Chapter Text
“Mmmm…hey.” Smiling, Maya carefully turned around in her wife’s loose embrace, trusting that the towel she’d wrapped around herself when she exited the shower would stay in place. “This is unexpected…” Maya leaned in and shared in a soft kiss, Carina’s touch helping to ground her and see some of the tension she’d been carrying for the last 24 hours, and the last 24 months, fade. “...did…”
“Captain Herrera see me?” asked Carina, knowing what her wife was thinking and feeling the wave of sadness wash over her again at how far from the ‘family’ atmosphere that characterised the Station they now were, how much Dixon and the pandemic and everything else had taken from her wife and her colleagues. “Si. But I told her I did not care.”
“Carina!” Stepping back slightly, Maya looked at her determined wife with a mixture of worry and awe.
“What? Your shift is finished no? There is no more floor to wash or hoses to roll?”
“No…” sighed Maya, turning back to look in her almost empty locker, leaning back against the welcome support of her wife’s body as she reached for the badge she’d put neatly on the top shelf when she’d taken her uniform off before her shower, carefully ensuring it was 0803 and the next shift’s briefing had begun before she let her shoulders slump and undone a button on her shirt. “...there is nothing she can do to me now.”
The rest of the shift had been in the showers at 0750, seeing enough of the next shift in and changed into uniform, the unspoken understanding that if the alarm went now the next watch had it…every Station, every shift did it, Captains and Chiefs turning a blind eye to this bending of the rules by literally hundreds of firefighters, just as Maya had done when she was Captain, but not these last months, and definitely not this last shift. She’d not been prepared to give anyone that final flex of authority and power over her, so she had stayed in her uniform, stayed sorting the spare air tank valves at the far end of the Beanery table until she’d heard the next shift line up briefing start, leaving the box neatly sorted for someone to take down and only then heading for her locker.
“I am sorry bambina…” whispered Carina, kissing the still damp shoulder before she rested her chin on it.
“Don’t be.” Maya put the badge back on the shelf, the symbol she’d once been so proud to wear now forever tarnished for her by the events of the last couple of years. “I wouldn’t change anything.”
They’d had this conversation more than once since Maya not only failed to get her Captaincy back after more than a year of waiting for a hearing that never came, but was then demoted again for reasons that everyone could see were petty, vindictive and the result of someone, somewhere deciding that Maya Bishop was allowed no leeway when it came to rules, nevermind second chances.
She’d stopped counting how many times Warren ignored orders, how many times Gibson broke protocol, how Vic and Theo continued to work the same shift in the same house without anyone seeming to be bothered that they’d been living together for over a year. Chief Ross had made it very clear it was one uncompromising set of rules for Maya and a permanent blind eye being turned for the ‘boys club’ and those female firefighters who were prepared to play ‘the game’ the way Chief Ross had.
“If you’re here…” she turned, reaching for her bra and looking past Carina, searching for something or someone.
“...where are the bambini?” guessed Carina, kissing Maya’s crinkling nose with affection. “Your mother is sitting in the car listening to their whale music.”
“If I’d known how effective that would be at getting them to sleep I’d have picked a different playlist to try…” muttered Maya, relieved to know the babies were safe but feeling a little bit bad for her mother. The whale song relaxation playlist had helped Carina through the nights when Maya had been working and, increasingly uncomfortable as her body struggled to tolerate six pointy elbows and six almost as pointy knees trying to stretch inside her, she’d been prone to hyperventilating. Now, six months old and almost ready for their biggest adventure so far, that same whale song playlist that had kept their Mamma calm and breathing more evenly when they were in utero was now a soothing background soundtrack that helped the DeLuca-Bishop babies stay asleep at the same time, something that was easier said than done with three of them.
“I am just glad it is not the rainstorm one,” laughed Carina, stepping back a pace so Maya had room to dress, knowing now was time to get this last step over with rather than lingering for a second longer than necessary. “And that we have something that they like to listen to that we can play on the plane.” The rainstorm one had worked for the first week or so of Carina’s increased anxiety, with her brain deciding that rain reduced the risk of Maya being called out to a really big fire, however that had backfired big time the following week when it felt like there was an elbow or knee permanently pressed into her bladder.
