Work Text:
It was nearing one a.m. on a Friday morning, and Kravitz wasn’t happy to be awake, let alone on the road and moving. It had been a long day tacked onto a long week, and despite labor laws putting limits on the shifts they could work, he’d gotten the chance to pick up extra hours from people calling off that week. On one hand, he really needed that good, good overtime pay. On the other hand, the last time he’d even seen his bed was….
Well, dunk. He couldn’t actually remember. Monday? Surely not. It must have been Tuesday….
His job was one that ought not be worked in a state of delirium, but it wasn’t like Kravitz had much choice. He had a job to do, and a dream to chase, and he’d downed a Red Bull right as the call light had gone off-- he could handle this.
The truck squealed to a stop and he leapt out the passenger side while his partner crawled through the back to make sure everything was prepped accordingly. She was a good partner, far more experience on the job than he had and strong enough to be a real help with the heavy lifting, but she preferred Kravitz to do the talking. She said he was “charming,” but Kravitz was pretty sure she just didn’t like talking to the patients.
Which, yeah. That was fair.
The police were already on the scene, officers he recognized by face but not name. They ran all the same jobs in a town this size and got used to each other, but there were enough on both teams cycling in-and-out that it was hard to properly keep track of everyone.
He approached the scene, panic blanket in hand since the call had been for a domestic disturbance, and wasn’t all that surprised to hear shouting, swearing, and spitting as he approached.
“I swear to God , let me get my hands on that bastard, and I’ll--!” A young man dressed in what looked like a chef’s garb was struggling in the hold of a certain Officer Hurley, who Kravitz knew from association and gossip to be five feet of kick ass. She hardly had any trouble holding back the man who, while he looked thin enough to blow over with a strong wind, was an entire head taller than her.
Hurley spat back, “If you do not calm down, I’m going to have to cuff you. Don’t make me arrest you over this, Taako.” She spoke to him with a familiarity that Kravitz hadn’t heard her use with perps before. While it wasn’t his job to know these things, he quickly figured that this man here was the victim of the disturbance, and he was dead set on making the assailant a victim as well if he had any say in the matter.
Taako-- apparently, what a name-- huffed and stilled, posture still tense and furious. He set his jaw.
“Go with the paramedics, call your sister, come down later and give your statement, okay?”
“Fine,” Taako spat, and before Hurley released him she glanced over at Kravitz with raised eyebrows and a clear message-- get ready to grab him if he runs. She loosened her hold, and Taako shook her off as if it had been his idea. He huffed, straightened out his jacket, and turned begrudgingly to Kravitz, who escorted him over to the ambulance.
Since this wasn’t a life-or-death type of scenario, Kravitz ran through the pleasantries as they walked over, introducing himself by name and position, as well as Raven, and giving Taako a basic once over assessment before sitting him down. He draped the blanket around Taako’s shoulders, and it was taken with a grumble and a huff as he clutched around him.
“Any injuries that I can’t see?” Kravitz asked, already making a mental list of what he could. His eye and cheekbone were red and starting to swell, and his lip was split. A few parallel lines about three inches long on the side of his neck, just touching his collar, obviously from being scratched, and there was mottled bruising on his throat around it. The sleeves of his chef’s jacket were rolled to the elbow, and his forearms were decorated with a smattering of burns, typical of someone working in a kitchen, and while some of them were new-- red and angry-- they didn’t seem to need immediate attention. There were bandaids on three fingers, colorful and patterned. His clothes were rumpled, a few jacket buttons undone and blood from the lip staining the shoulder, a hat clenched tightly in one fist, pants torn at the knee-- he’d gotten into quite a scuffle before help arrived, it seemed.
Beyond the bruising Kravitz couldn’t help but notice perfectly smooth skin, large, piercing eyes, and three piercings decorating both ears.
In a lapse of professionalism, that he was sure had to be from exhaustion, he couldn’t help but noting that the man was beautiful.
“You good, homie?” he asked, snapping Kravitz back to himself to notice that he’d had the blood pressure cuff around his arm for a good minute or so now and had failed to do anything else with it. Shit. Get a grip.
“My apologies,” he said, and quickly went about finishing that process, taking a pulse, counting respirations, and checking for a concussion while got called over by the officers to assess a few restaurant patrons.
Taako pulled a phone out of his pocket and shot off a quick message while Kravitz worked on cleaning him up. He winced and hissed through his teeth while Kravitz tended to the busted lip, and Kravitz murmured an apology under his breath and finished quickly. Taako slipped his phone away, rising a bit to slip it into his back pocket, and Kravitz kept a hand on his arm to steady him.
“Have you taken any drugs tonight?” he asked, and Taako huffed again.
“Fuck you,” he said. “I was at work .”
“I’m required to ask.”
Taako rolled his eyes. “ No , I’m fucking sober. Can’t say the same for that idiot.” He jerked his head to the side, over to where another man in clothes that were clearly restaurant staff, but not a chef’s regalia, was sitting in handcuffs on the curb outside the restaurant, answering questions for a police officer.
