck’s thumb had brushed over them once.
“I mean, come on, man, if your soulmate’s last words are 'you look terrible', then either they’re rude as hell or they know you really well.”
Then his expression had softened,
“Maybe it’s not a bad thing, you know? Maybe it means they get to see you after the worst part. ”
…
Eddie hadn't known what to do with that.
For the first time in his life the lines had given him hop, because Buck made them sound like an aftermath instead of an ending
And it terrified him for the same reason, because hope was not proof.
—————
Now, 2 years later, theyre called to a fire, a high-rise. Rain already turns the streets slick and black by the time the 118 pulls up beneath a sky split open by thunder.
“Buck,” he says. His voice cutting through the storm-static and shouted orders with enough urgency that Buck turns back immediately.
His hand closes around the strap of Buck’s harness.
“Be careful,”
The seconds the words are out, something under his sleeve burns.
Not pain exactly, more like a terrible warmth beneath the ink, spreading along his arm.
…
Buck’s mouth curves, into that devastating smile Eddie has seen a thousand times before.
“You worry too much. I’ll be fine.”
Eddie stops breathing.
What?
The storm still rumbles above them. Bobby still shouts something toward Chimney and the engine still flashes red against the street.
Buck is already turning back toward the ladder because to him it's Nothing. To him, the words are casual.
To Eddie, it feels like the floow just dropped out from under his feet and his hand falls from Buck’s harness.
His fingers come up and clamp around his own forearm so hard that the pressure hurts, but the ink burns brighter beneath his Palm and suddenly he's seven years old again with his mother scrubbing at his skin, twelve years old in a doctor’s office with a blood pressure cuff squeezing his arm, fifteen years old listening to a therapist explain that a second chance isn't a promise.
...
Buck climbs, and Eddie knows.
It's him.
Buck, who fell asleep on his couch with a book open on his chest and Christopher’s blanket tucked over his legs.
The person Eddie has loved in every language except the one that would force him to name it.
…
Buck, his soulmate… the Person who is climbing toward the sky while Eddie’s soulmark burns like a countdown.
“No,” Eddie calls, but the word is swallowed by thunder, “No, come back down!”
No one hears him.
…
His pulse punches against his throat while his vision keeps narrows around Buck’s boots on the rungs and his gloved hands moving higher.
My soulmate just said his death words to me.
Buck is my soulmate.
Buck is going to die.
…
I found out too late.
His fingers twitch toward his Radio, Buck's name already on his lips, Ready to order him to come down immedietly. He Needs to stop this. He needs to—
The sky flashes and for half a second before the strike, Eddie sees it coming.
“BUCK!” he screams.
The lightning hits anyways and white-blue light tears the world open.
It catches the ladder in a blinding line so bright that Buck’s body disappears inside it. The sound follows a fraction of a second later.
Eddie's Body is thrown backwards as the aftershock of the strike travels down the rig and hits him. His Body colliding heavily with the ground at the foot of the truck and pain explodes along his side.
His senses have fractured into light and sound and the violent, electric stink of air burned clean through.
When his eyes finally lift he sees Buck hanging from the harness and the sight empties Eddie so completely that he doesn't make a sound.
Buck is suspended beneath the ladder, body slack in a way it's never been before, arms hanging uselessly at his side while the harness is the only thing keeping him from falling.
“No... Buck!”
He's moving before anyone can stop him.
The universe has been threatening him with this moment.
…
He climbs, even though his shoulder screams.
“Buck!” he screams again, his voice cracking around the name. “Buck, answer me!”
He reaches the top of the ladder with his breath tearing hard through his chest and throws himself forward, stomach pressing hard against the ladder as he leans over the edge and grabs for the line with both hands.
“Buck!”
Buck’s face is pale, his mouth parted but not breathing in any way Eddie can see and there is damage Eddie registers in pieces. Burned fabric, a torn glove, and the harsh smell of singed gear.
Eddie grabs the harness with both Hands and tries to lift.
“Can you hear me? Buck!”
The motion is ugly and desperate, all shoulder and terrified strength. His boots slipp against the slick metal as he hauls upward with a raw sound ripped from somewhere low in his chest, but Buck’s body barely moves, suspended heavy in the harness.
