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Amongst the members of Burning Rescue, it's not that uncommon to be flirted with or asked out by the people they've saved. It isn't an everyday occurrence, no, but all of them have had at least one happenstance of a grateful civilian having a particular reaction after being saved from a life-threatening situation, and declaring their undying love for their newfound saviour. Thankfully, Lucia practically never had to deal with that, since she's usually not getting so up close and personal with the civilians. Mechs are her area of expertise, and sometimes a bit of emergency first-aid, but not usually the saving-people-directly bit.
What does occur to her, though, as she watches the young woman rush over to Galo with That Particular Look on her face, is that while Lucia knows about this phenomenon, Galo does not.
He's not even all the way out of his mech yet when the woman stumbles to a stop, looking up at him with starry eyes and a wide smile. Her gaze is lingering a little too long on Galo's unclothed chest, in Lucia's opinion, but that's less of an issue than what comes out of her mouth.
"Thank you so much for saving me!" The woman says, which is normal, and then continues on to say (very not-normally), "would you… consider coming out to dinner with me tonight? You know, as a… as a thanks, for all you've done! I'm just so grateful, you see…"
Lucia whips around and stares directly at Remi, indicating very clearly that he should go do something about that (because obviously she's not going to, for a number of reasons), when Galo responds… rather unexpectedly.
"That's super nice of you, but I actually can't! I'm having dinner with my boyfriend tonight!"
…What.
"Yeah, I already had to cancel the last date night because of a fire emergency," Galo continues with a sheepish laugh. "So I really can't miss this one, too. It's really sweet of you to offer, though!"
The woman looks utterly crestfallen as Galo turns and walks away, clearly devastated by the rejection. Eh, Lucia's sure she'll get over it as soon as the adrenaline dies down and she realises she just tried to ask out a man whose name she doesn't even know while he was actively at work and doing his job.
"The good ol' fake boyfriend trick, huh?" Aina asks, elbowing Galo in the side as he walks over to the rest of their group. "Really comes in handy, doesn't it? Lotta people don't know how to take 'no' for an answer."
Galo's brow furrows. "Fake?"
"…Yeah?"
"…No?" Galo's brow furrows further. "I have a boyfriend. We are having dinner tonight. Last time there was that fire downtown that needed all hands on deck, and we rescheduled for tonight."
"Oh my god, you're serious?" Aina asks. "You're— there's no way. Galo, you actually—?"
"Yes!" He exclaims. "Why would I lie about that?"
"What's his name?" Lucia demands, hopping down from the truck and stopping about three inches from Galo's face. "First, middle, and last. Where does he live? What's his job? You want me to do a background check? I'm gonna do a background check. How long have you been dating, anyway?"
"…Couple of years," Galo mutters, apparently choosing to rudely ignore her other questions. "And that's his business, not yours."
Lucia scoffs. She'll find out one way or another later, even if Galo wants to make it hard for her.
"Years?" Echoes Remi, clearly shocked. "You've been dating someone since before you started working here and just never mentioned it?"
Galo frowns. "Well, yeah! What's so surprising about that?"
Well, Lucia can think of a lot of things about it that are surprising, but none she should probably mention to Galo's face.
"I hope you know I'm telling the others about this," Aina informs him, pulling out her cellphone and starting to type. "I'm telling them right now, in fact. And you're gonna have to give us his name at some point or another — you can't be that good at keeping secrets."
To this, Galo laughs with a slightly odd tone, looking pleased. "Oh, I promise you, you'd be surprised."
oOoOo
"Come on, Galo, you can tell us," Aina coaxes, unsuccessfully. "We're your best friends, riiight?"
Galo leans back in his seat, shaking his head. "Mmm… are you?"
"Huh?!"
"Well," he continues with a grin, "wouldn't you say my boyfriend is my best friend?"
Aina opens her mouth to argue, only to be cut off by the sirens blaring overhead. Before Lucia is even out of her seat, the rest of Burning Rescue is in the main area and making their way to the trucks, ready to tackle whatever the latest emergency is.
As they head to their destination, an office building that should thankfully be mostly empty since it's a Saturday afternoon, Lucia's mind wanders once more to the topic of Galo's mysterious paramour as she inputs the necessary details for each mech. If she just knew his full name (and maybe some other identifying details like his date of birth, and perhaps his home address), she could easily figure out everything else from there — but Galo has been, for once, frustratingly tight-lipped about him. He hasn't even given away the guy's first name — not even the first letter! It's just downright rude, if you ask her.
The fire itself is actually not that bad, although given that it's only a few blocks from their HQ, it could be because it just hasn't had time to spiral out of control. The building's built-in fire suppressants are mostly doing their jobs, though, which means the main concern is getting civilians out through the damaged areas.
