Page 59 of Fire & Ice

“Shut up,” Tripp grunts, shoving Gunnar as hard as he can manage and barely budging him. Fuck Gunnar and his stupid-huge muscles. It’s not as if Tripp’s small, but Gunnar’s a brick shithouse. He chuckles as he shrugs Tripp off, turning away to walk towards the middle of the bay, where he can address everyone more effectively.

“Alrigh’, let’s get a move on, slackers,” Gunnar yells, clapping his hands together. “Fire ain’t gonna start itself.”

The ride to the training grounds is relaxing for Tripp, as much as being at work can be when he’d rather be at home, buried under the covers with Lee. The city flies by outside his window, turning first into sprawling industrial complexes and factories before becoming increasingly rural as they reach the outskirts. The slowly-rising sun in the winter sky is reflected off of towering windows and still-sleeping cars, pink and lazy in its journey to wake up.

Around him, Tripp’s fellow crew members shoot the shit and laugh, but Tripp’s content to sit quietly, running through drills in his head and thinking about everything he has to do, both today and tonight. He feels oddly comfortable, secure, even. Looking forward to seeing Lee later and spending the night with both him and his brother at Beau and Bri's rehearsal dinner, but not desperate for it or needy.

Just…happy.Content with the way things are. His life is damn good right now. Tripp can’t even imagine returning to the way things used to be before he and Lee jumped into this whole thing they have going together, wouldn’t know what to do if he suddenly had to try.

In the pocket of his pants, Tripp’s phone vibrates, but it’s too much of a pain to reachunderhis bunker gear and dig it out when he’ll just have to put it back. Leaving any device in an outer layer would be a great way to end up with a melted hunk of plastic and be out a few hundred dollars for a new phone, so…no. It’s probably just Lee checking in on him, anyway. He’s such a mother hen after they scene. That thought makes Tripp smile, makes him grateful. He turns his nose into the hood of Lee's sweatshirt that he’s still wearing, closing his eyes and inhaling the scent deeply.

Damn,Tripp thinks approvingly. Why doesn’t he steal Lee's shit more often?

The County’s fireground is available for any company in the local area to use for live burn training, City fire services included. It only has to be reserved ahead of time, and whatever potential scenarios approved by the County Commissioners. Not that those talking heads know anything about fire safety, and Tripp snorts when he thinks about them “approving” anything. As a Lieutenant, his own worries are mostly operational and practical, he steers clear of anything that would require wheeling and dealing with upper,uppermanagement in that way.

That’s Chief shit, so Mickey and Walter's gig, or maybe Gunnar’s, if he’s extra-unlucky that week.

When Theo pulls the engine to a stop about a hundred feet from the main burn building, Tripp glances out the window and spots Chief Mickey right away. He’s wearing his white helmet and leaning against the Sup vehicle impatiently. On the ground next to him are several huge stacks of wood pallets, bushels of hay, and some assorted other “Class A” materials they’ll use to stoke up a rager. All of the fire-fodder has to be brought inside the buildings, and no way is Mickey carting that stuff up multiple flights of stairs himself.

As Tripp listens to Gunnar taking them off-status with dispatch, Station Fifteen’s ladder and rescue trucks both pull to a stop behind the engine. Crews from the platoons scheduled opposite Tripp’s and an entire truckload of academy-fresh trainees soon to be turned loose on the department as a whole are packing them full, and they spill out like ants fleeing a smoking hill.

Ironic.

Every single person is here to participate in the planned drills—more specifically, they’re all here to learn from Tripp.

Damn,is he glad Lee let him blow off the lion’s share—ha—of his nervous energy before facing this shit.

Hopping down out of the truck—and noting disappointedly that the risen sun hasn’t remotely burned the chill from the air—Tripp waves hello to Mickey and then rounds on the burn building to assess his canvas, internally reviewing his plan of attack.

“Coffee’s on the picnic table,” Mickey grunts in his direction, before leaning sideways to holler around him at a gaggle of trainees socializing and dawdling awkwardly in front of the ladder truck. “Hey, you rookies just planning on watching while a real house burns to the ground, or what? Stop actin’ like spoiled princesses and haul this junk up to the second floor.”

From over at the picnic table—one of several placed beneath a pavilion structure meant to shelter onlookers from rain, water, falling debris, and sun—Tripp stifles a laugh. He turns away so that the newbies don’t see him smirking as he pours himself a coffee from one of the many Boxes of Joe littering the aged wood. There’s a giant stack of donuts there, too, and Tripp wastes no time in shoving more than a mouthful’s worth of powdered deliciousness into his face.

No question, this is the best part of any training—free food. With any luck, they’ll get hoagies for lunch, hopefully from that place he loves down the street.Fuck, yeah.Once his belly is full and there’s caffeine enroute to his veins, Tripp turns his attention back to the fireground.

The “burn building” they’re working out of today is actually two adjacent concrete structures, built specifically to train firefighters and rescue personnel using simulations thatmimic real life as closely as possible. The wing closest to Tripp’s engine was constructed to resemble a three-story rowhome, a residential dwelling, hundreds of which are found all over the city. Alternatively, the complex to the right of the house mimics a four-story commercial or industrial structure. Both are important to master, and each requires an entirely different approach to do so.

For Tripp, the teaching struggle lies in where to start and what to focus on as the major touchstones. On deciding what ismostimportant, what the priorities are to drive home, especially when handling a bunch of wet-behind-the-ear probies. There are a million things they could do during a live burn today,hoursworth of exercises and training using either structure, and Mickey’s left it completely up to Tripp to pare their maneuvers down to the essentials.

He takes a deep breath and lets it out.Alright,he thinks,Let’s do this.

“Not gonna make us run sprinkler drills on the industrial side, are you?” Aydin appears at Tripp’s side, helping himself to a cup of coffee. “Fuckin’ cold out.”

Tripp scoffs. “In this weather? What, you think I want my balls to fall off after I unpack? Don’t ask stupid questions. We’ll do those in the spring. Bus here yet?”

“Yep,” Aydin replies with a nod, gesturing off towards an area of the parking lot Tripp can’t see, thanks to all the fire trucks taking up space. “Medic-1 just pulled in. Your boy on today?”

“My—” Tripp startles, accidentally cuts himself off as he nearly spills his coffee, and then glares. “What did I say about stupid questions?” Leaving Aydin looking confused and sortof pitiful with his hands still raised, trying to pacify Tripp’s attitude, he stomps off.

Your boy.

Tripp wishes.

Focus.“Probies to the second floor,” Tripp hollers, swirling his hand over his head like he’s rounding them up, cowboy-style. “Time to see what you’re made of.”

Having collectively graduated from the academy and received conditional employment offers from the city, none of the newbies Tripp’s dealing with today arebrandnew to either fire ops or training evolutions. But everything they know is controlled—and nothing about fire in the real world is nearly so cut and dry.Thisis where these kids will start learning how to apply what they’ve memorized from books and in class: how to think on their feet, how to translate the theoretical to the practical, how to react when everything goes wrong and nothing that exists is how you expect it to be.

For starters, Tripp gathers them all inside the second floor of the residential side, packed like sardines into the bonfire room as Mickey lights the flame and then immediately bails. He’ll run command via radio from outside the building, just like during the real deal. Everyone that’s left inside is fully-masked and packed up at this point, except for Mac, who is stoking the fire completely unbothered by the increasing heat and smoke. He’s hanging out by the door to the fire escape, so Tripp isn’t overly worried, but he expects Mac to be forced from the room within the next few minutes.

---