Fic: (untitled firefighter fic) j2 PG
I wrote. :)
Trying for slightly silly and light fic. Dunno if it's gonna work.
Here's the first chapter. I'd love any and all con crit y'all could give me on it.
Jensen's breathing is loud behind the clear plexi of his mask, a harsh Darth Vader rasp of the air canister. Everything else sounds muffled, feels muffled through his heavy gloves, coat, boots. Looks muffled too, the edges softened with the smoke pouring down the hall.
He can feels the minutes go by, sharp where everything else is soft. He busts open a door, 4C, and knows that time is running out and the chief is gonna order him out. He can feel that this isn’t done, that if he leaves they’ll find one more corpse, one more person who’s alive now and won’t be soon.
“Ackles!” Bradley shouts into the radio, right on schedule. “Time’s up!”
“Not yet,” Jensen yells back, “I hear something. I’m almost there.” He stops to get his bearings, and then he does hear it, a high pitched keening like no human cry that he’s ever heard.
He breaks down 4D and two dogs rush out at him, whining like they’re frantic with fear. He expects them to break for the outside, but they rush back into the apartment, stupid fucking dogs. Jensen goes too, even though Bradley’s yelling about direct orders, even though that time-counter in his head is into negative numbers.
Half of the apartment from the next floor has collapsed into 4D. The ceiling is ripped open and the living room is littered with rubble. There’s a man on the floor, below most of the smoke, thank God, but unconscious. The dogs run back and forth, their yelps hoarse and urgent as they lead Jensen there.
Jensen should check the victim’s vitals, get a neck brace and backboard on him. He should, but by that time, the floor would be gone or the upper storey would have fallen in.
“Why do I always get the giants?” Jensen growls as he crosses the man’s arms in front of him. He bends over and lifts the guy’s back against his own chest, dragging him out of the room. Debris from the gaping hole falls on his helmet, and better the back of Jensen's head than the guy’s unprotected face.
Two flights of stairs later, Jensen pauses just long enough to strap an air mask over the man’s face before he shifts all that dead weight up onto his shoulder and starts down again.
The dogs are into the whole ‘leaving the burning building’ idea, which Jensen can’t help but count as a good thing.
Jensen stumbles once, going down hard on one knee. And fuck. Maybe Bradley was right, maybe he should have left earlier. He’s limping when he stands again, and by strength of will alone does the leg take his weight plus that of the guy on his shoulder.
It never even occurs to him to leave the stranger behind and get himself out of there.
For all his training, he’s breathing hard when he gets to daylight, and other people are taking the unconscious man off his shoulder and onto a stretcher. He lets them, taking a few minutes to get his helmet and gear off, get a few deep breaths of clean (okay, smoky but not-canned) air. His knee’s freakin’ killing him, but he sucks it up, not wanting to give the captain more reason to bitch at him.
Bradley comes over, gives him the “Follow Orders” speech, along with the “My Ass if You Get Killed” speech.
Jensen grins at him, empty “Yes, sir, sorry sir,” words tossed out like candy at a parade. He’s watching the guy on the stretcher, wrapped up in a grey blanket and strapped in.
The dogs are milling around, whining and in the way. A cop shoos them off but they don’t go far. “Somebody call animal control,” the officer’s partner suggests, and Jensen finds himself on his feet without planning it.
“It’s alright,” he says, because he can’t see the animals taken away to the county pound, maybe put down before their master gets out of the hospital. “They’re with me.” Stupid dogs saved a man’s life today, Jensen thinks, that makes them part of his crew.
The dogs ride back to the station in Engine 1, make-shift collars and leashes of utility rope keeping them from getting too much in the way.
Jensen's out of adrenalin, and he figures the dogs are too. The pair of them curl up together at his feet on the ride home, and when they get out at the station the female’s moving on three feet and the male whines when he’s petted. Jensen's limping from the knee thing, but he figures he’ll wrap it and ice it and he’ll be fine. Better that than filling out an injury report and giving Bradley another reason to ream his ass.
Shift has changed while they were out, and he leaves the dogs tied to a pole while he hits the showers and grabs some clean clothes real quick. They need a vet, even if nothing major's wrong. It’s not like he knows dogs, and he’d hate for the guy to get out of the hospital to find his animals are dead from smoke or internal injuries or something.
He goes through the empty locker-room, running his fingers on the back side of the locks. Four down, he hits pay-dirt, a piece of masking tape on the back. He peels it off and grins at the numbers. He spins the combination on the lock, and lo and behold the thing pops open. He rummages through, finds a set of keys. Five minutes later he’s heading for the door. “Hey Mack!” he calls on his way out, “I’m borrowing your truck. Back in an hour or so.”
