For the character and letter meme - Captain Stanley and Q
Q. One missed call.
Fun fact: This one was originally a pain in the ass to write, but I actually really like the way it turned out. I think this one was the second prompt fic I attempted (or the first? Don’t recall if I started it before or after Catnap); the first draft was written with fountain pens. Did a second draft on the typewriter, and then a final revision while typing it up on PC, so this one needed a bit more TLC than usual... but oh man once I finally figured out what I was doing during the second draft, I was having an absolute blast with this.
This is also a loose continuation of the last “Cap and Mike deal with McConnike’s continued existence” fic.
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The second Mike Stoker realized that the first few hours of his shift had been uncommonly pleasant and quiet, he should’ve known he was fucked. They were coming back from their second run that day - a simple grease fire, nothing major, and they’d been back at the station in the blink of an eye, clean-up included. And now he was looking forward to a nice, quiet lunch - or as nice as it got when Johnny was cooking, anyway.
That nice, quiet lunch obviously never happened.
As they climbed off the engine and stepped into the rec room, Johnny greeted them with a cheerful “oh hey, Cap! McConnike called, said he wanted to talk to you”, and Hank froze so abruptly that Mike bumped straight into him and almost sent them both sprawling into the skinny paramedic.
“Did he say why?” Hank asked. There was an odd, floaty quality to his voice that really didn't bode well.
“Nope,” Johnny replied, twirling an oven mitt around his finger, seemingly not noticing his captain’s reaction, “just said we should tell you to call him back when you can. I didn’t really ask, though.”
“Oh no,” Hank muttered, staggered forward a few steps and sank down on one of the chairs around the kitchen table. “Oh, that can’t be good.”
Mike silently agreed, mostly just because it meant that Hank would be all over the place until he got that sorted out, but then again... McConnike seemed like a nice, jovial man, sure, but as long as Hank was so obviously scared of him and Mike didn’t know why, he didn’t trust the man for a single second. Heck, for all he knew the guy might single-handedly be responsible for Hank’s odd phobia of anyone with a higher rank than himself... not to mention that Mike hated seeing him like that, all frantically worried and uptight. It just wasn’t right. And so he resolved to keep an eye on his friend until the entire thing cleared up, just to be safe. More than he always did, anyway.
He figured it wouldn’t take long, in any case - after all, all Hank had to do was to pick up a phone and call the man back.
As it turned out, he hadn’t accounted for Hank’s incredible ability to fret and pace and argue himself into complete inactivity until he’d totally clammed up, without ever getting a single thing done.
And so, afternoon turned into evening and Hank didn’t say a word at the dinner table and his obvious unease was starting to put Johnny on edge, who’d seemingly picked up on the tense atmosphere without ever consciously noticing, and that confused the heck out of Chet and caused Roy to keep throwing his partner wary glances, and in the end the entire shift ended up feeling decidedly off, huddled around the big, square table and picking at their food, and that was a huge shame, really, because Mike had been looking forward to Marco’s excellent cooking paired with good company and pleasant conversation.
Hank continued his pacing after dinner, trying to make his way into his office, probably, but turning back halfway, going back to the rec room door, turning on his heel again and walking back towards his office… and so on, and so forth, time and time again.
Mike’s patience was starting to wear a little thin by the time they were trying to sleep, because Hank still hadn’t picked up a phone and was now tossing and turning in his bunk, way too deep into his own head to come anywhere close to sleeping. Mike could hear long, graceful fingers tapping against the brick dividing walls between the bunks, against the edge of the bunk itself, even drumming against the mattress. Quiet, barely audible mutters of “I’m alright, I’m alright, it’s fine, everything’s fine...”
“Hank,” Mike finally hissed, “go to sleep!”
He heard the other man jolt, clearly startled, before the movements stilled. Mike was pretty sure Hank wouldn’t sleep that night.
He absolutely had to do something.
The night - regarding the tones going off, at least - was blissfully quiet, but come morning Hank still rolled out of bed looking like he hadn’t slept for even a single second in days, and was carrying the weight of the world on his lanky shoulders… which was equally heartwrenching and impressive, given that Hank’s little problem had started less than 24 hours ago.
And so, Mike made a decision: He watched Hank putter into the washroom to brush his teeth and shave, and snuck into his office to call McConnike himself. He wasn’t entirely sure if Hank would thank him for that or have his head for it, but something had to be done, and he figured that, as Hank’s second-in-command and best friend, it was his solemn duty to do it.
The call ended up taking all of a minute, and left Mike shaking his head in exasperation. He went into the washroom to release Hank from his suffering, and found the man pacing yet again. Upon spotting Mike, Hank came over to him and looked at him with sad brown eyes.
“I think I know why McConnike called,” he said.
