There might’ve been a thin trace of grim humour to them on occasion but for the most part domestic violence calls were amongst the worst they had to deal with. A woman going after her husband with a vase for cheating on her being one thing, a husband who’d beaten his wife for a pulp for overcooking the chicken she’d cooked for his dinner after pulling a twelve hour work day was another entirely. You never knew what you were gonna get until you got there and by then you’d be neck deep. Elea hoped that for the crew’s sake it had been more of the former, a spat between husband and wife that’d gotten just a little bit heated instead of the sort of call that would have their people walking back in looking grave, feeling like the weight of the world was suddenly crushing the rest of their bodies down through their knees.

Blue eyes studied Cassidy’s face as he stepped into the room, trying to gauge either way. There was a pall of grim there, she was pretty damn sure, but as she brandished the boxes it was like a dark cloud had dissipated revealing the bright glow of the sun right behind. Not the best sign of a simple call, not the worst either. Elea let the smile curl onto her lips and nodded. ”Patrol’s usually pretty good that way,” she agreed. Although, these days it was likely gonna be a case of standing room only in the cells, despite the need for social distancing. ”Did the truck come back with you or are they still out there?” AKA, did she try and slow down the cooking a little or were there gonna be a half dozen starving firefighers descending through the doors in a minute looking for something to fill the hole physical labour had put right through their guts.

Leaning back against the counter, Elea gave the boxes another wiggle, their contents rattling and scraping inside the boxes like they were maracas. She wiggled her brows above them, snorting as he admitted he didn’t know what the second box was. ”Quinoa,” she repeated in a drawl. ”It’s a South American seed. It’s good for you.” That held about as much sway in the firehouse as the notion that red meat wasn’t though. ”Rice it is. I think the quinoa’s probably off anyway.” Elea set the box of rice down on the counter, tipped the quinoa box upside down and grimaced. They were pretty frugal but trying to see if quinoa that had expired in May 2016 was probably pushing it a little too far.

Shuddering she tossed the box in the trash and then turned, a shrewd look on her face. A volunteer. One who obviously didn’t know or care what he could’ve been letting himself in for. ”A dog’s body. I like it,” she crooned. Smiling crookedly, she pointed him in the direction of the veggies she’d stacked for the salad she knew she’d hear a ton of bitching about when it got set out. ”I’m guessing you can identify most of those?” she asked with a winged brow. ”If you can chop ‘em up, toss them together for a salad I can get the rice going.” She snagged a large pot for that, already putting together stuff to add to the station’s shopping list in her head. ”How was it looking out there? Things seemed a little quieter on our last run.” That was the way these things went though, a hush falling for a moment, lulling you into a false sense of security before the next wave swept in to choke you.

Tagged: @cassidy * Word Count: 611

Most people spent their lives looking at the clock but on this job you really did live by it. You constantly juggled calls, how to fit them into the tight confines of a shift … and when you were on cooking duty, you had that continual little voice in the back of your head warning you not to get too fancy, not to start something complicated that you had to watch, cause the minute you did the voice of God, AKA dispatch, hollered through the station and you had to drop everything and go.

She hadn’t. She’d watched everybody else do it but Elea knew even without asking Cassidy that there was a chance time would have to be juggled again. You couldn’t predict, if you thought you could you were in the wrong line of work. She huffed out an amused breath of reassurance, a little glad he had a touch of the mind reader about him. ”I wasn’t worried,” she crooned in a promise. ”With you back first I’d have had someone who weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet to hold off the ravenous hoards while I finished up.” She let out a little sound as she looked him up and down as though checking that little fact.

The seeds were the sort of thing folks always assumed she ate. The rabbit food, the bird seed, a single apple a day to keep the pounds off. That had never been her problem, on the job it couldn’t have been, she’d have been flat on the ground herself in hours if she stuck to that sort of diet. She’d just apparently inherited a metabolism that could burn up calories almost as fast as she could consume the, resulting in the sort of figure that looked far more frail than it was.

That wasn’t to say she couldn’t lecture a bunch of red meat loving firefighters and paramedics on the benefits of diversifying once in a while. Elea scrunched her nose back up at him. ”Peanuts. Sunflower seeds are way too messy.” Although she’d give him bonus points for at least eating a seed of some kind. She felt a little wasteful dumping the quinoa but at this point, she thought as she glanced down into the trash can after them, they were probably as much a biological hazard as the virus. You never knew when someone would get desperate enough, like she’d almost been to try cooking it up. ”Hey, don’t knock it before you try it,” she snorted, snapping a hand in his direction. ”Someone was probably clearing out their cupboards at some point, figured it was better off here than giving them the stink eye every time they went digging for something to eat at home.” Or it’d been someone feeling helpful now.

Just like Cassidy. The offer was one she wouldn’t abuse but the man had left himself open to it. Elea smirked as she snagged the pot for the rice, side stepping to the sink to pour the rice into the bottom of it to rinse it off. ”Just don’t cut off a finger…” she warned. She kept an eye on him anyway, blue eyes cutting sideways as she sluiced the rice under cold water before she topped the pan up by eye to the right level. She met his eye as she stepped back, her lips twitching before they stilled at the thought of what it might’ve been like outside. The firehouse felt like a castle against it at times, the walls shielding them somehow.

