I’d like to see pregnant Penny.

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)

It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.

Keep reading

It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.

It’s probably mostly the latter.

Keep reading

It’s a minor miracle that John’s here. She so easily could’ve been alone.

Keep reading

Gordon’s feeling good as he saunters the half-block down to Penny’s cafe.

Keep reading

In the end, he’d had to admit that they’re not really family.

Not in the on-paper way, which is all that matters. Technically all John is to Penelope is a friend and a neighbour, and neither of those things had qualified him to stay in her hospital room. He’s been unceremoniously removed to the waiting room, and has been informed that Penelope’s next of kin have been contacted. John doesn’t know much about Penelope’s family, but it’s possible that that’s a very, very bad thing.

He hasn’t called Gordon, because he hadn’t been able to determine whether Penelope wants him to know. He hadn’t been able to ask her whether she’d known herself, though she’d been so pale and frightened and shocked by the entire situation that he has to imagine she didn’t. It’s always been in her nature to keep secrets—it’s why John doesn’t know much about her family, or what’s brought her six thousand miles across the pond away from them—but she wouldn’t have kept this from Gordon. He knows her better than that, knows that she loves him too much.

So John hasn’t called Gordon. He hasn’t called anybody, though he’d texted Alan to tell him that he’d have to come straight home from school to cover a couple shifts with Grandma so Virgil could get to work. He hasn’t called Gordon, but Gordon shows up anyway, stumbling out of the elevator, pulling a petite woman with dark hair and glasses along behind him.

He looks terrified, in a way that someone wearing a paramedic’s blues just never should. When he’d first taken the job, John had had his doubts about how well his second youngest brother was going to be able to adapt. Gordon’s always had the tendency towards letting his thoughts and feelings play immediately across his features in the exact same moment as he thinks and feels them. But somehow he’d learned. John’s not sure how long it had taken him, but there’d been no doubt of it by the time Gordon was through his training, he’d managed to build a persona to hide himself behind.

There’s no trace of it now. Gordon’s scared, and it’s plainly apparent in every aspect.

In the little waiting area across from the elevator, John pushes himself to his feet just as Gordon does a double take at the sight of him.

“She’ll be okay,” is the first thing he says, before his little brother can get a word out, before he can do anything more than get himself across the waiting room, his hands catching urgently at John’s forearms, where John’s reached out, instinctively, to steady him. “She—I mean, the last I saw her, they said she was going to be all right. It’s—” he stops abruptly, unaware of just how much his brother knows. The girl he’d brought trailing behind him wears a uniform to match Penny’s and a nametag that identifies her as “Moffy”, but John doesn’t know her. He knows Penelope’s harridan of a boss, a lady with hair red enough to make his own look brassy and ginger, and who’d once told her off for spotting him a coffee after he’d dropped her off at work. The fact that she’s here with Gordon means that Gordon must have gone by the cafe, hoping to meet Penny at the end of their respective shifts. What he’d found instead— “—did…did anyone tell you what happened?”

Gordon’s trembling and wild-eyed, and when John moves to sit him down, he resists, shaking his head. John stays standing, moves a hand up to Gordon’s shoulder, steadying. “I—I mean, no. No? I don’t…I don’t remember. We just came here. I didn’t…there was a hell of a lot of blood, John. They just said it was Penny. They called an ambulance. She can’t lose that much blood. Where’s her room? Jesus, I need—please, please, I need to find her. Where is she? John, help me. What—god—what happened?”

This isn’t Gordon Tracy, experienced paramedic, this is Gordon Tracy, terrified boyfriend, and he’s edging up towards real, actual panic. John’s grip on his shoulder tightens, and he hates that he has to be the person to tell his brother what’s happened. But he’ll do it, if it means that Gordon doesn’t have to hear the truth from a stranger. A little more insistently, John manages to coax his brother into sitting down. He practically collapses into the hard plastic chair, and John doesn’t let go of him, as he steels himself and finds the words.

“Listen, Gordon—I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She probably wasn’t more than eight or nine weeks along, but—”

“…nine weeks…pregnant? She’s pregnant?”

And John’s heart breaks for his little brother, as he’s forced to make the correction, “…she was.”

I’d like to see pregnant Penny.

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)

It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.

Keep reading

It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.

It’s probably mostly the latter.

Keep reading

It’s a minor miracle that John’s here. She so easily could’ve been alone.

Keep reading

Gordon’s feeling good as he saunters the half-block down to Penny’s cafe.

