Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Buck was pregnant, there were a lot of tells. Sure, there were the regular symptoms, the morning sickness, the cravings, the mood swings, but one thing that was specific to him was his birthmark. It swelled. It got redder. Sometimes he looked like he’d been stung by a bee, and other times it really did look like he’d gotten punched in the eye. Eddie kind of loved it.

Buck was convinced that it was magic, that the baby made his birthmark glow. but Eddie knew there was a logical explanation. Hormones, probably. Buck’s body was already out of whack, and if his ankles swelled to twice their size, or his nose changed shape a little, then it made sense that the petal-thin skin on his eye would get hit too. Like how a scar gets itchy when you’re out in the sun, or how acne flares in the cold. Bodies are just weird like that.

But it’s been five years since their daughter was born, and three years since Buck transitioned. The pregnancy hormones are long gone and the HRT has since settled in his system. His body, for all intents and purposes, has fallen into a rhythm of normalcy. There hasn’t been any significant changes in a while.

So is Buck’s birthmark swollen this morning, or is Eddie just half-asleep?

“Do I have something on my face?”

Eddie blinks. Buck is smiling at him over his coffee, eyebrows raised. The left one struggles to move, like it’s been hit with a unit of Botox.

Faintly, nonsensically, Eddie thinks, He shouldn’t be drinking caffeine.

“Uh.”

Violette giggles from the head of the table, and they both look to her.

“Is there?” Buck rubs his hands up and down his face, then runs them through his hair so the curls stick up in a million directions. “Is there something on my face and you guys aren’t telling me?”

Their daughter giggles again, pulling her knees up to her chest. Her chair tilts back and they both hook an ankle around the legs to keep her from tipping.

“No. You guys are just silly.”

Buck’s face lights up at the same time the alarm on his phone begins to blare from the other room.

“Oh, you hear that?” he says to Eddie, hoisting himself from the kitchen table. “We’re silly.”

Over their coffee and apple juice and bowls of cereal, Eddie and Violette watch Buck go about his weekly routine. First, he silences his phone, then he hits the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and comes back with his little zippered medkit, which he dumps unceremoniously onto the counter, since he claims the lighting in the kitchen is better. Shot, alcohol wipes, Hello Kitty Band-Aid, all lined up, just like every Friday.

Violette watches because she’s obsessed with her dad and fascinated with needles. Eddie watches because when Buck lifts his shirt, he finds that he's gained weight.

Which— Eddie knew that. He’s gained some weight too, it’s hard not to when your five-year-old’s diet consists mainly of Kraft mac and cheese and dino nuggets, or hot dogs with the ends cut off if it’s a special occasion, but this is a different kind of weight. It doesn’t look like fat. And it’s definitely not muscle.

Buck pinches the skin above his waistband and jabs the needle in.

His shirt doesn’t immediately fall back into place after he puts the pink Band-Aid over the injection site, and Eddie must be really tired because he’s convinced there’s a bump, a tiny swell between his hips that he swears wasn’t there before. Buck showed late with Violette. Statistically, you show earlier with a second pregnancy.

Eddie rubs his eyes so hard he sees stars, and Buck tugs his shirt down.

He pours himself more coffee.

The morning goes as every morning does, and Eddie forgets about Buck possibly being pregnant again in favor of getting their daughter ready for kindergarten. She tosses three outfits aside before settling on one, and refuses to brush her teeth unless she gets to do it standing on the bathroom counter, which Eddie argues with her about for ten minutes before caving.

Buck comes in while Violette is singing to herself in the mirror, getting spit and toothpaste all over the glass. She’s leaning her little butt on Eddie’s collarbone, and he has a vice grip around her knees.

“What is that smell?” His reflection is frowning over Eddie’s shoulder. His crossed arms and the black of his LAFD shirt hides his stomach from view.

“Dad pooped,” Violette says, dribbling bubblegum toothpaste down her chin. Eddie reaches up and wipes it away with the palm of his hand before it can stain her Garanimals. He is not changing her again.

“I did not poop,” he says. “That’s that new detangler Maddie got her. I think it’s gardenias.”

Buck leans in and sniffs Violette’s damp hair. He goes green.

“It’s kind of awful.”

Aversion to certain smells. With Violette, Buck couldn’t stand when Eddie wore his good cologne, and now—

“It makes me think of my mom’s candles.”

Eddie’s shoulders drop half an inch. Right, the candles Margaret continuously burned throughout Buck and Maddie’s childhood. Maddie always liked the smell, saying it reminded her of the gardenia shrubs growing behind their house before they moved to Hershey, but Buck has mentioned numerous times how much he hated it. He’s said it’s just too sickly sweet for his nose.

“Done!” Violette announces, bouncing up and down on Eddie’s collarbone. An echo of an ache races through his shoulder and he puts her on the floor between them.

Buck grabs her gently by the jaw and squeezes her cheeks. “Open sesame.”

Violette opens her mouth, sticking her tongue out and saying, ”Ahhh.”

Buck bends at the waist and peers inside like a drill sergeant doing bed checks. Eddie should be cleaning the toothpaste off the mirror before it dries, but he can’t stop looking at Buck’s birthmark, or wondering if his shirt is his regular size-too-small or if it’s tighter than usual.

“Dad, we are certified pearly.”

Eddie snaps out of it, going so far as shaking his head.

“Pearly?” he says, clearing his throat. “Sounds good to me, Dad. Shoes?”

Buck nods seriously. “Shoes.”

Violette groans, and Buck picks her up and props her on his hip before she can run out to the car in her socks.

On the way to the elementary school, after getting off the phone with Christopher, who always calls to wish his dads and sister a good morning before his first class, Violette says from her car seat, “Miss Hrick is gone.”

Eddie and Buck look at each other, then at the rearview mirror. Violette is kicking her feet and reading a book, looking like she never spoke at all.

“Oh?” Buck says, very obviously trying not to laugh. “And where did Miss Hrick go?”

“To have a baby.”

Eddie looks at Buck. Buck looks at the road.

When he doesn’t say anything, Eddie tells Violette, “Well, you better be nice to the sub. Are you guys making cards?”

Violette tosses her book aside and descends into telling them all about how her class will be spending the day making cards for Miss Hrick, and how they’re going to keep them safe in their cubbies until she comes back from manernity leave, which should be sometime after Christmas break.

When they pull into the drop-off line, Buck hops out of the car like he can’t get out fast enough and heads around to the back.

“Mr. Diaz!” says an aid, hands on her hips. “You know you’re not supposed to get out.”

Buck waves her off. “Her hands are too little to undo the buckle.”

“I’m not little,” Violette grumbles, her hands atop Buck’s as he presses the button on her harness.

The aid doesn’t leave, despite the sea of cars and children that she should be keeping an eye on. “That’s why we gave every parent a car seat key at the start of the school year, so Violette is able to do it herself.”

Buck places Violette on the ground, settling her backpack on her tiny shoulders and handing her her lunchbox. She looks up at the aid, Kari, Eddie thinks her name is, and says, “Please be nice to my daddy, Miss Kari. He’s a firefighter.”

And then she slips between the cars and into the building.

Kari huffs and goes after her.

Back in the car and free from the school drop-off line that’s arguably worse than LA traffic, Eddie broaches, “I didn’t know Miss Hrick was having a baby.”

Buck shifts in his seat, hands tight on the steering wheel like he’s trying to keep his fingers from drumming nervously. “I did. They sent out an email."

"Oh. Did you forward it to me?”

“No,” Buck says. “I didn’t think it was important.”

It’s out of Eddie’s mouth before he can think.

“It’s probably important to know when someone’s having a baby, I mean, right?”

Jesus, what is wrong with him?

Buck glances at him briefly, and his puffy browbone makes something clench in Eddie’s stomach. He’s not half-asleep, nor is he crazy; Buck’s birthmark is definitely swollen. For the first time since having Violette.

“What?” he says sharply. “Of course, Eddie, yeah.” And quieter, like it's just for himself, “Of course.”

The rest of the ride to the station is silent.

Eddie isn’t sure what side of the bed he woke up on that morning to be convinced that Buck is pregnant and hiding it from him, but the proceeding twelve hour shift does everything in its power to prove him wrong.

It starts before they even leave the locker room.

“I’m going to get degloved.”

“You are not going to get degloved. Let me see.”

Buck holds his left hand out with a pout. In his other is the little plastic case that holds their silicone work rings. Eddie’s wedding band has already been swapped out, but Buck can’t get his off. When Eddie takes his hand, he finds his fingers swollen. How long have they been like this?

They weren’t married yet when Buck was pregnant with Violette, but Eddie remembers clearly how he had to go up a size in his work gloves, just to be comfortable, and Shannon couldn’t even start wearing her wedding ring until well after Christopher was born. Eddie files this away.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Buck breaks through his thoughts, and he tries to take his hand back. “Am I losing circulation?”

Eddie tightens his hold on Buck’s hand and steps closer so the toes of their boots touch. “Will you stop? Here.”

He sticks Buck’s finger in his mouth, all the way down to the knuckle.

“Oh!” Buck says, cheeks going red. “Nice.”

Eddie snorts. Holding onto his wrist, he clamps his teeth around Buck’s wedding band and, after a few very non-sexual swipes of his tongue, manages to pull it off.

“You do know these walls are see-through, right?”

Eddie turns, ring between his teeth, still holding Buck’s hand. Chimney and Hen stand in the opening to the locker room with twin to-go cups of coffee. Chimney is frowning. Hen looks amused.

“Uh.” Buck takes his wedding band from Eddie’s mouth and shuts it up in the plastic case. The blush has reached his ears. “It was stuck.”

