Chapter 7
Nick
Captain Elizabeth Hyun of the San Francisco Fire Department is my boss and also a good friend of mine. I’ve known her and worked under her for all five years that I’ve been a firefighter-paramedic, and at this point in my life, she’s almost like a second mother to me, or like an aunt.
Still, that doesn’t mean that I’m not sometimes deeply annoyed by her.
I work twenty-four-hour shifts during which I’m constantly on call, so sleep is absolutely sacred to me.
I didn’t stay at the Anvil for long last night. After meeting Tristan, I wasn’t interested in going down to the dungeon, even to watch. So I took myself home and was in bed at a reasonable time, though I was awake for a while, hoping like a schoolboy with a crush that Tristan would text me.
Captain Hyun apparently doesn’t give a shit about my lack of sleep, and follows through on her expectation that everyone on this shift needs to report early today.
We have a new probie joining our station today, and Captain Hyun told us she wants all of us here to greet him.
None of us know anything about him because he didn’t go to the San Francisco Fire Academy (“Somewhere further south, I think,” Captain Hyun said. “Santa Barbara, maybe, or San Diego. Maybe Los Angeles?”)
I’m still hoping that Tristan will text me when I park in the small employee lot behind Station 27. Most of the other members of my crew are already here; I see Charlie’s Subaru, Vinnie’s Camaro, and Mila’s BMW. And, of course, Captain Hyun’s blimp of a minivan.
As I’m getting out of my car, my phone buzzes. I look at it and grin when I see two messages from an unknown number. It’s Tristan.
My smile grows when I read through his texts.
He was adorably anxious last night, and it comes through in his messages here, too. I admit that I’m absolutely fascinated by him.
Usually, I can get an immediate read on people, but not with Tristan.
He’s an adorable mystery.
We agree to get coffee soon, and I realize that he’s probably on his way to a new job, so I wish him luck.
I wonder what he does.
If we’d sat together at the bar last night for longer, I would’ve liked to get to know him, but I guess more personal information will have to wait until coffee.
We already know that the other person is at least vaguely interested in kink because of how we met, but we don’t know anything else about each other.
I find it a little amusing, and not for the first time, thank my lucky stars that I’m gay. Queer meet-cutes are just better, in my opinion.
Most of my crew is already gathered on the second floor of the fire station. Captain Hyun has laid out a platter of donuts and a large pot of coffee.
I eagerly reach for a donut, and Mila Chaudhary, an excellent firefighter who primarily works as the apparatus operator, slaps my hand away.
“Wait until the probie gets here!”
I groan. “But they look so good.”
“Unlike you, dude,” Charlie says affectionately. “Did you get any sleep last night? You look like shit.”
“I love you, too,” I say, eyeing the donuts lustfully. “Nah, I didn’t sleep well.”
Vinnie wiggles his bushy eyebrows suggestively. “Did you have some fun last night?”
Vinnie and Charlie might be the straightest pair of BrosTM I’ve ever met, but they’re incredibly protective of me as their “honorary gay little brother,” even though they’re 1) not brothers, and 2) both at least two inches shorter than me.
But one of the ways they show love is by insisting on including me in their Straight BroTM recaps of any weekend sexual escapades.
“Gross,” Mila says.
“If by ‘fun,’ you mean getting rejected at a bar and sleeping alone, then yeah, loads of fun.” I eye the donuts sadly.
“You got rejected?” Captain Hyun says, walking up to the table. She is a slender woman, with shoulder-length dark hair and dark eyes. “Jesus, were you trying to sleep with a Greek god?”
“I guess I wasn’t totally rejected,” I admit, and share a shit-eating grin with Vinnie and Charlie. “He texted me this morning. We’re getting coffee.”
Vinnie practically has to catch Charlie’s jaw when it drops. “You. Getting coffee. Oh, my god. Is Abigail going to have a handsome stepfather soon?”
“Jesus, Charlie,” I say, but I’m laughing. I know my tendencies and my team have been with me long enough that they do, too. My style is more “meet ’em, fuck ’em, forget ’em,” as Vinnie once so delicately put it.
But Tristan…I don’t know. I’ve met him, and I definitely want to fuck him, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to forget him.
“I expect everyone to behave when the probie gets here,” Liza says. “We don’t want to scare him away.”
“What, you don’t want him to know the truth of what it’s like working in this place?” Mila says, but she grins.
We’re a great crew, and we all love our jobs. It’s almost always us on a shift, plus a crew of engine firefighters. Captain Hyun, Charlie, Vinnie, and Mila are all in the truck, and I’m in the medic unit—the ambulance.
Until a few weeks ago, I shared the ambulance with a firefighter named Toni Frederickson, but she got transferred to another station. I hope the new probie can fill her shoes.
“We’ll behave,” I promise. “Mostly.”
Captain Hyun rolls her eyes. “He should be here soon, so everyone, try to look welcoming.”
“You mean I can’t pull his hair?” Charlie whines.
“And I can’t give him a wet willy?” Vinnie adds.
“You’re impossible,” Captain Hyun says, shaking her head, and we all smile.
We’re a family, and it’s always nerve-wracking to bring someone new into the family, but I hope our probie will be a good addition.