Chapter Text
"So none of them are coming now?" Chim asked, already one foot out the door and fifteen minutes late for dinner with Albert.
Maddie sighed. "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, Hen and Karen have had some thing planned for a couple weeks now, so I knew they'd be busy. But apparently Harry tore some ligament playing basketball earlier, so May and Athena are heading to Urgent Care to check in on him. But it's really not a big deal, we'll just try extra hard for next weekend."
He had an apologetic look on his face. "Yeah, Buck texted me about that a couple hours ago." He stepped back into the house to give Maddie a kiss on the temple. "Still, I'm sorry it had to be tonight of all nights. I can always text Albert and reschedule—"
"No no—" she cut him off, holding her hands out. "We have dinner plans for tomorrow night, and this just means I get a little time to myself, nothing bad." She smiled sweetly at her husband.
"As long as you're okay with that," he replied giving her a knowing look.
"I promise," she said. "And you're already way too late, don't let me keep you any longer. Say hi to Albert for me!" she said just as he was finally walking out. He gave her a smile and then the door shut.
If Maddie was being completely open with herself, she didn't really love being alone all that much. It reminded her of darker times. Times when she would just sit around waiting for Doug to come home, praying that she hadn't forgotten to do anything. Granted, she knew that those days were long gone by now, she was safe and happy. But the quiet rooms and the dark hallways still carried an ever-looming sense of dread with them.
She walked over into the kitchen, pulling the bottle of red out of the cabinet that she had saved for tonight. Might as well still take advantage of a kid-free household, right. Sitting back down in the living room, she poured herself a glass and flipped the TV on to whatever Lifetime original was currently playing.
Ten odd minutes of trying to play catch-up with the plot went by before her phone buzzed to life, rattling where it lay on the marble coffee table. Muting the television for a second, she picked up the call before looking at the ID. It was a dispatch tendency.
"Hello?"
"Hey Maddie! It's Eddie, sorry for the late call, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday."
The answer came at a bit of a surprise to her, the two of them almost never spoke one-on-one. "Oh, thank you. How was work today?"
"Pretty boring, couple small grease fires, some anxiety-induced panic attack, the usual. Oh! Some guy tried to propose to his girlfriend in a hot air balloon and ended up getting stranded in the air for a while. That was a fun one."
Maddie laughed. "Yeah, Chim was telling me about that one.""Well, I don't want to keep you, you probably have plans more interesting than listening to me talk about my job. Just wanted to call before I forgot."
Maddie paused for a moment, pondering what to say. She really didn't have anything better to do, at least not anymore. "Actually, do you have plans tonight?"
...
"So all four of them cancelled on you?" Eddie asked as he plopped down on Maddie's couch.
"Well I wouldn't say cancelled, per se," she replied as she grabbed another glass from the kitchen. "They just had—things that came up."
"So they cancelled on this because of something else."
Maddie paused, looking over at Eddie for a moment, who had a slight smirk on his face.
"Yeah, I guess they did."
"I mean not all cancellations are bad," he continued. "Their stuff was probably important, but that doesn't mean it doesn't suck for you. Now you're stuck listening to me."
She giggled, sitting back down. "Don't make it sound like that, I wouldn't have invited you over if I didn't want to."
He tilted his head like he was mulling over it, giving her a slight nod.
After a moment of silence, Eddie spoke again. "So what exactly does one do on wine night?"
"I mean, it's pretty simple for us. We just sit here while the fire's going and talk about life and stuff."
He shrugged. "Life and stuff? I can do that. But," he started, standing up. "We gotta set the mood first, right?" He walked over to the electric fireplace, setting it on a low light.
"Right," Maddie said after a moment, with a hint of surprise to her cadence. Granted, she didn't know all that much about Eddie despite knowing him for years, but this just seemed—abnormal. "Karen usually queues something up on the speaker, feel free to take over that. The name is like Wireless Connect or something basic like that."
"Got it, connecting now," Eddie said without looking up from his phone. She watched him mindlessly scroll through something on Spotify that was too far away to actually read. "Smooth jazz okay?" he asked after another minute.
Maddie shrugged. "Works for me."
"Great!" he exclaimed on his way back to the couch. "That takes care of that, how was your week?"
"It was—fine, for the most part," she said slowly, almost like she didn't really know how to answer the question. But then again, it didn't matter that she was talking to Eddie. This was wine night, and wine night always came first. "But oh my god, I don't know if Buck told you this or anything, but there's this lady that started working at dispatch, apparently knows Josh somehow. Anyway, she's never had another dispatch job before this, and she just like comes in on day one all cocky about how great she is at this, or something."
Eddie narrowed his eyes on her, looking genuinely invested. "Wait, so like that Claudette lady from a couple years ago? I remember May hated that lady."
"A little, but at least Claudette had like, years of experience at dispatch. The only prior experience this lady had was watching those true crime podcast things on TikTok."
Eddie almost spat out his drink. "And they hired her?"
"Yeah," Maddie said through a laugh. "I don't know, I guess she had some qualifications, but really? I mean, her?"
"Maybe I'll go back to working at dispatch just out of spite. Be a real menace."
"Well, I think my brother would kill both of us if you left the 118 main to come work with us."