Mack sputters and fusses, but Jensen obviously can’t take the dogs to the vet on his bike, so Mack shuts up after a demand of gas money.
The dogs are good on the way, and go into the vet’s office without a bit of trouble. Jensen's not sure why he’s going to all the effort, except that they saved a man, and they’re in pain, and there’s no doggy-EMT to hand them off to.
The girl in the vet’s office is crazy, Jensen thinks as he’s filling out paperwork. Dude, it’s not like dogs understand English, much less need to hear her baby-talk.
Jensen leaves half the lines blank on the canine admission forms. For names he puts “Girl” and “Dog.” That should be enough to tell them apart, right?
They get taken back to an exam room and the vet’s assistant does rude things with a thermometer and Jensen cringes and tries not to watch. The dogs are nervous and Girl whines and cringes behind Jensen's legs and has to be physically pulled out from behind him to get her vitals taken.
Jensen tries not to feel like an asshole. They’re just stupid dogs, right?
The vet comes in then, a small little Indian man (dot not feather). He checks the dogs over and talks to them like they’re people, all “How are you today” and “Oh, that doesn’t feel very nice does it?” At least he doesn’t use that baby-voice.
It turns out that Girl has a piece of broken glass cutting her up in between the pads of her paw and Dog is just bruised up a little from something falling on him. Girl gets bandaged up and Dog gets a shot for the pain and swelling and Jensen gets a bill for three hundred dollars.
“Can I just leave them here?” he asks after sacrificing his credit card to the cause.
“Boarding is forty-eight dollars per animal per night,” the check-out girl says and hell no, Jensen's not paying that for a stranger’s dogs. He ends up buying a big-ass bag of their cheapest scientifically engineered dog food (forty-two dollars is less than half what boarding would be so Jensen wins, right?).
He gets the dogs back in Mack’s truck and back across town to Jensen's apartment. He wants nothing more than to crash, but he locks the dogs in the bathroom and drives Mack’s truck back and comes back on his bike. By the time he’s home again his knee is swelling and stiff and the dogs are curled on top of each other on the bath mat. He leaves the door open so they can wander the apartment. He stretches out on the couch with a pillow under his head and one under his knee and an icepack to take the swelling down.
It’s been a long fucking day and Jensen's out like a light.
Trying for slightly silly and light fic. Dunno if it's gonna work.
Here's the first chapter. I'd love any and all con crit y'all could give me on it.
Jensen's breathing is loud behind the clear plexi of his mask, a harsh Darth Vader rasp of the air canister. Everything else sounds muffled, feels muffled through his heavy gloves, coat, boots. Looks muffled too, the edges softened with the smoke pouring down the hall.
He can feels the minutes go by, sharp where everything else is soft. He busts open a door, 4C, and knows that time is running out and the chief is gonna order him out. He can feel that this isn’t done, that if he leaves they’ll find one more corpse, one more person who’s alive now and won’t be soon.
“Ackles!” Bradley shouts into the radio, right on schedule. “Time’s up!”
“Not yet,” Jensen yells back, “I hear something. I’m almost there.” He stops to get his bearings, and then he does hear it, a high pitched keening like no human cry that he’s ever heard.
He breaks down 4D and two dogs rush out at him, whining like they’re frantic with fear. He expects them to break for the outside, but they rush back into the apartment, stupid fucking dogs. Jensen goes too, even though Bradley’s yelling about direct orders, even though that time-counter in his head is into negative numbers.
Half of the apartment from the next floor has collapsed into 4D. The ceiling is ripped open and the living room is littered with rubble. There’s a man on the floor, below most of the smoke, thank God, but unconscious. The dogs run back and forth, their yelps hoarse and urgent as they lead Jensen there.
Jensen should check the victim’s vitals, get a neck brace and backboard on him. He should, but by that time, the floor would be gone or the upper storey would have fallen in.
“Why do I always get the giants?” Jensen growls as he crosses the man’s arms in front of him. He bends over and lifts the guy’s back against his own chest, dragging him out of the room. Debris from the gaping hole falls on his helmet, and better the back of Jensen's head than the guy’s unprotected face.
Two flights of stairs later, Jensen pauses just long enough to strap an air mask over the man’s face before he shifts all that dead weight up onto his shoulder and starts down again.
The dogs are into the whole ‘leaving the burning building’ idea, which Jensen can’t help but count as a good thing.
Jensen stumbles once, going down hard on one knee. And fuck. Maybe Bradley was right, maybe he should have left earlier. He’s limping when he stands again, and by strength of will alone does the leg take his weight plus that of the guy on his shoulder.
