Broken Glass
Hank stepped out of the office to find all five firefighters under his command ready and waiting. They were so different from the casual group of goofy boys he'd had shared lunch with. He didn't like the difference very much. "Punctual," he said. "That's good. Uptight, not so good. At ease, gentlemen." They deflated as a unit, and looked at him.
There was clear worry on three of the five faces. Stoker seemed calm, and maybe... approving? Like Hank had passed some test. He wasn't sure how he felt about that, either, but it was better than trying to soothe a bunch of terrified statues. Daniels, DeSoto's replacement, didn't look worried either. He looked kind of like he'd have rather been anywhere else than where he was right at the moment. Hank definitely didn't like that, but he had no intention of making a public example out of anyone in his first five minutes of duty. Instead, he focused on his planned speech for the morning.
"Today, I am experiencing a paradox. I am your superior, and I am a boot." Interest brightened all five pairs of eyes. Good. "I'm no stranger to leadership. I assume that you all have no difficulty following Stoker's orders?" At first, the men just stared at him, likely expecting his question to be typical rhetoric. He waited patiently, and one by one, all four men nodded - even Daniels, though he seemed slightly put out by this realization. "The last time I saw you, he and I were of the same rank, with a fairly comparable skill set. Today, the only difference is that I am now on probation, and you gotta call me Cap. I still have that same skill set, for now. That means two things: one, that I'm learning as I go, and so I humbly request that you all please be patient with me; and two, that, in spite of my inexperience with this area, I do possess the skills you require of me when I take action, and so I not so humbly request that, if you feel the need to question my orders, you do so the way you would question any superior's orders, whatever that may mean."
He gave them a moment to let his requests sink in. "I don't have specific instructions for you yet - I may not have those until the end of the shift, depending on how things go. And my expectations, for the moment, are that you live up to job you've been chosen to do. That includes telling me when I am not meeting your needs. I am not here to boss you around - I'm here to coordinate you, to serve you in the same way you are here to serve the citizens of this county. Any questions?" The men shook their heads. "If you suddenly come up with any questions for me, don't hesitate to ask, okay?" He gulped, suddenly nervous. "Okay. Chores. Stoker and Daniels, rec room, Gage, bay, Lopez, dorms, Kelly, you're cooking." There. That wasn't so bad.
Except they were all staring at him like he was nuts. "Something wrong?"
"Uh... what about... the locker room?" Kelly looked like he expected to be hit in the face for asking.
Hank laughed, relieved that no one wanted to revolt. "I'm doing that."
"Why on Earth would anybody volunteer to do that," John demanded.
"Because I'm not going to ask any of you to do something that I wouldn't ask of myself," Hank said.
"You're asking us to eat Chet's cooking," John said not-quite under his breath.
"Hey, you're no James Beard," Kelly said.
"Who?"
Five minutes into the day, and he was already losing control of the men. "You wanna wait to start the bitching and moaning until after I've dismissed you?"
Gage and Kelly both snapped their mouths shut, after muttering embarrassed apologies.
"Sure thing. But now I'm not feeling so generous, so the two of you get to share latrines and slop duties today."
"Thanks a lot, Gage," Kelly said.
"Cap, I'll do latrines if it means they don't cook," Lopez said.
"Here, here," Daniels said. "I'll help!"
"Hell, I'll do latrines and cook if it means not eating both John and Chet's cooking on the same day," Stoker said.
"I give you idiots an inch and you take a mile! No! Stoker and Daniels have the kitchen AND bay, Lopez has the dorms, Gage and Kelly are scrubbing the toilets and cooking our lunch and dinner, and the rest of you had damned well better eat it! Is that clear?"
"Yes sir," came the meek response.
"Good! Now quit whining and get to work!" The crew scattered, and began their chores.
