Word Count: 3,490
Warnings/Spoilers: This chapter contains a rather vivid description of a panic attack.

He was hungover, and tired, and was determined to make himself as invisible as possible during his shift. It was deceptively easy to do when he couldn't remember the last time he'd been honest with anyone about how he felt. And if someone had offered him something better, something stronger or maybe a new job, he had a feeling he'd seriously consider it. It was a disturbing thought to have after he'd fought to get on the team, how thoroughly he'd jeopardised his friendships, and his family, and his career, to be a firefighter again.

If he were honest, he's noticed the way the others looked at him sometimes in the truck on the way to calls, or when he poured himself a mug of coffee while stifling a yawn behind his hand, or when he entered or exited the house at the start or end of shifts. He knew they were all watching him but their silence was permission to keep his distance and he couldn't decide if he appreciated or resented that they were willing to let him drown.

Which was, perhaps, a poor choice of words given the circumstances that had led to his isolation.

The bells rang and he discarded his mug with a sigh, grasping his jacket and helmet as he jumped into the truck. He stared at the patterns on the floor of the truck to avoid the eyes of everyone else. After the nightmare he'd had at Eddie's house a few days ago, he'd struggled to get any sort of rest. Now that they were sharing a shift again, it was impossible to look at him.

He managed to block out some of the sound of the wailing siren with his headset and tuned out the voices in his ears by fixating on being somewhere far, far away. Maybe he could put in transfer papers and move to Utah, or Arizona, or somewhere else without water and without a team of people who he couldn't look at or speak to anymore.

But, he tried to tell himself, he was exhausted and hungover and irritable and prone to misreading everything. He was prone to rash decisions at the best of times and feeling like he was at his worst… Well. Terrible decisions were even easier to make.

When they arrived at a house with a pristine lawn and a frantically waving daughter, Buck hung back as she wailed at them to come quickly and then took off through the side entrance along a fence. Bobby gestured at them to follow and Buck jogged behind the rest, hearing a woman's screams and a man's desperate shouts.

"They're here, mom! They're here!" the daughter sobbed, arms around her waist as they rounded the corner and took in the sight.

A brunette woman was bobbing in her pool, her hand clenched in a man's – who had to be her husband – as she shrieked in terror. At irregular intervals, she was dragged under the water before he hauled her back to the surface again and then she made another hysterical sound amid a lot of spluttering and spitting of water.

"Please! The cords of the vacuum sweeper are stuck around her legs! We can't get her up!" the man yelled as his wife sank under the water again and Buck could tell she was growing tired because when she came up the next time, she wasn't really screaming anymore. Her free hand was mostly just splashing around, a garbled gurgle escaping her mouth.

Memories swirled behind his eyes and he felt dizzy as he looked at her and saw a different scenario entirely. Him in the elevator. Him caught in the currents of water. Him with wires wrapped around his legs.

"Chimney, turn off the power to the machine. Hen, grab resus gear from the truck because there will be water in her lungs and we'll need to treat her for drowning. Eddie, I- Eddie!"

Buck watched numbly as Eddie flung his jacket to the ground and tossed his helmet on top before diving into the pool, a dark blur of a rippling shape through the water as he moved towards the woman's wavering feet. Buck's feet were anchored to the ground, utterly immobile as he stared and blinked and blinked and stared and remembered waterlogged clothes and a small body pressed against him and a woman's shrill screams for help.

Whatever orders Bobby had just given were ignored in the face of Eddie's rash action but Hen still disappeared down the alley and Chimney was asking the daughter where the power was and Bobby was grasping onto the woman's flailing other hand to help the husband and providing assurance to both of them and Buck was just…frozen.

Even when he heard Chimney's shout that the power was out, even when he saw Eddie's face break the surface, lifting the woman onto his shoulder so that the husband and Bobby could pull her over the edge of the pool, even when he watched Hen clear the woman's airway and lay her on her side while checking her vitals, even when Chim recommended transporting her to hospital, Buck just…couldn't move. Everything was happening to someone else, someone far away, on another planet, in another timeline.

