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“Ravi, you’re the man behind today!” Bobby shouts at him as the alarm blares above them, and Ravi slows to a stop from his instant jog in response to the call.
“Copy that, Cap.” He says, his eyebrows furrowing slightly. He hasn’t done anything to make Bobby mad, at least not that he knows of, so this is probably more of a requirement on shift today. It might be because of the new probie that was recently transferred from the C shift.
Well, he’s not going to complain if he doesn’t have to take Chimney’s terrible jokes about whatever the call is. Watching the fire engine pull out into the street, Ravi folds his arms across his chest.
Should he…clean? Taking a glance around, the station is already pretty sparkling, thanks to the new probie, so that seems like it would be a waste of time.
May was off shift today, and checking the time it was only ten at night, so Ravi pulls out his phone, quickly scrolling to her contact, and pressed it to his ear.
As he listens to it ring, Ravi walks to the bunk room, because a quiet station is a good time to get some rest at least after he calls May to see how her day went.
Kicking off his shoes, Ravi lays down on the cot, swallowing a yawn.
“Hey!” May picks up, sounding surprisingly awake for it being so late.
He immediately grins at the sound of her voice, butterflies fluttering in his stomach. They’d been together for a year, and Ravi still gets butterflies. “Hey…” Ravi responds quietly, closing his eyes as he leans his head back against the wall.
“Everything okay? How’s your shift going?”
“No, no, everything’s okay. I’m the man behind on a call, so the station is…really quiet.” He releases a soft sigh. “Just needed to hear your voice.”
“Yeah?” May’s voice is equally as soft as his. “Did something happen?”
“...Just a rough call earlier, we uh…couldn’t save a kid. Eddie took it really hard. The boy was the same age as Christopher.”
“I’m so sorry Ravi.”
“It’s alright…” He assures her, staring at the light leaking into the room from the overhead lights in the bay. “I can’t even imagine doing this job if I had a kid, waiting for me to come home every night,” Ravi admits. Seeing what he does at work, dead kids, fires, the worst day of someone’s life…it’s hard to imagine bringing a life into a world like that.
Though May and him are nowhere near ready for that yet. Swallowing, he clears his throat. “Uh, but…tell me about your day?” He just really wants to hear her voice. Let it calm his racing thoughts and the heavy feeling in his heart, at least for a moment.
“Of course,” May immediately knows what he needs, and for the second time today, Ravi can imagine himself getting down on one knee and marrying her.
(The first time was when he rescued a man from a burning house and the second they were safe, their husband had hugged them tight and buried their face in his neck. I want that with May, was all Ravi could think while he watched them, surrounded with love despite the destruction in their house.)
May launches into a detailed walk-through of her day, talking about how she went out to eat with her friends and studied for an upcoming college exam (he’s so glad he decided to just join the fire academy instead of enrolling in college after he was already so burnt out from high school), and did some tidying up around her apartment.
The tightness in his chest feels lighter by the minute as he listens to her talk, a small smile on his face as he tucks his head against the pillow. He could stay like this forever.
A few minutes pass before May falls quiet, saying softly. “Do you feel better?”
He peeks and opens his eyes which he hadn’t even realized were closed. “Much.” Ravi sighs before hesitantly continuing, “Can you stay on call until I fall asleep?”
She answers a quiet affirmative, which hardly registers because he’s already falling asleep, his eyes drifting shut.
He can’t breathe. He’s underwater, he’s in the ocean, he can’t breathe, it’s dark and cold, and he can’t breathe–
Ravi's eyes snap open, trying to take in a gasp of air after his nightmare, almost expecting to hear May’s voice tell him it’s okay. But he can’t.
He still can’t breathe.
Confusion takes away the air in his chest almost, before he registers that someone’s hands are around his throat. And squeezing his airway.
Instantly, Ravi begins to kick out, wiggling beneath the weight of the person on top of him.
He can’t breathe. It hits Ravi in the chest like a kick from a mule. How bad this is. Someone is literally choking him out and he can’t breathe, he can’t–
“Just give me the morphine!” The man’s voice sounds desperate, close to tears, like they can’t live without it. He needs it so bad, he’s willing to kill over it?
Ravi almost wants to make some sassy remark, like Eddie ‘I-want-you-to-shut-up-person-with-a-gun’ Diaz would, but he can’t speak. His hand pushes at the man’s chest futility, tossing his body so that his shoulder hits their chest.
It works, kind of, as they both go tumbling off the cot, the man’s hands finally leaving his throat.
Dizzy, Ravi lies crouched over on the ground, hacking and coughing before he can feel the man grab at his back again.
And he is not about to lose the precious air he just got to return. Mid-coughing, Ravi kicks and pushes them away, clearly landing some kind of hit if their pained yell is anything to go by, but Ravi doesn’t stick around to find out.
