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Ravi looks at himself in the mirror again, ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut. It’s just nerves. He needs to do this. He needs to face his fears.
Buck was in a tsunami and he still goes to the beach with Christopher , Ravi tells himself over and over again. All you did was dive after a car, you’re fine. You can do this.
This shirt doesn’t match his jeans. Sharply exhaling, Ravi pulls the gray t-shirt off more roughly than needed, throwing it onto the bed as he walks into his closet. Again.
For the fourth time.
“Ravi, we don’t have to do this if you’re not ready,” May hesitantly says from where she’s sitting on his bed, watching him move his hangers with a ringing clack and vetoing every shirt he looks at.
“I’m ready,” Ravi responds swiftly. Though he doesn’t feel very ready. It was going to be fine. He had to do it. “I just can’t find a shirt that matches.”
He very pointedly does not look in May’s direction, afraid that she’d let him know it was okay if they didn’t go . He’d give in immediately and Ravi can’t avoid the beach forever. It is California.
Besides, his parents had already texted him this morning about how proud they were of him for facing the pier again. For the first time since the incident. Even Bobby and everyone else at the 118 had texted him something encouraging.
Admittedly, Bobby had texted him, you got this with a lettuce emoji. Though Ravi is pretty sure it was meant to be a thumbs up. Anyway, everyone was so supportive, especially the 118, who knew trauma like the back of their hands, so it wasn’t like he could just back out of it.
He could do this. He was ready.
Ravi startles slightly as May’s hand gently slides over his shoulder, her soft fingers against his bare skin. He hadn’t even heard her get up.
“Here,” May murmurs, and his shoulders slouch, either in relief that she was dropping it or defeat that he didn’t have an excuse to never return to the pier again. He’s not really sure. “This cream sweater would look good.” She picks out the shirt and hands it to him.
Ravi’s fingers carefully play with the texture, breathing deeply to calm himself. “Thank you,” He quietly says, catching May’s hand before she can move too far away, his thumb gently rubbing circles on her palm.
He can do this. It’s a date at the pier, where they can stuff their faces with cotton candy, and ride the Ferris wheel, playing fair games and winning prizes. It would be fun.
Ravi shuffles back out to the mirror in the corner of his bedroom, bought for May after she started keeping more of her clothes at his apartment (even though he uses it more than her at this point), and pulls the sweater on. It does look good with his light jeans, though he’s not really sure why he’s surprised since May’s outfits always look good.
He is partial to May wearing his sweatpants and hoodies on lazy Sunday mornings when they have no place else to be but making breakfast and slow dancing in the kitchen. Even if May does insult his two left feet dancing every time.
He keeps staring at himself in the mirror for a second, before turning to May with a hesitant smile.
He can do this.
“Looks good?” He checks just in case, running his hands through his curly hair as he takes in May.
She’s wearing a striped tank top where the red pops and jean shorts, her hair left down so that it falls gorgeously over her shoulders.
It is a date after all, and he wants to look good. Not like one of those guys who wears cargo shorts and open-toed sandals to a fancy restaurant, or something.
“Perfect,” May smiles at him, and he finds it easier to genuinely smile in response.
“Okay.” He breathes out. Then in. He can do this. “Ready to go?”
“Ready.” May offers him her hand, and he gladly takes it, squeezing it tightly.
He can do this, as long as May is by his side.
The pier is packed today.
He’d be lying if he said it didn’t bother him because the last thing he wants right now is to be shoved side to side while revisiting the place of his nightmares.
Quite literally.
His gaze keeps drifting towards the horizon. It’s not hard to remember his feet pounding against the wood below him as he ran after the car that shattered through the railings just at the end of the pier. They fixed it, he notices, registering it almost in a detached sort of way. Like it didn’t matter that there was no evidence of what had happened. When he wants to scream that they can’t just fix it like nothing ever happened. May’s hand squeezes his, bringing him out of his spiraling thoughts.
“What first?” She softly asks, pulling them towards the side so they’re not standing in the way of people who are trying to enjoy a sunny day at the pier. Ravi watches a family walk past, their kids screaming and shouting in excitement, pointing at the Ferris wheel nearby.
He swallows, turning to look at May again. Her eyes are soft, searching, and he knows if he asked to leave right now, May wouldn’t even blink. She’d just take his hand and lead him back to the car.
But he can do this.
I can do this, He thinks and nods. “Cotton candy?”
