Archive of Our Own

It starts like this:

Buck: some guy on grindr just offered me poppers…should i know what that is

Josh: buck i am begging you to get some queer friends that aren’t 40 year old lesbians

“Do you think it’s weird that I don’t have that many queer friends?”

Hen glances up at him from her medical textbook, squinting a little like she’s trying to figure out if she’s willing to coach him through a gay crisis in the middle of their 24 hour shift.

“Does it bother you that you don’t?”

Buck shrugs, tapping his fingers on the table and shaking his leg a little. He’s not able to sit still at the best of times, but it gets worse when he’s worrying over something.

“I mean, it didn’t, but then Josh said…”

Hen scoffs, looking back down at her textbook, “because Josh is the leading authority.”

Buck rolls his eyes a little. Hen and Josh get along well enough when they’re in the same place, but he always got the feeling Hen didn’t like Josh all that much and he could never figure out why.

“I just mean…you and Karen have other queer friends, right? And obviously Josh does. Am I missing something, not having that…community connection?”

Hen marks her place and closes her textbook, looking at him for a moment before replying. “Buck, I was a black lesbian growing up in the 80s and 90s. If I hadn’t found the community I wouldn’t have survived. It’s different now. People are more accepting, you don’t have to worry as much that straight people are going to hate crime you if they find out. You can be yourself more openly.”

Buck nods, his eyes darting around the loft and then settling back on her, “I just feel like…there’s stuff I’m missing. Culture, connections. I can read about our history all I want, but at the end of the day I’m just some straight-passing guy who couldn’t even tell you which gay bar to go to because I don’t know any. I don’t even know where I’d start.”

Hen hums, nodding. They sit in silence for a moment.

“I know Josh and his friends go to drag brunch every Sunday. Maybe you could start there,” she suggests. “I may not be Josh’s biggest fan, but he obviously knows more people your age than I do.”

Buck thinks about it, nodding. Josh did start this, after all.

That’s how Buck finds himself seated at a long table on the patio of the Abbey on a mild Sunday meeting all of Josh’s friends, probably the biggest group of queer people he’s been around aside from when they get called out to Pride events.

“Everybody, this is Buck, he’s a firefighter. Buck, this is…everybody!”

Josh gestures to the table and everyone waves or says a hello, and Buck also notices he’s being checked out a lot and it makes him blush a little. He’s used to the attention, but it’s usually from women - he’s never had so many men eyeing him all at once. Some pretty attractive men, too.

“Buck isn’t quite a baby gay, but he still has his Bambi legs,” Josh says with a laugh, and Buck elbows him a little. He’s had more than one dick up his ass, he feels like he should qualify for fully fledged gay, but he understands what Josh means - it’s why he’s here after all.

“So, I’ll just give you a quick little intro to everyone. Our elders here are Rick and Bobby,” Josh gestures to two older men at the other end of the table with graying hair and matching wedding bands, “Rick is a casting director and Bobby is actually an accountant for SAG.”

“And don’t make the joke about Talladega Nights, we’ve heard it all before,” Rick laughs.

“Talladega Nights?” Buck asks, confused, and Josh groans.

“I forgot you grew up under a rock, don’t worry about it, we don’t need to talk about Will Ferrel. Moving on, this is Molly, she’s a librarian and works with some of the local LGBT organizations as an archivist.”

A girl with a cochlear implant and an awesome undercut in her curly hair waves to him, and Buck makes a mental note to ask her how she keeps her curls so nice - it’s something he struggles with but always wished he understood.

“Jay, they’re a hairstylist - not quite to the stars, but definitely some C list actors,” Josh jokes. 

Jay has faded green hair, a black sun hat, and some of the coolest eyeshadow and eyeliner Buck has ever seen.

“Lexie, she works in Disneyland doing something hush hush that we aren’t allowed to know about, and her brother Charlie who is a friend of Peter Pan - they only hire twinks for that role.”

Charlie, a slight guy with shocking blue eyes and some of the shortest shorts Buck has even seen on a man blows a kiss to Josh while his sister laughs.

“And you’ve met Jamal, from dispatch,” Josh finishes, and Buck nods to the dark skinned man he’s met a couple times before.

“Usually my boyfriend Tony is here, he’s a nurse at Cedars Sinai, but he had to swap his shifts around this weekend,” Jamal adds.

“Speaking of boyfriends,” Charlie leans over the table, grinning at Buck in a way that feels slightly dangerous, “are you single? Ready to mingle?”

Buck coughs a little, blushing again, and shakes his head, “Uh - I mean - my girlfriend and I broke up a little while ago, but I’m not really…looking. Right now.”

The waiter stops by then with two large pitchers of mimosa and glasses for the whole table and takes everyone’s order, letting them know the show will start in about 45 minutes.

“Buck is in love with his best friend who babytrapped him,” Josh says off-handedly while he pours himself a drink, “It’s tragic, really.”

“They babytrapped you? How?” Jay asks.

“I told Maddie that in confidence!” Buck whines at Josh, who just shrugs at him like ‘you know I know everything’, “And he didn’t babytrap me. I’m just…the guardian of his son. If he dies. Which he won’t.”

Everyone at the table exchanges glances, and Josh nods and mouths “I know”.

“Okay, let’s see this best friend,” Bobby holds his hand out, like he expects Buck to give him his phone. Buck fumbles with it for a second, pulling up a picture of him and Eddie, and passes it down the table.

“Oh my god ,” Jay exclaims, refusing to hand the phone over to Bobby, “that man is fine .”

Bobby snatches it from him and his eyebrows go up when he looks, glancing at Buck, “This man gave you his child?”

“I wish he’d give me his child, goddamn,” Jay mutters, and Josh laughs.