The woman's screaming might have stopped but he could still hear it, a ringing in his ears, a kaleidoscope of sound and colour of dozens of other people crying for assistance while water splashed against a solid surface. Yet he was also faintly aware of the silence that had descended now that the woman was out of the water and he knew there was another time when all the terrified screams around him had been silenced, when he'd been buffeted and tumbled by inescapable pressure that squeezed him on all sides.

Buck had never really considered how silent drowning could be until every sense was inundated by absolute nothingness, and water was pressing at the top of your throat, and you were fighting against inhaling because even though you needed the oxygen, you couldn't let the water in because if it got inside your lungs, you were gone. Gone like everyone else that couldn't hold their breath underwater for longer than thirty seconds. Gone like everyone else that had been so stricken with fear that the logical parts of their brain stopped functioning.

"Buck?"

And Buck was at the mercy of the water, letting it push and pull at him because he didn't have the strength to resist that sort of force. He lost every sense of direction when he was dragged up and down like a ragdoll. He swallowed mouthfuls of filthy water even as he struggled to keep it out of his lungs because his fingers had slipped from Christopher's and he had to find the kid. Panic made his brain spark like lightning and his fingers clenched around the nearest thing he could find.

At some point, he thought about buoying to the surface and clambering up a tree, or maybe a car, and he needed to look and search and shout even though his voice was hoarse with the water and the grit he'd swallowed but it wasn't enough. He still couldn't see Christopher. He'd dive into the water again, despite the whirlpools that were filled with unknown dangers. He'd twist his body around floating cars or trunks of trees or glass and debris that had been blown out of buildings which could so easily knock him out, or break another bone, or sheer off a limb. He could bleed out in the water, another victim among dozens, and he didn't know where Christopher was but he needed to find him.

He was numb to the pain from cuts and scrapes covered in putrid refuse, his face bloodied as he stumbled down road after road, torn clothes and gasping yells probably making him look like Frankenstein's monster.

"Diaz-"

His vision blurred dangerously out of focus and his knees shook too hard to hold him up any longer. He groped behind him until his fingers found the grooves of bricks and he sank into the solidity of the wall, sliding until he was curled into a ball because it was too hard to stay upright when he was swaying so badly, and his lungs were aching and his head was spinning and everywhere he looked he could see blue water and dead bodies, and there was this odd contradiction in the screaming of the pleas for help and the silence after they'd become gurgled and choked and then they were gone in the distance, and he couldn't save them all- he couldn't reach them all- he couldn't-

"Buck? Hey. Hey."

Some sort of sob stuck in his throat and there was a pain in his chest, and a pain behind his eyes, and everything in his chest burned and he couldn't breathe because if he breathed then water would get into his lungs and then he'd be dragged down, down into the depths, and he had to find Christopher, he couldn't fail Eddie, he had to-

"Buck."

Hands threaded through his hair, raising his unseeing eyes, and there were droplets of water running down his cheeks and tickling behind his ears and he needed to save Christopher from the water because Christopher wasn't a strong swimmer. Sometimes he struggled to coordinate his limbs going up or down stairs and Buck didn't know where the boy's crutches were in the carnage and he had to get a phone to call Maddie and let her know where he was but she was probably busy with all the other 911 calls so saving Christopher was his mission, his only mission, but he couldn't breathe and he needed to breathe but he-

"Snap out of it, Evan," a firm voice said, damp fingers on his cheeks shaking his head and pressing thumbs against the pulsepoint of his throat to tilt his head back, to open his airway, to give his lungs a chance to breathe. It felt a bit like being strangled, and it was unpleasant when he already felt like he was suffocating under the weight of the panic and the water swirling all around him, but the heat and the pressure also shocked his system into focusing on something else – like how weird it was to have his head tilted so far back in the middle of the ocean.

And gradually, gradually, painfully slowly, brown eyes shimmered into view in front of him to replace the blue of the ocean, and the yellow of Christopher's shirt, and the red of the blood staining his hands.

