Chapter Text
"Excuse me."
Buck doesn't realize he's the one being addressed until the speaker tugs at his t-shirt. He turns and blinks, his eyes having adjusted to the glare off the water, taking in the lone child in front of him. It's a boy, maybe five, six years old with a bright green, dinosaur-themed t-shirt, a mess of golden curls on his head, and forearm crutches on each arm.
"'Scuse me," he repeats, lips pursed like he's weighing Buck up and finding him, so far, wanting. "Are you a firefighter?"
It takes Buck a second—a wild second where Buck wonders, hysterically, if the kid's been following the trial—before he remembers that he's wearing an LAFD t-shirt; it was the only clean t-shirt he had left when Hen and Chim stopped by the apartment this morning and threatened to sic Bobby on him if he didn't get up, get dressed, and get out for the day.
It's just half a second after that before his brain catches up and puts together the fact that a young child asking for a firefighter probably needs help.
"I am," Buck says, plastering on a smile and crouching down until the kid's at eye level. He doesn't look hurt or even scared, but Buck's learned the value of double-checking his assumptions. "Is anything wrong?"
The kid nods, curls flopping, and shifts his weight to one of his crutches. He points down the boardwalk, towards the crowded area with the Ferris wheel and games, with the other. "I'm not lost, but I got sep—separated from Miss Stacy, and Daddy said if I ever got sep'rated from my adult person again I should find a first responder because they're supposed to help people, so I found you."
The kid grins up at him at the end, clearly proud of himself for successfully following his dad's directions, and it's just this big-toothed, freckle-faced, adorable thing so Buck can't help grinning back. He gives the kid a nod.
"Your dad's a really smart guy," he says. "I can definitely help you get back to Miss Stacy, if that sounds good to you. I'm Buck, by the way."
"That sounds good," the kid says. Then, with another grin, "I'm Christopher Humberto Diaz."
Buck straightens up and points towards where Christopher just did. The piermaster's house is just visible beyond the Ferris wheel. "If we go to the piermaster's house, we'll be able to call for Miss Stacy on the loudspeaker, and she can—"
"What the fuck?" someone yells a few feet away, and Buck turns to look and—
"What the hell?" he breathes, as he looks out over the Santa Monica pier and sees a dry seabed where there was water not two minutes ago.
And that's when the siren hits.
It's louder than a goddamned jet engine. A thousand jet engines.
Buck thought he was desensitized to the roar of a big wave after five years filled with as much surfing as he can manage, but nothing could have prepared him for this.
It's better, maybe; there's not room enough to think much, with that roar in his ears, aside from getting Christopher and himself to whatever safety they can find. Later, maybe, if he lives through this he'll have time to think about the people they ran past, the way the screams from the farthest points of the pier started suddenly cutting off behind him, of Christopher's high-pitched voice in his ear just barely audible above the ear-shattering magnitude of the wave.
All he has to think of, now, is running.
Just one foot in front of the other, legs pumping faster—faster—fast as he can, Christopher a squirming weight bouncing on his shoulder with every step.
"Buck!" Chris screams, and Buck knows, Buck knows, the water's coming on them, going to have them in just few seconds and they're dead if he can't get them somewhere with cover, but he doesn't think he can make the carnival stall in time, doesn't have it in him to move any faster than he is now but—
—no, fuck that, what was the point of all the training he's put in, all those days off he's forced himself out of bed early to go running, if he can't make it fifty more feet in time to save them?
He doesn't feel his body at all, the last few yards, feels almost like he's floating as he tosses Christopher over the side of the stall and follows him, trying to cushion the kid's fall, curling his body over the kid's as he lands himself.
"Hold your breath!" he yells, and sucks in a breath himself
and then the water is on them.
It rips Christopher from his arms in moments, drags Buck up and away and end over end, tumbling in the water so he can't figure out which way is up for several panicked breaths.
Clearing the water's a miracle itself, sucking in air into lungs a genuine shock because he thought for sure they'd be dead.
"Christopher!" he yells, soon as he catches his breath. "Chris!"
And it's not going to be good, a small part of his brain says, because Buck swims well enough he could have joined the SEALs and he barely made it to the surface, and he doesn't see anyone else around, not any adults, not any teens, and certainly not any tiny little kids with—
"Buck!"
He barely hears the shout over the rushing water, barely catches sight of Christopher, of a head of golden curls, the small, still-flailing body crushed by the current up against some tarp and the remains of what used to be a tennis net, tangling up in it and about to get dragged down.
"Hang on!" Buck yells, and takes a breath and turns and puts everything he's got into his first stroke.
It's the hardest rescue he's pulled, he'll think later when he's lying awake in bed and tallying it up instead of sleeping, getting Christopher loose. By the time Buck reaches him the kid's ankle's knotted up pretty well in some of the netting, and the chimney the tarp had snagged on—because that's what happened, though Buck doesn't see it until he's snug against it, curling his leg around the rough brick, more or less skinning his shin trying to keep hold of it—is starting to collapse in the current, along with the house it's built on. Christopher's head bobs below the the waters several times while Buck's on his way over, fighting debris and the discombobulating pull of the water that drags him off his path once and slams his body into a speedboat floating just under the surface of the water.