“No, no, come on,” Eddie grits out, trying again, fingers digging into the soaked line, searching for more leverage. “Come on, Buck, help me out here, please!”
This isn't working.
His head jerks down toward the crew below.
“We need more slack!” he screams, voice tearing raw through the storm.
“More slack, coming up” Chimneys voice reaches him from below.
…
Buck's body descends toward the waiting gurney down below, pale face tipped toward the rain, mouth still parted around no visible breath.
Eddie follows the movement until the angle forces him back. The second Buck’s body lands onto the gurney below, the second hands close around him and someone starts getting him free of the harness, Eddie moves.
One moment he's above Buck, hands empty and shaking, and the next he's sprinting down the ladder with rain in his eyes and Buck’s last words burning under his sleeve.
...
Chim's already at Buck’s side as his hands move with sharp, practiced urgency. Buck’s turnout coat shoved open across his chest, the dark fabric spread wide and useless around him.
“Bring it up!” Bobby yells, “Get the ambulance closer now!”
Eddie barely hears any of it.
Buck is lying flat on the gurney with his head tilted slightly back while Hen's fingers press into his neck.
Eddie reaches them so fast his knees nearly buckle against the gurney frame.
Bobby is at the foot of the gurney now, one hand locked around the rail with his face stripped raw in a way Eddie has never seen before.
He knows before anyone says it.
“No pulse” Hen calls out, looking at chimney.
“Get the lifepack ready!”
Hen’s head jerks up, rain running down the side of her face.
“Chim, we can’t shock him if he's in full cardiac arrest!”
Chim reaches for Buck’s chest but Eddie moves before either of them can take him away from this.
“No,” he breathes, “I am not letting you go.”
“Eddie—” Hen starts, but he's already climbing onto the gurney.
The metal frame rocks beneath his weight, wheels squealing against wet pavement as Bobby grabs the rail to steady it.
He straddles Buck’s hips, knees braced hard on either side of him and his palms find the center of Buck’s chest over damp, cooling skin.
Then he starts compressions.
Eddie locks his elbows and drives down hard, rhythm finding him through terror because it lives deeper than thought, because he has done this before on strangers, on victims, but never on Buck, never on the body that has stood shoulder to shoulder with him through fire and blood.
“One, two, three, four,” he counts, “Come on, Buck, five, six, seven, don’t do this to me, eight, nine, ten.”
Chimney seals the mask over Buck’s mouth and nose, squeezing air into lungs that refuse to rise on their own, while Hen places monitor leads on Buck's chest.
The gurney jolts beneath him and Eddie’s knees tighten around Buck’s hips, his hands never leaving the center of his chest as the whole world starts moving around them.
Chim climbs half into the ambulance ahead of them with the bag-valve mask still in his grip, delivering 2 breaths at the same time.
“One, two, three, four, five,” Eddie keeps counting “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”
Buck’s chest gives beneath his palms.
“Keep him centered,” Hen snaps, bracing one hand against Eddie’s back for half a second when the wheels hit the ambulance ramp and the gurney tilts upward. “Eddie, stay with him, keep your shoulders over him.”
“I’m with him,” Eddie grits out, “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.”
The gurney locks into the ambulance with a metallic slam that rattles through Eddie’s knees while Hen else climbs in behind him.
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty.”
Chmin breathes for Buck. Once, twice.
“Back on,” Hen orders.
Eddie’s hands find Buck’s chest again..
“One, two, three, four,” he counts, his voice cracking around the numbers.
Buck’s skin is cold beneath the heel of his hands and the LifePak alarms in sharp little bursts that make Eddie’s skin crawl.
Hen is working in the narrow space by Buck’s shoulder, fingers fast despite the ambulance’s motion, connecting pads, checking leads, calling things Eddie hears and doesn't process, while Chim shifts between airway and equipment.
“Pads are on,” Hen says. “Still no pulse.”
...
Every compression travels up his arms and into his shoulders until his muscles burn.
“I’ve got you, okay, I’ve got you, I’m not letting go, I’m not, so you don’t get to either.”
His palms drive down.
Release.
Down.
Release.
