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Chimney pulled away from his beautiful wife's arms as his phone lit up the dark room, the loud ring broke through the soft spell of rest they'd fallen under after the kids had blessedly fallen asleep. He squinted his eyes as the tiny text on the top left corner of his screen read 22:41.
He had to blink a few more times before he could read the name of the soon-to-be murder victim that had dared to call him at this ungodly hour.
"Eddie? Why are you calling me at eleven at night?"
"Chim, will you fake date me?" Eddie sounded alarmingly serious.
Chim felt a cluster headache coming on, his left eye twitched as an utterly horrified sounding squawk came through the speaker of his phone. A squawk that sounded like his brother-in-law.
This was weird right? Chimney should not know people by their squawks. Why does he know his people by their squawks? Why was he being asked this question if Buck was right there?
"Diaz. It is eleven p.m."
"There's twenty minutes still! We all got sleep in the bunks ‘til the afternoon today and the shift had been qu—"
"Ababab! Don't you dare!" Chimney whisper-shouted. Maddie was beside him, her sleep shirt was falling off of one shoulder, her hair was staticky and adorable. Her lips were shiny because she had been half asleep and drooling on his shoulder just a few minutes before. Her eyes were looking at him, so big and curious and slowly filling with mirth as each word registered. He was so in love with this woman. He wanted to be doing so many things within that moment. Things that were not whisper-shouting at one of his best friends about jinxing his, for once, peaceful night; and yet.
"Chim, we aren't even on shift right now."
"If you say it, I will personally make sure you feel the effects wherever you are. Now, why are you asking me to fake date you?"
Really, it should count for something, a statement about the codependency and dynamic of their extended family, that his wife heard that sentence and her reaction was to snort softly before laying her head back down on his shoulder so she could go back to her sweet, sweet rest. She knew he would fill her in later.
"Well, you see, I was going to ask Buck, but he told me to ask you."
"Buck told you to ask... me?"
"Yeah, he j— hey— stop that!" Chim could hear Eddie laughing as he presumably wrestled Buck to protect his phone from being stolen.
"Chim, I did not tell him to ask you that!" Buck shouted.
Chimney sighed deeply and started a preliminary massage at his brow bone while the hopeless idiots flirted on his phone line. At eleven at night.
Why does he have to be here for this?
"You did!"
"Did not!"
"He did, Chim. I swear. I told him I had a favor to ask him and he decided to be a smart ass about it. So I said I'd ask you instead and he told me to go ahead!"
"I didn't know you were gonna ask my brother-in-law to date you!"
"Fake date."
"Same difference."
"I was going to ask you!"
The following silence stretched on and even Chim had the decency not to breathe too loud.
Vaguely, as his free hand was busy stroking his gorgeous, gorgeous wife's hair as her head migrated from his chest to his lap, Chimney wondered if they remembered that he was still on the line.
He could hear shuffling. He should hang up, but Hen would kill him if he didn’t get all the gossip.
It’s a full five minutes before he had realised that these idiots were frozen in a stalemate. Figures that the only time Buck could keep his mouth shut is when he really, really should be talking. Chim looked down at his wife again, with all the love in the world and some incredibly mixed feelings about the elder-sibling-duties expansion-pack she came with. Then again, he had voluntarily filled the role before she came along, if only for the fun bits.
Nonetheless, it was time for some responsible meddling.
"So is anyone going to tell me why Eddie needs a fake relationship so bad?"
"Huh? Oh. Oh! Yes. It's— this one parent at Chris' school. She's everywhere, PTA, pick ups, the stupid parent Olympics three legged lemon race—"
"Hey, we won that lemon race."
"—that- nevermind it's not important. Buck is already at every event with me, they'd believe he graduated from best friend to- you know. Anyway she keeps trying to set me up with her cousin." Eddie said.
It was Buck who had the fastest reaction time to that bit of information, "What?!"
"What, 'what'? They're vultures, man. They keep on hitting on me and there's a fundraiser coming up. I'm assigned to the dunk tank."
"Multiple people are hitting on you and you didn't think to tell me? Where was I?"
"Oh like you tell me every time someone talks to you like you're a hot piece of—"
Chimney decided to cut in, "I'm still here boys."
"Sorry Chim." Buck replied, "We gotta go. Eddie won't be needing you to fake date him."
"I wasn't—" Chim's reply was cut off by the beep-beep-beep that told him Buck had hung up already.
He set his phone down on the charging stand and gently picked Maddie up and off of his lap; laying down carefully as he tried not to wake her, before he situated her in his arms again properly.
She snuggled up to him on her own, and asked in the sleepy tone that had him waking up in ways neither of them really had energy for at eleven at night, "So, you gonna go on a date with Eddie?"
"No, but I do think we are getting a new brother-in-law next year."
That woke her up, "It's happening?"
"I think it is, but then again, I've thought that a lot of times since season four."