“We have lube for that,” Hen says, eyebrows dancing over her glasses. “You don’t need to go all My Best Friend’s Wedding on it.”

Eddie shrugs. He tries to slip Buck’s silicone ring on for him but it won’t go past his knuckle. “Hey, if it worked for Dermot Mulroney, then that’s good enough for me. Jesus, Buck.”

Having heard more than enough, Chimney wanders away, alternating between his coffee and the gum in his mouth. Back to the locker room, he shouts up to the rafters of the station, “I AM SO GLAD I’M NOT CAPTAIN ANYMORE!”

Eyebrows falling below the frames of her glasses in a concerned furrow, Hen sets her coffee on a bench and takes Buck’s hand in hers, being sure not to touch his spit-wet third finger. “Why are your hands so swollen, Buck?”

Buck takes his hand back. Hen lifts his pantleg to look at his ankles, and before he can shake her off, Eddie notices that Buck’s boots aren’t laced to the top like they usually are.

“Hen— I must’ve just eaten something salty. You don’t need to turn into Paramedic Wilson on me.”

The eyebrows go back up. “I’m just trying to be your friend, Hen. Do you want me to turn into Captain Wilson? Make you go pee in a cup?”

Like a switch has been flipped, the flush drains from Buck’s cheeks, leaving him sallow-cheeked and suddenly pale. “What? No. No, I’m— I don’t need to pee in a cup, what?”

Hen crosses her arms loosely, cocking a hip. “Well, now I think you should. You’re not coming to work high, now, are you?”

Buck’s eyes go wide. “What are you even talking about?”

Hen knocks the back of her hand into Buck’s arm playfully, snorting. “Easy, Buck, I’m just kidding around.”

Eddie squeezes Buck’s silicone ring between his fingers, squishing it out of shape. “What did you eat that was salty? I thought you were limiting your sodium for your migraines."

Again, hard to do with a five-year-old, but Buck has gotten a lot better about taking care of his health over the last few years, especially once he found out he was pregnant with Violette. So, if he really is pregnant again like Eddie suspects, why wouldn’t he tell him?

Buck snatches his ring from Eddie and stuffs it in his shirt pocket. “Are you asking as Paramedic Diaz, or are you asking as my husband?”

“Does it matter?” Eddie says steadily.

Buck lets out a breath that could be a scoff. The blush has returned, and it’s engulfed his ears, like his blood pressure is going up.

“I wish everyone would get off my case today.”

And with that, he slams his locker shut and disappears up to the loft.

“I’m not—!” Eddie turns to Hen, who’s hiding her face in her coffee. “I am not on his case, Hen. It’s too early to be on his case.”

She shrugs. “He’s just moody. We all have those days.”

Moody.

“Go love on him.” Hen pats him on the shoulder. “And tell him you love his sausage fingers. Captain’s orders.”

Ravi is on the couch watching an old Hotshots rerun when Eddie reaches the top of the stairs, and he turns and looks at him with his nose scrunched.

“What did you do?” he says, hushed.

Eddie pauses. “What?”

He follows Ravi’s gesture to find Buck standing before the gold-plated axe on the far wall, hands in his pockets and shoulders up to his ears. Eddie reaches him in a couple long strides.

Buck is teary-eyed when Eddie presses their shoulders together, frowning at Bobby’s memorial plaque like it personally offended him. Eddie gets that. He understands how weird grief can be, how so easily it can turn into anger, no matter how long it’s been.

It's been almost five years, and some days he refuses to use the staircase nearest because if he sees this plaque, or the collage of photographs surrounding it, Eddie is afraid he might take a baseball bat to it all.

“I miss him,” Buck croaks, sniffling and leaning his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

Eddie kisses his curls and threads their fingers together. It’s weird not feeling his wedding band. Whether it’s the silver one or the silicone one, Buck never keeps it off for long. He’ll have to get it resized, if—

“I know. Me too.”

Buck sniffs harder and picks his head up, almost knocking into Eddie’s chin. Not letting go of his hand, he reaches out and plucks a photograph from the wall. It’s a Polaroid, with a date six weeks before Bobby’s death scrawled across the bottom in Buck’s terrible handwriting. In it is the two of them, side-by-side in a hospital bed, and in Bobby’s lap is Violette, less than an hour old. May took the picture, Eddie behind her. He can still hear her voice as she took it, telling Eddie to Stop crying, it’s ruining my focus.

“I forgot how long your hair was,” Eddie muses, cradling Buck’s hand as he holds the Polaroid. It's long and strawberry blond, a mess of frizz and curls piled onto the top of his head and falling into his face.

I’m shaving my head after this, Buck had said as Eddie was trying fruitlessly to keep his hair out of his face for the millionth time that night. And he did, he shaved it off the same day they got home from the hospital. That was the first change in a long line of them.

Buck doesn’t seem to have heard him. Head back on Eddie’s shoulder, the same shoulder their daughter was sitting on that morning, he rubs his thumb over the glossy face of the Polaroid and says, “He’s missing so much. God, Eddie, how are we supposed to do this without him?”

He kisses his head again. “We’ve been doing it without him for years now, sweetheart.”

Buck makes a noise in the back of his throat that Eddie can’t parse. Could be frustration, could be a word swallowed. He has no idea about anything today.

The tones sound, and a voice overhead informs them of a lift assist; the station erupts in a collective groan.

Eddie untwines their fingers and takes the Polaroid from Buck, tucking it in Buck’s breast pocket next to his work ring. His eyes are wide, almost scared-like, and Eddie fingers the buttons along Buck’s chest.

“What’s up?”

A blink, a sniff. “Nothing. Sorry I got mean before. I don’t think I slept well.”

And then he’s jogging downstairs, grabbing Ravi on the way.

Eddie hears Ravi say, “Since Eddie made you cry, I’ll let you have my leftovers from last night.”

That’s when Eddie remembers: Buck and Ravi went out for burgers last night, salty, greasy, salty burgers.

Of course.

The lift assist sees them at the home of an 89-year-old woman who lost her balance while out getting the mail. While Eddie and Hen are checking her over on her front stoop, Buck goes into her house, without permission, to use her bathroom.

“Sorry, really had to pee,” he says sheepishly when he returns. “Must’ve been that second cup of coffee.”

He didn’t have a second cup of coffee that morning. In fact, Eddie distinctly remembers dumping half of his first cup down the kitchen sink because Buck had forgotten about it and let it go cold.

He doesn’t say anything.

Two calls later, barely an hour since the lift assist, he’s asking to pull into a Trader Joe’s on the way back, and after that, he’s using another patient’s bathroom while she bleeds out on her kitchen floor.

When he reappears, wiping his wet hands on his pants, everyone, including the girl with the superficial scalp lac, is looking at him.

“Geez, Buck, are we going to have to start keeping a porta potty on the rig?” Chimney says dryly.

“What?” Buck says, looking startled. His word of the day, it seems.

“This is the third time you’ve had to pee since we left the station,” Hen says, peeling back the bloodied gauze and looking at the girl’s head. “Some of us haven’t even gone once, which probably should be concerning considering the amount of coffee we’ve all consumed today.”

Eddie busies himself with his paramedic bag.

“So I’m more hydrated than you guys,” Buck says with a shrug. “I didn’t know that was a crime.”

Ravi snorts and Buck points at him.

“I’m just trying to flush the sodium out of my system from dinner!”

A quick glance goes around the room, and it’s interrupted by the piercing cry of a baby somewhere in the back of the woman’s apartment. Buck perks up, like his whole body goes on high-alert.

“Oh—” the girl says, but he’s already gone.

Buck returns to the kitchen a second later with the baby, a one-year-nothing little boy in a dinosaur onesie that stops crying the second Buck puts him on his shoulder and starts patting his butt. Muscle memory.

“Sorry,” the girl, Samantha, says, looking embarrassed. “Um, is it okay if he comes in the ambulance with us? He— I don’t have anyone to take him, but I always have a diaper bag packed. You know, just in case something like this happened.”

Hen lifts the gauze again. “It stopped bleeding.” She says to Samantha, “Just in case you hit your head on the cupboard door?”

She shrugs. “Single mom. Gotta be prepared for anything.”

Buck bounces the baby a little. “Of course it’s okay if he comes with us! Come on, little man, let’s go find your diaper bag.”

“It’s— it’s in the closet! On the shelf!” Samantha lets herself be pulled to her feet and she says, swaying slightly, “He must have kids.”

“We do,” Eddie tells her. His chest begins to swell, the way it always does when he gets to talk about his family. He refrains from pulling out his wallet to show her. “A boy and a little girl.”

She’s pale, from the pain and the blood loss and the adrenaline leaving her body, but the smile she gives Eddie brings some color to her cheeks. “That’s nice.”

“You know,” Chimney says as they’re wheeling Samantha outside. Buck is carrying baby Henry in a Superman-style pose, the way he used to do when Christopher was small, and Violette, when she was even smaller, “We all have two kids now, a boy and a girl.”

“Except mee,” Ravi sing-songs.

“Oh, are you offering to babysit, Ravioli?” Chimney says. “I’m sure Robbie and Jee would loove to see you.”

“Okay, that’s not—"

“And Samantha here would probably appreciate a nice, capable firefighter looking after little Henry. Right, Samantha?”

Samantha blushes as they load her into the ambulance. “I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed.”

“Okay, now it sounds like you’re setting us up,” Ravi says. “Pretty sure that goes against LAFD protocol, Han. Right, Cap?”

Hen shrugs. “I don’t recall reading that in any manuals, Rav. Besides, both Buck and Eddie dated girls they met on-call.”