“Eddie,” Hen says, watching the angle of his arms and the ragged way he is dragging air into his lungs. “You’re getting tired. I need you to switch with me after this cycle.”
“No.”
“Eddie, I need quality compressions.”
“I said no.”
“Eddie—”
“No,” he snaps, but the anger breaks almost immediately “No, I’m not stopping, I’m not moving, I’m not taking my hands off him.”
“Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight,” he counts, and his voice is shaking now, “Twenty-nine, thirty.”
The second Chim pulls back from delivering the breaths, Eddie’s hands return to Buck’s chest.
“These are not the last words you ever say to me, you hear me?”
Hen’s eyes flick up and Chim’s hand stills for half a second around the bag.
Eddie keeps going, his voice breaking harder around each number. “You don’t get to say the words I’ve had on my skin my whole life and then leave me with them.”
Chim looks at Eddie’s forearm. At the sleeve shoved up from the climb.
You worry too much. I’ll be fine.
“Eddie,” Chim says, and his voice is different now, almost disbelieving. “He’s your soulmate?”
Eddie’s hands falter for less than a second, then immedietly fall back into rythm.
“Fourteen, fifteen, yes, okay, yes, he is, he is, and I didn’t know, I didn’t know until he said it, I didn’t know until he was already going up that ladder.”
Hen reaches for him again, one hand closing around his wrist between compressions.
“Eddie, switch with me.”
“No.”
“You’re exhausting yourself.”
“I don’t care.”
“I care,” Hen shoots back, fierce and frightened, her eyes shining under the harsh ambulance lights. “Buck cares. You want him back, you do this right.”
“I am doing it right,” Eddie says, “I know how to do compressions, Hen.”
“You know how to do compressions on a patient,” Hen says. “This is Buck.”
That almost destroys him.
…
He doesn't want to… but
If his rhythm slips.
If one shallow compression steals one more second from Buck.
Eddie will never forgive himself.
“Switch,” Hen orders. And this time, he moves.
He climbs off the gurney awkwardly, one knee nearly slipping on the narrow metal edge, while Hen is already moving in,taking the space Eddie leaves behind
“One, two, three, four,” Hen counts, her voice steady as the ambulance rocks beneath them.
Eddie sits there with nothing in his hands.
Buck is still pale beneath the smear of soot and rainwater, his lashes lying dark and heavy against his cheeks and his lips have taken on the faintest hint of blue.
“No,” he whispers, barely audible beneath Hen’s counting. “No, no, no, Buck, don’t do this.”
Bobby’s voice cuts from the front.
“We’re here!”
The ambulance brakes hard enough that Eddie has to grab the overhead rail.
The back doors fly open and hospital light floods in, white and merciless. The second the latch releases, he jumps down onto wet pavement, body already turning back toward the ambulance and his hands close around the gurney.
“On my count,” Hen says from above Buck. “One, two—”
Eddie pulls and the gurney slides out cleanly, wheels dropping and locking beneath it with a metallic snap, and then they are moving in a coordinated rush bay with nurses already running toward them, voices overlapping in sharp fragments around Buck’s name, lightning strike, cardiac arrest, CPR in progress, no pulse.
The monitor changes and his head snaps toward it.
“Shockable rhythm.”
Buck lies beneath the harsh white lights, impossibly Young, lips faintly blue, chest exposed with pads stark against his skin.
Eddie’s hand closes around the control.
“Clear!”
Hands lift.
For half a second, Buck is alone on the gurney.
He presses the button.
Buck’s body jerks against the stretcher, shoulders lifting and his head shifting sharply to the side before falling back against the sheet.
The monitor stutters.
Eddie stops breathing as his fingers go to Buck’s throat.
One second.
Two.
Three.
“I’ve got a pulse!”
“Pulse is back.”
Eddie’s knees almost go weak
Buck’s heart is beating.
The stretcher moves, and he moves with it because his body has not accepted any world where Buck goes somewhere he can't follow, but someone catches his shoulder.
“They have him,” Bobby says, “Eddie, let them work.”
A doctor glances up a second before they dissapear through the trauma doors.
“We’ll do our best.”
Eddie breaks.
“Do more!”
The trauma doors swing shut.
