Chapter Text
The first of June arrived with clear skies, warm temperatures and a complete lack of emergencies, which was enough to make every firefighter in Station 118 vaguely suspicious. Several uninterrupted hours without a call should have felt like a blessing. Instead, it lingered in the background of the afternoon like a question nobody wanted to ask out loud. Los Angeles had never been particularly good at behaving itself and experience had taught them all that quiet days often came with consequences.
The loft had settled into the sort of comfortable stillness that only existed between people who knew each other well enough not to feel obligated to fill every silence. Chimney occupied one end of the dining table with several reports spread around him, periodically glaring at whichever form happened to be directly in front of him as though sheer irritation might somehow reduce the amount of paperwork attached to being a senior paramedic. Every few minutes he scribbled something down, muttered under his breath and moved onto the next page with the air of a man enduring a personal injustice. Nearby, Hen sat curled into the armchair with a tablet balanced across one knee, her attention fixed on a medical journal article she'd apparently found more interesting than anything else happening in the room. Every so often she scrolled further down the page or enlarged a diagram before settling back into her reading. On the sofa, Buck had somehow managed to occupy considerably more space than his actual body should have allowed. His legs were stretched across Eddie's lap while Eddie worked his way through a dog-eared magazine he'd picked up from somewhere, occasionally turning a page or absent-mindedly shifting Buck's feet whenever they slid into an uncomfortable position. Neither of them seemed remotely aware that most people would have found the arrangement unusual.
Near the lockers Ravi was attempting to complete an inventory check while Harry followed him with a clipboard tucked beneath one arm. Attempting was perhaps a generous description. They'd spent the better part of ten minutes arguing about Buck's caffeine intake instead. Harry had pointed out that anybody who drank six cups of coffee before lunch clearly had a problem. Buck had immediately objected from the sofa without looking up from his magazine. "Five." Harry didn't even glance in his direction. "That is not the part of that sentence you should be correcting." "Five," Buck repeated. "And caffeine isn't a problem if it works." Ravi snorted as he ticked another box on the inventory sheet. "That's not how addiction works." "Who said anything about addiction?" "The five coffees before lunch did." Buck looked personally attacked. "You're all being very dramatic." Harry finally looked up from his clipboard and shook his head. "Buck, you've spent years refusing to get checked for ADHD. We don't get to use your definition of normal." Across the room Hen hummed thoughtfully without taking her eyes off the article she was reading. "He's got a point." "Traitor," Buck informed her. "Medical professional," Hen corrected.
The door to Bobby's office opened and he emerged carrying a mug of coffee in one hand and a single sheet of paper in the other. The moment Chimney spotted it, his shoulders sagged.
"No."
Bobby glanced down at the form. "You haven't even looked at it."
"I don't need to. It's paperwork."
"You're the senior paramedic."
"I save lives."
"And occasionally fill out forms."
"I preferred it when somebody else filled out the forms."
A smile flickered briefly across Bobby's face as he set the sheet down beside Chimney's growing pile. "Funny. Everybody else preferred it when you filled out the forms."
Chimney looked down at the new addition to his workload as though Bobby had personally betrayed him.
That momentum finally broke whatever remained of the afternoon's calm. Chimney dropped his pen onto the table and leaned back in his chair with a sigh dramatic enough to draw attention from every corner of the loft.
Hen turned a page on her tablet without looking up. "What?"
"I don't trust this." Chimney gestured vaguely around the station as though the source of his discomfort should have been obvious to everybody present. "It's been too calm."
A smile tugged at the corner of Hen's mouth. "Don't."
"I'm not saying anything."
"You are."
"No, I'm not."
"You are," Hen replied patiently. "You're just trying to find a creative way of saying it."
Buck's grin widened. "She's right."
"Thank you."
Chimney looked personally betrayed by the lack of support. "I haven't even finished the sentence yet."
"That's because nobody's letting you," Buck pointed out.
"There's a reason for that."
Across the sofa Eddie turned another page of his magazine. "Eight years."
Nobody paid him the slightest bit of attention.
That seemed to amuse him more than anything else.
Harry looked between them, his confusion becoming increasingly obvious. Whatever conversation was taking place, he appeared to be the only person who hadn't received the relevant briefing beforehand. "What are you all talking about?" he asked, glancing from Chimney to Hen before finally settling on Ravi, who suddenly found the inventory sheet in front of him fascinating. When nobody volunteered an answer, Harry frowned. "Seriously. What?"