"Just hang on," Buck says when he reaches Christopher, and it's fine, everything's fine, except part of the house goes, and things shift, and at one point Christopher does get yanked underwater and doesn't come back up and Buck dives in after him, hands ripping at the netting around Christopher's ankle and leg, and for a second he thinks they're going to die, but it works, Christopher's leg pops loose suddenly and Buck's hand shoots out and grabs at his collar before the water yanks him away again, and they both come up, out of the water, and Christopher is coughing and gagging and spluttering his lungs out maybe, but he's alive.
"I've got you," Buck says, treading water and holding him close. "It's okay, buddy."
They have to get out of the water, he knows, or sooner or later they'll both be killed, but there's nothing big enough or stable enough for them to hang on to, as far as he can see.
He turns with the current and swims.
They find a roof, eventually, of some big, ugly house that would have been worth millions just that morning. Must be three stories high, but the water's up to the gutter and threatening to creep up.
Still, it's the safest thing they've seen yet, and Buck's arms and legs are burning. He just manages to toss Chris up onto it and grab on himself before the current pulls him past, dragging himself up and flopping down to catch his breath.
Every part of him hurts.
He's going to bruise up like a peach tomorrow, thanks to some debris, and there are a couple of cuts on him that are going to need stitches, if he can get them seen to in time. He managed to shield the kid from the worst of it, thank God, but Christopher's got a few cuts and scrapes himself when Buck looks him over.
It's hard, moving, once he makes it onto the roof. He tosses his left arm out in Christopher's direction and is rewarded with a knobbly knee underneath his palm. It's squirming, and he can hear Christopher coughing, which isn't great but is a sign that the kid's not dead, so that's okay. That's fine. Buck can take a moment and catch his breath. Just—just a quick second.
"You in one piece there, buddy?" he asks.
He looks over when there's no answer, and—shit.
He's crying, Christopher is, breath hitching and mouth all screwy.
"Hey," Buck says, and he's up, scrambling over, got the kid in a hug before his brain understands it's told his muscles to move. "Hey, I know that was scary, but we made it out, okay? We're safe on this roof right now, and we're just going to hang out here for a while until it's a little safer and someone can come get us, all right?"
The kid nods against his chest, but it doesn't stop the tears. He curls his arms around Buck, hands fisted in his t-shirt, and cries.
"I'll get you home safe," Buck says. "I promise."
"D'you think Miss Stacy's okay?" Christopher asks maybe an hour later. The water's settled down, some, less of a raging force than when they clambered onto the roof; they've settled down, too, Buck sitting cross-legged on the flattest part of the roof and bringing Christopher up to sit in his lap, steady even through a shudder now and then as some particularly heavy debris hits the house beneath them.
Buck rubs the kid's back and takes a long look around them, at the small patches in the distance that are probably multi-story buildings, at the nothingness of water in between them.
"I'm sure everyone's fighting as hard as they can right now to get to safety," Buck says, ruffling Christopher's hair. There are splinters snagged in the curls, sand, a short piece of netting; he tugs at a bit with his fingers and teases it out. "Just like we are. And there are a lot of people working as hard as they can to get to us so they can take us somewhere safe, where the water didn't reach us, so we've just got to wait for them, okay?"
He's not sure it works, braces for a follow-up, but Christopher just nods, nose rubbing against Buck's collarbone. Buck's shifting, ready to start up a game of twenty questions if needed to distract him—because Buck can't tell where they are, exactly, but he knows they must still be pretty near the coast, farthest out from where the search houses are going to set out from, and they really are in for a good, long wait before they're rescued. Chris moves before he can ask, though, looking up at him with wide eyes.
"Is my Daddy with them?" he asks. "He's a firefighter too."
Buck starts to say yes, thinks of the fire houses that will have been within the radius of the wave's destruction, and hopes against hope the kid wasn't at this pier because it's close to his home.
"I'm sure your dad's fire house are helping look for people," he says. "Do you know what fire house he's with?"
Christopher shrugs. "The one-something. 'S his first day today, and he was nervous, so I put Peter in his bag. Peter's my stuffed bear. He's not really big, so he fit."
Well, if his dad's fire house is in the hundreds, that means he was probably out of range of the wave. Buck vaguely remembers Bobby mentioned there was a new hire starting soon at the 118, and he wonders, but he doesn't remember when that was supposed to be. That lunch with Bobby had ended with a panic attack and Buck spilling his guts about the thing with Willis and Vance, and anything else they talked about over that visit is cloudy at best.
"I'll bet it made him feel a lot better," he tells Christopher, snapping his mind back to the present before it can drift too far off course. "You and your dad must be really close, huh?"
Christopher's face splits into a smile again, not as big as before but sunny enough, and Buck's heart melts. Whoever this kid's dad is, he is one lucky guy. "He's my best friend. He said it's okay if I get a new best friend when I start school again since we moved here, but I'm okay."