“Do more,” Eddie says again, but the second time it is smaller. “Please, just—just do more.”
…
For a moment, he just stands there. His body is still angled toward the doors, fingers spread and trembling.
Then the adrenaline drops and the strength leaves his legs first, then his vision tilts white
“Eddie!”
…
He tries to say Buck’s name but the sound barely makes it past his throat before his knees buckle.
For one terrifying second, he is falling, then Bobby catches him, both arms coming around him before he can hit the Floor.
“I’ve got you. Easy, Eddie, I’ve got you.”
For a second, he thinks he might be sick but then his sleeve shifts and the ink beneath it Shows slightly. He pushes it up a bit.
You look terrible.
A sound breaks out of Eddie before he can stop it and he presses his shaking fingers over the words.
They have a voice now.
Buck's voice
*Maybe it means they get to see you after the worst part.*
His face crumples before he can stop it, and he turns his head away, but the first sob still gets out, his shoulders jerking once under Bobby’s hand.
“It was Buck,” he whispers.
Bobby goes still behind him and for a second, Eddie thinks maybe he hasn't heard him over the noise of the Hospital.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
Eddie looks down at his arm again.
“He’s my soulmate,” he says, barely more than a breath, tears blurring the dark letters beneath his hand. “Buck is my soulmate.”
—————
Bobby doesn't say anything at first.
Eddie almost wishes he would frown or shake his head or tell him that he must have misunderstood somehow, then Eddie could push against something solid instead of standing in the middle of the hospital hallway with Buck’s bloodless face is still burned behind his eyes.
But Bobby only goes still. His hand is still around Eddie’s shoulder from where he caught him before his knees could hit the Floor.
…
His eyes drop to Eddie’s forearm.
Eddie should pull his sleeve down, like he did most of his life… but he doesn't
The lines stare up at both of them in dark, stubborn ink.
You worry too much. I’ll be fine.
…
You look terrible.
Bobby looks back up at him slowly.
“How long have you known?”
Eddie’s mouth opens, but for a second nothing comes out, because the answer seems impossible.
He swallows, and his throat feels raw.
“Since the ladder.”
Bobby’s expression changes into something that might be horror or grief or understanding, and he hates that Bobby understands exactly what he means.
“Eddie,”
He shakes his head.
“No.”
He doesn't know what he's refusing.
Comfort, maybe.
“No,” he says again while and his thumb presses over the second line until his Skin hurts under the pressure. “He doesn’t know.”
Bobby’s hand shifts on his shoulder.
“What?”
Eddie looks down at his arm.
“He doesn’t know...Buck doesn’t know. His mark—”
He cuts himself off.
…
Can you hear me?
Bucks words… no his words.
Eddie hears himself screaming them into the rain.
Can you hear me? Buck!
His stomach turns.
“Oh God,” he whispers.
Bobby’s grip tightens.
“What is it?”
Eddie drags a hand over his mouth, but it does nothing to stop the Sound pushes through clenched teeths.
“I said it,” he says. “On the ladder. I said his words.”
Bobby’s face goes very still again.
Eddie laughs once, but there is no humor in it.
“I said them while he was hanging there. While he was—” His throat closes hard around the rest, “What if that’s all he heard? What if those were the last words he heard before his heart stopped?”
The thought has opened something terrible inside him now.
Buck might wake up and not remember.
Buck might never know.
He might die without ever knowing.
Buck might be lying behind those doors with Eddie’s words written somewhere on his ribs, words Eddie had screamed in terror.
…
Bobby catches him again before he can fold completely, both hands on his shoulders now.
“Breathe,”
Eddie tries, but they're too shallow and too fast, scraping at the back of his throat.
“Eddie, look at me. He made it to the hospital,” Bobby says, each word careful, “He has a pulse. They’re working on him.”
“That’s not enough.”
…
“I know.”
The honesty hurts more than reassurance would have.
Nothing changes.
And the world keeps going in the cruel, ordinary way while Eddie stands there with his soulmate’s death words burned into his skin and no idea if Buck is going to live long enough to prove them wrong.
—————
By two in the morning, the waiting room has become a place outside time.
There are no windows near the chairs they have claimed, so Eddie can't see the sky anymore, can't see if the rain has stopped or if the storm is still chewing through Los Angeles.