Hank returned to the office, and faced the pile of papers tucked away in the back corner of the room. Blueprints. Charts, fire codes, maps, addresses - everything he needed to know about every building for miles around the firestation, and for a few buildings beyond even that radius, should they be called in to help an adjoining station. The map he was comfortable with - everybody in L.A. had a Thomas Brother's map, and that was the county standard. He was an engineer, he knew how to read the thing even when he didn't know where he was. The fire codes he was perfectly clear on - he wouldn't be cleared for line duty, much less a promotion, if he weren't. But the blueprints - those were going to be a challenge. So damned many buildings! And he had to know them all, inside and out, and he had to make sure his men knew them all, inside and out. Hell, they probably already did, and he was the odd man out.
"Everything okay?"
Hank jumped and whirled around, to see Gage with a mop and bucket, and a concerned look on his face. "I'm fine. How's the locker room?"
"I dunno, I was just getting to it. But, really, you look a little pale, Cap. Are you okay?"
Was it professional courtesy? Or just a con job attempt to get out of cleaning the bathroom? Hank cinched up his resolved. "I'm fine. Thanks."
Gage frowned for a minute, and looked carefully at each of Hank's eyes. "You have breakfast? You should really have some breakfast. Just take you a second. Take your paperwork in the rec room, we won't bother you in there." Then he took his cleaning supplies to the locker room, peeking back over his shoulder at Hank all the while before he disappeared through the swinging door.
The minute the door swished shut behind Gage, the klaxons sounded, and he came barreling back out, arms and feet flailing, with Kelly fast on his heels. The rest of the crew spilled out of their own hideaways, and bolted for the truck. Adrenaline surged through Hank as he approached the radio.
"Squad 51, unknown type rescue 2152 E Inglewood. Two one, five two, east Inglewood. Cross street: Hawthorne. Meet the informant at the north-west corner of the lot. Time out: 8:51."
Equal parts relief at not having to involve himself in the call and disappointment at being left behind warred for Hank's attention, but he shook off his worries and concentrated on the task before him. He still had a duty to perform, small as it was. He scrawled down the address and instructions, signed off on the call, passed the slip of paper to Gage, who looked a bit uncomfortable behind the wheel, and watched the squad peel off towards their unknown rescue. Only when they were out of sight, and the rest of the crew had disappeared to continue scrubbing and polishing their assigned areas, did Hank allow himself to sag heavily against the brick wall. "Fucking hell," he said under his breath, and then he burrowed away in the office under his mountain of blue prints.
The day was fairly quiet, save for a second call for the squad, and time skittered away under the manuals and booklets and tubes of blue marked onion paper that held Hank enthralled. He was surprised to hear the call to lunch, and more surprised when his stomach growled in answer. Suddenly, all the studying and the memorizing and the deciphering were anethema to him. He shoved away from the desk and loped into the rec room, feeling wildly ravenous. The depth of his hunger was a surprise - how could anybody work up such an appetite just sitting in one place?
The bigger surprise, though, was the row of glum faces around the table, while everyone stared at the wide, shallow bowl in the middle of the table. There seemed to be some kind of meat flopping over the lip of the bowl, though what animal it used to be, Hank couldn't rightly say. "What's that?"
"Chicken paella," Kelly said proudly.
"That is not chicken paella," Lopez said.
"How would you know, pal, you're not Spanish," Kelly said.
"No, I'm human, and I know Spanish, and that is not paella. That's not even dirty rice."
Hank raised an eyebrow. "Is... pie air related to dirty rice?"
"Pa-ey-ah," Lopez corrected. "Sorta - it's a rice casserole that's supposed to have shellfish and sausage and sometimes CUT PIECES of chicken. NOT A WHOLE RUBBERIZED GAG CHICKEN, CHET."
"Don't knock it til you try it, is all I'm saying," Kelly said, and leaned back in his seat.
"You're not trying it," Stoker said. "Why should we?"
"I'll try it," Hank said. "I'm hungry enough to eat an actual rubber chicken at this point."
"Well," Gage said unhappily, "that oughta cure it."