The silence that followed wasn't awkward. If anything, it felt collective, as though everybody in the room had arrived at the same conclusion and was waiting to see whether Harry would get there too. For a moment he simply looked around the loft. Then his gaze drifted towards the inactive alarm system, the trucks waiting below and the station as a whole. Understanding slowly dawned across his face.
"Oh."
Ravi straightened immediately.
Unfortunately, Harry noticed none of it.
"You mean it's really qu..."
The rest of the word disappeared beneath Ravi's hand.
For one perfect second the entire loft froze.
Then Buck laughed.
The sound burst out of him so suddenly that he folded forward against Eddie's shoulder, forcing Eddie to catch the magazine threatening to slip from his hands. Buck's laughter echoed through the station, warm and entirely unrepentant, while across the room Chimney looked so pleased with himself that he might as well have won an argument nobody else realised they were having. Even Hen finally abandoned her article, lowering her tablet to her lap as she watched the scene unfold.
Ravi, meanwhile, kept his hand firmly over Harry's mouth.
Harry stared at him.
Ravi stared right back.
Neither moved.
Eventually Harry peeled the offending hand away and took a step backwards, looking somewhere between confused and insulted. "What the hell was that?"
"Saving you."
"It was a word."
Ravi reclaimed the clipboard before Harry could decide to weaponise it. Around them the loft gradually settled back into motion. Buck's laughter faded into occasional snorts from the sofa. Eddie retrieved his magazine and turned a page, though he hadn't looked at it properly since Harry had nearly said the q-word. Bobby had stopped halfway back to his office. Even Chimney's paperwork sat forgotten on the dining table.
"Trust me," Ravi said, already sounding tired. "That was for your own good."
"It was a word."
"That's exactly what I thought."
Something in Ravi's tone made Harry pause. The indignation remained, but curiosity was beginning to creep in around the edges. He shifted the clipboard beneath one arm and leaned back against the lockers, clearly abandoning any pretence of helping with inventory for the foreseeable future.
"What happened?"
Ravi let out a long suffering sigh.
It was the sigh of a man who had told this story too many times already and knew he was about to tell it again.
"I was still a probie on B Shift. It was shift change. A Shift were coming on, B Shift were heading out and everybody was standing around talking." A faint smile appeared despite himself as he shook his head at the memory. "I'd only been here a few weeks. Long enough to know names. Not long enough to know all the weird station traditions."
Harry nodded.
Around the loft nobody interrupted. Judging by the expressions scattered throughout the room, they'd all heard the story before. Several times. Buck in particular looked like a man trying very hard not to laugh before the funny part arrived.
Ravi noticed.
"Don't."
Buck held up both hands innocently.
The warning had absolutely not been directed at him.
Ravi ignored the grin spreading across the sofa and continued. "Buck asked if I was the new B Shift probie. I said yes. Then he asked how it was going."
A look of understanding immediately crossed Harry's face.
"Oh no."
"Oh yes," Ravi muttered.
The grin he'd been fighting finally escaped Buck.
"I said it'd been a good day." Ravi paused briefly before continuing. "Then I said the q-word."
Even now several people visibly winced.
Ravi chose not to acknowledge any of them.
"The second it left my mouth every firefighter within earshot turned around and stared at me. Every single one." He shook his head again. "At the time I genuinely thought they'd all lost their minds."
A laugh escaped Harry before he could stop it.
"Fair."
"Thank you."
The inventory sheet had long since stopped receiving attention from either of them. Harry was fully invested now, leaning against the lockers with his arms folded while Ravi stood opposite him, one hand still resting on the clipboard he'd confiscated earlier.
"Nobody said anything. They just stared." Ravi glanced around the room. "Exactly like all of you did about five minutes ago. Then, before anybody could explain what was happening, the bell went off."
Harry opened his mouth.
Closed it again.
Then narrowed his eyes.
"Immediately?"
"As in I finished the sentence and the alarm started within 30 seconds I'd guess."
The scepticism remained firmly in place, but for the first time since the conversation had started it was sharing space with something else. The uncertainty only lasted a second before Harry pushed it away, but several people around the room noticed.
Buck's grin widened.
