Shift’s End

by A. R. Barley

  Jack reached out and flipped open the closest box of pizza. Veggie lovers. Most of it was gone, but there were still two slices left. He didn’t bother with a plate, folding the larger slice in half and taking a big bite. “Thanks for dinner.”

  “You bought lunch,” Diesel said, but his blush had reached his ears now. Freaking adorable. “You didn’t tell me your ex-wife lived next door.”

  “Right.” He should probably explain. The situation wasn’t exactly normal, but it worked for them. When Mona wasn’t out to destroy his dahlias. “I used to rent a place near the station, but it was too far for Eric to stay over and get to school by himself in the morning when he was a kid. After my last divorce, I wanted to be closer to him and this place was on the market. It seemed like serendipity.”

  “And neither of you have a problem with that? Living next to your ex?”

  “Only when he tries to cook,” Mona said. “Then I worry that he’s going to burn the entire neighborhood down. It’s a good thing he’s a firefighter.”

  “Bitch,” Jack cursed around a mouth full of crust and cheese.

  “Jerk.” On screen her avatar ran straight off a cliff and fell to its death. “For fuck’s sake.” She tossed the controller down, took the box from Marco’s, and walked out of the house without saying another word. The door closed solidly behind her and then, finally, Diesel and Jack were as alone as they were going to get.

  Thank God for small favors. Tension left Jack’s body as he scooted even closer to Diesel. “Would it help if I apologized for them?”

  “Your kid’s nice and Mona’s...” Diesel’s voice trailed off. “You know I don’t care about the age difference, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re smart, you’re hot. You’ve got your life together.” Diesel sighed. “You know who you are and you don’t hide anything. There’s something damn sexy about that. I can see why the two of you are friends. I can even see why you married her.” He put the video game controller down and turned to look Jack straight on. “Why’d you divorce her?”

  “Mona was in school, getting her PhD. She wanted to be an all-star academic and that takes work. I was starting up in the fire department at the same time, working a lot of doubles. We were never home at the same time, and when we were, the only thing we talked about was Eric. That’s probably why we lasted so long in the first place. If we’d spent more time talking we’d have realized earlier we were better off as friends.”

  “And you never think about getting back together?”

  “Every year on Eric’s birthday. For about twenty minutes.” His tongue felt clumsy as he said the words. His tone was flippant. This wasn’t the time to give a bullshit answer. He swallowed. “Getting a dog? Retiring together someday? All those things we talked about earlier, I never thought about doing that with her. She’s the mother of my son, and she’s a great mother. I always knew she’d be a great mother. I never dreamed about the two of us walking off onto the sunset.”

  Mona was soft, pretty, and stubborn. When she wanted to do something, she steamrolled over anyone who got in her way. Even Jack.

  Jack wasn’t interested in being with a one-woman army for the rest of his life. He wanted a partner, someone who could consider his wants and needs while they made their own plans. Someone who’d talk to him about what he wanted and figure out a way for them to work toward the goal together.

  Someone who’d go to dog training lessons with him and take turns waking up in the middle of the night to let out their puppy.

  A spaniel.

  Either a Clumber or a Papillon.

  “These days she’s dating a moral philosopher at Columbia, and I’m—” He’d sworn off relationships. No more. Not until he retired. “I’m exploring my options.”

  That last statement didn’t stop him from snuggling even closer to Diesel on the couch. He’d never been particularly cuddly, but something about curling up to a larger body meant he could definitely see the appeal.

  Diesel switched the game over to single player mode and they took turns playing while they finished off the rest of the pizza. When they were finally done, it was going on one o’clock in the morning and Eric was snoring away in the smaller bedroom.

  “You’re staying the night.” It wasn’t a question. If Eric had gone back to his mother’s house, Jack would have flirted his ass off to get Diesel back into bed, naked and panting. The sex was fantastic. Unbelievable.

  It was like a dream, and he still hadn’t forgotten about that little tidbit.

  Diesel actually dreamed about him?

  Jack was going to need to know more about that.

  Some other time.

  For right now, he’d settle for Diesel safe and happy in his arms. They stumbled out of the living room and into the bedroom. Diesel didn’t bother getting all the way undressed, but he shoved his pants off and climbed onto the middle of the bed.

  The lights went off. Jack got into bed beside his lover. He tugged the comforter up over them and curled himself around Diesel’s body. The light from the street was soft. The harsh new LED bulbs the city was putting in hadn’t made it out to Staten Island yet and the old ones still glowed with yellow incandescence.

  Every once in a while a car would go by on the street providing an additional burst of illumination.

  The cut on Diesel’s back was harsh and ugly. Ragged. It would definitely leave a scar, but it would heal.

  Just like the pinpoint bruises he’d left with his fingertips. Jack’s head dipped to skim a dark spot near the base of Diesel’s neck. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

  “I heal fast.” Diesel snuggled back even closer. “If your kid wasn’t in the other room...” His voice trailed off, but they both knew what he wasn’t saying.

  “Maybe he won’t hear?” Jack said.

