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the world (it burns through me)

Chapter 12: Darlin'

Ao3 | 3.1k | Darlin's POV

The 10-19 fights a fire on Christmas Eve. Darlin' works hoses. Asher takes command. Milo gets pinned. Somebody slips out the back door.

TW: fire, burning building, descriptions of injury, life threatening peril, discussions of Christmas.

When people found out you were a firefighter, the first question out of their mouths was always about the heat. It bugged the shit out of you, that curious glint in their eyes when they cornered you in your turnouts or a well loved Dahlia Fire Department tee-shirt. Gosh, it must get hot, or you must sweat in all of that! You never were good at placating probing questions like Asher was, or remembering statistics on average house fire temperatures like David.

What you didn’t say, what you couldn’t, what you didn’t dare to vocalize to anybody who hadn’t been inside of one, was that it wasn’t the heat that got to you in the middle of a fire. It was the sound. Sure, it was hot as hell when you were weighed down by sixty pounds of gear and fumbling around your thick gloves to snatch human lives away from the flames. But what shocked you that first time in training, while clearing a building destined for demolition of awkward, stuffed dummies, was the noise. The flames hissed like a scared cat, whipping and whooshing as they danced across the field. Wood and steel creaked and groaned and popped as the heat expanded it. And the screams… nothing hurt like a burn, and nobody screamed like a burn victim. You had been fortunate enough not to ever hear, let alone see, anybody burn to death, but you had seen plenty get close. That was the noise that you could never shake.

You were surprised by the fucking noise of it that first time in training, during your first C.P.A.T..

You were surprised during your second.

You were surprised as you stood outside of Bean Me Up on Christmas fucking Eve, hose in hand, batting down flames as they emerged from the building’s low windows, trying to beat back the fire as it gained more ground.

It had been three weeks and change since you and the Shaws had bugged out, and you’d spent nearly every moment of that time preparing for your C.P.A.T.. It was exhausting, looking only at the walls of the 10-19, seeing only the day and night crews as they filtered in and out, waking in the dead of night to the blaring of the alarm.

That was the only other noise you couldn’t get out of your head, the skull-drilling bell that rang in a code. That noise had buzzed in your dreams and jerked you awake since you were a teenager. You were always halfway through tugging on imaginary turnouts when you realized it wasn’t real. In the past, when your mind drifted, you would hear it out of the house entirely, in the car, in the grocery store, walking through the forests in Washington. Wherever and whenever your brain got just a bit too quiet.

That built in instinct served you well, though, over the last few days. You didn’t need to be retrained. You didn’t need to be shown the ropes. Everything was already in you, built into your head and muscles and bones so fiercely that no amount of time could train them out. As soon as David certified your C.P.A.T. results and you were issued gear, it was as though you never left.

You spent days with a sense of deja vu. You kept doing the same things over and over again. It made you sick to stay in one place for too long, so instead you just ran in circles.

Running hoses was a demanding job, both physically and mentally. The hoses themselves were thick and heavy, and hauling them out in a timely manner stretched your strength to its extreme. Once they were hooked up to a hydrant and running, the pressure made them about ten times as unruly. It took two men to run them (one up front on nozzle, the other supporting the hose and adding slack), plus the person adjusting the pressure in real time at the hydrant. Besides breaching, running nozzle was your preferred position in a call. It required your full attention, and it meant that you couldn’t get distracted.

You were sat, flat on your ass on the freezing concrete, batting down flames as they encroached on the building incessantly.

David and Milo were still inside. The fire was defensive, but it wasn’t an option to stop fighting it anyway until the structure was cleared. Even then, you had to worry about the fire spreading to neighboring buildings. They’d been sprayed down and cleared by Christian’s team already, but with a fire running this hot and eating through the building this fast, there was no telling what it would do.

You held your breath, listened to the frantic chatter over the radio as Asher ran the scene over your shoulder. He directed you by touch, shoved your shoulders, pointed you, like a blunt weapon, where he wanted you. That was always how you’d worked best.

“Breach, delta wall is crumbling, clear out!” Asher shouted into his radio, over the noise of the building beginning to come down. You moved where he turned you, fought back the flames that had begun to eat at the entrance again so that David and Milo could get out again.

“Copy, I.C.,” David’s voice crackled over the radio, straining. “One vic in hand, coming out the alpha entrance.”

David wasn’t the sort of man who stood outside of a fire and called the shots while his people stepped into the flames. Gabe had been exactly the same way. It was technically against protocol, but the Shaw men had never been precise rule followers. David handed over the title of Incident Commander to someone else and threw himself at fires in what you might consider a reckless fashion if you didn’t know him better by now. It might have been true of the David you’d known two years ago, but not now. The things that he chose to do were dangerous, but he never chose them recklessly.

You supposed that was the difference between the two of you.

Half a breath later, Asher abruptly turned you away from the entrance as David emerged, a little figure curled against his chest as he shielded them from the smoke and flames that lapped on all sides. David unfurled as he began to jog to Sam, the ambulance parked a safe distance away. Geordi’s sandy mop made an appearance in the corner of your eye, singed but still alive. You could tell by David’s urgency alone.