“Oh, my God,” Ravi says. “Okay, unlike Buck, I am not ready to become a step-father. No offense, uh, ma’am.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Buck wrinkles his nose.

“It means—” Ravi claps his hands together. "That I am driving the engine back. See you idiots at the station!”

Chimney cups his hands around his mouth and calls after him, “Once a matchmaker, always a matchmaker, Panikkar! 100% success rate!”

Samantha laughs, then winces.

Eddie and Buck sit with Samantha in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, baby Henry now in Eddie’s lap. With one hand holding fresh gauze to her head, she reaches the other out to scratch her son’s back. He squeals, but he’s too preoccupied with Buck’s shiny badge to pay attention to his mom.

“He’s such a good baby,” she sighs. “I wouldn't mind having another one. Maybe a girl, like you guys. But not for a while.”

“Waiting is fine,” Buck tells her. “Ours are fifteen years apart.”

Eddie is too proud to interject with the technicalities.

Samantha’s eyes go wide. “Fifteen? Wow. Which one is younger?”

“Violette,” they both say.

“Violette,” she coos, leaning her head back against the gurney and closing her eyes. The mild painkillers they gave her must be kicking in. Henry stumbles a little in Eddie’s lap and both he and Buck grab him. “Why Violette?”

Buck verbally cringes. “She was purple when she came out.”

“Oh, man,” Eddie laughs. “She was so purple.”

“I thought the cord was wrapped around her neck, but she was just being dramatic.”

“She still holds her breath when she’s mad. Scares us half to death.”

Samantha is looking at them now, gazing steadily between them, then down at Henry. Sweet, content Henry, who’s gumming on the pen from Buck’s pocket and making gentle noises. Buck’s huge hand is holding his small elbow so carefully, and Eddie remembers a time when Buck was much, much smaller than he is now. He’s turned into a gentle giant since transitioning, going from the lanky 20-something girl Eddie met at the station all those years ago to the beefy 30-almost-40-year-old man Eddie has grown to love. He was considered mildly underweight when he was pregnant with Violette, but now—

Eddie imagines Buck pregnant in this new body of his, imagines him getting even bigger, cradling a newborn against the broad pecs he’s worked so hard on, and maybe it turns Eddie on a little, sure, but it also has a lump forming in his throat.

“Have you thought about having any more?” Samantha asks. “I mean— I’m sure Violette would love having a sibling closer in age, right? Sorry, I think I’m rambling. I don’t talk to a lot of people these days.”

Henry pats his fat little hands against Buck’s reddish stubble and Buck pretends to eat them. Henry squeals so loud Chimney looks back at them from the cab.

“She has cousins her age,” Buck says.

“Hmm.” Samantha looks at the gauze, still bright red. “You’re happy with two, then? If I had a partner like you guys, I probably wouldn’t stop having babies.”

Buck visibly swallows. It might not be as obvious to anyone else, but the smile he gives her is strained. Eddie squints at the side of his face.

But instead of answering, Buck says, to no one in particular, “Hey, when we get to Cedars, I gotta pee again. They have that nice bathroom on the third floor by the nurses’ station.”

“I love a nice bathroom,” Samantha mumbles.

“Ba-ba-ba,” babbles Henry.

The constant bathroom breaks ease up around lunchtime. Nausea takes its place.

“Okay, Buck, I’m starting to get offended here,” Chimney says as he takes lunch from the oven; salmon and asparagus with sweet potatoes. Buck loves salmon.

But Buck hated fish of all kinds when he was pregnant with Violette.

“Sorry,” Buck says as he gags into the neck of his shirt for the umpteenth time. “Something got my stomach all weird.”

“You haven’t eaten all day,” Hen points out, passing him a glass of room-temp water.

Eddie watches the scene unfold as if he were an outsider looking in. Observing. Calculating. He watches and he wonders what’s going to happen next.

“Then that’s probably it,” Buck says with a shrug. “I always forget to eat with my T shot.”

A noise escapes Eddie, one not unlike Bob from Bob’s Burgers.

“Can you eat, Buck, please?” he says. “Just some veggies, at least?”

Pinpricks of sweat glisten from Buck’s temples, and Eddie remembers how sweaty he got with Violette. He was sweaty and nauseous and swollen and moody and Eddie really, truly, feels like he’s losing his mind.

Because it’s obvious, but somehow it’s only obvious to him.

Buck scratches at his birthmark absently and holds his hand out in Chimney’s direction. “Fine. Just some veggies. I don’t feel like passing out on the clock.”

Buck almost passes out on the clock. But that, too, comes with a logical, non-pregnancy explanation.

Only halfway through their shift, and Eddie feels like he’s lived three lifetimes since leaving the house that morning.

A movie theater downtown went up in flames when one of the old projectors shorted, quickly going from a small, contained fire to a one-alarm when no one noticed for the entire duration of a Lord of the Rings marathon. Everything was going textbook, until Buck stumbled out of the melting double doors to where Eddie was manning triage with the paramedics from Station 122.

There’s soot streaked on his red face, and he doubles over with his hands on his knees.

Eddie abandons his teenage patient and goes to him.

“Hey, hey! What the hell happened?”

Buck blinks and reaches blindly for Eddie. “I think I’m gonna pass out.”

Eddie drags him over to the nearest engine and sits him on the tailboard. The IC walks by and tosses a bottle of water at them. Buck swallows down the whole thing and only gags twice.

“Where the hell is your facepiece?” Eddie asks, hands on his hips. He brackets Buck’s legs with his own.

Buck leans his forehead against Eddie’s stomach and lets out a ragged breath. “I took it off,” he says. “Couldn’t breathe. My nose got all stuffed up from the smoke.”

You’re going to get addicted to that Afrin stuff if you keep using it like that, Buck.

I can’t help it! My nose is always so stuffy! And I’m already super out of breath all the time. I think the baby is stealing my oxygen.

The baby isn’t stealing your oxygen, Buck.

“Buck,” Eddie groans. “That’s why you keep it on, pendejo.”

”No me llames pendejo, pendejo. Okay, I think I’m good.”

Eddie pushes Buck back down when he tries to get up. “Nope, you sit there. I’m benching you.”

“Aw, come on, coach! Don’t take me out!”

Eddie puts his lips to his warm forehead. “Nope, you lost your chance when you ditched your mask in the middle of a one-alarmer.”

Buck pouts, but ultimately listens.

He falls asleep in the engine on the way back to the station, nose tucked into the front of his turnouts because the smell of lingering smoke was too much, even though it never has been before. Everybody keeps an eyebrow raised, but all Eddie can do is shrug.

After stripping and showering, Buck announces, looking dead on his feet, that he’s going to go take a nap.

“That call drained me,” he groans, getting up from the couch.

Hen snorts. “You mean the call you only participated in half of?”

Buck waves her off and starts off towards the bunk room. Eddie watches him go and notices that he’s limping.

“Hey,” he says over the back of the couch. “Is your leg bothering you too?”

Buck looks down at his left leg and straightens it out. “Not really.”

Which is definitely a lie, but Eddie doesn’t call him out on it.

“Maybe you should get your cane, old man,” Ravi says.

“What cane?” Buck says.

“The one you used when you were pregnant.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chimney says. “That thing was cool. It had that pivoting foot thing.”

“Why would I need that?” Eddie can see Buck’s hackles rising. “I only used it because the extra baby weight killed my joints. I don’t need it. I just need a painkiller.”

“Okay,” Hen says, looking up from her laptop. “Maybe you do need a nap.”

“Uh, sorry, Buck,” Ravi says. “I didn’t mean to, uh— Do you want some Aleve? I think I have some in my locker.”

Buck scratches the back of his neck, looking guilty and embarrassed all at once.

Moody, Hen had said.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Uh, no?” Eddie says. “That’s an NSAID. You haven’t been taking that, Buck, have you?”

If he has, that could explain the inflamed birthmark, could maybe even explain everything else, and Eddie would be forced to put all this pregnancy worry down once and for all.

Buck has to think about it for a second. Pregnancy brain, or ADHD brain? Eventually, he says, “No. No, I usually steal Tylenol from the ambulance.”

Right.

“Okay, I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Hen says. “Go steal some more and hit the bunks. You’re annoying me.”

Buck smiles sheepishly and blows Eddie a discreet kiss.

He ends up sleeping through the last call of their shift, which is fine, considering they needed a man behind anyway. A kid stuck on the roof of his house trying to get a Frisbee down doesn’t require all hands on deck.

When they return, more than ready to call it quits for the day, Buck is still out. He’s snoring, too, when Eddie checks in on him. Buck doesn’t snore. He hasn’t snored since he was pregnant.

Eddie starting to feel like a broken record.

“I don’t know, it’s weird,” Chimney is saying when Eddie joins him and Ravi in the locker room.

“What’s weird?”

“Buck,” Ravi says.

“Well, we knew that.” Eddie swaps his wedding rings out. On the inside of his locker door is the Polaroid of Buck and Bobby, stuck next to a picture of Christopher and Violette at his high school graduation a couple years ago. Buck must have put it there at some point during the day. “What’s weird about him this time, though?”

Chimney sits down on a bench to tie his shoes. “I mean, he’s been acting weird all day. Is he coming down with something, you think? Robbie brought a nasty bug home last week and had Maddie laid up for two straight days.”

Eddie pauses with his jacket halfway on. “You think he’s sick?”

Chimney sits up and snaps his gum thoughtfully. “Well, his hands are all swollen, right? And he’s had to pee, like, every five minutes. Then there’s the dizziness, and the nausea…”

“Okay, and?” Eddie can feel his heart start to kick up in his chest. He tries to keep his voice casual. “What’s your diagnosis, Paramedic Han?”