Buck is in surgery.
Eddie has heard the words several times now. From nurses, from a doctor with tired eyes, from Bobby repeating them slowly when he stopped processing the first time...
Electrical injury.
Cardiac arrest.
Monitoring.
Stabilizing.
We will update you as soon as we can.
…
As soon as we can means nothing.
Eddie sits in the chair closest to the hallway with his elbows braced on his knees and his hands clasped so tightly between them that his fingers have started to ache. His turnout gear is dumped into the chair beside him in a wet heap.
He's still in his station uniform and the blue shirt feels too tight across his chest and throat.
…
Every time he closes his eyes, his palms remember the give of Buck’s sternum, the awful resistance of a body that wasn't helping.
Thirty compressions.
Two breaths.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Bobby is sitting two chairs away, close enough to reach him if Eddie falls apart again but far enough not to crowd him.
Hen and Chim had been pulled away earlier, not far, just somewhere to give statements or get checked or Change.
Eddie hadn't gone with them.
He couldn't.
You worry too much. I’ll be fine.
…
The automatic doors open somewhere down the hall and Eddie looks up so fast his neck pulls.
It's not a doctor. It's Hen and Chim.
They come through the waiting room entrance in ordinary clothes, and for one terrible second the sight of them without their turnout gear makes everything feel wrong in a new way, like the emergency has ended for everyone except him.
Hen carries spare clothes folded against her chest while Chim walks beside her with his hands shoved into the pockets of a dark hoodie.
Hen stops in front of him.
“Change,”
Eddie stares at the clothes.
“I’m fine.”
“No,” Hen says “You’re soaked through and you’re shaking.”
…
“Eddie,” she says, quieter now. “Go change.”
“I don’t want to miss—”
“You won’t,” Bobby says before he can finish.
Eddie looks at him.
Bobby is standing now.
“When they come out, I’ll get you.”
He wants to argue but Hen is still standing there with the clothes and Bobby looks like he has aged ten years since the lightning hit.
...
His fingers brush Hen’s as he takes them and she catches them for half a second.
“You need to breathe too,”
—————
He sets the clothes on the counter and stands there for several seconds, staring at himself in the mirror of the too bright light.
He looks wrecked.
His hair is still damp and flattened in places from rain, dark strands sticking wrong across his forehead. His station shirt clings in cold patches across his chest, wrinkled and stained.
He strips out of the damp station pants and changes into the sweats Hen brought him.
...
When he's done, he braces both hands on the sink and leans forward.
Pale.
Hollow-eyed.
Wrong.
His gaze drops to his forearm and slowly, like the movement belongs to someone else, Eddie rolls up his sleeve again.
...
You look terrible.
His breath leaves him in a thin, broken sound.
Buck might never say it. He might never squint through medication and pain and exhaustion and see Eddie standing there with fear carved into his face.
The sink blurs and his breathing changes, coming faster. His fingers clamp around the porcelain edge as his shoulders hunch toward his ears.
“No,” he whispers.
His vision swims and the bathroom tilts slightly left, heart pounding too fast
Eddie grips the sink until his knuckles ache.
“Stop,” he tells himself, “Stop. Not now.”
He turns the faucet on with a clumsy twist and let's cold water rushes into the sink.
He shoves his hands under it, then splashes his face once, twice, until the shock of it cuts through the edge of the panic.
Buck is alive.
Eddie breathes in through his nose, then he tears off a paper towel, dries his face badly, and looks down at his arm one more time.
You look terrible.
His mouth twists.
“Yeah, I do”
—————
When Eddie returns to the waiting room, everyone looks up.
Hen’s gaze catches on his damp hair, his pale face and the way his hands still tremble and Chim looks at him for half a second too long, then looks down at the untouched coffee in his hands.
No one says he looks better, because that'd be a lie.
Eddie lowers himself into the same chair as before.
...
For a while, no one speaks.
The clock above the doorway ticks toward three, then past it.
Chim is the one who finally breaks the silence.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “Buck would be insufferable about this.”
Eddie turns his head.
Chim’s mouth twitches, but his eyes are red.
