Once Upon a Time...There Was a Firefighter

My gloves slip against the steel beam for the third time, my arms screaming as I try to lever it up from the doorframe. The thing has to weigh three hundred pounds, maybe more, and it's literally sitting there like a prison bar across my only way out.

The heat is unbearable now. Even through my turnout gear, it presses against my chest and back like I've been shoved into an oven. Sweat pours down my face inside my mask, stinging my eyes. Every breath tastes like burning plastic and charred wood despite the air from my tank. The smoke is so thick I can barely see the beam in front of me—just a dark shape in the orange-gray haze.

I plant my feet and try again, pulling with everything I have left. The beam shifts maybe an inch. My shoulders burn. My lungs burn. Everything burns.

Come on, you piece of shit. Move, you bastard.

Above me, something groans—a deep, metallic sound that vibrates through the floor. The building is settling, shifting on its compromised frame. I've heard that sound before. It's never usually good—at least not when it comes to structural fires.

I reposition, try pushing instead of pulling. The beam scrapes against concrete but doesn't budge enough. Not nearly enough. The doorway is still blocked, and I'm running out of time and strength and air. My heart hammers against my ribs.

Another groan from overhead, louder this time. A crack echoes somewhere to my left.

No, no, no—

The radio crackles to life, cutting through the roar of the fire. The captain's voice, sharp and urgent: "All units, evacuate immediately. I repeat, evacuate NOW. The building is coming down."

"Shit! Shit! Shit!"

My stomach drops. I grab the beam again, pull with desperate strength, but my arms are shaking, useless. It won't move. I can't do it alone.

The heat intensifies. The groaning grows constant now, a chorus of failing steel and splintering wood.

Fuck. I'm trapped.

There's got to be another way out of here. I scan my surroundings. There's an air duct, but it's the size of a shoebox. There's a grate on the roof—it's too high, and even if I could reach it, who knows what the conditions are up there. And then we're back to the door. And the beam.

Captain Brevard calls over the radio again, "Everybody out! Now!"

He's been fighting fires for over thirty-five years, literally longer than I've been alive, and if working under his leadership has taught me anything, it's that if he says abandon ship, then this whole place is lost. My guess—the fire was blazing long before we got here, maybe fifteen minutes or so. Captain Brevard has most likely gauged the integrity of the building based on the material used to construct it and the fire rating of those materials and how long we have until this whole place is a pile of ash.

I've got to get the fuck out of here.

I grasp the beam one more time, gripping it with both hands and pulling hard, trying to drag it away from the doorway. My boots slip on debris as I heave backward. The beam shifts maybe two inches before my grip fails and I stumble backward, gasping. My tank alarm starts chirping—low air. Perfect. Just perfect.

The air duct. I scramble toward it, already knowing it's useless. I rip the cover off anyway, desperate. The opening is barely wide enough for my head, let alone my shoulders and gear. I punch the wall beside it, frustration and fear boiling over.

Above me, something cracks like a gunshot. I look up just as a chunk of ceiling tile crashes down three feet away, sending up a shower of sparks and ash. The roof grate catches the firelight—fifteen feet up, maybe more. I could try to climb, but there's nothing to climb on, and even if I made it, the roof could already be compromised. I'd be trading one death trap for another.

Another crack. Louder. The floor shudders beneath my feet.

"Fuck!" The word comes out as a sob. My chest is tight, my breathing ragged inside the mask. Nobody knows I'm here. They all got out. They think I got out. The building is going to collapse, and I'm going to die in this room, and—

A voice cuts through the roar of flames and my own panic.

"Hawke!"

Benjamin. That's Benjamin's voice.

"Hawke, where are you?"

"Benji! Benji! I'm in here!"

I run back to the door.

"Hawke, the door is stuck!"

"I know—there's a beam in front of it—I can't move it!"

"Hang on, bub!"

Benji is my on-again, off-again boyfriend who at the moment is off-again. We met in the academy and by some stroke of luck wound up in the same firehouse. And Benji would walk through fire for me—literally. Even though we aren't dating at the moment, he's always been fiercely protective of me—sometimes to his own detriment.

Captain Brevard's voice crackles over the radio again, barking orders I can barely make out through the static and roar of flames.

The heat is growing more intense. Smoke starts billowing in from a hole in the adjacent wall, thick and black. The more I think about what I need to say, the harder the words get—the harder they are to form in my throat.

"Benji, listen, you gotta get outta here, man—this beam isn't going anywhere," I say, resignation heavy in my voice.