“Doesn’t sound like a bug to me,” Ravi says, and Chimney hums.

“Nah, it sounds like it could be his sugar, maybe. Or something with his kidneys.” He gets a grim look on his face. “Or thyroid. We know that runs in the family.”

“Or he’s pregnant,” Ravi says.

Chimney laughs. He gets up and claps Eddie on the shoulder. “See ya, Diaz. Tell Buck to go get checked out. Come on, Rav, I’ll drive you home, bud.”

Eddie blinks at the row of lockers, then drops his duffel at his feet and starts for Hen’s office.

He turns the corners of the hall like he’s being pulled along on a wire, quick and sharp. He power-walks to Hen’s office and doesn’t even bother knocking when he gets there. There’s no time for knocking. He bursts through the door with enough force to bring it off its hinges, if this station was anything less than military-reinforced.

Hen jumps, and her day-end paperwork goes flying.

“Jesus, Eddie!”

She lets the papers go in favor of pulling off her glasses and digging the heels of her palms into her eyes. This is Eddie’s cue to speak, but he suddenly finds that he can’t. His heart thudding at the base of his throat is choking him into silence.

“I know we keep an open-door policy, but—”

“I think Buck is pregnant.”

The hands stop rubbing and drop to the desk. Hen looks at him bleary-eyed and squinting, and Eddie wonders if he spoke words or if what came out was just garbled nothing.

“I’m sorry?”

“I—” He shifts from foot to foot. “I think Buck might be pregnant. Again.”

Hen slots her glasses back onto her wrinkled nose and says, “What, can you smell it on him?”

That shakes Eddie out of it a little. “What? No, his birthmark.”

The wrinkled nose is paired with an eyebrow raise, and Hen tilts her head a fraction. “What about his birthmark?” she asks slowly, like she’s talking to a child or a mental patient.

“It kind of…glows?”

Hen, his current captain, his former partner, one of his best friends, looks at Eddie like he’s lost his mind.

“Boy, if you don’t get out of my office so we can go home.”

“No. I—!”

Eddie puts his hands on Hen’s chest to stop her from kicking him out when she gets up and rounds her desk, and when he realizes where his hands have landed, moves them to her shoulders and squeezes.

“Hen. I’m serious.”

Hen looks at him steadily for a moment, then steps out from under Eddie’s hands and closes the door gently. She sits on the edge of her desk, and Eddie suddenly feels as if he’s confessing some sort of crime.

“Okay,” she says, palms up. “What makes you think Buck’s pregnant?”

Starting with this morning and how he first noticed that Buck’s birthmark was swollen just like when he was pregnant with Violette, Eddie recounts the whole day to Hen as if she wasn’t there, ending with,

“Chim says it could be thyroid, or—or kidney, or—”

“But you don’t think so.”

Eddie takes a breath. “No, I don’t think so.”

Another steady gaze, this one softer. “I think,” Hen says, “that you should be talking to your husband about this. And not me.”

Eddie runs his hands through his hair, feeling the greasy strands between his fingers. “How do I tell my husband that I think he’s pregnant without sounding like a huge asshole?”

Hen flicks her eyebrows, as if to say Good point.

“No, he’s— He’s being purposefully ignorant, Hen, and I can’t figure out why. We always wanted a big family, you know? Well, not big, but at least one more—”

Hen’s hands go up. “Hold on. Ignorant? Maybe he just genuinely can’t tell, Eddie. Buck has always been a little scatterbrained, plus his body has changed a lot since going on T, you know?”

“I know.” Eddie’s own hands go up. “I know, but— You don’t understand, Hen. With our first baby, with Violette, he knew he was pregnant before the tests were even showing up positive, so if I think he might be pregnant, then he definitely is.”

“Alright—”

“And I don’t know why he won’t talk to me about it! He needs to stop his T, and go on prenatal, and—and, shit, Hen, this is considered a geriatric pregnancy, right? He’s going to have to go on light duty soon! Like, now! And, well, at least he already eats fairly healthy, and he takes care of himself, but—”

”Eddie!”

Eddie jumps and his heart jumps with him. He presses his hands to his chest and stares at Hen wide-eyed. Her hands are still up.

“You need,” she says emphatically, “to go and speak with Buck. Alright? Before you have a goddamn stroke in my office and leave me with even more paperwork to fill out.”

Now it’s Eddie’s turn to shove his palms into his eyes. “Jesus, okay. You’re right. I’m just worried.”

Hen snort-scoffs. “Ain’t that an understatement."

She slides off her desk and gives Eddie a brief hug and an even briefer press of her lips to his temple.

Eddie clears his throat. “Okay, uh. I’m gonna go wake him up.”

“Wait, Eddie—” Hen stops him. “He just came to me before you and said he was going home with a headache. He didn’t find you before he left?”

“No, he—” Eddie takes his phone from his pocket and clicks it on to a text from Buck.

Buck
sorry, took the car! head is killing me and couldn’t wait 🤕 picking up dinner and vi on the way. love you ❤️

“He didn’t.” Eddie slips his phone back in his pocket. “Is it okay if I—”

“Go,” Hen laughs. “You better check on him and make sure he’s not going into diabetic shock, or something.”

Eddie wipes his hands down his face and points a wavering finger at her. “Don’t joke about that.”

She laughs again and knocks his finger away. “Go home, Eddie. I’ll see you guys on Monday.”

Eddie has to call an Uber.

The house is quiet when Eddie pushes in. Setting his duffel next to Buck’s by the door, he calls out, “Babe?”

No answer. The distinct smell of Chinese food hits his nose, and he finds a stuffed-to-the-brim takeout bag sitting on the kitchen table, still steaming hot when he puts the back of his hand to it. Violette’s book bag is hooked over one of the chairs.

Eddie goes for the bedroom next. The door is cracked and the lights are off, and what sounds like an ASMR YouTube video is playing from Buck’s phone on the nightstand. Inside, Buck is sprawled on his back in the middle of the bed with Violette on top of him, her head tucked under his chin and his knuckles dragging languidly up and down her back. They’re both already in their pajamas.

Violette is still small enough that her little body moves easily with Buck’s breathing, but her legs are already so long that her feet nearly reach Buck’s knees. God, she’s going to be tall.

Eddie kneels gently next to them, bringing the CVS bag into his lap. At the sound of the crinkling bag, Buck cracks an eye open.

“Hey,” he rasps.

“Hey, yourself.” Eddie leans over and kisses him on the forehead, then kisses Violette’s hair, his hand overlapping Buck’s on her back for a moment. “Feeling okay?”

Buck hums. His eyes are on the CVS bag. “Just a headache. Think I slept too long at the station. What’d you get?”

“Takeout won’t help a headache, bud.”

“I was craving scallion pancakes,” Buck says, pushing himself up on his elbows. Violette slips down a little, and she curls against his stomach with an unhappy noise. “I already took something for it.”

Eddie makes a similar noise and sticks his hand into the CVS bag. He pulls out a little stuffed animal that fits perfectly in his palm.

“I got another one of those Palm Pal things. For her collection.”

Buck gasps like the toy is for him. “She doesn’t have the ladybug yet!”

Violette’s eyes snap open. “Ladybug?” She spots the plush and snatches it from Eddie’s hand. “Ladybug!” Her eyes close again, and she drops her head, hard, onto Buck’s chest with a blissful sigh. “Ladybug. Thank you.”

And just like that, she’s asleep.

“Her head is like a bowling ball,” Buck says, wincing and trying to shift her around.

Eddie grips the CVS bag and swallows. He’s sweating, suddenly. Why is he nervous?

“Does your chest hurt?” he asks, casually.

Buck stops wincing and hides his face in Violette’s hair as he kisses her. “Just a little tender, I guess. Sometimes that happens.”

Sometimes, sure. But now?

Eddie swallows again. “Um. I got you something.”

Buck picks his head up. “Is it those cookie dough bites that I like?”

Eddie hands him the theater box of cookie dough bites, and while Buck is tearing into them, takes out the second box. Long and thin. White with pink writing. It’s been a while since they had one of these in the house.

“And, uh. And this.”

Buck throws back a handful of candy and looks at the pregnancy test. His face turns white, then green, then red. He doesn’t take it, nor does he say anything. Eddie sets it down between them, and for a solid thirty seconds the only sounds in the room are Violette’s even breathing and the incoherent whispering coming from Buck’s phone.

Eventually, Buck throws back another handful, chewing carefully, and says as casually as Eddie had when he asked about his chest, “Heck of a way to say you want another baby.”

“Buck—”

Eddie snatches up the pregnancy test and shakes it a little. Buck looks terrified and is doing a horrible job at hiding it. It’s all the confirmation Eddie needs, really.

“Buck, you— You’re swollen.”

Buck screws his face up. ”What?”

“You’re—!”

Violette turns her face into Buck’s chest and Eddie sighs. He didn’t think this through. What the hell is he doing? Seriously? What did he think tossing a drugstore pregnancy into Buck’s lap would do?

Eddie swallows and sets the box back down.

“Buck,” he says, keeping his voice low, “are you pregnant?”

And Buck—

He gets angry.

“What the hell, Eddie?” he spits. “Why would you ask me that?”

“Because—”

“’Cause I’m swollen? Because— Because maybe I ate something salty last night? Jesus, you’re a paramedic! and you’re jumping to—”

“I’m your husband!” Eddie whisper-shouts. “I know you!”

“So how do you know I— I’m not sick, or—or—”

“Are you sick?”

