Chapter Text
Eddie has never been a fan of four in the morning. It's too early for some, too late for others, and absolutely a time when he should be sleeping.
He chose this life, he reminds himself as the engine roars through the LA streets. He could have become a mechanic or done construction, but he decided to be a damn firefighter.
He wouldn't trade it for the world, though, not now. Not when Buck laughs across the cab and Hen and Chim roll their eyes at whatever he just said. Out of the corner of his eye Eddie can see Bobby fighting back a smile.
"It's a fact," Buck continues, "humans evolved with different sleep patterns. Night owls, morning people. It's all an evolutionary tactic so not everyone was asleep at the same time."
"You're just saying that because you like working out at three in the morning," Hen says.
"Excuses, excuses," Chim adds with a shake of his head.
"Three-thirty," Buck argues.
Hen waves a hand at Eddie. "How do you deal with this guy? Waking up that early."
"He waits for me." They've both woken up alone and abandoned before, so they have an understanding to wake the other up if they have to get up early. The problem, of course, is that sometimes Eddie can't fall back asleep and spends the rest of the day grumpy and, from what Buck says, infuriatingly pessimistic, so they agreed that Buck would wake up later.
Chim grins. "Aww, you trained him?"
"You know I'm not actually a dog," Buck says with a bit of annoyance in his voice.
"And I wake up earlier," Eddie adds. "We meet in the middle."
"Compromise," Bobby says from the front.
Buck smiles and locks eyes with Eddie. "Yeah, it's an adjustment, but it's worth it," Buck says.
They pull into a parking lot along a dock. At four in the morning. "God, who's on a boat this early?" Eddie asks as he hops down from the engine.
"Judging by the music, I'd say it's late," Hen says.
Sure enough, house music blares from one of the yachts near the end of the dock. This whole thing started with a noise complaint from one of the houses nearby, but the boat is a surprise. The responding officers called for an RA unit to treat a possible overdose.
They make their way down the dock quickly. Hen and Chim each have their med bags, Buck has some gear, and Eddie carries the backboard in hand.
"We got a call about a possible overdose?" Bobby says as they approach two officers standing next to the gangway.
One of the officers points at the yacht. "Female, mid-twenties. Other party-goers refuse to tell us what she took."
"The party-goers that stayed," the other officer snickers. "Most of them took off when we got here."
"Not suspicious at all," Buck says.
The first officer gives them some side-eye. "We're here for a noise complaint, not a drug bust."
"Well we're here to save lives," Hen says as she and Chim make their way onto the yacht.
Eddie follows behind and hears Buck coming up behind him. They pass through the path Hen expertly makes through the crowd to the bow, boat rocking wildly beneath their feet. He hears her ask what the victim took and spots a woman leaning on the railing, face pale.
"She didn't take nothing," a man says, arms crossed.
"She's just drunk," another cuts in.
"Sir, we need to know what she took so we can help her," Chim says. "We're not here to get anyone in trouble."
"Ma'am," Hen says, hand on the woman's shoulder. "Can you tell me what you took?"
Chim waves them over. "Eddie, Buck, let's get her on a backboard."
Buck takes the backboard from Eddie and reaches the railing first. He's just laid it down and straightened up when Eddie hears the telltale click of a gun being cocked. "Fuck off!" someone yells, and Eddie doesn't even have the chance to turn to see who has the damn gun before it goes off.
And hits Buck between his spine and his left shoulder blade.
And he lurches forward, right over the railing into the roiling water. Eddie screams his name. He hears Bobby break through the crowd, wild yelling from civilians and from the officers, and Hen calling for Buck.
Eddie doesn't think. He vaults over the side of the yacht into the ocean.
—
Bobby yells Buck's name first when he sees him go over, and then Eddie's when he sees the man plant a hand on the railing and jump after him. Bobby's hand remains uselessly outstretched for a moment before it drops.
Buck was just shot. Bobby knows firsthand how much it hurts, and the ocean is violent and freezing tonight.
He bolts to the edge of the yacht, calling into his radio for additional units, the coast guard, anything. The water is pitch black, and there's no sign of Buck or Eddie.