"Looks like there's a handful of folks on the third floor and the eighth floor," Lucia informs them all, watching the infrared feed from Aina's chopper as it circles the building. "Galo, you're up top — get ready to launch. Varys, Remi, there's more people on the third floor, so you two double-team it."
She receives affirmatives from all three sets of comms, and a moment later, the crackling of Ignis' voice comes through.
"I'll do a sweep of the first floor where the flames are at their highest concentration, make sure no one is caught where our scanners can't see them," the boss states. "Lucia, Aina, keep your ears open in case anyone needs emergency extraction."
"You got it, Chief!" Lucia chirps. At the top of her computer, Vinny echoes his own affirmative — not that Ignis can hear him, though, since the boss still won't let Lucia give Vinny his own comm.
Now there's not much left for Lucia to do except for wait and listen in case someone needs her help, so she leans back in her chair and keeps an eye on the infrared feed along with Aina, watching to see if anything goes wrong. Her teammates are all experts though (for the most part), and this fire's a pretty straightforward one, so Lucia's completely unsurprised when all of the civilians are deposited safely outside of the building for Aina and Varys to start triaging. Seems like minimal casualties here, too — a few minor burns and obviously some smoke inhalation, but nothing requiring a hospital (or worse, a morgue). Remi and Galo stay close to the building, ready to go back in at a moment's notice.
And it's a good thing they stayed ready, too, because it's barely a minute later when Lucia heard Ignis through the comms again.
"I need some backup in here, possible Code Blue," Ignis orders, and Lucia's upright in an instant as he continues his directions. "Conference room at the end of the left hallway — fire's out, just come straight through. Path should be cleared now."
Lucia doesn't have to say a word before Galo and Remi are heading inside, ready to help with whatever civilian Ignis has in there. Lucia could have sworn that the first floor was empty, but the fire could've easily obscured their heat signature, hence why the boss had headed in to check for himself. They must've been penned into the conference room by the fire blocking off any potential escape routes.
She pulls up the camera feed from Galo's mech, hoping that he'll have the best point of view since he went in before Remi. Lucia could probably get a little detail from Ignis' bodycam, but the quality's always kind of shitty on that one since it's attached to his jacket and he's probably hunched over to administer first-aid right now.
One moment, Lucia's watching Galo's mech bolt down the hall, skidding to a stop right outside of the conference room's door. One moment he's in the mech, and the next he's throwing himself out of it, directly at the boss.
"OH FUCK," Galo yells, bodyslamming into the chief and knocking him off of the office worker's unmoving form. "BOSS, NO!"
What the hell is he doing?! Lucia's too shocked to even ask the question aloud, stunned into silence by not only Galo cursing at the top of his lungs (and sure, she's heard him swear before, but not like that), but also by him hurling himself across the room like a human cannonball to interrupt their commanding officer's management of an emergent medical situation.
"Galo, what are you doing?!" Ignis demands, sitting up as Galo scrambles off of him and takes his place over the civilian. "Why would you—"
"If you keep doing CPR on him like that, you're going to kill him." Lucia's never heard Galo's voice sound quite so serious before, and just like the shouted swear, it's enough to stun pretty much everyone into silence once again. "We need heat and oxygen, first and foremost."
"I don't think heat is going to—" Remi starts, only for Galo to cut him off, shaking his head.
"No, his temperature is dangerously low. Lucia, get my phone from the top drawer and call Lio — tell him it's a code teal, and then get in here with a shock blanket. If Lio doesn't pick up, try Meis or Gueira next."
Lucia's brow furrows, although she knows Galo can't see it. "What—"
"Lucia, I know you know my phone password, just call Lio and tell him code teal!"
She's got no fucking clue what Galo is talking about right now, but he seems pretty confident about this, and Lucia trusts him. She grabs the shock blanket with one hand while she fishes his phone out of the drawer with her other, opening up the contacts list and hitting the call button for the topmost one.
"Hello?" Comes a voice she doesn't recognise, sounding vaguely confused. "Galo, I thought you were at work."
"Not Galo," Lucia corrects. "Galo said to call you and say it's a code teal."
"Where," the voice, presumably Lio, responds — more of a demand than a question.
Lucia glances at her screen, reading off the address. "He's in conference room C, if that helps."
There's a bit of a kerfuffle on the other end of the phone, and Lucia can hear Lio demanding that someone take the phone before his voice fades out and disappears, followed by… is that the sound of a motorcycle revving?
"And he's gone. With my bike," someone else sighs, apparently now holding the phone. "Hey, Galo, what's going on?"
"Not Galo," Lucia repeats. "Lucia, Galo's teammate. He said to tell Lio it's a code teal, whatever that means."
