Archive of Our Own ^beta

Day 1: Buck

"I just want to point out," Buck says, as Eddie shoulders past him with a duffel bag, "that I have the smallest living space of any of us. Hell, I think I'm the only one who only has an apartment. So why do I keep hosting quarantine sleepovers?"

"Because," Bobby says, following Eddie, "you also don't have anyone else living with you."

"And without a couch, there's plenty of room for an air mattress," Eddie adds, pointedly dropping his bag in the space where a couch could be. "Or two."

"Yeah, yeah," Buck mutters, and shuts the door to his apartment. "How long is this, again?"

"Ten days from exposure, so eight days for us," Bobby says, "according to Gina at the Department of Public Health."

"Great," Buck says. "Also, not two air mattresses. Just one, but it's a queen."

Eddie narrows his eyes at Buck. "What happened to the ones we used for COVID?"

With a helpless shrug, Buck says, "Look, all of us have been playing musical air mattresses for the past, like, three years. First Albert borrowed one of them when he moved out, and he never gave it back. Then Hen and Karen borrowed one for Toni when she first moved in and Chim borrowed it from them, and - "

"Point taken," Eddie says.

Bobby moves to drop his duffel next to Eddie's.

"Hey, hey, whoa, what are you doing?" Buck says, rushing to stop him. "You've got a bad back, that gets you the bed."

"I'm not kicking you out of your own bed," Bobby says with a frown. "You're already giving up your space - "

Buck glances at Eddie, ready to marshal his resources.

"Yeah, no, we're not letting you take the air mattress, Cap," Eddie agrees easily, crossing his arms. "Besides, when Buck's up in the loft, the acoustics make his snoring even louder. Chim tested it with a decibel meter app on his phone during lockdown and everything."

"I still don't think it's that bad," Buck mutters.

"You're just lucky I haven't snapped and bought you a CPAP machine yet," Eddie tells him.

"Yeah, well, good luck with that, since you need to do a sleep study to get one."

"I know people," Eddie says, mysteriously.

"Oh really? Who do you know that I don't?"

Eddie shrugs. "All those people at the poker game, for one."

But before Buck can follow up, he sees the flash of Bobby's phone in his peripheral vision, and cranes his neck to see.

"Is that an update from everyone else? Are the test results back?"

Bobby looks up, his expression deceptively mild. "I was just checking the time to see how many hours of this I'm in for. We're not going to get test results for at least another day or two - and even then, with the incubation period, we still won't know anything until someone tests positive or ten days have passed."

"From exposure two days ago, right?" Eddie repeats, as if those two days will make or break this quarantine experience.

"From exposure," Bobby confirms, and glances at his phone again. "But that is an update - Hen, Chim, and Ravi are all officially in isolation at Hen's."

It's a little bit of an awkward division, since, again, Buck has the smallest living space. But when they were responding to the call - someone fainting in a chicken coop at an "urban homestead," which Buck had never heard of before but seemed to consist of house with a lawn and some chickens - Buck, Eddie, and Bobby had been the ones fending off the incredibly overprotective rooster while Hen, Chim, and Ravi actually tended to their patient.

Their patient who, thirty-six hours in the hospital later, had tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian flu.

Hen, Chim, and Ravi, to Buck's understanding, are actually the lowest risk, since they would've had to catch it from the patient. Buck had gone down a bit of a rabbit hole on zoonotic vs. human-to-human transmission of various flus, particularly since they were all presumably isolating so they wouldn't infect other humans, and everything basically seemed to boil down to the age-old principle of 'better safe than sorry.' So Hen, Chim, and Ravi had agreed to isolate at Hen's house, with Karen taking Denny and baby Ursula to her parents' house until the test results come back.

But Buck, Eddie, and Bobby had been in the coop, wrestling with the aptly-named Beelzebird, breathing in stirred-up feathers and guano and dander and whateverthefuck else was in there.

Buck hopes that Beelzebird's incredibly muscular wings and thighs, which the aforementioned Lord of the Flyers had used to beat the shit out of Buck's legs, are crisping up in a Los Angeles Department of Public Health deep-fryer right now.

There had been talk, very briefly, about trying to find some other arrangement - maybe with Maddie and Jee staying in the loft so that Buck, Eddie, and Bobby could isolate in the Murder House, or Chris going to stay with Pepa - but ultimately, this is what it came down to: Buck has the least in his life that would be disrupted, so out came the queen-sized air mattress.

"I'm really okay sharing down here," Bobby tries again.

"Don't even think about it," Buck says.

"We'll rat you out to Athena," Eddie agrees. "And May. She's developed some real strong opinions about how you take care of yourself since the bridge collapse."

Bobby smiles to himself, only a little ruefully. "You two are still dispatch buddies, huh?"

"We have a meal prep groupchat with Linda," Eddie says with a shrug. "Speaking of - should we get some groceries delivered?"

They end up scheduling the grocery delivery - an order with a precautionary emphasis on clear liquids and foods in the BRAT diet - for tomorrow morning and ordering in ramen for the evening. Bobby bakes some sugar cookies, which he is adamant he is just baking, not stress-baking, Buck, stop saying that, and they end up playing a truly cutthroat tournament of Scrabble until they finally run out of steam.

It's different enough from the COVID lockdown, with its vaguely apocalyptic vibes and aggressively undetermined end date, that Buck dares to even feel a little hopeful as he nestles himself into a nest of blankets on one end of the air mattress. With one day down, there are only seven more to go, and he's not going to have to deal with Chim's constant purloining of everyone else's moisturizer or Hen's tendency to judge the nutritional value of Buck's breakfasts.

He misses them a little - he's enjoying the fact that he's basically having an extended sleepover with two of his favorite people, of course, but he also wouldn't mind an extended sleepover with all of his favorite people.

And, well, he hasn't thought about Natalia all day. And his list of favorite people in this particular context may not include her. But that's fine. That's probably what a healthy relationship is like, instead of the codependent messes Buck's found himself mired in before.

He should probably text her and let her know he's sick, though. At the very least.

Quarantine is just seven more days.

Eminently doable.

Day 2: Bobby

Bobby sees Buck's head snap in his direction the second he sniffles coming down the stairs in the morning.

"I'm always a little congested in the morning, Buck, you can calm down," Bobby says, just on the softer side of exasperation.

Bobby knows that Buck knows that. They work overnight shifts together, after all, and in the hundreds of nights they've worked a few have even been quiet enough that they all slept through the night, and Bobby's not the only one who's come out of the showers in the morning with a clearer airway.

So Bobby pretends not to notice Buck's surreptitious flurry of activity on his phone, where he's no doubt adding a decongestant to their still-pending grocery delivery.

Eddie doesn't even twitch despite the noise coming from the attached kitchen, but Eddie's always been a sound sleeper when the situation calls for it. He came to the 118 having perfected the military-slash-first-responder skill of being able to subconsciously determine which noises are worth waking up for and which ones aren't. He's the first one on the engine when the alarm rings at three o'clock in the morning, but also the last to rouse when Buck and Chim start comparing the judges on Great British Bake Off. (With Chim having strong opinions and Buck finding it hilarious to have the opposite opinions to Chim's, it has a tendency to get heated.)

"Any updates?" Buck asks, even though he's looking at his own phone.

Bobby lights up his screen anyway. He doesn't mind indulging Buck when he can; it's nice to be depended on, even when it's not strictly necessary. He thinks of it as stockpiling goodwill for when he has to be the bad guy - Buck won't hesitate to ignore an unreasonable request, so Bobby keeps himself firmly on the reasonable side of that line.

And if it helps keep Bobby reasonable - keep him from drifting over that line? Well, there's nothing wrong with that.

"No updates," Bobby tells Buck. "Anything on your end?"

Buck raises his eyebrows at Bobby. "You think I have an in with the health department?"

"I think you have an in with someone who has an in with Chimney," Bobby says, letting himself crack a smile.

"Well, my in with Chimney was showing off her in with my niece instead." Buck holds out his phone to Bobby. In the picture, Jee-Yun is dressed in a tutu with a tiara on her head, surrounded by a veritable crime scene of stuffed animals. Her arms are outstretched towards the sky, and based on how wide her mouth is open, she appears to be shrieking with joy. "Maddy sent this with the caption 'This is how bad she misses her daddy.'"

Bobby ducks his head to hide a smile.

Buck's phone chirps with a notification, and Bobby watches his expression for clues. Buck frowns.

"Everything all right?" Bobby asks.

"Yeah, fine," Buck says absently, and catches sight of Bobby's expression. "It's not an update from anyone - well, not anyone at Hen's. Christopher wants help with a new video game, so I'm gonna give him a - "

"Christopher?" Beyond Buck in the living room, Eddie's head shoots up as he pushes himself onto his knees on the air mattress. "Did you - is Chris all right?"