“You might have a concussion,” Kravitz told him. “We should transport you to a hospital so a doctor can look you over.”
Taako laughed at that, sharp and bitter, and a second ambulance had pulled up and settled where Raven was looking over the other victims, who all seemed to be fine as far as he could tell. Good.
“You think I can afford that shit? My business has been murdered, my dude, straight up slaughtered in front of my eyes. It’s over . Nobody’s going to eat at a restaurant where half the patrons nearly got fucking poisoned .”
With no great rush and no immediate need for his services, Kravitz let himself relax a little. He sat on the edge of the truck next to Taako and swallowed a sigh at how good it felt to be off his feet.
“At least you didn’t get murdered,” he said without thinking, and winced at his loose tongue. Taako bit out a sharp laugh. Kravitz rubbed at his neck and told himself to get a grip. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, stripping his gloves off and tossing them in the bin now that he was done patching Taako up. He reached overhead to dump sanitizer into his hand and rubbed it in on autopilot while Taako burst into a story.
“Arsenic,” he spat. “How nineteenth century is that, huh? Dumped the stuff into my cooking wine and thought it’d be enough to off me when I taste tested the sauce for tonight’s special. Stupid son of a bitch, left the fucking bottle in his locker, and when he caught me with it he went bezerk.”
Taako sighed and slumped a little. He was shivering under the thin metallic blanket, which he clutched tighter. Kravitz let out a low whistle, not knowing how else to respond.
“That’s a lot to handle,” he said, “You ought to be able to trust a coworker.”
“Employee,” Taako corrected, “And more than that actually. Cha’boy really knows how to pick ‘em, I’ll tell you.” He straightened his back a little and reached up to snag the hairnet off his head, letting shoulder-length locks tumble free around his face. He swiped one out of the way, grimaced when his fingertips touched the damaged skin around his eye.
Right, Kravitz told himself. Focus . He pushed himself up, climbed into the truck, and pulled out a cold pack. He handed it over, and Taako took it with a bit of a sneer, biting off a quiet pained noise when he pressed it to his burning skin. Kravitz hesitated before patting him on the shoulder.
“Can’t fault yourself for someone trying to kill you,” Kravitz attempted to sooth, and Taako laughed again.
“You can if you deserve it, maybe,” Taako said. “Can I leave now? It’s been… one hell of a day, kemosabe, you would not believe .”
“I think I have an idea,” Kravitz responded. “I have to recommend you go to the hospital and have a doctor look you over.”
For the third time that night, despite the circumstances, Taako laughed. “Great idea, kemosabe, but I don’t have five thousand dollars for a ride in your wee-woo wagon.”
Kravitz had to stifle a laugh. “It’ll help your case if you have a doctor assess your injuries. I’m assuming you’re planning to press charges?” He really wasn’t supposed to talk about these things with the patients, but Raven wasn’t here, and Taako didn’t seem like the kind of complain about it. He patted Kravitz on the knee, stood up on shaky legs, and dropped the icepack back in his lap.
“Then I’ll walk,” he said. A car sped into the scene, tires dragging as the driver slammed on the brakes. Taako’s face broke into a smile. “Or not, thank the Lord , Maggie! Over here, my dude!”
He rushed off, and then Raven was calling for Kravitz from across the parking lot, and he had no choice but to get back to work.
-------
Kravitz hadn’t wanted to be an EMT. He liked the work, mind you, but it wasn’t really his goal in life. Unfortunately his goal in life cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the work he’d had before that hadn’t paid enough to even feed him. EMT training was probably the best and worst life choice he’d made so far. It paid well enough for him to pay rent, feed himself, and even stash a few dollars a week away into the ‘med school savings fund.’ But the hours were so long that he could only take one pre-med class a semester, which meant he’d have his med school qualifications…. Never. Probably never.
The system was fucking broken.
Working in the nursing home as a CNA had been a dream come true, had really reinforced his dream of working in geriatric care in the future. He wanted to be a doctor, and he wanted to help people. The state of geriatric care in this country was an absolute nightmare, and Kravitz would help that, if he had anything to do about it.
Or, he would eventually . That was the plan.
For now he was stuck with this, which was fine, of course. It was good work. A lot of the time he was doing what he wanted, saving lives, helping people during their hardest times, giving people hope and trying to provide as much comfort as possible.
Other times it was working with stupid, drunken assholes, and that was the work Kravitz wasn’t totally fond of. The unconscious man on his stretcher had been babbling incoherently seconds ago, and the alcohol coming off his breath was enough to make Kravitz feel drunk. That, or the sleep deprivation. He really needed to get a handle on this. It was getting out of hand.
Merle’s friend was in tears, also drunk out of his mind, and had explained several times now what had happened. Kravitz had to wonder if anyone who got into a drunken bar fight deserved to have their elbow shattered; actions and consequences and all that. The funniest part was that it wasn’t even the opposing team that had broken Merle’s arm, it was Magnus , and Kravitz used all of his self-control to keep an air of professionalism and a blank expression and not tell Magnus to please, for the love of God, stop crying .