Buck smiles back. He catches movement just out the corner of his eye and looks up, hoping for a rescue boat, but it's just some debris floating by in the far distance. No, it'll be hours, still, probably, before anyone gets this far out. But as long as the house stays solid under them, that's fine. All he's got to do is keep Christopher distracted until then.
"Where'd you move from?" he asks, and looks out again while Christopher answers.
More debris floats by, closer this time, a wooden stand from a bookstore, the kind that they hang tote bags on, with several bags tangled up on it. There is no Frigate like a Book, one reads over an illustration of stylized boats on a calm, idyllic lake.
The stand bumps into something just under the water and dips out of sight before resurfacing, too far away to reach, floating steadily down the cloudy, churning water on a current that would drag a grown man down in seconds if he wasn't careful. There's nothing to be heard over the sound of the water, no cars no sirens no people. Nothing in the range of Buck's hearing.
Buck's never heard this much quiet in the city of Los Angeles.
The first survivor floats by forty minutes later, clinging to the lid of a baby grand piano. His name is Todd, he's a wedding and special events musician, and he almost drowns both Buck and himself when he panics while being rescued.
He apologizes profusely, afterwards, in between bouts of vomiting up water when he's safe on the roof. Christopher tells him it's okay, that the same thing happened to him, a year ago at his uncle JP's backyard swimming pool in El Paso when he fell in during a barbecue and his dad had to jump in and get him and his abuelo and abuela got really upset.
Buck leaves the comfort to Christopher, beyond a quick assurance that it happens all the time to people drowning, not to worry about it. He focuses, instead, on finding something he can use in lieu of a safety line, just in case.
"Is that a scar?" Christopher asks once they've exhausted the topics of El Paso and its kindergarten teachers, Hershey and its chocolate world attraction, and the tourist trap delights of Kennebunkport, Maine, from whence Todd hails.
"It's a birthmark," Buck answers when Christopher's hand smacks into the side of his face. They took Christopher's glasses off and looped them around Buck's neck when Christopher complained they'd gotten twisted and were digging into his head, and Buck doesn't know just how well the kid can see without them. It works out better, this way; when he sees the first body float by, a woman in her thirties tangled to some driftwood by her hair, he tells Christopher to shut his eyes so the strain doesn't bother them. It works, at least for now. Buck figures there's always I spy to fall back on, if need be.
Todd, a couple feet away, shifts and stretches out one leg like he's got a cramp. He's coughing wet in a way that makes Buck worry about secondary drowning later on, and he's stopped talking much, claiming a sore throat, but there's nothing either of them can do about it just then.
Another body passes them by on the current, an old man with grey hair in a three-piece suit.
"There's glare off the water," Buck says in response to Christopher's look when he cups his hand around the side of his face, shielding his eyes. "Don't look, okay? It's too bright."
"Okay," Chris says. He flops back, stretches out from cross-legged to lying back with his legs out and his head pillowed on Buck's arm, and looks up. "What's a birthmark?"
The body of the old man in the water drifts to a stop, his clothing snagging on what might be a truck or the remains of a shed.
"They're marks on the skin you get when you're born," Buck says, smiling down at the kid in his arms. "It's actually really interesting, there are lots of causes. So, underneath your skin you've got a bunch of what are called blood vessels, right?"
Todd, besides them, grabs a stick out of the water and tosses it a few feet with unerring aim. The force of it smacking into the torso makes the body bob around for a few seconds before it separates from whatever it was caught on and drifts on.
"I played lacrosse in high school," he says when he settles back down. He coughs, wads his jacket up and sets it under his head. "Go Rams."
Christopher wiggles around to look at him, but there's nothing to see, the body a nondescript lump in the swift-traveling current. Todd shoots him a soft smile and turns back to Buck. "So, how do blood vessels make birthmarks?"
He pulls three more people off the water while they wait.
There would be more survivors to help if he were further inland, he knows, even just a mile, but the area they drifted into, a sprawling, exclusive gated community near the beach, with each home on a large plot of land—large for Los Angeles, anyway—there simply weren't a lot of people around in the area and few buildings tall enough they didn't get toppled or submerged by the wave.
The water's receded some already by the time Todd dries off, enough that Buck can see the top half of the attic windows of the house they're sitting on. He takes a chance and dives in, finding the attic's only got a foot of water in it; he ends up with two new cuts on his leg, thanks to some stubborn window glass, but also finds three sets of king-sized sheets and two pool noodles, which they manage to tie together and use to rescue the others safely.
He also finds a pair of kid's arm floaties, which he inflates and sticks on Chris, just in case.
"You're the firefighter from the trial!" Gary blurts out when Buck helps him clamber onto the roof. "With the sexy doctor, right?"
Buck's breath stutters.
"Dude," one of the girls they picked up just a few minutes earlier says with a huff. "Rude."
Gary, who looks exactly like someone Buck would have roomed with just a few months earlier, doesn't have the grace to look embarrassed, but he shuts up, at least,
"Just sit tight," Buck says, deciding to ignore it and shuffling over to where Christopher is obediently sitting still on the flattest part of the roof. "Help should reach us any time."
