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The popcorn had gone cold on the counter.
Chris had fallen asleep halfway through the first movie, curled up with his blanket, head tucked against Buck’s side. And Eddie… Eddie still wasn’t home.
Buck’s eyes darted to the clock again. Two hours late. No text. No call. Eddie wasn’t the type to just… vanish. Not anymore.
Buck told himself it was fine. Maybe the shift had run long. Maybe he’d gotten caught up somewhere. But the excuses rang hollow, sharp against the silence of the Diaz living room.
He pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over Eddie’s name in his contacts before he gave in to something he hadn’t done in months. He opened the location app. His chest tightened as the little blue dot blinked into focus.
Not the firehouse.
Not his house.
Not anywhere Buck recognized.
An industrial block on the edge of downtown, half the buildings abandoned, the rest alive only after midnight.
Every instinct screamed at him to stay put, to not make it worse. But Eddie was out there, and Buck couldn’t ignore the pounding in his chest or the gnawing certainty that something was wrong.
So, like always, Buck acted before he thought. His fingers shook as he called Carla, half-hoping she’d talk him down. Instead, her steady voice told him to sit tight, that she was on her way. Guilt pricked at him for dragging her into this, but he couldn’t do it alone. He had to find Eddie—no matter what it cost him.
With a heavy exhale, Buck eased Chris’s head from his shoulder and settled him gently against a pillow. He pressed a lingering kiss to the boy’s forehead, a silent promise: I’ll bring him back to you. Then he grabbed his jacket, keys looped around his finger, just as Carla pulled up.
He thanked her, words tumbling over each other, but she only gave him a calm, knowing smile.
“Do what you have to do, Buck,” she said softly. “I’ll make sure he’s not alone when he wakes up.”
That was all the reassurance he needed. With one last glance back through the window, Buck slid behind the wheel of his Jeep, heart hammering, and drove straight toward the pulsing dot on Buck’s phone.
The closer Buck got, the more uneasy he felt. The streets were nearly deserted, warehouses looming like shadows, their broken windows catching the dim glow of passing headlights. His GPS pinged, Eddie’s dot unmoving in the middle of the industrial block.
He killed the engine and sat there for a beat, knuckles white around the steering wheel. The muffled sound reached him first—an indistinct roar, voices rising and falling together, carried on the night air. It wasn’t laughter. It wasn’t celebration. It was hunger.
Buck’s pulse spiked as he followed the noise, slipping down a side alley where a heavy metal door stood half-cracked, light and sound spilling out like a living thing. The bass of a chant throbbed against his chest before he even stepped inside.
The air hit him like a wave—thick with sweat, beer, and adrenaline. A crowd pressed shoulder to shoulder around a chain-link cage in the center of the room, their shouts vibrating through the concrete walls. Fists slammed against the barrier, urging on the fighters inside. Buck edged closer, heart clawing up his throat, every nerve screaming that this was the wrong place for Eddie to be.
The crowd’s energy was a living thing—wild, vicious, unrelenting. Buck shoved through bodies that smelled of beer and sweat, shoulders colliding, curses thrown his way. His gaze snagged on the cage at the center of it all, the metallic clang of fists on chain-link rattling in his bones.
Inside, two men moved like predators. One swung heavy, wild punches; the other was sharper, faster, controlled. Buck’s eyes locked onto him, drawn by the precision, the quiet rage simmering beneath every strike.
There was blood on his knuckles. A cut just beneath his cheekbone. His shoulders rose and fell with the kind of exhaustion Buck had only ever seen at the end of the hardest calls.
For a second, Buck told himself it couldn’t be. It was just some stranger with the same build, the same stance. But then the fighter’s head snapped up for the briefest moment, and under the harsh glare of the overhead lights, Buck saw it.
The dark hair, damp with sweat.
The familiar curve of his jaw.
The eyes he knew better than his own.
Eddie.
The name nearly ripped out of him, but it stuck in his throat, swallowed by the roar of the crowd as Eddie threw his next punch.
