Buck was off the day after that, which was honestly for the best. It was also not an off day where they were scheduled for therapy, which was great.
Quite frankly, he needed the day to himself. He needed to not have to face his coworkers after last night. It was embarrassing, at the very least. He knew what they'd said they thought about it, but he also couldn't stop thinking about how Buck 1.0 had been. If maybe they were just too nice to say that maybe that version of him held at least part of the blame.
He was also glad to not have to see Eddie again quite yet. Sort of. He also missed the other man more than words could describe and if Eddie called right now he'd drop everything and literally run to him. He was still embarrassed about last night though.
Hi, hello, so glad to be given the gift of your friendship once again. Now let me have a big loud messy breakdown in your arms. Thanks.
Who even did that? Well, other than Buck. Could he get anymore high maintenance?
Anyways, the point was that he had some time off where he wasn't going to see any of them, and he was choosing to see it as a blessing. Also as a day to get some errands done. So, he woke up bright and early and jogged down to the park near his apartment where he ran one of the trails there and then jogged back home. He took a shower, drank a protein shake, took his meds, and headed to the hardware store to get some wood and varnish for the crib he was building.
He did that sometimes, well, he'd started doing it since his leg got crushed to pass time. He'd build and donate a crib or something else that the local shelter said they needed. The crib he was currently working on was almost done. He knew that Maddie was planning on painting this one with a garden theme too. So it would be super cute for whatever babies needed it.
The hardware store was somehow out of wood. Well, not entirely out of wood, but out of the kind he needed. So he had to drive across town to the other store's location where the store associate swore they had the thinner planks that he needed for the slats.
It was fine, it's not like he really had anything dire he needed to deal with today. Other than maybe getting some lunch soon, because he was getting hungry.
It was then, while he was crossing between Rose and Granville street, that it happened. The only warning being the sudden blaring of a horn while he was crossing the intersection and then a Minivan was T-boning the pickup in front of him.
Buck slammed on his breaks, throwing the jeep into park and hitting his hazards before he was leaping out of the jeep. He had his phone out of his pocket in a second and was already dialling 9-1-1.
"This is 9-1-1, what's your emergency?" The voice over the phone sounded vaguely familiar, but he didn't have the mental capacity to think too much about it as he ran over to the cars.
"This is off duty firefighter Buckley with the 118. I'm at the intersection of Rose and Granville, there's a minivan that T-boned a pickup." He called into the phone.
A man stumbled out of the pickup truck, looking mostly unharmed other than a profusely bleeding nose.
"Buck? Is that you?" Asks the voice over the phone and he realised who he's talking to.
"Hey Josh." He greeted before getting back to business, "I've got at least one person injured, send me an RA unit."
"Already on the way, it's three minutes out." Josh informed him.
"Hello, Sir? I'm a firefighter, are you alright?" He asked, standing in front of the driver, who didn't seem able to really make eye contact with him.
"'Mmmm fiiineee" The guy answered, stumbling a bit.
Buck had him sit on the curb after that, fairly certain that a concussion was a strong possibility.
"Is there anyone else in the truck?" He asked, snapping in front of the guys face to get his attention, "Hey! Was there anyone else with you?"
"N-no. Jus' me." The guy slurred.
He wasn't doing good, but he'd stay conscious.
"Hey! You!" He called to one of the teenagers who was taking a video of the accident. "Turn that off and get over here!"
The kid startled at having been called out of the rapidly growing crowd, but he did as Buck said and jogged over.
"Stay with this guy, keep him talking. If he loses consciousness get me." He ordered, barely waiting for the kid's nod before he was heading back towards the cars.
"Did you get all that Josh?" He called into his phone as he jogged past the pickup, glancing through the windows to be sure it really was empty.
"Yes. Can you confirm there was no one else in the truck?" Josh asked, the clicking of the keyboard going in the background.
"Yeah, it's clear. Checking the van now." He called, rounding the truck to get to the minivan.
He let out a sigh of relief when he saw an advertisement for a cleaning agency on the side of the van. Not that he had anything against cleaning people, but it meant that there almost definitely wasn't some mom with an entire soccer team's worth of children crammed in the back. Small mercies.
He ran over to the driver's side. It was sort of crumpled from the collision, but he could get close enough to bang on the window. There was a woman inside, unconscious in the drivers seat. She was looking pretty banged up, but she was breathing.
"Hey! Hey! Can you hear me!" He yelled, banging on the window, and the woman stirred.
He kept banging and calling out to her, and luckily she woke up. Eyes blinking open groggily before she was jolting up in her seat and looking around wildly. She tried to open her door, but it was stuck.
"Ayuda! Ayúdame!" She screamed, banging on the door and continuing to try to force it.