Buck throws his hands up. “Maybe!”

They stare at each other, like two cowboys in a standoff. Buck’s nostrils are flaring, and Eddie wonders how they hell they got here.

“Buck—”

“I am not pregnant.” Buck’s mouth turns down at the corners as he says it, being turned away from their usual uptick by some invisible force. “Not again. I can’t be.”

Holding Violette in one arm, he gets up from the bed in one swift movement. He hoists her over his shoulder and she makes another unhappy noise into his neck. The ladybug dangles from her fingers.

Shirt rumpled, hair mussed, face pale and eyes wide, Buck looks like a cornered animal. Eddie hasn’t seen him like this in years, not since Maddie was taken by that crooked cop, maybe. And this time, Eddie is the reason. It makes him feel a little sick. This whole thing makes him feel awful. Seriously, how did they get here?

Eddie reaches for Buck’s shaking hand, clenching and unclenching at his side, and Buck moves it out of the way. He picks up his phone and pockets it.

“I can’t be,” he says again, mostly to himself. He swallows audibly. “I’m not. I’m not, Eddie.”

Eddie sits back and looks at him, looks at their daughter. She’s a gangly little kindergartener now, who collects Palm Pals and is learning how to tie her shoes, but just a few short years ago she was tiny and safe inside of Buck, making his hands and ankles swell, making him hate certain smells and crave certain foods, making him dizzy and unsteady and sore. She gave him headaches and sent him to the bathroom every hour, sometimes more. She made his birthmark glow.

It was just a few short years ago that Buck was showing up on Eddie’s doorstep in the middle of the night with a plate of overdone cookies and saying, out of breath and in a voice a bit higher than it is now,

“I think you got me pregnant.”

At that point they’d been dating for just a few weeks, sleeping together for not much longer than that, both on the precipice of twin discoveries, though neither of them knew it at the time, and there Buck was, telling Eddie he was pregnant.

“How do you know?” Eddie had asked him, taking the plate of cookies and shutting the door behind them. He’d been feeling the weight of Christopher’s absence lately, and for a split second Eddie had been convinced that Buck was doing this to distract him. Some sort of sick joke.

It wasn’t a joke. That first pregnancy test came out negative, and the one after that, and the one after that, but it was definitely not a joke.

Buck had shrugged and scratched at his bright pink birthmark and said, “I just know.”

Eddie looks at his husband’s birthmark now and comes to this conclusion:

He doesn’t want another baby.

Violette awakens suddenly, her head lifting from Buck’s shoulder like a vampire rising from its coffin, and she says with her eyes still closed and her face mashed into his cheek, “Can we eat dinner now?”

Buck pats her butt and kisses her. He won’t look at Eddie. “Yeah, baby girl,” he says. “Let’s go eat.”

They eat dinner in front of the TV so Violette doesn’t notice the silence between her dads, and afterwards, once the leftovers are put away and everyone has taken a shower or a bath or both, Eddie and Buck go to sleep in separate rooms; Eddie in theirs, Buck in Violette’s, curling up in her twin bed amongst all the stuffed animals.

It’s the first time they’re sleeping apart since living under the same roof.

When Eddie’s alarm goes off, he listens to the sounds of breakfast being made and stares at the ceiling. He stares, and he thinks, and he twists his fingers nervously, and, eventually, he gets up.

“Buck,” he says as he heads to the kitchen. “Babe, listen, I just wanted to say that I’m—”

Buck is not in the kitchen. Instead, Christopher is sitting at the table on his rollator with Violette in his lap. They’re sharing a plate of bacon and watching cartoons on his laptop.

“Chris?”

“Hi, Dad!” Violette shrieks, mouth full. Her hair is brushed and she’s already dressed for the day.

“Hey, sweetheart—”

“Hi, Dad,” Chris says.

“Uh, hey, bud. What are you doing here?”

Christopher looks at Eddie over his glasses. He looks like he’s about to snark, but instead says, holding out a piece of bacon for him, “Buck asked me last night to watch Vi. Since he had to work and you have errands.”

“Hi, Dad!” Violette says again, bouncing in Christopher’s lap. He keeps a secure arm around her.

“Hi, Vi.” Eddie hands her the bacon. It disappears in .2 seconds. “What do you mean, he had to work?”

Christopher looks at Eddie like he’s stupid. “He had to go to work. At the fire station. Where he’s a firefighter.”

Eddie rubs his hand down his face. “No, Chris, I mean— We both had the weekend off. We were supposed to run errands together.”

And they were supposed to talk.

Christopher shrugs. “Maybe he picked up someone’s shift. He shouldn’t have, though. He was pretty sick when I got here.”

“He was?”

“He pooped,” Violette says gravely. “All over. It was smelly.”

“He was puking a bunch,” Christopher amends, putting his hand over his sister’s mouth.

Puking a bunch. Right.

“Okay, and he— Went to work?”

“Correctamundo, Edmundo.”

“’Mundo,” Violette says with a giggle.

“Okay—” Eddie starts back towards the bedroom and stops. “You can watch Violette while I go get your dad?”

Christopher doesn’t even look at Eddie when he says, “That’s literally why I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“Wait, Dad—”

Eddie stops again.

“There’s cinnamon rolls in the oven. The kind with the cream cheese icing.”

“Don’t eat them!” Violette screams, almost launching herself from Christopher’s lap. “They’re gross.”

“You literally ate three of them,” Christopher tells her.

She whirls on him, pointing her finger in his face in a way that’s all Eddie. “Don’t lie. I did not.”

Christopher rolls his eyes over to Eddie. “She just wants more. I wrapped them up so you can bring them for Buck.”

Eddie flicks the oven on low and goes to get dressed. Violette and Christopher start singing the Bluey theme together, and he stops to listen with his pants halfway up his thighs, just to listen. To take a breath. He wonders why he’s rushing.

Buck is fine, he tells himself. Sure, he picked up a shift last minute without telling Eddie, and was gone before he woke up, and, sure, he didn’t leave a note or a text and was apparently throwing up all morning, but there’s no reason for Eddie to hurry to get out the door.

Mifepristone and Misoprostol can be taken up to ten weeks. A vacuum aspiration can be done up to 16 weeks. A D&E until 23. Eddie spent the better part of last night researching this on his phone. He doesn’t know how far along Buck is, but he knows they have time.

So why is he rushing?

The pregnancy test is gone from Eddie’s nightstand, and he finds it, unopened, in the medicine cabinet next to Buck’s medkit. He leaves it there, then leaves the house, kissing his kids goodbye and taking the warmed plate of cinnamon rolls with him. Covered crudely with tinfoil, Eddie sets them on the passenger seat and starts off in the direction of the station.

He goes five over the limit until he hits standstill traffic. Idling against a Suburu’s back bumper with a Cybertruck nosing at his ass, Eddie takes another breath and tells himself to slow down. If Buck were here, he’d bring up the burnt toast theory, like he does every time they carpool to work and are late because of traffic. Maybe a sinkhole opens up a mile down the road, he’d say, or there’s an active shooter at their usual coffee spot, or maybe, this time, Eddie showing up when he does gives Buck just enough time to be ready to talk.

His phone rings from the dashboard mount, and Eddie’s nerves settle a bit. He answers it.

“Hey, Buck—”

“Eddie.”

Eddie frowns and taps the screen. It’s Hen, not Buck, and there’s an edge to her voice.

“Hen,” he says, stomach clenching. “What’s up?”

There’s some rustling, what sounds like yelling. The familiar sounds of chaos. Eddie knows without knowing.

“Cap. What’s happening?”

Hen makes a frustrated noise on the other end.

“I wasn’t going to call you, but I was thinking about what you told me yesterday, and I—”

“Where are you?”

“The shopping center on West 7th,” Hen tells him reluctantly. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come down here, Eddie, I just wanted—”

Eddie hangs up and gets out of his truck. Ripping off his jacket and shutting it in the window, he heads off through the LA traffic on foot.

“Sir, I’m going to need you to step back, please.”

“My husband is in there. I need to get to him.”

“Sir, a lot of people’s husbands are in there. Now, please get back behind the barricade.”

“I am behind the barricade!”

A hand appears on the police officer’s shoulder, and Athena comes up beside him. Taking off her sunglasses, she says, “Firefighter Diaz, do we have a problem here?”

The police officer, so much younger than the both of them, takes a startled step back.

“Oh!” he says. “Um. I’m so sorry, sir, uh—”

He shifts the barricade aside and Athena pulls Eddie through by the elbow. She doesn’t let go.

“I don’t like seeing you here in your civvies, Diaz,” she says, as close to his ear as she can reach. “Is there something going on in there that I should be worried about? Other than the obvious.”

They come to a stop at a row of white tents. Despite the blood and injury Eddie is seeing, the shopping mall looks fine from where they’re standing. Eerily so.

Shielding his eyes from the sun as he looks up at the building, he says, “Buck is being Buck, I guess.”

“Goddamn that boy,” Athena says with a sharp shake of her head. She sticks her sunglasses back on. “I thought he put the reckless shit behind him once you had your little girl.”

Neither of them have landed themselves in the hospital since Violette was born, a promise they’d made when Bobby died, and they’d been doing so good upholding it.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Me too.”

Forcing her mouth out of its grim line, Athena squeezes her radio and says into it, “Captain 118, what is your location?”

Some static, and Hen’s voice rings through: “’Thena, we been at this damn sinkhole since it opened up.”

“Sinkhole?” Eddie says. He looks again at the building,

Athena lets go of her radio and wraps her fingers around his arm again. She explains as she drags him towards the crowded entrance of the shopping center.

