boldly going forward because we can't find reverse

buck is escorting roz out of the lab when bobby notices that the lab extinguishers are almost empty and he sends ravi out behind buck to get some from the rest of the floor.

buck and roz have just cleared the clean room when there's an enormous boom and they get thrown to the floor in the hallway. they're both shook up and off balance and it takes buck a few tries to get to his feet. he's keying the radio before he can get a look inside, trying to raise any of the team. no one answers.

buck takes a deep breath and hauls roz to her feet, keeping his back to the door. the civilians are the first priority, and — "oh my god," roz gasps, staggering back into the wall. buck turns around.

ravi is collapsed in what's left of the clean room, both doors slammed down in the explosion. everything beyond the clean room is up in flames, and buck can't see anyone else.

"go. keep walking straight, you'll be able to get out," buck says to roz on autopilot. he hopes it's true, that nothing else has come down in the explosion and that their way out isn't blocked. he waits until roz has cleared the hallway to key his radio open and leave the channel open, screaming his team's names.

maddie and josh bully their way onto the channel, and buck tells her through hoarse gasps that no one is responding to him.

he can hear josh get on the main channel and start calling for other houses, saying that the 118 is down. maddie does her best to get his attention, but buck is back on the ladder, getting struck by lightning, back on the bridge and watching everyone collapse, back in the helicopter over a roiling ocean and staring at the submerged remains of the domino. "i can't get the doors open, they're industrial medical grade and they stay locked down in an emergency, maddie, you have to find someone who can get them open."

"okay, okay, buck, you have to breathe."

"i have to get them out! ravi! ravi! answer me, probie!'

buck's glad that he's on a 118 only channel, because he screams himself hoarse trying to get someone to respond to him. if he was on an open channel, the rest of the lafd would think he was dying.

he thinks he is dying. did he ever wake up from the coma?

whatever the explosion did to the lab, disabled the sprinklers. there's no water coming in, buck can't see anyone using an extinguisher, and the fire is growing. their turnouts are rated to get them through anything less than the worst chemical fires, and — god, it's a lab. there are so many chemicals in there. if he doesn't get them out now, they won't — they can't —

"dad," buck gasps, pounding on the doors. he can't even hear himself. no one answers.

there's blood on the door. he stares at his hands. the skin on his knuckles is ripped and torn and he has no idea when that happened. was it the explosion?

"kid. kid." there's someone in front of him. it's the captain of the 122 — some guy that bobby knows from before buck started working with him. they've exchanged nods at scenes before. buck can't remember his name. "i need you to go outside. we've got this."

"no, no, i have to— i have to—" buck gasps, his throat wet. he chokes. is he bleeding?

"jonesy, get him out of here and come right back."

"no! no, i'm not leaving—" buck gets pulled bodily away from the doors and dragged down the hallway by jonesy. he swears and curses the whole way, but he can't make his body listen enough to fight his way back to the doors. he's buffeted along behind jonesy's body. there's a triage station outside the lab, and he sees roz and allen there. roz gasps and grabs at buck's hands, the blood draining out of her face. "what happened to your hands?"

okay. okay. that didn't happen in the explosion, then.

"i've got him. go, jonesy."

buck knows that voice. he blinks, looks over his shoulder. tommy's standing by the edge of roz's stretcher, his hands shoved in his pockets. buck watches as he pulls them out, balls them into fists, shoves them back into his pockets.

jonesy's left. buck's not sure when. he's sitting on his own stretcher now, one of the 122 medics carefully dabbing at his hands. he doesn't remember sitting down. roz and allen are sitting across from him, their arms wrapped around each other. "does this hurt?" the medic asks. buck shakes his head. he can't feel anything.

he's sobbing into tommy's shoulder and the medic has pulled back, waiting and glancing back towards the lab. tommy's holding him tightly, he thinks. he can't move. he can't feel it. "my dad," buck says, and he's not sure if he makes any noise. bobby and chim and hen are still in the lab. ravi is in the clean room. everything was on fire. he has no idea how long it's been.

athena appears in the triage station, karen and maddie behind her. buck swallows hard and shakes his head. athena's lips go thin and buck—

wakes up in the hospital. he collapsed. ravi's in the icu, in a coma. everyone else is… everyone else is.

buck hopes that he's still trapped in that fucking coma dream.

tommy's sitting beside his bed. they're not touching, but buck can see the way tommy is oh-so-carefully holding himself back from reaching out. "when did you join the 122?"

"melton heard josh's call on the radio. he sent me over."

buck hums and looks towards the wall. he wants to look at tommy. he doesn't want to look at anyone if it's not bobby.

"evan. i'm—"

"don't. don't say it." if tommy says it, it's real. realer than it was when athena came to the scene. even getting called evan again isn't — isn't worth it. he wishes he was still buck. when he was buck everyone was —

he's still crying when maddie comes into the room. "buck."

"maddie," buck gasps. she looks the way he feels.

"they want to keep you for a few days. concussion protocol, making sure there was nothing in the lab that we need to be worried about," maddie says, sitting on the edge of his bed. she's not looking at tommy, but it's not her ignoring him. she just doesn't have the bandwidth to pay attention to anything that isn't buck. he knows that look on her face; she's keeping herself together by the skin of her fingernails. he should have done more to help. "karen asked jee and i to come spend the night with them. we're going to…" she sighs. "i think we're going to stay there for a while. we'll see what happens in the next few days."