"Hawke—if you think I'm gonna leave without you—you clearly don't know me very well."

"Benji!"

"Hawkie!" He's being sarcastic, using my first name like that.

"Benji, I'm low on O2, which means you are too." I pull the helmet off but leave my respirator on, needing him to hear me clearly. "If you leave now, you won't pass out before you get to the exit."

"Hawke Sullivan, I want you to listen to me very carefully." His voice cuts through the door with an authority that makes my spine straighten. "I have had it up to here with the fucking pity party. You are not gonna die in a fucking abandoned department store that some lowlife teenagers thought would be fun to play with bottle rockets in. We train for shit like this all the time, and this isn't even the worst we've been in. And if I haven't given up, I'll be damned if you will, so we need to work together to move this goddamn beam. Now move your ass!"

He stresses the last three words particularly harshly, and hearing him in command like that—all fire and determination—kinda turns me on despite everything.

I stand up immediately, following his instruction, and wrap my arms around the beam. The metal is scorching even through my gloves, the heat radiating through the thick material and into my palms.

"Okay," I say, positioning my feet for leverage.

"Okay," he says, calmer now. "On three."

He counts, and on three I heave the beam while he pushes on the door from the other side. I'm straining every muscle in my arms and back, and it feels like the fibers are actively tearing apart, being pulled to their absolute tensile limit. My shoulders burn with the effort.

I let out a grunt and clench my teeth, pulling with everything in me.

"Come on!" Benji yells from the other side. "Come on!"

Another grunt and another heave. And I feel it—I feel the beam shift. It scratches across the coarse concrete floor with a metallic shriek that echoes through the smoke-filled room.

"Pull, Hawke! Pull!"

The beam digs into my skin and I can feel the jagged edges even through my gear, biting into my forearms like teeth. The pain is sharp and immediate, but I don't let go.

"This shit is fucking heavy!"

"I don't give a fuck! Pull!"

Inch by inch, my feet start to slide backward across the concrete. I replant them every chance I get, pulling with everything I have left. My vision goes blurry because I've got my eyelids shut so tight, every ounce of focus channeled into this one movement.

At the edge of my strength, I feel completely depleted. My muscles scream in protest, threatening to give out entirely.

"Fucckkk!!!!!"

I give one more heave and fall back with a loud thud, my shoulders slamming against the concrete hard enough to knock the wind out of me. But when I look up, gasping for air, I see the doors—and there's a gap. A gap big enough for my body.

"Hawke! Let's go!"

I scramble to my feet and run for the crack in the door. I can't fit through with all my gear—it's only wide enough for me. The building starts to shake, the groaning growing louder by the second. Debris rains down from above.

"The tank won't fit!" I say, my hands already working at the straps.

"We'll share mine," he says without hesitation.

And as lovely as that plan sounds, the building has other plans. A massive crack splits the ceiling above us.

"This thing is coming down any second—we won't have time for that," I say, the realism settling over me like a weight. "How far is the exit?"

"I don't know," he says, looking down the smoke-choked corridor. "Maybe thirty yards, give or take."

"Okay," I say, thinking fast. "Okay, okay, okay."

The building makes another loud groan and another large section of ceiling crashes down next to me, sending up a cloud of dust and embers.

"Fuck!" I say, pulling my tank off, then my jacket. The heat hits me immediately without the protective layer.

I turn, put one arm and my head through the crack. Benji grabs my outstretched hand and pulls me the rest of the way through. The smoke is everywhere on this side, thick and choking, and the whole right wall is engulfed in flames that lick toward the ceiling.

"Stay to my left!" Benji yells over the roar of the fire.

I grab the respirator from his face, take the deepest breath I can manage—filling my lungs until they ache—and shove it back at him. Then I run.

The smoke swallows me whole. I can't see more than a few feet ahead, just Benji's shape cutting through the gray-black haze. My lungs are already screaming, demanding another breath, but there's nothing to breathe here except superheated poison.

Ten seconds in and my chest is burning.

A section of ceiling crashes down to our right, so close the shockwave nearly knocks me off my feet. Sparks and embers spray across my exposed arms, searing through my undershirt. I don't slow down. Can't slow down.

Benji's hand reaches back, finds my wrist, pulls me forward. "MOVE!"

Fifteen seconds. My vision starts to blur at the edges.

The floor beneath us shudders and buckles. I stumble, catch myself, keep running. Every muscle in my legs is on fire, exhausted from the beam, from the heat, from everything. They're not responding the way they should. Each step feels like I'm dragging weights.