The work was easy, though. No bone had broken through the skin, so it was just stabilize, take vitals, and hurry to the emergency room. He and Raven ushered Magnus out of the ambulance when they got their and wheeled Merle in, the old man still out cold, but that was probably for the best at this point. They’d knock him out anyways if they had to do surgery on him.
Once they got him through the doors and into the nurses’s hands, it was no longer Kravitz’s responsibility.
“Bathroom,” Raven reported, turning to amble down the hall. “You want coffee?”
“Please,” he answered, and watched Magnus collapse into a chair in the waiting room, dropping his head into his hands and sighing. Kravitz rubbed his hand over his face and leaned back against the check-in counter to wait for Raven so they could get back to dispatch. The waiting room was nearly empty, being one in the morning on a Wednesday.
It became significantly less empty moments later, when two figures burst through the automatic doors and rushed over to the drunken man in front of Kravitz in a whirlwind of activity. Both thin, blonde, wearing pajamas, and sleep tired eyes. The one, the woman, had her pajama pants tucked into a pair of combat boots and she dropped into the chair immediately next to Magnus and wrapped her arms around him.
The other, the man, kicked idle at a chair with the tip of his flip flop and yawned into hs fist. Kravitz almost didn’t recognize him without his chef’s clothing, but the fading yellow bruise circling his eye, and his shiny golden hair hanging around his jaw, and the way he laughed at his friend in that very familiar laugh gave him away.
“Taako?” he asked, shocked, and immediately kicked himself for the blatant HIPAA violation. Never reach out to the patient first when you know them, that was like lesson one, what was the matter with him?
Still, Taako looked up with wide eyes, and Kravitz’s heart soared a little bit when he smiled. “Well shit,” Taako said, ruffling Magnus’s hair before waltzing over. “I’m just seeing you everywhere, aren’t I?”
“Tends to happen when you hang out around the hospital,” Kravitz pointed out, and Taako leaned back against the counter next to him, leaning on his elbows and yawning again.
“Didn’t meet you in the hospital the first time,” he corrected, but then added. “Thanks for that, by the way. My lawyer said the doctor’s evaluation will be good for the case.”
“Got a court date yet?” Kravitz asked him, and before Taako could answer, a nearly-identical figure joined them. The girl leaned into Taako’s side, hooking her arm over his shoulder and smirked at Kravitz with pointed teeth. She held out a hand to shake and introduced herself.
“Hey there, hot stuff,” she said. “Name’s Lup.”
“Kravitz,” he responded, shaking her hand.
“How do you know my baby brother?”
Taako shoved an elbow into her ribs and said, “We were born at the same time .”
“Sure thing, pumpkin.”
“We were .”
“Don’t be rude,” she snapped, then literally snapped her gum, then turned back to Kravitz. Taako answered for him.
“We was the ambulance guy last week,” he answered. Lup’s responding smile was dazzling.
“A knight in shining armor then,” she said, and then Raven was calling for him across the room.
He nodded at her and pushed off the counter. “I have to go,” he said, “It was nice to meet you,” he said to Lup, who smiled in a way he didn’t understand. “And, uh, it was nice to see you again,” he said to Taako, who grinned and rolled his eyes, and then Raven was calling again and it was time to go. “Good luck with the arm!” he added, as an afterthought, and followed Raven out the door.
They were nearly to the ambulance when the sound of running footsteps caught his attention. “Yo, tall dark and handsome!” a voice called, and Kravitz turned back to see Taako. He stopped so suddenly that Taako nearly skidded into him, but he caught himself in time, and was quickly holding his cellphone out and almost pushing it into Kravitz’s hands.
“Give me your number,” she said, “I’ll give you arm updates on the old man, or like, courtroom gossip or whatever, if you want.”
Kravitz blinked, glanced awkwardly over his shoulder to find Raven smirking at him, and cleared his throat.
“I, uh… yeah, that sounds. Sure, okay,” he said. Taako smiled. Kravitz typed in his number, and he watched as Taako saved it under ‘EMT Guy.’
“It’s Kravitz, by the way,” he said, unsure of if he’d ever properly introduced himself. He couldn’t have blamed Taako for forgetting anyways, all things considered.
Taako grinned at him, flipped his hair back, and said, “Oh, I know.”
“I might not be the best for conversations,” he warned, thinking it only fair to tell him now, rather than later. “I don’t have a lot of free time, I, uh.”
“That’s fine,” Taako said. “We’ll work something out. You can tell me about what keeps you so busy later.”
Then he was taking his phone back, spinning on heel, and walking back towards the front doors of the ER. Raven was smirking at him when he climbed into the driver’s seat of the ambulance, and he flipped her off idly as he started it up. Just seconds down the road his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he pulled it out to check it at a red light.
A message from Taako flashed across the screen, and he’d just swiped it open when the light changed. Raven took the phone out of his hand and proceeded to read the message out loud, teasing him mercilessly the entire drive back to dispatch.