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“Besides the bed, name somewhere people like to make love.”
Bobby, looking every inch the clean-cut fire captain whose men loved him enough to step in when his wife and step-children had to withdraw due to family illness, immediately answered. “The car!”
“The car?” Steve doubted.
“Oh, yeah.” He gave a short nod, and Steve asked the board. Unsurprisingly, it took the top slot, and the firehouse eagerly called to play.
Steve wandered over with a grin on his face. “You cannot know how happy I am right now.” Next up was Hen, who’d already pointed out her wife and two children. “Henrietta, besides the bed, name somewhere people like to make love.”
The curvy woman raised her hand like a baptist minister. “Steve, they do it on the couch.”
Eddie, quieter than usual under the attention, eyed the blonde man at the end before stating his preference for the shower. Both he and Hen were correct.
Next was Chimney. “Chimney, your girlfriend’s pregnant. Besides the bed--”
“The kitchen table!”
Hen glared at him. “You’d better mean your own table and not the station’s.”
At Chimney’s awkward non-answer of “well, you see, the thing is”, the rest of the team slapped, smacked, and punched him.
“Dude, we cook there!” Buck pointed out.
“You did worse!” Chim retorted.
“Not anywhere food is prepared!” Everyone else agreed with that assessment, and Bobby promised Chimney he’d be bleaching the kitchen next shift.
“Alright. The daddy says the kitchen table is where it jumps off!” Another right answer.
At Buck’s turn, he shot his wide shit-eating grin up to Bobby. “Now my first instinct is ‘fire truck’,”
Bobby facepalmed. “Oh, god, not that again.”
“--but not many people have access to that, so I’ll say on the floor!”
Another right answer. Steve looked at them and declared “I gotta work at this firehouse!” before circling back to Bobby. “One answer left and no strikes. Bobby, besides the bed, where’s somewhere people like to make love?”
“I’ll say in the park, Steve.”
The laughter at the boring-looking civil servants getting a clean sweep on such a dirty question practically brought the house down.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Bobby knows that’s a ridiculous thought, an excuse at best, and if he had put any thought into it, he would have predicted something like this with absolute certainty. There is no way any of this could ever be excused as a good idea.
But when the Grant-Nash family had been picked for an episode of Family Feud , only to have four-fifths of the family have to back out because Michael’s mom was sick and it didn’t look good, and the 118 offered to step in . . . well, Bobby had been too touched by the love and generosity shown by his people to say no.
Buck had volunteered first, obviously. Bobby didn’t know much about Buck’s relationship with his parents, but the fact that the kid had been in the hospital three times in 18 months and they’d never bothered to visit made it clear that it was not good. He wasn’t sure when he and Athena had adopted him, but it was somewhere between family movie nights, teaching Harry about girls, and taking May to the Planned Parenthood when she’d had a pregnancy scare.
Eddie had joined in next, following Buck’s lead to the shock of absolutely no one. Chimney and Hen spoke up as a unit, the two oldest friends practically reading each other's minds. The four of them were so oblivious to any doubts about them qualifying as family, they’d seem shocked when Bobby pointed it out.
They had surprisingly good points. Buck reminded him that Chimney was irrefutably his family through Maddie and the nugget. Eddie pointed out that they’d spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter together. Chimney declared that Buck was Eddie’s co-parent-- “shut up, you both know it’s true. Idiots.”. But it was Hen who won him over, stating that the episode was part of a week on non-traditional families, and the 118 were unusual, but they loved each other and would do anything for each other, and if that’s not family, what is? And Bobby caved.
Now, as he stared in horror at the YouTube video that was circling its’ way around the internet, at the comments and the memes and the angry email from his boss, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
No matter how many times he ended up in the fire chief's office, Bobby always felt like a kid getting sent to the principal, and this time was no different. His left leg seemed to have a mind of its own, bouncing up and down like a kid on a sugar rush irregardless of Bobby’s attempt to hold still and look like a Functional Adult ™. Chief Daniels sighed.
“I don’t know what to do about this. I really don’t.” He sat back and gestured vaguely at his computer. “One the one hand, you didn’t break any department regulations, you represented the LAFD well by showing how much we care about each other, and quite honestly, this has put our approval numbers through the roof. We’ve never looked more human.”
Bobby didn’t have to be particularly smart to hear the sound of the other shoe whistling to earth. “But?”
Daniels flashed him a resigned grimace. “But as much as the citizens love this, the brass does not. We look human, sure, but a bunch of humans who think about sex twenty-four/seven. Han might have knocked up his girlfriend on LAFD premises, people are speculating that Sergeant Grant’s badge is the only reason you haven't been arrested for indecent exposure, Diaz and Buckley are eye-fucking the entire time, and that’s just what’s in the video! Apparently, Buckley borrowed the engine for hookups more than once? And his former therapist has made calls claiming he seduced her during a session.”
“Um, point of clarification: Eddie and Buck aren’t together.” Bobby rushed out. “What was that about the therapist?”
Another vague hand wave. “We were already looking into her; don’t worry about it. Buckley and Diaz aren’t an item? Really?” The chief could not have looked more skeptical than if Bobby had tried to claim the video wasn’t of the 118 at all.
“Nope, I promise. I take the frat regs very seriously; I saw a relationship go very bad when I was a rookie in St. Paul.” Bobby affirmed.
“Professionally, that’s a relief. On a personal level, that’s just sad.” Daniels admitted. “That a conscious decision or. . .”
“Mutual obliviousness with a side helping internalized homophobia, sir.” Bobby delivered with all the passion of a man giving traffic accident numbers. “Wilson’s betting pool has them figuring their mess out by next year at the earliest.” The pool had started off as a joke, but at this point, persisted mainly out of the desperate belief that two people could not both be that stupid forever.
A thoughtful look passed over the chief's face. “Is Diaz a jealous man? Possessive, maybe?”
Bobby grinned as he realized what the chief was hinting at. “Very much so, sir.”
A pause, then his boss grabbed his wallet out of his desk and fished out some cash. “Here’s fifty, put me down for two weeks. And file that paperwork the moment they get their heads out their and each other’s rectums.”
Leaving the office, Bobby felt the usual gush of relief that it was over. No one was fired, no one was reprimanded, Chimney has sterilized the kitchen and all utensils and would not say why, and Buck and Eddie might stop staring at each other with lovesick puppy dog eyes soon.
And then he’d gain a grandson. Well, Chris pretty much was his grandson already, what with the babysitting and family dinners and Buck helping to pay for Chris’s school. And not long after that, he’d get another grandkid from Chim and Maddie. He and Athena had both admitted they hadn’t expected to be grandparents this soon, but they’d prefer it come from one of his kids rather than hers. Plus, Aunt Hen, Aunt Karen and the cousins would have more reasons to come around.
Because family comes in all forms, even a firehouse that has rescued far to many people from awkward sex calls.
Okay, fine, maybe they’d learned all that first hand.