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“Yo, Diaz!”
Hernandez’s voice cuts across the station like a foghorn, and Eddie fights to hide his wince as he looks up from his phone to see the other man staring across the kitchen area at him, Garcia and White flanking him as always.
“I’ve told you, it’s Eddie,” he says, as placidly as he can manage.
“Eddie,” Garcia says in a tone that has quickly become familiar, the younger man forever attempting to play pacifier to Hernandez’s aggressor, “you busy tonight? We’re headed out after shift, figure we can all use a bit of cutting loose.”
Eddie couldn’t argue with that, not after the last call, but—
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s Wednesday.”
White snorts, elbowing Garcia in the side. “Yeah, Sunshine. It’s Wednesday.” Garcia shoves him off, while Hernandez rolls his eyes.
“Right, sorry, I forgot,” Hernandez says. “And how is the little missus doing, anyways? Still holding down the fort in LA?”
Eddie ignores the biting tone, already accustomed to receiving it from his new coworkers, even though it’s barely been a month.
The 134, he’d quickly learned, had a lot more in common with the army barracks he’d once shared with other soldiers than it did the 118. The teasing and banter coming with a razor edge that he’d never experienced at the 118—everything just a little bit too sharp to be friendly, perpetually underpinned by a genuine attempt to go for the throat. Borne up by the type of disaffection that seemed to inevitably grow in any space dominated by men with something to prove.
Which wasn’t to say that Gutierrez was a bad Captain, for allowing that sharpness, but he was no Bobby; too willing to let his eyes skate past a sneer, a cutting undertone, too quick to pretend not to hear the snap of teeth that accompanied words casually tossed back and forth.
But Eddie had had more than one reason in the past year to appreciate that there were few Captains who could live up to Robert Nash.
The less-than-friendly and less-than-subtle ribbing was, at least, something he’d had plenty of practice in ignoring, which was what he did now; limiting himself to a simple shake of his head in response, rolling his eyes when he catches Garcia’s slightly more sympathetic gaze.
“He’s doing okay, though?” Garcia asks quietly later, when it's just the two of them left to clean up the kitchen after lunch. “Buck, I mean?”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, failing, despite himself, to hide the sigh that accompanies the word. Garcia’s expression turns even more sympathetic, the look in his eyes nearly baleful as he glances at Eddie.
“It must be hard,” he says after a moment. “Being so far away from home.”
Eddie allows himself this one small moment of weakness, nodding his head even as he avoids Garcia’s eyes under the pretence of rinsing off the last of the plates.
“It is,” he admits, more to the soapy water than the man he barely knows standing next to him. “But it’s what I’ve gotta do, at least for now.”
“Have you talked to him about him coming down here? I heard Station 8 is hiring.”
Eddie’s shaking his head before Garcia has even finished.
“He’d never leave LA. Especially now that his sister is pregnant again. And— I’d never ask him to. He loves it there, he— his whole family is there. His whole life.”
“Not you though,” Garcia says. “Or Christopher.”
Much like with the 118, Eddie had revealed his son’s existence as a matter of circumstance; a confession he’d never planned on giving. The revelation hadn’t been greeted with any of the effusive, clumsy enthusiasm that it had been last time, but Eddie hadn’t expected it to be. He’d known, even from that first shift at the 118, back when Buck still was pretending to hate him, that there was no one out there quite like Buck.
“No,” he admits. “And I know—he puts on a brave face, y’know? He doesn’t want me to feel bad about it, or like I’ve abandoned him—them. The whole station. And he gets it. Why I had to come down here.”
Garcia nods. “Still,” he says. “It’s gotta suck. Even if he gets it.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says, the word escaping him like absolution. Like an exorcism. “It does.”
—
It hadn’t taken Lee long, after he joined the team, to learn about Diaz’ husband.
It’d been a bit of a shock, he wasn’t gonna lie. A good ol’ Texas boy like Diaz? A firefighter? A veteran? Someone who’d immediately proven himself in the field, someone who’d quickly and undeniably claimed a place amongst the best firefighters Lee’d ever worked with? It’d made him maybe reconsider a few things he’d always understood as true. Things he’d heard bandied about since he was a kid, things that’d only been reinforced through his time as a firefighter.