“Cotton candy,” May affirms, and she takes his hand again, even though his palms feel sweaty, and clenches hers tighter than what’s probably comfortable as they start to walk closer to the end of the pier.
The gentle breeze from the ocean carries the smell of salt, and he tries to enjoy it like he used to.
The pier, and the ocean, have bad memories. But that doesn’t mean he can’t make new, better memories here.
Especially when he has May beside him.
They’re leaning against the railing on the side, not the front, a pink fluffy cloud of pure sugar in his hands. And it almost feels peaceful. May’s eyes are closed, her face turned towards the sun like she’s soaking in the atmosphere.
His stomach flutters just watching her.
“What?” May asks with a small laugh as she notices him staring.
“Nothing,” He says, grinning. “Just wondering how much longer I have to hold this monstrosity of sugar.”
May snorts. “Don’t even pretend like you don’t like it.”
Okay, it’s true, he has been the one sneaking most of the wisps of it. “It’s like a cloud melting in my mouth,” Ravi defends himself.
She grins, leaning into his space and ripping off some of the fluffy candy. May pops it in her mouth. “Mhmm.”
Her face grows more serious though after a second, huddling into his side as a couple joins their side at the railing, bickering between each other. “You feeling okay?”
Ravi mulls it over. “It’s…it’s not terrible,” He settles on, staring out at the ocean. And really it’s not. The guilt hanging in his stomach feels lighter in a way, like he’s not letting go of what happened, but trying to make peace with it. Trying to live with it.
“That’s good,” May says. Ravi sighs. It is good. It feels good to take something back that should never have not been his anyway. He can enjoy the ocean, he can enjoy a date with his girlfriend on the pier, it’s all his.
The pier is his again, and it doesn’t belong to some monster who tried to kill both of his kids that day.
“Okay.” Ravi pushes his elbows off the railing, straightening up. May glances at him curiously.
“Okay?”
“What now?” He asks as he tosses their cotton candy into the trash can.
May blinks at him.
“This is a date,” Ravi says. “And if I’m not mistaken, dates are supposed to be fun. So, May,”
May fights the smile trying to creep up on her face, shaking her head. He might be a little bit of a dork.
“What would you like to do next?”
She snorts, which makes his heart do something funny in his chest, and reaches up to brush her lips against his. “You’re so dumb,” May murmurs against his lips, somehow fond and exasperated all at the same time. He smiles, his hand reaching up to gently caress her jaw. Her lips taste like cotton candy.
“Not that I’m,” Ravi murmurs between kisses, “complaining, but I think making out on a pier isn’t very family friendly.”
May groans and drops her forehead against his chest. “Ferris wheel.” She says.
His mind blanks for a second. Ferris wheel?
Oh. Ravi grins. “Okay. Ferris wheel it is.”
They slide their way out of the growing crowd near the railings, hands tightly folded together so they don’t lose each other, occasionally passing smiles between each other.
Ravi thinks that this will be his favorite memory of the pier.
At least, it would be, until he hears the wood creak below his feet. Until he hears the ear-crushing snap below him, and the screaming of people as the ground caves in beneath him.
And Ravi suddenly wishes he’d never gone to the pier at all as the world fades away.
Coming back to consciousness is almost like being hit in the face with a wrecking ball. He says almost because it hurts so much more than that.
Ravi coughs, hacking up some type of flem from the dust and debris, and groans, twisting his head against the broken wood below him. There’s a burning, stabbing feeling shooting up his hip from his thigh, something warm and metallic smelling gushing down from the source of the pain.
Everything hurts. Grime feels like a second skin.
His mind is racing, boiling in confusion.
Okay, He tries to maintain calm. I need to stop the bleeding.
And he really does, because the flow of blood is not stopping, and he’s pretty sure it’s soaked through his jeans already. Fumbling for purchase on something, Ravi drags himself up, screaming as he slumps against the wood debris behind him.
His entire body feels like it should be ablaze, but instead, it just feels like he was hit with an icy wave, his head spinning dizzily as he looks at his thigh.
It’s so red. The blood is stunningly red, and flowing like a river.
His hands are already slick with it, even if he doesn’t remember even touching it.
It must be an artery.
Okay. He can do this.
Though that has a different meaning than it did this morning.
Stop the blood flow, Ravi’s trembling hands fumble with the belt, hastily pulling it from the loops of his jeans. He tries to ignore how the voice telling him what to do sounds like Hen. Tourniquet it.
This was going to hurt. Really badly.