“I mean it,” he says. “Soulmate? Best friend? Found family? He’d act like he won the universe in a raffle.”
Hen makes a sound that is almost a laugh.
Bobby closes his eyes for half a second.
Eddie stares at Chim.
The words should hurt.
...
They do hurt.
But underneath the hurt, something small and impossible moves in Eddie’s chest.
Buck would be insufferable and he would probably cry later where no one could see him.
He would tell Christopher with his whole face lit up.
Eddie’s throat tightens so hard he has to look away.
“He doesn’t know,”
Chim’s small almost-smile fades and Hen turns toward him a little more.
“I said his words,” he continues, “On the ladder. I said them when I was trying to get him down, but he was unconscious. Or close to it. I don’t know if he heard me. I don’t know if he understood.”
Hen’s face softens.
“Eddie.”
“What if he doesn’t remember?” he asks, and once he starts, he cannot stop. “What if he wakes up and doesn’t know? What if he—”
He cuts himself off because no one in this waiting room needs him to finish that sentence.
...
Hen reaches over and covers his hand with hers.
“Then you tell him,”
Eddie laughs under his breath, broken and disbelieving.
“He might not wake up,”
Hen’s grip tightens.
“No,” she says, “He might not. But Buck is stubborn as hell, and he has never known how to leave people who love him alone for long.”
Eddie’s eyes burn as he looks toward the closed doors again.
Buck is not just his soulmate.
...
Buck was already his.
The mark only finally admitted it.
—————
By six in the morning, the waiting room has gone strange.
The night emergency chaos has thinned into hospital morning. The coffee on the little table has gone cold in paper cups no one finished and the rain still taps faintly against windows.
None of them have left.
Bobby sits forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped tightly enough that his knuckles have gone pale.
Hen is slumped beside Chim, one shoulder pressed into the wall, eyes open but unfocused like she has been staring at the same patch of floor for too long.
He hasn't slept. None of them have.
Every time Eddie’s eyes begin to close, his body jerks itself awake. His neck hurts from sitting wrong and his ribs hurt from where the shockwave threw him back against the ground.
None of it matters. Pain means his body is still doing something.
...
The doctor comes out at 6:07.
Eddie knows because he has been staring at the clock til the second the door opens, and then every detail snaps into place with vicious clarity.
The doctor is still in scrubs, hair slightly flattened from a surgical cap.
Bobby stands first with Hen and Chim following half a second later.
Eddie doesn't remember standing. One moment he is in the chair and the next he is on his feet.
...
“He’s stable for the moment,” she says.
Eddie hates every word that comes after.
Bobby’s voice is steady when he asks,
“For the moment?”
The doctor nods.
“He’s still critical,” she says gently. “His heart rhythm has stabilized, and we’ve been able to maintain his blood pressure. We’re transferring him to the ICU now.”
The doctor’s gaze moves over them, professional and careful.
“Before I continue,” she says, “I need to confirm who I’m speaking to. Is there immediate family present?”
No one answers quickly enough.
Bobby’s hand flexes once at his side. Hen’s eyes flick toward Eddie and Chim looks down.
Immediate family.
Buck has Maddie, but she's not here. Buck has parents somewhere who have never deserved a piece of him. Buck has the 118, standing in this hospital waiting room.
The doctor continues, as if she has already understood that the silence means something complicated.
“Immediate family, medical proxy, or confirmed soulmate. Otherwise I can only give very general information.”
Eddie’s lungs stop working properly.
Confirmed soulmate.
Bobby turns his head toward him and he instinctively want to push his sleeve down, even though it already is.
Instead, slowly, with fingers that do not feel steady enough, he pushes the fabric back.
The marks are still there.
The first line looks darker than it did before the call.
You worry too much. I’ll be fine.
The doctor’s eyes drop to it and something in her expression shifts, not surprise exactly, but recognition.
“When did the first line activate?” she asks.
Eddie’s mouth is dry.
“Tonight,” he says. “Before the strike.”
The doctor looks at him for a long second.
“And the second?”
Eddie’s fingers hover over the lower line but dosn't touch it.
“Not yet.”
The quiet after that feels terrible.
...
The doctor nods once, very carefully.