His shift had ended on time, and for once Gordon finished it in the same uniform he started with. The worst thing on the call sheet today had been a badly broken arm, another eight year old learning the hard way that he couldn’t fly. But he’d been so hopped up on excitement and the attention that he’d laughed at Gordon’s weak jokes as he gently probed the break and set the temporary inflatable cast onto his arm to prepare him for transport.

No gruesome car wrecks, no suicides, nothing that made Gordon grieve for humanity. He’d even gotten to pat a puppy waiting at the bus stop.

He couldn’t wait to tell Penny about the puppy. It had been so tiny.

He’s grinning as the bell above the door chimed, the place mostly empty in the lull between the lunchtime rush and post-school surge. Gordon waves at Moffie where she’s clearing a table. He frowns and rushes forward as she fumbles the greasy plates and almost drops them. “Gordon,” she breathes, eyes wide, cheeks pale. “What are you doing here?”

Gordon placed the mug he’d caught back on the table. “Meeting Penny,” he said. True, it had been a while, but that’s why he was looking forward to this afternoon’s date before he had to head back and take a spell sitting with Grandma. He glances back at the kitchen door. “Where’s Penny?”

Gordon knew he shouldn’t, he might get Penny in trouble, but some instinct had him striding for the swinging doors that separated cafe from kitchen. The transition from warm and homey cafe to industrial kitchen was immediate, the lights in here a blue-white, flickering fluorescence that flattened shadows and turned the giant bloodstain Miss Edmunds was scrubbing off the tiles an earthy, dirty brown.

Gordon was too familiar with blood in all its stages, wet or dry or curdled, to allow himself the illusion that this was just a dropped pot of gravy. “Miss E?” he asks, his hand gripping the cool metal edge of the prep bench hard enough to dig in against his knuckles.

He hadn’t heard the door swing again, but Moffie’s there, smelling of stale coffee and the faintest edge of blood as she hugs him. “Gordon,” Miss Edmunds says, taking his hand. She’s stripped her rubber gloves, but her fingers are still blood-warm from the bucket of hot, soapy water by her feet. “I’m sorry, we didn’t have your number. It’s Penny.”

He doesn’t remember sitting down, but between one blink and the next he’s been slotted in the back booth, a large mug of sweet tea in front of him. Behind the counter, Moffie is finalizing her register, already in her coat, as next to her Miss E. is packing up some leftovers into a takeaway box.

Gordon still feels a bit woozy as he levers himself off the worn upholstery. “I really need….which hospital did they say?”

Moffie takes the bag from Miss Edmunds and starts shooing Gordon towards the door. Gordon only starts moving when she says the magic word. “I have a car.” Her tone indicates she already has a plan. “You can navigate.”

His fingers twitch to flick a non-existent switch for lights and sirens he’d left behind with his other ride. Moffie drove like a paramedic anyway, fast and smooth, weaving in and out of traffic like it was her birthright. She didn’t try to talk, and for that Gordon was grateful.

The lot by the hospital was packed, visiting hours in full swing, but Moffie snaked a spot from a waiting driver without a backwards glance. Ignoring the glares, they strode together through the entrance and into reception. Gordon’s still in his uniform, his ID clipped onto his pocket. “I need to find a recent admission, Creighton-Ward?” he asks the charge nurse. He knows all the staff by the emergency entrance, but he manages to smile like they know each other too anyway. “Brought in this afternoon by some of my colleagues?”

The combination of uniform and smile get a room number out of her regardless of family visitation protocols.

Moffie shifts her bags to her other hand to twine her fingers with Gordon’s as they are crushed together in the packed elevator.

Gordon takes a deep breath as the bell dings and the doors slide open.

I’d like to see pregnant Penny.

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)

It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.

Keep reading

It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.

It’s probably mostly the latter.

Keep reading

It’s a minor miracle that John’s here. She so easily could’ve been alone.

There’s no emergency contact listed in her phone, and she’d realized this only as they were loading her into the ambulance. It still doesn’t feel entirely real that they’d called an ambulance, but nothing that’s happened in the past hour really does. The last thing Penelope remembers clearly is feeling utterly foolish, sitting in the bathroom in the middle of the lunchtime rush, her abdomen wracked with cramps and her head just absolutely spinning. She’d retreated to the bathroom for fear of throwing up in the middle of taking Mr. Ambreaux’s order, and just hoped that the spell would pass. She doesn’t remember if it had been the sight of the blood that had caused the fainting spell, or if she’d stood up too quickly, or if it’s really just that serious.

