Work Text:
All things considered, the 118 was having a pretty normal day. No one had dared utter the q-word, for fear of breaking the peaceful spell, but Eddie – sitting on the front of a fire engine and bouncing his leg absentmindedly – looked bored enough to try to curse the shift on purpose. Bobby was away in his office, taking the chance to get ahead on his never-ending mountains of paperwork, and Ravi was draped over the sofa in a position that would have been wildly uncomfortable for anyone on the shift older than him, a sketchbook on his lap and a pencil dramatically chewed between his lips. In the corner, Buck and Chim were hiding something with their bodies, giggling to each other and glancing behind them to see if anyone had caught on.
And Hen – Hen was watching. It was something she considered herself to be quite good at, as an EMT, parent, and generally observant person. She liked to think that she noticed a lot about the world around her, and that she came to pretty decent conclusions about her observations.
She noticed when Athena and Bobby were arguing, from the way that Bobby would bang his fork a little too hard on his plate at dinner time or miss the seat belt buckle one too many times when settling himself into the captain’s chair in the fire engine.
She noticed that Buck and Eddie were dancing around realising that their relationship was somewhere in between just normal buddies hanging out and already been married and divorced 3 times so far, by the way that Eddie chewed on his lips subconsciously while he watched Buck pull a t-shirt over his head and the way that Buck always managed to find a reason to be in physical contact with Eddie, even at the most inopportune times.
And she was noticing, right now, that Ravi was having a very uncharacteristic reaction to whatever antics Buck and Chim were planning.
She was inclined to trust his reaction, considering that he was the only one who could actually hear them from his spot on the couch, but the scowls he was sending at them every time they turned their back was so unlike him that she couldn’t help but be intrigued by whatever was causing him to be making faces at his teammates’ backs.
“Ay – think fast!” Chim shouted suddenly, launching a crumpled paper ball in Ravi’s direction. Instead of playing along, Ravi let the ball collide with his face, watching it drop unceremoniously onto his chest and refusing to look up. With an almost passive aggressive deliberation, he picked up the pencil that had fallen out of his mouth and continued sketching.
“Don’t worry,” Hen heard Buck encourage Chim. “We’ll get him laughing in no time.”
Sure enough, moments later, another set of two paper balls were hurling towards Ravi, this time accompanied by comically silly whooshing sound effects from the two instigators of the prank. Clearly annoyed, Ravi swatted one away and let the other hit him, wincing almost imperceptibly as the paper slashed a light cut into his hand. “Oh my god,” he groaned, mostly under his breath, rolling his eyes.
Honestly, Hen wasn’t entirely sure what had him so upset. It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d gotten picked on by the two of them, or like he couldn’t take a good joke. If anything, Ravi was probably the most graceful of all of them, taking their hazing with a good-natured sigh at the very worst. In all of the time she’d known him, he’d never raised his voice or even expressed genuine annoyance in any way.
Maybe, she reasoned, he was just having a bad day and the paper balls launched at his face were just another line on a long receipt of inconveniences. But Hen had a good eye for a little mystery, and she was almost sure it was something deeper than that.
By the time the two firefighters were planning their third attack, Ravi looked properly annoyed. He seemed to have given up on sketching entirely, instead chewing on his pencil and occasionally biting down on it like he had no other way to keep his emotions in check. He was glaring at the pair, and although she wasn’t too close, Hen thought she could detect a slight tremble in the hand that he was running through his hair over and over again.
“Okay, last try!” Buck shouted, like it was some sort of sports competition. “Giving it everything we got!”
This time the assault included all sorts of things – toy erasers, paper airplanes, a bean bag that Chimney had found in the abyss of some closet. Ravi didn’t even bother swatting at them, letting each item hit him and bounce off onto the sofa and the floor.
“Aw, come on!” Buck whined, jogging over to shove Ravi playfully. “That was our best one yet!”
“Yeah,” Chim agreed, joining Buck as back-up. “Come on, Ravi. What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with you? ” Ravi muttered back, staring pointedly at the teeth marks on his pencil. Across the station, Eddie whistled in response, standing up on the bumper of the engine to get a better look at whatever was about to happen.