"Aw, fuck," the voice mutters. "Meis, get your bike, we're going after him!"
So if she's spoken to Lio and this person is speaking to Meis, then Gueira is probably the one who has the phone. Who are these people, anyways? She's never heard Galo mention any of these names before.
Lucia keeps the phone to her ear as she runs into the building with the shock blanket under one arm, ducking under Galo's stationary mech so she can deposit it beside the civilian's body. The poor guy doesn't look like he's going to make it, if he's even still kicking — although, she's pretty sure Galo wouldn't still be doing compressions if he were already too far gone. Through the cell, she can hear way more background noise than she thinks is necessary, and Meis and Gueira bickering over something that's not really audible, though she catches the name 'Lio' a few times.
"Got your shock blanket," Lucia informs him, "and whoever Lio is, he's on his way. His friends too, I'm pretty sure."
"Hear that?" Galo tells the guy, not ceasing the compressions for a single moment. "Help's on the way. Don't burn out on me now, you're not ashes yet."
To Lucia's utter shock, the man's hand actually twitches at those words — it's the first sign of life she's seen from him, in fact. Judging by the way Ignis and Remi's eyes widen, they could probably say the same.
"Remi, grab that shock blanket, we've got to keep his temp up," Galo continues, tipping his head toward Lucia. Remi, to his credit, doesn't hesitate and simply does as asked. Galo may be acting deeply fucking weird right now, but he's taken the role of leader when it comes to saving this civilian's life, and they all know that there's no time to ask questions when a life is on the line.
Ignis, however, has not been given a task to occupy him, and therefore has plenty of time for asking questions. "Galo, what the hell are you doing? You interrupt my CPR to start doing the same thing, but with a shit technique? That's not how you do compressions or rescue breaths, what do you think that's going to—"
Galo pauses said breaths (ones that are oddly shallow, Lucia notes, more like a gentle breeze than a breath of life) to give Ignis a serious look, glancing down at the man for just a moment. "Chief, if I try and do standard CPR on him, he's gonna die. There's nothing wrong with his heart or lungs. His fire's going out."
"His what?" Ignis doesn't seem to understand, and at first Lucia doesn't either, almost chalking it up to Galo's usual rambling about his 'burning firefighter's soul', but… even Galo doesn't usually bring that out when someone could be dying. He may be a dramatic idiot, but he's still capable of reeling it in when necessary.
So if he's not being metaphorical, then he's being literal.
"Keep an eye on his fingers, tell me if they start to turn grey," Galo orders to no one in particular, returning his focus to the civilian. Ignis is still staring at him, speechless.
Lucia is about to speak when the staticky audio coming from Galo's phone lets a few words through, clearly from Meis. "Damn, we lost him!"
"Hey, Galo's teammate, where are we going?" Gueira asks, words coming through far more clearly. He must be the one holding the phone, although the audio quality still isn't that great. "We were following Lio, but he's too quick."
"You know the shopping center just west of the square?" Lucia asks. "Office building right next to it, the one with all the fire suppressant equipment out. You can't miss it."
Galo glances up, frowning slightly. "Is that Lio? Put him on speaker."
"Not Lio, he passed the phone to the other two," Lucia informs him, but does so anyways. Galo can talk to his weird friends if he wants to.
"Wait, what do you mean, 'not Lio'?" Galo asks, but Gueira's answering for Lucia before she has to say anything else.
"Yeah, sorry, boss shoved the phone at me and then stole my bike," Gueira replies, sounding oddly unconcerned by the theft. "Pretty sure he'll get there before we do, so you should be seeing him in a minute or two."
"Obviously he's gonna get there first, he had one hell of a head start," Meis cuts in, voice sounding a fair bit further away. "But we'll be there right after him, so—"
Lucia nearly drops the phone as someone bolts into the room from behind her, and Galo practically throws himself away from the civilian so that the newcomer can take his place. Once he's holding still, she can see that he's about Galo's age but maybe half his size, with pale hair cut short and a large, tattered black t-shirt that she's pretty sure might by Galo's.
"I think Lio's here," Lucia informs Gueira over the phone. Oh, and Lio's doing rescue breaths— no, that's not right. He's just locked lips with the civilian and does not appear to be intending to stop. His hair is kind of in the way, so she can't get the best look at it, but Lucia is pretty sure she sees something glowing in there.
Galo, having stood up, takes the phone from Lucia and turns the speaker off, holding it up to his ear to describe the situation for Gueira (and presumably Meis). "Yeah, he just got here. Guy should be fine now— well, no, I've seen people worse off come back fine, but you know there's not much I could've done to help."
"Not much you could've done to help?" Remi repeats, clearly having picked up on the odd emphasis.