But it was hard to miss, how much Diaz loved his husband, even from a distance, all while being tough as nails, unflinching even in the face of the horror and tragedy that their worst calls had to offer.
“Hey,” Diaz had said once, right after he’d started, right in the middle of a complete disaster of a call, a grin already well on its way to taking over his face despite the mud they were all soaked in, a rapidly growing smile that said he knew exactly what impact his words would have on the other men around him, “at least this time I’m not getting shot at.”
Turbo had rolled his eyes while attempting to shake some of the mud off his own turnouts. “Yeah, yeah,” he’d said. “We get it. You were a soldier, you’re a real goddam true-blooded American hero.”
Diaz’s smile had, somehow, turned even sharper. “I’m not talking about Afghanistan,” he’d said.
Which is how they’d all learned that Diaz had been one of the firefighters shot in that clusterfuck a few years back, when that sniper had started taking potshots at LA’s bravest. The whole reveal had been more than a bit surreal, once they’d all realized that one of the videos they’d seen of a firefighter going down in a pool of blood had been of someone that was now working at their station.
Had turned even more surreal, after Nelson had connected the dots, pointing out to the rest of them that the civilian who’d crawled under the truck and pulled Diaz to safety had actually been another firefighter, and also Diaz’s fucking husband.
“Buck?” Lee asks now, catching Diaz smiling down at his phone, an expression Lee had quickly learned was entirely reserved for only one person.
“What?” Diaz says, looking up at Lee before glancing back down at his phone. “Oh, uh, yeah. He’s just—apparently they got a call to this woman whose property was overrun with about a hundred raccoons? So now he’s got a whole bunch of new raccoon facts to share.”
Lee snorts. “Sounds about right,” he says, familiar, even after a mere month and only through secondhand anecdotes, with Diaz’s husband’s love of internet deep-dives and random facts.
“Yeah, well…” Diaz trails off, shrugs. “Apparently they wash their food before eating it because they have sensitive nerves in their front paws, and it tells them information about their food, or whatever. So this woman’s hoarding, combined with the pond in her backyard…”
“The perfect recipe for a raccoon invasion?”
“Apparently,” Diaz says, voice dry, but the small smile that creeps across his face when his phone lights up again, the way his eyes can’t help but fall to it, smile growing as he reads whatever follow-up text Buck had sent him, gives him away.
It’d be nauseating if it wasn’t so sweet. Which, well—like he’d said. Lee’d had to reconsider a few things in the past month.
—
Unlike a lot of her coworkers, Sticks hadn’t been totally knocked for a loop when she’d learned about Diaz’s husband. It’d been a surprise, sure, with his kid and all, but that was on her, really, for making assumptions. She knew that there wasn’t any one type of gay person, that there were plenty of people out there whose sexuality you couldn’t guess at based on the way they looked or acted alone.
Hell, her cousin Mandy was an out-and-proud lesbian, and Sticks couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her go out without a full face of makeup and terrifyingly long, sharp nails to match.
No, what had really thrown her was when she’d clued into the fact that Diaz’s old Captain was also his father-in-law. She couldn’t even begin to imagine working with Nick’s father—she liked the man well enough, but she had zero interest in spending her whole working day with him, much less as her boss.
Personally, she also thought it was more than a bit crazy that the brass in LA were okay with both a married couple and a father and son being at the same house, much less on the same shift, but she guessed they just did things differently out there in California.
It’d come out when her and Diaz were stuck alone cleaning the truck after a dusty ride-out to a farm in the middle of nowhere. Diaz had just finished politely listening to her complaining about Caroline’s new boyfriend, who was a fucking idiot and a half, and Nick’s refusal to do the right thing and chase him off with a shotgun.
“What’s even the point of being married, if your husband won’t play the bad guy with your kid’s useless boyfriends?” she’d asked.
Diaz had snorted, shaking his head as he ducked his sponge back into the increasingly murky bucket of soapy water.
“Don’t ask me,” he said. “Chris isn’t quite there yet, though he went through a bit of a phase where he was kinda… stringing a bunch of girls along?”
Sticks gives him a sideways look, surprised at Diaz’s characterization of his son’s dating habits, which didn’t seem to align at all with the sweet kid she’d met a couple times.