The phone gets passed around as Buck squirms, watches as everyone nods and gives him approving looks. 

“He just knows that I care about Christopher like he does! His family kinda sucks, it’s not that weird!”

“So you’re co-parenting?” Molly asks, very straight-faced.

Buck wants to put his head on the table and whine, but he makes sure to look directly at Molly and speak clearly when he answers. “I guess? But it takes a village, right?”

Everyone exchanges more glances and Buck groans.

“He’s straight anyway, it doesn’t matter!”

Jamal and Josh burst out laughing. 

“What?!”

“Buck, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Eddie is not straight. I don’t know how he acts at the firehouse, but when he was at dispatch he spent most of his time kiki-ing with Linda and May in the break room and having petty bitch-offs with Josh. When he wasn’t doing that he was talking about you. Non-stop, really - there’s only so many tweets to be sent and so much extra time to talk about his so-called ‘best friend’ in a very more than friendly way.”

Buck gapes at Jamal, and Josh is just nodding beside him, adding, “It was always Buck did this, Buck did that. Buck stayed over and made us breakfast, Buck made sure Christopher was taken care of while I was at therapy, Buck and Taylor are fighting again and I hate her.”

“He really hated her,” Jamal laughs, “and I agree that she sucks and she looks a little bit like a chipmunk, but he like, jealously hated her.”

“Taylor who? I need to know all the tea,” Charlie is on his second mimosa and eating up the entire conversation like it’s a four course meal, looking absolutely delighted.

“My ex-girlfriend. Eddie uh…never liked her. She’s kinda an acquired taste?” Buck didn’t really think about what he was saying, but describing Taylor like that definitely made him feel better about the break up - that wasn’t the way you described someone you wanted to be with, let alone liked that much.

“Taylor Kelly,” Josh clarifies, “since I know he would leave that part out.”

“Oh my god, her voice is so annoying,” Rick bursts out, “I hated when she did the traffic reports. You dated her ?”

“She’s kinda a fox tho, let’s admit that,” Lexie takes a sip of her drink. “Like, I would let her step on me.”

Molly nods beside her.

Charlie’s eyes are gleaming a little and he wiggles his eyebrows at Buck, “That’s quite the size difference, is that something you’re into?”

Jay throws a napkin at him from across the table, rolling their eyes, “Stop acting like a bitch in heat, he’s not gonna fuck you.”

Everyone at the table laughs at that and Lexie elbows her brother good-naturedly. Even if he is in the hotspot and mildly embarrassed, Buck finds that he’s having a great time. The camaraderie here feels different than when he’s with the 118, it even feels different than when he’s just with Hen and Karen having a “girls night”. He doesn’t know these people well, but he can see how close they all are. They’ve created their own little family here together and that’s definitely something Buck can appreciate.

Somehow, by a miracle or maybe because Josh can sense he needs a break, the conversation turns to the rest of the table. Buck becomes fascinated by Molly discussing her archival work and how difficult it can be because there was a time not that long ago where it wasn’t safe for queer people to keep pictures or film of their lives, and so much history is passed on orally, yet they lost so many voices far too early. He gets engrossed in a conversation with Charlie about working at Disney and scouts for behind-the-scenes information on how to make a trip with Christopher as fun and accessible as possible, and Charlie tells his stories of some of his favorite encounters with children. 

Rick is working on a higher-profile movie at the moment, and the entire table heckles him and calls him pretentious when he starts a story with “So the other day Aziz was talking to me about casting these background actors for a scene…” as if they were close friends. Jay chimes in that they did Patrick Wilson’s wife’s hair and everyone says “nobody knows who that is ” as if it’s a running joke. Buck genuinely doesn’t know who that is, but he laughs anyway because the joy is infectious.

By the time their food arrives and the show starts, Buck realizes he’s having such a good time that he hasn’t even texted Eddie or looked at his phone. In between acts he texts just saw a drag queen strip out of a banana costume to look like the mom from beetlejuice and lip sync that song about bananas and Eddie texts back was it bananas ? 

Jamal catches him smiling at his phone and winks at him, miming sealing his lips. Everyone else is distracted and Buck appreciates that the focus won’t be pulled back to him and Eddie.

All told, they stay for almost three hours and Buck is sure he hasn’t had a better time doing anything else recently that wasn’t hanging out with Eddie and Christopher. He catches an Uber with Josh because they’re both headed to Maddie and Chim’s for a “family game night”, even though it’s still the afternoon - she’s just trying to get them all together while Jee is napping.

“Thanks for this,” Buck says quietly, looking out the window so he doesn’t have to see Josh’s reaction, “I really appreciate it. I see what you and Hen were talking about, now, about having a community.”

Josh hums, reaching over to pat Buck on the shoulder, “I know you understand, about found families. I know that’s what you have at the 118. One of the best things, one of my favorite things about being queer is that even if our biological families are complicated, or broken, or just plain awful - we get to choose a new family. We get to bond with each other, and take care of each other. When I first moved to LA I was freshly out and had no idea what I was doing, I had cut contact with my parents and I felt so alone. Bobby and Rick owned the apartment building I lived in and they recognized that I was floundering and took me in. I don’t think I would have survived without them, just like you with your captain.”

Buck is trying not to tear up listening to the emotion in Josh’s voice and he nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“It’s not like we have the monopoly on found families, but I feel something special with my little queer family. And I think they really liked you.”

Buck turns to look at him now, “yeah? You think so?”

Josh nods, a soft smile on his face, “I do. You’re welcome to join us any time. And hey - maybe next time, if you get your shit together, you could bring Eddie.”

Buck blushes to the tips of his ears and gives Josh a light shove, but he’s smiling when he says, “Yeah, maybe. Next time.”