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The 118 comes in different configurations. Like stars in the night sky, they orbit around each other, and there are certain constellations which are constantly recurring. Bobby-Hen-Chim-Buck-Eddie. Chim-Maddie-Buck-Albert. Bobby-Athena-Hen-Karen. And Eddie's personal favorite, Eddie-Buck-Chris.
He's met so many of the people who matter to his chosen family. God knows they throw enough parties, big bustling get togethers in Bobby and Athena's back yard, or a couple dozen people packed into Maddie and Chim's apartment. He's met Karen's brother and Harry's middle school crush and Athena's ex-husband's boyfriend's coworkers. So he's met Josh before. Of course he's met Josh before.
It's different meeting someone at a party though. It's ten minutes, maybe twenty. You learn a little bit about each other and you do your best to remember but you mostly forget anyway. Eddie's met Josh, but he doesn't really know him.
And then Eddie joins dispatch, and suddenly he's part of a new set of constellations: Eddie-May-Josh, Eddie-Josh-Sue, Eddie-Josh-Claudette-May-Linda.
Suddenly Josh is everywhere.
And Eddie? Eddie can't stand him.
*
May catches him stewing in the break room. "Prank call?" she asks, heading for the coffee pot. "I hate those. What kind of asshole pranks 9-1-1?"
He doesn't have to correct her. He shouldn't. But his desk is right next to Josh and he needs to vent to someone before he goes back out there. It's not bad-mouthing if you don't say who you're talking about, right?
"Do you ever," Eddie starts, then stops, thinking better of it. But May's intrigued now. She drifts closer, clutching at her coffee mug. "Do you ever have someone who just rubs you the wrong way? Like, objectively, there's nothing wrong with them. It's all in your head."
"Oh my god, yes," says May. She looks around, making sure they're alone, then lowers her voice. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."
"No no no," Eddie says. "I don't want it to get back to them. Like I said, it's all me. It's my problem."
Although now he wants to know who May can't stand. He can't help it; he's always been a gossip. And he can tell May's an enabler, just like Chimney and Hen. He feels a rush of warmth towards her.
"That's why we both have to tell each other," May says. "Mutually assured destruction."
Eddie breaths out. "Okay. You go first." And then he feels like a coward, for making the twenty year old go first.
May leans in. "Claudette."
And - okay, yeah, Eddie can see that. He admires Claudette, but she can be a little condescending.
May is looking at him expectantly. His turn.
Eddie clears his throat. Whispers: "Josh."
May's eyebrows shoot up. "Josh?" she whispers back, confused. "Why?"
He doesn't know what to tell her. Josh is friendly and funny and good in a crisis. There's nothing wrong with him. "There's no 'why'," he tells May. "The whole point is it's not rational."
May thinks about that for a moment, like she's still trying to process someone not liking Josh, and then she shrugs, like she's given up.
"Please don't tell him," Eddie says. That's the last thing he wants.
But May smiles. "Mutually assured destruction, remember?"
Eddie smiles back, but it's more like a grimace. He needs to get over himself before this turns into a cold war.
*
But it gets worse after that.
Before, it was out-of-sight out-of-mind. Shifts were rough. In the breaks between calls, when he should be taking a breather, he'd pick out Josh's voice from the general hum of dispatch conversation, and it set him on edge, his jaw grinding tighter and tighter until he was fighting off a headache. But once he'd left dispatch it was over. He could forget about it until next shift.
Since the conversation with May, though, he can't forget about it. Her question nags at him: why? Why doesn't he like Josh?
The problem isn't that he can't come up with answers. The problem is that his answers are awful.
He doesn't like Josh's voice. He doesn't like the way Josh carries himself, the way he sits in his chair. Last week Josh came in with his nails painted pink, and Linda had said, "They look good! Don't they, Eddie?" Eddie had nodded too stiffly, forced out a "yeah". Turned back to his station, where he still had to hear Josh, but didn't have to look.
He knows it's homophobia. It's not hard to figure out. And that's probably why things have gotten so bad. Because he hates that he feels this way. He sees Josh, and he judges Josh, and he judges himself for judging Josh, and he gets a headache.
If he could stop he would. But he can't seem to stop.
*
He doesn't know who to ask for help. Certainly not anyone at dispatch. He's not close to any of them anyway.
Maybe someone at the 118? Although, just the idea of voicing his thoughts to Hen makes him want to shrivel up and die. And Buck - Buck is friends with Josh. He's part of a constellation, Buck-Maddie-Josh-Chim.
But Eddie could bring it up in the abstract. He could lay it all out without saying it's Josh. Maybe imply that he's talking about a parent at school.
