“Yeah.”
They stared at each other silently while Ian steeled himself for questions.
“Want some coffee?I found it and made some.”
Ian opened his mouth, but nothing came out for a second.Then, “Uh, sure.”
Sam brought him coffee with a splash of milk.How did he know that’s how Ian liked it?Most people assumed he was a black coffee kind of guy.He usually took it black in public because somehow needing that splash of milk seemed like a weakness.
Sam sat on the bed next to him, took a sip of his own coffee, set it down, and asked nervously, “Can I look at your back?”
Ian rolled onto his side silently, more to avoid looking at Sam than as an answer.
A few seconds passed before he felt Sam’s fingertips on his skin.In his mind, he followed their progress tracing his healed wounds.The swirly burned patch below his left shoulder, then the rough patch closer to his spine.Sam worked his way down, and it didn’t feel awful.When he traced the surgical scar along Ian’s lower back, Ian blurted, “I thought you’d left.”
Sam’s hand stilled.“Huh?”
“When I woke up and you weren’t here in bed.”
“Should I have left?”Sam asked uncertainly, hand hovering just over the scar.
“No.”Ian added an indifferent shrug.
Sam’s hand settled on him again, and Ian let his eyes drift shut while Sam’s fingertips mapped his injuries.It was sort of lulling.
“Do you ever talk about what happened?”
“No,” Ian said reflexively.“I was in an accident at work.”
“You already told me that.”The mild exasperation in his voice made Ian smile.He liked Sam with attitude.Sam stretched out on the bed behind him and continued touching him, retracing areas he’d already visited.It almost felt like a caress.
“It’s a dumb story.The fire was dumb; I was dumb.It’s embarrassing.”Ian sighed.In for a penny or whatever ...“I got hit by a car on fire.”
“What?”
Exactly the response he’d expected.Ian laughed shortly, but Sam’s hand never stopped moving on his back, which must have been why he went on.“I was the Battalion Chief on duty that night.Morning, rather; I guess it was a little after two.Anyway, they tapped out a car fire behind a strip mall.Engine nine went, and they reported a fully involved Volkswagen bus.I figured someone stole a van and torched it when they were done with their joyride.Normal shit.”
“But it wasn’t.”Sam’s hand rubbed circles on his lower back, as if the skin there was the same as any other skin.“What does ‘tapped out’ mean?”
“It’s slang for broadcasting tones.”That probably wasn’t much clearer.“Every time emergency vehicles are sent to a scene, tones precede the information given by the dispatcher to open the radios at the correct station.Like an audio key for the station.”
“Oh.’Kay.”Ian suspected Sam didn’t really understand.“So ...‘fully involved’ means it was engulfed in flames?”
“Yeah.They didn’t report the year of the van.As I pulled up, they put the hose on it, and it just exploded.”
Sam didn’t say anything, tracing the ribs in Ian’s back now.
“The bus was late sixties, and the engine was on fire.Those engines are made of magnesium, which burns in water—it burns anything with oxygen in it.Magnesium will just break the chemical bond and feed the fire with the oxygen atoms.”
“Oh,” Sam said softly.“Chemistry.”
Ian snorted.“Yeah, chemistry.The guys weren’t awake or something, I don’t know.So I jumped out of the command unit without putting on my turnouts—my protective gear.The captain started yelling at the kid on the nozzle, but it took a few seconds before we yanked him off.So then we were standing there, laughing at him, and the stupid thing was still on fire.Geller smothered it with a fire extinguisher, and all of a sudden the vehicle started rolling.”
Sam’s fingers stopped.“It could still roll?”
“Yeah.Came right for us.I guess we ran, I don’t remember, but it hit me in the back.It was out, but still hot.Geller said after I was down, the wheel rolled right over my ass and kept going until it hit the green strip.Blunt force trauma with a red-hot ’68 Volkswagen does some damage.I was lying in this pass-through behind a grocery store and there was gravel in my cheek, and I could see lights streaming across wet pavement.That’s what I remember.Didn’t even hurt.You know when you get third-degree burns, it sometimes doesn’t hurt because all the nerves are cauterized?All the lesser burns around it hurt, and when you start healing it hurts like hell, but at first I couldn’t feel much of anything.”
Ian craned his neck to watch Sam over his shoulder.And oh fuck, he’d said a lot.It was all over Sam’s face.Ian didn’t want to see that expression, because it meant he felt something for Ian.Pity and horror and—he started to get up, but Sam grabbed him, skinny bicep squeezing tight around his chest.Ian’s heart pounded under Sam’s palm, and Sam’s arm felt like another band of steel—an external one to match the internal one that he’d swear was wrapped around his ribs right now.
