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Clownpierce had not even made it to the door downstairs before the boiler had exploded. One blast powerful enough to take the door straight off its hinges and put him on the floor before he ever had a second to process.
When he comes back to himself ten seconds later, his ears ring loudly, drowning out the sound of everything else. The roaring fire, the screams and yelling and fear of everybody around him.
When he tries to stand, his left arm gives way the moment he puts pressure on it, buckling and twisting in the way he knows arms should not. Dislocated—broken, he doesn't know. And when he turns his head enough to see one of the maids—he never remembered her name—trapped underneath a splintered beam, none of that matters anymore.
He uses his good arm to stand up. It's not a conscious decision so much as it is the absence of one—an old habit from long before Whitepine, from before the mask, from before this. He's not fully upright, but it's enough to help pull off the beam. She doesn't move—nor does she even twitch—and he looks away from her locked, horrified, but vacant stare.
Clownpierce goes on a rescue mission. He ignores the servant who is most definitely dead laying between broken furniture and throws his bad shoulder at a door with a handle too hot to touch. The pain never registers, all he understands is save them, make sure they live.
He manages to help BitOtter out of a window, half carrying them with his good arm when they trip over what is definitely not someone else's leg. BitOtter disappears over the windowsill, and Clown avoids thinking about who he has to step back over. It's harder when there's faces, when theres names to haunt you, telling you that you didn't save them specifically.
Somewhere in his suicidal mission, he realises his sleeve is on fire, he doesn't know how he notices, everything smells like burning and he still can't feel one of his arms, but he swats the small flames away the best he can.
Not once does Clown even think about 'going back' to help himself, it's not in the plan. It never has been.
But, by the time he's thinking about it, the smoke is thick enough to chew and his lungs have begun to make their complaints very noticable. He ignores it, just as he has with his significant lack of hearing and feeling. As long as there are people alive in here, there's a job to do.
Over the years, Clownpierce has learned that he was once a soldier and so he will always be a soldier. His body has always been a tool, one that has simply grown a little worn with age. When his vision starts swimming, he blames the heat. When his sight narrows, he blames the smoke. When his cough comes up wet and stops clearing anything at all, he tells himself he'll worry about it later.
He doesn't remember going back to the stairwell in the west, maybe he had heard something or someone—maybe by then he had stopped trusting his ears. He gets two steps before his lungs constrict in a horrifically sharp pain he can't ignore anymore, and he puts his good forearm on the wall. The wall is hot, and it takes him far too long to pull it back. He just needs a breather, a second to level out before he braves the smoke and flames that have spread to the first floor.
In a small, terrified part of his brain, he knows he's dying in here. He did what he could, but it's not enough. If he manages one more before he goes, that's one more death he prevented.
Clownpierce gets two more steps before the ground comes up to reach him instead.
;
Ash had been on the roof on the other side of the estate when the explosion happened. He would say a part of him knew the second things went up in flames exactly who would carry out the worlds stupidest plan known to man.
He had opened the door and been met with the immediate billowing of smoke, and gave himself one minute. If he couldn't find Clown in sixty seconds he was out.
It is not one minute. Ash pulls off his blazer, tears it up the best he can, and uses it the best he can as a mask. It won't do much. but it's better than nothing, and he runs in. He rushes past two staff who tell him they're going to try to jump from the first floor. Whatever plan they yell falls on deaf ears as he leaves them behind, he won't be joining them.
The stairwell, when he finally reaches it, is half buried under burning wood, the ceiling above collapsing in on itself. It doesn't stop him, and he kicks what he can out the way, swatting at the flickering embers that spill out.
It's at the bottom of the stairwell that Ash finds Clown, bloody and broken, breathing wet and raspy and still fighting to get up, probably fifteen seconds from just kicking the bucket. Ash curses under his breath, and grabs a fistful of collar, and pulls. He doesn't think about the cracked mask barely hanging on or the smear of blood that trails behind them.
He doesn't stop either, not until he's found a window that isn't blocked and hauled Clown's body out. They both end up landing in a bush, but it's only once that Ash too collapses into the grass that he'll ever admit how stupid they both are, that he's cut it far too close, that if he was any slower a million things could have gone differently. It's relief and accusation and fear as the flames dance higher and consume every inch of the estate.
;
Reddoons hears about it from a man in his shop.
He never gets the man’s name. He wouldn’t remember it afterwards even if he had asked anyway. The guy had come into Bargain Luxury with the energy of a man who had seen something and had needed to put it into words at the soonest opportunity, and then he had said it in the way people do when they don’t yet understand the severity of what they had really seen. More interested in the spectacle of it all than the real world ramifications.
“You believe that?” He starts. “Whole east side of that estate must’ve lit up like a lantern. Heard one’a the staff kept going back in— they're sayin' somethin’ 'bout a mask saving his life. Talk about bein’ dedicated to the job, I guess.”
Reddoons stills, he doesn’t move. Mask. Went back in, went back in, wentbackin—
“What estate?” He doesn't need to ask, the description alone tells him exactly where.