It never even occurs to him to leave the stranger behind and get himself out of there.
For all his training, he’s breathing hard when he gets to daylight, and other people are taking the unconscious man off his shoulder and onto a stretcher. He lets them, taking a few minutes to get his helmet and gear off, get a few deep breaths of clean (okay, smoky but not-canned) air. His knee’s freakin’ killing him, but he sucks it up, not wanting to give the captain more reason to bitch at him.
Bradley comes over, gives him the “Follow Orders” speech, along with the “My Ass if You Get Killed” speech.
Jensen grins at him, empty “Yes, sir, sorry sir,” words tossed out like candy at a parade. He’s watching the guy on the stretcher, wrapped up in a grey blanket and strapped in.
The dogs are milling around, whining and in the way. A cop shoos them off but they don’t go far. “Somebody call animal control,” the officer’s partner suggests, and Jensen finds himself on his feet without planning it.
“It’s alright,” he says, because he can’t see the animals taken away to the county pound, maybe put down before their master gets out of the hospital. “They’re with me.” Stupid dogs saved a man’s life today, Jensen thinks, that makes them part of his crew.
The dogs ride back to the station in Engine 1, make-shift collars and leashes of utility rope keeping them from getting too much in the way.
Jensen's out of adrenalin, and he figures the dogs are too. The pair of them curl up together at his feet on the ride home, and when they get out at the station the female’s moving on three feet and the male whines when he’s petted. Jensen's limping from the knee thing, but he figures he’ll wrap it and ice it and he’ll be fine. Better that than filling out an injury report and giving Bradley another reason to ream his ass.
Shift has changed while they were out, and he leaves the dogs tied to a pole while he hits the showers and grabs some clean clothes real quick. They need a vet, even if nothing major's wrong. It’s not like he knows dogs, and he’d hate for the guy to get out of the hospital to find his animals are dead from smoke or internal injuries or something.
He goes through the empty locker-room, running his fingers on the back side of the locks. Four down, he hits pay-dirt, a piece of masking tape on the back. He peels it off and grins at the numbers. He spins the combination on the lock, and lo and behold the thing pops open. He rummages through, finds a set of keys. Five minutes later he’s heading for the door. “Hey Mack!” he calls on his way out, “I’m borrowing your truck. Back in an hour or so.”
Mack sputters and fusses, but Jensen obviously can’t take the dogs to the vet on his bike, so Mack shuts up after a demand of gas money.
The dogs are good on the way, and go into the vet’s office without a bit of trouble. Jensen's not sure why he’s going to all the effort, except that they saved a man, and they’re in pain, and there’s no doggy-EMT to hand them off to.
The girl in the vet’s office is crazy, Jensen thinks as he’s filling out paperwork. Dude, it’s not like dogs understand English, much less need to hear her baby-talk.
Jensen leaves half the lines blank on the canine admission forms. For names he puts “Girl” and “Dog.” That should be enough to tell them apart, right?
They get taken back to an exam room and the vet’s assistant does rude things with a thermometer and Jensen cringes and tries not to watch. The dogs are nervous and Girl whines and cringes behind Jensen's legs and has to be physically pulled out from behind him to get her vitals taken.
Jensen tries not to feel like an asshole. They’re just stupid dogs, right?
The vet comes in then, a small little Indian man (dot not feather). He checks the dogs over and talks to them like they’re people, all “How are you today” and “Oh, that doesn’t feel very nice does it?” At least he doesn’t use that baby-voice.
It turns out that Girl has a piece of broken glass cutting her up in between the pads of her paw and Dog is just bruised up a little from something falling on him. Girl gets bandaged up and Dog gets a shot for the pain and swelling and Jensen gets a bill for three hundred dollars.
“Can I just leave them here?” he asks after sacrificing his credit card to the cause.
“Boarding is forty-eight dollars per animal per night,” the check-out girl says and hell no, Jensen's not paying that for a stranger’s dogs. He ends up buying a big-ass bag of their cheapest scientifically engineered dog food (forty-two dollars is less than half what boarding would be so Jensen wins, right?).
He gets the dogs back in Mack’s truck and back across town to Jensen's apartment. He wants nothing more than to crash, but he locks the dogs in the bathroom and drives Mack’s truck back and comes back on his bike. By the time he’s home again his knee is swelling and stiff and the dogs are curled on top of each other on the bath mat. He leaves the door open so they can wander the apartment. He stretches out on the couch with a pillow under his head and one under his knee and an icepack to take the swelling down.
It’s been a long fucking day and Jensen's out like a light.