Diaz caught the look, laughed.
“I got Buck to have a talk with him… turned out it was about something else, but it was worth it anyways, just to get to watch Buck awkwardly try to stumble through that conversation while trying not to give too much away about what he used to be like.”
Sticks tried not to feel jealous. She couldn’t imagine Nick even attempting to have that sort of conversation with either of the girls, no matter how much she poked and prodded at him. Though, she supposed it might be a bit different, with fathers and their son, than with a father and his daughters.
“What he used to be like?” Sticks asked instead, curious.
Diaz grinned. “Yeah… admittedly, it was before I met him, but apparently he used to be a bit of a… um…”
“A player?” Sticks guessed
“A huge slut, is how Hen always puts it,” Diaz corrected, laughing at the way that Sticks’ eyebrows flew upwards at the blunt description. “It used to drive Bobby crazy,” he continued. “He actually used to take the truck out to hook up in the middle of shifts.”
Sticks didn’t even know how to begin to reply to that, mind gone blank with the realization that Diaz’ former captain was Buck’s dad. She supposed that did explain why Buck hadn’t gotten fired, if he’d been taking their truck out on joyrides.
Some of that must have shown on her face, because Diaz quickly continued, “He’d calmed down by the time I met him,” he said. “He—he’d actually just gotten out of his first serious relationship. Well. Kinda.”
By the face Diaz made at that, Sticks guessed he wasn’t the biggest fan of Buck’s ex-boyfriend. Not that she blamed him. She still mentally referred to Nick’s first wife as The Bitch in her head, though she’d never say it to her husband’s face.
“Kinda?” Sticks asked.
Diaz’s expression turned even more sour.
“She ghosted him,” he said. “Went on a trip to Europe to ‘find herself’ and just stopped answering his calls.”
And there she was, making assumptions again.
Sticks did her best to hide her surprise at the pronoun. She wasn’t sure how good of a job she did, but Diaz must have taken whatever expression she’d landed on as disbelief about Buck’s ex-girlfriend’s actions, jumping right into a much longer rant about Abby, and how Buck had apparently risked his life to save her fiancé when they’d run into her on a call a few years later.
Christ, maybe The Bitch wasn’t that bad after all.
—
Don had honestly been a bit thrilled, when he’d realized how obsessed Diaz was with his husband. Stranded in a station made up predominantly of either single guys or the kinda men who unironically referred to their wives as “the ball-and-chain,” it’d been a surprisingly heavy relief, to finally find some solidarity with another man who was also an unapologetic Wife Guy.
Husband Guy.
Whatever.
It hadn’t taken him long to realize just how much of a Husband Guy Diaz was either—it had become apparent almost immediately following the husband reveal itself, which also hadn’t taken long—hardly more than a couple shifts.
Don could tell that Diaz was the kinda guy who liked to think that he kept things close to the chest—who probably tried really hard to keep his work and home life separate, to keep all his feelings to himself—and who actually, when it came down to it, perpetually and completely failed at doing so. In the end, all it had taken was a glance at his phone background, and Sunshine asking who the people in the photo were, for Diaz to crack.
“Oh, uh, that’s Buck. And Chris. My son.” Diaz had looked nervous, quickly picking up his phone from where he’d briefly abandoned it on the table, unguarded, having apparently previously been living under the false assumption that the firefighters and paramedics at the station would ever respect anyone else’s privacy.
Don had felt a pang of sympathy at the careful way Diaz had phrased his explanation. He couldn’t blame the guy, not in a city this small, not this deep in Texas, but he hated it all the same. Hated that Diaz had any cause to feel afraid, and especially that he’d felt that he needed to hide his life—his family—from his new coworkers.
Catching first Sticks’ eye, and then Sunshine’s, Don had known he wasn’t alone in that feeling.
“He’s adorable,” Don had said—talking about Diaz’s son, though he had to admit that the description could easily apply to Diaz’s husband as well, what with his wide, beaming grin, the other man squished cheek-to-cheek with their kid in the photo—“How old is he?”