"Who's a sexy doctor?" Christopher asks very clearly when Buck picks him up again.
Grady flushes at the dirty looks Buck and Gabriela send him.
"It's just some really boring adult stuff," Buck says. "Hey, do you know how to play I spy?"
Grady, it turns out, is a civil engineer. He'd been safe on top of a truck but gotten knocked off when a floating Jeep crashed into it, and had just barely managed to grab onto a surfboard in the water that got him to Buck's roof. Laura, a teacher, and Graciela, a student at Mount Saint Mary's, had found refuge on the roof of a two-story house, but the house had started collapsing in the rising waters, and they'd ended up swimming for it. The current had dragged them far off course, but they'd stuck together, and Buck had heard them calling for help before they were in sight.
Graciela's double-majoring in astrophysics and mathematics with the hope of going into NASA someday. Buck jumps on that, asking her about stuff he's heard Karen talk about, making it as kid friendly as possible. Christopher doesn't exactly fall asleep, but he drifts a little, eyelids fluttering open every time he gets too close to nodding off. Buck wants to tell him to just go for it, but the last time he tried to get Denny to go down for a nap it ended up backfiring on him terribly, so he holds off and just tries to make Christopher as comfortable as he can. The kid hasn't complained—done better than Gary, at that—but he mentioned two surgeries earlier, and Buck doesn't know if cerebral palsy causes chronic pain or anything.
That'll be something to check when he gets back home.
Not that he'll ever be seeing Christopher again, of course, kid's declaration that Buck's his 'Best Los Angeles Friend' aside. He's a great kid, but it's not like Buck has any kids he can do a play date with. But it'll be good to know, about the CP, for future reference. Never know when it'll come up on a call. So he'll look into it when he gets home.
He just has to make it home, first.
Shouldn't be long until someone comes to pick them up, if the water doesn't recede first. Within a couple of hours, hopefully, though that depends on how much of the city's still flooded and whether any fire stations got hit. National Guard's probably set up by now, too, which will help, and there are bound to be civilians venturing out in boats sooner or later. Buck isn't fussed how they're rescued, just the sooner Todd gets his lungs seen to—and all of them get a round of antibiotics—the better. And of course, Christopher's dad must be worried out of his skull, poor guy. Buck's going to make sure Christopher gets safely home tonight if it's the last thing he does.
"My boyfriend keeps telling me I should go back to school and finish my degree," Grady says halfway through a round of the animal name game, which he is surprisingly good at. "In case crypto doesn't pan out. But I dunno. Feels like a waste. Uh, Tiger."
Todd clears his throat with a pointed look in Christopher's direction.
"For me," Grady blurts. "School feels like a waste for me specifically. Umm. Because I'm an idiot."
"Raccoon," Laura says.
Christopher sits up straighter, settling his weight directly over a bruise on Buck's thigh. "Daddy says idiot's a mean word we shouldn't use for people. And if people aren't good at something in school it's not because they're dumb, maybe they just need acco-accommas-a—"
"Accommodations?" Buck asks. "Narwhal." He shifts as he sees another pile of debris floating by. He can't tell what's on it, but he readjusts Christopher in his lap so he's facing straight ahead, right at Laura. Grady, at his side, sees him moving and shifts, too, stretching out his arms and leaning in closer so Christopher's peripheral vision is blocked.
"Wait," Laura says. "Narwhals are real? Aren't they, like, sea unicorns?"
"You can sleep if you want to," Buck says three hours later, moving so Christopher, at his side, can rest his head on his arm or shoulder if he likes.
Christopher grunts and squirms against him, his foot knocking into one of the cuts on Buck's leg. Buck bites his lip and helps him settle down more comfortably.
He tore up Todd's vest and used it as a bandage on the cuts, which were taking a concerningly long time to clot, but they ache every time he moves his leg. They should have had stitches hours ago; as it is, now, Buck's bound to be off work for another week at a minimum before Bobby lets him back. And he'd been so eager to get back to work, even with the awkward mess no doubt waiting for him now that Willis and Vance have been transferred. Not that Bobby'll let anyone do anything else outright, and of course Hen and Chimney and a few of the others would stick up for him no matter what—and did, at that—but Bobby and Hen and Chimney can't be with him constantly, and even if they could he wouldn't want them to.
This is his shit to deal with. He appreciates the help and how nice they've been about everything, even Chimney laying off the jokes, but ultimately Buck's an adult and he shouldn't be relying on other people for every little thing that bothers him.
He'll be fine.
At his side the squirming stops, and he looks down to find Chris has drifted off.
"Someone will come get us," he says two hours later, when Laura asks the question out loud. He keeps his voice low, just loud enough for the other adults to hear. "Listen, in situations like these it's a lot safer to stay put and wait for rescue than to try to get out yourselves. Trust me. We're safe up here, but down in the water there's no guarantee we survive."