He waits until Christopher's in bed, when they've gotten their customary beers and stretched out on Eddie's couch. Eddie takes a moment to be grateful for it. When he left the 118, he was so afraid that he'd lose this too. He'd seen the hurt and the anger in Buck's eyes. But Buck had shown up at his house that same night with two grocery bags full of supplies for dinner, though they were all still full from the mid-day Christmas meal. Can't get rid of me that easy, Buck had said, a little bit of bravado in his voice, and Eddie had answered quietly: Like I'd ever want to.
"Watcha thinking about, Eds?"
Eddie takes a sip of his beer, gives himself a moment to come up with an answer besides 'how right it feels to have you here'. That's too sentimental, even if it's true.
Might as well get it over with. "I need your advice on something."
Buck nods, leaning back. He loves to give advice. It's usually good advice, too.
"There's this guy," Eddie begins, and then he trails off, unsure of how to continue.
Buck sucks in a sharp breath. "You mean, like, 'a guy'?"
Eddie realizes how he sounds. "No!" he says, hurriedly. "Not like that! Not that - not that it would be bad if it was like that." His shoulders tense a little. "Actually, that's kind of the problem."
Buck's staring at him. "I'm so confused."
"You're telling me." Eddie tries again: "There's this guy who's kind of...flamboyant. And I know, intellectually, that there's nothing wrong with being flamboyant. But I can't stop myself from reacting to it. How do I stop myself from reacting to it?"
Buck takes a long time to answer. He's thinking hard, but he's also watching Eddie, like he's trying to figure something out. How much of an asshole Eddie is, maybe.
"Have you spent much time around people like him before?" Buck asks finally.
"You mean queer people?"
"No," Buck laughs, "I know you spend time around queer people."
"Right." He loves Hen. He'd treated Lena awfully, but not because she was queer - he'd done it because he'd been a fucking disaster. Karen, Michael, David, Ravi, he's never once had a problem with any of them.
"I meant, have you ever been friends with an effeminate gay man before?"
Eddie hasn't, not really. It wasn't even an option until he moved to LA - not a lot of out queer folks in either his conservative El Paso neighborhood or in the army. But even in LA, he'd sort of steered clear. Avoided gay bars, avoided Pride. Avoided Josh, for that matter, always keeping their conversations at parties surface-deep.
Eddie shrugs.
"Hmm," says Buck, still digging for an answer, for a way to help Eddie, even though he doesn't deserve it. "Okay," he says, sitting up a little straighter. "Okay, how about this. Imagine it's Chris."
"What?"
"Imagine that Chris grows up to be a flamboyantly gay man. How would you feel about him?"
I'd love him, Eddie wants to say, immediately. But this is Buck. He knows how much Eddie loves Christopher. That's why he suggested the thought experiment.
Eddie closes his eyes and tries to picture it. Chris as a teenager. Chris with painted fingernails. Chris with a slightly feminine cadence in his voice.
There's a flicker of disgust, at first, but it's drowned in the wave of love he always feels when he thinks of Christopher. How can any of that be wrong, if it's what Chris wants?
He imagines himself pulling Christopher into a hug. Telling him, "I'm so proud of you."
But suddenly his father is there in the room with them. His father is saying, "Proud? You should be ashamed." His father grabs Chris's hands and drags him towards the bathroom, so he can scrub them off with soap.
"Eddie - " says Buck. "Eddie - "
He's too far away. Eddie is being dragged by his father towards the bathroom. His father turns the faucet on all-the-way hot and drags a wet towel up and down Eddie's face, and Eddie doesn't know if it's the water or the too-harsh scrubbing or the humiliation but it burns, it burns, and -
"Eddie," says Buck.
Eddie takes a ragged breath, shakes free of the memory, and meets Buck's eyes. They're so soft, so concerned.
"Where'd you go?"
Eddie doesn't want to tell him. But he also doesn't want Buck to think he's upset by the idea of Chris being gay. "I was remembering this one time my sisters let me play dress up with them. They went all in on the makeup. My dad...he didn't like it."
Buck grabs Eddie's hands where they're clutching his own knees, and holds tight. "I'm sorry."
Eddie just sits there. He hasn't thought of that day in so long. It's strange to remember being that young boy: slight and pretty, not too different from his sisters. Strange to feel it in his body now, which is tall and broad and tough.
"Don't be sorry," he says, finally. "I think it's important I remember that." It feels like a thread he needs to pull on; like a symptom in a patient he just knows will lead to the diagnosis.
Buck squeezes Eddie's hands. "I meant I'm sorry it happened."
Eddie nods. Buck's hands are warm and he wants to keep holding them forever, and he also wants to pull away.
