Work Text:
‘Another shift over without casualties,’ Hank thought as he wrapped up his organizational duties and stashed his paperwork in its manila folder. He could hear the next shift clattering around outside, checking the equipment that A shift had left unchecked. The day had remained painfully busy even after the disaster at the scrapyard, but they’d gotten through it, so Hank was in a fairly good mood as he stepped out into the engine bay.
And then, one of B shift’s paramedics walked up to him, asbestos blanket in hand, and asked “Hey, Captain Stanley - what’d you do to the blanket, use it for shooting practice?”
There were little alarm bells going off in Captain Stanley’s mind, then, like pretty much every time somebody mentioned ‘shooting’ these days in any way relating to his job.
“Shooting practice?” he asked warily.
The other man held the blanket up against the light, and indeed, there were two small bullet holes, one on both sides of it, a thin finger of light streaming through and making them glow brightly against the stiff fabric. And then, Hank noticed a few muddy fingerprints along the edge of the blanket, near the holes, and he actually felt himself go pale as he tracked their position and realized what that meant. The paramedic threw him a concerned glance as Hank’s world seemed to tilt sideways for a moment. Instead of answering, he just stepped forward, took the blanket, wrapped it around himself and put his fingers over the muddy prints. Some of the grime flaked off.
The paramedic’s gaze followed Hank’s hands, and he muttered a quiet “oh” as he peered through the holes and realized that the projectiles must’ve barely whizzed past the head of the person holding it. “Oh dear.”
Hank would’ve used a stronger word, really, but the man had gotten the gist of it.
“Junkyard fire,” he explained. “Exploding ammunition.”
“Shit,” the paramedic stated dryly, and that was a lot closer to Hank’s preferred choice of words. And then, the man sighed and added: “John Gage?”
Hank nodded, swallowed hard. John Gage. Of course it had been Johnny, the man seemed to attract projectiles like an industrial-strength magnet, and for the way-too-manieth time, Hank had an uncomfortably vivid vision of his youngest suddenly lying on the floor, already dead even as a pool of blood spread from underneath that unruly mop of dark hair, before anyone had a chance to do something. This had been close, way too close, and they hadn’t even noticed, Johnny could’ve been dead and they’d never even noticed.
“Are you okay?” the paramedic asked, and Hank realized he’d been staring at the thrice-damned asbestos blanket, eyes wide and face still probably frightfully pale.
“Yes?” he replied, meaning to sound confident and missing the mark. “Yes, I’m alright. I just… I just realized that I almost lost one of my men last shift, and now I, ah…”
“Now you’re a bit less okay than you were five minutes ago,” the paramedic remarked astutely, and Hank probably should’ve been embarrassed, but the man’s remark had been spot-on, really, and Hank figured his terror was perfectly justified and nothing to be embarrassed about. You could only almost-lose people you cared about so many times before it started to get to you, there were a lot of people he cared about in his team, and Johnny specifically had had so many close calls that he alone could have used up their allotted number of them in one single shift. And that got to Hank, more than it normally would, both because there was something heartachingly vulnerable about the scrawny kid, behind all the intensity and the stubbornness and the weirdness, that still touched him after all this time, and because he knew he’d have to face Roy if anything were to happen to him, and that might just break both of them.
“I better get going,” he finally said and handed the accursed blanket back to the paramedic. “In the end, there’s nothing any of us can do about it now, anyway.”
The paramedic simply nodded, but Hank felt his gaze burning a hole between his shoulder blades all the way into the locker room. He couldn’t wait to leave his uniform behind in his locker, quietly hoping he’d manage to rid himself of the shock and the falling feeling of retroactive horror just as easily as he would rid himself of his shirt, but he knew perfectly well that things didn’t work like that, that he’d never been very good at leaving his work at the station anyway.
And then, he heard the door open and close again and suddenly found himself face to face with Roy, who should’ve been home half an hour ago and who was giving him an uncomfortably questioning look, and Hank knew he wouldn’t get out of this one without some serious explaining.
“Hey, Roy,” he said, and even he could tell that his voice sounded strained, “what are you still doing here?”
“Forgot my wallet,” Roy explained off-handedly, “but nevermind that, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Are you alright?”
Hank’s first impulse was to snap “none of your business” and be done with it, but that was the exact problem - it was Roy’s partner who’d almost died, this was all of Roy’s business.
“B shift checked the asbestos blanket,” he said and hoped he could leave it at that.
Roy gave him a knowing look.
“Johnny had that at the junkyard rescue,” he said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“They, ah. They found holes in it.”
“Holes? What kind of hole?” Roy asked, but he looked as if he already had a pretty solid guess.
“Bullet holes,” Hank simply said, and Roy’s stern nod confirmed his suspicion.
“Somewhere important?” Roy continued, and he sounded like he had a hunch about that one, too.
“Pretty much next to his head if I had to guess,” Hank replied, and the admission, weirdly enough, helped ground him a little. Roy, on the other hand, looked approximately like Hank had felt earlier.
And Hank didn’t really know what kind of reaction he’d expected, but a tired “ah, damn it” while Roy turned around and opened his locker and picked his wallet up from the bottom sure hadn’t been it. He was still marveling at Roy’s calm reaction when his thoughts were interrupted by a loud bang as Roy slammed the locker door shut. They both stared at it for a moment, and even Roy himself seemed surprised by his sudden outburst. Not so calm, then.
“Sorry,” Roy said a moment later, sounding embarrassed, “I don’t know what got into me-”
He trailed off. They both knew exactly what had gotten into him.
He sighed, ran a hand through his hair.
“Do you think he noticed?” he finally asked.
Hank shrugged.
“Do I… do I tell him?”
Another shrug. “If you don’t, I’ll probably have to anyway,” Hank said. “For the report.”
Roy made some sort of pained noise, something between a sigh and a groan, and let himself slump against the lockers - against Johnny’s locker, to be precise - and tilted his head back until it hit the wood with a quiet thump.
“I’ll talk to him,” he mumbled at the ceiling. “Maybe it’ll do some good, rattle him enough to keep him out of trouble, or… ah, hell.”
Hank just cleared his throat, unsure of what to say. In the end, he merely gave Roy a reassuring pat on the shoulder and left the locker room, eager to escape into the cool morning air.
One of these days, Johnny’s luck was going to run out. One of these days, somebody would have to pick up the pieces, and he could only selfishly hope that it wouldn’t have to be him, that he’d never hear about it.
But today, thanks to some kind of miracle, was not that day.