Chris wheezes, snuffles in his sleep, his little-kid snore muffled in Buck's ribs.
Somewhere, in the distance, a woman screams. It yanks him out of his thoughts, jolts Christopher out of his doze, makes everyone on the rooftop sit up and look out across the water.
Buck can see more rooftops, now, a few more buildings dotted here and there, the upturned wheels of a semi-truck that got flipped over somehow and settled on its roof.
No other humans, as far as he can see. No movement aside from the water and debris and a flag just barely waving, far far away on top of a very tall building, in the limp breeze.
The scream comes again, and another, and Buck softly sets Chris aside, next to Gabriela who grabs his hand, and stands on the roof, walking carefully over to the peak where Laura's sitting.
"It's coming from over there," Laura says, turning to her right and pointing. Todd nods and clambers to his feet, wheezing.
There are a few houses in that direction. Buck strains, shading his eyes, but he can't see anyone on a roof, hanging out a window, nothing.
The screaming stops, then, like someone pausing for breath, and it doesn't start up again.
Fuck, what he wouldn't give to have an extra pair of hands here. One of the department's boats. Hen and Chim, to help him look after people and free him up to go rescue people like he does best.
Bobby, to tell him what to do.
The clouds drift away from the sun. Its rays hit the water and shine, illuminating cars and trucks and toppled piles of bricks beneath the murky eddies near the house they're standing on but nothing that he's hoping to see in the distance to their right.
"I can't see—" Buck starts, and that's when the water around them starts to move, the previously sluggish current reversing course and heading out to sea, picking up speed as it goes.
"It's okay," Buck says.
This is fine. It's fine. He was expecting this. Nothing to worry about.
He looks over at Christopher. The kid hasn't even noticed the water moving, caught up in some sort of word game with Gabriela, but he's sitting calmly on the flattest part of the roof, floaties still on his arm.
It's fine.
The wind picks up, too, whistling past them in an effort to match the now-rushing water. It's loud, the water and the heavy thuds of cars and trucks and SUVs grinding past each other in the streets just under the surface, piling up against buildings or crunching into palms and oaks and telephone poles.
He needs to get back to Christopher.
"Just sit down," Buck says, crouching down to steady himself as something heavy smacks into the second floor of the house and scrapes along its side. He moves towards Gabriela and Christopher, pausing to help Todd, who's bent double in a coughing fit. "This won't last long, so just keep as far away from the edge as you can and—"
Something very large and very heavy smashes into the house straight on with a juddering heave. There's a small but noticeable splash, and when Buck looks up Gabriela is screaming and Christopher is gone.
It's instinct natural as breathing to dive in after.
All he remembers, later, is the taste of the water in his mouth.
The current drags him under when he tries to surface to take a breath, and he gets a good mouthful before he fights it long enough to make it up. He's coughing, spluttering out this mess of water and mud and bits of twig and leaf and god knows what, and he spits some out and hacks some up and almost chokes on a torn-off piece of plastic grocery bag that's worked itself into his throat, and it's hard just to suck in a breath, takes all his strength just to keep his breath above water but then he sees him, sees rays of light piercing the water and bouncing off bright neon green and golden curls and swims for them.
Christopher's flailing when he grabs him, the current dragging him down despite the floaties and his vigorous attempts at swimming. He's half-drowned when Buck hauls him up with a fist in the back of his t-shirt, gasping, choking on the water and puking up a river of it all over Buck.
"I've got you," Buck says, treading the water with all he's got as the current drags them along. "I'll get us out of the water, okay?"
He's got this. He has to.
He's going to get Christopher home to his dad, no matter what.
It's just before they get out of the water that it happens. They're just about to get swept past a bunch of oaks he's hoping to grab onto, is trying to swim closer so he can, but it's awkward, swimming with Christopher hanging off of him, the muscles in his legs and arms burning with the effort of fighting. He's focused on that, on reaching the trees, so hard that he loses track of the water directly outside of his arm's reach just long enough for a mass of debris—part of a bicycle he thinks, tangled up in and kept afloat by a couple of tree branches that have been collecting broken bits of things along the way.
He doesn't see it until it's too late.
There's just enough time to fling his arm out in a stroke and turn so he takes the hit, curling his body around Christopher as best he can while still treading water, and then it slams into him, smacking the breath out of him and leaving him reeling, choking on water, desperately kicking his legs and his free arm to keep it from dragging them under.
It's heavy as hell, but it starts to float past them, the branches bumping around them and catching the current, and Buck thinks for a second they're fine. He got a good hit, will have some brag-worthy bruises tomorrow if they survive this, but he's all right.
And then the broken bicycle pedal that's impaled his abdomen twists inside him.
It breaks off.
Buck grabs the bicycle by the and tries to yank it loose from the tree branches. He doesn't manage it, but the pull of the current snaps the damaged thing off at the pedal bracket and sets them free, and that's what saves them.