From that last clear point in her memory, everything dissolves into a haze of sensations; shivering against the cold clamminess of the floor and the coppery smell of blood, like a handful of pennies. Her head in Moffie’s lap, the coffee stain that marred her white apron, the first thing Penelope had seen when she’d managed to open her eyes and to try to sit up. Miss Edmunds had pushed her firmly back down, her voice the sugarcoated steel of a career waitress, and she’d snapped into the phone that they needed an ambulance now.

Penelope remembers the wetness of tears on her cheeks and the pain that had caused them, the awful, seizing cramps that seemed to come on in waves, made her want to throw up. She remembers the flood of relief that she’d felt at the sight of a dark blue uniform, immediately familiar—but it had belonged to a dark skinned man and his partner had been a blonde lady, and the names they’d exchanged as they’d worked on her had been Clark and Sontag. They’d both had that same reassuring lightness in their voices, and Penelope had tried to ask them if they knew her boyfriend, if they might know where he was, if they could find him. They hadn’t seemed to understand. Maybe she hadn’t been clear.

Penelope remembers hearing the word miscarriage, and how impossible that had seemed.

Because she hadn’t even known. She’s more afraid than anything that Gordon will think she’d been trying to keep it a secret, but the truth is she just hadn’t had the first idea.

In retrospect it explains so much, and makes her feel incredibly stupid for not having added all the pieces together into the glaringly obvious whole.

She’d put the fatigue and the tiredness down to the extra shifts she’d picked up at work, or just the change of the season, as the weather turned colder, from autumn to the beginnings of winter.

The soreness in her back and breasts she’d assumed was just a cruelty of the universe at large, a wicked irony of the fact that she’d actually saved up and splurged on a sexy, gorgeous little bra, a surprise for their first anniversary. The look on Gordon’s face as she’d slowly popped open the buttons on her pink uniform top had been worth every cent, though the thing had become the very devil to wear, despite the way it had been comfortable when she’d first tried it on.

She’d had some nausea and a few mornings before work she’d actually thrown up—but she’d had Gordon paying close attention to that, and when it had seemed to clear up as suddenly as it had started, he’d put it down to a stomach bug or a minor food allergy, especially when she’d found out that the diner had switched the sort of creamers they offered for tea or coffee, non-dairy replacing regular cream. He hadn’t been concerned, so she hadn’t been either.

The lack of her cycle—she’s dropped nearly twenty pounds since striking out on her own, she’d gotten used to the absence. Ironically, lately she’d also started to notice a slight tightness to her uniform, and had been almost grateful for the fact that she was starting to fill out again. Now she knows why.

They’ve always been careful. Mostly. They’re not perfect, but they’ve always tried to be careful. If some nights they’d been too tired and desperate for the comfort of each other to be quite as careful as usual, then they’d just hoped to be lucky and before now they always had been. If some mornings there’s a little too much urgency, if they’ve been a little too focused on the process of getting away with a quickie before work—well. It doesn’t matter. They should’ve been more careful, is really all it is.

Careful fingers gently brush her hair off her face again, and suddenly she remembers that John’s there at all. He’s not Gordon, but she’s suddenly unsure if she really wants Gordon. She wants him here, but she doesn’t want to have to tell him what’s happened. It’s the worst sort of catch-22.

“Pen, not that I blame you, but you’re kinda starting to hurt my hand a little bit,” John tells her, almost casual as though the fact that her grip is growing painful is only a minor inconvenience. She means to let go, but before she can, there’s another wave of intense cramping, and she keels forward with a moan of pain, one her hands tightening against his fingers, the other twisting in the hospital sheets. She’s sobbing again even as she leans into him, and the only word she can summon up is just, “please”, repeated again and again. It’s the last thing she says as the light in the room goes grey and then darkens to black.

I’d like to see pregnant Penny.

rent-day-blues:

(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)

It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.

Keep reading

It’s probably because he and his brothers are almost city mascots, and that John’s already a senior dispatcher despite being in the younger half of the crew, and because John hasn’t frozen on a call in years that his supervisor stands him down immediately.

It’s probably mostly the latter.

Marion at the station behind him had come around, pulled the headset from his skull, had finished the call with one hand on his shoulder, warm and motherly and all the things John had convinced himself he didn’t need.

He preferred Marion when she was pissed off and brisk, to be honest. But now he can hear her whispering to his supervisor as he jams his stuff into his worn out backpack. “Yeah, sounded like she lost it…I had no idea he had a young lady…I know, so sad, after, well, everything….”

John’s in no mood to correct their assumptions. Penny’s not his ‘young lady.’ But she is his friend, and she’s alone and hurting, and if John’s been stood down off his shift forty-five minutes early, then he’s going to go help her.