Hank ignored the wisecracking, and began to scoop out the food underneath the limp bird. He plopped the result, a strange, dry stew, into an empty dish. No, it wasn't a dry stew. It was soggy rice. He shuddered slightly, but he soldiered on, and hacked at the dead bird with his fork, until he got a stringy bit of breast meat to drag through his bowl of gloopy rice. He poked at the bowl reluctantly, and prayed for the tones to sound. No such luck. Maybe he could just dump the bowl back in the serving dish and... what? This was his doing. They'd warned him, and he'd insisted, because thought they were just trying to test his limits. Shit.
He scooped up a forkful of slop and shoveled it in his mouth.
No salt.
Too squishy.
Except for the chicken, of course, which felt like desert dry burlap threads.
Why did he take this promotion, again?
"How is it, Cap?" Kelly's eyes were all alight, and he rubbed his hands together nervously. Hank wasn't sure if the guy was putting him on, or if this was all part of an elaborate prank. Judging by the way Lopez and Gage rolled their eyes, Hank began to fear Kelly might actually be serious.
"It's better than the stuff they served in the Army," Hank said. It was the truth, and it wasn't an outright condemnation of the man's food - though he was pretty sure everyone at the table knew it was a condemnation. "Is this what I have to look forward to every time you cook?"
Kelly looked slightly put out. "Well, no, not really. My specialty is chili."
"That's actually semi-edible," Stoker said.
"Yours is better, " Gage said almost instantly.
"His everything is better - that's why he's not allowed to cook every day, we'll all bust out of our uniforms if we did that," Lopez said.
"Aw, come on, it's not that bad," Kelly said.
"It's squishy," Hank said. "I need crackers or raw carrots or something."
"I think I left something at Rampart," Daniels finally said, and elbowed Gage. "Can we go-"
"Nope. You can pick it up on your next run," Hank said. He set his food aside and began ladling out the soggy rice to everyone else. "Here, eat it. If we get a three alarm assignment and you collapse from hunger, that's my ass on the line. I didn't get this far in the fire service just to get dumped during my probation because you all are too princessy to choke down a little chow."
"Gee, thanks Cap," Kelly said.
"No one's asking you to be a gourmet cook, and we're all appreciative of the effort, aren't we?"
"No," Gage said. "But I'll eat it anyway, because I gotta cook dinner, and I don't wanna hear this speech twice."
"Just don't burn the hamburgers, John, and we'll be okay," Stoker said.
"Okay, y'all are scaring me, here," Hank said. "Am I gonna have to start brown bagging it?"
They dissolved into laughter, then, and did their best to eat lunch.
The day grew even quieter, almost eerie, after lunch. Everyone tensed up as the tones sounded, though they never went off for Station 51, until the whole station was walking around on eggshells. Eventually, just to get some relief from being hunched over his desk all damned day, Hank found himself waxing the squad furiously. He'd wanted to work on the engine, but he didn't feel quite right about it. He'd been a fairly possessive engineer himself, and he didn't want to step on Stoker's toes. He didn't care so much about stepping on Gage's toes - that one had behaved like a petulant child from the moment he'd met him, but he'd behaved that way with everyone. Hank had the feeling there was no real malice in Gage's heart - and if there was, well, the guy was a pussycat. So he waxed away his agitation, and watched the white substance swirl over the crisp shiny red metal.
"I don't think I've ever seen this before," Stoker said behind Hank.
"Seen what?"
"A captain waxing a squad."
"First time for everything, pal."
They fell silent. "Missed a spot," Stoker said.
Hank looked up, irritated. But Stoker already had a rag in hand, and was reapplying the wax with a careful arcing stroke. Hank relaxed a little. "I was gonna do the engine, but I thought I'd better wait until I got to know the driver a little better."
Stoker smiled. "I know you won't break her. I can finish here if you'd rather switch."
Hank shook his head. "Doesn't really matter. I was just working off some tension."
"Getting a little cabin fever?"
"You said it." They finished wiping down the squad in companionable silence. Hank checked his watch. "Seriously? We've got hours before sundown!"
Stoker laughed. "I could call a friend, have 'em set a dumpster on fire if you'd like?"