"He will be once he figures out this shrine," Buck says, gesturing with his phone to Eddie as he sidles towards the stairs to the loft.

"Shrine?" Bobby asks Eddie with a frown.

"It's a Zelda thing," Eddie dismisses, leaning back in a spinal stretch.

"You can go back to sleep if you want," Bobby offers. "I was gonna make some pancakes, but they'll keep."

"Nah, might as well get up. Did you say pancakes?"

"I figure we should enjoy ourselves before any potential symptoms hit," Bobby says, surveying the kitchen. "Gina from the Health Department is sending over some Tamiflu, so that should help, but in the meantime..." He looks across the counter and finds a distinct dearth of spatulas. "Of course, that's assuming Buck hasn't reorganized his kitchen since he got the cast off his leg."

"Wow. Has it really been that long?"

Bobby reaches up for a cabinet. "It's more that since then, I've been cooking separately or at the station and bringing it over." Sure enough, the flour is on the shelf.

Eddie settles himself at the island counter. "Did Maddie rope you into her meal train for Buck after the lightning?"

"I think she knew that she'd lose plausible deniability," Bobby says, which is true. But Bobby had also been - busy. It's a little heartening to know that his mental state while trying to get justice for Wendall hadn't been so overt to Eddie, though.

The pancake batter is made by the time Buck comes back down, putting his phone back in his pocket.

"Did Link survive the shrine?" Eddie asks him. "Also, should I be offended that my kid's calling you for video game help instead of me?"

"Once Link remembered he could reverse time, he did just fine," Buck informs him, "and Chris knows you think Legend of Zelda is boring."

"It's not boring! It's just - the ratio of puzzles to bad guys is weird."

"By which you mean the puzzles exist."

"Next time you and him come to me complaining about a Battle Talus, I'm gonna remind you you said that."

"Are you even speaking English right now?" Bobby asks, hovering a hand above the pan to check the temperature.

"I think it's technically Hylian, now that you mention it," Buck begins as Bobby pours the batter for the first pancake. There's something wonderfully domestic about letting the conversation happen around him as he cooks. It happens at home, when May comes over and chats with Athena as Bobby takes care of dinner; it happens at the station, when the conversations over a game of pool or pinball fades into the background.

"Isn't Hylian the name of the world?" Eddie says, and Bobby starts looking for a spatula.

"Nah, that's Hyrule. Hylian is the name of the elves."

"Buck," Bobby says mildly, staring at the utensil holder. "Why do you have a ring cutter, and why is it in your kitchen?"

Eddie stares as Bobby brandishes the offending implement.

But Buck just grins. "Remember that mattress call we got a few years ago?" He adds as an aside to Eddie, "I think it was while you were still on leave from getting shot. This guy ordered a mattress online and it came rolled up, like, super tight and secured with these giant zip-tie things, and he couldn't get them off to unroll it. So he grabs this, uh, Bobby, what was that weird knife called?"

"Santoku," Bobby supplies, and tells Eddie, "Japanese-style chef's knife."

Buck continues, "So he gets the knife in there and he's sawing away - "

"Santokus are notably not serrated," Bobby murmurs, and puts the ringcutter aside to focus on the pancake.

" - and nothing's happening and nothing's happening and nothing's happening, so he decides to pull instead of push and really put his biceps into it."

Eddie blanches. "Tell me he didn't."

"Chopped himself in the face," Buck confirms. "Had a thick skull so I think he only got stitches. Wouldn't let us take him to the hospital until we'd unrolled the stupid mattress for him, though, and, well. The ringcutter was right there in our equipment, and, hey, it worked."

"And why is your ringcutter in the kitchen?" Bobby asks.

Buck gestures to the counter. "This is where I open my packages. Sometimes the big ones have, like, metal staples." Then he grins. "Don't tell Maddie that's why I have it, though."

"Why does Maddie think - no, actually, I don't want to know." Bobby shakes his head and turns back to the pancakes.

It's a relaxing day, as these things go. Bobby makes some stock to have on hand in case they need soup, with Buck observing him so closely that Bobby half-expects him to whip out a notebook and start taking notes, and all three of them dutifully swab their own noses for their daily tests. They leave the sealed bag just outside Buck's apartment door, and the courier from the health department confirms when they've been picked up.

Bobby had been pretty happy with how the division of personnel for quarantine had worked out. Buck and Eddie are good at entertaining both themselves and each other, so nobody feels too crowded or too isolated, and Bobby has a chance to videocall Athena upstairs with a modicum of privacy.

There's not a lot to do, which is never Bobby's strong suit, but grappling with it is probably good for him. He gets in some meditation, at the very least, focusing on his breathing.

His breathing which, over the course of the day, has gotten noticeably more congested.

After his meditation, when he can't deny it anymore, Bobby sighs to himself up in the loft. He's not sure which will be worse: actually being sick, or Buck's fussing over him.

Day 3: Eddie

Eddie sleeps in again. Sleeping in two days in a row is, frankly, a luxury - it usually only happens on the rare occasions that he has both days of a weekend off, because otherwise he's getting up to get Chris off to school.

The downside of sleeping in is that by the time he stumbles into the kitchen, Buck and Bobby are having a heated, if half-hissed, not-quite-argument.

"There's nothing else to do," Bobby is insisting thickly. "We're already getting tested daily. We have all the supplies we need if any of us do test positive."

"You should be resting!" Buck tells him. "Not walking around trying to make us breakfast - "

"I'm just standing up and putting bread in the toaster, Buck, I really don't know what else you want from me." Now Eddie can hear it - the distinctly clogged quality to Bobby's voice.

"Uh-oh," Eddie says, mostly to draw Buck's attention and give Bobby a reprieve. "Sounds like we've got a man down."

"I'm just a little congested," Bobby tells him. "We knew this was a possibility, and we have all the resources if anything gets worse - "

"Eddie, tell him to go back to bed," Buck demands.

Eddie holds his hands up in the universal signal for I'm not touching this one.

"Buck," Bobby repeats levelly. "I'm making toast. Then I'm going to sit down. I promise you that if I feel any weakness, or fatigue, or anything else of concern, I'll let you know, all right?"

Buck's lips thin with displeasure, but he mutters something about a shower and stalks up the stairs.

Bobby sighs, looking after him. "As captain, aren't I supposed to be the overprotective one?"

"Do you want me to take a look, if only to get Buck to calm down?" Eddie offers.

Bobby looks at him flatly. "As I just told Buck, it doesn't matter whether you look at me or not - we're getting tested daily anyway."

"Might matter to Buck," Eddie points out, and Bobby just sighs again, so Eddie lets himself add, "I wouldn't mind it for my own peace of mind, either."

This time Bobby's sigh is only in his eyes, and probably his soul, but he splays out his hands helplessly. "Okay. What do you need?"

Eddie takes the offer for what it is and closes the distance between them. "I'm just going to check your lymph nodes, see if they're swollen," Eddie says.

Bobby fully rolls his eyes, but raises his chin to present his cervical lymph nodes without complaining, so Eddie obligingly gets palpating.

"Any tenderness?" Eddie asks, although given what he's feeling it seems redundant. For a second he's not sure if Bobby will answer honestly.

But then: "Some," Bobby admits, and then adds wryly, "I think I have a pretty good idea what I might've caught, though."

Eddie grimaces, letting go of Bobby's neck. He takes out his phone with one hand and quickly shakes it in the gesture that automatically turns on the flashlight. "Open?"

Bobby complies, revealing an inflamed and, frankly, slimy-looking back of his throat.

"Seeing some postnasal drip," Eddie says, and turns his flashlight off.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's all consistent with the flu?" Bobby asks. "Or do you need to look up my nose to double-check?"

Eddie shakes his head, but ruefully, conceding the point. "It's all flu-like for sure, but nothing to worry about. You really feeling okay?"

"I feel," Bobby says, enunciating to get his point across, "like I might be coming down with a mild flu." The even half-smile that always lives in Bobby's eyes doesn't fade even as his eyebrows quirk, just a little. "You know you can always take your paramedic certification if you want, right? I've never brought it up because you never seemed interested, but - "

"I'm happy to help out when I'm needed, but that's not where I want to be," Eddie says, laying his phone back on the counter.

Bobby inclines his head in acknowledgement, but says, "You keep ending up there. If you want to stop ending up there, you just let me know."

"There's a difference between ending up somewhere every now and then and deciding it's what you want forever," Eddie says with a shrug.

"Ah, yes," Bobby says, in a tone that immediately makes Eddie suspicious. "Speaking of which, how is Marisol?"

Eddie turns back to the counter to hide his grimace, and hides his hiding by reaching for a box of cereal. "I took your advice. I was open to what the universe had to give."