The only question is whether he should call Gordon. John’s got a spreadsheet of all their shifts, a set of notes on his phone to ensure Grandma always has someone with her, and in the bright late afternoon sunshine John has to peer through the crack in the screen to see that Gordon’s on shift for another four hours at least, his phone probably still tucked away in his locker. Paramedics aren’t allowed to take personal calls on the job.

John tucks his own phone away, squares his shoulders, and sprints to make the cross-town bus. Scott’s got the car today, and John knows he could call him, but somehow it doesn’t feel right to tell Scott before Gordon. So John keeps his hands buried in his pockets in the crush of the packed bus, running the pad of his finger over the crack in lieu of having anyone to call.

His uniform gets a second look from the admissions nurse, and the sound of his voice turns more than one head. But all that means is that John is hurried through back hallways without having to prove that he’s immediate family.

He’s a redhead, she’s a redhead, they both love Gordon despite themselves, and Penny took him for three separate chore tokens in Saturday night poker with Grandma. She’s family.

As John is led down an open ward to a partially drawn curtain, John gets a glimpse of Penny gently pushing away a fussing charge nurse. She’s pale, red-eyed and hair in un-Penny-like disarray. But she’s sitting up, reclining against a stack of pillows, and she’s awake. “Let them take care of you, Pen,” he says in lieu of a greeting, stepping around the curtain.

“John!” Penny reaches for him, freezing as she winces and goes ghostly white, one hand flying to press against her abdomen.

John can feel her shaking as he helps her lie back. He doesn’t let go of her hand. “How…?”

“I caught the call.” John’s embarrassed, feels like he’s been caught snooping. But he leans in to brush her hair off her face anyway, hating the brave face he can see her struggling to maintain. “Gordon’s still on shift, but I could call dispatch…?”

She grabs his hand with an unexpected ferocity, and he’s not sure if that’s a yes or a no.

I’d like to see pregnant Penny.

(here is prelude again, and I’m gonna go ahead and slap a big ol trigger warning on this one: tw: miscarriage. sorry folks, this is the soap opera AU.)

It’s generally considered that the nightmare scenario for a dispatcher is to take a call in which a friend or family member is involved, but John’s got three brothers in three separate lines of emergency service, and it’s not that big a city. He’s pretty sure if he worked it out, he’d find he routes a call to one or the other of them at least once a week, and this is compounded by the fact that he hears about it, any time one of his colleagues dispatches one of the Tracy brood for whatever reason. John and his brothers are halfway to being city mascots, by this point.

Deep down he’s still afraid of the day he hears Grandma’s voice, or Alan’s. But he’s used to hearing his brothers. It took him a while to get used to it, but John’s mostly managed to inure himself to the shock of hearing a familiar voice on the line. In a weird way he almost looks forward to it. Makes it seem almost like their family is together enough to have something as normal and stable as a family business.

So John’s used to hearing from family. And he doesn’t have enough friends outside of work to have properly considered it a risk he’d ever have to worry about.

When the call comes in, the fact that he knows the address offhand doesn’t quite ring the right bell. He’s already slipped into dispatch mode, and the only reason the address matters is with respect to nearby ambulances. He’s on the line with an older sounding woman, calling about one of her staff members, a twenty-six year old female who’d been found collapsed on the bathroom floor by one of the patrons. She’s bleeding, has bled through her skirt, enough that she’s left blood on the floor where she’d fallen.

John’s already got an ambulance on route, and he’s talking the woman through instructions to treat the onset of shock, when she breaks off in the middle of a question to exclaim, “Oh, no no no, Penny, darlin’, don’t. Shh, shh shh. Sweetness, you just lie back now, don’t try to—”

And for the first time since he was a rookie, John freezes up in the middle of a call.

Can I offer a prompt please – handmade gifts

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

rent-day-blues:

(prelude here, I’ma start this one off with…)

Gordon’s last gift to his older brother was a pamphlet listing a variety of hand and wrist exercises, in an effort to help stave off the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s probably just about inevitable, considering all the typing his brother does. Of the five of them, John and Alan are the only ones who spend any time at desks any longer, and though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally John ends up with idle time on his hands, nothing to do while he sits at his desk. Come Christmastime, it becomes apparent that he’s been putting this time to productive use. It’s not clear if he’s used any of this idle time for the provided wrist exercises.