"No, no, with my luck, the whole block would go up in flames before anyone had a chance to call. I just... I'm so damned antsy!"
The phone rang, and Hank jumped. Stoker gave him an odd look. "Maybe we should do laps or something? You seem like a cat in a rocking chair factory."
"I feel like a cat in an electrified swimming pool. But no, I've already subjected us all to Kelly's cooking. I don't want you all to hate me by making you break out in a hard sweat so close to dinner." He grinned. "Maybe next shift, before lunch is served."
Daniels poked his head out of the rec room. "Captain Stanley? Phone call."
Hank frowned. Who in the world would know to call- He clamped down on the excitement that threatened to send him rocketing to the moon. He knew who would call him there at the station. He just hoped it was with good news. He hurried into the office and picked up the phone. "Captain Stanley speaking."
"Hello, this is Greg Hunt, with Palazio Properties. You've been approved for, uh, three locations, actually. We'll just need you to come on in at your earliest convenience to sign paperwork and turn in your deposit. And choose, of course."
A broad smile spread across Hank's face. "Of course. Is tomorrow okay?" They worked out the details of his appointment, and the three apartments he was going to be choosing from, and then Hank hung up the phone and floated into the kitchen on a cloud of joy.
"Oh, good! Dinner's almost ready," Johnny Gage chirped. Hank's mood went crashing down to the ground, where it remained until they all turned in for bed that night.
Hank knew he was going to toss and turn all night, between the rock hard well done hamburgers they'd choked down for dinner, the thin, wobbly mattress designed to poke springs into its occupant at regular intervals all the way up and down the body, and the hyped up state from being alert for absolutely nothing all day. He punched the pillow a couple of times, and tried to curl his long, long body into the standard sized bed, but bits and pieces of him kept hanging off. He was half paranoid he'd knock his head against the table set up next to his bed, and kept arching away from it, which put a crook in his back, in his neck, in his shoulders. He was probably going to wake up with a crook in his top right incisor and a crook in his left big toenail, he was so uncomfortable. Gentle snoring of the other men just served to mock him in his sleepless state. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe along with their slow, calm rhythm. He tried to think of someplace comfortable, someplace safe.
A beach. A hotel room on a beach. Somewhere in the South Pacific, maybe, with a warm, salty breeze, and the rustling of palms overhead. The balcony. He was on a ground floor balcony, a patio all to himself, on a beach, with the creature-comforts of a fancy-schmancy hotel at hand, but the glory of unmolested nature equally nearby. And he was listening to the soft, gentle roar of the waves crashing against the shore, and the soft, gentle rumble of some other sleeping soul next to him. Under him. He was resting his head on top of someone's chest, someone who slept without a care in the world.
Someone with smooth skin and fine dark hair on well muscled arms. Someone with baby-tender fingertips on paradoxally huge meaty hands. Someone with full, cherry colored lips and long, long eyelashes that brushed against rosy cheekbones. Exquisite. Someone exquisite.
Hank was supposed to be sleeping, he knew that, but he couldn't help himself. He had to touch the soft, smooth cheeks, to run his fingers along the firm jaw, down the neck, to perfectly formed shoulders. He had to lift himself up, and kiss, just once, those pink, pink lips.
A shriek of sound and explosive light obliterated the tranquil beach. Hank popped straight up in his tiny bed, disoriented and terrified. His heart thumped in his throat as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light, and his sleep addled brain slowly made sense of the scene. Fire station. Tones. Fire. Redondo. Time out, 2:45.
He could hear the vehicles start up, and the creak of the bay door rolling open. He shook off the last of his disorientation and shrugged into his own gear. He half tripped his way to the front of the engine, and paused, nonplussed by the sight of another man behind the wheel of the fire engine. Shotgun. He's supposed to ride shotgun. He scrambled around and hauled himself into the engine, and turned to a tight faced Stoker. "You know I don't actually have the address."
Stoker's mouth twitched as he threw the engine into gear, and they went barreling out of the station. "21513 E Arlington Blvd. I think the cross street was Redondo."