Ravi winces and loops the belt just above his wound, trying not to focus on how red already shines against the leather.
One.
Two.
Three…
He yanks the belt tightly, screaming in utter agony. It’s like hot, boiling water against frostbitten skin. Tears spring to his eyes and run down his cheeks as he tightens and tightens it more, staunching the blood just barely. Blood is still leaking, but not at the speed it had been.
His hands shake, from adrenaline or pain he’s not sure. And then it hits him. He’s not alone.
“May.” He whispers to himself at first.
“May!” Ravi’s bloodied hands clutch at a beam– from the structure of the pier– pulling himself up so fast he briefly thinks he’s going to pass out. The smell of burning is nearby. Electrical fires from the wires that powered the rides, maybe. He tries not to think about gasoline, because he can only handle so much. “May!”
He staggers in one direction, not really sure where he’s going or if help is coming but he has to get to May. Blood spurts down his leg, hot and red and sticky, almost like the cotton candy he and May had shared earlier.
What he wouldn’t give to go back to that moment. When everything was starting to feel okay again.
“May!”
His leg wobbles beneath him. He has to find May.
He can do this. He has to find May. “MAY!”
Ravi hears the desperation in his own voice, and he tries not to look at the deceased bodies, crushed under wood. Because that can’t be what happened to May. She was okay. Maybe not okay, but she was alive.
He’d find her. He had to.
Blood rushes to his head, making everything blur and spin and sway unsteadily. There are grains of sand everywhere. Stuck to the lining of the gaping gash on his thigh, stuck to his face from the tears occasionally leaking from his eyes.
He needs– “Ravi!”
Doesn’t even pause. He staggers in the direction of her voice.
He sees her, blood running down the side of her face, her legs cut up from the debris, and bruises already appearing on her skin. But she’s alive.
And then his arms are full of May, clutching at her as relief as the tight feeling in the back of his throat makes him shakily exhale. “Oh my God.” He murmurs, holding and being held. “You’re okay. Thank God. Oh my God…”
May shakes in his hold, squeezing herself as close to him as she can get. They’re surrounded by the stench of death, the smoke, dust, and debris, and the haunting smell of salt in the air, but they are alive.
His thigh blazes, and it almost feels like a dog has hooked its teeth into his flesh and held and held as he stumbled and staggered to find May. To find her.
“You’re bleeding,” May breathes, shakily pulling back. They’re not out of danger yet. They’re still stuck right in the middle of it.
“So are you.” Completely forgoing his pain. His hand comes up to gently swipe his finger along the cut on May’s temple. She hisses at the sting, and he breathlessly apologizes.
It feels almost ironic how the California sun is still shining above them, scorching his skin. Water laps at his feet, and Ravi shakes his head dizzily. “We need to…”
To what? Get help? Stumble their way through the maze of debris and to the open beach, hoping Ravi doesn’t bleed out.
It hits him. The fire. “May, I need you to do something,”
May stares.
“I need you to cauterize my wound.”
Her head is already shaking, her mouth opening and closing.
“May! May, you have to.” Ravi pants, grabbing her hands. Blood smears against her skin. “May. Look at me.”
May’s still shaking her head, eyes welling up with tears.
“We need to stop the bleeding.”
“Ravi, I can’t–” Her voice catches. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“You can. You can.”
She inhales shakily. “I don’t know–”
“I’ll walk you through it.” If he doesn’t pass out. Ravi isn’t about to tell her that though.
“Oh my God,” May says, and he agrees. This has to be the worst day of his life.
Maybe he should start keeping a list. May grabs his arms and helps him stagger over toward the flickering light of flames, because, well cauterizing needs heat. A lot of it.
The splash of water below him echoes in his ears and it’s like he feels everything all over again.
Everything.
The car driving off the pier, and the pier collapsing. All of it.
He slumps down on the ground minutes later and May crouches down right beside him. Her hair is matted with blood, though he doesn’t dare ask whose it is. They had been split up for a while.
“What do I do?” May searches his face, nerves making her hands shake. He exhales.
“We need…something metal. Something that will heat up…make sure it…glows a reddish color and then just…” Ravi swallows, trying not to think about burning flesh and fire literally going into his wound.
“Got it,” She answers, looking just as queasy about it as he does.
He watches her search through the debris for a minute, before he closes his eyes. Please. Please. Ravi doesn’t know who he’s pleading to. Bobby knows Ravi and May are at the pier. He’s coming to get them, along with the entire 118. They’ll get them out. He just has to not bleed out.