Ravi pretended not to see it.
"Anyway, I figured that was the end of it. A Shift took over. I went home." Another sigh escaped him. "Then I came in for my next shift."
Harry was already smiling.
Ravi pointed at him.
"Don't."
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're about to laugh."
The smile widened.
Ravi looked deeply unimpressed.
"The first thing Buck said to me wasn't hello. It wasn't good morning. It wasn't welcome to work." He folded his arms. "The first thing he said was, 'What's your name probie?'"
Harry glanced towards the sofa.
Buck looked entirely too pleased with himself.
"I told him."
Ravi paused.
Harry was already laughing.
"And then Buck looked at me and said, 'Oh. Now I know the name of the one who said the q-word.'"
By the time he reached the end of the story Harry was laughing openly. Around the loft several other people looked far too satisfied for Ravi's liking, while Buck appeared to regard the entire memory as one of the funniest things that had ever happened. Ravi, on the other hand, looked like a man who had accepted long ago that he would never be allowed to live it down.
The laughter lingered long after Ravi finished speaking.
Harry eventually reclaimed his clipboard, though neither he nor Ravi made any serious attempt to return to the inventory check. Around the loft people gradually drifted back towards whatever they'd been doing before the conversation had taken over the room. Hen reopened the article she'd abandoned. Chimney pulled another form towards himself with all the enthusiasm of a man volunteering for a root canal. Eddie turned another page of his magazine. Buck caught sight of Ravi's expression from across the room and immediately looked far too pleased with himself.
Ravi noticed.
"Don't."
Buck's grin widened.
"I didn't say anything."
"That's never stopped you before."
A snort escaped Chimney before he buried his head back in the paperwork.
The station settled once more. It wasn't exactly quiet. It never really was. Paper rustled. Somebody turned a page. The air conditioning hummed steadily overhead. Down in the apparatus bay a door opened and closed.
Bobby had almost made it back to his office when something seemed to occur to him. He paused in the doorway and looked back towards the sofa.
"Actually, before I forget. Have either of you thought about what you want to do for your birthdays?"
The question was directed at both men, though it was Eddie who answered first.
"We've got plenty of time."
Bobby's eyebrows rose slightly.
"Not really. It's already the first of June."
That finally drew Eddie's attention away from the magazine.
Beside him Buck sat up a little straighter.
"Exactly."
Nobody had asked him to elaborate.
That had never stopped him before.
"It's twenty five days until Eddie's and twenty six until mine."
Harry didn't even look up from the clipboard.
"That seems normal."
Several people glanced towards him.
"What?" Harry asked, finally noticing. "It's Eddie."
The explanation appeared entirely sufficient to him.
Buck looked delighted.
"Thank you."
"I've known you since I was nine. If you didn't know how many days there were until Eddie's birthday I'd assume you'd suffered some kind of head injury."
"See?" Buck pointed triumphantly in Harry's direction.
"Please stop encouraging him," Hen said without looking up from her tablet.
A smile flickered briefly across Eddie's face before he lowered the magazine completely. His eyes met Buck's for a moment.
Nothing was said.
Nobody seemed to expect anything to be.
The exchange lasted barely a second before Eddie gave the smallest shrug and Buck nodded once in return.
Conversation concluded.
"We'll probably do a family dinner," Buck said.
Bobby smiled.
"I thought you might."
For a few moments the conversation drifted elsewhere. Chimney eventually returned to his paperwork. Hen scrolled through another page of her article. Ravi finally remembered he was supposed to be checking inventory, though the speed at which he was working suggested he wasn't particularly committed to the task.
Then Hen looked up again.
"Actually, this'll be the first birthday we've all had since you brought Theo home."
The comment immediately drew Buck's attention.
Across from him Eddie lowered the magazine onto his lap.
"That's true."
A thoughtful look crossed Harry's face.
"It's weird thinking how much changed after Danny's first birthday."
Several people looked towards him.
Harry shrugged.
"At Danny's birthday it was me and Buck joking about being the only two people without somebody." A laugh escaped him at the memory. "Then a few days later Buck was running around trying to get ready for Theo."
Buck's expression softened instantly.
"So much for being alone."
The words were light, but there was warmth behind them.
Harry smiled.
"Yeah."
The conversation settled for a moment after that. Not awkwardly. Comfortably. Buck was still smiling faintly, and nobody looked particularly surprised by it.