“Thirteen,” Diaz had said with the familiar, slightly stunned look of someone who couldn’t believe how fast their kid was growing up. Don had felt another pang of sympathy go through him for the other man. Don’s own kids were all under ten, but it still caught him off-guard, sometimes, when he looked at his oldest and realized that Martin was now closer to being a teenager than not.
For her part, Sticks had visibly winced.
“Tough age,” she had said, prompting a surprisingly loud snort from Diaz.
“You have no idea,” he’d said.
It’d taken a bit longer for Don to learn that Buck wasn’t actually in Texas with Diaz and their son.
He didn’t think he could really be blamed for missing it—Diaz talked about Buck constantly, and always in the present tense. Was always flashing around photos of the other man and Chris at their various outings, full of updates on what Buck’d been up to, the latest weird fact that his husband had told him.
It wasn’t until Diaz said something about Buck pouting about being moved to another shift while someone was out on maternity leave that it finally clicked.
“Oh, Buck works shift too?” Don had asked.
Diaz had looked startled, and then slightly embarrassed, as if surprised at himself, that he’d somehow managed not to mention something so critical about his husband as his occupation.
“Oh, um. Yeah. He’s—he’s a firefighter.”
“No way!” Don had exclaimed, completely taken aback. Forget somehow managing not to mention what his husband did for work—that he was also a firefighter and Diaz hadn’t ever mentioned it before was actually insane. “What station?”
“Uh. The 118. In LA,” Diaz had said, looking taken aback at Don’s reaction in turn.
Don had frowned at him. “He’s not here?” he’d asked—guessed, really, because otherwise nothing about what Diaz had just said made sense.
Diaz had shaken his head. “No, he—we talked—but. No. He’s still in LA. Same station I used to work at, actually.”
“Oh,” Don had said, stalling as he tried to grab at everything that Diaz hadn’t just said. There were whole essays between those words, he could just tell. “Is that how you met?”
“Yeah,” Diaz had said, discomfort fading as a smile had grown on his face, eyes shining with it. “He hated me at first. Thought I was there to take his place. Spent my whole first shift walking around like a pissed off, territorial cat.”
Don hadn’t been able to do anything but laugh at the description, though he had a hard time imagining Buck—who he’d yet to see a photo of where he wasn’t grinning, wide and bright—being pissed at anyone. Much less at Diaz.
“Well, clearly he got over it,” he had said.
“Yup,” Diaz had said, smile widening. “Lasted all of a single shift. And then on my second shift, we pulled a live grenade out of a guy’s leg, and, well. That was apparently all it took.”
“You did what?” Don had asked, not too proud to admit he was gaping slightly as he stared at Diaz. His own story of running into Maria outside of an ice cream shop—physically running into her, and smushing her cone directly onto the front of her beautiful, white linen dress—suddenly seeming mild in comparison.
From that, Diaz had launched into a far more detailed, and—god, Don hoped—exaggerated, version of the story of how he’d met his husband.
After that conversation, Don’s excitement about being able to gush about Maria to someone who got it became slightly tempered, constantly underpinned with the knowledge that though Diaz was just as obsessed with his husband as Don was his wife, they were also living in entirely separate states. It clearly wasn’t what either of them wanted—the devastated look in Diaz’s eyes whenever it came up saying as much, even if the other man would never voice it—and Don still wasn’t entirely clear why Buck hadn’t just moved down to join his husband and son.
Something about his sister being pregnant, and maybe some other complicated family stuff, if Sunshine was to be believed.
Despite all of that, Don was still more than happy to listen to whatever stories Diaz wanted to share, to look at every photo that was flashed his way. It was clear that if nothing else, Diaz was in sore need of a friend. Someone he could trust with his family, who wouldn’t mock him for how in love he and his husband were. It was something no one else in the station could offer Diaz, and Don was happy to pick up that torch, with no ulterior motives.
Certainly not because it meant that Diaz would then be morally obligated to indulge him right back, and everyone else was absolutely sick of hearing him talk about Maria and the kids.
Well. Mostly not because of that.
—
It’s the middle of a long, relatively uneventful shift that a loud, if friendly, voice cut through the peaceful air of the station, drawing the eyes of every firefighter and paramedic currently half-heartedly doing chores in the vicinity of the app bay. Front and centre with his broom, Juan’s in the perfect position to witness the approach of the unfamiliar man who’d called out the casual greeting.