“Mmm, yeah.” Maya’s head popped through the neck of her top, her mind already shifted to working her way through her final to do list as a member of the Seattle Fire Department. “Have you got the fifty dollars?”
“Si.” Carina pulled out the folded bills from her jeans pocket.
“Can you put it with the badge please?”
“What is it for?” She was curious rather than condemnatory, knowing Maya had been planning for the end of this shift for three months, so the last minute request by text in the early hours of the morning was a surprise, though it was at least easily managed.
“My helmet.” As Maya stepped into her jeans, Carina followed her gaze to the nearby counter where a red helmet sat. “Hughes found it a while back when she was doing inventory. We were texting, last night, she told me where to find it.”
“And the money?”
“Kit regulations. You can keep your old helmet when you need a new one but must pay fifty dollars…” She sat down, shoulders slumped as she reached for her sneakers, unknotting the laces before she put them on. “...I had paid to keep my black one when I made Lieutenant but I’m assuming that’s all forgotten now…” She’d certainly not been given back her original fifty dollars when she’d had her red one taken from her, instead being ordered to present her black one for safety inspection when she’d had her Lieutenant’s bar taken away from her. “...I assumed it had been thrown away…” Like she had, thought Maya, the unspoken words hanging in the air between the wives.
“I am glad she found it again.” Carina reached for it, picking it up and turning it over in her hands, studying the webbing that made the helmet wearable. “Can we take your other one also?”
“My black one?” Maya had left it in her kit locker, with the rest of her bunker gear at the end of her previous shift, the last she’d worked assigned to the Engine, not giving keeping her helmet a second thought until Vic mentioned her red one hidden behind some old hoses in the store room, with Maya going and checking it was where Vic had said it would be around 3am when everyone else in the Station was asleep. “Don’t think it’s been tossed out yet…” Maya stood up, her locker now only containing the badge, her backpack with her washbag and gym clothes already packed away in it, and her jacket. She’d removed all her photos and personal items the shift before, not wanting to be overloaded at the end of this final shift. “...you want it?”
She’d been very attached to the idea of keeping it when she’d first made Lieutenant, but now? After everything that had happened and everything she and Carina had to look forward to in their future, it was something that she’d not given any thought to, finding she didn’t have any great desire to keep mementos or souvenirs of her time in the SFD. The discovery her red one was still in the Station had proven to be an exception to that firmly held belief however, with a sudden determination that this last remaining piece of her success and achievement in being the first female Captain of 19 was going to leave with her and not be left for others to destroy.
“Per favore.” Carina reached into her pocket and pulled out the rest of the dollar bills she’d got from the ATM earlier, deciding when she’d visited that it never hurt to have some cash when travelling and it wasn’t like she’d be unable to exchange the dollars to euros when they got to Italy. “Another fifty to be safe?”
“Probably best.” Maya put her jacket on and shouldered her backpack, then took the bills from her wife and put them under her badge, carefully placing them at right-angles of the first fifty, so it was clear there were two lots. “Knowing my luck I’d get my pay docked or something.”
“Bene, anything else?” asked Carina, looking at the money under her wife’s silver badge, refusing to think about all the times she’d felt it and the previous ones, with their bars in the centre, pressed against her as she hugged Maya. The Department had made it very clear what terms they were prepared to let her wife wear their badge, terms that they’d clearly believed Maya would suffer and endure because they figured she had no other options, that they had her held captive in their toxic grip.
How wrong they had been, and how liberating it was for her wife to leave that badge, knowing it was the weight that had been holding her down, a weight she didn’t have to shoulder in her future.
“You wanna go down the pole?”
“Scusa?”
“The pole? It’s right by the kit lockers. You want to have a go?”
“Si, but…” Carina saw the mischievous sparkle return to her wife’s brilliant blue eyes, the spirit that had attracted her so much years before when ‘Captain Maya Bishop’ had started telling the story as to why she’d run into the ER with a nose in a plastic bag returned. For the first time in months, something about firefighting in this city, in this station, albeit as tiny and ridiculous as sliding down the pole, was generating that sparkle, rather than it being brought to life by family and future plans.