Buck was already reaching for his phone, no doubt preparing to inflict photographs on whoever happened to be closest, when Chimney suddenly paused.
A familiar look crossed his face.
Nobody liked that look.
"What?" Hen asked immediately.
Chimney wasn't looking at her.
His attention had settled on Harry.
"Hang on."
Harry looked suspicious on instinct.
"What?"
A grin spread slowly across Chimney's face.
"This is your first Pride Month with the 118."
Harry frowned.
"No, it isn't."
Chimney gestured around the loft before pointing towards the apparatus bay below.
"Not with us. With the station."
Understanding arrived a moment later.
"Oh."
"Yeah."
Harry's gaze travelled slowly around the room.
From Chimney to Hen.
From Hen to Buck.
From Buck to Eddie.
Then finally to Ravi.
The second look lasted noticeably longer than the first.
Buck noticed immediately and grinned into his drink.
"Don't."
"I'm not saying anything."
"You are."
Buck wisely chose not to argue.
Harry ignored them both and continued looking around the room.
"You know what?"
Nobody trusted that tone.
"What?" Ravi asked cautiously.
Harry gestured vaguely around the loft.
"I think this might genuinely be the most diverse firehouse in Los Angeles."
The observation lingered in the room for a moment. Nobody seemed particularly interested in arguing with it. Chimney looked far too pleased with himself. Buck was still trying and failing to hide a grin behind his drink. Ravi had finally resumed the inventory check, though his attention clearly wasn't on the clipboard. Even Bobby remained standing in the doorway of his office.
Harry looked around the room again before shaking his head.
"No, seriously."
That drew a few more curious looks.
"I grew up around Dad and David and Hen and Karen as my aunts, so none of this is exactly new to me, but when you actually stop and think about it..." He trailed off, glancing around the loft once more. "Everybody's story must be completely different."
The humour faded slightly from the room, though not entirely, just enough that Harry's question seemed to settle differently than the conversation that had come before it.
"What was it like?"
The question wasn't directed at anybody in particular, but even so several pairs of eyes drifted towards Hen.
She noticed immediately.
"Why's everybody looking at me?"
Nobody answered.
Hen sighed.
"Traitors."
The word carried far more affection than annoyance.
For a moment she stared down at the tablet resting in her lap, her fingers tapping absently against the edge of the case before eventually stilling altogether. When she finally spoke, her gaze had already drifted somewhere beyond the loft. Not far, just far enough that it was obvious she wasn't really looking at the station anymore.
"When I was younger, I thought everybody was exaggerating."
A faint smile tugged at her mouth.
"I remember sitting with my friends at lunch listening to them talk about boys. They'd spend entire lunch breaks obsessing over one guy or another, talking about who was cute, who smiled at them in class, who they wanted to sit next to. I'd look over expecting to see somebody incredible and it was always just some boy."
The smile widened slightly at the memory.
"I kept waiting for whatever they were seeing to click because everybody else seemed so sure. They'd be practically falling over themselves for these guys and I genuinely thought they had to be making half of it up." She shook her head fondly at her younger self. "It wasn't until I kissed a girl that I realised they weren't. And the funny thing is, it wasn't even the kiss itself that convinced me. It was everything afterwards. I couldn't stop thinking about her. Suddenly all the things my friends had spent years talking about actually made sense."
Harry remained silent, the clipboard hanging forgotten at his side while Hen continued turning over memories she'd clearly not revisited in years.
"I figured out pretty quickly after that that it wasn't boys I was interested in, and honestly, that part was easier than people think. When I was younger I thought figuring out I was a lesbian would be the hard part. It turned out life had other plans."
The amusement faded slightly, giving way to something quieter as her thumb brushed absentmindedly across the edge of the tablet.
"Eva and I loved each other. We also hurt each other, and when it ended I remember feeling stupid because I'd spent so much time worrying whether somebody would ever love me back that I'd never stopped to consider what happened if they did and it broke apart." A small humourless laugh escaped her. "Nobody really talks about that part when you're young. They talk about finding love like it's the finish line, but sometimes you find it and things still fall apart."
For a moment she stared down at the dark screen resting in her lap before continuing.
