Chapter Text
The smell of melting cheese, herbs and tomato sauce permeated the top floor of the fire house, along with quiet conversations of people waiting to eat. Despite all this, and his stomach rumbling, Eddie’s attention remained focused. Leaning over the counter, he watches as Buck crouches down, gently pulling open the oven door. His mouth pulls to the side - evidently what he sees is not satisfactory.
He stands back up and announces loudly, “Sorry, guys. It’s probably going to be another fifteen minutes.” The sound of groans come back in response to Buck’s statement. He spins looking for his phone, patting his pockets as he scans the kitchen. Wordlessly Eddie points to where Buck left it, right beside the stovetop.
“Thanks.” Buck mutters as he grabs the phone and sets a timer. “Five more minutes in the oven and ten minutes to rest.”
“Buck?”
“Hmm, yeah?” Buck locks his phone and glances at Eddie, who has a look of patient amusement on his face.
“Did you even hear what I was saying?”
“Of course, yeah.” Buck nods earnestly. “You were talking about…”
“Going out tomorrow.”
“Going out tomorrow, right.” Buck hands Eddie a bowl of buns and grabbing one of salad himself, heads to the table. “I—I don’t know, Eddie. I’m not sure if I’m really up for going out, going out.” Buck sets the bowl down and turns to face Eddie who’s a step behind him. “Wait, that’s what you meant, right? You’re not meaning going out and getting some beers and then taking them back home and drinking them there? ‘Cause that I’d be good with—”
“No, Buck. I do mean going out, going out. Not sitting at home, drinking beers. It’s been ages since we’ve actually gone out anywhere and we’ve got the next couple days off.” Eddie places the bowl on the table and looks at Buck imploringly. Buck shrugs his shoulders and heads back into the kitchen, grabbing a stack of plates to bring to the table. Eddie follows and scoops up the cutlery, not giving up in his mission to convince Buck. “Chris won’t even be home tomorrow, he’s sleeping over at his cousins, so don’t try to use him as an excuse.”
“Says you.” Buck scoffs, setting the plates on the table. Eddie dumps the cutlery beside them.
“Says me? Excuse you, but a PTA meeting is not an excuse, it’s a perfectly valid reason not to be able to make pool night. I need to know what goes on at my son’s school.” Eddie shrugs a shoulder, as if to punctuate his point. Hen and Chimney walk over just as Buck opens his mouth to reply.
“What are you two roomies talkin’ about?” Chimney grabs a piece of pepper from the salad before making his way into the kitchen and standing right beside Buck, who just pulled the massive lasagna out of the oven. Chim wafts a hand over the casserole and lets out a pleased hum. Buck smacks him on the shoulder with his oven mitts and tells him to get out of the kitchen. Chim backs away a few steps but doesn’t go far.
“I’m trying to convince Buck that we should go out. But apparently he’s turned into an old man while I’ve been away, and seems less than enthusiastic about the idea.”
“You’re trying to convince Buck to go out drinking?” Hen points from Eddie to the man in question, taking a seat at the table as she does so.
“Yes,” Eddie groans. “Though so far, he’s not been interested, and nothing I say seems to convince him.” He slumps against the counter but straightens just as quick, spinning and gesturing at Chimney. “But you! You got him to come to that pick-up game. What did you say? How’d you do that? Tell me your secret.”
Chimney cocks his head, an amused look on his face. “I wasn’t—”
A loud cough cut off whatever he was about to say. Buck sets a pitcher of water on the table, giving Chimney a sharp look. Turning his attention Eddie, he says, “Look, I’ll think about it, okay? I figured I’d use tomorrow to look some more for a new place, see if there’re any showings I could go to.”
Eddie waves him off. “Buck, there’s no rush with that. You can stay as long as you need. Now ‘I’ll think about it’ is a step up, but it’s still not a solid ‘yes.’”
“I’m down to go out tomorrow.”
All three guys look at Hen, who shrugs and says, “What? Like Eddie said, it’s been a while since we’ve all gone out together. The last time was Eddie’s good-bye dinner, wasn’t it?”
An awkward silence fills the space for a beat before Chimney pipes up, “If you’re going, count me in, too.”
“Who’s going where?” A breathless Ravi asks, flinging himself into the chair beside Hen.