“What they going to do?” asked Maya rhetorically, holding out her hand for Carina to take, her wedding ring catching the light and sparkling as brightly as her eyes.
“Si bambina.” Carina laughed, a giddiness washing over her that she’d long ago thought she’d never feel in this building, taking her wife’s hand and squeezing it with affection. “Even if I do not like heights.”
“Close your eyes and think of how you’ll one day tell the trips about it,” suggested Maya, as she shut her locker door and picked up the red helmet with her name on it, efficiently clipping it to the front of her backpack, like a cyclist would stow their bike helmet.
“You will have them climbing ladders and poles before they can walk,” teased Carina, allowing herself to be guided towards the door onto the high level walkway, noticing the total absence of people on the upper floor but not prepared to waste any energy wondering where they had gone.
“Only if they need help doing it safely,” countered Maya, having already had this conversation many times with Carina - as far as she was concerned, she’d only try to teach the triplets something if they’d already started doing it for themselves but were, through a lack of technique or understanding, at increased risk of hurting themselves. As far as she was concerned, they could run or not run, have a head for heights or insist on staying with their feet firmly on the ground. “I’ll follow their lead, and yours,” she added, kissing Carina’s knuckles as she steered her through the door and onto the gantry. “You sure you want to do this?”
“Si, but I also want to watch you do it bambina.” She looked down through the hole in the floor, peering carefully over the little barrier. “I think I will like the view from the ground more…”
“You mean you want to see my butt,” corrected Maya, taking her backpack off and putting it carefully against the railings. “You remember what to do?”
“Si…”
“Show me!”
“Carina…” Maya, despite her obvious reluctance, allowed her girlfriend to pull her towards the children’s play area. “...it’s like one in the morning…”
“Si, and so there are no children to fight with.”
“...and a kid’s playground…” continued Maya, feeling her feet sink into the wood chip that provided the ‘soft’ landing for any kid who fell from the climbing frames or swings.
“But it is a pole no?” Carina, one hand still holding firmly onto Maya’s, grabbed hold of the metal pole that was at one end of the climbing frame, enabling kids to presumably use it to hold onto as they climbed up or down the little step ladder. “Like your station one?”
“I mean…” Maya grabbed hold of the pole and gave it a good tug, pleased to see it was firmly anchored into the ground. “...it’s like a quarter of the diameter…” She opened up her hand to show Carina how the one inch wide pole was nothing compared to the Station pole which she’d be not quite able to wrap her hand the whole way around. “...and not even half as tall, but…” Without any warning she let go of Carina’s hand and, with one easy, powerfully athletic jump, had caught hold of the top rung of the kid-sized ladder and pushed herself up so she was sitting on the floor of the highest level of the climbing frame, looking down at her girlfriend. “...sure…” She pushed away from the frame’s structure with her feet, catching hold of the pole with her hands and, adjusting for the fact she was wearing sneakers and jeans rather than boots and her uniform and the very narrow pole, moulded her body around it in an almost textbook ‘ready to slide’ position. “...gravity’s still gravity.” And slipped down to land lightly on her feet at the bottom of the pole.
“Will you teach me?”
“Now?” Maya looked around the deserted parking lot, the hospital play area exactly as Carina had told her it would be, completely ignored by the few late night visitors to the hospital.
“Si…” Carina’s lip was caught in between her teeth, her eyebrow raised in challenge. “...ahie!” Suddenly her world was upside down and mostly consisted of her girlfriend’s butt, making her realise that she was now hanging over Maya’s shoulder in a classic ‘fireman’s lift’. “Put me down!” she laughed, having no idea what was happening, but enjoying both the casual display of strength and the playful side of Maya finally breaking free of her tightly controlled exterior. The close up of her girlfriend’s butt was a great bonus too.
“If you insist…” WIth great care, Maya climbed the final two rungs she needed to then gently tipped Carina backwards and sat her on the floor of the upper level, holding her steady until she got her bearings. “...you ok?”
