Page 17 of Fire & Ice

“Thank you,” he settles on saying, his voice coming out used and gritty. He swipes roughly at his eyes and nods. “Tomorrow, then.”

The fire engine revs and rumbles behind them, like someone has stepped on the gas without first releasing the brake. Clearly, the crew inside isn’t trying to be obnoxious or insensitive, but someone wants them to get a move on.

“Text me,” Tripp says, pointing a finger in Leander’s direction as he walks backward towards the waiting truck. With a last nod and a wave, Leander agrees, and lets him go.

When he returns to his own truck, parked carefully in-between the next set of white lines beside Zosia and Echo’s, the patient compartment is nearly back to its formerly pristine state. “Thank you, Marley,” Leander says quietly, thumbing through his paperwork and the patient demographic information that Marley has kindly retrieved from registration.

“Dude, I should be thanking you,” Marley quips, zipping up the first-in bag and plopping it on top of the stretcher for next time. “If you need—”

“I don’t,” Leander cuts her off quickly and then offers what he hopes reads as an appreciative look when she glares back at him disapprovingly. “I’m fine,” he assures her.

“Oookay, if you say so,” Marley concedes, shrugging as she hops down out of the truck and makes her way to the driver’s seat. Before Leander follows, he takes a second to poke his head into the back of Zosia’s rig, only to find Echo doing the same cleaning routine as Marley.

“Hey,” he says. “You should text Chloe. I don’t know how much she may have seen, but I thought she looked…” Leander trails off and presses his lips together. Echo will understand—she’s been dating his niece for over a year now and knows the interminably stubborn Chloe better than just about anyone. In some ways, the two of them remind Leander quite a lot of him and Tripp: complementary pieces that shouldn’t fit together, but somehow do.

Except, of course, for the fact that Chloe loves Echo back, and she shows it openly.

“Thanks for the heads up,” Echo replies sincerely, stopping what she’s doing to lean an elbow against the cabinets and eye Leander with concern. “And you? You don’t look so good.”

“I’mfine,” Leander grumbles, ducking back out of the box and heading for his own truck. “Besides having to reassure everyone else that’s the case.”

“That’s what Chloe always says when she’s not fine,” Echo yells after him.

“It’s whateveryonesays when they’re not fine, Echo,” Leander shoots back, noncommittal and evasive as ever. He slides into the cab of the ambulance and motions for Marley to get going before Echo can so much as reply (or before Zosia can show up and pile on him, too). That’s the last thing he needs right now. Heisfine. Or at least, he will be.

Tomorrow night.

***

Twenty-four hours stuck off and on in various enclosed spaces with three smart, intuitive women who aredeterminedto make Leander talk about his feelings turns him itching and anxious in an entirely different way. By the time six p.m. rolls around the following evening and Leander’s shift ends, he’s feeling marginally less distraught about what he saw at the accident scene, but alotmore interested in getting the hell away from his well-intentioned co-workers. He gets it—they’re grateful he took one for the team, they want to support him, but none of them are any good at accepting that a roundtable discussion is simplynothow Leander copes.

No matter what the experts claim, simplytalkingthings out is not an effective tool for every person to deal with every kind of stress. Rehashing trauma in that way has always functioned in the reverse for Leander, causing him to feel worse. Unpacking what’s in the rearview tends to paint a vivid picture of all the things that were and are out of his control, placing the value of words and intention above action and outcome in all ways. It’s not something that’s ever made sense to him and it’s not a coping method he can relate to.

Working things out in a BDSM scene,though—a place where he controls theintention,the action,and the outcome—now, that’s useful. However twisted someone else may find it to be, in Leander’s mind, the importance of being able toseeandfeelhis wins can’t be overstated, and that’s where being a Dom comes in. Talk can be valuable, of course, and there is a time and a place for it. But when it comes to processing and coping with trauma, talk simply doesn’t work for Leander, and insofar as he can tell, it doesn’t work for Tripp, either.

No one else needs to understand. They have each other for that.

As Leander is loading up his car to head home, he receives a text from Tripp advising that he’s coming straight over, the minute the clock chimes six. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars—or in this case, do not shower and change. Logistically speaking, Leander knows that he should probably tell him to go tohishome and do all that, but put plainly, he simply doesn’t want to.

Since their brief encounter in the hospital parking lot the night before, he hasn’t seen Tripp at all, and they’ve barely spoken. Both of their shifts were busy, leaving little time for texting. The result is an anxious Leander who is quite desperate to get on with their plans, and in general, to have Tripp in his arms.

Besides, he reasons to himself, it’s well-within the sphere of their relationship for Leander to order Tripp—once he’s collared—to get cleaned up or to prep himself in whatever way he deems necessary. In fact, the idea of Trippdoing soin Leander’s own bathroom is an enticing thought all it’s own, not to mention, one that’s easily tacked onto the scene he has in mind.

Excited all over again (perhaps even more so now), Leander bids his co-workers a rushed goodbye, completely ignoring Marley’s suspicious line of questioning regarding why he’s suddenly smiling.

“Are you seeing Autumn again or something?!” She calls after him hopefully, her voice carrying loudly across the parking lot. But Leander just slides silently into his car, thrusting a hand out the window to wave at her as he pulls away. Marley doesn’t need any inadvertent clues about how close she’s accidentally wandered to the truth—knowing her, it’s only a matter of time until she figures it out.

Leander wonders if Tripp realizes as much, and how he’ll react when she inevitably does, because it’s almostcertainlya ‘when,’ and not an ‘if.’

The drive home feels endless, though in actuality, it takes less than fifteen minutes. When Leander turns to maneuver his car into the parking area beneath his apartment complex, he notes Tripp’s Chevelle already parked in the visitor’s lot outside, and his extremities tingle with anticipation. Overnight bag slung over his shoulder, Leander takes the elevator from the garage up to his floor, beginning to slip into Dom-mode even before it dings his arrival and the doors slide open.

He’s still unprepared.

Leander’s breath catches in his chest because Tripp—Tripp looks even better than usual. Perhaps it’s all of the anticipation and the build-up, the coalescing stress and emotions piled high on top of something Leanderalreadywanted and needed very badly over the last twenty-four hours, but he’s fairly certain he’s never seen such a welcoming sight.

Tripp is still in his t-shirt, of course, paired with his blue uniform pants and heavy black duty boots, essentially the same thing Leander is wearing. Except, Tripp looks like he’s modeling for a catalog, not coming off of a long work shift, and Leander probably has “just rolled out of bed” vibes. To be fair, he did—he took a nap from about four-thirty to six, and likely retains the crease lines on his cheek to prove it.

The way Tripp leans so casually against Leander’s door frame, arms folded across his chest as he absently scrolls his phone, is artful perfection. His toned biceps push against the fabric of his t-shirt and the hem rides up a little near his hip, exposing skin that Leander has to physically restrain himself from dropping to his knees to lick.

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