“Drinks, tomorrow. Chim, Eddie and I are all going. Eddie’s persuasive skills have so far fallen short on Buck, and Chim has yet to reveal his secret, so it might just be the three of us.”
“I’d be happy to join, make it a quartet.” Ravi looks around. “That is, if it’s fine if I come, too.”
“Of course you can come, Ravioli! The more the merrier, right?” Chim smiles and smacks Eddie on the shoulder as he passes, making his way to the table.
“Totally,” Eddie says slowly, unsure of how the situation got to this point. The place he’d had in mind when it was just supposed to be him and Buck—
“So, where’re we going?” Ravi asks.
“It’s, um, it’s a surprise,” Eddie nods once, more to himself than any of the other four around him. “Yeah, it’s a surprise.”
Hen and Chimney look at each other before both saying, “Right.”
“You have no idea where we’re going, do you?”
“Shut it, Panikkar. Yes, I do.”
——————————
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Eddie Diaz?”
Eddie looks up to see Hen walking towards him, hands in her pockets, and a suspicious look covering her face.
“Why are you touching things that go in my ambulance?”
“Chim’s busy, so I thought I’d help you restock. We had to use a lot of items on that last call.” They’d been summoned shortly after eating to an event space where the kitchen was in the basement and a server had tripped walking down the stairs with a full container of forks and knives. Eddie figured they must have set a record for most impalements by fork and knife at one time.
“Uh-huh.” Hen’s dry response doesn’t put Eddie off.
“And,” Eddie lowers his voice as he looks around, “I wanted to ask your advice.”
Hen raised her eyebrows at him. “Advice? On what?”
Eddie pulls his phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. After a few swipes and taps, he holds it up to her. A bar was pinned and open on his maps app. “Have you ever been here?”
Hen squints as she reads the screen. “Isn’t that a—”
“A gay bar? Yes, it is.”
“Why are you asking me about whether I’ve been to a gay bar or not, Eddie?”
“It’s not for me,” he says shortly, locking his phone and tucking it quickly back in his pocket. “It’s for Buck. I figured it’s been a while since Tommy, his baking has slowed down, and I just thought, maybe, you know, it wouldn’t hurt him to get out there. See what there is. Who there is.”
“And you thought a gay bar would be the best place to go?”
“Stop saying that so loudly!” Eddie hisses, glancing furtively around. “Why do you have to specify that it’s a gay bar? It’s a bar, it just, also, caters to people of the gay variety.” Eddie ignores the amused look on Hen’s face. “And besides, when I was looking up such venues, this one was recommended for not being so party heavy, which is good because I don’t think Buck is up to that kind of place right now. I also read a blog review saying something about there being a range of people who frequented the bar. I can pull it up if you want to see—”
Eddie makes a motion to pull his phone back out of his pocket but stops when Hen waves him off. Watching her face, he gets the sense her response is going to be longer than what Eddie has the time for right now, so he cuts her off before she can start talking. “Look, I just want to know if you think it’s a good idea or not. When it was originally just me and Buck going out, I thought it wouldn’t be a big deal—”
Eddie isn’t sure what the look that comes over Hen’s face means but he keeps talking.
“—but now that the rest of you are coming as well, I’m just not sure if it’s where we should go.” He trails off, sitting on the back step of the ambulance, despair evident on his face as Hen watches him.
“Look,” she starts, perching beside him, “this is Buck we’re talking about here. There’s a good chance he’d go the whole night without knowing it’s a gay bar. Now, if you’re worried about what the rest of us would think, well, I am gay.” She smiles at the mock exasperated look Eddie gives her. “Chim enjoys himself anywhere there’s food and drinks, and Ravi seems pretty easy-going. The only person who seems to have an issue going to a—” she lowers her voice to a whisper, “—gay bar is you.”
Buck stomps down the stairs, throwing his arms up when he sees Eddie sitting in the ambulance beside Hen. “Hey! I thought we were doing inventory, Eddie. I got my clipboard and everything!”
“My condolences,” Hen mutters to Eddie, both watching Buck walk towards them, clipboard firmly grasped in his hand.
Eddie stands. “Ah, I don’t mind.” He smiles and adds, “Besides, it’ll give me more time to turn that maybe into a yes.”