He needs space. Time, to think this through. Buck seems to get that, because he leans back a little, takes a swig of beer and reaches for the remote. But before he can turn the t.v. on -
"I'd love him," Eddie blurts out, one last thing, the thing he wanted to say first. "If Chris was gay, or effeminate, or trans, or, or - anything. I'd love him. And it'd be easy." He needs Buck to know that.
But of course Buck already does. "I know you would," Buck says, and smiles.
*
Buck probably hadn't meant to flip Eddie's world upside down with his little thought experiment, but he has. That's what's happened.
The thing is, Eddie hadn't known to be afraid of it, that part of him that hated Josh. He barely admitted to himself that it was there. But now he's dragged it out into the light, and seen that it could hurt his kid. So he has to take care of it, just in case. Like putting child locks on the cabinets when Chris was little, or making sure he's buckled in his car seat. He has to protect Chris.
It is excruciating.
Once he starts looking, there's a very clear pattern. All the things that bother him about Josh are things that were stamped out of Eddie, wrung out, beaten out, shouted out.
"You've got tickets for Lizzo?" he hears Josh asking Linda. "Oh my god, I love her!"
He follows his annoyance and it morphs into pain: his mother taking down the Backstreet Boys poster Sophia gave him, while he was at school. When he'd asked her, she pretended not to know what he was talking about. Like him putting a poster of some teenage hearthrobs up on his wall was too horrible to even acknowledge.
"No, I can't have any more," says Josh at Ismael's going away party, even as he reaches for another brownie. "You know this is going right to my thighs."
On Eddie's high school baseball team, they were always lifting weights, trying to bulk up like Bonds and McGwire and Sosa. They'd show off for each other, flexing, pulling their shirts up to display their six-packs. But there was a kid on the team, Danny, who wasn't built for home runs. He was quiet, slender. Once in the locker room Eddie was admiring Danny without even realizing it, the smooth unmarked skin of his slight shoulders. He couldn't tell if he wanted to press his lips to Danny's shoulders, or somehow to make them his own. Then suddenly Gustafson was in between them: "Hey Diaz, you a secret faggot?"
It takes months of excavating the memories. It's so easy to drown in them at first: in the shame of it, the fear, his father's rough hands, his mother's cold judgment. It's easy to believe he deserves it.
But then he imagines Christopher in his place. And every part of him rises up in defiance. How fucking dare you speak to my son that way! he wants to scream at Gustafson. How dare you speak that way to my beautiful, perfect son!
He calls Adriana eventually. Asks her, "Do you remember that time when we were little? When we were playing dress up?"
"Yeah," says Adri. "And dad freaked out."
Eddie swallows hard. "Dad was wrong to do that."
A beat of silence, of surprise. "Yeah," says Adri, warmly. "Yeah, he was."
*
That night he runs through the memories again. He is defiant. He is angry. He shouts, "How dare you speak that way!"
But it's not Christopher he's protecting this time. It's his childhood self.
He presses his face into the pillow and sobs.
*
He wants to tell Buck about the work he's doing, the progress he's making. About how being around Josh barely bothers him anymore.
But even as one part of his life settles down, another comes unsettled.
Now it's hard to be around Buck.
It's not like it was with Josh, not at all. Josh was gritted teeth, tension headaches, irrational anger and the resulting rational guilt. Buck is sweaty palms, nervous laughter, and warmth laced with anxiety.
He's given himself permission to feel, and now he feels everything.
Buck cooks them dinner and Eddie can't stop measuring the breath of his shoulders. He teases Eddie and Eddie flushes like he's never been teased before. Buck puts Chris to bed, brushes a kiss across his forehead, and Eddie watches, rooted to the ground by the strength of his love for Buck, the depth of his longing. He wants Buck to stay with them forever.
(He's always wanted Buck to stay with them forever. He'd just never known exactly why.)
One night Chris is sleeping over at Hen's place and Buck is whipping up dessert in the kitchen. Literally whipping it up - he's got a bowl of coconut milk and a whisk. Buck's biceps strain with the effort and Eddie should offer to take a turn but he can't really form words. If anyone asks, his mouth's watering over the dessert.
"Whew," Buck says when he finishes. "Next time I'm getting out the stand mixer." He pours the whipped coconut cream into two different bowls and adds some berries. "Here you go."
It's so good. Sweet, but not too sweet. Fresh and crisp and clear. Eddie closes his eyes to savor it - to savor the moment - and when he opens them again, Buck is looking at him intently. When their eyes meet, Buck looks away. Eddie's whole body goes hot.
"So," Buck says around a mouthful of berries. "Whatever happened to that guy?"
It's vague as hell. Eddie knows exactly what Buck means, but he could pretend not to.
He's tired of pretending.
"We're fine," Eddie says. "Your advice was - really good. It helped."
"Oh?" Buck says, surprised, pleased.
"Yeah, I realized that the problem wasn't him, it was me." But that's not quite right. "I mean, the problem was how I was taught I had to be."