  They both snickered. The closed doors might offer some protection, but the small house meant they were less than fifteen feet from Eric. He’d be able to hear anything above a whisper.

  Diesel rolled over to face him straight on. They were touching in several places, close enough that Jack couldn’t tell the difference between their two heartbeats, but Diesel needed more. He wove their fingers together. “This has been fun. Really fun.”

  “We’ll do it again.”

  “Right.” Another car went by, and the flash of light it created made Diesel’s eyes glow and illuminated the uncertainty in his expression. Teeth dug at his bottom lip. His brows were heavy. “With our track records, it might be better if we kept things casual.”

  “Is this because of my ex—”

  “It’s not.” Diesel’s voice was steely.

  Right, because those were only a few of the hundred other reasons why they didn’t belong together. Diesel was too young. Jack was too old. They worked together. Jack was his damn boss. If things went sideways they could both be fired, and the bitch of it was that they’d deserve it.

  But Jack had never had a casual relationship in his life.

  He wasn’t about to start now.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The weather was still warm, and their patch of New York managed to avoid any real disasters for another two weeks.

  And then came the restaurant fire.

  The place was narrow, less than six feet from wall to wall. In another part of the country it might have been used as a storage closet for the apartment building next door. Hell, it might have been an alleyway or a greenspace with trees stretching up toward the sky. There was no reason to make a damn restaurant that was less than six feet wide.

  Even if it did have the best pierogis in the state according to the sign on the door.

  “That’s bullshit,” Lee Juracek told Diesel as he picked his way between overturned chairs. “The best pierogis in the state come from The Polish Village in Alphabet City. My Auntie Amelia works there.”

>   Pierogis were like dumplings, right? Diesel wasn’t quite sure, and he wasn’t about to ask. He was too focused on moving through the debris. The restaurant was empty and the fire was out except for the occasional fit and start from the embers deep in the walls. Now it was time to pick up the pieces.

  Please, God, let that not include a body. The fire had been raging when they first arrived, jumping and dancing. There’d been no way into the building and no indication that they were needed in the restaurant’s interior. Diesel and Lee had manned a hose together, wetting down the buildings on either side before spraying directly into the flames.

  The fire had started when the chef went out back for a smoke without turning down all the burners. A package of pierogis had been stacked on the back of the stove. It had caught fire and the flames had jumped to the walls a few seconds later.

  By the time the customers noticed what was going on it was already too late.

  At least it wasn’t a grease fire.

  Diesel hated grease fires. He hated the mess, he hated the smell, and he hated that most of them got out of hand when someone tried to put them out. A cup of water on a grease fire didn’t help. It just caused the flame to flare up even higher.

  They’d been there ninety minutes before the line cook told the captain about the apartments on the narrow building’s second and third floor. They were illegal conversions only accessible through a set of boat stairs in the back, one bedroom, one bathroom each, and they still probably rented for twice what Diesel paid for his own little corner of hell.

  People were willing to pay more for privacy, even if they couldn’t afford a building that had passed all its inspections. Shit. Diesel’s gear weighed heavy across his back as he tried not to think about his own warren of an apartment. His room didn’t have any freaking windows. If something caught on fire? If one of his roommates decided to cook something at two in the morning or left a lit cigarette on the coffee table next to an open bottle? It’d be all over.

  “How are you guys doing?” Jack’s voice crackled over the working radios. “You make it upstairs yet?”

  “Not yet,” Lee answered for both of them. They’d finally reached the very back of the restaurant. If anything it was narrower than the front. Heat pricked at Diesel’s skin and made sweat roll across his brow. Lee had to turn sideways to start up a contraption that was more ladder than stairs. His boots overflowed the treads, and the entire thing creaked and rattled when he headed up.

  Diesel held his breath until Lee landed on the second floor with a thunk. It was his turn. He had a bad feeling about this, but he wasn’t about to complain. Not when Jack was listening to them on the radio.

  In the week since he’d gone to the captain’s house, they’d gone out every night in Manhattan. Sushi. Burgers. Banh-mi. No Polish food. Twice the night had ended with desperate kisses at the ferry dock. The rest of the time, they’d made it all the way back up to Diesel’s place where Jack had managed to silence the cacophony in the living room with a hard stare.

  The sex was absolutely freaking fantastic, like something out of the kind of porn Diesel would never admit to watching.

  And at the end of the night Jack always kissed him on the forehead and left without saying a word.

  Casual. That was the name of the game.

  The so-called stairs were a little bit quieter under Diesel’s feet, but he was carrying less weight around the middle. That didn’t stop the tiny second floor landing from groaning at his arrival. “This place is a disaster.”

  “It’s that bad?” Jack asked.

  “He’s speaking architecturally,” Lee hurried to explain. “It’s mostly smoke damage so far. No bodies.”

  The key to the apartment had gone mysteriously missing, if it ever existed at all. Lee’s uniform flapped and billowed around him as he kicked at the door, but the cramped space didn’t give him enough room to build up momentum. He had to kick out three more times before the hinges finally splintered and gave way.