“From what I understand, the air conditioning units crashed through the roof and took out two floors on their way down.” She shoves first responders aside, and none of them give her a second glance, either because she’s Athena Grant, or because the situation is that dire. Eddie hopes it’s the former, but he knows they’re not usually that lucky. "Maybe an hour ago, the entire south wing collapsed into the basement.”

Inside now, Eddie can see the full extent of the damage. Even after an hour, the dust still hasn’t settled, but the carnage is clear. Behind the perimeter walls, the building has been nearly reduced to a mountain of rubble.

Athena finally lets go of his arm, setting him free into the wreckage. “That’s all I know.”

A firefighter from a neighboring station goes past with a young boy in his arms, no older than sixteen-years-old. He’s unconscious, and blood runs in rivulets down his arm, cutting through the dust covering the terrazzo flooring.

“Bobby would hate this.”

Athena hums. “He was very serious about structural integrity.” Her radio signals and she grabs it. “Go bring Violette’s daddy back home to her.”

And then she’s gone, shoving her way back through the hoard of first responders.

Eddie swallows and heads deeper.

He finds his team and half of the 133 in what’s left of the south wing. Chimney spots him as he goes by with a patient strapped to a backboard. She’s missing a stiletto, and her leg is a mess of viscera. It stops Eddie in his tracks.

“Diaz?! How the hell— What the hell are you doing here?”

Eddie feels his nostrils flare. “Where’s Buck?”

The lines of Chimney’s face are long, and his eyes are wide and haunted. He tips his chin over his shoulder to where Hen is standing at the edge of the collapsed floor, manning the winch as two 133 paramedics breach the opening with another patient. He stops himself from running over.

“Hen.”

Hen doesn’t look surprised to see him. But she does look concerned.

“Did you run here?”

“Where is he.”

A helmet is slammed into his chest. It’s Buck’s.

“Put that on and I’ll lower you down. Maybe you can talk some sense into his stupid ass.”

Eddie puts Buck’s helmet on. “What’s— He’s not hurt?”

“Oh, he’s hurt.” Hen says into her radio, not taking her eyes off Eddie, “Buckley, how you doing down there?”

“Uh, I’m—” Buck coughs, long and hard and rattling. Sounds like a punctured lung, maybe. Eddie forces himself to stay still and to not jump into the hole without an assist. “I think everyone’s out.”

Hen lets out an exasperated breath. “Big damn hero,” she mutters. “That’s not what I asked, Buck.”

Buck laughs. It’s weak, but he laughs. Still, Eddie doesn’t like the sound of it.

“Get me down there, Hen. Now.”

Eddie gets down into the ruined remains of the basement with the help of one of the girls from the 133, and she wishes him good luck before she heads back up to safety.

”Buck?” Eddie calls. His voice echoes, and it sends a shiver down his spine.

Buck appears, climbing over a slab of concrete the size of a minivan. He’s helmetless and pale, and blood has dried rust-colored on the side of his face and neck. Head injury. Definitely a concussion, maybe worse. He doesn’t look surprised to see Eddie, either.

“Eddie,” Buck says, ragged. He’s holding himself tightly around the ribs with the hand that isn’t keeping his balance. “There’s—”

He erupts in another set of hacking coughs. Blood sprays from his mouth and splatters the dusty concrete.

And then he loses his balance.

”Buck!”

Buck lands hard on his knees with a pained shout, and Eddie lands next to him, knowing he shouldn’t touch but touching him anyway. He runs his fingers through Buck’s blood-and-sweat-matted curls and finds the laceration above his right ear. Not bad, but a head injury is a head injury, and Buck should be in a collar right now.

“Not bad,” Buck says, echoing Eddie’s thoughts. He spits more blood onto the ground. “Only fell a story when the floor went.”

“Only. Right.”

“Ah, and—” He leans forward into Eddie’s lap, curling in on himself. “Ah. Ribs.”

“Pneumo?”

Buck grunts. “On its way, I think.”

Eddie doesn’t want to think about it. He can’t. He can’t think about what a rib injury could mean for—

A small voice calls for help somewhere in the dark recesses of the collapsed basement, and Buck’s head snaps towards it. He’s struggling to his feet before Eddie can stop him.

“Buck— Buck, no—”

Buck bats him away. There’s a desperate fire in his eyes, the same kind that probably found him falling a story in the first place.

“It’s a kid. Oh, God, oh, God, Eddie—"

Together they scramble over the slab of concrete, towards the voice, towards the kid that’s still trapped. Eddie’s palms are bleeding by the time they get onto steady ground.

“Buck, you need to slow down.”

Buck ignores him. He’s bent slightly at the waist, hand gripping tighter than before. Eddie wants to sit him down, he wants to tear Buck’s uniform off and give him a full-body exam right here in the ruins of the West 7th shopping center. A selfish part of him wants to bring Buck to the surface and have someone else come down for the kid.

“I thought I got everyone. I thought—”

Buck stops suddenly. The desperate little voice calls again but he makes no move to keep going. What little blood was left in his face drains completely.

“Buck, what are you feeling, baby?”

His hand splays over his stomach, pressing, and all he says is, ”Ow.”

Eddie freezes for half a second, then he’s fumbling with the layers of Buck’s turnouts until he can get his naked, shaking fingers under his shirt. His belly is warm to the touch.

Eddie’s brain supplies Uterine rupture, but his mouth says, “Liver lac.”

Buck hums, bordering on a whimper. “I don’t— I don’t feel good, Eddie. I think I’m, uh, hmm. Tachycardic.”

Eddie moves his fingers from Buck’s belly to the side of his neck, and finds his pulse erratic. Bright blood sits in the corner of Buck’s mouth.

“Okay, yeah, we’re getting you out of here.”

"No.”

"Buck.” Eddie puts his hands on the sides of Buck’s face, holding him, forcing him to look him in the eye, but also keeping his cervical spine steady. “You have multiple rib fractures. Upper and lower. You know as well as I do how badly that can go.”

“There’s a kid,” Buck whines with huge, bloodshot eyes. “I have to save him.”

“What you have to do is sit down before you fall down. I’ll get the kid.”

Eddie half drags, half carries Buck to an overturned leather chair that looks like it might be from a dressing room on one of the fallen floors, and sits him down on the edge. He takes Buck’s helmet and props it gently on his head.

“I’d have Hen send down the harness, but I know you won’t go up on your own.”

Fists on his knees, Buck lets out a breath. “No chance.”

“Alright.” Eddie puts his lips to Buck’s dirty forehead. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back, you hear me?”

Buck gives a wordless two-finger salute.

As satisfied as he can be, Eddie leaves Buck and follows the kid’s tiny, pleading voice.

He finds the little boy cowering under two tented slabs of concrete maybe a hundred feet from where he left Buck, sparking from broken electric and too small for Eddie to fit.

“Hey!” Eddie says, getting down on his knees. It feels wrong to be in jeans and a Henley, and he has to keep reminding himself the same that he’d reminded Buck: Don’t do anything stupid.

The little boy is wet and shaking. He’s clinging to a stiletto high heel.

“Hey,” Eddie says, gentler. He holds out a hand. “I’m a firefighter. Are you hurt?”

He shakes his head. “Where’s my mom?”

Eddie’s heart twists at the downturn of his little quivering mouth. “I think she already got out. Come on, let’s go find her.”

The little boy looks at Eddie’s hand for a second; the building around them groans. He tosses the shoe aside and crawls out.

When he’s close enough, Eddie grabs the little boy by the arm and yanks him out, past the sparking and into his arms. He’s cold and he’s shivering and Eddie holds him tight against his chest as he stands.

“Alright,” he breathes. “Okay, let’s get out of here, huh?”

“I— Me and my mom were getting a birthday present for my little sister,” the boy babbles into Eddie’s neck. Eddie hitches him higher in his arms when he starts to slip. He can’t be more than seven or eight.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Um, yeah. We— I know she likes Taylor Swift so I wanted to get her, like, um, like, something with Taylor Swift on it. She has a lot of shirts.”

“You sound like a good big brother.”

“My mom says that I am.” He lowers his voice, almost to the point where Eddie can’t hear him over the chaos. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure, little man.”

“Um, I really didn’t want a little sister, but I really love her. She’s my best friend. Um, especially since my older sister is too old to live with us anymore. Her name is Casey and she goes to college.” Eddie smiles into the top of the boy’s head. “Um, do you have a best friend?”

“I do.” They come upon Buck, still sitting hunched on the overturned chair. He’s still holding his stomach and he’s even paler than when Eddie left him, if that was possible. Eddie stays calm. “This is my best friend, his name is Buck. He saved your mom.”

Buck looks up, and at the sight of the little boy in Eddie’s arms, unharmed, his shoulders sag, and he smiles.

“Having a best friend that’s a firefighter just like you must be so cool.” The boy waves. “Hi, Buck. I’m Daniel, but you can call me Danny. Like from The Shining.”

Eddie and Buck let out surprise laughs. Buck grimaces into his shoulder so Danny doesn’t see.

“Come on, Danny. More of our friends are waiting topside.”

Buck starts to get up from his perch and Eddie points a severe finger at him.

“Sit. Danny, tell him to sit.”

“Sit!”

Buck sits.

The harness is waiting for them when Eddie gets on the other side of the fallen concrete, and Hen’s beaming face greets them as they breach the hole.

“Wow, Buck, you look different,” she says. Two B-shift paramedics take Danny from Eddie’s arms and set him on a waiting gurney. They wrap him in a foil blanket.