Mike knew the nice thing to do would be to interrupt his friend and tell him what he’d just learned, put an end to his anxiety, but he had to admit that he wasn’t exactly looking forward to Hank’s reaction and the latrine duty he was probably going to get as a natural consequence of overreaching like this - and besides, he really was terribly curious about what Hank thought he’d done. Heck, maybe Mike would even gain some insight into what exactly his friend’s issue was. And so he just raised an eyebrow and asked “oh?”
Hank dragged a hand through his hair, which stayed sticking up in all kinds of directions, his expressive, thick eyebrows creased with worry.
“Remember when I accidentally hit the Chief with a volleyball at the last department picnic? He must’ve finally figured out that it was me who did it. This is it! This is how my beautiful career ends! Squandered for a volleyball game we didn’t even win!” He sighed, and the genuine heartbreak reflected in his eyes was as touching as it was unnecessary. “Mike, it’s been such an honor working with you…”
Mike decided he’d heard enough then - he put a hand on his captain’s shoulder.
“Hank,” he said calmly, “let me talk for a minute, alright?”
Hank blinked at him, clearly confused, but he did shut up.
“First of all,” the engineer continued, “I’m pretty sure McConnike still thinks it was Johnny who nailed him with that volleyball. Second, he seemed more impressed than anything. Third, I figured I’d do you a favor and called him for you --” he skillfully ignored the way Hank’s shoulders tensed up under his hand, and the man’s wide-eyed, frantic deer-in-the-headlights look -- “and it’s actually just about the practice drill on Tuesday -- apparently it looks like we might get hit by a pretty bad storm around then, so they decided to reschedule it for next week.”
The terrified look turned incredulous.
“And that’s it?” Hank asked.
“That’s it. Apparently we were supposed to get a physical memo about it, but it ended up at 15’s again, so the Chief decided to just call us directly.”
“That man,” Hank groaned and leaned heavily on the sink, “has got to stop doing that.”
Mike wisely decided to keep his comments to himself, and merely patted his captain’s shoulder in a reassuring gesture. For the most part, he was just glad that Hank was going to be alright.
And a second for the Character and letter -Mike Stoker and X
X - Flash Of Anger
Well, THIS one sure was a challenge!
I originally tried bumping up the drama level further and further to get to a point where I could imagine Stoker losing his cool, but it just didn’t happen - so I pretty much did the opposite and figured that him having to save his amazing, perfect, self-sabotaging disaster of a captain from himself would probably be more effective. Besides, the good old “leader and second-in-command are friends and actually pretty close, especially when no one’s looking”-dynamic is always fun to write. Thus, “Hank” and “Mike”, and this whole thing not ending in latrine duty.
Of course, a prank involving the engine would’ve been easiest, but the prompt said a flash of anger, not a raging wildfire of fury, so. yeah.
Also, totally random Roy POV, I guess? For bonus points, there WILL be a Mike POV in the prompt fills, but it sure ain’t in this story where you’d have expected it.
Wrote this one on a typewriter again; I’ll reblog with the typewritten version later or tomorrow or something.
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Life at Station 51 taught one to expect the unexpected, if not for Chet’s constant pranks, then thanks to Johnny’s uncanny ability to make any day far more interesting than it really had to be. Safe to say, there wasn’t much that really, genuinely surprised Roy after all those years. He especially hadn’t expected Mike and Cap to be the thing that did it on this particular day, before the shift had even officially started. And yet…
“Hank Stanley, what did you do???” a voice suddenly howled through the otherwise quiet station, loud enough to echo, and despite Roy’s claims of being totally unsurprisable, that did the trick, especially after Roy finally recognized the voice - to his utter bafflement, it was Mike Stoker’s.
Roy had never - not once in his years at 51’s - heard Mike raise his voice. The engineer was completely unflappable, and even when something really got to him, he was the type for murderous glances and quiet seething - unhinged shouting really wasn’t his style. Roy wasn’t trying to snoop, honestly, but still found himself edging closer to Cap’s office, and couldn’t avoid hearing some of what was being said. Well, all of it, really, but it was hardly his fault if he’d left something out in the engine bay…
“Mike, you don’t understand,” Roy heard Cap say, his voice striking an odd balance of intense and utterly morose, “the man is going to ruin me. Have my head on a silver platter.”
“Not if I get to you first,” Mike barked. “Putting in for a transfer to god-knows-where because you don’t like a battalion chief that hasn’t even started working yet? Giving up on everything we’ve built here? That- are you completely out of your mind?”
“It’s damage control, Mike,” Cap said. “Once McConnike gets his hands on me, I’ll never make battalion chief - heck, I’ll be lucky if I don’t end up getting fired.”
“What on earth would he fire you for?” Mike asked incredulously, his normally endless patience clearly running dangerously thin.