Apparently one of the other dispatchers had taught him the basics over the course of a couple lunch breaks. Apparently she’d gotten him started with a spare pair of needles, and an old skein of yarn that she’d meant for him just to practice with—by her standards, the colour of it was too bright and gaudy for anyone to reasonably want to wear, bright, chunky, golden rod yellow—but John’s a fast learner and a perfectionist, and by the end of a few particularly slow weeks, he’d had a respectable four feet worth of scarf, garter stitched the whole way through.

John says it’s nothing much, and that he won’t mind in the least if Gordon doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know if it’ll be particularly warm, being made of cheap acrylic yarn, nothing like high quality wool. He’d made it just to make it, after all, it was only supposed to be for practice. And anyway it’s out of regs, as far as the uniform goes.

Gordon doesn’t care. Gordon loves it. And he wears it from the depths of December, right up until the city starts to thaw out again.

Grandma used to do this when she was a girl, and the Depression made everything scare and then scarcer still.

Keep reading

Alan’s not sure what Scott was trying to prove, giving him something of Mom’s. Especially her wedding ring.

Keep reading

Penny wasn’t brought up to be the kind of girl to do her own baking.

She was brought up to be genteel and ornamental and functionally useless. She was brought up to be pretty and charming and obedient, to go where she was told and to do as she was bid.

The diner doesn’t care about pretty, or charming, or even obedient as long as the eggs made it to the table still hot from the kitchen. The diner cares about girls that can carry eight plates at once and keep the coffee topped up.

It’s exhausting and leaves her coated in grease, and it doesn’t pay enough, even with tips that are delivered as often as not with a slap on her ass, but a part of her is so, so proud of herself for making it this far.

The library cookbook has a thumbprint marked in grease on the corner of the page. Penny’s got her tongue permanently parked in the corner of her mouth as she studies the instructions and guesses weights and measures with a chipped coffee mug and a bowl that she’d been using to hold her fruit.

The result is lopsided, the icing slowly oozing downhill to spill over one side. But the candles encountered nothing but fluffy sweetness as she jammed them in, setting them aflame with Virgil’s borrowed lighter.

Gordon’s eyes are golden in the firelight as he leans in to blow out the candles. “Happy birthday, darling,” Penny said as she kissed his cheek, mindful of his brothers and Grandmother ringed around the table. “What did you wish for?”

Gordon wasn’t brought up to be genteel or charming. He catches her jaw in a gentle hand, pulls her in for a kiss that still makes her toes curl. “Nothing. I’ve already got everything I could want.”

Can I offer a prompt please – handmade gifts

rent-day-blues:

(prelude here, I’ma start this one off with…)

Gordon’s last gift to his older brother was a pamphlet listing a variety of hand and wrist exercises, in an effort to help stave off the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s probably just about inevitable, considering all the typing his brother does. Of the five of them, John and Alan are the only ones who spend any time at desks any longer, and though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally John ends up with idle time on his hands, nothing to do while he sits at his desk. Come Christmastime, it becomes apparent that he’s been putting this time to productive use. It’s not clear if he’s used any of this idle time for the provided wrist exercises.

Apparently one of the other dispatchers had taught him the basics over the course of a couple lunch breaks. Apparently she’d gotten him started with a spare pair of needles, and an old skein of yarn that she’d meant for him just to practice with—by her standards, the colour of it was too bright and gaudy for anyone to reasonably want to wear, bright, chunky, golden rod yellow—but John’s a fast learner and a perfectionist, and by the end of a few particularly slow weeks, he’d had a respectable four feet worth of scarf, garter stitched the whole way through.

John says it’s nothing much, and that he won’t mind in the least if Gordon doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know if it’ll be particularly warm, being made of cheap acrylic yarn, nothing like high quality wool. He’d made it just to make it, after all, it was only supposed to be for practice. And anyway it’s out of regs, as far as the uniform goes.

Gordon doesn’t care. Gordon loves it. And he wears it from the depths of December, right up until the city starts to thaw out again.

Grandma used to do this when she was a girl, and the Depression made everything scare and then scarcer still.

Her hands are gnarled now, and ache regardless of the weather, but even if her joints fight her the movements come back quick enough. It’s not exactly dexterous work, but moving the bundles in and out of steaming pans even coaxes some warmth into always-frozen fingertips, fills the kitchen with clean, bright scents.

Virgil’s always been a kind boy, and even though he frowns when she presents him with the box full of waxy balls, each a cacophony of original colours, he still says ‘thank you’ and means it. “But, uh, what are they? Do you eat them?”

Grandma had to laugh at that. “Only if you’ve been swearing again,” she teases, plucking one out slowly and carefully. “I used to make these for your great-grandpa. Soap balls, full of oils and glycerin and all sorts of good stuff. If it got the grease off his skin, it can get the smoke outta yours.”

