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"I mean," Hen says, kicked back in the comfiest armchair in the station loft. "The pharmacy degree did help in the fire academy, but most of it was just good old fashioned studying, you know? It felt like I was back in uni again."
Chimney grins at her, twirling a pen between his fingers. "Ooh, a fancy degree," he teases. "Some of us had to start from scratch, by the way. Really get our hands dirty."
Hen rolls her eyes at him, kicking at his chair slightly. Chimney dodges with an especially artful twist, if you ask him, and laughs when she makes a rude gesture at him. "With what," she snorts. "Kaluha? Weren't you a bartender before joining the academy?"
For some reason, that's what gets the new probie interested, blue eyes blinking as he shifts forward from where he'd been idly flipping through some sort of old station manual from a dusty cupboard.
"You were a bartender?" he asks, all wide-eyed. Chimney smirks at him, feeling a little fission of satisfaction spark through him at the chance to impress the frat boy that's found his way into their little group.
"Among other things," he drawls, drawing out the suspense. He beams when he catches a spark of curiosity in the kid's eyes. "I lived a long and varied life before becoming a firefighter, young padawan. Gained a lot of life experiences to become the man I am today."
Buck's brows wrinkle a little, his fuckass backwards cap tilting on his head as he goes: "What the fuck is a padawan?"
Chimney groans loudly as Hen cackles. "You are so uncultured," he tells him.
The probie ignores him, rude. "So you, uh, had a lot of jobs before you joined the 118?" he asks, sounding weirdly eager. Sheltered kid, probably. He probably thinks that bouncing from job to job was something fun and glamorous, instead of just vaguely humiliating. Whatever, all the better for Chimney.
"Dozens," Chimney tells him.
Besides the probie, Hen looks at him with a spark of amusement in her eyes. Don't ruin this for me, he says silently to her. She shrugs a shoulder, allowing it. They both like impressing the new probie, after all. There's just something about him-- his undisguised awe, his genuine interest. He might be a stereotypical cocky frat bro in some ways, but at least he's a likeable one.
"Like what?" the kid pushes forward, watching Chimney with weirdly intense eyes.
Chimney flips through a mental rolodex of past jobs, considering which would be the most likely to impress a young white guy in his early 20s. "Oh, you know," he says. "Lots of stuff. Entrepreneurship, some social media stuff, bartending, obviously, some traveling--"
"That's cool!" Buck blurts out. "I mean-- I did some, uh, some traveling too."
Chimney rolls his eyes a little internally, thinking of the kid relaxing on a beach in Bali on his parents' dime or doing an exchange in Europe and defining his entire personality around it. "Not like that, kid," he says. "This was strictly for work purposes."
The probie deflates a little, which, Chimney winces, maybe he poked at his ego a little too hard. Kid was just trying to relate, after all. "I mean--" he says, casting a look at Hen, who gives him a fix our resident probie look back. "That's nice, Buck. I'm sure you had a lot of fun. It's always...nice...to get out...?"
Buck snorts a little, breaking off his awkward words. Chimney internally sighs in relief. Another plus for the probie -- he never really seemed to get offended by any of their little quips, even when they did, admittedly, occasionally get a little mean. A necessity for a firehouse, sure, but one that probies often don't get the memo for. Especially when the probies where young white men, and the ones dishing it out were, well, not.
(The bar, to be honest, was kind of in hell.)
"How long did you...work for, before deciding to go to fire academy?" the probie asks, tugging their conversation back into place.
Chimney shrugs. "A while," he says. "I had to find what fit for me, you know?" And what would make the Lee's proud, he thinks, an addendum too private for a new probie's ears.
Buck nods. "I get that," he says. He opens his mouth again, but Chimney doesn't notice, his next words already slipping out.
"And besides, it took me a while to pay off that student debt. Gotta start with a clean slate, y'know?"
A moment of silence, just long enough for Chimney to furrow his brows and turn to look at Buck again. But the probie looks normal enough, thoughtful. Maybe it never occured to him that people were paying their own student debts, Chimney thinks wryly. A quick look exchanged with Hen echoes his sentiments.
"Oh," Buck says, after a beat too long. "So-- uh, so you went to college?"
Chimney flaps his hand dismissively. "Barely," he snorts. "Just, like, a shitty little community college degree, you know?"
"Business major," Hen drawls, mockery in her voice. Chimney sticks his tongue out at her.
"I just wanted to get it over with!" he insists, flapping a hand. "I mean, I spent more time working to fund that degree than the degree itself. Completely pointless."
There's a small note in the probie's voice when he speaks again, something Chimney can't quite put his finger on. "But you finished it anyways?"
Chimney pauses slightly, wondering at the slight change of tone. But he can't quite figure it out, so he answers honestly: "Yeah, for my family. They seemed excited about watching me graduate, so I decided-- might as well finish for them, let them take some pictures or whatever."
He says it flippantly, but he feels a small smile move across his face as he remembers it: Anne and John, clapping and beaming as he walked on that shitty little stage. Kevin whopping so loud that several people shushed him. The picture still on their mantle, so proud for so little.
It had taken Chimney too many years to find something that he felt proud of, too. But at least he had been able to give them this in the meantime, the best he could do between all the things they'd given him and all the things they lost because of him.
"Oh," the probie says. "Yeah. That-- that makes sense, I guess."
Chimney laughs a little at the awkwardness in his tone. "Life lesson, probie," he says, pointing at the kid. "Business degrees suck ass. Would not recommend."
"A little too late for that, I think," Hen grins. "And besides, who doesn't know that business majors are the bane of higher education?"
"Hey, that's a different sentence, are you besmirching my honor--"
"Like you had any honor to besmirch, Han."
Chimney turns to face Buck again. "Hope you didn't go to any business courses in college," he teases. "Or sweet Henrietta here will be outnumbered."
A flicker of an expression, too quick to catch. A grin that takes over, a little different than usual, in some undefinable way.
"Uh, yeah, no," Buck chuckles. "There's no-- uh, there's no danger of that."
And if there is a note of something disappointed in his voice, it's forgotten as Hen claps a cheerful hand on his shoulder, as they begin to bicker again. Chimney falls into the conversation with ease, with cheer. There is, after all, not much more to it than that.