The pedal broke in half lengthwise at some point, then in half again so all that was left of it was a sharp, jagged, dart of rough plastic and rubber attached to a couple inches of metal bar. It sank into Buck's stomach just to the right of his left hipbone, a little lower than his belly button. He can't tell if it hit his intestines, but it's bleeding plenty by the time he manages to drag himself and Christopher up onto an oak tree, nestling in close to the trunk. There's a hollow of sorts where one branch ends that he can just set Christopher against, bracketing him into the tree with his body; it's sturdy enough he thinks Christopher should be able to hang on even if Buck falls off.
Christopher's crying. Babbling some sort of apology, but Buck will have to look after him later.
"It's okay," he says, pressing down on the wound with his hand. It hurts—it's fucking excruciating—but he bites down on his scream and swallows it down. He tries to get his t-shirt off, but it hurts so much to stretch his arm up that he falls back, groaning, against the tree trunk. The water rushes by just a couple feet below them, ripping off a lower-lying branch.
If he or Christopher fall in again with the current this strong, Buck doesn't think he's going to be able to get them out of it.
The water, thank god, somehow did not take the Swiss Army knife that he carries in his left pants pocket—courtesy of Maddie, who dropped him off and picked him up from every Boy Scout meeting he had until she moved away for college. He grabs it now, cuts his khakis off below the knee and manages to wind them around his stomach so he's pretty sure the pedal won't come out.
Well, not without someone grabbing it and yanking it out, and he's not about to go do that. Chimney would kill him.
It's still bleeding, pretty badly. He presses down on it with one hand and grabs onto Chris with the other.
"It's okay," he says. "I'm sorry I scared you."
The bleeding tapers off, eventually, even if it sluggishly crops back up every time he bends too far to the left. The water beneath them slows, too, level lower inch by inch until it's maybe as high as his knee and Buck can see the devastation around them.
They're in the remains of a golf course off another luxury gated community, in a copse of trees off of what he thinks was a green. It's hard to tell; there's a small yacht beached on the bunker, and several cars piled up on each other against some trees by the fairway in the far distance. Further on there are several buildings that he thinks used to be house, but he can't see a street, let alone the freeway, from where they're sitting.
It's going to be a long time before anyone thinks to look for survivors here, Buck realizes with a sinking feeling in his gut. Which might have been okay before he got impaled by a fucking bike pedal, but now?
"Hey, buddy," he says, patting Christopher's knee. "We're a little far out for the rescuers to come, so we're going to have to walk a little, okay?"
It's easier once he gets going. Getting out of the tree, settling Christopher on his hip, taking those first few steps—that's hard. That's rough.
It hurts so much he almost vomits.
He breathes through it, though, the way he breathes through nausea during a hard workout or on one of his morning runs when he tries to do a little more than usual. Hen can say whatever she likes about how healthy it is; it works, and that's what matters.
Christopher's scared; he can feel it in how tense the kid's spine is under his hand where he's holding him up, the hard grip the boy has on the back of his shirt. He'd cried again when Buck grabbed him down from the tree, sobbed into Buck's shoulder through their walk off the golf course, mumbling apologies for falling off the roof into Buck's neck.
Some of his teachers in El Paso used to get mad, he tells Buck when Buck tries to reassure him. When he messed up on some of the class activities or couldn't walk as fast as the other students and got left behind. He hadn't wanted to tell his daddy then because his daddy was really stressed out and Tia Sophia had told him his daddy was working three jobs to provide for them and his abuelo and abuela were always upset at his daddy, too, because they didn't think he was taking good care of Christopher ever since his mommy had left—and they said his daddy wasn't handling things well since he'd got shot up in the army, and all of them didn't think Christopher knew about any of this but he did, because he wasn't dumb and he overheard a lot they didn't know about, so he hadn't told anyone about his kindergarten teacher and the lunch room teacher's aide. And now in Los Angeles the teachers are okay so far, but some of the other kids make fun of him because he can't climb the stairs to the second floor, and now his daddy's worried about someone looking after Christopher when Tia Pepa and his Abuelita Isabela are busy or sick, so he hired Miss Stacy for just a few days until he could figure something else out when Abuelita Isabela got the flu and Miss Stacy isn't mean but she gets irritated at Christopher sometimes, she thinks he talks too much and when she took him to the zoo yesterday she didn't like that he wanted to spend longer reading through the descriptions at each attraction and asking people who worked at the zoo questions about the animals.
"Well, that's ridiculous," Buck interjects before he can work himself up again. God, Christopher can't weigh more than forty pounds but his arm's already aching, and they've barely walked a mile, if that. "What's the point of going to the zoo if you can't learn about the animals?"
"Exactly!" Christopher yelps, and he sits up, kicking his leg out a little to keep his balance, and accidentally knocks his knee into the metal part of the pedal jutting out of Buck's stomach.
Buck does vomit, then.
Christopher's the only thing that keeps him going.
He doesn't quite drop him, thankfully, when he doubles over and pukes, but it's a close thing. He breathes through it again, quietly thanking whatever greater being is out there in the universe for the year he spent obsessed with crossfit, and hefts Christopher up.
"It's okay," he says, and wonders if he's wearing the word out. "Just an accident. No harm done."