"if you need anything," buck starts, and she shakes her head. "just get out of here, okay?" she murmurs, squeezing his ankle. he can't feel it. "that's what you can do for me."

tommy follows her to the door when she leaves and says something to her. buck doesn't try to listen to whatever it is. he doesn't sleep, but he does close his eyes when tommy's back is turned. he can't do this. he can't be a person right now. he can't ask tommy for what he wants and he can't — can't think about why tommy is here.

he falls asleep at some point. may is in the chair beside tommy when he wakes up. she's awake, but tommy is folded up like a pretzel and totally out of it. "mom and harry are checking on ravi before they come up here," she says softly, leaning forward. "i'll go down at some point. we're not going to leave you alone."

"i…" buck swallows hard and trails off. he tries again. "may…"

"i'm glad you're okay, buck."

it's cry again or fall asleep, so buck falls asleep.

athena's staring at him when he wakes up. tommy looks between them and asks harry if he wants a snack, guiding him out of the room and down the hallway. "he sent me away," buck gasps. "i tried. i tried to get back in."

athena reaches out and holds his hands, and buck stares at the casts on both of them. that explains a few things. "i know. you broke both your hands trying to get back in," she says. her voice is flat the way voices only get when someone's trying not to cry. "when they let you out of here, you're coming home with us."

"i can—" the offer makes buck want to recoil, but that takes more energy than he has right now. "…manage."

"i'm sure you can. but bobby couldn't survive losing you, and i'm not waiting to see if you can survive losing him."

buck goes home with athena when they discharge him. tommy shows up every day (is it every day? buck's sleeping a lot.) and drives him back to the hospital so he can sit with ravi. buck's sure that he eats, because you have to eat, but he can't remember a single meal that he's had. maddie and karen call every morning, and maddie does end up staying with her because her doctor is suddenly calling her pregnancy high risk. it's no surprise why. it's ten days before ravi wakes up, and he frowns at buck when he's able to focus on him. "what happened?"

"there was an explosion."

ravi's parents take him home and buck calls him every night. they do a video call because buck isn't really up to talking but he's got to check that ravi is okay, has to make sure that ravi can tell that buck is okay too.

buck can't work with two broken hands but he needs the stuff he left in his locker. tommy drives him to the 118 and waits in the parking lot. buck takes one step outside his truck and has a panic attack. stevens runs out and hooks him up to some oxygen while tommy runs in and cleans out his locker. buck is still breathing hard when tommy comes back, and stevens asks him if he wants some valium. he's not sure if it's from the bus or not, and normally he wouldn't, but his head feels like cotton and it doesn't feel like he's standing on anything.

tommy tucks him into bed when he gets home and buck immediately drops his head into tommy's lap. he hasn't ever cried this much in his entire life. he wakes up to tommy leaning back against the headboard, running his fingers through buck's hair. may brings him water and coffee and a tylenol.

the captain from the 122 drops by to talk to tommy and seems utterly unshocked that buck is there in athena's house. that tommy is there in buck's bed. he drifts off while they talk and when he's back with it again, he and tommy are alone.

"sal said to call him if you want to come back to work," tommy murmurs, letting the offer linger in between them. buck thinks that's a good idea. he couldn't even go get his bag from his locker; he can't go back to work in bobby's house with no bobby there. he's not sure he's going back to work. "that's okay too," tommy says gently, and buck realizes he said that last one out loud. he closes his eyes and breathes against tommy until he falls asleep.

athena doesn't blink about tommy always being there either. buck's afraid to ask her why, doesn't want to know what she thinks about them. not that there's much of a them; buck sleeps and eats and talks to everyone who wants to know he's still alive. he's haunting her house and he's not even the one that—

buck doesn't go to the memorial ceremony. he and ravi play mario-kart instead. well, tommy plays mario-kart for him and buck bosses him around because it's still a week before the casts come off. athena and harry do, and harry comes home and asks buck what the fire academy was like. buck and ravi immediately say that he isn't allowed to join.

may switches majors and joins the nursing program. buck gets the casts off and starts physical therapy. ravi continues physical therapy. tommy goes back to work after a few weeks, but if he's not on shift he's at athena's. sometimes buck will come downstairs and tommy and athena will be talking over a cup of coffee. he never cares enough to try and eavesdrop, and they're skilled at changing the topic of conversation when he comes into the room.

"what are you doing here?" buck asks, a few months later. "i — no, i want you here, but what are you — why did you—"

"when the call went out, i thought that you…" tommy trails off. "when you collapsed, when you were in the hospital, before you woke up, athena sat me down and said that i had to choose. i was in, or i was out. because she wasn't going to let you get hurt again and if i wasn't sure, i had to go. she said she wouldn't hold either answer against me. that she'd lie if i left, that if you remembered and asked if i was there she'd tell you that it was someone else."

"and?"

"when i thought you were down," tommy says, and buck appreciates that he doesn't say dead. he doesn't react well to the word these days. "i realized that leaving you was the stupidest thing i'd ever done. i wasn't about to repeat my mistakes. the only way i'm leaving now is if you ask me to."