“Mmm…” Carina grabbed Maya’s collar with both hands and dipped her head forwards, capturing questioning lips in a bruising kiss that might have seen Maya fall backwards off the ladder if she wasn’t a firefighter, her feet and hands able to keep her steady even as everything else in her brain short-circuited. “...now will you teach me?”
“Carina.”
“That’s Dr DeLuca-Bishop to you,” corrected Carina firmly as she let go of the shiny pole and stepped back immediately, just like Maya had taught her that night in the Grey Sloan children’s playground.
“You can’t just go down the pole on your own like that.”
“I did not.” Carina refused to look at Andy, aware she was frustrating the Captain but far more interested in watching her wife, backpack hanging from her forearms, descend from the upper level.
“Bishop…” Andy’s heavy sigh was accompanied, Maya knew without needing to look around as she touched down and instinctively stepped away from the pole, with her hands on her hips and the same irritating pout that surely should have been grown out of long before the Academy, nevermind getting Captain’s bars. “...you know that’s not allowed.”
“I thought every day was a pole day Captain?” asked Maya with impressive innocence, confusing Carina but clearly, judging from the souring of Andy’s expression, striking some sort of nerve.
“Don’t test me Bishop…”
“Or what?” Maya put her backpack onto her right shoulder, well aware her red helmet swung only an inch or so away from Andy’s belt as she did so. “Shift’s over.” She knew she was goading her former best friend, knew too she was letting her anger now get the better of her, but it had been a long year, years really of biting her lip and swallowing her anger.
“What are you doing with that helmet?”
“Taking it with me.” She held up her left hand in the universal gesture of ‘stop talking and listen’, her wedding ring catching in the early morning sun as it streamed in through the open barn doors as she reached for Carina’s hand with her right. “Don’t worry, I left the money in my locker. Fifty dollars, just like the regulations you’re so keen to remind me about all the time require. And there’s another fifty, for my other one, again.”
“Why you buying your helmet?” asked Travis, coming round the back of the Aid Car, having been drawn to the sound of voices. “You need it next shift.”
“There is no next shift Trav,” said Vic quietly, having spotted Maya and Carina heading for the gantry and, having a pretty good idea what they were doing, taking the stairs downstairs then detouring to the kit lockers and getting Maya’s black helmet for her.
“Sure there is…” Confused, Travis looked from Maya to Vic to Andy, waiting for one of them to correct him. “...I mean, you said she was just on B Shift while King was out…”
The silence hung, painfully, between the four firefighters, stretching Carina’s nerves and making her want to explode and let her temper do the talking, but the gentle squeezing of her hand kept her grounded and silent, her heart swelling when she realised how well Maya understood her.
“...but then she’s coming back to A shift right?” Seeing Andy’s hardened expression, Travis began to panic, spinning round to look for clues in Vic’s eyes, only to see the tears and sorrow that told him whatever was happening wasn’t good, definitely wasn’t good when he realised the helmet Vic was spinning in her hands had ‘Bishop’ stamped on it. “Maya?” He looked finally at his fellow ‘Seattle Fire Queer’, those days of easy camaderie feeling a lifetime ago as now he saw the distance that had grown between them, realsiing too how strange her name sounded in his mouth, so long had it been since he’d used it.
“King is back next shift.”
“And Maya is back on A shift, right Herrera?” he asked again, turning once more to look at Andy, seeing with a shock how different she looked - not because she’d changed in the moment since he’d last looked at her, but because he was now starting to see her for who she was now. “I mean Captain?” he corrected, seeing now that what he’d accepted as pride in her hard won rank was actually a petty fixation on rank and title, a constant need to have her authority acknowledged through how she was addressed, like she afraid that the moment she was out of uniform and just ‘Andy Herrera’ she lost their respect.
“No.”
“No she’s on B Shift until he’s back up to speed and then she’s on A Shift?”
“Montgomery…” began Maya quietly, her desire to see Andy twist and wriggle her way out of this corner she’d backed herself into second now to wanting to try and make it easier for Travis to understand, easier too for her and Carina to leave.