"Hey! Oye! Mírame!" He called, getting her too look up at him, eyes wide in panic, "Cálmate! Te ayudaré!"
He tried to exaggerate taking a couple deep breaths, which she thankfully seemed to catch on to. She calmed down a bit and Buck tried the door from the outside but it still wasn't working.
"Uno momento!" He called, gesturing that he would be right back.
The woman nodded and he took off towards the bed of the pickup truck where he'd spotted some scattered tools earlier.
"Josh, I got another injured woman. She was unconscious but now she's fully conscious and alert." he called.
"Ok Buck, help is a minute out." Josh informed him.
He spotted a wrench and quickly grabbed it, running back over to the minivan. He mimed smashing the window and then ducking for cover. The woman nodded that she understood and then turned away from the window and shielded her head.
"Uno, dos, y tres!" He called in warning before smashing the wrench through the top corner of her window.
The woman was scrambling to get out of the window before Buck could stop her to check for any potential spinal injuries. He reached through the window to help her climb out, and between the two of them they made quick work of it.
"Gracias! Gracias! Muchos gracias!" The woman cried once she was out of the car as Buck helped brush the glass off of her.
"No problemo." Buck waved her off easily, "Estás adolorido?"
"Un poquito." She said, showing him her arms that were scraped up from the airbag, "pero estoy bien, lo prometo. Gracias por ayudar."
She patted him on the cheek with a smile, just as the ambulance and fire truck pulled up. He led her over to the paramedics and pointed some of the firefighters towards the other man still sitting with the kid on the curb.
"Alright Josh, everything's ok, help is here. I'm going to let you go now. Thanks." Buck said into the phone.
"No problem Buck, see you around." Josh said before hanging up so he could take the next call.
The man was taken away in the first ambulance, but the woman refused one, instead opting to let the paramedics patch up her scrapes and have a coworker pick her up from the scene. The cops had just started taking statements and Buck's adrenaline was finally crashing when one of the paramedics approached him.
"Hey man, were you in the accident too?" The guy called.
"No, I was just nearby. Figured I'd help out." Buck waved him off, gesturing towards his jeep that was clearly not mangled by the crash.
"You sure you're alright?" The paramedic said, jogging over until he was only a few steps away. "You're arm doesn't look too good."
Buck looked down and found that his right arm was coated in blood from a pretty decent gash on his forearm. Shit. He hadn't even noticed, but it must be from helping that lady climb out through the window. She'd been panicking so much that he'd had to help her out before he could clear out all the extra glass.
He felt a bit dizzy now that he was looking at his arm. His heart beating loud in his ears and all he could think about was the little white pill he'd swallowed that morning.
"Uh, this might be a good time to mention that I'm on blood thinners."
.................................................
"Alright Mr. Buckley, light duty for the next day or two, and a round of antibiotics, but other than that I think you'll be alright." The doctor announced once he'd finished gluing Buck's arm back together.
The cut didn't end up being as bad as all the bleeding had made it seem, but he supposed that was the blood thinners. He sort of felt a bit silly, having had them drive him to the hospital and all. Still though, it was the right call, the mature call. One that Bobby would've been proud of back when he was still talking to him.
"Sounds good doc, am I good to head out?" He said, swinging his legs over the exam table he'd been on.
"Yeah, take care Mr. Buckley." The doctor said, and Buck was out of there like a bat out of hell.
He didn't much like hospitals, never had.
He hadn't made it past the ER to get patched up, so it was a short walk into the waiting room where the exit was. He would've kept right on walking too if he hadn't heard a very familiar voice over by the help desk.
"I'm here for Evan Buckley, I'm His emergency contact and I got a call that he was here but they didn't say why." A very worried sounding voice was saying.
Buck turned and did a double take, because There was no way that Bobby was very urgently and very worriedly inquiring about him at the front desk of the ER. Bobby was there though, no matter how many times Buck blinked or pinched his uninjured arm.
"Bobby?"
The man whipped around, and, upon seeing Buck standing there, hurried over and started looking him over.
"Are you alright? The hospital called but they wouldn't tell me anything!" Bobby said.
"Yeah, Bobby I'm totally fine, I promise!" Buck assures the other man, still feeling a bit like maybe he woke up in an alternate reality where the lawsuit had never happened. "I just cut myself a bit. It's fine I swear, I just wanted to be extra careful."
"How did it happen?" Bobby asks, eyes still roving over Buck like he was searching for any other signs of injury.
"There was an accident in the intersection right in front of me." Buck answers dutifully, "Both drivers were alright, worst injury was a concussion."
"And you figured you'd help out?" Bobby says more than asks, already knowing the answer.
Buck shrugged and nodded, not really sure what else he could've done.
"Of course you did." Bobby sighs, sounding disappointed.