"Eddie, that was advice, not a recipe."

Eddie glances over his shoulder. "Well, do you happen to have a recipe?"

With a rueful smile, Bobby says, "There isn't one."

Eddie sighs a little, pouring cereal into his bowl. "I'm not...jealous. I just wouldn't mind having something like what you and Athena have, you know? Or what Hen and Karen have, or Chim and Maddie. With Shannon it was all arguing, and with Ana it was all not-arguing when maybe there should've been some, and you and Athena - you never seem to need to argue at all."

"Oh," Bobby says on the back of a goopy chuckle, "we've argued."

That draws Eddie's attention. "Oh yeah? When?"

Bobby frowns. "Now that you mention it...our first argument - well, the first one after we got married, anyway - was interrupted when Hen called to say you'd been shot."

"What?"

"She'd tailed me to a meeting - "

"What, why would she - "

"Because I lied to her face and told her I wasn't going to a meeting," Bobby says, matter-of-fact, as if he isn't talking about the most bizarre, un-Bobby-like behavior Eddie's ever heard. "I was sponsoring someone who - who Athena had met in a professional capacity, and not in a good way. And there were - other reasons. We weren't communicating, not really. And it all came to a boil. I have to say, though, you getting shot really put things in perspective."

Faintly, Eddie says, "I bet Athena rescuing you from that burning building helped too."

"It didn't hurt," Bobby concedes with a soft smile. "But then we also talked about things. After Athena was attacked, we'd been so focused on recovering physically that we didn't pay enough attention to making sure we were recovering emotionally."

Eddie glances up in the direction of the upstairs bathroom. "...yeah," he says, and even he's not entirely sure of the connection as he continues, but it feels relevant, somehow. "Buck asked, after he got out of the hospital, what I remembered about getting shot."

Bobby raises his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"There are some pieces that I..." He blinks to chase the memories of images away - mostly of blood. And Buck. And blood splattered on Buck. "I can't tell if they're memories, or, I don't know. Dreams. Nightmares."

"I'd imagine sometimes the whole thing feels like a nightmare," Bobby admits. "I'm a little surprised you hadn't talked about it before, though."

"I never wanted him to have to relive it," Eddie says. Bobby's eyebrows rise even further, and Eddie knows he's not getting away with it. Somehow he never does, with Bobby, so he turns fully around, leans back against the counter, and crosses his arms. "And...I didn't want to relive it, either. I guess he rode in the ambulance with me?"

"The engine," Bobby corrects absently. "Ambulances were all full, and the battalion truck was - one of the sniper's rounds pierced the gas tank." Now it's Bobby's turn to look away, staring into the middle distance. "I didn't see him until he was already at the hospital, and I'd already gotten some details from Mehta on the ride over, so I had an idea of what to expect."

Eddie waits for elaboration, and when it doesn't come, he pokes at the subject. "What did you expect?"

"Not to see you, because you'd been rushed into surgery," Bobby says. "Buck was...shaken. I'd only seen him like that after the tsunami, if I'm being honest."

That's - a lot. Eddie remembers the immediate aftermath of finding Buck in the tsunami. How pale he was, how out-of-it - looking at everything and everyone like he was only half-seeing. And the thought of him being like that after Eddie got shot? That's going to take some reconciling. "He said he lost it when he told Chris I'd gotten hurt," Eddie says, frowning.

"I'd be very curious to hear what his idea of 'losing it' was at the time," Bobby says, and also glances Buck-ward. "It took me a while to figure him out, after he started. When he talks, he's so upfront about what he says, it can get hard to remember that there's the stuff he doesn't talk about - either because he thinks it's so obvious he doesn't have to say it, or because he's buried it so deep even he doesn't know it's there." The toast pops out of the toaster, and Bobby plucks it onto a plate. "I should send Dr. Copeland a fruit basket or something."

Eddie huffs out a laugh, the spell of the conversation broken, and heads to the fridge to grab the milk. "Gift card for a spa day, maybe," he suggests. "She probably needs it."

"Very nicely done, by the way."

Eddie turns around with the milk, frowning at Bobby. "What?"

Bobby gives him a knowing look. "Changing the subject from Marisol."

Caught out, Eddie grimaces. "Uh - "

"Just remember," Bobby says, in his Wise Captain Giving Sage Wisdom Voice, "you're the only one who can figure out what you want. Whatever anyone else thinks..." He shakes his head. "The good new is, for stuff like this, the only person you're accountable to is you. The bad news is...you're always accountable to yourself."

Eddie briefly considers drowning himself in his cereal. He wants - he doesn't know what he wants. Or, he knows he doesn't want what he should want, and anything past that is dangerous territory. "That seems way worse."

"Oh," Bobby says, and claps a hand on Eddie's shoulder, "it absolutely is."

Buck, once he gets out of the shower, is mostly sufferable for the rest of the day. Eddie goads him into a freeweight workout that mostly consists of them egging each other on; the fact that they're in a line of work that has mandatory exercise regimens during work hours means that they know exactly how to press each other's buttons, from Buck's disproportionate hatred for Bavarian split squats to Eddie's ability to turn absolutely any kind of workout into a sparring session. Which is, admittedly, more difficult to do in the confined space of Buck's living room.

It's a few hours after lunch that Bobby's phone starts pinging. Eddie has commandeered Buck's TV for some light gaming, and Buck's pulled out a two-inch-thick paperback and Eddie vaguely recognizes from COVID quarantine as a book that Hen, despite Karen's recommendation, had dismissed as "too depressing" in favor of some Scandinavian serial killer mystery instead.

Bobby looks up from the island counter, where he's preparing a whole chicken for roasting to have on-hand because that's the kind of person he is, and announces to the apartment at large, "Chim's a negative today."

Eddie pauses his game to watch Buck tilt his head backward from his position half-hanging off the air mattress to look at Bobby upside-down.

"The results are starting to go out?" Buck asks, splaying his book open to his page on his chest.

"Yep," Bobby says, keeping his eye on his phone as it pings again. "Ravi's negative, too."

"Why do they send the results out one at a time like this?" Eddie wonders. "It seems a little overdramatic."

"We don't know that the others are telling us right away. They're the ones I'm getting the texts from." Ping. "Hen's negative."

"It's gotta be automatic, right?" Buck says to Eddie. "Or is it actually Gina texting us each time?"

A ping, and a grimace. "Well," Bobby says, and Eddie knows exactly what that means.

But apparently Buck doesn't. "Well what?"

"Surprising no one," Bobby says, lifting his phone, "I apparently have the flu."

Now it's Eddie's phone that pings, and he drops his controller to look at it. "Ah, fuck."

"You, too?" Bobby says, but his resigned tone makes it clear that he already knows.

"Yup."

The last ping echoes through the apartment, and everyone looks at Buck's phone, upside-down on the air mattress next to him.

"I mean, it doesn't even matter at this point, right?" Buck says. "If you two have it - "

"It might not be transmissible human-to-human," Bobby says, but Eddie personally thinks it's a bit of a stretch.

Buck steels himself with a breath, and flips his phone over. "Oh hey," he says, surprised. "Negative!"

"Yeah," Eddie says, because he can never resist riling Buck. "For now."

Day 4: Buck

Buck wakes up the next morning to the sound of Eddie trying to suppress a cough, but it's a slow wakeup, the kind that processes the information around him, turns it into a feeling, and incorporates that feeling into a hallucinatory half-waking dream. Where dream-Buck had previously been climbing the outside of a high-rise while trying not to spill a tray of to-go coffee cups balanced on his head so he could deliver them to (for some reason) Lucy Donato, he suddenly finds himself wandering through the dark firehouse as moonlight glints over every sharp surface. His dream-logic knows that somewhere, trailing him, is the personification of H5N1 wearing dark robes and an N95 strapped over a hockey mask, but he has to get to the shower room to retrieve his moisturizer before either Chimney steals it or the bird flu manages to murder him. Not with the flu, though - it has a knife, because why wouldn't it.

Then Eddie shifts on the air mattress, bobbling Buck up and down, and Buck wakes up the whole way.

"I'm doomed," Buck mumbles into his pillow.

Eddie clears his throat, the noise a bizarre combination of wet and grinding, and says creakily, "Yeah, you are."

Bobby keeps sniffling, Eddie keeps coughing, and Buck tries to keep his attention on his book. It's not hard - it's a good book, and half of it is set in the Middle Ages, so he has to keep looking stuff up. His search history is now full of things like "kirtle," "surcote," "matins time of day," and "where is oxford," which probably means he'll be getting ads for Renaissance Festival costumes for the next year, but it's absorbing and long and mostly helps keep his mind off the fact that bird flu is coming for him.

Around lunchtime, Bobby video-calls the other house to check in.