“Danny’s mom is the last person Buck got out,” Eddie tells Hen. And, lowering his voice, adds, “The one with the leg.”

Hen nods. “You’re going outside to tent five, sweetheart. Your mom’s been asking for you.”

“Yeah, she does that sometimes,” Danny says, making the paramedics laugh. They wheel him out.

Eddie is about to be lowered back down when Hen grabs his elbow.

“How’s he doing?”

He avoids the question in her eyes, the one she doesn’t ask. “Not great. Have an RA ready.”

Hen lets go. She gives him a sad smile. “Chim’s already outside waiting. I’ll send a backboard down after you.”

“Copy that, Cap.”

Eddie goes down.

“Last ones out,” he says as he climbs back over the concrete barrier. The knees of his jeans are beginning to tear open. “This is just like our first date. Remember that?”

Buck, shaking, weak, lets Eddie pull him to his feet. He blinks a few times, and Eddie knows what it looks like when he’s about to pass out. They just have to make it back over, just another hundred feet and they’re home free.

“Heh, yeah. Those waiters hated us.”

“They did. That was the first time I’d ever been kicked out of somewhere.”

“Not me,” Buck grunts. “You didn’t know me when I was a teenage girl. I think I was— I was banned from three different Sheetz back home.”

They reach the fallen concrete. It suddenly looks much larger than before. Much more daunting.

Eddie looks at Buck. Buck looks back.

“This is gonna suck,” Eddie tells him, and Buck shrugs a shoulder.

“Let’s do it anyway.”

Neither of them move.

“Guys, I’m getting evac orders up here,” comes Hen’s voice from Buck’s radio. “Y’all ready to come up?”

Eddie lets out a breath. “Let’s go, pobrecito.”

Buck lets Eddie hoist him up on top of the concrete. “I hate it when you call me that— Fuck!”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t always getting yourself into situations.” Eddie comes up beside him and puts a hand on his back. “Okay?”

Buck squeezes his eyes shut. He’s wheezing, and Eddie can hear his breath crackling in his chest.

“Eddie,” he says. It sounds more like a whimper.

“Yeah, baby.”

“Boys,” Hen warns.

“Eddie,” Buck whimpers again. His helmet, unbuckled, slips down his forehead and he hisses. Eddie straightens it for him. “I’m sorry.”

“For what—”

Blood fills the crevices between his white teeth, like stained grout in bathroom tile. Eddie hasn’t seen him look this scared since that night five years ago, with the cookies and the life-changing news in the palm of his hands.

Eddie is suddenly scared, too.

“For last night. For— I have to—”

”No.”

The building groans ominously around them. Hen is saying something from the radio on Buck’s chest but Eddie can’t hear it over the sudden ringing in his ears.

“Eddie—”

“No, Buck, we can talk when we get the hell out of here. Now, let’s move.”

Buck whimpers again but lets Eddie manhandle him to the other side of the concrete. They land heavily on their feet, kicking up dust and dirt. Another groan, followed by a loud, distant cracking like a thunderstorm rolling in.

Hen’s next words are drowned out completely when the entire world crashes down around them.

“—off.”

Debris rains like hail against Eddie’s back, slicing through his Henley, and in turn, his skin. Beneath him, Buck is screaming into his teeth.

“Buckley-Diazes, sound off!”

“Eddie, get off! Get off me!”

Eddie scrambles back onto his haunches, landing on Buck’s thighs. A steel support beam, gnarled and broken to half its size but weighing no less than a hundred pounds, lays perpendicular across Buck’s left shoulder. He presses his face into it, agony twisting his features. His left hand, gloveless and ringless, twitches.

“Oh, God,” Eddie breathes.

“Eddie!” Buck howls, the muscles in his neck straining taut. “My shoulder, my— my fucking— Get it off!”

With a sort of hysterical strength, the kind mothers get that has them able to lift a car, Eddie heaves the support beam off of Buck’s arm and tosses it aside as if it weighed nothing. His coat hides the damage, but Eddie knows it’s bad. They both know it’s bad. Crush injury. More broken bones, more sharp edges floating around in the soft recesses of Buck’s body, poking, nicking, tearing. His belly is already filling with blood, there’s already air leaking into his pleural space—

And they’re trapped.

Eddie can no longer see the light coming in from above, can no longer hear the chaos of outside. The dark gray of wet concrete surrounds them. Water. Water is trickling in from somewhere unseen and dampening the rubble around them. It’s pooling, it’s reaching Buck’s ears—

Eddie grabs the open front of Buck’s coat and hauls him up, out of the water. Buck shouts in pain.

1995. Korea. People drowned in two inches of water.

“Sampoong!” Buck cries. “I know! I told you about that!”

Eddie didn’t know he was speaking out loud. He lets go of Buck’s coat when he’s sure he won’t fall backwards.

“Buck! Eddie! Can you hear me? Sound off, goddamnit.”

The radio is gone from Buck’s chest, probably knocked off when the beam fell on him. Eddie doesn’t see where it landed.

“If you can hear me,” Hen says, voice hard yet shaking. Their captain first, but their friend always, “just stay put. We’re coming to you.”

“Oh, God,” Eddie says again. “Oh, God, Buck.”

Buck is loud when he’s in pain, that was one of the first things Eddie had ever learned about him. He moaned and he groaned and he yelled. Every exhale came as a grunt, low in his throat, animalistic. Buck in pain was the rawest form of him. Sometimes he complained, sometimes he cried. Buck’s body did not belong to him when he was hurting. It was the same whether he was trapped beneath an overturned ladder truck or giving birth to their daughter.

Now, the pain is at such a level that it turns to panic. Desperate noises spill from Buck’s mouth, his hands— his hand grabs and pulls at Eddie. Eddie has no idea what he wants nor what he needs, but he holds him close.

“Buck, Buck, you need to relax.”

“Eddie, I messed up,” Buck cries, ignoring him. “I—I messed up so bad, Eddie. I—I wasn’t even supposed to be here, but Ravi’s parents are in town to surprise him and I couldn’t face you after last night, and I—”

“Okay, it’s okay, just—"

“No, n-no.” Buck pushes and he pulls. “Eddie, Eddie, I need to tell you something.”

Eddie wants to put his hand over Buck’s mouth. Wants to keep the words from hitting the air.

“Buck, please—”

“I'm pregnant.”

Something in Eddie’s chest, something that spider-webbed when Hen first called him that morning, splinters and breaks. He closes his eyes so tight they ache.

“I know.”

Buck swallows a moan, or a sob, or something in between. “What? H-how?”

“I just know.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Eddie, I’m so sorry—”

Eddie holds the back of his neck, again keeping his spine steady because it’s second nature for Eddie to protect him, and puts his mouth to his cool, clammy forehead.

“Don’t you dare apologize.”

“But I— I knew, but I didn’t— I wasn’t—”

“Buck, baby, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Buck explodes, blood-flecked spittle hitting Eddie’s face. “Eddie, I knew. I knew, but I pretended it wasn’t true, I ignored it, and now— now I’m probably going to miscarry.”

Eddie lets go of him, just a little. Buck is holding his stomach in a way that reminds Eddie of when he was pregnant with Violette, fingers splayed and stretched to touch every inch, purposeful, loving. Like he has the entire world in his palm.

“Wait, you—" Eddie bites his lip to stop it from quivering. “You want this?”

Buck looks devastated. “What?” he breathes. “Did you— I didn’t do this on purpose, Eddie. I wasn’t trying to put myself in danger, I wasn’t trying to hurt—"

Eddie holds him again. “No, no, Buck, I never said that, I just thought—” He swallows, and he says in a small voice, “You didn’t tell me.”

Hen’s voice breaks through the sudden, heavy silence. Eddie follows it and finds Buck’s radio half-crushed beneath a crumbling cinderblock. He blows on it and presses the buttons.

“Cap, come in.”

“Eddie? Is that you?”

“It’s me, Hen. I need you on a secure channel, now.”

Hen comes back after a few seconds. “What’s going on down there?”

“Do you remember what I told you yesterday?"

Hen swears to herself. “Okay. Is— Is Buck…”

Buck knocks his helmet off. He’s beginning to turn gray, and there’s more sweat than blood in his hair.

“Just get us out of here, Hen.”

“Roger that.”

Eddie throws the radio. Buck flinches and begins to cry, loud, noisy sobs.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says. “I’m just so scared.”

Eddie cradles his face, pressing his thumb into his birthmark, still so pink despite the lack of color in his face. “Buck, what are you afraid of, sweetheart? We’ve done this before.”

“But we haven’t done it without Bobby.”

Buck at Bobby’s memorial wall, the photo from when Violette was born. How are we supposed to do this without him? It makes sense to Eddie, now. Bobby was the largest figurehead in Buck’s village the last time he was pregnant, he got them through those first few crucial weeks with Violette. Hell, Bobby was the first person they let into the delivery room.

Buck’s sobs taper off as Eddie digests the enormity of this realization, this realization that Buck has been coping with for however many weeks since he first noticed he was pregnant again.

“Everything is so different now,” Buck says with a pained grunt as he shifts his legs beneath him.

“It is,” Eddie agrees.

“I’m different.”

Eddie kisses his forehead again. “You’re still you,” he says, echoing a familiar sentiment from the early days of Buck’s transition.

Buck snorts. It cuts off into another round of hacking coughs, which turns into wheezing swears.

“Fuck, shit. E-Eddie, it hurts. Oh, God, this hurts so bad. I hope they’re okay, I hope I didn’t—”

A crash, somewhere close by. Eddie gets up and stands over Buck.

“Hello?!”

“Firefighter Diaz?”