Christopher clutches on to him, breath short, and mutters something incomprehensible and wet against his neck.
"Really," Buck says. "The doctors'll patch me up as soon as we get ro safety, and my boss will give me a whole week off to make sure I'm feeling good before I go back to work. What was your favorite animal at the zoo?"
Chris shifts again but, in a subdued voice, starts telling Buck all about the penguins and the python and the spotted hyenas.
Buck takes one step after another, and the bleeding does finally taper off again.
The dizziness doesn't, this time, but he ignores it.
All that matters is that he gets Christopher to safety. Then he can worry about himself.
They reach a residential area, eventually.
Buck tells Christopher to close his eyes and tells him a story from his time in Newfoundland when he sees the first body on the sidewalk, nestled up against the front bumper of a car with sightless, open eyes.
It all comes down to this, in the end: one step at a time, feet sloshing through muddy water that smells like sea salt and sewage, breathing in and breathing out, one arm free in case he trips, the other holding Christopher up, hand fisted in the kid's damp t-shirt, moving forward no matter what.
He wonders how Abby's doing; they haven't talked a whole lot since the tracheotomy; he would have called, but it was after that, when Bobby couldn't make it to a follow-up appointment and Athena volunteered to pick him up instead, that everything started happening and ended up with the trial and the work thing and him taking leave for a few days while Bobby sorted things out with the chief. He and Abby talked a few times, but never for long, and he never went back and asked her out for another date. He'll do that, once Christopher is safe.
If he makes it.
Hell. If he makes it through this, he'll get Maddie's new number and try calling her. She won't pick up, but what the hell. He's missed her so much the last two years. Bobby and Hen and Chim have been great, and—and it's not like he doesn't appreciate the important roles they've got in his life now, as friends and maybe family, and sure, maybe he's found himself thinking it would have been nice if he'd had a dad like Bobby once or twice, and god knows Hen and Chimney are bursting with advice to give him any time he looks like he could possibly use some, but Maddie's the one who raised him, basically, and he's halfway down Sepulveda Boulevard, looking down and seeing fresh red blood staining the makeshift bandage on his abdomen, when he realizes he doesn't want to die without seeing her again. So he can tell her. Tell her that he understands, now, how unfair it was that she had to set aside her own childhood so he could have one, and how much he appreciates what she did.
"Buck?" Christopher asks, smacking his hand against Buck's face, like it's not the first time he's called him. "Your face feels hot."
Buck slips in an unexpected pull of water, stumbles, and manages not to drop them both down an open manhole. "It's just the sun, buddy. This is why you're supposed to wear sunscreen when you're outside a lot."
Chris makes a skeptical noise but settles back into his shoulder.
Buck's pretty sure it's not a sunburn, but there's nothing anyone can do about it until he gets to the hospital. He just hope he doesn't get MRSA in the cuts on his leg. That would be a really shitty way to go.
At some point his body starts going a little numb.
This is a bad sign, he knows, and if he were by himself he'd lie down on top of a car and pass out and hope help found him in time.
The thing is, Christopher, sharp as he is for a kid his age, is only six years old, and there are storm drains and open manholes and water a foot deep in some areas, which is plenty enough for a six-year-old with CP to drown in, so Buck passing out is unacceptable.
So he just has to keep going.
They don't pass anyone on the streets which, frankly, is puzzling, though it makes perfect sense when they round a corner maybe three hours after Buck dives off the roof, one of the first completely dry streets they've walked, and find a buzz of activity a hundred meters straight in front of them.
There are two fire trucks, four ambulances, and a very familiar captain's truck parked on the street ahead of them, over a dozen firefighters milling around and tending to several victims under a makeshift tent.
Buck doesn't know what the hell this is, because it sure as hell isn't a proper command center or emergency triaging space, but he doesn't really give a fuck. It means safety; somewhere he can hand off Christopher and know he'll be all right and somewhere he can sit down and get some fucking rest.
And maybe some morphine. Morphine would be really nice.
"Look," he says, jostling Christopher until the kid sits up. The word sticks in his throat, and he coughs. It aches in his side when he does, a deep, throbbing pain ripping through his flank, but he bites his lip and takes a step forward. "We're going to see if they can help us find your dad."
Nobody notices him, the first ten feet. There's some sort of hubbub, several people in the triage area huddled together yelling at a couple of firefighters with increasing volume and distracting everybody else. Probably a family who got separated from someone.
Poor guys. Whoever they're looking for is probably long dead.
Buck feels Chris stiffen before he hears the voices to his right.
There are two men standing in the shade of a doorway a house ahead of them, clearly trying to have a private conversation. Buck recognizes one of them—Dunning, a floater who spent a couple weeks with the 118 when Sasha went on maternity leave; he's got his hand on another guy, placatingly, urging something in a voice too low for Buck to hear. The other guy interrupts him, though, knocking his arm off his shoulder.