"Cap?" he hears. He turns to see Chim and Hen looking at him desperately. He turns the other way to find Officers Reyes and Knowles have tackled the shooter to the ground. It's a twenty-something-year-old Hispanic man with white powder below his nose and a wild look in his eye. The urge to kick him in his powdered nose flits through Bobby's mind until he dismisses it. It would be useless.
He looks back at the water as the remaining crowd scatters and footsteps thunder along the dock. He hears more emergency personnel arrive. He imagines they take the original victim, because Hen and Chim pop up and train their eyes on the ocean, too.
—
The only thought Eddie can form for a long moment is, Fuck, it's cold.
Then, I can't breathe.
Then, Buck.
He's aware that jumping into a stormy ocean at four in the morning is a bad idea. It might actually be suicidal, but he wasn't about to let Buck die.
The tide rips him around, and he thinks it might carry him in the same direction as Buck. He gives into it, even when his body collides with something hard and rough. He flails out of instinct. He can't see, but he feels his hand hit something soft. He grabs on, feels a leather belt, plants his feet, and launches himself up with his cargo. He prays that it's Buck and not a dead body.
He surfaces with a gasp and pulls the body's head above water. In the light of the stars and the full moon, he sees Buck's slack face. He'd breathe a sigh of relief if Buck were conscious.
They've drifted further than he thought. The dock is distant so far away he can't make out any people, just the thunder of music and shouting. He opens his mouth to call for help when bright floodlights blind him. "Grab on!" he hears, and he wraps an arm more solidly around Buck's chest and reaches with the other. His eyes adjust enough to see an orange life preserver splash in the water. He kicks toward it and loops his free arm through, and whoever is on the other end tugs. The force of the pull hurts his shoulder but he holds on tight because he sees what might be the tip of a shark fin, and only then does he realize that Buck's blood will attract no shortage of dangerous sea life.
Hands grab onto them and haul them onto the platform at the stern, then up a ladder onto the deck. He pushes the hands away and rolls Buck onto his back. He feels for a pulse or breath and feels nothing, and he takes in the blue tint of Buck’s lips for an instant before starting compressions. "Radio for help!" he demands even as his hands shove Buck's sternum into his chest cavity. "And get some blankets! Anything! Please!" He's not sure who he directs that last word to: Buck or the people he hasn't even bothered to look at. His voice is thick and desperate even to his own ears. He clears his throat and coughs. "Buck, come on. Come on. Please."
No one's moving. No one's helping. He hears the waves and nothing else.
"Come on, Buck," he pleads. His eyes sting from the water and the tears he knows are about to fall. "Come on, breathe."
Water spurts from Buck's lips and Eddie almost cries in relief. He gently turns Buck's head so he can cough the water up more easily. "There you go. You're okay."
Buck's head twists as Eddie is ripped away. "Get him back," someone says.
Two men reach for Buck, who winces and takes a shuddering breath before coughing again.
"No!" Eddie shouts. "He was shot! He needs help!" watered-down blood rolls along the pristine white of the boat floor.
"Shot?" One of the men pokes at Buck with his bare toes.
"There isn't an exit wound," Eddie says. He fights against the hands holding him back. "It's still in him. Let me help him."
"Fine." He's released, and he crawls toward Buck again. He sees, distantly, the dock getting farther away as the boat rumbles to life and heads further out to sea.
He presses around the wound carefully. The bullet definitely cracked one of Buck's ribs but the bleeding is slow, probably because of the cold water. He checks Buck's pulse, fast and weak. "He needs-" Eddie begins, but he cuts himself off when a blue bag lands beside him. "What?"
He finally looks up at the men around them. Three of them. Two white men and one black, all wearing, of all things, surfer shorts and loose T-shirts. One of the white men has taken over driving the boat while the other two hover menacingly. The black man speaks up. "If you want to help him, help him," he says with an almost lazy wave of his hand.
Eddie stares at him with wide eyes. "I can't remove a bullet. That's a surgeon's job."
The man shrugs. "Then leave it in if you think he'll live."