That should be it. It was late enough that it should have just been Geordi in the building. Milo would emerge from the building in just a moment and you would do your best to kill the rest of the flames. Either you would or they would eat whatever fuel was left in the building and die on their own.

“I.C., I’ve got another vic in here. On his feet, charlie wall!” Milo’s voice came through over the radio.

“Negative,” Asher barked, “this started on the charlie wall, do not engage. Two in, two out, Milo, G.T.F.O.!”

You’d never heard Asher be so assertive, so certain, so in charge. David had run a handful of calls as Gabe’s Lieutenant while you’d been on the Force, but Asher had always been on the breech team with you or Milo. He was ever present over the radio, a constant chatter in your ear. It had always kept you grounded, centered on the world around you, kept you from drowning in the fucking roar of the fire. This Asher, the Asher who had emerged from the gangly, somewhat awkward twenty-something you knew, was steady. He was sure. Far from the giggling, insecure people pleaser you used to know.

The world had kept turning while you were gone. Everybody had kept growing, kept changing, even those people and things that you knew in your fucking bones never would.

And you kept running in circles. You were sat on your ass, batting down flames at eighteen, at twenty-five, at twenty-seven, and it never fucking ended.

“Copy, I.C.,” Milo’s voice replied over the radio.

You heard it over the channel. Fires were loud. They telegraphed their every move, told you in as clear of a voice as they could what ceiling they were about to pull down on top of you. Milo’s thumb was still hot on his radio, voice still crackling out the details of his exit when you heard support beams- it had to be a support beam, nothing else would be heavy enough to snap that loudly- pop and fall. Milo shouted, short and desperate, and his radio cut out.

Your heart leapt to your throat. Asher let the silence lapse for just a moment, just a breath. You could feel his hope beating at your back, waiting for Milo to call an all clear.

His call never came. You felt something in your bones aching, something in your body itch to move, move, do something, do fucking anything!

“Greer, call back.” Asher called into his radio, voice sharp and clear. David echoed him a moment later from the ambulance. You realized that you were dragging in your breath erratically, unevenly. Panic coursed through your limbs, making you feel heavy and slow.

“Fuck-” Milo’s voice crackled back in, strained and desperate. There must have been something wrong with his radio, or maybe he was shaking, because his connection was spotty. “-pinned!” he cried, something scarily close to a scream letting itself be known in staticy, cut off segments. You felt your core jerk, body tense, muscles straining against the urge to go.

Milo’s voice crackled over the radio again, pained and distant against the roar of the fire.

He called out his sweetheart’s name.

You snapped the hose valve shut. You were up and on your feet and moving before it hit the ground.

“No- wait!” Asher called from over your shoulder. You felt his gloved fingers brush against your back, but you were much faster than he was. Always had been. You attached your oxygen mask to your face as you ran, ignoring David’s loud, clear protests over the radio as you stepped into the flames.

Fires were loud. Even in your full turnouts, ears covered, you could hear it- feel it reverberate around in your chest.

Milo was clearing the back room, along the charlie wall where the fire had started. Why the fuck Asher hadn’t pulled him sooner was beyond you. This fire was defensive, even along the alpha wall where David had found Geordi. You were having words with both the Lieutenant and the Captain when you got Milo out of this.

If. If you got Milo out of this. If you got yourself out of this, come to think of it. Nothing was ever sure in a fire, and once you stepped into one, there was no guarantee that you’d step out.

You’d made a life out of snatching people out from the jaws of death. You were your own best client.

The cafe was unrecognizable, despite the frankly ridiculous number of mornings you’d spent in it since you’d gotten back in town. Everything was crumbled, burning, or long since burned. The little tables and chairs were fuel. The counter that had been covered in stickers and custom art was split by a fallen beam, paint bubbling and curling in the heat.

Milo was pinned by that same support beam, just through the swinging door that led to the back of house. It was bent and warped from the heat, and you heard it groan as you followed it. You spotted him, his limp body laid prone, beam flat against his back.

You clapped a hand on his shoulder, shaking once hard as you ran a gloved hand down what you could reach of his spine quickly. You didn’t have time to properly check and make sure nothing was broken or out of place. If he came out of this fire paralyzed because you moved him, then you figured he’d still be better off.

“Located him along the charlie wall,” you barked into your radio, “extracting now.”

“I’m gonna kill you!” David’s voice cracked back at you. You couldn’t help but grin.

“Let me survive this fire first, Cap.”

You slid your hands under Milo’s armpits and tried to tug him out, but Milo made a horrible groaning sound and you abandoned that idea very quickly. The beam was flush with his body, no room to squeeze between them and wedge him out.

You weren’t strong enough to lift a support beam. You certainly weren’t strong enough to lift it and clear Milo from it at the same time.

“Greer!” You shouted, patting him hard on the back, shaking him left and right. “Wake the fuck up, you’ve got to move!”