“Woah…” Buck stepped back, looking immediately intimidated. Hen couldn’t blame him – she had never once seen Ravi be anything but pleasant, offering to give up his seat to anyone who wanted it, taking up extra chores just to spare his coworkers, keeping himself updated with everyone’s personal lives and asking about them from time to time. She didn’t think any of the 118 had seen him even close to hostile before, and if she had been in Buck’s place she would have been a little scared too. “What’s gotten into you? ”
Chimney, unafraid, stepped forward to defend himself. “Yeah, what’s the big deal? It was just a little paper.”
“The ‘big deal’- ” Ravi shoved his sketchbook off his lap and stood up. “Is that you guys are always so… fucking childish-” He sounded like he was trying to yell, but there were tears catching in the back of his voice and they were keeping him quiet enough that he sounded more heartbroken than angry. “Doesn’t it bother you? Don’t you ever feel like it’s time to grow up ?”
He was still standing, and Hen was sure he would have kept standing there, frozen and shaking and glaring at Buck and Chim like they were missing one of life’s biggest truths, but a gentle sob escaped him, betraying his anger as just a front for something else. Shaking his head like he couldn’t quite believe himself, he shoved his sleeve into his mouth and ran out of the room.
“Um…” Buck was glancing wildly back and forth between Chimney and the door that Ravi had escaped through, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What the hell was that?”
Sitting back in her seat – realising for the first time that she’d even leaned forward at all – Hen shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” she responded, opting not to mention her already forming ideas. It wasn’t like Ravi was the first person to get frustrated when teasing went a little too far – especially on a slow shift like this one. In fact, that was probably one of the mildest outbursts the fire house had seen. But most people who ended up shouting at the station’s two pranksters were annoyed at being picked on personally, or at not being left alone, or at being interrupted. No one before had told them off for being too childish.
Now that she was thinking about it, she had noticed Ravi’s intensely strange relationship with the concept of childhood. She’d noticed the way that he smiled a little too sadly when they passed busy playgrounds, the way that he would jump to a kid’s defence without half a thought, the way that he leaned a little too much into Bobby and Athena’s parental affection as if he was starving for it. She’d noticed the time that he’d lingered a little too long in front of the Lego store on their way out of a mall one time, and she’d noticed the way that he’d shut down once during a conversation about childhood hospital trips, chewing on the hem of his sleeve and slowly dropping out of the circle until he could escape to a quiet corner without too much attention.
So she knew that…something was up, between Ravi and childishness, but she didn’t know what it was, and she wasn’t about to let an unknown attacker eat up her newest little-brother-figure all alone while she sat outside and wondered about it – and she had a pretty good idea of where he would be. “I’ve got it,” she announced, standing up. “Give me a minute.”
Standing outside the back of the ambulance, Hen stared at it for a good minute before knocking twice gently. “Ravi?” She shook the latch, making sure it rattled enough to give him a fair warning before she opened the door. “I’m coming in, okay?”
There was no response, but she heard quiet shuffling inside and she gave him a second before she climbed in, latching the door behind her. It was dimly lit inside, and her eyes took a moment to get adjusted to it, but she could make out Ravi’s figure hunched over on the bench.
“Hey,” she greeted quietly, still awkwardly bent over at the end of the ambulance. “It okay if I join you?”
He didn’t answer, but he nodded quickly – almost desperately.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, the moment she sat down beside him. His voice caught on the word, dropping into a whisper. “I didn’t mean to lose it like that. I just-”
“Hey, hey, none of that.” Hen patted his shoulder, interrupting him. There was a light chuckle in her voice, like she was trying to brighten the mood a little bit, but her tone sobered when Ravi’s expression didn’t change, and he continued staring brokenly at the nothing in front of him. “I’m not here to get you in trouble or anything like that. You’re not a kid.”
That, of all things, got his attention. He still refused to make eye contact with her, but he laughed drily to himself, sounding anything but amused. “I kind of wish I was sometimes, you know? Like a real kid. Not a sick kid, or a brave kid, or a kid who’s ‘so mature for his age’. ” Wry sarcasm dripped off his voice and he sighed bitterly. “Just a normal kid.”
Ah. So that’s what this was all really about, then. She wrapped her arm over his shoulder, pretending not to notice the way that he subtly shifted closer to her. “I don’t know, she admitted, voice gentle. “But you can tell me about it.”
At first, he didn’t answer, and in the silence of the ambulance Hen heard him swallow, thick and intentional. He sniffled once, cleared his throat into the back of his hand. “I just-” he began eventually, his voice sounding every bit as strained and teary as the previous silence led her to expect. “I just never had it, you know? The…the whole being a kid thing.”