“Then I can give you the update,” she says. “But I need you to understand that if legal next of kin arrive, they’ll still be included in formal decisions unless Mr. Buckley has documentation naming someone else.”
Eddie nods.
...
Chim speaks first after that.
“Is he breathing on his own?”
“Not yet,” the doctor says. “He’s on a ventilator. Right now, his body needs support while we monitor him.”
Eddie’s fingers curl so tightly around his own sleeve that the fabric bites into his palm.
Ventilator.
A machine breathing for Buck.
...
Hen’s voice is low when she asks,
“Coma?”
The doctor’s expression does not change much.
“He’s unconscious, and we’re keeping him sedated for now. That gives his body the best chance to recover without additional stress.”
Coma.
Sedated.
Ventilator.
Critical.
The words stack inside Eddie’s head until there is no room for anything else.
“Broken ribs?” Hen asks,
“Likely from CPR,” the doctor says. “We’ve confirmed fractures, but they’re not our primary concern at the moment. We’re monitoring for complications from the electrical injury, neurological changes, cardiac instability, and any respiratory issues connected to the arrest and resuscitation.”
Eddie stares at the doctor’s mouth and tries to turn every sentence into Buck alive.
The doctor keeps speaking, but the meaning comes in fragments.
No visitors.
Eddie’s head snaps up.
“What?”
The doctor looks at him.
“Can't we see him?”
The doctor’s expression softens.
“Not yet.”
Eddie’s breath catches.
“No,” he says, and he hears how broken it sounds. “No, he shouldn’t be alone.”
“He won’t be,” the doctor says carefully. “He’ll have an ICU team with him the entire time.”
That's not what he means.
“He won’t know where he is,” He tries again. “If he wakes up, he won’t—”
“He's not expected to wake up right now,” the doctor says, gently but firmly. “And while we’re stabilizing him in the ICU, we need space to work. I know this is difficult.”
Difficult?
Eddie almost laughs. Difficult is a word for heavy traffic and broken appliances.
This is Buck alone behind doors with machines doing what his body can't.
Bobby’s voice cuts through before Eddie can say something he can't take back.
“What are his chances?”
The doctor doesn't answer immediately and that pause is worse than any number she could have given them.
...
“I can’t give you a clear answer yet,” she says finally. “The first twenty-four hours will tell us more. Right now, what matters is that his heart is beating and that he’s oxygenating with support.”
“But you don’t know,” Hen says.
The doctor looks at her with something like sympathy.
“No. Not yet.”
Not yet.
...
Every answer brings Buck closer and farther away at the same time.
“We’ll update you as soon as we can,” the doctor says.
She looks at them for a moment, and for the first time since she came out, something tired shows through the careful professionalism on her face.
“I know none of you want to hear this, but the best thing you can do for him right now is go home, shower, eat something, and try to sleep.”
Eddie looks at her like she has said something obscene.
“No.”
“You sitting in this waiting room without sleep, food, or dry clothes will not change what his body needs right now.”
Eddie’s jaw locks and his thumb presses so hard into the inside of his forearm that pain sparks beneath the mark.
The doctor’s eyes follow the movement.
“Especially you,” she says, softer now.
Eddie looks up.
“You’re his soulmate,” she continues. “If he wakes and the bond recognizes fully, he may need you present. If he gets worse, you may need to be able to understand what we’re telling you. Right now, you’re running on shock and adrenaline. That won’t help him.”
That get's through to him. Because she doesn't say go home because Buck doesn't need him.
She says go home because Buck might.
Bobby’s voice is low beside him.
“She’s right.”
Eddie turns on him, betrayed for half a second, but Bobby only looks exhausted and sad.
“If they call, we come back. Immediately.”
Chim swallows hard.
“And Buck would lose his mind if he woke up and found out you passed out in a waiting room because you decided basic human maintenance was optional.”
The words should not help but they do in a strage way.
Because that does sound like Buck.
...
You look terrible.
“We’ll call you the moment anything changes,” she says. “But right now, he's sedated. He's monitored and he's not aware of who is in this room and who isn’t. The next few hours are about keeping him stable.”
...
“He made it this far,” Bobby says quietly.
Eddie stares at the closed door.
“Okay”