The man tells Reddoons anyway, oblivious, and still riding the high of seeing the aftermath of tragedy unfolding. When the first syllable hits, Redd slams the rope he wasn't even aware he was holding onto the counter. When had he even picked it up?
"We're closed for the day." He says through grit teeth.
"But—"
"Closed." Redd says firmer, already moving, already untying his apron with hands that aren't steady enough.
He doesn't run, not exactly, just walks hurriedly. Running means admitting something about just how fast his heart beats at the thought of what happened to Clown? Oh, God, what happened to him? and Redd has spent the best part of twenty years pointedly not admitting a hundred things about Clown. So, he walks fast and simply lets that be all of it.
The smell of Whitepine burning and the smoke that still disappates up into the sky hit him before he had even turned onto the path. There is only one time he has smelt anything like it, like char and death and tragedy. He swallows the bile in his throat and presses onward.
The fire isn't out, but the fire department have put out a lot of what they can. There are medics everywhere, and it all too painfully reminds Redd of twenty years ago in ways he cannot ignore.
Reddoons goes through seven people searching for Clownpierce.
Nobody has answers for him. they tell him they don't know who's still in there, or who is alive or dead or whatever else. They all tell him to check the hospital, and if he's not there he's unaccounted for. He scans every face once, then twice, the same headcount Clown always did in habit.
Instead, he finds Ash, being tended to by a medic.
"Where." Is all Reddoons says.
"Hospital." Ash croaks, voice heavy from its own smoke damage. Whatever expression sits on Redd's face, Ash doesn't question it. He knows little, but it's still enough. "He's… alive."
"Alive. Not okay?"
"No. Almost died. Playing hero."
"Of course." Reddoons turns to the estate, still blackened and smoking, still radiating light into the darkening evening. He thought about war a little, in the way he always tried not to when it came to him and Clown and fires. Old habits die hard, and they very nearly died in that blaze.
;
One of the nurses in the hospital points Reddoons down the hall of the burn unit and Reddoons walks down it much faster than he had intended to. He slows down almost abruptly at the end, because part of him is afraid of what he'll see. He had been there after the incident that tore up Clown's face, the entire reason for the mask.
Whatever lay in that bed can't have been worse than the bloodsoaked bandages and crude stitches from that foreign girl Reddoons still regrets flirting with, and it can't have been worse than the doctor telling him Clown only might live. He's scared—even if he wont admit it—of it being worse. But fear only keeps him back, and there is no version of Clownpierce that lies in there just fine and okay.
When Reddoons enters, Clown is propped up with his back against a stack of pillows that does little to disguise how he actually sits, which is horribly. His arm is wrapped and strapped across his chest. There's gauze wrapped around his half of his head and under his jaw, it only hides half of the scarring that was already there and simply frames the rest. His skin is too grey, and no warm lighting from the lamp beside him counters it. It's ugly, in the way that trauma always is. It makes Clown look small, and small is not a word Redd has ever used to describe the man before him.
He stands in the doorway a beat too long, and Clown finally tilts his weary head up. Him being awake is either good luck or bad luck depending on how Redd looks at it. It meant he's lucid enough to see the worry on Redd's face and subsequently downplay the state of himself.
"Red… you didn't have to come." Clown says, his voice has a rasp in it that wasn't there the last time they spoke and most certainly wasn't there yesterday either.
"Heard it from a guy at the store. He thought it was entertainment or somethin'."
He moves in and invites himself, shutting the door and pulling the chair on the side as close to the bed as he can.
"How many people's lives did you put above your own? Three? Four?" Redd asks. There's not an accusatory tone in his voice, because he knows Clown, he knows exactly the kind of man he is and the kind of man he would die as. Asking Clownpierce 'why' is asking why people breathe; it's a function developed for survival. In this case, the trauma of survival.
"Something like that." Clownpierce avoids the question because the truth is that he doesn't even know himself.
Reddoons looks down at Clown's arm, limp and wrapped and he dreads to think what happened to it. His eyes flick back up to the dressing on Clown's jaw and realises he can't look at either for long.
"Do you know how many…" Clown starts.
"No. Well, Ash is okay. But, no. Came right here."
Twenty years of Clownpierce playing mother bear to people, of counting heads and putting himself in harms way over the little things.
Twenty years is a long time, and it's an even longer time to not think about a certain thing, but here they both are, in the same damn position they were back then. Reddoons knows they both have managed it in the same way; keeping busy, and keeping everything unnamed. They don't talk about the war outside of simply that; 'the war'. They don't talk about what they are to each other because that makes everything else too real. It had worked fine for twenty damn years and now it doesn't because it's a cycle and they've finally looped back around.
"You're quiet, it's weird." Clown rasps, sinking back into the pillows the best his body will allow.
"I keep… thinkin' about you dying. In there." In there, in the base, in the estate. It was the same thing wrapped up and topped with a different colour bow.
"I should have. Probably a thousand times, if I'm being honest. Should've died the second the boiler exploded, and then every time I did anything afterwards." His eyes are focused on the ceiling, and the paint that had started to stain. He speaks like he reads off a script, detatched and borrowed. "Just hadn't gotten around to it yet, I suppose. Kept finding one more thing to do before I went. Nurse said I might be deaf in one ear, I'll get more scarring from the burns but… worse else I have is the dislocated arm, so, all things considered, could be so much worse. Could be dead."