“Yeah?” Hen hummed, encouraging him to continue.
He inhaled, and the breath came back out in a shaky, sudden laugh. “I never really tell people about this. I always feel like I’m, I don’t know. Trying to get attention for it or something.”
“Well,” Hen gently hit his knee with her free hand. “I came to you this time, so I don’t think you have to worry about that with me.”
He nodded, with a small appreciative smile. “I…I got diagnosed when I was five.” He didn’t elaborate on that particular point, and Hen didn’t make him. “Moved to America when I was six. Then it was in and out of hospitals for years and years. In and out of school, too, but that was… well, you can imagine how that would go.” Hen hummed again in acknowledgement.
“I got a job when I was fourteen because-” He trailed off, biting his lip and tipping his face upwards in a vain attempt to keep tears from falling. When he continued, his voice was almost incomprehensible, thick and choked from fighting not to cry. “Because hospital bills are so expensive, and it was the least I could do.”
“I never got to worry about normal kid stuff, you know? Like, I don’t know, sneaking out to play sports if I was grounded or people finding out who I had a crush on. I didn’t even know people had crushes until I was like, thirteen. It was always, ‘is this treatment actually going to work this time’ and ‘can we pay these bills before we get kicked out of our apartment’ and ‘will they take away my siblings because my parents had to work and be at the hospital and there were only two of them and five of us’ and…that’s a lot to think about when you’re seven years old.”
His voice went up and down as he spoke, and if Hen knew him a little bit less she would have thought he was being angry or sarcastic, but she knew enough to recognize a desperate, last-resort attempt to hold himself together.
She squeezed his shoulder, heart breaking. It was bad enough, without him feeling responsible to pay his own childhood hospital bills or keep his family from falling apart. She couldn’t even imagine the toll that must have taken on his young self, or the ways that would mess with his perception of being a child. In fact, she couldn’t imagine the toll that it must still be taking, or how he had possibly been keeping it all to himself until now.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, painfully aware of how inadequate it was.
He shrugged. “At least it’s over now, right?”
Something in his voice kept Hen silent, watching him carefully and keeping her arm steadily around him. The question seemed to linger in the space around them, and after a few seconds of tense silence, a full sob choked its way out of Ravi’s throat. His chest heaved suddenly, and he broke away from Hen’s grasp to hide his face in his hands.
“Why doesn’t it feel like it’s over?” he cried, sounding entirely broken, muffled by his hands. “When is it going to feel like it's over?”
Hen thought that at that moment she might have sacrificed anything to have an answer for him, but she didn’t, so she cradled him closer against her and ran her hand through his hair gently while he cried.
“It never feels like it’s over,” he admitted eventually, once his sobs faded into sniffles and hiccups and he unhid his face from behind his hands. “I did everything I could to get away from it – I bought my own place to live, I made my own money, I paid off my parents’ bills, I go to doctors all the time.” He sighed, frustration mixing with the sadness in his tone. “And I can never escape it. It’s like it’s always there inside me anyways.”
He broke away from her again to make eye contact with her, looking nervous. “If I say something that sounds crazy, are you gonna judge me?”
It was a hint of the lighthearted, self-conscious Ravi that she was familiar with, and Hen smiled softly at him. “Course not, sweetheart.”
“It feels like…it feels like there’s, I don’t know, a little kid trapped inside me all the time? Just- just trying to get out and I don’t- I don’t know what to do with that? People always say stuff about, you know, letting your ‘inner child’ do things you couldn’t actually do as a kid, but every time I let him out even a little bit, I hear my dad’s voice in my head telling me that it’s time to grow up and that I have to face real problems now, and I hear my mom stressing to me about how she didn’t know how they were gonna pay bills and I just get so scared, I guess? Like if I slip up and let myself act like a kid or try to go back even a little bit, it’s all gonna happen again.” He took a deep breath and sank back against Hen. “Sorry, I told you it was gonna sound crazy.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy,” Hen responded, opting not to mention that what it did sound like was an extremely common response to childhood trauma. That was a conversation for another time, to have with another Ravi who wasn’t pouring his heart out to someone for maybe one of the first times ever. “It does sound very difficult and scary though.”
“It just feels so unfair sometimes. I couldn’t have a childhood as a kid, and I can’t even have it now. How is that fair?” His voice took on the same heartbroken anger that had characterised his outburst to Buck and Chimney earlier, and Hen suddenly saw every piece of the situation fit together.