"Hang on, Gueira, my team wants me," Galo says into the phone before bringing it away from his ear to focus on Remi. "Yeah, I mean, I can't really breathe fire. Anything I would've tried beyond what I was already doing would've just blown his flame right out."
"Galo," Ignis begins, "what the fuck are you talking about."
"He needed a donor flame, so I had Lucia call another Burnish," Galo explains. Oh, hell yeah, Lucia was right! She knew Galo was being literal about the flame thing earlier! "He probably got doused in fire suppressant when the automatic stuff kicked on, and if he was already suppressing his flame, it would've just been too much."
"So then, Lio, Meis, and Gueira—" Lucia starts, only to be cut off when Lio straightens up, the civilian following a moment later with some difficulty.
He seems lucid enough, for a guy who was just dying on the ground, although there's clearly some extenuating circumstances going on. Galo crouches down, most likely intending to do the post-CPR check in to make sure all of his faculties are intact and he doesn't need any further immediate treatment, but before he can start with any of the questions, two more people burst into the room, much louder and more dramatically than Lio had.
"IS ANYONE STILL DYING," One of them demands, the other still taking off his motorcycle helmet. "Boss, what's happening?"
"Calm down, nobody's dying," Lio sighs, gesturing to the now-upright civilian. Right before Lucia's eyes, he lights up a flame in one hand and reaches for one of the office worker's own hands, barely reacting to the way that every member of Burning Rescue (except for Galo) flinch forward at the sight. Meis and Gueira (although she's not sure which is which yet) have a far more dramatic reaction, ending up on the other side of the room in seconds to put themselves between Lio and the firefighters with suspicious looks on their faces.
"Don't worry, they're not gonna do anything," Galo soothes, which works surprisingly well to get Meis and Gueira to stop puffing and and move more to the side of Lio rather than making themselves human shields. "Right, guys?"
The last phrase is clearly directed at his teammates with a very pointed look, and Lucia nods immediately, followed by a slightly more hesitant Remi. Ignis crosses his arms, but nods as well.
"We have no intentions of causing any trouble for someone who provided such vital aid," Ignis declares. "Although I'm very interested to know exactly who these people are, Galo."
Galo stands up and grins, scooping Lio up off of the floor despite the smaller man's immediate and vocal displeasure. "This is my boyfriend, Lio! And that's our friends, Meis and Gueira."
"THAT'S your boyfriend?!" Lucia exclaims. "Varys! Aina! Get in here! Get in here, Galo's boyfriend is here!"
"What?" Aina's voice asks, coming through the comms. "Guys, what's going on? Galo's boyfriend is— wait, he wasn't the victim that the chief found, was he?!"
"Can we maybe not have this conversation over the comms," Galo asks, interrupted immediately by Lio's squirming and protests.
"Galo, if you don't put me down right the fuck now, I swear to god—"
"Aww, but you're the perfect size to carry around," Galo says sadly, still not releasing him.
"I'm going to set every pair of pants you own on fire—"
"Ha! I work in the fire department, they're all fireproof or fire-resistant! That's not going to work!"
"Fine, then," Lio sniffs. "I'll go sleep in Meis and Gueira's room if you don't put me down."
Galo immediately drops him, though thankfully Lio's reflexes are good enough that he easily lands on his feet instead of in a pile. Behind them both, Meis and Gueira are cracking up, and Lucia has the strangest feeling that this isn't an uncommon occurrence.
Now that he's back on his own two feet again, Lio dusts himself off, straightening up and clearly attempting to regain some of his dignity. Lucia takes a closer look at him and notes that not only is he wearing Galo's shirt, he also seems to be wearing someone else's black skinny jeans, probably Meis' given how many times he has the cuffs rolled up.
…Lucia is wondering privately, just to herself, if perhaps Galo is in some kind of polycule situation. That is in no way her business, though, so she'll keep her mouth shut (for now).
"You need more healthy outlets," Galo informs the civilian, having crouched down again to begin lecturing him. "You can't smother your flame all the time or else you'll end up right back here again— but take it easy! Don't do anything too strenuous, or you'll burn yourself out!"
"Okay, I think we can take it from here," Meis interrupts, nudging Galo away so he can take the civilian's hands and help him to his feet. "We'll get the guy home and make sure he's doing alright. Boss—"
"Hey, you should come back to the station with us," Lucia interrupts. "It won't take us that long to finish here. Stick around and hang out with us!"
Galo eyes her suspiciously, as do Meis and Gueira, but Lio nods after a moment's deliberation. "I suppose I'm not doing anything else important this evening. Meis, Gueira, look after him — I'll be home whenever Galo gets off work tonight."
Oh, Lucia is going to get so much information out of this. Take that, Galo's secret-keeping skills! Lucia wins again!