He’s on his knees, stumbling and grasping at the edge of the cot to pull himself up, sucking in air with an awful wheeze, which doesn’t seem great for his health, but you know, someone continuing to try and choke you out doesn’t seem like a winning situation either. So, Ravi sucks it up (literally), and stumbles out of the bunk room.
His throat hurts so bad, and he’s ninety-eight percent sure that there’s already purple bruising in the shape of a hand around his throat, but it’s not like there’s a mirror anywhere around, and it’s not like he has time to stop and look because he can hear the man start to scramble after him.
Not great.
He needs 911. Or Bobby and everyone else to return from their call. He needs Athena to come and arrest this man but he–
Ravi left his phone in the bunk room, probably lying on the floor cracked from his struggle.
The telephone in Bobby’s office.
He starts to stagger in the vague direction of Cap’s office when he’s smacked into from behind. His forehead smacks into the apparatus floor below him, hands grabbing at his vulnerable neck again. Twisting in their grip he yanks his elbow back, trying to hit anything really, but he just jabs at thin air.
Not good. Not good, He panically thinks as his hands clutch his throat, again.
The morphine isn’t even here. The ambulance had gone out on call with the fire engine, it was only him. Though he doubts someone trying to kill him over drugs isn’t high on something, so then again, common sense didn’t seem like something this man had.
A gasp escapes his lips unwilling as the man squeezes tight, and he can’t fucking breathe again.
“Just give me the morphine!” He screams in Ravi’s face, landing some spit on him.
Which, was choking him not enough? Seriously?
His vision blurs at the edges and all he can think is, This is it. This is how I die. By some junkie looking for a quick fix. Not by running into a burning building.
He hasn’t even been able to really live yet. For so long he was trapped by his cancer diagnosis. Trapped in hospitals, trapped by his parent’s overwhelming need to fix what was wrong with him, trapped by his sister’s disdain for him because he got all of the attention.
He’d only recently started healing the bond between Anaya and him. Only recently started living life for himself, and not for cancer.
This can’t be it. Ravi thinks, tears blurring the rest of his vision as it starts to flicker.
And then he can breathe again.
He sucks in the air before he even realizes he can again, spluttering it out in the same breath as he coughs, rolling over onto his stomach. His elbows scramble below him, ready to push his body up and away in case he needs to get away again.
There’s yelling and screaming, someone’s hand touching his shoulder, which has him flinching until he realizes it’s Bobby.
They’re here. Deliriously Ravi thinks. He hadn’t even heard them return.
Trembling as he tries to speak, Ravi turns his head to see what had gotten the man to release the death grip he’d had on his throat. And it’s Buck and Eddie.
Eddie has gotten the man pinned to the ground, pure hatred all over his face, turning him a little red. Buck’s got one of the man’s arms pinned beneath his leg as he helps Eddie hold down the thrashing man.
He thought he was dead. That was it. All he had left in life, was a small breath of air and a flickering vision.
“We’ve got you, Ravi,” Bobby assures him, as Hen runs over with her med kit, police lights starting to light up the outside of the fire station. “We’ve got you,” He says again.
Ravi still can’t really catch a breath of fresh air. He can’t speak, his throat is so sore and painful to the touch. He’s clutching at it as he tries to say thank you, or cry, or both. Hen drops to her knees beside him, rubbing a hand up and down his back, as she whispers soothing things to him that he can’t really make out, too busy staring at the man who attacked him.
He’s still screaming, and spitting disgusting words out at all of them, but it doesn’t matter because seconds later he’s being shoved into the ground and cuffed by Athena.
It almost feels like a victory. If victory was less painful.
Leaning his face down against his arm that’s braced against the cold concrete ground, he catches his breath and tries to shove the tears in his eyes away, because now really isn’t the time or place, even though it feels like he should be allowed to breakdown and scream and cry over the fact that he could have just died. Been murdered.
Strangled to death.
Buck’s hand joins Hen’s, though he’s rubbing his shoulder instead of his back. “We’ve got you probie. Let it out.”
He shakily exhales, gingerly rubbing at his throat. It feels like it’s on fire, like a burning flame slowly trickling its way down his airway and wrapping around his lungs, setting fire to his skin and everything around it.
Hot tears leak down his cheek, as he whimpers into the skin of his arm, because it’s all he can really do.
“I’m sorry,” Bobby breathes out, even though it’s not his fault. It’s really not. “I’m so sorry, Ravi.”
The skin of his neck is a raging storm of purple and blue bruising already, the sharp red imprint of his hands and fingers embedded in his skin.
I can’t breathe, is all Ravi can manage to think, even though he gasps in air at the same time. He’s not safe at the fire station anymore. He’s not safe anywhere. He’ll never feel safe again.
I can’t breathe.