Buck flinched at the crack, the sound cutting through the roar of the crowd like a gunshot. Eddie’s opponent crumpled to the floor, blood pouring from what was almost certainly a broken nose. The cage erupted in cheers, bodies surging forward, but all Buck could see was Eddie—standing tall, trying to look untouchable, but Buck knew better. His hands trembled, his chest heaved, and his eyes… they weren’t the warm, steady ones that always softened for him or Chris. They were hollow. Hard.
Something in Buck snapped. He forced his way through the crush of people, shoving shoulders and elbows aside until he was pressed against the chain-link. And when the cage door swung open, Buck didn’t think—he moved.
He was on Eddie in seconds, hands fisting in his chest, slamming him back once, twice, fueled by a chaos of emotions that tangled so tightly he couldn’t tell them apart. Rage. Fear. Hurt. And something darker he didn’t dare name.
“What the hell, Eddie?!” Buck’s voice tore out of him, raw and furious, loud enough to cut through the noise.
Eddie’s eyes widened the way they did when Buck caught him off-guard—surprised, exposed, vulnerably human. For a heartbeat the fight-night swagger dropped, and Buck saw the man under the mask: raw, bruised, and suddenly very small.
Before Buck could say anything else, a rough hand closed on the back of his shirt and shoved him sideways. “Hey! Calm—” someone barked, trying to herd him away like he was a troublemaker spoiling the post-fight show.
Eddie moved faster than Buck expected. He planted himself between Buck and the man, leaned in close enough that the guy could see the white of his knuckles. The crowd noise dimmed as attention snapped toward them. Eddie’s face hardened; the shock in his eyes curdled into something like ice.
“Touch him again,” Eddie said, low and dangerous, every syllable a promise, “and I’ll break you.”
The threat cut through the room. Even the man with Buck’s shirt in his fist went still, the bravado gone from his shoulders. Around them the crowd shivered back into murmurs.
Buck scoffed, shoving the guy’s hand off with a sharp twist before his own fingers closed hard around Eddie’s arm. He didn’t give him a chance to argue, just yanked him through the crowd, out the side door and into the cold night air.
“What the hell were you thinking, Eddie?” Buck’s voice cracked, the fury laced with something far more fragile. He pulled him toward the Jeep like a man possessed. “You have a kid at home. A kid who needs you. What happens when—when someone loses control in there? When it’s not you who walks away?” His throat tightened, the words raw as they spilled out. “What happens to me?”
He stopped short, spinning on Eddie, his grip still firm. His chest rose and fell too fast, breathless from more than just the fight to get him out. “You’re gonna stop this. Whatever this is—you’re done.”
Eddie stared at him, silent, the harsh glow of a streetlamp catching the sweat still running down his temple. His jaw clenched, but his eyes betrayed him—they flickered with something Buck had never seen before. Not shame, not pride. Something darker.
“It’s not that simple, Buck,” Eddie rasped, voice low.
Buck’s hand tightened. “Don’t you dare tell me that. You don’t get to throw yourself into a cage and act like it doesn’t matter. It matters to Chris. And it matters to me.”
For the first time all night, Eddie faltered, his gaze dropping to the pavement as if the truth in Buck’s words was heavier than any punch he’d taken inside the ring.
Eddie’s silence stretched, long enough for Buck’s pulse to pound in his ears. Then, finally, he exhaled, shoulders sagging like the fight had been beaten out of him long before Buck ever showed up.
“You think I don’t know what I’ve got to lose?” Eddie muttered, eyes still fixed on the asphalt. His voice was rough, worn thin. “Every time I step in there… I know. I know I’m one wrong hit away from leaving Chris without a dad. I know.”
Buck’s breath caught, his grip loosening but not letting go. “Then why?”
Eddie looked up, and the hollow bravado was gone. His eyes were glassy, haunted, and it hit Buck harder than the fight itself. “Because sometimes,” Eddie admitted, voice barely above a whisper, “the ring feels easier than everything else. Easier than the nightmares. Easier than pretending I’m fine. Easier than… needing things I’m not supposed to need.”