"Still testing negative here, as far as we know," Hen says, her face filling up the frame. "We should get the latest results in an hour or two, if it comes at the same time that it has been."

"The biggest risk," Chimney's voice filters in, and Hen belatedly turns the camera towards him, "is cabin fever. We're going a little stir-crazy, and some people have started to make baseless accusations - "

Now Ravi's voice joins, though the camera doesn't move: "I know you took my achar, Chimney!"

"That's pickled mango," Chimney says in mixed tones of disgust and amazement. "Why someone would take a perfectly good mango and pickle it is beyond me, let alone why he thinks I would - "

"Chimney," Bobby says, his calm-but-warning authority a little undercut by the distinct nasal quality to his voice, "let's not say anything anyone will regret."

"If I had eaten pickled mango, I would regret it," Chimney says. "Mangoes are supposed to be sweet - "

"Okay, that's enough of that," Hen says, and the camera turns back to her. "It hasn't been exactly like this twenty-four-seven, but I think we'll all be relieved once we're set free again. How about you?"

"Buck's most recent test was negative, and Eddie and I are only experiencing mild symptoms," Bobby says, and has to duck his head a little to wipe his nose.

"And I'm just waiting for it to come for me," Buck adds sadly.

"Hey, it might not," Hen says.

"Yeah, but it's gonna," Buck says.

After a second, Hen admits, "...yeah, probably. Where's Eddie?"

"Shower," Bobby says. "He's got the other half of the upper respiratory symptoms - coughing, sore throat."

"Any fever?"

"I've got one, but low-grade," Bobby admits, which is news to Buck.

"Wait, what?"

"It's hovering around a hundred, Buck, it's nothing to worry about," Bobby says, and Buck instantly clocks that Bobby didn't tell him because he knew Buck would worry.

Well, joke's on Bobby then, because Buck found out anyway and, yeah, he's worrying.

So Buck keeps an eye on Bobby for the rest of the day, glancing up from the novel each time Bobby blows his nose and diligently monitoring Bobby's liquid intake to make sure he's staying hydrated. Eddie lets it pass mostly without comment, just rolling his eyes and going back to slaying demons or whatever in his game.

The other shoe drops around four that afternoon, when the usual cascading of phone notifications tolls through the apartment - first Bobby, then Eddie, and then...

"Well, shit," Buck says, staring at the word "POSITIVE" on his screen.

"Look at it this way," Eddie says hoarsely, clapping Buck on the back. "At least you're not left out."

With the official diagnosis, Buck can't make himself keep ignoring the accumulating symptoms. He's been exhausted all day, although he figured it was from worrying about Bobby and Eddie - although more Bobby, since Eddie hasn't been giving off any of the tells that would suggest he's actually feeling worse than just a cough and sore throat. Bobby, on the other hand, has obviously been experiencing a dwindling appetite, and as the day has gone on he's been taking the stairs to the loft slower and slower. Buck can relate - there's an ache building in his bones, especially around his left leg - but that doesn't keep Buck from obsessing about it.

Someone, either Bobby or Eddie, must tip Hen off about Buck's mood and/or constant surveillance of Bobby, because he's about halfway through his book when he gets a text: look, those mango pickles are tasty. don't tell chim I took them though. it's payback for how he KEEPS USING MY MOISTURIZER.

That raises his spirits a little.

After a relatively quiet dinner of chicken soup, courtesy of the chicken and stock Bobby had made earlier in quarantine, they call it an early night. Buck still harbors some optimistic if halfhearted hopes that he can sleep this off before it gets any worse, Bobby clearly thinks that physical distance will keep Buck from checking his temperature, and Eddie honestly just seems bored with the day. Which is fair. So by the time the generous natural light has faded from the windows that jacked up Buck's rent by more than he cares to think about, he and Eddie are already in the air mattress, sharing the sleepover configuration they had used in his actual bed during the COVID quarantine: Eddie sleeping right-way-up and Buck with his head at the foot of the bed, each swathed in separate blankets.

"I think you were right about the acoustics," Buck murmurs in Eddie's general direction eventually. He can tell Eddie isn't asleep yet by the way he keeps fidgeting and clearing his throat, clearly trying not to cough. But - "I think I can hear Bobby snoring."

"That's not snoring," Eddie says back softly. Technically, like anatomically, Buck doesn't know if it counts as snoring or not - it's definitely the loud, open-mouthed breathing of someone who can't breathe through their nose, complete with occasional snotty clicks. But before Buck can argue the point, Eddie finishes, "Not compared to you."

"Hey, Natalia's never complained," Buck shoots back before he thinks about it. And it's...true. Strictly speaking. But with Buck's 24-hour shifts and the fact that Natalia's apartment is up to two hours away if the traffic's just wrong, they haven't actually slept together all that much. Not actual sleeping, anyway.

"Oh, then she's a keeper for sure," Eddie says instantly. "A freaking unicorn, even."

"Ha, ha."

Eddie gives a slow exhale that catches and turns into a closed-mouth cough.

"You okay? Do you need another lozenge?"

"Nah. Should've had another cup of that throat tea before bed."

"It's not too late. I can get the kettle on - "

"Don't worry about it. Seriously," Eddie adds, probably feeling Buck's weight starting to shift. "Not worth it. Not when we're already cozy."

Buck scoffs, just a little. "You're not even wearing socks."

"And you're a weirdo for wearing socks to bed."

Buck just grins, even though Eddie can't see it.

"So things are going okay with you and Natalia?"

The grin doesn't fade, but - Buck just wants to give Eddie's question the weight it deserves.

"I think so, yeah," he says. "It's nice, you know? To have someone to spend time with. Like, there's something about just...sharing your life. I know it sounds dumb."

"I don't think it is," Eddie says softly. "I mean - Christopher."

"Yeah," Buck agrees. "How's, uh. How's he feeling about Marisol?"

Eddie half-coughs a laugh. "He thinks she's way out of my league."

"Oh wow - dissed by your own son!"

"My teenage son."

"God, that makes it so much worse."

This time, Eddie manages an entire, if curtailed, chuckle without coughing. "Oh, trust me, I know. But - Natalia's...you know. You're getting what you need out of a relationship?"

In the quiet dark, it's easier to be honest. Also Buck can still hear Bobby's maybe-snoring from upstairs so he's pretty sure Bobby isn't eavesdropping. "I know it's probably weird to say, and it's definitely not, like, the reason I'm dating Natalia, I just - I really missed having regular sex with the same person, you know?"

"...huh," Eddie says. "You know, I never actually met Buck 1.0, but that's a little unexpected."

"Ha, yeah," Buck says, smiling ruefully at his ceiling. "The thing is, Buck 1.0 asked a lot of his hookups afterwards for their numbers, and almost all of them said no, so therapy might have revealed that Buck 1.0 was a clumsy attempt to search for intimacy in the only way he knew how."

"Oh wow," Eddie says, in the same tone Buck's heard him use on, say, a pair of gardening shears embedded in someone's thigh. "Wait, hang on - so all those girls you were calling to ask whether they came - "

"Yep," Buck says with a sigh. "Those were just the ones who said yes. Which Karen said biased my sample and made it statistically insignificant. But, like - getting to know someone. What they like. Getting better at, you know. Making them feel good. It's nice."

"Sure. What is it about Natalia, though?" Eddie asks. "I mean, everything you've said is about just being in a relationship, not a relationship with her."

Buck takes the question seriously, curling his arm beneath the back of his head. It's not an unfair question, and, honestly, yeah, Buck is happy to be in a relationship again. But he also likes the person Natalia sees him as, the way he can just be unapologetically who he is without having to worry about how she'll take it. And she complements him, too, in a way that doesn't make him feel like he should be more. It's all the best parts of a relationship with none of the unhealthy entanglements and expectations.

"I think," Buck says eventually, "it's that...you want someone who, at the worst and most terrifying moment of your life - or death - can be the brave one." He looks down towards his feet in the dim light towards the scant outlines of Eddie's silhouette. Most of Eddie's face is in shadow, and Buck can't tell what he's thinking. "Does that make sense?"

After a second, Eddie says, "Do you want to know what I really think?"

The unspoken part of the question - or do you want to hear what I think you want to hear? - goes unsaid, but Buck rankles at it anyway. "Yeah, Eddie. Always. C'mon, lay it on me."

"She wasn't there," Eddie says simply. "She wasn't brave. She wasn't there. Looking back when you know everything's fine and saying in hindsight it was cool is one thing, and that's fine, but it's not the same as being the brave one. You want to see how she does as the brave one? How'd she do when Kameron's water broke on your couch, huh?"

"Yeah, but - " Buck starts, because he hadn't needed her to be brave then, so it didn't really matter, did it.