Twenty seconds. The pressure in my chest is unbearable now, like someone's crushing my ribcage from the inside.

Metal shrieks somewhere above us—a sound like the building's spine snapping. A massive beam tears free from the ceiling and crashes down behind us, missing me by inches. The impact sends a wave of debris rolling forward, chunks of concrete bouncing past my boots.

I can't hold it. My body is screaming at me to breathe, every instinct demanding I open my mouth and gasp. But I know what's out here. I know what that smoke will do.

Twenty-five seconds. My vision tunnels. The edges go dark and fuzzy.

The wall to our left starts to bow inward, bricks cracking and separating. Benji yanks me right and we veer away just as the whole section collapses, rebar twisting and snapping like dry branches.

Thirty seconds. I'm not going to make it.

My legs are barely working now. I'm stumbling more than running, my coordination shot. Benji's practically dragging me, his arm around my waist, half-carrying me forward.

The heat is everywhere. Waves of it rolling over us, through us. I can feel my skin blistering even through what's left of my gear.

Thirty-five seconds. Black spots dance across my vision. My legs give out.

Benji catches me, hauls me up, keeps moving. "STAY WITH ME!"

And then—through the smoke, through the darkness creeping in from all sides—I see it. A rectangle of gray light. The exit.

It looks impossibly far away.

Forty seconds. I'm going to pass out. I can feel it coming, feel consciousness slipping away like sand through my fingers.

The entire structure groans, a sound so deep it vibrates in my bones. The floor cracks beneath us, splitting open.

Benji pulls me forward with strength I didn't know existed. We're running on nothing but adrenaline and terror now.

Ten feet from the door. Five.

My vision goes completely dark at the edges. There's only a pinpoint of light ahead—the exit, the door, salvation.

The building screams.

We hit the doorway and explode into the open air.

I collapse onto concrete, my mouth opening automatically, and I suck in oxygen like a drowning man breaking the surface. The first breath sears my throat. The second makes me cough so hard I retch. But it's air. Real air.

I glance over at Benji, and he's staring at me with this intensity I can't quite figure out. His eyes lock onto mine—this deep, piercing look that holds my gaze and won't let go. It traps me there, suspended in the moment. There's something in his expression that makes my chest tighten, something raw and unguarded. It's almost uncomfortable in its intimacy, but somehow it's not. Somehow it feels exactly right, even though I don't understand why. But my attention snaps to the collapsing building.

Behind us, the building folds in on itself with a roar like the end of the world. Steel beams twist and shriek as they buckle. The walls collapse inward, floor by floor, in a cascading avalanche of concrete and flame. The sound is deafening—a thunderous, grinding death rattle that shakes the ground beneath us. Dust and ash billow outward in a massive cloud, rolling toward us like a tidal wave.

Benji drives the rig back to the station. I sit in the back, quiet. Unsure what to say. Unsure what there even is to say.

I almost died in there. I almost gave up. And even though my muscles and bones ache—every part of me screaming with exhaustion—there's some other part of me that hurts worse. Something deeper. Something I can't massage away or ice down.

Part of it has to do with the fact that it took Benji to give me the strength to get back up. Benji—the guy who's always got my back, who just saved my life, but who's also let me down in so many ways it's nearly unfathomable.

Two months ago, I found text messages on his phone. He'd been sending dick pics to some guy two states away. When I confronted him, he swore it was innocent, that he would never actually cheat on me. But I couldn't get over it. The betrayal sat in my chest like a stone. So I ended things.

Benji was always doing stuff to piss me off—little things, big things—and maybe this was just one more. But I felt vindicated. Justified.

Two nights after we broke up, I got drunk at a bar and let some guy whose name I'd barely remember fuck me in a bathroom while four other guys stood there and watched. It wasn't cute, just hard and rough and fuck—I'm getting hard thinking about it.

Turns out one of Benji's friends from college was one of those guys and told him. And while we were technically not together anymore, Benji said I'd cheated on him. That it really was over now. How could I bend over for some guy I'd barely known two days after ending things with him?

I still wasn't sure how I felt about that. About any of it.

Back at the firehouse, we toss our gear in a pile for the probie to clean and hit the showers. There are no stalls—just a wall of showerheads lined up in a row. Benji takes the one right next to me. Nothing I haven't seen before, and it doesn't bother me. Not really.

The water is hot, not quite scalding but close enough, and between the small burns on my arms and the scrapes that showed up out of nowhere, it's both soothing and something else that feels good. Something that makes me want to close my eyes and just stand here forever.