Virgil flushes; Grandma knew he hadn’t told a soul how much the lingering scent of fire was bugging him, even months after he’d become a full-timer. But she had nothing much left to do now but watch her boys, had seen him sniff and frown too many times. He leans forward and she holds out the ball in her hand for him to sniff. It’s only because she’s watching now does she see his nose wrinkle. “Uh, thanks Grandma.”

She gave the ball another sniff herself. “Hmm, maybe I did put too much patchouli oil in there?” She shrugged and dropped it back in the box. “Well, they’re made from ends I found in the sink, so throw them out if you don’t like them.”

Virgil’s gentle, almost reverent, as he takes the box from her and presses a dry kiss to her temples.

Can I offer a prompt please – handmade gifts

(prelude here, I’ma start this one off with…)

Gordon’s last gift to his older brother was a pamphlet listing a variety of hand and wrist exercises, in an effort to help stave off the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s probably just about inevitable, considering all the typing his brother does. Of the five of them, John and Alan are the only ones who spend any time at desks any longer, and though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally John ends up with idle time on his hands, nothing to do while he sits at his desk. Come Christmastime, it becomes apparent that he’s been putting this time to productive use. It’s not clear if he’s used any of this idle time for the provided wrist exercises.

Apparently one of the other dispatchers had taught him the basics over the course of a couple lunch breaks. Apparently she’d gotten him started with a spare pair of needles, and an old skein of yarn that she’d meant for him just to practice with—by her standards, the colour of it was too bright and gaudy for anyone to reasonably want to wear, bright, chunky, golden rod yellow—but John’s a fast learner and a perfectionist, and by the end of a few particularly slow weeks, he’d had a respectable four feet worth of scarf, garter stitched the whole way through.

John says it’s nothing much, and that he won’t mind in the least if Gordon doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know if it’ll be particularly warm, being made of cheap acrylic yarn, nothing like high quality wool. He’d made it just to make it, after all, it was only supposed to be for practice. And anyway it’s out of regs, as far as the uniform goes.

Gordon doesn’t care. Gordon loves it. And he wears it from the depths of December, right up until the city starts to thaw out again.

worst phone call john ever got vs. the best one (I imagine 911 call since he’s dispatch but take it how you like)

rent-day-blues:

The new kid’s been in the break room for an hour now, but after a call like that, it’s not like anyone can blame him. Fires are always bad, but this fire had trapped and killed two children, and the new kid had been on the line with their mother the whole time. It’s an hour since the end of the call, and he hasn’t said a word since.

The captain’s pulled him off his console, stuck him somewhere quiet to calm down. But it’s been an hour, and it’s time to send in the cavalry. The cavalry, in this case, has just clocked on for his first shift of the evening.

There’s a coffee machine and a beat up old kettle in the break room, but Ned doesn’t trust either of those things. He makes his tea at home and brings it to work in a two litre thermos, hot and strong and sweet, and sacrosanct. The new kid is still too new to recognize the magnitude of the gesture being made, when Ned ambles into the break room, pulls up a chair beside him, and pours out a generous cup of tea from his very own thermos. He pushes the mug over, clears his throat, and says, magnanimous, “There now, lad, a cup of tea will help.”

Even this doesn’t get an answer, and now that he’s sitting down, Ned can see that there’s a procedural manual open in the young man’s lap. There are a couple spots of damp on the open page, and Ned pretends not to notice these as he reaches over to close the book. He picks it up and sets it aside. “Now, don’t you go beating yourself ‘bout the head with the manual,” he chides gently. “Procedure sounds grand on paper, but it’s the only place this job is actually that black and white.”

“But I did everything right.” The protest is hollow, and the first thing Ned’s heard the boy say, since the call that’s left him in this state, shaken and numb. With the crisp professionalism—the rigour of training—stripped out of his voice, he sounds alarmingly young. Ned can’t help but wonder at his age, even as he shakes his head, confused as much as he’s hurt. “I—I know I did. If they’d gotten there just a minute sooner…”

“No doubt you did everything right, but sometimes it all goes awry even so. Can’t recall if it says so in the book, but it ought to. Sometimes even everything isn’t enough.” Ned heaves a sigh. “It’s a funny old world.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t mean the sort of funny what gets a laugh. Meant the sort of funny that makes you feel sick inside.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely that.” There’s a shuddering sigh and the shake of a bowed ginger head. “I don’t think I can do this. I thought—I thought it wouldn’t get to me. But it’s so much worse than I imagined.”