"I am not looking in the morgue," he hisses. He's a paramedic, still got on a pair of gloves and a stethoscope looped around the back of his neck, and he doesn't have any injuries that Buck can see but the guy looks worse than some of the people Buck's rescued that day. "Because my son is not in the morgue. My son is—"
"Daddy?" Christopher says, voice small and muffled against Buck's collarbone, and—oh.
Oh.
"Hey," Buck calls, but—but his voice doesn't carry, lungs lacking the air to power it and throat not cooperating, so he moves closer to try again.
It's funny, how his legs seem heavier with every step he takes after they've held him up all day.
"Hey!" he yells, and the paramedic doesn't look up, but Dunning does, and that's good, that's—
"Daddy!" Christopher yells—screeches—suddenly, a burst from him, and he's squirming against Buck's chest like he's been saving up a packet of energy for this, and it hurts, Buck's ribs ache and his arm burns and Chris isn't being gentle or coordinated and he feels a whole lot heavier than he did that morning, but that doesn't matter.
That doesn't matter one bit.
"Christopher?" the guy calls, voice raw, incredulous. His face twists, something passing over it that Buck's seen several times before, on calls, but still doesn't have a proper word for. He doesn't look like Christopher, not really, but then his eyes land on the kid, properly, and they go big and wide and there's no way anyone could mistake them for anything but father and son.
Buck's legs are lead when he tries to move, but it doesn't matter. Christopher's dad takes four long steps and that's it, Christopher's being lifted from his arms and he's home, he's safe, he's sobbing into his dad's shoulder, and just like that Buck's job is done.
He did it.
"I'm so glad you're okay," the guy's murmuring into Christopher's hair, tears streaming down his cheeks, arms holding Christopher tight.
Good.
"Good," Buck says, and he doesn't think anyone hears him but the effort of talking hits him just then, for some reason, settles on his shoulders heavy and weighs him down, down, down, and Buck blinks and tries to breathe through it and realizes he's dropped to his knees.
There's more noise, then, bursting into life around him.
"Hey," someone says, and, a frenzied yell of, "Cap!" and "Daddy, you have to help him," in a high-pitched voice, and then from somewhere else, "Hey, that's him!"
And then someone's calling his name, several someones, and Buck sways and finds he can't stop himself from pitching forward, and it's going to hurt, it's going to jar the plastic and metal embedded in his side loose, bandage or no bandage, and that's going to suck, and maybe kill him, and probably scar Christopher for life. Except instead of smacking face-first into the ground, a pair of hands reach in and catch him and ease him down, and the next time he blinks his eyes open Bobby's hovering above him.
Bobby's really good at catching him when he needs it.
"Hen! Chim!" Bobby calls out, swiveling to yell again down the street before he turns back. "Damn it, kid."
"Hey," Buck says. There's movement out of the corner of his eye, Christopher's dad is setting him down a couple of feet away and saying something to him, and then he's hovering over Buck, too, and—
—fuck.
"—impalement, no telling how much blood he's lost, and if it pierced his intestine we could be looking at sepsis."
It burns. He knows they have to do this, have to get a look at it and their trauma dressing's got to be better than the filthy, wet t-shirt, but jesus christ it hurts so much his eyes tear up.
"Wound on the back of his head," Bobby's saying, and there's a hand at the nape of his neck, lifting his head, and that hurts too, a little. "Still bleeding a little. Lacerations on his left leg, they—shit. Hey, Buck, stay with me, okay? You know the drill."
Buck nods reflexively and immediately regrets this. His vision drifts for a second, nausea churning in his gut.
"Just for the record," Chimney says above him and to his right, "When we told you to get out of the house this morning, this is not what we meant."
Hen's there, too, then saying something—asking him something—calling him Buckaroo in that tone she used when they discovered that naproxen makes his throat swell shut—but Christopher's moving in Buck's peripheral vision, moving out of sight and—oh, his dad's got him. Hen and Chimney have Buck now, so his dad's free again, and that's good. It's good he's safe. He's such a good kid.
Someone needs to tell his dad, to make sure his dad knows. Dads should know that sort of thing.
"He's a really good kid," he says. It's a lot darker out now though it's early for the sun to set, still, he's pretty sure, and he blinks to see if his eyes adjust to it.
They don't.
"He was really brave today," he says again. He makes the effort of finding Bobby's eyes so he can meet them. "He's a really good kid. You should tell 'is dad. He should know."
Hen and Chim must have the medical side of things covered—which tracks, since he can hear gauze packs ripping and someone's making pathetic noises and he thinks it's him and also he's pretty sure he's crying a little from the pain—but Bobby ignores whatever's going on with his body, just grabs his hand and brushes his hair back from his forehead, which is nice even though his hair must be really, disgustingly filthy.
"His dad knows," Bobby says, and squeezes his hand. "He's really proud of him, Buck."
And that's really nice, too.
"Good," he manages, and licks his lips and wonders why he suddenly can't feel his tongue.
"Just hang in there, Buckaroo," Hen mutters from somewhere near his chest, and Buck means to; he does, he has the very best of intentions of staying awake forever.
It's just his eyelids disagree with him, and shut, and after that everything drifts away from him.