“I don’t-” Captain Stanley paused and took a shaky breath, at which point Roy realized that he was basically directly in front of his office now, but in his mixture of morbid curiosity and honest concern, he found that he really didn’t care. “I don’t know, Mike, but he’ll find something, believe me.”
Mike huffed. “And that’s why you’ll just drop everything and leave? Look, Station 51 in general and this shift in particular is one of the best teams out there, and we have the quite probably best paramedics in the business right now. I’m sure the guys upstairs know that, and I’m almost certain they wouldn’t simply let McConnike have his merry way with your assignment.”
“You’re just saying that to cheer me up,” Cap sighed, and it sounded heart-wrenchingly pitiful.
Mike didn’t seem impressed, though - his voice was firm and allowed no argument as he replied: “Hank, have you ever heard me say something I haven’t meant?”
Silence.
Roy could hear footsteps in the office, and almost bailed - but after nothing happened, he realized that it must’ve been the captain pacing. Mike didn’t say a thing, seemingly content to wait the man out and let him think.
“You really think I should stay?” Cap asked. He sounded genuinely surprised by it.
“Obviously,” was Mike’s familiarly bone-dry reply.
“Despite the risk?”
“Yes. I may be biased because I really do not want another captain if I can help it, but I also definitely think the risk is worth it. It’s a damned good thing we’ve got going here, Hank, with a lot of great men working in an amazing team. And you, Hank, you’re part of that. We could make do without you, sure, we wouldn’t fall apart with a new captain, but I’ve seen these people work with different captains and I’m absolutely certain the spark would be gone if you left.”
Roy thought of Johnny, eternally distrustful of anyone outranking him, who had nonetheless - however hesitantly - found something of a father figure in the man, and silently agreed. He’d probably clam up again the second a new captain set foot into the station. Chet, too, in his own way. They’d live, sure, but not like they’d used to. That wasn’t really something he’d consciously thought of recently, and in retrospect, Roy wouldn’t have minded keeping it that way.
“And you really mean that?” Cap asked Mike yet again, before answering his own question: “Of course you do.”
There was a short silence, only broken by the sound of further footsteps. Paper being picked up. Another pause.
“There,” Cap said, punctuated by the sound of tearing paper, “I give up.” Another tearing noise. The quiet flutter of scraps into a waste basket. “You’ve got me. I’m staying. You happy now?”
“Yes, actually,” Mike replied - and unexpected admission from the stoic engineer. “And if I’m wrong, if that Chief of yours really does try something, he’ll have to get past me first - and I’m sure every other guy on the shift would say the exact same thing.”
“Good, good,” Cap said, sounding relieved. He took a shaky breath.
“You know,” he said, “I still can’t believe you actually shouted at me.”
“Some things are worth shouting about,” was Mike’s simple, gruff reply. “And now let’s get out of here and get some actual work done, I’ve had enough of your office for the day.”
“You ‘n me both,” Roy heard Cap mutter, and then had to dodge into the break room as fast as he could to avoid being caught totally-not-snooping.
By the time captain and engineer walked into the break room, the way Mike stuck just a bit closer to Cap than usual was the only remaining evidence that this morning had been anything else than perfectly ordinary, and Roy was about to very subtly needle Mike about losing his temper, before realizing that he couldn’t, that nobody could ever know - but then again, he figured it’d been worth it.
From the Injuries ask meme "You shot me!" - Colonel Casey
From this ask meme
Really, it should never have happened.
John’s got the best aim of all of his brother’s, even better than Scott’s, truthfully, and he spent three years with the RAF. He’s a master of the claw machine, of pin-point precise decisions and actions and, whether it’s catching a weather monitoring station with a mooring claw or hitting the range target bullseye, there’s no way he’d simply miss.
And he wouldn’t have. He wouldn’t have missed if the guy in a balaclava and hoodie hadn’t decided that tackling people on a rich person’s shooting range was a smart thing to go out and do on a cold, drizzly Wednesday evening.
For an American, John sure has a big reluctance surrounding guns. It’d been quite the challenge to get him out to England, to the Lady Penelope’s range for a few lessons, in the first place. He remembers Grandpa Grant owning a big old blunderbuss thing back when he was just a boy, but not many people fire live bullets these days, not really, not with the upsurge in electronic disablers and Global banning of the frankly dangerous things without a permit and a very good reason for their possession.
Casey, evidently, thinks she has a good reason for them. She wants all of Jeff’s boys prepared (though, in the end, they’d refused to let her get her hands on Alan) for anything, and apparently that includes using guns. Scott had persuaded him to just go along with it, to keep the GDF happy. It’s just the range, John, there’s nothing you need to worry about John, Gordon had a great time John. Even with Casey’s worries about The Hood, John knows full well that none of them will ever use the thing against another human being, villainous or otherwise. Their job is to reconnaissance and rescue, definitely not to shooting people. Not intentionally anyway.