"Come on, Evan. The tsunami is over. Christopher is safe. Breathe with me, okay? Here. Give me your hand."

A shaking hand clasped around his limp wrist and his palm pressed into damp clothes.

"You feel me breathing? You feel my heart beating beneath your fingers? I want you to match it, alright? I need you to breathe with me, Evan. Come on."

When all the racing and thudding and fear that ricocheted through Buck's head finally started to abate, he realised it was Eddie kneeling in front of him and they were the only people he could see. He blinked rapidly, fingers unconsciously curling into the wet navy LAFD shirt Eddie was wearing. Some of the tightness in his chest loosened, his heart giving a final stuttered series of beats as he started to realise he'd…what? Had a panic attack? And a bunch of flashbacks? Or hallucinated? He wasn't even entirely sure what had just happened and even that realisation made him feel sick and anxious all over again because no one else was around but it meant they'd still had to have seen what happened. This was a whole lot worse than getting stuck in the elevator.

"Hey," Eddie murmured, a thumb smoothing up and over Buck's eyebrow and dragging over his birthmark, rubbing a gentle circle against Buck's temple. "You with me, Buckley?"

Buck swallowed, meeting Eddie's gaze and realising how very, very tired he felt. All his limbs felt like his bones had been injected with jelly and lead and if it wasn't for Eddie's hands cradling his jaw, he could imagine his head lolling straight off his shoulders and bouncing across the outdoor tiles. "I don't- I just-"

"It was the water, wasn't it?" Eddie said and Buck's gaze dropped to Eddie's soaked clothes, as much a confirmation as anything he could have said because even though Eddie was holding him up, even though Eddie was clearly okay and alive and hadn't drowned and – he presumed – they'd gotten the woman up and out and she was also okay, he'd gotten transported to a place that was so terrifying he thought it only existed in his nightmares. "Shit, Buck. Was it the tsunami or the elevator?"

"You don't…forget what it's like to be drowning," he whispered, eyes closing for a minute as images flickered like an old movie of the tsunami and the elevator and the desperate urge to survive even though you didn't know how it was possible. "You don't forget the sound of…of someone's desperate screams before it becomes that choked, gasping sound when they finally get sucked under and their splashes disappear beneath the surface and you can't see them anymore." Eddie's fingers twitched against his skin and Buck coughed, eyes snapping open, like he was trying to expel water from his lungs or the images from his brain. "Sorry, I-"

"Don't apologise. Just…stay present with me, okay?" Eddie said, low and soothing like Buck suspected he talked to Christopher after a nightmare. It was a tone of voice Buck had never really heard directed towards him by Eddie, or by anyone except, perhaps, Maddie when he was a whole lot younger. But Buck could also hear how Eddie's words were tinged with a small amount of shakiness, which was uncharacteristic for the level-headed firefighter and veteran army medic who had endured worse than Buck could even pretend to imagine and always seemed perfectly at ease. "You scared the shit out of me. I need to calm down myself."

Buck tried a rueful smile but he thought it probably came out more of a grimace as Eddie combed fingers through his hair, leaving damp trails against his scalp which snaked down his temples and dripped off his jaw.

"What happened to-"

"Hen and Chimney took the vic and the family to the hospital," Eddie explained as some of the sensation in Buck's fingers and toes gradually returned now that his blood was flowing somewhat more regularly through his heart. "Bobby's with the truck. He took the 118 offline while I stayed with you."

Buck felt his face heat with shame because the team had definitely seen him completely lose it and he had been fighting so damn hard to cover up everything that was going on, because he was a first responder and he had to switch off his feelings on a call and because they saw horrible shit so often and because Chim would call Maddie to tell her what happened and then she'd start fussing around him again and because he'd fought to get on this team so hard and now he'd just proven to Bobby exactly why he shouldn't have come back and-

Eddie's fingers firmed again his jaw, raising his eyes until they met warm brown, slightly creased around the edges with concern and care and the small, nervous smile that played on the edge of Eddie's lips. "We've all been worried about you, man, but I- I thought if we gave you the space to process, or the time to…to realise you weren't okay, then you'd eventually open up to us because we're your family and we care about you."