“Yes! Yes, we’re here! Hurry it up!”

The sound of a rotary saw assaults their senses, the revving, squealing sound of freedom. Buck, with his good hand, grabs onto Eddie’s leg.

“I want this!” he shouts over the noise. “I’m scared, Eddie, but I want this!”

“I do too!” Eddie props Buck’s helmet back on his head and slaps the visor down. And then he says what they were always told not to: “Everything’s gonna be okay.”

Their concrete fortress cracks and begins to fall, flooding their small, dark space with hazy light. A firefighter that Eddie doesn’t recognize is the first face that peers in.

“Firefighter Diaz?”

Eddie looks down at his dirtied Henley. “Yeah. I just decided to come in on my day off.”

He gives a crooked smile. “We’re never really off the clock, are we?”

“Not when you’re married to this one.”

Buck, at Eddie’s feet, huffs. “I think I’m decompensating here.”

The rescue goes quickly after that. A team of firefighters comprised of every house across Los Angeles gets them out, strapping Buck to a backboard and ratcheting him up to safety. The shopping center is even more unrecognizable when Eddie joins him topside. It’s a miracle they made it out at all.

Station 6 paramedics are cutting Buck out of his turnout coat and shirt, slashing his suspenders and leaving them hanging. He’s on a gurney now, staining the blue sheets with dirt and blood. A mottled bruise stretches from his shoulder to his belly.

“Careful, careful!” Eddie says when they start wrapping his arm in gauze to stabilize it against his chest. “Careful, he’s pregnant.”

”What?” Chimney appears, then. His faces goes ashen as he takes Buck in. “Oh, man, your sister is going to be so mad at you.”

“Not any madder than my husband,” Buck says, bringing his legs up slightly and groaning. Eddie pushes them back down so he’s laying flat.

One of the paramedics, who they’ve worked with before and who just finished pointing out Buck’s top surgery scars to her clueless partner, says to Buck, “Well, Buckley, you just earned yourself a one-way ticket to Cedars-Sinai.”

“No!” Eddie says. “No, UCLA. They have a better fetal medicine department there.”

They get a C-collar on Buck and carefully make their way outside, the wheels of the gurney hiccuping over fallen debris. Buck cries out with every jolt, and he’s in earnest tears by the time they load him into the awaiting 118 ambulance.

“I’m sorry,” he says miserably to no one in particular.

Hen and Athena appear in the doors and lean over Buck with watery smiles.

“You sure as hell better be,” Athena says, sniffing. “If Bobby were here, he’d wring your stupid neck.”

Hen squeezes Buck’s cheeks and plants a kiss on his forehead. “You’re on light duty until Violette graduates high school. Chim, take good care of them.”

Chimney nods. “Aye aye, Captain. Alright, let’s go!”

Hen and Athena slam the ambulance doors shut on them and the engine rumbles to life.

“I’m sorry,” Buck says again.

“Diaz, you should be in a collar too, you know.”

Eddie waves Chimney off. “I’m more worried about him.”

Buck sobs. “I’m so sorry.”

They look at him. Eddie puts a hand on Buck’s chest. His heart is jackhammering against his palm.

“Baby,” he says. “Why are you apologizing?”

“Pushing morphine and Zofran,” Chimney says as he gets Buck hooked up to a line. He hands Eddie an oxygen mask.

“I’m going to lose them,” Buck says to the ceiling. “And it’s all my fault.”

Eddie puts the oxygen mask over Buck’s nose and mouth and picks his hand up from the bed so he can hold it himself. “You’re delirious with pain, Buck. When the morphine kicks in, you’ll feel better.”

“Oh, God,” Buck groans, his eyes fluttering shut. The LifePak between his legs erupts in alarm.

“BP is tanking,” Chimney says. “Stay with me, Buck.”

“Chim,” Eddie warns, holding the oxygen mask up when Buck’s hand starts to slip.

Chimney points to the portable ultrasound machine on the shelf next to Eddie’s head. “Give me that. I need to do a FAST on him.”

Eddie gives it to him, along with a bottle of gel. Chimney squeezes a generous amount over Buck’s chest and belly, forgoing the typical cold warning.

The screen on the ultrasound comes to life when Chimney presses the wand into Buck’s wrapped shoulder. Buck groans low under his breath.

“Left anterior. Free-flowing bone fragments,” Chimney mutters. “Not enough to worry about yet.”

The wand is slid over to the other side of Buck’s chest.

“Right anterior. Air in the pleural space. Mild pneumothorax, no sign of total collapse yet.”

Eddie’s shoulders sag in relief.

Chimney moves the wand down between Buck’s pecs, in the hollow of his sternum. “You’re tachycardic, Buck. Heart looks good otherwise. No pericardial effusion.”

The wand slides an inch.

“You lacerated your liver, though. I’ve got a little blood in the abdominal cavity.”

“No—” Eddie swallows. “No uterine abruption?”

Buck whimpers behind the oxygen mask, fogging the plastic.

Chimney glances at both of them in turn and presses the ultrasound wand deep into Buck’s belly, below his naval. Buck flinches and tries to move away.

“Uterus looks good,” Chimney says. “Placenta is intact, and…”

”And?” Eddie prompts.

Chimney blows out a breath, and when he looks at Eddie, his eyes are shining. The air in the ambulance shifts considerably.

“And there’s definitely a baby in there.”

He turns the ultrasound machine so they can see. The screen is gray and fuzzy, a familiar picture they’ve all seen plenty of times on the job and in their personal lives, and right there in the center, maybe the size of a strawberry, is a light-colored mass that could be nothing but a baby.

It could also be pooling blood, or a tumor, but Eddie doesn’t think a tumor has fingers and toes.

“Oh,” Eddie says, and takes Buck’s hand.

Fingers and toes and a little nose and— their baby.

“Nice job, Diaz. Not one, not two, but three unplanned pregnancies. You officially got me and Maddie beat.”

Buck grunts. “With Violette, the condom broke. And with— with this one— I thought testosterone was a birth control.”

Chimney’s face falls. “Even I know that’s not true, Buck.”

Buck cracks a smile behind the oxygen mask. “Just kidding.”

Chimney wags his finger. “Morphine’s kicking in.”

Eddie leans over Buck to get a closer look at the screen. “Ten weeks?”

“Yeah,” Chimney says, looking too. “I’m no expert, but I’d say you’re about ten weeks in, Buckaroo.”

He twists a dial on the machine and the typical whooshing of an ultrasound turns into a rhythmic galloping, filling the back of the ambulance. The heartbeat. As fast as Buck’s tachycardic one, but that’s normal for babies.

“Buck, baby, look.”

Eddie lowers the oxygen mask and lifts the ultrasound machine to his eye level, and Buck frowns before he smiles.

“Wow,” he breathes.

“Blood pressure’s coming back up,” Chimney says. “How you feeling, Buck? Any cramping?”

“No,” Buck says. “Are they— are they okay?”

Chimney wiggles the wand a little. Buck hisses again. “I’d say you got the Bobby Nash Special.”

Buck makes a questioning noise.

“The what?” Eddie says.

Chimney grins around a wad of chewing gum. “Someone was looking out for you. Baby Buckley-Diaz looks just fine.”

A lump forms in Eddie’s throat, and he leans forward and kisses the first part of Buck he can reach, which happens to be his forearm. He sends a silent Thank you up to Bobby. Things could have easily gone very, very bad.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t know, Buck,” Eddie says into Buck’s elbow. “I mean— ten weeks. Jesus.”

Buck shifts his arm under Eddie’s cheek. He gets the oxygen mask strap around his head finally and puts a hand on the back of Eddie’s neck. His core temp is coming up, and his palm burns Eddie’s skin.

“Eddie— I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t even want to know.”

His hand slips to Eddie’s shoulder, and a dull ache throbs under his touch. He should probably get himself checked out when they get to UCLA, but not now.

“Uh-oh,” Chimney says suddenly, shifting nervously where he sits.

“What, uh-oh,” Eddie says, his heart climbing into his throat. He squeezes Buck’s elbow. “Don’t say uh-oh.”

Chimney doesn’t look at them. He twists his wrist and suddenly the baby-shaped mass on the screen looks different. Bigger.

“You know I said I’m no expert—”

“Chim.”

“I think you’re farther along than ten weeks, Buck.”

Buck swallows a few times before he can get the words out. He’s well on his way to slipping into that sweet morphine-induced sleep. “How d’you know?”

“Well,” Chimney says, shifting again. “I think I can see the sex. Hold on.”

“Wait, Chim—”

They didn’t know with Violette. They didn’t want to know. All they cared about was if the baby was healthy and—

“Looks like Violette’s getting a little brother!”

Eddie groans and drops his face back into Buck’s arm. Buck, as sleepy and delirious as he is, laughs until his ribs hurt. As punishment, Chimney shuts the ultrasound machine off and ends the FAST exam.

“Eddie, Eds.”

”Eds?” Chimney chuckles, wiping the gel from Buck’s chest and belly carefully.

Eddie shakes his head. “He only calls me that when he’s drunk or hopped up on pain meds. What, sweetheart.”

Buck frowns, and his eyebrows struggle to furrow, like his brain forgot how. “How did you know?”

Eddie thinks about yesterday, about everything he told Hen, all the symptoms, every indicator, and says, “Your birthmark.”

Buck scrunches his nose. “My— my birthmark?”

“Yeah, it’s—” Eddie huffs a small laugh. “It’s glowing, Buck.”

Buck reaches up and touches the swollen skin above his browbone like it’s something precious. A small smile overtakes his face, pained features finally smoothing out. His eyes shut.

”Magic.”