"You know what I think is brave," Eddie continues relentlessly, his hushed tone going more intense to make up for his volume. "Remember when I got shot?"

Buck blanches. As if he could forget.

But Eddie continues, "You said afterward that you kind of lost it when you told Christopher. You know what Christopher told me? He said that when he saw you were upset, he felt like he could be upset, too. That he could feel it and keep going, because at least you were feeling it together. That's what I think is brave. Being willing to be in it with you."

That's...a lot. That's a lot more than Buck can process in the muffled gray not-quite-light of a quarantine sleepover, so instead he says, "So are you in it with Marisol?"

Eddie huffs out a breath that could be a laugh or just a noise of surprise. "Buck, we've been on three dates."

"Yeah, but you were texting for three months before that," Buck points out.

"And I was on painkillers for my ribs for, like, two of them."

"Oh, come on, Eddie. I'm not saying you have to know. I'm just saying...do you have a guess?"

Eddie doesn't reply, which is kind of a reply in and of itself. Buck makes a mental note to put a calendar reminder in his phone in case Eddie's still dating Marisol in a few months: 'Give Eddie the Abby talk again.'

But then, to Buck's surprise, Eddie says, "She's gonna find someone really great someday."

It takes Buck a second to think of something to say, past the sudden rush of relief - which makes sense, because Buck may not have much firsthand experience with having a best friend, but he knows how these things go. Hell, even Chim became more scarce in the 118 social scene when he and Maddie got serious, and, as he reminds them all at every turn, he is the alpha and omega of the firehouse. "Have, uh. Have you...told her that?"

"I said I want to keep things casual," Eddie admits. "I've never really done that before, so we're just...keeping things casual. I think she's going on dates with other guys, which is honestly kind of a relief."

"Oh," Buck says, a little thrown. But he's done plenty casual before, assuming that Eddie means what Buck thinks he means, and that can be nice. "Are you - what does casual even mean for you two? Are you sleeping together?"

"Jesus, Buck."

"Sorry, did you want me to be more subtle? Are you - " Buck lets his voice go wobbly in an admittedly childish, goading way - "getting what you need out of the relationship?"

"Okay, first of all, I didn't mean sex when I asked you that question," Eddie says.

"Uh-huh. Sure."

"Second of all - we're. I mean. We have. On occasion."

Buck finds himself filled suddenly with immature glee. "Are you two each other's booty-calls?"

"I - look - I don't really - 'booty call' is just a really loaded phrase."

"Wait," Buck says suddenly, frowning. "If you never really dated except for Shannon and Ana - did you never..."

"We should probably go to sleep now," Eddie says. "Because we're sick." He gives a fake cough that turns into a real one.

But Buck is undeterred. "Is this your first experience with no-strings-attached sex?"

Eddie just gives a long sigh, and Buck watches the outline of his hand come up to rub his forehead.

"Hey, c'mon," Buck says, shifting his (socked) foot under the covers to prod at Eddie's arm. "You know basically everything about my sex life. Spill."

"I just..." Eddie's hand drops, and Buck sees the glint of reflected city-light on his eyes. "I don't really know what I'm doing," he says.

And Buck knows that Eddie really doesn't like not knowing what he's doing. "It doesn't have to mean anything you don't want it to," he says, aiming for reassuring. "Just because it's new doesn't mean it's bad."

"Easy for you to say," Eddie mutters, and, yeah, that rankles Buck a little bit.

"Hey, Buck 1.0 is, like, four updates ago at this point - "

"That's not what I - " Eddie cuts himself off with a small, frustrated noise. "I just mean that you're good at this kind of thing."

Buck squints at him. "Sex?"

"Jumping into something headfirst, without having a plan," Eddie says. "You just - do it. And whatever comes at you, you just...feel your way through it."

Something about the way Eddie's saying it sounds off, almost discordant. Buck's been told basically this exact thing plenty of times before, but Eddie's tone... "Wait. Do you mean that as a compliment?"

Now Eddie's head rises a little, and secondhand light drizzles across his face. "Yeah?" He says it like it's obvious.

"Wow," Buck says. "That's...not usually how that goes."

Eddie keeps looking in Buck's direction, but in the darkness, Buck can't quite see his expression - only the general contours of his face. "I know I give you a lot of shit," Eddie says, his tone now as soft as his volume, "but I really admire that about you, Buck. Your flexibility. The way you're always game. How you just...feel everything." There's a shifting of light, and the movement makes Buck realize it's Eddie's Adam's apple rising as he swallows. "You make it look effortless."

It takes a second for Buck to answer. "Sometimes I wish it took a little more effort," he admits. "Wish I could - I don't know. Have my shit more together, like you."

A huffed breath. "You say 'have my shit together,' Frank says 'control issues' and 'problems with intimacy.'"

"Well, you say 'flexibility' and 'always game,' and so many people say 'impulse control issues' and, well, also 'problems with intimacy,' but in, like, the opposite direction."

Eddie gives a noncommittal, raspy hum.

"I've also heard 'reckless,'" Buck continues, because now that he's cataloguing them, there really are a lot, aren't there? "'Needy.'"

"Do you want a fishing rod?" Eddie says abruptly, and Buck blinks, trying to follow the thought. "Since you're out here fishing for compliments?"

That gets Buck to laugh, which instantly breaks the morose mood he'd been suddenly on the edge of. "Well, I mean," he says, "you could mention my ass. I work hard on it, you know. Wouldn't mind some appreciation."

"It's a great ass," Eddie agrees instantly. "We all have great asses. We're professional firefighters - our asses are all objectively amazing. Our job is literally climbing ladders, so every day is glute day. "

Buck laughs again, and it hits him: this is effortless. Despite everything Eddie said about Buck and his feelings or whatever, this, right here, feels as easy as anything Buck's ever done. Even staring down the self-worth and self-knowledge issues that Dr. Copeland has spent the better part of three years helping him dismantle, Eddie knows exactly what to say to pull Buck out of it.

"I don't want to sound sappy," Buck says, knowing that he's about to anyway, "but I just - I'm so fucking glad I get to know you, Eddie. I mean it. I'm lucky as hell."

Maybe it's the protective power of the dimness, or the white noise of Bobby's sleep-sounds upstairs, or just the little world they inadvertently constructed out of blankets and pillows and a dumb air mattress that is absolutely murdering Buck's back. But Eddie says back, "I'm pretty lucky, too. You're kind of great, Buck."

Then, after barely half a second:

"And that was incredibly sappy."

Buck grins, pulling his arm out from behind his head and taking a second to bask in the compliment. "Aww, I know you're just a big softie at heart, Diaz."

"Oh, I'm a softie? Didn't you cry at a kids' movie about a dragon?"

Buck did, and he stands by it. "I also cry at, like, kitten videos, man. And it was a good movie."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." But Buck can hear the smile in Eddie's voice. "Would you shut up and let me go to sleep? Or do you want to make friendship bracelets?"

"I mean, let's see how bored we get," Buck says. "Unless we start testing negative, we've still got four days of quarantine left."

Eddie gives a sleepy chuckle, and silence falls over them like a heavy blanket. Buck tucks himself further under the blanket, rubbing his socked feet together to try to warm them, and tries not to contemplate the difference between all the best parts and in it.

All the best parts are really nice. But it's here, getting teased about wearing socks to bed, that he feels like he might not be in it alone.

Day 5: Bobby

When Bobby wakes up, he finds that he no longer has to wipe his nose every two seconds. This would be a relief, if instead the congestion hadn't moved further back: he can feel a coating on the back of his throat and a low rumble of nausea on the horizon.

He sighs, reminding himself that this is progress even if it's frustrating, and drags himself out of the bed.

Buck and Eddie are still asleep when he comes down, so he keeps his movements quiet. He grabs a bottle of Gatorade instead of risking the noise of the coffeemaker (and he could probably use the electrolytes anyway), and brings a sleeve of saltines with him out onto Buck's balcony.

"Just make sure you're taking care of yourself," Athena tells him when he calls her over his breakfast.

"I am," he promises. "And if I weren't, trust me, you'd hear it from Buck."

Athena chuckles. "It'll be nice to have you home once you're cleared, but at least I know you're in good hands."

"Good, deeply paranoid hands," Bobby half-agrees, and it gets another laugh.

"I'm a little surprised those two haven't broken your spirit yet," Athena says with a knowing smile. "What is this, day five?"

"Day seven since exposure, day five of quarantine," Bobby confirms. "Honestly, they're not too bad, when Buck isn't Nurse Buck. Of course," he adds, "it helps that they're asleep right now. That makes it very easy to deal with them."

"Well, send them my love and make sure you stay hydrated."

"Will do. I love you."

"Love you, too," Athena says, and Bobby has just a second to relish the curve of her smile before the screen goes blank.