Ned nudges the cup of tea closer again. “How old are you?” he asks, tries to make it sound like idle curiosity, rather than a question he means to use to make a point.

“Twenty-two,” is the answer, and Ned manages not to wince, though it’s about what he’d expected. Barely old enough to drink, or at least to drink in this country. Hopefully too young to be inclined to really start, because Ned’s seen far too many people in this line of work turn to stiffer drinks than tea.

But as sad as the fact is, it still helps him make his point. “I’ve been doing this job longer than you’ve been alive, lad. And I won’t lie to you—there’ll be worse days than this. But you’ll help so many people, and I hope you can believe me when I tell you, that’ll help get you through.”

“Really?”

“Really. You’ll be the best part of the worst day of people’s lives, and there’s worth in that. I know it won’t seem like it, but it’s true. Now, drink your tea, and let’s get you back out on the floor. Back in the saddle, son.”

Eventually, finally, the young man reaches out and wraps his hands around the warmth of the ceramic. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try.”

(am i gonna pick this up? I’m gonna pick this up)

John’s trying not to lurk, but Gordon’s been at his first day of work for a whole three hours now, and John’s dying to know how it’s going.

Gordon’s still a probie, riding along with a senior team, and John knows he has nothing to worry about. This isn’t like Virgil’s first day, where John had sat listening for fire dispatches until his head was ringing like a bell. Gordon’s job only starts once the danger has passed, strictly enforced by regulations and rules they all know off by heart. Gordon’s safe.

Even so, John’s worrying for Gordon. He knows, they all know, how the first day in job knocks all the shine off, the carefully imagined perfect ideal of thrilling heroics and dramatic rescues. Gordon should know better, with three older brothers in the trade, but John recognized the shine in Gordon’s eyes as he’d tugged on his pristine and crisp uniform this morning.

John reached for the battered thermos tucked safely away under his station. The steam helps clear his head, soothe his sore throat, in the little lull that John knows better than to expect would last.

He’s three sips in when boards across the room light up like it’s disaster Christmas. The little cap-shaped mug by his side grows cold as John catches and throws messages, his eyes constantly glancing up at the situation monitor along the wall of the room.

Take old gas mains in the part of the city no-one’s patched up in decades. Add sparks. Mix with over-crowded tenements and watch every service flirt with descending into chaos.

John’s supervisor is liaising with the fire chief, throws John the paramedic dispatch with gestures more than words.

Words are reserved for saving people.

There’s burns and broken bones, more glass than most people realize. A gas main in a residential building was like a shrapnel bomb going off under the kitchen table. John’s got half a dozen wagons in motion, a ballet of bodies and bandages negotiating their way around tankers and fire trucks and more squad cars than are useful at this point in the process.

“Hey,” Liesel got his attention over the low partition with a click of her fingers. “Got someone here asking for you direct.”

“Throw it over,” John said, glancing up at the status of the fire units. Virgil really needed to be broken of his annoying habit of calling to John directly. “Virg, I….”

“John?” Gordon sounds tiny and young, and John immediately tracks to unit 24, Gordon’s ride-along for tonight, safely tucked away on the southern perimeter ready to roll into the building’s lot as soon as fire and rescue gave the all clear. Gordon should be idling, gloves on and ready to follow his elders around like an obedient and safe little puppy.

“Gordon? What the….” in the background of the call came a scream of pain. John’s identities stuttered, brother and dispatch crashing into each other. “Report.”

“So Jack and Noorah went to go a sitrep and then this kid came and banged on my door and his mother, I think the blast set her off, and John, I think this baby isn’t going to wait for me to go fetch the wagon.”

John breathed out. “You’ve been trained on maternal first aid, right?”

Gordon’s voice was thin, just this side of a reedy wail. “Only in my textbook. There weren’t even any pictures.”

John flicked three incoming calls to junior operators and settled back in his chair. “Okay, Gordon, first thing you need to do…”

In his earpiece, Gordon’s breathing steadied as he obeyed John’s instructions, his training slowly locking into place with the messy, screaming, panicking human being in front of him.

“John, I think this kid is coming right now.”

John bit his lip to stifle his laugh. “Then catch it,” he said as patiently as he could.

One of the best tricks John ever learned as a trainee was to listen to the background, not just the voice on the line. There was something unmistakable about the scream of a woman giving birth. “Holy shit,” Gordon panted.

“Language,” John scolded mildly as he caught Liesel’s eye and gestured for her to put another tick on the new baby tally. “Give it to her, keep them warm.” His fingers were already tapping, rerouting one of the smaller units away from the disaster towards where Gordon’s GPS was throbbing like a heartbeat on his map. “I’m sending two-two to collect them, they’re only a block away.”