Milo groaned, barely audible over the fire, and planted a shaking hand on the ground. He glared up at you through his mask, face pinched and confused. You put on your most reassuring smile before you turned back to the beam. Milo was up, at least enough to crawl. You would have to trust that he could do it. He was trusting you to do the rest.

Something over your head shifted and groaned. You jerked, moving instinctively to cover Milo from the debris. Burning plaster hit the ground a few feet to your left.

You didn’t have long. You might already be out of time. Your exit route could be blocked, consumed by flames, unpassable. Carrying Milo could make it even harder to get out.

You could go. You could turn around and leave him there. You could tell David that you couldn’t get him out and that you barely escaped with your own life.

You kept running in circles. You reached endlessly to snatch people from the jaws of death. You kept ending up with bodies at your feet. You kept running when shit went wrong.

You wedged your fingers between the beam, digging into Milo’s back with enough force that he would likely bruise. You spread your stance, bent your knees, straightened your back.

You were not running. There came a time when even you had to plant your fucking feet.

The beam didn’t move enough for you to feel it. You likely only made about a half inch of space for Milo to work with, and in his dazed, injured state, that wasn’t much.

It was enough. When your muscles failed, the beam clattered to the ground, left your fingers burning. You didn’t take a second longer to process. Milo was over your shoulder before you could form another thought. You moved, uncaring of what was in your way, back to your point of egress.

David was waiting for you the moment you cleared the flames.

You had received more than your fair share of lectures in the Captain’s office at the 10-19. Gabe had a particular style to his, a sly glint in his eyes that told you that it was a formality, that he was really on your side, that he appreciated the ways that you chose to break procedure. He was the same sort of reckless that you were, after all.

David Shaw was not a reckless man. He was tolerant of it. He was a planner, a strategist, and when one of his chess pieces moved without his permission it pissed him off. You could appreciate his need for control, even if it rubbed awkwardly against your own tendencies at times.

You weren’t going to change, though. There was something broken inside of you that made you throw yourself into actual, literal fires. David wasn’t going to pull the strings of that particular complex out from the jagged edges of you. That wasn’t going to stop him from trying, of course. For as broken and fucked up as you were, David was equally stubborn and hopeful.

You sat, legs crossed under your boots smearing dirt across David’s fancy armchair, waiting for the Captain to find a moment to read you the riot act. No matter what David said, there was a quiet, still satisfaction sitting in your gut when you delivered Milo to Sammy’s waiting care. You’d reached back to pull him off the edge, and you’d done it. If just one thing had gone wrong, Milo would be dead. But it hadn’t. It hadn’t.

“You already know what I’m going to say.” David sighed as he entered. You’d expected more of the yelling that you’d received on the scene, but he just sounded tired. He sounded like that more and more often these days.

“‘You’re fired?’” You offered, eyeing the soft-lit lamp on the left side of David’s desk. If you stared long enough into its bulb, it burned an impression of itself into your eyes.

“You’re an idiot.” David corrected, his voice quiet but dripping with venom. “You’re reckless. You could have gotten yourself killed.”

You nodded along to each accusation. You remained silent, plead guilty.

“You saved his life.”

You met David’s eyes, the blue-white ghost of the lamplight blotting out details of his face. The gentle frown lines that curved around his mouth. The bags that sat, deep and seemingly constant, under his sharp, dark eyes.

“I did.” You replied. David held your gaze for a long, tense moment.

“I’m not writing you up.” David kicked back in his chair, running his hands over his face. “I should, but that’s an immediate dismissal, so… Merry Christmas, I guess.”

“It’s not-”

“It’s twelve-thirty.” David gestured to his desk clock. You blinked.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t get you anything.”

David stared across the desk at you, his face unreadable.

“You saved Milo’s life.” He shrugged.

“Merry fucking Christmas.”

That one made him laugh, soft and exhausted.

“What about the other vic?” You asked, leaning forward as David eased back into something resembling relaxation. “The one Milo spotted.” David clicked a few things on his desktop, squinted through the blue light as he pulled the report.

“No remains found on the premises.” He shrugged. “The back exit was open, though, so somebody could have gotten out. We’ll have to ask Milo when he wakes up.”

“That’s fucking weird, though.” You said. “Milo said he was on his feet. The fire broke out on that wall, it was hot as fuck back there. I don’t why he wouldn’t have left sooner.”

“Milo’s getting released from the hospital in a few hours.” David said softly. “You’ll just have to be patient. Go get some rest.” He said, standing and popping his back. You rose, stretched out your sore fingers. As you turned to leave, David’s voice stopped you in your tracks. “And if you do that shit again…” hesitation painted his tone. You turned, faced down his threat head on. “I’ll… I don’t know. Strangle you or something.”

You snorted, turning back towards the door.

“Copy that, Cap.”

#okay I'll admit when i saw the warning for Milo getting pinned i thought of something else lmao #NOT HIM CALLING OUT SWEETHEARTS NAME ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME???? FUUUU #Anyway merry Christmas indeed we eatin good with this one

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