“Hello?” he says in response, hating the uncertainty that is clearly audible in his voice, despite himself.
The man grins at him, hands shoved in his pockets as he comes closer. Juan has to tilt his head back slightly to maintain eye contact as the man finally comes to a stop in front of him. White, with curly blonde hair and blue eyes, the man was obviously strong, thick with the kind of muscles that came from actual strength, rather than being sculpted for show.
“I’m looking for Eddie?” the man says, nearly bouncing on his toes.
Juan frowns for a moment before it clicks, eyes widening as his gaze lands on the pink smudge above the man’s eyebrow.
“Oh shit,” he says. The other man looks startled, and Juan hastens to continue, tacking on “You’re Buck.”
It's not enough of an explanation, going by the way Buck is now frowning in confusion, but it's all Juan’s got.
Christ, he can’t believe that Diaz never told them that he was married to an actual giant.
“Hey, everything okay over here?” Sticks asks, wandering over, posture casual but eyes wary. Clearly in protect the probie mode, which Juan would normally chafe at, but was currently nothing but profoundly grateful for.
Buck turned to look at her, now looking even more confused, but Juan jumps in before he has a chance to say anything about how rude and/or weird Juan was being.
“This is Buck,” he says, watching as Sticks’ eyes widen in the exact same way his own had.
“Oh shit,” she breathes. Her eyes flick up and down Buck’s body, and she lets out a low whistle between her teeth. “Damn, and Diaz just left you behind?”
“What?” Buck says, but Sticks is already turning, raising her voice into a shout as she cranes his head towards the kitchen.
“Yo, Diaz!” she says.
“What?” Diaz’s reply is just as loud, though heavy with exasperation. His voice grows louder as he continues, clearly already heading their way despite himself. “What do you want n—”
“Your husband is here,” Sticks says at the exact same volume as before, apparently utterly unbothered by Diaz’s pissy tone. Which was wild, since Juan still felt like he was about to cry every time he heard it.
“What?” Diaz asks, appearing from around the corner, eyes wide with shock.
“What?” Buck says, expression equally stunned.
“Diaz’s husband is here?” Sunshine’s voice comes from behind the ladder truck only seconds before the man himself emerges.
“No! What? Holy shit. Yo, we’ve heard so much about you,” Hernandez says, following after Sunshine, expression alight with curiosity.
“Wait, the legendary Buck?” White says as he joins them, openly staring.
“Wow, you’re even hotter in person,” Lee says as he appears behind Diaz, looking Diaz’s husband up and down in a way that Juan, frankly, feels is maybe a bit inappropriate. He claps his hand on Diaz’s shoulder. “Good job locking that one down, Diaz.”
Diaz sways gently under the force of Lee’s hand, expression still blank with surprise as he stares at his husband.
“All the soldier reunion videos really led me to expect more running and crying. And kissing,” Juan hears Hernandez less than subtly whisper to Sunshine, prompting the other man to elbow him right in the stomach.
“They’re not soldiers,” Sunshine whispers back, before pausing. “I was kinda expecting it though,” he admits, before raising his voice. “Well? You gonna kiss your man or what, Diaz?”
“What?” Diaz says again.
“Oh hey! Diaz, I didn’t realize your husband would be visiting!” Cap joins in, emerging from the depths of the firehouse. He glances at Diaz, still frozen in place, before striding forward, stretching his hand out towards Buck as he draws level with the other man. “Hello Buck, I’m Oscar Gutierrez. I’m your husband’s Captain. It’s very nice to finally meet you, we’ve all heard a lot about you.”
“What is happening,” Buck whispers to himself even as he shakes Cap’s hand on what seems to be autopilot.
“Chris must be so excited to have his other dad in town,” Cap says, moving his hand to Buck’s shoulder, turning and beginning to walk back the way he’d come, guiding the other man towards husband.
Juan only barely catches another whispered what from Buck as they walk away. Diaz just stares at his husband as he approaches, expression still stuck on stunned.
It must be nice, Juan thinks to himself, trying not to feel too wistful or depressingly single as he watches the two men approach one another.
He thinks he’d be pretty lucky, if someday he managed to find someone who would love him half as much as Diaz loves his husband.