“Got it,” Gordon managed to be professional for five seconds. “Hey,” he cooed a second later, and John knew it wasn’t him Gordon was talking to. “Welcome to the world, little lady.”

John knew he should end the call, log the incident, get back to helping his team coordinate paramedics around the crater. But something made him linger. “Gordon?”

“Two-two have got them. Mission accomplished,” Gordon quipped weakly.

“You okay?”

There was a long pause. “Wow, that was…Johnny, that was really something else.”

John could see the service messages on his screen start to back up. He took a deep breath. “It really is. But now other people need you.”

“Yeah. Blast. Shit, sorry…but wow is it weird I completely forgot about that?”

John leaned in, his hand hovering over his keys once more. “Hey, think of it this way. Your first baby.” He waited for Gordon’s happy little noise. “I think there’s gonna be a lot more firsts for you today, probie, so time to gear up and get back in the saddle. Can you do that for me?”

A weak chuckle echoed in his ear. “I’ll try.”

John ended the call and gave himself a moment to exhale, to feel the warm soft glow of pride. Then he tapped a key and picked up the next call.

worst phone call john ever got vs. the best one (I imagine 911 call since he’s dispatch but take it how you like)

The new kid’s been in the break room for an hour now, but after a call like that, it’s not like anyone can blame him. Fires are always bad, but this fire had trapped and killed two children, and the new kid had been on the line with their mother the whole time. It’s an hour since the end of the call, and he hasn’t said a word since.

The captain’s pulled him off his console, stuck him somewhere quiet to calm down. But it’s been an hour, and it’s time to send in the cavalry. The cavalry, in this case, has just clocked on for his first shift of the evening.

There’s a coffee machine and a beat up old kettle in the break room, but Ned doesn’t trust either of those things. He makes his tea at home and brings it to work in a two litre thermos, hot and strong and sweet, and sacrosanct. The new kid is still too new to recognize the magnitude of the gesture being made, when Ned ambles into the break room, pulls up a chair beside him, and pours out a generous cup of tea from his very own thermos. He pushes the mug over, clears his throat, and says, magnanimous, “There now, lad, a cup of tea will help.”

Even this doesn’t get an answer, and now that he’s sitting down, Ned can see that there’s a procedural manual open in the young man’s lap. There are a couple spots of damp on the open page, and Ned pretends not to notice these as he reaches over to close the book. He picks it up and sets it aside. “Now, don’t you go beating yourself ‘bout the head with the manual,” he chides gently. “Procedure sounds grand on paper, but it’s the only place this job is actually that black and white.”

“But I did everything right.” The protest is hollow, and the first thing Ned’s heard the boy say, since the call that’s left him in this state, shaken and numb. With the crisp professionalism—the rigour of training—stripped out of his voice, he sounds alarmingly young. Ned can’t help but wonder at his age, even as he shakes his head, confused as much as he’s hurt. “I—I know I did. If they’d gotten there just a minute sooner…”

“No doubt you did everything right, but sometimes it all goes awry even so. Can’t recall if it says so in the book, but it ought to. Sometimes even everything isn’t enough.” Ned heaves a sigh. “It’s a funny old world.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“I didn’t mean the sort of funny what gets a laugh. Meant the sort of funny that makes you feel sick inside.”

“Yeah, it’s definitely that.” There’s a shuddering sigh and the shake of a bowed ginger head. “I don’t think I can do this. I thought—I thought it wouldn’t get to me. But it’s so much worse than I imagined.”

Ned nudges the cup of tea closer again. “How old are you?” he asks, tries to make it sound like idle curiosity, rather than a question he means to use to make a point.

“Twenty-two,” is the answer, and Ned manages not to wince, though it’s about what he’d expected. Barely old enough to drink, or at least to drink in this country. Hopefully too young to be inclined to really start, because Ned’s seen far too many people in this line of work turn to stiffer drinks than tea.

But as sad as the fact is, it still helps him make his point. “I’ve been doing this job longer than you’ve been alive, lad. And I won’t lie to you—there’ll be worse days than this. But you’ll help so many people, and I hope you can believe me when I tell you, that’ll help get you through.”

“Really?”

“Really. You’ll be the best part of the worst day of people’s lives, and there’s worth in that. I know it won’t seem like it, but it’s true. Now, drink your tea, and let’s get you back out on the floor. Back in the saddle, son.”

Eventually, finally, the young man reaches out and wraps his hands around the warmth of the ceramic. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try.”