He sighs again, which makes him cough a little, and flips his phone facedown on the table. He closes his eyes, breathes in slow and smooth, and takes the time to himself to meditate.

Some time later - he either meditates successfully or drifts off for a nap, he's not sure which - the balcony door slides open behind him, and Bobby turns around ready to justify his fresh air to Nurse Buck.

Lucky for him, it's Eddie.

"Morning," Bobby says.

Eddie opens his mouth, and his lips form the word morning in return, but all that comes out is a croak. Bobby raises his eyebrows, and Eddie closes his eyes, his mouth settling into a grim line of resignation.

"I'm guessing you've lost your voice," Bobby says, and Eddie nods. "Well, you're welcome to join me for some meditation."

Eddie squints at Bobby, then at the saltines and Gatorade. He tilts his head with a skeptical glance.

"Meditation and gentle nourishment," Bobby allows.

Eddie contemplates this for a moment, then gives Bobby a no-thank-you-but-you-enjoy-that thumbs-up and goes back inside.

"Well," Bobby says to himself, "at least it's going to be relatively quiet today."

Buck doesn't wake up for another hour, during which Eddie showers upstairs and Bobby enjoys the silence. When Buck finally does rise from the air mattress, he shuffles over to the counter like something out of a cheap horror movie, with dull eyes and pale skin and noticeable chills running through him.

"Good morning, Buck," Bobby says, and slides another Gatorade across the counter at him. "I take it your asymptomatic days are over?"

"I think I have a fever," Buck admits. He doesn't sound congested or hoarse, at least. "Got chills. Everything hurts." He flops onto one of his bar stools, letting everything from his ribcage up rest on the counter. "I bet Beelzebird doesn't feel this bad."

Beelzebird was, as far as Bobby knows, humanely euthanized along with the rest of the birds. He decides not to mention this. "Beelzebird didn't have Tamiflu."

"Or Gatorade," Buck agrees, his voice muffled by the counter. He raises his head. "Does coffee interact with Tamiflu? Is that why - "

"Just didn't want to wake you up." Bobby gets up and crosses over to the coffee maker. Honestly, he's glad to have something to do - he's never done well with free time. "Eddie's in the shower - he woke up this morning with no voice."

"God, look at us," Buck says, with more despair than disdain.

With his back to Buck, Bobby smiles. "Well, you know what they say. Birds of a feather..."

Buck groans, and Bobby hears the solid thunk of his head hitting the counter, which only makes him smile wider.

Everything's going fine until Eddie comes back down and starts making his own breakfast. Bobby sticks to saltines and Buck says he'll need at least two cups of coffee to get enough energy to chew anything, but the second the smell of Eddie's eggs in the frying pan hits Bobby, he knows he's in trouble.

But Bobby is an adult, and a professional, and he refuses to be laid low by a pan of eggs, even if eggs are suddenly the most noxious smell he's ever encountered. Instead, he sips his Gatorade, trying to let the artificial sweetness block out the stench. He takes careful, measured breaths. He twists the packet of Saltines shut and uses his meditation techniques to transcend this existence into a world where the concept of food doesn't exist.

Then Eddie turns around with his plate, and something about the wrinkled, glistening pale-yellow of the eggs reaches right past Bobby's conscious brain and hits the evolutionary button that says actually, no thank you.

Bobby rushes for the bathroom and pukes into the toilet so spectacularly that he decides to just stay there for a little bit.

After about ten minutes, Buck pokes his head in and brandishes a bottle of Gatorade. "Hey. You, uh, forgot this."

"Thanks," Bobby says, reaching out for the bottle. "And I know what you're going to say, but I'm fine."

"Uh-huh." Buck comes further in to hand it to him. "And Eddie says - well, not says, but, you know - he says sorry, and no more eggs."

Bobby's stomach clenches and he closes his eyes. He may be a grown man and a fire captain, but right now all he can do is pitifully beg, "Please don't say that word."

"Right. Sorry. You, uh, want a pillow or something?"

Bobby lays his head on the cool rim of the toilet seat. "No, I'll be out soon. I promise. There's not much left, anyway."

When Bobby opens his eyes, Buck looks like he might argue. Then Buck just shakes his head. "All right. Let us know if you need anything, yeah?"

"I will. I promise."

Buck gives Bobby a vague wave as he leaves. Bobby almost feels bad for taking advantage of the fact that Buck clearly feels, if possible, even worse than Bobby does, but the last thing Bobby wants is for Buck to have to weather whatever symptoms he's dealing with on the tiled floor of his own bathroom.

And, anyway, after another fifteen or so minutes, Bobby does feel good enough to come back out. Eddie has a crumb-scattered plate in front of him and the scent of toast fills the air, and when he sees Bobby come out, he grimaces an apology.

Bobby just shakes his head and waves the apology away. "Don't worry about it. No way to know that that's what would happen." He turns towards the stairs to the loft, expecting Buck to be asleep on the air mattress, but instead Buck has propped himself up on pillows. His book is facedown on his stomach, open to his page - at least, Bobby assumes it's the page Buck is at, but it's at least three-quarters of the way through, which is impressive - but Buck is scrolling his phone with one hand and chewing nervously on the thumbnail of the other.

Bobby frowns. "Everything okay? News from Hen or Chim?"

"No," Buck says distractedly. "I'm just looking up spoilers for the book I'm reading to make sure Mr. Dunworthy is going to be okay."

It takes Bobby a few gummy-eyed blinks for it to click. "In your book?"

"Yeah. He's in the other books in the series, apparently, but I can't figure out if they come before or after this one, and now there's a flu epidemic - "

"I thought it was about the plague," Bobby says, tilting his head a little to glance again at the cover, which displays a faux-calligraphy font and intricate Celtic-inspired knotwork that certainly seems to point to plague.

"Yeah," Buck says, "but there's also a flu epidemic in the 2050's." Buck finally looks away from his phone and sees the look on Bobby's face. "They're time-travelers," he explains, and, yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

"Why," comes a creaky whisper from Eddie, "are you reading a book about infectious diseases now?"

Buck sighs, and lets his phone drop. "You know," he says, "I'm honestly asking myself that too." Then he scrubs his face with one hand. "But now I'm invested." He picks up the phone again and returns his attention to it.

Bobby catches Eddie's eye-roll in his peripheral vision, and shakes his head to himself as he goes upstairs for a nap. It's only been a few hours since he woke up, but with way the day is already going, he figures it's best to fortify himself.

He's woken up a little later by the hushed tones of a conversation - or half of one.

"I mean, higher than you'd think," Buck is saying quietly, and Bobby can hear the smile in his voice. For a second Bobby thinks he's talking to Eddie, but after a pause Buck replies, "Well - not really. It's not once-in-a-lifetime when it's my job, you know?" Another pause. "No, that's what I'm saying. Other people have, like, normal amounts of bad luck, and then I get called in because that's my job. So, yeah, sometimes that bad luck, like, spills over. But statistically speaking - " Buck cuts himself off, and Bobby frowns. He feels a little bad about eavesdropping, but mostly...well, mostly, no he doesn't. "It is going to happen again," Buck says, and now his tone is changing. Not frustrated, but more...resigned. "That's not - it isn't about making it through this one tough time. Maybe next time it won't be bird flu, but it's not just bird flu, you know? Before that it was a bridge collapse. Before that, lightning. Before that, Eddie got shot. I'm not trying to scare you or anything, I'm just saying that this...this is what it is. And it's not for everyone. If it's not for you, then...well, trust me when I say that it's better to know that now than further down the line."

Oh.

Now Bobby does feel a little bad about eavesdropping.

He rolls over, pulls a pillow over his head, and focuses on the sound of his breathing until he falls back into a doze.

When he wakes up, Bobby manages a few saltines here and there and drinks so much Gatorade that his taste buds stop registering it. Eddie spends most of the day on the balcony, gaming on a laptop that Bobby never realized that he had. Buck finishes his book that afternoon, and indicates it to the world by pressing the cover of the paperback to his forehead with both hands, his eyes squeezed shut, for a solid five minutes after.

Eventually, even Bobby can't resist the bait. "Was Mr. Dunworthy okay?" he asks from the counter, where he's been building a house of saltines. They don't have quite the same architectural properties as cards, but he takes a picture of the structure and sends it to Michael anyway, just to see what he'll say.

"Nothing will ever be okay again," Buck says.

"How about next time you have an infectious disease," Bobby suggests, trying not to smile, "you read something a little less intense?"

"I looked up the rest of the series," Buck says. "Two of the books are set during the London Blitz. That's when London was being bombed by Nazis!"

"What are the other books about, then?" Bobby asks. "Pompeii? The meteor that killed the dinosaurs?"