Eddie sighed, his gaze flicking over Buck's head and a small frown drew his eyebrows together. Eddie's indecision about his words was a better thing for Buck to focus on because Eddie's hands felt very intimate against his skin, a gesture that was entirely friendly and something they often did for rescues, but it made Buck starkly aware of how long it had been since he'd felt any sort of affection from another person that wasn't his sister.

"I should've pushed you about that nightmare," Eddie murmured, almost as if he were speaking to himself.

Buck shrugged. He had a feeling that even if he'd been directly challenged, even if someone like Bobby had called him out, he wasn't sure he'd admit to anything. In the dead of night, he meditated on the idea of screaming until he was noticed, pleading for help the way all those people had while he'd sheltered on the top of the fire truck with Christopher in his arms. But then it felt like it was increasingly apparent that no one truly cared, no one was realising he was sinking under the weight of all his emotions and the memories, and no one could possibly reach out to save him because they all had their own shit to deal with and they didn't need him adding to that. He was the baby of the team and they all had Big Adult Problems. They kept expecting him to just get over it and move on. And he couldn't.

He pushed away the thoughts and misgivings and began wondering if it would be rude to return to the firehouse and request a nap. He still felt an uncomfortable distance between him and reality, like he was watching it through fuzzy glass and everything Eddie said was happening to some other version of himself. His temples still throbbed with the after-effects of his racing heart, his chest still hurt from all the spasming breaths he'd tried to suck in yet simultaneously block out because of the water he feared would drown his lungs.

And he wasn't an idiot. He knew enough about PTSD after reading online guides about ways to help Maddie cope after Doug's death and how to avoid any sudden actions that might make her flinch to recognise that seeing Eddie dive into the water, and watching the woman drown, and hearing her intermittent shrieks and gurgles for help, had unravelled the parts of his memories that he'd been struggling to shut out since the flooded elevator and avoid leaking past the dam of his defences when he closed his eyes at night.

"Evan." Eddie's finger tapped beneath his chin and his heavy lids opened – he didn't even remember closing his eyes – to find Eddie's eyes on him again, the small smile gone and replaced with downturned lips that clearly betrayed how worried he was. "D'you think you can get up and get back to the truck?"

It seemed like a simple enough suggestion which turned out to be harder than it sounded because as soon as he tried to get to his feet, the world spun in technicolour and his knees threatened to give out on him. He'd pushed Eddie's hand away when he'd first tried to stand but refused to admit his gratitude when Eddie's arm curled around his waist, holding him steady and upright, until the blurring sharpened into focus again and he tried not to screw up his face and start crying with how completely fraught all his emotions felt.

"Okay?"

He nodded, trying – and failing – to remind himself he was a confident and strong and stoic firefighter as he shuffled along the side of the house with Eddie keeping him standing. He saw Bobby sitting in the driver's seat of the truck, feet hanging out the open door and his head down as he fiddled with his phone in his lap. As soon as he caught movement, Bobby's attention snapped towards the house and within seconds, he was leaping from the cab of the truck and crossing the yard.

"Buck." Bobby's brows were drawn, his mouth unhappy, but his arms were extended towards him and for a moment, Buck felt himself freeze again because he could remember a similar expression when he'd felt something in his chest pop and tasted the metallic bite of blood surge up his throat. But Bobby stood there patiently, something so paternal in his body language, and it reminded Buck of when Bobby had rushed to the hospital waiting desk because he'd been called as the emergency contact after Buck had sliced his arm on the car windshield getting a guy out.

Something inside Buck cracked, some sort of hold against his feelings, and he stumbled out of Eddie's hold to collapse into the embrace of his Captain. Fingers snagged into the heavy fibres of the jacket and he clung to the older man as the tempestuous storm raged through his head.

"It's okay, son," Bobby murmured, arms strong and certain around Buck's torso and pressing against painful bruises that reminded him he was alive. "It's okay."

For a moment, Buck almost believed him.

~TBC~