Not my circus, not my monkeys

Athena and Bobby lounged at the side of the road, watching the chaos unfold in front of them.

A minor fender bender, caused entirely by the person behind them failing to pay attention to the road, had escalated into something entirely more than that. A second driver had suffered a lapse in attention, somehow swerving into the side of the one that had hit Bobby’s truck, and that had caused a third driver to lose control.

And now they were all arguing between each other over whose fault it was. Bobby and Athena were staying well out of it. Bobby’s truck was equipped with front and rear dash cams and he’d been maintaining a safe speed and distance from the car in front. He was completely, 100% not at fault for the initial accident or any subsequent ones, and he didn’t need to argue over insurance liability with the others involved.

And while Athena would normally be up there trying to sort things out, they were on their way home from date night, taking advantage of Buck’s willingness to babysit Harry and keep an eye on May (who insisted she didn’t need a babysitter) for the evening. As a result she was more than a little drunk, and it would be completely irresponsible of her to go up there and throw her weight around as an LAPD sergeant right now. Besides, her gun was tucked away in the safe in her bedroom and her badge was on the dresser, so she had no authority besides her own take-charge attitude.

Bobby was sober, as always, but he had no interest in dealing with the petty argument unfolding in front of him. No one was injured beyond cuts and bruises and the burn that was left on chests and shoulders when the seatbelts did their job, so he wasn’t needed. If someone was actually hurt he’d help them, but none of these argumentative, unobservant fools was worth his time.

As one of them screamed into the chest area of a man almost a foot taller than her, Bobby shook his head. Despite the similarities to Buck and Chimney during their latest blowup, these weren’t his monkeys. And since he was off-duty for another twelve hours, almost, this wasn’t his circus either.

So he could just relax and enjoy the show.

–

Not my circus, but those are my monkeys

“Williams, report!”

The officer glanced up briefly at Athena’s shout, but didn’t move towards her. He kept most of his attention on the situation unfolding below him, his knuckles white on the remains of the guardrail.

“Car went over the side, but it’s tangled in wire that stopped it plunging all the way. Two bystanders have gone down to try and free the occupants.”

Two bystanders. ‘Give me a break from have-a-go heroes,’ Athena screamed to herself. She looked around the scene, making sure that there was sufficient access for the LAFD when they arrived.

And then her eyes lit on a silver Jeep Rubicon stopped haphazard in the shoulder, both front doors left open. A silver Jeep Rubicon with a license plate that Athena knew almost as well as her own. She pursed her lips and drew a deep breath in through her nose before she turned to face Williams again.

“Bystanders, huh?”

Williams shrugged. “They’re in their civvies,” he said, as if that explained his choice of words.

More like he didn’t want to worry Athena. Because while this situation wasn’t her circus, those two clinging to the straining wires were her monkeys. Well, her husband’s monkeys, which was close enough.

Now she was actually looking, she could see the orange rope looped around each of them, secured to the stanchions of an unbroken piece of guardrail either side of the accident. So they had taken minimal precautions. But not enough.

“727-L-30 to dispatch, I need an ETA on the LAFD.”

“The 136 are three minutes out, Sergeant.” Maddie’s voice was too calm for her to know exactly what her idiot brother was doing.

“Okay, Dumbasses, you got three minutes to secure that vehicle and get your backsides back up here before the 136 arrives.”

Two heads popped up, giving Athena matching guilty looks. And then they were working again, hands swiftly looping two free ropes to points on the underside of the car’s rear end, and then hauling themselves up their ropes and back to the road surface.

“Hi, Athena,” Buck had the audacity to chirp at her. Eddie said nothing, just scowled and rubbed his hands on his jeans.

“Go and try to pretend that you’re part of the gawking crowd.”

Athena really didn’t want to explain to Bobby why two of his firefighters had been written up if she could at all help it.

Although there was no way Captain Cooper was going to miss the makeshift rope harnesses that both of them still wore proudly. But he just sighed and looked straight past them.

Not his monkeys, and he hadn’t actually caught them.

–

My circus, but those aren’t my monkeys

Bobby was IC. The size of the pileup had necessitated the presence of another house, but the 118 had arrived first and so Bobby was IC.