Buck finally removes the book from his head and flops it onto his lap. "Apparently it's 'a Victorian farcical romp.'"

"...huh," Bobby says. "I guess the author has range."

"Screw this," Buck says, "I'm putting on a dumb action movie."

Bobby joins him, and, eventually, Eddie does too. The dumb action movie has a laundry list of the usual stock Hollywood traumas that might be an issue for any or all of them - a tragic backstory of dead family members, an estranged wife in peril, and a veritable bingo card of injuries to rival Buck's own - but luckily it's incredibly dumb, and they're too busy criticizing the rescue techniques to care. At one point the lead character rips off a car door with his bare hands.

"I think," Buck says, staring at the end credits as they roll, "that I got dumber watching that. Is that even possible?"

"For anyone else," Eddie whisper-croaks as he stands up, "probably. For you?" He shrugs theatrically, and lets it turn into a stretch. "Anyone want soup?"

Soup sounds great to Bobby for about half a second, until his stomach catches up with his head. He dashes to the bathroom, filled with regret. And bile.

Once the saltines are out of his system he feels a little better, but he leans his back against the tile wall, reluctant to chance it. It's been a while since he's been in this opposite-of-sweet-spot of illness: feeling terrible, but not terrible enough to actually worry. His fever has been steadily ticking down over the course of the day, and he's fairly certain his nausea was caused by the postnasal drip making its way out of his system via his GI tract, and the good news is that he doesn't feel anymore slime on the back of his throat. That, at least, might be a self-limiting problem.

But he stays in the bathroom just in case, letting the sounds of Buck and Eddie echo around him. The low murmur of voices, Buck's becoming almost audible as he comes closer until Eddie says, level but authoritative, "Buck," and then recedes again. The clattering of dishes. The hum of a microwave. The quiet clink of silverware. More voices.

Then footsteps.

Buck, when he appears in the doorway, has gone from pale to vaguely green, and the corners of his mouth are clamped together with determination.

He barely parts his lips as he says, "I'm, like, ninety percent sure I'm not going to - "

And then he stops, a horrible gurgling sound bubbling from his trachea.

Bobby sighs and puts up the toilet seat. "Pull up some tile. You'll feel better when everything's out."

So Buck throws up too. The soup, it seems, was not a good idea. Bobby rubs Buck's shoulder as he retches - Buck is getting it worse than Bobby did, dramatic convulsions that wring tears and snot out of him, and for all that they tease him for being the pretty one, this is doing a lot to challenge that reputation.

"God, this is like high school all over again," Buck says between waves, and Bobby decides they don't really have time to unpack that.

Bobby waits for a lull of about three minutes - at the very least, he's pretty sure Buck has nothing left in his stomach to lose, even if he's slumped against the sink cabinet with his head tilted towards the toilet just in case.

"Is Eddie going to be joining us, do you think?" Bobby asks when he's pretty sure things have calmed down.

Buck shakes his head, the motion rolling it across the cabinet and back. "Nah," he says. "His stomach's fine, and he's not a fan of vomit."

Bobby frowns. "Nobody's a fan."

"No, but like - the way you're not a fan of bugs, and Chim has the thing about dogs."

That gets an eyebrow raise from Bobby. "I never noticed."

"He's a professional," Buck says with a shrug. "When he's on the job. Less so when Chris caught COVID and couldn't keep anything down for two days." Buck gives Bobby a faint smile and explained, "I was the cavalry. Now, he's made a strategic retreat to the balcony so he doesn't have to hear it."

Bobby huffs out a laugh. "Professional is right."

The smile fades quickly from Buck's face, though, and Bobby doesn't even have time to wonder if he'll have to ask before Buck says, "I broke up with Natalia."

Bobby blinks. That's more than he had expected. "I'm sorry to hear that," he says, keeping his voice level.

"She wasn't getting it," Buck says, staring morosely at the toilet. "It was just - it was Ali all over again."

"Not all over again," Bobby says gently. "You ended it this time. And early."

"Yeah," Buck says, but dubiously.

So Bobby says, "I'm proud of you. No, don't give me that look, I mean it. You didn't pretend it wasn't happening, or wait for her to do it, or stay in denial until she crossed a line. You saw it wasn't working for you, and you took action. It's not easy."

Especially not for Buck, but Bobby doesn't think he has to say that part.

Buck hooks a rueful half-grin. "You mean," he says, "unlike Abby, and Ali, and Taylor." He lifts his head, just a little, to thunk it back against the cabinet.

"Well, I'd offer you advice, but according to Eddie, it's not worth much." Bobby watches Buck huff out a barely-attempted laugh, his expression not even shifting. "You're doing everything right. I know it doesn't feel like it, but there's nothing wrong with asking yourself what you want."

"What if every time I think I know what I want, I get it, and it's...not?"

"What did you think you got with Natalia?"

Buck squints in thought, his gaze directed somewhere in the vicinity of his showerhead. "It was just...nice. Being around someone who didn't look at me and see all the bad stuff that's happened to me. Like I was someone who could just - deal with all that, and move on. Not be stuck in it."

"Hmm." Bobby rolls this over in his head. "That may be how she looked at you, but was that how she made you feel?"

After a second, Buck breaks out another smile, this one more genuine. "'If what matters to me most,'" he says, in the distinct enunciations of a quote, "'is how other people see me, then I haven't learned a damn thing.'"

Bobby raises his eyebrows, impressed. "That's very wise. Where'd you hear that?"

"In my coma dream," Buck says, and when his eyes meet Bobby's there's laughter in them, like he's got a private joke all to himself. "So I guess, technically, I'm the wise one."

"Well, you know what they say about broken clocks," Bobby says, and that gets a genuine laugh out of Buck, even though it quickly turns into a nauseated burp.

They stay in the bathroom for most of the evening.

Day 6: Not Applicable

Bobby's fever is gone when he wakes up. Buck's breaks a little before noon, and both of them manage to keep down a lunch of Gatorade and soup. Eddie, who accidentally slept outside on one of the balcony chairs for most of the night, still has no voice and looks and feels about as bad as Buck and Bobby do.

The most exciting thing that happens is that Gina from the Health Department drops off at-home flu tests and says that they're "good enough at this point," which, in one of the few conversations they muster the energy for that day, they all agree is a good sign for their prognosis.

Which is to say, all three of them basically sleep for the entire day and have no regrets about it.

Day 7: Eddie

Eddie sleeps in - again - only to wake up and find that Bobby's already gone.

"Twenty-four hours without a fever and a negative test," Buck tells him, pouring batter into the waffle maker. It's a novelty waffle iron, something that Eddie hadn't even realized was a thing, that makes waffles shaped like various trucks - including firetrucks. Buck had stolen it from Ravi at the white elephant gift exchange and threatened to physically fight anyone who tried to take it from him.

"Your fever broke yesterday too, right?" Eddie asks, playing quarantine Tetris in his head. If Buck tests negative but Eddie tests positive, then Eddie isn't going to kick Buck out of his own apartment. Although maybe if he frames it as Buck getting to go hang out with Christopher -

"Took my test this morning," Buck says ruefully. "Still positive. Line didn't show up until almost the end of the time, though. I think that means I've got less virus? Is that how it works?"

"You should ask Hen - she probably knows."

"Hen knows everything," Buck agrees solemnly, and passes Eddie a plate. Eddie spears a cement-mixer already scraped with butter and flurried with powdered sugar (God bless Buck's encyclopedic knowledge of everyone's weird food quirks, Eddie can't stand maple syrup) and pops it into his mouth.

"What d'you think for the day?" he mumbles around the waffle. "Video games? Got another depressing book to read?" He swallows, and another possibility occurs to him. "I can go out to the balcony again if you want some privacy to call Natalia."

Buck shoots him a look that's equal parts surprised and confused. "Why - okay, first of all, why would I need privacy to call anyone? We all basically live in each others' pockets."

"Yeah," Eddie agrees, keeping his face schooled to aloof neutrality. "Which is part of why I know how much an entire week of having roommates again must be messing with you. So if you want me to clear out a little so you and Natalia can, you know, have some alone time. If you need to hang a sock on the balcony door, that kind of thing..."

"Okay," Buck says, shaking his head. "Wow, I don't even know where to start. First of all, I'm perfectly capable of going a week without having sex, okay?"

Eddie hums, high-pitched and dubious.

"I am! And second of all - Natalia and I broke up."

That takes Eddie by surprise. "You - what? When?"

Buck shrugs. "A couple days ago."

"When you had bird flu and were feverish?" Eddie demands. "Doesn't that seem like, I don't know, not the time to make big life decisions?"

"Why do you sound angry?" Buck says, as if the aggression with which he hooks a dish towel over his shoulder doesn't suggest he's halfway to anger himself.