“That’s why Buck and Chim messing around made you so upset, huh,” she offered softly, without any judgement in her tone. “Because they get to act childish, and you feel like you can’t?”
Ravi’s anger deflated and he dragged his hands down his face. “God, I’m sorry for that. I just get so… I don’t know. Resentful, sometimes, I guess? I don’t know.” He glanced up at Hen. “Are they okay?”
Hen fully laughed, only regretting it slightly when Ravi jumped, startled. “Ravi, they have seen a lot more than a little yelling. They’re gonna be fine.” Softer, she added. “I’m more worried about if you’re okay.”
He lifted his arm, catching his sleeve between his teeth and chewing on it. It was something Hen had noticed he did when he was upset – sometimes it was a pencil, sometimes it was the side of his finger, sometimes it was his shirt sleeves. “Yeah,” he said quietly, muffled by the fabric in his mouth. “I’ll be okay. I don’t…” he looked up, eyes wide and uncertain. “I don’t wanna go back out yet, though.”
She understood the silent request for her to stay, the unspoken need for company and affection, and she was almost offended that he thought he even had to ask her. “Of course. Come here.” She turned her body almost sideways and opened her arms in invitation, letting him fall against her chest.
They stayed like that for a minute – Hen absentmindedly playing with Ravi’s hair while he leaned against her, hiccupping every so often as an after effect of crying as hard as he had.
“You know,” Hen broke the silence gently. “If you keep chewing on that sleeve of yours, you might suck all the blue out of it and dye your tongue instead.” It was silly, like something she would say to Denny, but he glanced up at her and let it drop from his mouth.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, and Hen might not have thought this one all the way through because she felt Ravi’s face heat up from embarrassment and he fidgeted slightly. “I know it’s kinda gross, it’s just like, comforting sometimes, I don’t-”
Hen shifted Ravi’s weight off of her gently and stood up. “No, no, no. Nothing like that. I just have…” She trailed off, rummaging through cabinets and drawers in the ambulance. “I know I keep them in here somewhere. Aha!” Triumphantly, she held up a clear bag filled with little rubber shapes in all sorts of colours, strung onto pieces of black yarn. “What’s your favourite colour?”
“Um…Green? Like teal-ish green?”
She took one of the shapes from the bag, placed it back in its drawer, and sat back down next to him. Extending her arm, she opened her hand and offered it to him.
“It’s…for biting?” Hesitantly, he took it from her, turning it over in his hands.
Hen nodded. “It’s a type of stim toy. It’s designed to be chewed on, so it won’t break or,” Her tone turned lighter, and she nudged him gently as she teased, “release deadly fabric dyes into your system. I keep them in here for the kids, it helps them calm down sometimes.”
At the mention of kids, Ravi gave it back so quickly that Hen for a second, entirely irrationally, wondered if it had burned him. “I don’t want to take it from the kids, Hen,” he explained. “They- they probably need it way more than I do, and I don’t- I don’t need a kid thing anyways, it’s- it’s okay I don’t have to bite on anything I’m- I’m an adult, adults don’t chew on stuff so-”
Hen set the necklace down and grabbed both of Ravi’s hands, squeezing them just hard enough to be grounding. “Hey, hey, hey. Ravi.” She waited until he looked at her, squeezing his wrists again. “Take a deep breath, with me.” She guided one of his hands to rest just above her heart, so that he could feel each inhale and exhale. “In and out, sweetheart, there you go.”
A few breaths later, the panic in his eyes was more subdued and he sank back against the wall behind him.
“You don’t have to take it,” Hen said, hoping she was conveying every ounce of safety and comfort she possibly could. “Nothing happens if you do take it, and nothing happens if you don’t. And if you don’t want it today, you can have it any other time you like.”
He stared at his hands, lifting one arm as if he was about to chew on his sleeve again and dropping it back onto his lap. “Not…” He looked terrified, but there was something hopeful in his expression that made Hen want to wrap him up in her arms and protect him forever. “Not today, I don’t think? Not…right now.”
Making sure to express complete acceptance of his decision, making sure he knew there was no right or wrong answer, Hen hummed in acknowledgement with a nod.
“…but one day?” Ravi continued, and his words were asking about a bit of green rubber and black yarn, but everything else about him was asking so much more – one day this won’t hurt quite so much? One day I’ll feel better? One day everything will be okay?
“One day,” Hen promised, ruffling his hair. “One day.”