  Inside was even worse. The electricity had gone out and the shotgun design meant that the light coming through the windows at the front of the building didn’t quite make it to the back. It smelled like smoke and sour meat. Diesel made the sign of the cross as he pulled out his flashlight. He didn’t go to church, but he had yet to meet a firefighter who wasn’t religious given the right circumstances.

  “You’ve got the light, you take the lead.” Lee pressed himself up against a wall, allowing Diesel to shimmy past.

  “Whoever built this place needs to have their head examined.” He clicked the flashlight on, sweeping its beam across a pint-size kitchen set up with a bathtub next to the sink and a toilet tucked beside the refrigerator. Charming.

  “It’s probably a spite building,” Jack said over the radio.

  Like that explained anything. Diesel waited a moment, giving them a chance to continue. Nothing. “What the fuck’s that?”

  “Back when they were dividing up all the land in the city, things could go sideways fast,” Jack explained. “Someone ends up with an awkward parcel, maybe they try to sell it to one of their neighbors and they can’t reach a fair price, maybe the city takes part of the land to build a road, whatever.”

  The smell of smoke was getting even stronger, and it felt like the walls were bowing inward. Diesel took a tentative step forward, forcing himself to draw air in through his mouth. The building might be a pile of bricks and spite, but it had stood for years. It wasn’t about to fall apart now.

  He hoped.

  “The guy gets mad.” Jack’s voice was rough, like gravel running across asphalt. It was also reassuring as Diesel made his way out of the kitchen-cum-bathroom and into a living room whose major furniture piece was a plaid couch. “He decides to build on it himself to block out the light, ruin the view, block access to a back alley, or something along those lines. There used to be one over on Lexington and 82nd. Remind me and I’ll show you a picture sometime.”

  “Fucking hell, a fire and a history lesson,” Lee snarked. “That’s a first. Is there such a thing as a spite couch? Because I’m pretty sure we’re looking at a spite couch, Captain.”

  Diesel didn’t say anything, but that didn’t stop the heat from flooding his cheeks. The mini-lecture had been entertaining and illuminating. It had also been freaking special. Jack didn’t usually clutter up the radio with chatter. Taking the time to respond to Diesel’s question? That was freaking special.

  Creak. He took another step forward and—

  Crunch. His boot went halfway through the unsteady timbers. The crowded apartment was throwing off his spatial awareness, but if he had to guess, they were directly above the restaurant’s small kitchen.

  He jerked his boot out, shaking it twice to dislodge any debris.

  “This place is coming apart, boss.” He held his breath, waiting for Jack to answer. “You want us to keep going?”

  “I want you to stay safe.”

  Lee laughed. “It’s almost like you care.”

  “Of course I care. You know how much paperwork I’d have to fill out if the two of you died.” There was a sharp intake of breath, like Jack had only just considered the possibility that they might not make it out alive. “How bad is it?”

  “We’re fine.” Diesel wasn’t about to reassure his not-boyfriend on an open line, but he wanted to. He moved over toward the side of the room where the floor might be a little stronger. Every movement forward was a two-step process now, first edging his foot forward to make sure the area was safe and then putting the rest of his weight down carefully.

  They were almost at the front of the building now, only one room left to check out. “Anyone there?” Diesel called out. Maybe he wouldn’t need to go any farther in after all. “This is the fire department, is there anybody there?” He held his breath. Please, God.

  A whimper, so quiet he almost missed it.
>
  Except then it repeated itself, louder.

  Two more slow steps. Lee’d dropped back even farther now. “The floor’s not going to hold both of us.” He was talking directly to Diesel, but the radio line was still open. Jack would be able to hear every word. “I’m the senior man. I’ve got more experience. You can come back and we can switch places, or—”

  Fuck that. Lee might have a couple of years on him, but that didn’t mean either of them knew what they were doing. Not really. Every single fire was different, an organic living breathing thing that charged the atmosphere around them, creating the possibility that anything—anything—could happen. In the end, all a firefighter had was his training and his gut.

  “I’m going to keep going,” he said.

  Smoke was sharp and acrid in the back of his throat. It wasn’t billowing or clouding the air. He could see fine, but it hurt when he swallowed. Keeping his mouth closed was always an option, but then he wouldn’t be able to draw in as much oxygen.

  The whimpering was gone now. Maybe he hadn’t heard it in the first place. Pipes squeaked. Air blew awkwardly through the downstairs. It could have been anything.

  Diesel took another step.

  Crunch. His boot went all the way into the floorboard this time, but he could see through the open door. The bed was a messy double with a powder-pink comforter sprawled halfway across the floor. The furniture might have come with the house, but the comforter definitely belonged to the resident.

  It matched her fingernail polish.

  Powder pink and gleaming. Her manicure was fresh. One hand was outstretched from where she was sprawled unconscious on the bed. Her hair was messy and blond. Her cream tank top and mauve yoga pants were clean. Except for the chemical stench, she might have been asleep.

  The time for being careful was over.

  Only a few feet separated Diesel from the door. He could make it. Probably. He crossed his fingers and tried to keep his steps light as he darted forward. He wasn’t light enough. The entire building seemed to shake as he arrived at the bed.