“You’re not going to punish her for letting Carina come down the pole are you? C’mon Cap…”
“That’s enough!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Maya could see Andy’s explosive snapping at Travis had attracted the attention of the rest of A shift, with Warren and the others, the new firefighters she barely knew the names of, drifting over from where they’d been cleaning kit.
“Maya?” Still he wasn’t silenced.
“No more shifts Montgomery,” said Maya simply, somehow not surprised, despite barely saying more than two words to her these last few weeks due to her being exiled to B Shift, that it would be Travis that would finally push everything out into the open and ruin her opportunity to just quietly walk away and leave them all behind. “That was my last one.”
“You’re leaving?” Warren pushed further forward, looking between Maya and Carina, confusion obvious, instinctively knowing she wasn’t going to serve with the SFD at a station that wasn’t 19. “You’ve quit being a firefighter?”
“I’ve left the SFD,” corrected Maya, feeling Carina move closer to her, appreciating her supportive presence, seeing too that Miranda must have kept her promise after all. “I’m still a firefighter.” The ‘just not with you’ was unspoken but heard loudly by everyone.
“Civilians are not allowed…”
“Oh will you shut the fuck up!”
“Gibson!”
“Don’t ‘Gibson’ me…” growled Jack, moving out of the shadow of the aid car having heard enough from Andy, having put the pieces together rather quickly. “And sure, I volunteer for bathrooms from now ‘til Thanksgiving, Christmas if you like, save you ordering me to do them now Bishop’s not here for you to punish, so just shut the fuck up for once.”
“I…” The venom in her glare might have made a lesser man back down, but after everything he’d gone through, everything she’d put him through with her constant pushing him away only to draw him in again whenever he had a curve ball thrown at him by the universe, he was done with her. For today at least. So instead he just met her gaze with calm eyes, that smirk he knew she found infuriating on his lips and just waited, arms crossed across his chest, watching for the sign she’d cracked.
“Bathrooms, got it.” His smirk grew when she closed her mouth, turning on her heel in silence and striding back to the Captain’s office.
“Jack…”
“Forget about it,” he dismissed, waving away Maya’s attempts at trying to get him to see how foolish he was being, deliberately getting on Andy’s wrong side and in defence of Maya too. “You really did it huh?”
“You know you can’t hide from her forever.”
“I’m not hiding…” sighed Maya, trying to put the books she’d been studying from into a pile in the hope he wouldn’t notice what they were about, before she realised it was too late. “...I’m studying.”
“Maya…” groaned Jack, sitting down on the other side of the picnic table that had, years ago, managed to migrate to the roof of the station, his back to the sunset. “...you’re not trying for Lieutenant again are you?” He knew her latest request for a transfer, to the open spot down on the harbour crews, had been blocked, signalling clearer than ever before that the department was determined to see her end her career as an unranked firefighter at Station 19.
“No.” Sighing again, knowing she’d done well to remain unnoticed by the others for this long, unsurprised that it was Jack of all people that was the first to find her, she reached forwards and turned the small stack of papers and books around, so he could see the spines of the books.
“Italian?” He reached for the top book, a small children’s book with a brightly coloured cover showing a picture of a fire station with an engine and a ladder truck outside it, his hand pausing in mid air until he saw her small nod, permission to touch her stuff. “You know it’s gonna be awhile before your kid can read this right?” He looked up from the book, about to make a joke about even a DeLuca-Bishop kid wouldn’t come out able to read, but saw something in her expression that made him pause. “This isn’t about your kid…”
“Kids.”
“Twins?” He vaguely remembered something about her bad mood last shift being because she’d not had her request to switch with Finch approved, only for Theo to tell her to ‘take the hour’, promising to cover for her if anyone noticed she’d stepped out. Suddenly it started to make sense. “Carina had another appointment?”
“Yeah.” Maya rubbed her hand across the back of her neck. “And it’s not twins.” She’d have laughed if it wasn’t so serious, he was always so easy to confuse, but this, her family, wasn’t something she laughed about. “Well, it is, kinda…” She took a deep breath, realising of everyone she might be the first to tell, it would have to be him. “...triplets. Carina’s pregnant with triplets. We found out this week it’s…” She tried to remember everything Carina had explained to her, first when they’d found out at the thirteen week scan that they were pregnant with triplets, then, after this latest scan when it had been possible for Carina to see enough in the ultrasound images to be able to identify not only their babies’ genders but also how, exactly, they were pregnant with triplets. “...think twins and an only child all at once.”