It could’ve been raging warfare out there and unless the call went out, they wouldn’t have known of much of it. A sobering thought. Elea’s expression had grown more serious by the time she was lifting the kid off of the chicken to baste it again. ”I’d say probably not,” she said hoarsely. They could joke about it all they wanted but at the end of the day everybody in this house knew what it really meant when there were less and less people on the streets. Hearing her own thoughts echoed in his Elea reached out and rubbed a hand lightly over his back. ”They’re all gonne be at home, doing the wise thing and keeping themselves isolated. Hey, if we weren’t here everybody we know would be doing the same thing.” A lie, a little white one that probably wouldn’t fly very far.

Elea stepped away, drawing in a deep breath to grab the large metal trays she’d set the food out in. If it was deemed edible they’d likely be licked clean in the end. Her throat worked at Cassidy’s observation, he was certainly getting the weight off about it all, although that lead feeling was still there in the pit of her stomach. ”Probably,” she said on a sigh, setting them down lightly on the counter. ”They will get better though, that’s the goal you’ve gotte keep your eyes on. Til then, right, we keep doing our jobs. Pick yourself up every day, dust your off, get back out there and if you’re lucky, look good doing it. The greens will help there.” She slanted a grin at that, coming to peer over his shoulder into the bowl. Not bad. She plucked a chunk of lettuce from the bowl to tide her over as she propped herself against the counter next to him.

Tagged: @cassidy * Word Count: 902

Mistake number 2, Elea thought, her lips pursing into a smug little grin. She’d only been kidding about making him stand as the last barrier between her and the hungry hoards returning from the call of course but now Cassidy was leaving himself wide open to it in a way she was powerless to resist. He certainly would’ve made more of an impression standing there, all solid chest and brawny shoulders while she’d have looked like a reed up against a hurricane. ”You’ve gotta stop doing that,” she warned, a trace of sing-song in her voice. ”Volunteering’s a bad idea, Ryan.” And not only when it came to her. Right now volunteering was more likely to turn around and bite you on the ass than nudge you towards venerated sainthood.

Elea dusted her hands off and then held a finger up in his direction, her brows hitched faintly. ”I thought we were talking favourites,” she quantified. Peanuts were that for hers, although they had to be fresh roasted, salted just lightly, maybe with a little dusting of the dry roasted seasoning sort if she was getting real adventurous. Her nose wrinkled as she shook her head. ”Unless they’re going into something else, like couscous, you can keep those.” A little fussy, she knew, but she’d always had clear cut opinions on food. Not fussy, she didn’t have the reputation some of the guys at the station had for turning their noses up at anything that didn’t fall into the meat and three veg kinda category, but years on the road with her parents had taught her when to start questioning what was going in the pot. That kinda upbringing tended to do do a number on your tastes.

Adventurous but firm on her boundaries. That pretty much defined everything in her life.

She probably could’ve coaxed half the folks in the station to be the same but right now people didn’t want to cross lines for very obvious reasons. She’d empathise, sympathise even and when they crabbed about the food later, she wouldn’t force them to finish what ended up on their plates. The salad even hitting any plates was doubtful, despite Cassidy’s help. Elea paused with the water streaming into the sink to turn and eye him with amusement. ”You’re not just gonna wrap a kitchen towel around it and swear you’re good? You surprise me.” Snorting, she set the pan down on the stove and stepped over to bend and inspect his finger and his cutting skills close up. ”Eh … you’re not bad with a knife. I will give you a sucker and a sticker if I do have end up patching you up though, since I’m sure you’ll be a good boy while I do it.” She would’ve patted his arm as she stepped away but doing that while he was working with the knife was only asking for the quips to become a reality.

Maybe she should’ve done. It might’ve saved the darker turn the conversation took.

Thinking of how much worse this was because people hadn’t listened to the medical advice – screaming conspiracy or scoffing about how badly it would affect them if they got infected – left a bitter taste in Elea’s throat that she tried to swallow. She forced positivity into her voice, like anybody working out of this firehouse had much of that left right now. One corner of her mouth kicked up for him. ”Right, patching them up, handing out those suckers and stickers.” Like it was all that easy. That’d be like pissing in the ocean at the moment, insignificant in all of the overwhelmingness of the rest.

You did what you could, carried on going one step at a time, that was all you could control. Drawing herself back together Elea was glad that Cass had pushed the conversation back out of that abyss again. She shifted close, propping herself against the counter as she crunched into the lettuce. She clucked her tongue at him, narrowing blue eyes for a moment as though she was considering the deal. Elea thrust a hand out in his direction, squelching her smugness into just a hint of a triumphant grin. ”Deal.” Humming in her throat, Elea studied the stove top, the stove door where steam was moistening the glass. ”That’s about it til the rice is done. I guess all we need is a pack of cards…” Something to stop minds slipping back down that slope at least. It was slippery and those angry bears of fear lay at the bottom.

Tagged: @cassidy * Word Count: 759