Buck felt his breathing ratchet up, mind suddenly going a million miles an hour at that response. This was it, he supposed, this was finally his breaking point with Bobby.
"Are you- are you seriously disappointed in me right now?" Buck demands, suddenly angry and frustrated in a way that had tears springing to his eyes.
It wasn't fair, it wasn't fucking fair, was all the voice in his head could scream. None of this was his fault, he hadn't asked for a truck to crush him or the metal in his leg to start throwing clots or for a goddamn tsunami to slam into the pier. He hadn't gotten hurt on purpose, or in any way that could even be blamed on him, yet Bobby was acting like he was, like he was responsible for all the bad things that'd happened to him. Buck couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't keep doing this with Bobby, he didn't know what he was going to do instead, but it couldn't be this. It couldn't be-
"No, I'm not." Bobby said, stopping Buck's rapidly deteriorating thoughts in their tracks, "I think I'm disappointed in myself."
"W-what?" Buck stuttered out, not having expected that in the slightest.
"Do you want to get lunch?" Bobby asked, instead of explaining, "I think maybe we should talk."
"I- yeah, sure." Buck nodded hesitantly, still not sure exactly what alternate reality he'd stepped into.
"C'mon, I'm driving." Bobby nodded towards the exit where Buck quickly followed.
He was incredibly unsure as to what the hell was going on, but he also definitely wasn't going to question it. He considered that his car was probably still pulled over haphazardly by that intersection and that he should probably go get it. He didn't dare interrupt whatever was going on between him and Bobby to ask if he could be taken to get his car instead though. It'd be fine for another hour.
"What's going on here, exactly?" Buck finally asked after the first couple minutes of silence as they drove to a nearby diner. "Am I getting fired?"
"What? No." Bobby shook his head, then sighed, "I'd ask why you'd think that, but I guess given recent events that might be a somewhat fair question."
Buck let out an awkward chuckle, not really sure how else to respond, "Ok, so what is going on then?"
"I figured we could talk." Bobby shrugged, seeming nervous but definitely trying to appear calm.
"About the lawsuit?" Buck clarified, and Bobby nodded, "Look Bobby, I know I already said it, but I'm really sorry. The whole thing was a colossal mistake, I just freaked out and then it all just spiraled out of control and I'm so sorry."
"It's, well it's not ok exactly, please don't ever do anything like that again-" Bobby started.
"I won't, I swear." Buck promised vehemently.
Bobby huffed and cut a fond glance over at him at the interruption, "I know, but listen. The way you went about it was wrong, but your argument wasn't. I was treating you differently than the others."
Buck nodded, and Bobby took a deep breath like he was bracing himself for his next words, hands clenching and unclenching around the wheel.
"It's just, after the embolism- it reminded me of me. When I hurt my back I was so desperate to get back to work, back to doing what I loved, that I pushed myself way too hard. Then the pain got too much and I started getting into pills and booze and it all got out of control. You know how that story goes."
Buck nodded, because he did. He knew that that was what Bobby had been thinking about too, he'd said as much at that dinner with Athena when he'd told Buck it was him saying no to him going back to work. He wasn't Bobby though, he wasn't making the same mistake as he had all those years ago, but he hadn't known how to make Bobby see that.
"You aren't repeating my mistakes though, I see that now." Bobby said, and god did hearing that admission feel good. "It was more than just that holding me back from letting you come back to work though. I was scared, you'd almost died on the job, and because of something I'd done years ago."
"That wasn't your fault." Buck immediately butt in, conviction clear in his voice.
Bobby sort of nodded, but didn't verbally agree.
"I was scared. I was scared of losing you and I wanted to protect you." Was what Bobby said instead, "And I thought that if you weren't at work then you could be safe."
"That isn't how the world works though." Buck pointed out softly, and Bobby let out an unamused huff of laughter.
"Yeah, I think that's what I realized today after I got that call from the hospital. Maybe I should've had that realization after the tsunami, but I guess I was a bit slow on the uptake. The world is full of emergencies, and I can't always protect you from them. Even when you first started back at the station, I thought I could only let you out on the easier calls and that if I pushed you away then it'd hurt less if you got hurt again. I was wrong on both accounts." Bobby said, sending such a fond look at Buck that he felt himself melt a little bit, "You are always going to help people, and maybe get hurt sometimes doing it. It isn't a uniform or being on the clock that makes you that way. Being a firefighter is who you are, and I think I'd rather have you doing it under my supervision."
"Does that-" Buck breathed out, practically vibrating in excitement, "Does that mean I can be back for real?"
"Yeah, Buck." Bobby chuckled, "You're back for real this time."
When the bill came after they'd finished their lunch, they split it evenly down the middle. Buck tried not to feel too dramatic about that, but it felt a bit cathartic in a way.