The bay door is down. The next crew is forty minutes out. Captain Elias Crowe is still shirtless and streaked with soot when Maya Chen and Sloane Harlan walk in from the same structure fire, turnout coats open, adrenaline sharp enough to cut.
They have been circling this for weeks—the too-long looks, the hands that linger, the jokes that stop just short of an order. Tonight they stop circling. In the empty apparatus bay of Station 9, against the engine, on the concrete, and later behind the locked bunk-room door, the three of them take what the call left burning.
Maya is busty and direct. Sloane is freckled and filthy-mouthed. Elias is built like the truck he drives and done pretending he doesn't want both of them on his rotation and in his bed. What starts as one hard release becomes a standing arrangement: almost-caught moments when doors open, breeding talk that gets specific, and the choice to keep the same nights permanently.