"God bless you, Stoker." Hank snatched up a Thomas Guide in one hand, and radioed in with the other. "Station 51, 10-4." He rubbed away the last of sleep, and checked the route. He needn't have bothered. The route was extremely straight forward, and the blaze was visible before they ever turned onto Arlington Blvd. "Holy huckleberries," Hank breathed as they approached the burning building.
They arrived at an old two story house that was lit up like a Roman candle. The whole neighborhood had turned out in pjs and bunny slippers to watch in horror as one of their houses turned to ash before their eyes. Hank could hear the whine of sirens closing in, and knew they were first on scene. Showtime, boys.
There was no room for nervousness here, no time to fret about where or how to start. So many times he'd pulled into a raging fire, and wondered why in the hell had Whitmore sent the men left instead of right, why had he pointed up, instead of down. Hank had had ideas on how to approach a fire, had been gifted with instincts that, unbeknownst to him, had left Whitmore, and his previous captain, McConnike, stunned by his ability, and confused by his off-duty uncertainty. Now, with a raging fire, and no one on hand to hold his hand, Captain Stanley came into his own.
In the end, it took four companies, the battalion chief, two police cars, and three long, hot, dark, ugly hours to contain the fire that spread to three other houses in the tight knit neighborhood. Miraculously, no one was injured in the fire, though two of the houses were completely lost. Hank leaned against the truck, completely spent, while he watched his men clean up and collect their equipment. He wasn't sure how he felt. Had his first run been a success? Was he happy? Would this bode well for his probation? Had he started in the right place? Had those few seconds of confusion when he'd first awakened cost the victims their home? He knew his body ached, that it was tired and wanted a rest, but the thought of returning to the tiny, squeaky bed in the fire house was absolutely out of the question. But he didn't feel like he could ever get himself back off the engine again.
"Captain Stanley!" Hank looked over to see Chief Connor picking his way over half-charged lines and weeping women. The small man looked as tired as Hank felt. He tried to push himself up to something resembling attention, but the chief waved him down, and sat down on the lip of the engine himself. "You look tuckered out. Heh heh heh heh."
Hank shrugged. "I couldn't sleep. Except, apparently, yes I could, but I didn't know it until the tones scared me awake."
"Ho ho."
Hank looked down at the chief, who was still smiling up at him. "I have no idea what the hell I'm doing, Chief."
The chief laughed again, a little longer than Hank thought really necessary. "You're wondering if you did right by the victims. You're wondering if you should have done something better, faster, harder. You're wondering if you're going to pass probation. You're wondering if it's worth it to try to go back to bed before the morning tones sound."
Hank frowned in amazement. "Are you telling me this is normal?"
Connor shrugged. "What fire is ever normal, Hank? But it is what I expect you to be worrying about."
Hank looked at his shoes. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"Well did I do okay? Am I gonna pass probation? Is it worth it to go to bed?"
Connor laughed yet again. "I don't know if you'll pass probation, Hank. You've got a whole year to get through. This was just the first night. But you haven't failed it. You did just fine, tonight, just fine. I wouldn't expect better from any of the more experienced men."
Hank smiled. "Really?"
Connor nodded. "Really."
Hank watched his men collect the hoses, and felt a weight lift from his shoulders. "I'm glad to know that, Chief."
"Good, good. Now go get yourselves cleaned up and get some coffee into you. The sun's up, and morning tones are probably going to sound before you even pull into the station at this rate." Then Chief Connor gathered his feet under himself and pushed himself on to the next company in the aftermath, laughing as he went by.
Hank watched his crew gather up close, and beckoned his paramedics closer. "We just about done here, boys?" They nodded slowly, uncertain. "Good. How about I put us 10-8 to the nearest Denny's? It's too late to go back to bed now, and I think you boys deserve a better meal after that mess Gage tried to poison us with. My dime." Tired and uncertain as they were, all five faces lit up at the promise of free food and public praise, and they accepted the offer with heartfelt enthusiasm - they had the best captain ever.