“Triplets?” His eyes were narrowed, blinking rapidly as he looked between Maya and the book he still held, like he was trying to puzzle his way through something. “How’d you do it? Didn’t you hate your picks?”
“Mmm?” It took Maya a moment to work out what ‘it’ was. “Yeah, turns out my race number was lucky after all.”
“Your race number?”
“From the final, 1717…” Maya’s face softened into a smile he didn’t think he’d seen before, one so soft and warm he would have guessed she’d been thinking about Carina even if he wasn’t talking to her. “...after you…when it didn’t work with you, the next cycle came and you weren’t here…” She looked at him so calmly, so accepting of his need to take off after discovering his birth family and siblings, accepting too that while she got punished and pushed down constantly over nothing, he’d been able to just reappear after six weeks of no contact and carry on like nothing had happened, keeping his rank and position. “...we didn’t know what to do…”
“What’s your lucky number?”
“Excuse me?” Maya, lost in the flames of the fire in the fireplace, put aside her glass of water and refocused on her wife.
“Your lucky number? What is it?”
“I don’t have one.” Carina’s dramatic groan and eyeroll made Maya smirk, amused by her wife’s theatrics. “Really, I don’t!” She watched as Carina reached for the laptop, left on the coffee table from their earlier round of household admin. “Why’d you ask?”
“Because…” Biting her lip in nervousness, Carina opened the web browser and pulled up a long forgotten about bookmark - the sperm donor site. “...next week is time.”
“Oh.” They’d skirted round the issue, when Jack first took off, about what they’d do, if their first attempt didn’t work. Cold hard logic said they couldn’t afford to miss any opportunities that arose while he was away - biology didn’t wait for anyone, and Carina…Carina’s matter-of-fact explanation that every cycle missed was one less chance for them to try, with each subsequent try then with one slightly less optimum egg. “But we still hate each other’s pick.”
“Si, which is why I wanted to know your lucky number…” Carina clicked on a search option, turning the screen to her wife so she could see ‘search by donor ID.”
“And I said I don’t have a lucky number…” Maya reached for her wife, pulling Carina into her lap and resting her chin on her shoulder, staring at the screen. “...I wish I did though.”
“Your medal.” Suddenly, in a flurry of movement, Carina was clicking open another browser window and starting to google her wife, only for her fingers to be stilled by Maya’s own catching hold of them.
“From London?” Maya felt Carina’s nod. “What about it?”
“The pictures, you have a number? On your front?”
“1717…” Maya watched as Carina switched back to the donor site, typing the number into the search box, the cursor hovering over the ‘search’ button. “...but it’s just a number.”
“Si, but a good one for you, for us bambina…” Carina turned her head so she could just see the crinkle in her wife’s nose, knowing that was her ‘thinking’ face, watching and waiting for the moment it disappeared, a tiny advance notice of her wife coming around.
“Can’t hurt to look him up….” agreed Maya finally, reaching forwards to wrap her own hand around her wife’s. “On three?”
“ Let me guess, blonde hair, blue eyes All American College Champion?” He had been half joking, only to see from Maya’s nod that he’d been pretty much spot on. “What sport?”
“Basketball.” She laughed when he let out a low whistle, knowing what he was thinking. “Yeah, I’m going to be surrounded by giants.” She looked down at her books and papers. “Super intelligent bilingual giants…” She looked back up at him, seeing his confusion. “He’s some sort of translator for the UN...”
“Wow, that’s…” He looked again at the books, trying to work out how it all fit together. “...you’re moving to Italy?” She thought about brushing him off, telling him some half truth about how she was just ‘covering all bases’, or losing him in a tangle of same-sex parenting red tape that made her brain hurt everytime she had to go through it with Carina and their lawyer for America, nevermind Italy but…this was Gibson: disgusting, flaky, supportive, underrated…he pissed her off but watched her back, pushed her to leap when she might have otherwise stayed frozen in place, be it in fires or stood in front of the bathroom mirror all those years back. Yes, there was a lot of parenting ‘stuff’ motivating this project of hers, but there was something else, something that she knew, hoped, he would understand.