The words hung heavy between them, the first real crack in Eddie’s armor, and Buck’s chest tightened with something he couldn’t quite name—fear, relief, longing, all at once.
“Eddie,” Buck said softly, but there was steel under it. He stepped closer, close enough that Eddie couldn’t look away. “You don’t get to disappear into that cage. Not when you’ve got Chris. Not when you’ve got me.”
Eddie’s throat worked, like he wanted to argue, but the fight had drained out of him. For the first time tonight, he didn’t push back. He just stood there, trembling under Buck’s hand, like a man who’d been caught on the edge of falling.
For a moment, Buck just looked at him, every nerve in his body screaming with the weight of Eddie’s words. He could taste the truth hanging there between them, bitter and electric, and before he could stop himself, he leaned in.
The kiss was desperate, clumsy—more a collision than anything soft. It was fear and anger and love all tangled together, Buck pouring everything he hadn’t been able to say straight into Eddie’s mouth.
Eddie froze for half a second, the shock flashing in his eyes—then something in him broke loose. With a growl low in his throat, he shoved Buck back hard against the Jeep, the metal door rattling from the impact.
Buck gasped, but Eddie was already on him, hands gripping his jacket, mouth crushing against his with a heat that left no room for hesitation. The control shifted in an instant—Buck’s fury giving way to Eddie’s need, Eddie kissing him like he was starving, like this was the only fight worth losing.
When they finally broke for air, foreheads pressed together, Eddie’s voice came rough, wrecked, and trembling.
“You have no idea what you do to me, God. Buck.”
Buck’s eyes were wide, blown open in shock and awe, chest heaving as though he’d just run a marathon. He lifted a trembling hand to Eddie’s face, fingertips brushing over the split skin on his cheekbone. The heat and sting of the wound made Buck wince for him, his own heart aching at the sight.
And then—without thinking—he leaned in, pressing his mouth to Eddie’s again, gentler this time, almost pleading.
Eddie tore away with a sharp shake of his head, breath ragged, eyes wild. “Buck…” The word was half warning, half prayer.
Before Buck could answer, Eddie’s hands slid down, gripping his hips hard and shoving him back into the Jeep with enough force to make the frame groan. Buck’s gasp broke against Eddie’s mouth as their lips crashed together once more, but this kiss was nothing like the first—it was raw, consuming, Eddie taking and Buck letting him, his own hands scrambling for purchase in Eddie’s sweat-damp shirt.
Every shove of Eddie’s hips into his sent sparks shooting down Buck’s spine, but underneath the heat Buck still felt it—the shaking in Eddie’s hands, the storm he was barely holding back.
Buck pulled away first, breathless and trembling. “W-we’re going to have a real conversation when we get home—to your kid,” he said, voice low but firm.
His gaze softened, filled with a mix of love and quiet hurt. “You’re not alone, Eddie. Not anymore. So please… let me be there for you.”
Eddie leaned in, brushing his face against Buck’s cheek, a gentle hum escaping his lips. His thumb ghosted over Buck’s pulse, grounding them both.
“Our kid,” he whispered. “Let’s go home. Please.”
They were in the car minutes later, Buck behind the wheel, guiding them through the quiet streets toward Eddie’s house—home.
Eddie’s bruised hand rested on Buck’s thigh, fingers tracing soft, absent-minded patterns into the denim. His gaze was turned toward the window, but his touch said everything: present, grounded, needing.
And deep down, Buck knew they’d be okay.
They always were.
This was just another storm to weather, another fight they’d get through side by side, like always. Like a family. And Buck would be there, just like he always had been. Eddie’s partner. His constant. His home.
Family.
Buck couldn’t even pretend he hadn’t wanted to jump Eddie’s bones—well, bone—when he saw him in that cage, all fire and fury and reckless courage. But that was a conversation for another day.
Right now, they were just driving home. Together.
When there is a ring, there’s a rescue and that’s what Buck is for Eddie.
His rescue, his partner and his world.