The crack of the shot discharging as he goes down is going to haunt John for a long time.
His head ricochets off the gravel, stunned, and the gun falls from limp fingers, skittering away from him. There’s a black-gloved hand shoving his face down, another wrestling one of his arms up behind his back.
“G-Give me all your valuables!” The guy with a heavy knee on John’s spine demands. He sounds young, desperate perhaps. Like he’s walked to the nearest manor house with half a plan and attacked the first rich-looking person he finds. “Y-Your watch!” The knee in his spine presses down hard and John chokes out an awful, pained little sound as something in there grinds. “G-Give me...”
John twists to try and get a look at Colonel Casey, to see how she’s reacting to all this, only to find...
John’s mouth drops open. His eyes go wide and shocked and his face abruptly loses all colour.
There’s blood rapidly seeping into the fabric of her uniform, around the shoulder. A dangerous crimson; a deadly bloom that’s intent on devouring as much of the material as it can, as fast as possible. She claps a hand over the gunshot wound, but she’s already stumbling to her knees, her own gun out and levelled at the perp that had just flattened John, her face gritty with determination.
“No!” There’s a surge of momentum that upends the young man kneeling on him, reaching for his watch, with a yelp, and John flings an arm out, putting his own body in between Casey’s gunsight and the perp. “Wait, don’t shoot him!”
“H-hey! D-Drop the gun!” The guy insists, shaking badly as he levels the gun he’s grabbed off the floor at John. What’s visible of his face beneath the balaclava an ashy grey. His fingers on the trigger are dangerously trembly. “Or... Or I’ll shoot him! I swear!”
John raises both hands in surrender, his hair mussed wild and gravel imprinted on his cheek.
“Drop the gun Aunt Casey.” John says, strained, “Let’s give this guy what he wants, so that I can have a look at that shoulder of yours, ok?”
The ask prompt - getting reqady for a formal occasion. OK - not an OTP but the 51 crew helping Johnny and Roy get dressed in their formal uniforms for their Captains ceremony. (as a bonus - did you know that it was a tradition in LACounty for the crew to paint the skunk stripe on the helmet of a fellow crew member who's been promoted to Captain)
i did not know that! honestly that makes me so happy and I’m getting so many feels for that !!!!! (sorry it’s been a minute since you sent this but I just went and found it so I’m ready to go!)
Honestly, I promise you I will write this, but I think this will go longer than is good for tumblr, so I’m going to write and post it for AO3 hopefully within the month. Please keep an eye out for it, and I will be happy to tag you in it on AO3 if you’d like. Just send me a PM saying if you’d like me to do that and I will :)
Gordon’s last gift to his older brother was a pamphlet listing a variety of hand and wrist exercises, in an effort to help stave off the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s probably just about inevitable, considering all the typing his brother does. Of the five of them, John and Alan are the only ones who spend any time at desks any longer, and though it doesn’t happen often, occasionally John ends up with idle time on his hands, nothing to do while he sits at his desk. Come Christmastime, it becomes apparent that he’s been putting this time to productive use. It’s not clear if he’s used any of this idle time for the provided wrist exercises.
Apparently one of the other dispatchers had taught him the basics over the course of a couple lunch breaks. Apparently she’d gotten him started with a spare pair of needles, and an old skein of yarn that she’d meant for him just to practice with---by her standards, the colour of it was too bright and gaudy for anyone to reasonably want to wear, bright, chunky, golden rod yellow---but John’s a fast learner and a perfectionist, and by the end of a few particularly slow weeks, he’d had a respectable four feet worth of scarf, garter stitched the whole way through.
John says it’s nothing much, and that he won’t mind in the least if Gordon doesn’t wear it. He doesn’t even know if it’ll be particularly warm, being made of cheap acrylic yarn, nothing like high quality wool. He’d made it just to make it, after all, it was only supposed to be for practice. And anyway it’s out of regs, as far as the uniform goes.
Gordon doesn’t care. Gordon loves it. And he wears it from the depths of December, right up until the city starts to thaw out again.
Send 🔻 for my muse to try and explain where they were last night.
Nibs was looking a little un-tidy and tired when she came in and Casey caught her and asked her the dreaded question of ‘And where was you last night?’.
“Um...Well, after doing the drop off at Tracy Island, I...most definitely came back..yes..and went straight to bed...yes...didn’t spend the night there at all, nope.” Nibs stifled a yawn. “And most definitely did not get up stupidly early to get back here in time for work...Uh...maybe I ought to get to my office and start..”
Nibs made to walk around Casey, trying not to look sheepish and guilty.