Buck's eyes widen a little, but he is otherwise steady. His focus is all on Eddie, like they're in the middle of a rescue. Buck is watching him carefully to make sure he doesn't fall.
"It wasn't okay to be gay in my house. Where I grew up. Especially not that kind of gay, you know - the obvious kind. If you were going to be gay, you had to do a good job of hiding it." He takes a breath. Takes a step. Trusts Buck to have his back. "I did such a good job hiding it I forgot I was hiding at all."
Buck drops his bowl onto the table with a clatter and steps forward. "Eddie."
Eddie shrugs; he doesn't know what to do with his hands, with any part of himself after confessing all that. Luckily Buck does. Buck takes another step forward and wraps Eddie in a hug. Eddie presses his face into Buck's shoulder and breathes.
"Holy shit," Buck says. Eddie can feel his voice as it rumbles out of his chest, wants to feel it forever. "That was so brave, Eddie."
"Nah," says Eddie, and now it's his turn to fake a little bravado, his voice shaking. "I haven't even gotten to the hard part."
Buck pulls back so he can look at Eddie, brow furrowed.
"Buck, I - " He can't get it out. Buck has a hand on his waist and another on his shoulder, they're breathing the same warm air, and he can't get it out. "I need to tell you - Buck. Buck, I - "
And then Buck's lips are on his, just for a moment, soft and sweet. So quick Eddie might have imagined it.
"That was it, right?" Buck asks nervously. "Eddie? That was the hard part?"
Eddie laughs. He can't help it; he's relieved, he's giddy. He's in love. He pulls Buck in before he can get the wrong impression and kisses him again. He brings his hands up to frame Buck's face, his fingers spreading into Buck's curls. Buck whimpers into his mouth.
"You don't know how long I've wanted this," says Buck, when they break apart again.
He aches to think of Buck waiting for him. Hurting.
"I've wanted you for almost as long as I've known you," he says. "I just couldn't admit it to myself."
Eddie licks his lips. They taste of whipped cream and berries and Buck.
Buck reaches out to touch the corner of Eddie's mouth, stops himself, and then continues, like he'd had to remind himself he's allowed this now. His expression is awed, almost disbelieving. "Man," he says, "I've got to get that guy a gift basket. Whoever he is."
*
Eddie's just getting off shift when Josh confronts him.
"Okay, Eddie, spill," says Josh. "Why did Buck send me an edible arrangement?"
Eddie can't help the smile that blooms in him at that. Of course Buck actually did it. Of course.
"Hmmm. You definitely know why."
"I do," says Eddie, calm. He's not trying to be infuriating, but, well, he's not not trying.
"I'll get the answer out of you."
Eddie checks the time. He has two hours before he needs to pick up Chris from school. "Tell you what," he says. "I'll trade you the answer for a favor."
"What favor?" Josh asks cautiously.
"I need a recommendation for a barber. A - um, a queer-friendly barber."
Josh's mouth drops in surprise. "For you?"
"Yeah, for me. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about it."
Once he says that, Josh insists on taking him to his own barber, who is luckily not too far from dispatch. They flip through the magazines and the books with headshots together, and Josh gives him suggestions about what he think will look best, "although they'll all look good, because you're unfairly hot".
Eddie flushes and grins.
"Don't tell Buck I said that, I don't want to be murdered by my best friend's brother."
The barber takes him back to a chair. Thirty minutes and a lot of careful buzzing and clipping later, and there's a man Eddie barely recognizes looking at him in the mirror.
"Never mind," Josh says when he sees Eddie. "Buck isn't going to murder me, he's going to buy me another edible arrangement."
They walk back to their cars, which are parked only a few spaces away from each other - an LA miracle. They say their goodbyes, but then Josh hesitates.
"I have to admit," says Josh, "for a while there, I kind of thought you didn't like me."
The sun is just beginning to set, and there's an orange-pink glow to everything. Josh's kind face looks beautiful. They're both of them beautiful.
"No," says Eddie. "I didn't like myself."
"Ah," says Josh, like he gets it. He probably does. "And now?"
"I like both of us."
Josh beams. "Good." Then he clears his throat. "I'll see you in the morning, Eddie." The morning shift is Eddie-Josh-May-Sue.
Eddie's looking forward to it.
"See you in the morning, Josh."
The sun is just beginning to set, which means the stars are coming out. Maybe this weekend he and Buck can take Chris out of the city so he can really see them. They can show Chris the constellations, and Eddie can tell them his theory, how they belong together like certain stars do.
And it will be sentimental, but Eddie won't shove it down, because it's true, it's true, the three of them do belong together, each one of them burning bright as anything. Lighting each other's way. Guiding each other home.