Reddoons is silent for a moment, and then his hand reaches up and rests over top of Clown's good one, their fingers locking together the same way they last did a decade ago.
"I didn't know what to do with myself when I first heard, and I still don't even in this damn chair. I thought about you dyin' and all I know is that I can't have a world you're not alive in. We promised each other we'd live, 'n I know we were scared and young but… I don't know. Theres a version of me out there livin' through Hell because you died in there." Reddoons can feel the trembling work its way through his legs, then his shoulders, and into his voice. They were both soldiers, but they aren't anymore.
Clownpierce doesn't move his hand, but he's far too weak to grip back. He lies there, Redd's hand in his, and he knows his own mortality very well. Life, to Clown, is not something he takes for granted. Even amongst his self destructive tendencies; he does it because he swore duty to protect, and to die doing his job is to do it right. It always will be.
"God, Clown," Reddoons' free hand comes up to cover his mouth. He feels burning drops of his own tears hit his skin and he knows it's so so over.
"Hey, hey. Red, you're okay. I'm okay, okay?"
"No—yes—no. It's not that. We're okay, I know." He sniffs. It's so much more juvenile than just 'okay'. "I just… nevermind."
"Just breathe, like I showed you how to before."
Before, before, before.
He follows suit, deep breaths he wishes Clown could do with him, until his tears are nothing more than drying streaks on his cheeks.
"Didn't want to lose you, not then, not now, not ever. And I've been such a coward because I thought that… if I did this one thing, I would."
"What thing, Red?"
Reddoons pauses, heart drumming in his chest, because it really is now or never. A million things could go wrong, but a million more already has. To be wrong about everything he's going to do is to lose Clown, but to lose him like this is to lose him alive. Alive means knowing he's out there still living a life.
He leans over slowly, and he's careful not to brush anything more than their noses together.
"I've known how you feel about us for a long time, and I know we've both just… dodged around it for so long because that makes it real, it makes us different. I don't care anymore, I know it's selfish, I know it's unfair, but I can't not do this and regret never doin' it."
The kiss Reddoons places on Clown's lips is soft, tender, and holding back everything, but it says it all anyway. Clown's lips are chapped and dry, they always have been. They're everything Reddoons ever dreamed of kissing, the same damn man he spent two decades wanting from a distance because friends was all he thought he needed. Friends who held each other, who have seen each other at their very worst. When they part, he intentionally keeps his eyes down, voice small and loaded with the instinctual urge of flight the second he thought it went wrong.
It doesn't feel right at first, the silence hangs over him like shame and guilt, but Reddoons doesn't move away. Neither does Clown, they stay hand in hand until he speaks.
"Near enough twenty years I've wanted to do that." Clown says instead.
Red's head shoots up.
"What?"
"Twenty years."
"Jesus wept, man, don't scare me like that." Redd laughs in disbelief, his heart squeezes tight and then lets go.
Clownpierce shifts, trying to turn over the best he can without hurting himself more. The painkillers he's on are good, but he's got hours to go until they'll give him more. His face narrows in thought, but the kind of narrowing that's fonder and softer.
"You rememeber that first winter, the one where we refused to use the fireplace because it set you off?"
He remembers well, he remembers freezing up and staring and shaking. The tears, the sweat, the whole lot. He also rememebers exactly what it felt like when he came back slowly, wrapped in Clown's arms because they were the only thing that let him know he was safe.
"Almost froze half to death." He says instead, because that part is true. They had huddled for warmth all winter, cozied up in Clown's bed because he had said the smell helped keep him sane.
"That was when I realised I loved you, and I never let myself accept any of it. Felt like telling myself it was wrong was better than ever losing you. I couldn't lose you, Red, not after everything we survived." Clown laughs bitterly, because Sir Pyroscythe taught him enough about being himself, and he had remembered that when he came trailing after the only man who could ever have the chance of understanding him. God he hopes Pyroscythe made it.
"'N you thought being a queer would chase me off?"
"It sounds stupid, I know, I know. You know how people are. Just… kiss me again, would you?"
Reddoons obliges with a smile, and lingers long enough that Clown's breath warms his face further. Oh, Redd knows they're going to both be so incredibly obnoxious about kissing in private.
"Never do anything so fuckin' stupid again. I'm beggin' you. As your… whatever I am." He whispers, followed by another kiss.
"We'll figure that out when I get out of here, but you're my Red, nobody elses."
Eventually, Reddoons decides to sit back in his chair, hand still intertwined with Clown's. He can tell the exhaustion settling into them both. The exhaustion that doesn't take long to lull Clown back to sleep, head tipping sideways against the stack of pillows. He's cute when he sleeps, always a drooler even though he would rather go back and die in the fire at Whitepine than ever admit it.
"You're moving in with me. I'm not letting you object. You're moving in with me and we're sharing that damn bed full time and you're committing to a quiet, settled down life, you hear me?" Reddoons whispers over top of Clown's sleeping form. He's not risking it anymore, not when everything is lined up to be perfect in a way it has never been before.