"I'm not angry," Eddie says, angrily. He hears it as soon as it comes out of his mouth, and he doesn't really know why either. Or - well, he has the sense that he probably could know why, in the dangerous way that means he needs to put it in a box immediately and never think about it again. He looks down at his plate and stabs the police car waffle. "I'm not," he repeats, and it comes out much more reasonable this time. "I just - I'm not saying this because I think you should change what you're doing, or because you're doing something wrong, but sometimes I worry about you. And, you know. Sometimes you can...get in your own way a little."

When Eddie finally glances up, Buck is staring at him, gape-mouthed and shellshocked.

Eddie theatrically looks behind himself, then back at Buck. "What?"

Buck shakes his head a little. "Uh - just - that's a lot of feelings words for you. Did you sneak in a video-call session with Frank while I wasn't looking? Did the flu break you?"

"Ha, ha. Very funny."

Eddie waits for Buck to actually respond, as Buck opens the waffle maker and carefully tips another set of vehicular waffles onto his own plate. Eventually, Buck says, "I wasn't in it. Not really. I was spending so much energy proving that I was, I don't know, settled with myself, that I didn't have any left to just...be myself. Like, I wanted to make sure that I knew that I didn't need the relationship to know who I am. And it worked. I didn't need the relationship, so much that I already had one foot out the door. Because at the end of the day...I don't actually want to be in it alone, you know?"

Something about the phrasing makes Eddie swallow hard. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I get it." He clears his throat. "And you're not, you know." Off Buck's look, he clarifies, "In it alone. No matter what, you've got me and Chris, and the whole 118. We'll be in it with you whether you like it or not," he continues, watching Buck's expression go from touched to bashful to amused, "irritating your nurses at the hospital, judging your love life, giving you shit about not knowing who Richard Nixon was - "

"Hey! I knew he was President, I just didn't remember all the...other stuff."

"Uh-huh."

"Anyway," Buck says, glaring, "since me breaking up with Natalia means that you're the one in a committed relationship, you just let me know if you want me to go out on the balcony so you can have phone sex. No judgment. Phone sex is great."

"Okay, I'm leaving." Eddie lets his fork fall to his now-empty plate and slips off his bar stool, heading for the stairs. "I need a shower anyway."

"Hey Eddie - "

"If you make a comment about jerking off in the shower, I swear to God - "

"No, I just - " Buck pauses, his mouth a little open, and then finds a second wind. "You're not in it alone, either. We're in it together. Nothing's ever gonna change that."

Eddie hesitates. Buck must've meant the whole 118. He must have. "Yeah," he says, his mouth suddenly dry. "Yeah, Buck, I know."

"I mean it," Buck insists, and steps around the island. He keeps his distance from Eddie, but without the fortification of the counter between them, he seems more - present. Vulnerable. "I'm not just saying that. Whoever - whoever else might be around, in our lives, I've got your back."

There's something about Buck's tone, the dead-seriousness of it, that Eddie can't quite wrap his head around. He swallows, or tries to. "If you think I'm worried about you getting into a serious relationship - "

"You don't have to," Buck interrupts. "That's what I'm saying. You - you and Chris, you're always going to come first. Even if we marry other people, the second either of you needs me, I'm there, okay?"

Eddie realizes he's blinking, fast. He's not sure why. "Where the hell is this coming from?"

"Because when you say you're in it with me, I believe you," Buck says. "And I feel it. Like I'm not alone. Like I'm - not just taking up space in your life. You don't have to feel the same," he adds hurriedly, "but I just want you to know that, because you deserve to."

Eddie doesn't know what to say. There are a million things he could say, each more frightening than the last. That Buck also makes him feel like he's not in it alone. That Buck makes him feel like it's worth it to put the effort in. That Buck makes him forget to think about who he's supposed to be, expected to be, and makes him act without thinking in a way that both calms him and terrifies him - makes him feel recklessly himself. Not like Dutiful Son Eddie Diaz, or Man of the House Eddie Diaz, or Husband Eddie Diaz, or even Dad Eddie Diaz, even though he loves being Dad Eddie Diaz so fucking much. Buck doesn't even make him feel like none of those labels, or like all of them together - Buck makes him feel like the labels don't even matter.

And that's - that's big. That's important. And, in a way that Eddie can scarcely bear to think about, it's lifechanging. It would be so easy to let the moment dissolve, to throw a flippant right back atcha over his shoulder as he goes upstairs and flees. Nothing would have to change.

Except that Eddie would always know that he let this go, and, well - he'll always be accountable to himself.

"You're not taking up space in my life," Eddie says. "I don't - I've never thought that, Buck. Even when you're driving me up a freaking wall, I - " Then he stops as Buck's words replay in his head. "Feel...the same?"

Buck blinks, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. "Just - you've always got me."

"You - you've always got me, too," Eddie makes himself say. It comes out soft. "And - you - I know I've got you. I'm - really glad."

This is so far out of Eddie's comfort zone that he vaguely wishes he were on a bridge so it could collapse. It feels like the early days of therapy with Frank, except those early days with Frank were more frustrating than vulnerable and Eddie feels like his chest is carved open for Buck to see straight into him, even the parts that Eddie himself doesn't know how to make sense of.

But Eddie doesn't know how to say it. He doesn't even know what he wants to say. He's just got this looming tangle of feelings rising up like a bizarro sea monster and he only knows one thing to do with them other than shove them back down, and that's - not an option. It's just not an option.

Buck is looking at him, watching his face, and his lips are still a little parted in a way that's just not an option. "Anything you need from me," Buck says, but he's looking at Eddie like he means something else, and he's taking a step closer. "Eddie, you can ask me for anything and it's yours."

And then it just - kind of clicks into place. A calm rolls over Eddie, not the band-aid calm of packing something away to be dealt with later (or, better yet, never), or the professional calm of rolling up his sleeves when he sights blood and bone, or even the comfortable calm of the firehouse's couch at nine at night, as everyone's winding down but not exhausted yet.

Eddie doesn't know how to ask for what he wants - but neither does Buck. Buck may have been right that Eddie sucks at dating, but Eddie's pretty good at reading Buck and it turns out that whatever messy in-between space they're in right now, Buck sucks at it too.

Which makes sense - from what Eddie knows, Buck hasn't ever gone from friend to lover. He's always started off with romantic intent. And Eddie, on the other hand, has only gone from friend to lover - the only time that really counted, anyway, and that was all Shannon's doing. Eddie can't remember how Shannon made it feel so goddamn easy, but now he thinks maybe the way to do it is to just refuse to let it be hard. To just do it and stop thinking about the hard parts.

So he closes the distance between them with slow, sure steps and clasps his arms behind him so they don't get a mind of their own. He takes a deep breath, watches the flicker of Buck's eyes as he watches him back, and says the words that have only been anything less than terrifying with Buck: "I don't really know what I'm doing...but I want to not know what I'm doing with you. If you want that."

Buck's eyes widen like he can't quite believe it. His mouth pinches a little in the corners as he swallows, and after a second he looks down. His fingertips tentatively skim the back of Eddie's hand; Eddie turns it within the hollow of Buck's fingers so they can interlace, palm to palm. "You know," Buck says, voice low, and when Eddie looks back up from their hands he sees Buck watching Eddie's lips. "Someone recently gave me some advice..."

Eddie lets himself drift even closer to Buck - feels his proximity like heat radiating off a fire. "Yeah?"

Buck's lips quirk in a cocky half-grin. "...that I shouldn't make big life choices while quarantining with bird flu."

Eddie had been making this easy by ignoring the hard parts - and now the hard parts are just gone, poof, like they never existed, because this is just him and Buck. He knows him and Buck. "Technically, I said while you were feverish."

"Uh-huh," Buck says, and Eddie feels the gentle pressure of Buck's hand on the back of his hip. This, he decides, is permission, so Eddie draws his free hand along the line of Buck's arm, around the curve of his shoulder, to tuck into the curve where his skull meets his spine.

"You're trying to come up with a corny pickup line about fevers, aren't you," Eddie says, letting his mouth tug into a sly smile.

"My pickup lines aren't corny," Buck says. "And who says I'm trying to pick you up?"

Eddie brings their bodies closer, bare centimeters between their chests as he lets one of his legs relax against Buck's. "You're not being very subtle, Buckley."

"And you're making some assumptions," Buck says, even as he tips his head so his cheek brushes Eddie's. His breath flutters against Eddie's ear as he murmurs, "You know what they say - don't count your chickens before they hatch."

Eddie pulls his head back, using the hand on the back of Buck's neck to keep him in place until he can look Buck full in the eye. "I can't believe," Eddie says seriously, "that you said that and I'm still going to have sex with you."

Buck smiles so hard it crinkles his eyes, and Eddie just has to kiss him about it.