And no, Eddie doesn't think he'd live. At least, the chances of the bullet shifting and puncturing his lung (which he doesn't think it has yet) or nicking his aorta is uncomfortably high. Risk of infection is way higher, too, if the bullet stays in. "I'm not a surgeon."
"You're an EMT, right? Do it."
How insanely wrong this guy is. Sure, Eddie's an EMT like all Los Angeles firefighters, and he was an army medic, but that doesn't mean he's qualified to dig a bullet out of someone's back. His job has always been to keep the person alive until they can get more skilled help from a doctor or a surgeon.
He doesn't have another chance to argue, though, because Buck makes a tiny noise that catches Eddie's attention even over the roar of the motor. He cups Buck's cheek. "Hey, hey. I've got you."
Buck shivers and coughs. He looks like he's about to curl up but flinches.
"You should take care of him," the man says.
Eddie glances toward where the shore should be but only sees the distant glow of lights. There's no chance that they'll turn around now. Wherever they're going is too far from help. "I'm sorry," he whispers, though he's not sure if Buck even hears him. Getting shot is bad enough, but then he almost drowned and the saltwater must make the wound sting more. Buck's clearly delirious with pain.
"Wh…"
"I am so sorry," Eddie says again. "I don't think I have a choice."
Buck's face twists further. "You… shot me?"
"No! I'd never hurt you," he replies quickly, but then he cringes, because he's about to do just that. "But I think I have to… Get it out."
"Get… You okay?"
One of the men speaks up. "Hurry up. We don't have all day."
They might be in a rush to flee the scene, but Eddie isn't eager to do this. Still, these men aren't giving him much of a choice. He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, then reaches a shaky hand toward the bag. He opens it and assesses the supplies given to him: some gauze, alcohol wipes, a large pair of tweezers, some scissors, and a box of gloves.
This is happening.
He squeezes the back of Buck's neck once and gets to work. He pulls on a pair of gloves and cuts a sizable hole around the bullet wound. He carefully but thoroughly sanitizes the area with alcohol wipes, heart squeezing every time Buck flinches. Then he removes his belt, folds it, and holds it in front Buck's mouth. "Bite on this." Buck does so immediately, showing the sort of blind trust he has in Eddie. Eddie's heart cracks as he picks up the tweezers in his left hand and frames the bullet hole with his right. "I'm sorry," he says one last time before he sticks the tweezers into the wound.
He's heard Buck scream before, and it rips him apart even more now that they're together and he's the one hurting him. He couldn't stop Buck from getting shot or falling over the edge of a damn boat, and he couldn't find Buck fast enough in the water to keep them from being kidnapped, and he couldn't convince these assholes to get help. And now he's digging a pair of alcohol-wiped tweezers into his partner's back to find a tiny piece of metal, making him scream and writhe in pain. Both of their eyes swim with tears until Buck goes limp.
Eddie feels the bullet and carefully pulls it out, then tapes gauze over the aggravated wound because there weren't any needle or thread for stitches.
The men grab him away again before he can so much as take off his gloves, and he fights against them as hard as he can to no avail. They pin him face-down on the floor.
And they start stripping him of his clothes.
"What? Stop!" he says. "Stop!" They rip off his boots as the boat slows.
"What are you doing?" the driver asks.
"Get the damn clothes off," one of the men above Eddie demands.
The driver makes his way slowly to Buck and starts to do the same. "Leave him alone!" Eddie snaps.
Despite his protests, he and Buck are both stripped to their underwear and redressed in what are apparently spare clothes from their kidnappers: Buck in too-short green swim trunks and a black shirt and Eddie in a matching blue set.
The driver flips Buck over, grabs under his shoulders, and starts to drag him.
"No!" Eddie cries. He twists so abruptly that he feels something in his chest give under the weight on top of him. Someone slams his head down and his vision blurs and swims. Bile rises in his throat, and he sees Buck's out-of-focus body, and he pukes right there onto the deck.
"Gross!" someone shouts, as if the puke makes the blood, seawater, and desperation more disgusting.
"Help me here," the one with Buck says, and Eddie feels one of them men remove his weight from Eddie's back and sees him walk over to Buck. The two men lift him up awkwardly and carry him below decks.