“Maybe, one day…” She saw his question before he had time to ask it. “Carina would never accept a job back in Italy if it meant I had to give up my career but to apply for a job in their fire department I have to have citizenship, and for citizenship I need to pass a language exam…” Not to mention everything else they’d need to go through, for the kids, and for her and Carina, to get them all recognised as a family, but he didn’t need to know about that, nor that this plan wasn’t as hypothetical as she was making it sound. “And since I don’t have to study for the job…” That had been made very clear to her now, more than once. “...no time like the present.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t been learning Italian before, because she had, since the pandemic, but never at the Station, and no one other than Carina knew she was doing it.
“Huh.” Nodding, he closed the children’s book and put it back on her pile.
“You’ve got that look”
“What look?”
“The Jack look that used to make me want to hit you…” She rolled her eyes when he smirked. “Hit Jack, I said hit.” Still she was smiling, knowing he was thinking about their ill-timed and thoroughly unhealthy sexual relationship, which had pretty much started when, rather than hit him she’d kissed him, it firmly in both their pasts, never to be revisited in anything other than memories of a truly bad idea. “You think I’m crazy.”
“No I don’t.”
“Jack…”
“You’re doing what’s right for your family, I respect that…” He stood up, looking down at all the papers, trying to wrap his head around the massive challenge she’d set herself. “...I mean…” He gestured to everything on the table, remembering a day that now felt a lifetime ago, but then it probably was given how much had changed since then. “...it’s not your best time on a trashed ankle…” He saw her start to cringe as she remembered that same moment, when she tore him a new one for being a brat and wanting to touch her gold medal when she was still a Probie. “...but you were right.”
“I was?” Once she’d have answered ‘I’m always right’, but time and love had changed her, in good ways she knew.
“You are, tougher than all of us. And this?” He picked up the book so she couldn’t have any doubt what he was talking about. “The way I see it, you can do it indoors when it’s raining or snowy and cold…and I mean sure, you’ll still run the 100 miles a week because you’re you, but that’s like an hour of audiobook time right?”
She shook her head at his silliness.
“It’s 70…and takes me more than an hour.”
“My point is you got this Bishop.” He put the book down and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “You ok with grilled cheese for lunch?”
“Sounds great.”
“Cool.” And, as if what she wanted for dinner was all they’d talked about, he turned and headed back to the door, whistling tunelessly as he went, knowing she knew he would keep her secret.
Grilled cheese. That meant twenty minutes, allowing for the usual kitchen chaos and arguments about who was on grill duty.
Just enough time for her to have another go at some spellings…colours, that’d do. Red…that she knew, and in her neat and tidy handwriting, started to write down the colours of the rainbow. Rosso…aran…she tapped her pen against the paper. She could remember how to say it, but how did she spell it? Arani…no…aranc…that’s it!
Grinning, she wrote down ‘arancione’ while she remembered it, quickly followed by giallo, verde, blu…that one was easy, now, how many z’s were in that other blue one? Two? Must be, one didn’t look right…
“I really did.”
She saw his small smile and nod, a tiny gesture but it was as supportive and celebratory as if he’d organised a marching band and banner…and made her realise that all those years ago, after they’d watched Jack take Marcus up the ladder to wave at Marsha through the window, Carina had been right. She and Jack did have their own language, and it was partly about hoses and fires but also about how, as broken, isolated individuals they navigated the world as they tried to find a spot to put down roots. For both of them, they’d thought it was 19 forever, and maybe for him it might still be, but for her? It was just a stop on her track, as a wife and mother.
“What sort of Station you moving to?”
He knew she understood the opportunity he was giving her, the chance to decide how much she wanted to share, what point she wanted to make to these firefighters that had once been like a family to her.
“An Italian one.”
There, she’d said it.