"I wasn't angry when it ended. Looking back, I think that was probably the worst part. If I'd been angry, I would've had somebody to blame. Instead I was just sad because I loved her, she loved me, and somehow that still wasn't enough to make us work."
The certainty she'd once felt about what came next seemed almost amusing to her now.
"For a long time I convinced myself that was all the proof I needed that love wasn't worth the risk." Her smile was small and wry. "I wasn't swearing off women. I was swearing off love."
The memory lingered for a moment before another surfaced in its place, and the change in her expression when Karen's name entered the conversation was immediate. Not dramatic, just unmistakable.
"And then Chim introduced me to Karen."
Warmth settled naturally across her face.
"I wasn't looking for a relationship and Karen, being Karen, completely ignored that." A quiet laugh escaped her before she shook her head. "I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself it wasn't worth trying again. Karen spent a lot of time proving me wrong. She kept turning up, kept calling, kept refusing to be put off by all the reasons I was convinced this wasn't going to work. As it turns out, she's incredibly stubborn."
For a moment Hen seemed to be looking through years rather than remembering a single moment.
"By the time Eva called, Karen and I were already living together. We'd already started building something, even if neither of us knew exactly what it was going to become. Then Eva asked if we'd raise Denny."
The softness that entered her voice at Denny's name was impossible to miss.
"We brought home this tiny baby and suddenly everything changed. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing." A laugh escaped her before she shook her head. "Still don't some days."
Her smile lingered as another memory surfaced.
"Denny was just a baby when Karen got the chance to become an astronaut. A real astronaut." Even now the idea seemed faintly unbelievable. "I remember looking at her and thinking there was no way anybody should have to choose between those things, between going to space and staying home with the family they'd built."
The smile softened.
"But Karen chose us."
There was no hesitation in her voice when she said it.
"Not because she had to. Because she wanted to."
For a few moments she sat quietly with the memory before continuing.
"And then life just kept happening. There was IVF, fostering, Nia..." A fond smile touched her lips before faltering slightly at the last name. "I was so sure I couldn't do it again after Nia went home. I remember sitting on the floor crying because it felt like somebody had ripped my heart out, and Karen sat with me through all of it."
Her thumb brushed lightly across the edge of the tablet.
"She always did."
For a moment Hen seemed to be looking through years of memories. Long shifts. Shared dinners. Raising Denny. The ordinary days that eventually became a life.
"The funny thing is, when I think about Eva now, the heartbreak isn't the first thing I remember. It was real and it hurt, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise, but it isn't what comes to mind first anymore. I think about Denny. I think about the fact that if I'd never met Eva, I wouldn't have him, and I can't regret that. Not for a second."
For a moment she seemed to be looking at a newborn baby and a teenager at the same time.
"Because Denny is one of the best things that's ever happened to me."
Only then did she look back towards Harry.
"You remember the wedding, right?"
The smile that followed was impossible to separate from Karen.
"We'd already been a family for years by then. We were already raising Denny together. We'd already chosen each other every single day. Getting married wasn't the start of our family. It was finally being allowed to have the same thing everybody else already had."
She shook her head, amused by the journey that had brought her there.
"If you'd asked fourteen-year-old me what my future looked like, I would've had absolutely no idea. I knew I liked women. I had no idea I was going to end up married to a rocket scientist who looked at the chance to go to space and still chose us."
The warmth in her voice lingered long after the words themselves.
"For a long time I thought my story was about realising I was a lesbian." She shook her head gently. "It wasn't."
Her eyes lifted, steady and certain.
"My story was finding the people I wanted to build a life with."
For a few moments nobody spoke.
Hen's words lingered in the loft long after she finished speaking, settling into the comfortable silence that only really existed between people who knew each other as well as they did. Harry found himself looking around the room differently than he had at the start of the conversation. These weren't just the people he'd grown up around. They weren't just firefighters or paramedics or family friends. They were people who had lived entire lives before he'd known them, people who had fallen in love and had their hearts broken, people who had made mistakes and recovered from them, people who had spent years becoming the versions of themselves sitting around the table now.
Beside him, Ravi had long since given up pretending to do inventory. His clipboard remained balanced on his knee, forgotten somewhere around the time Hen had started talking about Karen, while Bobby appeared equally uninterested in the paperwork he'd originally brought out of his office. Even Buck and Eddie had gone unusually quiet, both listening rather than filling the silence the way they often might have done.