"Yeah, he probably would," Eddie laughed.
There was a moment of silence, the two of them just staring off into the living room, sipping wine.
"How is Buck doing?" Maddie asked, breaking the silence. "We haven't talked as much in the past couple weeks."
Eddie shrugged. "He's been pretty busy with all that first time parenting stuff, but other than that, pretty good, I think."
Maddie nodded. "Well, he's sacrificing his free time babysitting for wine night, so that's a plus, I guess."
"Please. I'm pretty sure he'd adopt Jee and Nash if you'd let him."
Maddie laughed. "Yeah he probably would."
Then it was silent again, before the two of them looked at each other and burst out into another fit of laughter. They had only had two glasses, right?
Suddenly, the door barged open.
"Great news, Maddie!" Chim yelled from the foyer. "Albert said he's transferring from the 146 to the 133, which means he'll be closer to us near the downto—Eddie?" he stopped abruptly as he walked into the living room.
Eddie waved up at him from where he was slouched on the couch. "Hey Chim."
Chimney took a pause, pondering what series of actions could have possibly led to the scene he just walked into. Deciding to just move past it, he continued to talk.
"Right. So Eddie, now that you're here for whatever reason, Albert's gonna be transferring to a station pretty close to us. Apparently he got a really good deal on a new place downtown, and the 133's been down a B-shift guy for a while."
Eddie said nothing, simply giving him a thumbs up. It made Maddie giggle again.
"Okay then," Chim declared. "I'm gonna leave you guys to—whatever you were doing." Turning to his wife, he continued. "Reservation's for six tomorrow, so can we plan on being ready for 5:15?"
"You got it, love you."
He smiled, before walking down the hallway. "I love you too. Night Eddie!"
"Night Chim!" Eddie yelled back, much louder than necessary.
"He's sweet to you at least," Eddie said once the bedroom door shut. "I swear, he tries to act like a drill sergeant sometimes at work."
"Please," Maddie said. "He just feels bad because it's my birthday and my plans got thrown off. Also, there's no way he acts like a drill sergeant with you guys. I've visited the station, you know."
"At the beginning of every shift he does. He comes in all like 'Alright guys, let's get shit done today!'" he mimics in some cartoonish voice. "Then by the time Ravi and Harry start arguing over whose turn it is to clean the rigs he gives up."
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Maddie laughed. "At least you can tell he cares about the job."
"Does he?" Eddie joked.
"Well maybe that's a bit strong of wording."
"You guys do realize I can hear you, right?" A voice shouts from down the hallway. "This house is not very big."
"We love you!" Eddie shouts back, drawing out the end of you far too long.
"Yeah!" Maddie adds. "All said with love!"
"Jesus Christ, how much wine did you guys have?" Chimney shouted back.
They both look over at the coffee table to see a quite empty bottle staring back at them.
"It was just two glasses, right?" Eddie half-whispered to Maddie.
"Yeah," she said without a single confident bone in her body. "Just two."
"Just two!" she shouted louder.
Chimney loudly sighed. "Isn't Hen usually the one who pours for you guys?"
"Well Hen isn't here," Eddie cut in. "Instead, you've gotta put up with me. But uh," he said quieter, looking back at Maddie. "Do you mind if I crash in the guest room for the night? Probably shouldn't be out on the roads."
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea," she said, getting up. "Jesus, what time is it?" she asked, suddenly checking her watch.
"Almost one!" Chim yelled through a now closed door.
"Thanks Babe!" Maddie yelled back with a slight twinge of guilt. "You think he's mad at me?"
Eddie gave her a smirk and a shake of the head. "It's your birthday. He can't be."
"Yeah, you know what? You're right."
It got quiet for another minute before Maddie continued. "You wanna come over again next week? We've been doing these every Wednesday for a while now."
Eddie smiled at her. "Wednesdays work for me, I'd love to. You know, as long as that's okay with everyone else."
She waved him off. "It's my birthday. They've gotta do whatever I say for at least a month."
"Plus, you're one of the only ones we don't really talk shit about," she added a minute later.
Eddie let out a good laugh at that. "Really. Even your husband? Your brother?"
Maddie's eyes widened. "Oh, especially those two. And Bobby, and Harry, and now Ravi. Really, you should be lucky. You're on a very short list."
"Well, it's an honor," Eddie said with a little bow. "But I really should be getting to bed. Gotta get up early to drive Chris to school in the morning."
"Don't let me keep you. Buck offered to drive Jee tomorrow, I'm off the hook until my birthday dinner."
"Where you guys going this time?"
Maddie shrugged. "He said it's a surprise. But knowing my husband, he always knows a guy. So I truly haven't the slightest idea."
Eddie laughed. "That you do. But, uh, going back to the Buck thing, you've got a—a good brother."
She nodded in response. "And you've got a great best friend."
Eddie smiled warmly. "Yeah, I really do, don't I."
...
Somehow, she managed to get in bed before 1:30. Careful to not wake her husband up, she slipped right underneath the covers without turning on any of the lights.
"So," an apparently awake Chimney started. "How did wine night end up getting infiltrated on by Eddie Diaz?"
She giggled. "I think you value sleep right now more than that story."
He pondered the statement for a moment. "Yeah, you're probably right on that one."