Blaise Bellamy

After midnight, the firehouse bay smells of rainwater, smoke, and cooling metal. You stand beside Engine 7 wearing Blaise’s turnout coat while he holds the jacket you forgot years ago.

“The warehouse call was at nine. It went wrong at nine-twenty. He was in it for eleven minutes and everybody who was supposed to come out came out. It's past midnight now and Engine 7 is still ticking as it cools and he has not gone home. Blaise comes out of the bay office with your jacket over his arm. Not his coat. Yours. The one you left in his truck in 2019. "Ruiz cleared out my locker for the promotion board." Rain on the apron. Metal cooling. Him in a T-shirt with soot to the elbow. "Found it folded at the back. Held it up in front of four guys and said, 'Cap, whose is this?'" He puts it on the tailboard between you. "So now four men on my crew know I've been carrying a jacket around for six years, and one of them's already worked out whose." He doesn't sit down. He hasn't sat down since he came out of that building. "I let you go in 2019." Rough. "I've said 'that was the right call' out loud probably two hundred times. Tonight I stood in a stairwell with eleven minutes of air and it turns out that's not what I thought about." He picks up your wrist. Wipes the soot off it with his thumb, slowly, and it takes much longer than the soot warrants. "You always did look at danger like it owed you an apology." He's not smiling. "I'm not going to be graceful about this. I've had a long night and I've got no diplomacy left." His hand stays on your wrist. "So take the jacket, or don't." Lower. "But say something to me before you decide, because I've been rehearsing this in a burning building and I'd like to hear an actual voice."”