May’s back with the piece of metal, dulling glowing red at the end where it’s clear she stuck over the fire.
Ravi exhales. “Okay, just…hold it on the wound for 2 seconds at a time. Keep going until it’s…” May seems to read between the lines. Keep going, even if he passes out. “Until it’s closed. Okay?”
“Ravi,” May says, her voice desperate.
“I know,” He swallows, and leans against the wood behind his back. The tide keeps coming in. He can hear the crash of waves against walls of debris, and the lap of water against his body as he lays in the sand.
Ravi lifts his sweater’s sleeve, which was cream just this morning and now a rudish red tint, and sticks it in his mouth, baring down on it.
He can do this.
And then May presses the burning hot metal against his wound.
He screams and instantly begins to shake, May’s free hand holding his leg down so he doesn’t try to kick and drag himself away.
Ravi writhes against the pain, his vision flashing white and blood rushes to his ears. It hurts so bad. The smell of burning flesh hits his nose and he wants to pass out. He doesn’t want to be conscious for this anymore. Metallic, coppery, burning.
He wails and screams and suddenly it’s over. May is trembling and placing clumsily kisses on his temple as she cradles his slouched form in her arms. ‘It’s over, it’s over, I’m done, I’m done.”
She repeats over and over again, though it still feels like the scream is stuck in his throat.
Tears stream down his cheeks as he looks at the wound. It’s charred and burned around the edges and he can taste the metal in his mouth but the blood is gone. It seeps between the cracks in little droplets but it’s gone. He slumps against May’s side and fights to breathe.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” May murmurs into his hair, which is covered with dust and debris.
She holds him close to her, feeling him shake violently every few seconds and tightens her hold.
Ravi doesn’t know how long they sit there, pressed against the destruction all around them, waves steadily lapping higher and higher against their legs. He couldn’t even feel his leg, though his flimsy belt tourniquet was off now at least.
It feels like forever.
His stomach is tied in knots, nausea the ever-staying friend. The blood, and the fire, and the salt in the air.
He wants to vomit.
“Over here!” Someone shouts, but Ravi can’t even bring himself to look up from where he’s curled up against May’s limp body. He presses his head against May’s shoulder, and he tries to breathe.
The world fades away again.
Ravi’s eyes squeeze themselves shut the first few times he comes back to consciousness. The feeling of a hospital bang around his wrist feels familiar, and it’s not hard to imagine where he is.
He doesn’t want to wake up yet. He wants to float in the darkness and let it hide him from the pain.
May is dead, he remembers. I don’t want to wake up.
Of course, he can’t keep that promise, and the moment the bright lights hit him, Ravi starts crying. Someone clutches his hand, which reminds him of how he tightly held May’s hand in his while they lay in the debris, and the water, and the sand.
Hen swims into his vision. “Ravi, it’s okay. Breathe, breathe.”
His thigh throbs and burns. It feels like it’s been stretched open and tightly closed together with stitches, trying to piece him back together. “Is she, she’s…” He mumbles, not making much sense to even himself.
“Breathe.”
He tries.
“Ravi, May’s okay. She’s okay.”
Disbelief crashes against his body. He draws in a breath of air again and again, near hyperventilating.
“She’s alive?” His voice cracks and breaks and Ravi doesn’t even care that he’s crying in front of Hen.
“She’s alive,” Hen smiles and blinks back her own tears. “She was internally bleeding, but she’s out of surgery now. She’s okay, Ravi.”
He wants to see her. Needs to see her. “Hen,” He says, and she instantly shakes her head.
“Ravi, you can’t see her yet,”
Like that would stop him.
Ravi gets his way not even an hour later. Though he’s in a wheelchair instead of on his two own feet, he doubts he’ll be able to walk for a while, if anything the doctor said was true.
The nerves in his thigh were burned. Not a death sentence for his firefighting days, but he’d need physical therapy. Again.
Ravi’s never going to the beach again, and he doubts anyone would blame him.
Swallowing, he stares at May in the hospital bed. She’s slightly propped up, Athena gently curling her fingers through her hair, which is still matted with blood and debris, but she’s never looked so beautiful in his eyes.
Pushing himself closer, May weakly smiles at him. Her eyes are red from tears, her skin pale, and he doesn’t think he fairs much better.
“Hey,” he whispers hoarsely, and it’s a start.
He can do this.
Even if it has a completely different meaning than it did this morning.