He looked over the scene. Buck and Eddie were busy cutting someone free from the wreckage of what used to be a Subaru Impreza. It was nothing more than scrap now, or would be once Buck finished using the saw on it.

His willingness to use the tools had disturbed Bobby once upon a time. Actually, it still did a little, but at least Buck had learned some moderation as the years had passed.

Mostly.

That moderation’s name being ‘Eddie’ more often than not.

Hen had a woman sat on the kerb, her arm dripping blood onto the asphalt. She would need to go to the hospital for stitches at the very least.

Chimney was already gone, taking one of the 118’s ambulances and two crew with him. His patient had been too critical to wait, but not critical enough to need to summon a helicopter from Harbor. Not that the 217’s pilots had anywhere to land in this shitshow.

And there, at the edge of the crash scene, was someone he didn’t recognise. And while he didn’t know everyone at the 136, not like he did at the 118, the look on Cooper’s face and the way he was clenching his fist suggested that he didn’t know them either.

Bobby hoped he didn’t, because the two idiots were taking selfies. They were dressed in turnouts and helmets, and taking selfies of themselves with mangled wrecks in the background. Mangled wrecks that contained dead bodies they hadn’t had the time to remove yet.

“Oi! You two!”

Bobby didn’t shout over a scene very often. He didn’t need to shout over a scene very often.

But when he did, people paid attention. Or, in this case, scarpered. The two fake firefighters ran like the hounds of hell were on their tail. To Bobby’s displeasure they had the presence of mind not to run towards any cops or real firefighters, and they ditched their fake gear as soon as they were out of sight.

While this shitshow might be his circus, those were most definitely not his monkeys. He didn’t know whose monkeys they were, if anyone’s, but they weren’t his.

–

My circus, my monkeys

In the privacy of his office, Bobby pinched the top of his nose to stave off the headache that had been threatening to crest all day. And then he grabbed the bottle of tylenol from the bottom drawer and dry-swallowed two of them, just to be sure.

The day hadn’t been too busy. They’d had a few calls, just to minor incidents. He’d had a very pointed email from Cooper at 136, an article about the best ways to jury-rig a harness out of ropes, which the other Captain said that some of his crew might find interesting and informative.

Bobby wasn’t sure if he meant Buck, Eddie, or Ravi (whose mentoring Buck was actually taking seriously, for the most part), so he forwarded the link to all three of them just to be sure. There was a story behind that, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.

Especially as Buck and Eddie were the main cause of his headache. Eight hours in and they hadn’t had a single call out that wasn’t medical in nature, meaning the two heavy rescue specialists had far too much downtime for anyone’s sanity.

Including their own.

The chores were finished. They’d spent enough time in the gym to cover the entire week’s exercise requirements. Buck had done a grocery run.

And then the firehouse had gotten less noisy. Which was dangerous, when those two were around. Very dangerous. It was possible they’d just retired to the bunkroom, to tempt the EMS gods by taking a nap.

Bobby wished that had been the case. Because they hadn’t been in the bunkrooms. Or the showers. Or the toilet, which Bobby had noticed was out of paper.

And it was while he was retrieving a fresh packet of toilet paper that the pair had almost literally fallen into his arms. He’d opened the closet door, and suddenly he had four hundred pounds of firefighter almost on top of him, before they thankfully managed to catch their balance.

They’d stared at him, wide-eyed, panting, and slightly panicked. And thankfully fully clothed, because that was more than Bobby wanted to see of either of them, at least in that context.

He’d walked away.

A tentative knock at the door preceded it slowly creaking open. Buck gave him a sheepish grin as he looked in, and then he practically dragged Eddie in behind him at Bobby’s nod.

“Sorry about earlier, Cap. It won’t happen again.”

Bobby sighed. He knew better than to believe that. Especially as Eddie did not look as repentant as Buck did.

But… the two of them had been dancing on the edge of something since Eddie’s arrival at the 118. Bobby unlocked his desk drawer and pulled out some of the paperwork he kept in there.

“I already filled most of this in. You just need to finish it, and sign it. And please… just try to be discreet about things.”

His circus, his monkeys, and he was absolutely okay with this.

It was about damn time.