"How you feeling?" he asks.

"I'm fine," I say, lying.

"You're such a bad liar," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice even though I'm not looking at him.

"Well, maybe I'm not fine, but I'll get there."

"Hawke, you all but gave up back there. What the fuck?"

I turn to face him then, water streaming down between us. "Dude, you could have died too, and for what?"

"Listen, bub, you might have a death wish or something, and good for you, but the Hawke I know doesn't give up," he says, his jaw tight.

I'm not sure if he's scolding me or trying to be motivational. Regardless.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Why are you apologizing to me?" he asks, his brow furrowing.

"I don't know. I feel like I let you down or something."

"Well, I've let you down plenty," he admits, his voice softer now. "Maybe I'm the one who owes you an apology."

"Let's just chalk this up as a lesson learned," I say.

He looks at me for a long while. The same way he did outside the building—like he's trying to memorize my face or figure out some puzzle he can't quite solve.

"What is it?"

"If you had died—"

"Ben—"

Before I can say another word, his lips are on mine, crashing together like two things that were never meant to be apart. I kiss him back because some part of me tells me to, and our tongues slide across one another's in this deep, impactful kiss that makes my head spin.

Fuck.

He pushes me away from the showerhead and we crash against the tile wall. It's cold and smooth and actually hurts a little, but I don't care. The kiss deepens and my arms close around his broad shoulders and wide back as our cocks press up against each other, trapped between our stomachs. The hair on his chest rubs against mine and my arousal intensifies, heat pooling low in my gut.

We're both hard, and I can't tell if we're both leaking precum or if the rivulets of water are just beading down below my navel.

Again, fuck.

I grab him by his large biceps and turn us around, slamming him into the wall. A small grin creases across his face, like it didn't hurt so much as turn us both on. So fucking hot.

We're kissing again, and he's got one hand on the back of my neck and the other on the small of my back, pulling me into him like he's trying to fuse us together. I reach back and with both hands grab fistfuls of his ass. His cheeks are smooth and just as muscular as the rest of his body, firm under my grip.

"Mmhm, fuck," he says as he lets out a loud grunt that turns into a moan.

"You like that?" I ask.

I don't give him a chance to respond. Instead, I kiss him back.

Then Benji's hand slides up into my hair—not rough, not yet, but firmer than usual. His fingers curl against my scalp and he pulls, just enough that my head tilts back and breaks the kiss.

I blink at him, confused. "What—"

"Stop talking for a second," he says, and there's something different in his voice. Not angry, but... commanding. Direct in a way he never was when we were together.

He holds my gaze for a beat, his hand still in my hair, and I feel my pulse kick up. Not from fear—from something else entirely.

"Okay," I manage.

His other hand slides down my side, grips my hip. Not gentle. Hard enough that I feel the pressure of each finger. "Turn around."

"Benji—"

"Hawke." He says my name like a warning, and fuck if that doesn't send heat straight to my cock. "Turn around."

I do it. I don't even think about it, I just turn and face the tile wall. My palms press flat against the cold surface and I'm breathing harder now, trying to figure out what the hell is happening. This isn't how Benji operates. Benji asks. Benji checks in. Benji treats me like I might shatter if he's not careful enough. But it was like the way he was when he was on the other side of that door—he was commanding, and even though I was looking death in the face, it still turned me on a little.

His body presses against my back—all that weight and muscle pinning me there—and his cock grinds against my ass. He's hard as fuck and not hiding it.

"Is this okay?" he asks, but his voice is still rough, still commanding.

"Yeah," I say, and my voice comes out shakier than I want. "Yeah, it's—"

His hand wraps around the back of my neck, holding me in place. Not choking, just... controlling. "Good."

Christ. I didn't know I wanted this. I didn't know I needed him to stop being so goddamn careful with me. When we were together, it was always soft—always him asking if I was okay, if this was good, treating me like I might break. I hated feeling like he was holding back.

This is different.

"You always gotta be in control," he mutters against my ear, and his teeth scrape my neck. Not hard enough to hurt, but enough that I feel it. "Always running your mouth."

"I don't—" I start, but his hand tightens on my neck and the words die.

"Yeah, you do." His other hand slides down, grips my hip hard enough to bruise. "But not right now."

My cock is throbbing, pressed against the cold tile, and I'm leaking—definitely leaking, not just wet from before. I push back against him, trying to get more friction, more contact.

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