Chapter Three.        It's Called: Freefall

[ Season One, Episode Two ]

        "You know..." Ezra says as he tears his gaze away from the window and the pitch-black streets of LA. "This guy designed this roller coaster that was meant to kill its passengers. Called it the Euthanasia Coaster. Said it was supposed to take lives with elegance and euphoria. The g-force was supposed to take them out."

The rest of the team fixes him with strange stares.

"Ohh-kay, then," Buck says quietly, tearing his gaze away from Ezra.

"Way to boost the mood," Chimney tells Ezra, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Sorry," Ezra mutters with a grimace and turns to stare back out of the window again.

Ezra hates night calls. Nothing good ever happens after dark, and there's always this certain feeling of unease that comes hand-in-hand with night calls that Ezra can never really shake—after all, they always lose more calls during the night.

They'd received a call from the amusement park. One of the cars had stopped halfway through one of the loops, leaving one of the passengers to fall out of the cart and the rest of them suspended above certain death. Ezra stands atop the ladder truck along with Bobby and Buck, staring up at the passengers suspended upside-down from the stuck cart. Something sinks in Ezra's stomach when his eyes land on the passenger who dangles above the ground, holding on with dear life to the cart that he had been strapped into. Ezra has had dreams like this, free-falling from dizzying heights; nightmares that ended just before he hits the ground. He just hopes that the man has the strength to hold on long enough to see this nightmare through—though a small part of Ezra knows that the young man will never really see the end of the nightmare, there would always be a small part of him left behind there.

"Buck, we came in at the wrong angle," Bobby is telling Buck. Buck in question is standing at the base of the ladder, preparing for the long climb to the summit of the roller coaster. "I'm gonna have you come up there, harness him in, and hang tight while we move the truck. You think you can handle that?"

Buck glances back at the summit before turning back to Bobby with an exhilarated grin on his face. "Hell yeah! This daredevil hero stuff is what I signed up for, Bobby."

"Good."

Bobby and Ezra watch as Buck climbs to the end of the ladder as it extends to its full length, calling instructions to the passengers as he draws nearer. Ezra finds himself wringing his hands together as Buck climbs off the end of the ladder and starts to scale the rails of the roller coaster.

"Hey, Bobby, he's asking for his friend," Buck tells them through the radio.

Ezra grimaces and glances over to Chimney and Hen who tend to the motionless body of the passenger who had fallen from the cart. He doesn't need confirmation from Hen and Chimney to know that the man didn't make it past the nightmare. Ezra just hopes that it was quick. He hopes that it was just like falling asleep. To spend one's last moments in terror instead of surrounded by people who they are loved by is a thought that makes him sick if he dwells on it for too long. He tears his gaze away from the body and back up to Buck who edges closer and closer to the dangling man. At least one of them still has a chance of waking up from the nightmare before they meet the ground.

"Chimney, it's Captain, do you copy?" Bobby calls into the radio.

"Copy, Captain," Chimney replies. "What do you need?"

"How's the kid on the ground?"

"We lost him."

Ezra nods and hangs his head.

"All right, I don't need the people up there seeing that," Bobby tells Chimney. "So, do me a favor...He survived, right? Get him on a gurney. You know the drill."

"Copy that."

Bobby turns to Ezra. "Go help Hen and Chim. I'm gonna get this truck turned around."

Ezra nods with a small salute. "You got it, Cap."

By the time Ezra climbs down from the top of the truck and joins Hen and Chimney, the young man—Chad—has already been loaded into the back of the ambulance and they're left with nothing to do but watch helplessly from the ground as Buck finally reaches the summit of the loop. Ezra glances behind him to see that a giant crowd of spectators has gathered behind them, all with their phones out, clamoring for the best shot of the misfortune before them. This part of calls always angers him. He never understands how so many people can be so apathetic to another person's pain that they decide to capture it on digital media forever. Those people on the roller coaster are living through one of their worst nightmares and everybody on the ground is just treating it as the next viral video to go to trend. There isn't much that any of them can legally do to stop the crowd from recording the rescue, the amusement park is public after all, but if he could, he would.

"Come on, Buck. Come on, Buck," Chimney urges silently from beside Ezra as the man reaches out to the dangling man with his harness.

"You got this," Ezra whispers, wringing his hands together.

Ezra watches as Buck's small figure reaches out a hand to the man who continues to cling to the cart with everything that he has, but the man makes no moves to reach for Buck's hand.

And then—Ezra isn't entirely sure what happened—the man is free-falling. Screams erupt from the crowd as the body hits the metal track below. The sickening crunch of bones against metal is the only thing that Ezra can hear as his hands jump to his face.

He was gone too.

The nightmare never ended.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Ezra sits at the table across from Buck who doesn't seem to be entirely there. He hasn't really been there with them since the roller coaster. Ezra understands. He knows that look and he knows what it feels like to be sitting in a room, but not be completely there. It was a feeling that he'd gotten used to as he grew up; it was how he coped with what would happen to him in that house, it made it easier to handle the pain and it was how he learned to cope with everybody that he lost on a call at first. He can't feel the pain if he can't feel anything else either. When he first joined the LAFD, he'd had this thought that he would be able to save everybody that called for help, but he'd learned quickly that they were not the masters of death. He would never be able to save everybody. At first, he drowned in the sea of ghosts of the people that he could not save, but he's gotten better at keeping himself afloat. It never really gets easier, that guilt will always stay with him, but every day he gets a little more used to carrying the load. Every now and then, though, there's a call that will strike something deep within him; a weight that he never really gets used to. Another scar that will never heal over.

"I'm not hungry," Buck tells Chimney as he sets a plate of food down in front of him.

"This is America, Buckaroo," Chimney replies. "Eating has nothing to do with being hungry."

"Man, I was right there," Buck says. Ezra looks up from the spot on the table to look at the man. It's the first that he's spoken of what had happened at the amusement park. "You know, all he had to do was reach up and grab my hand."

"People do funny things at times like that," Chimney tries to supply. "Sometimes they just freeze up."

Ezra nods. "And I'm sure the crowd didn't exactly help."

"I've never lost anyone before," Buck says, turning the glass of water in front of him. "Does it get any easier?"

"No," Bobby replies.

"Look," Chimney says, leaning forward, "people die and that's part of the gig, right? See, your problem is, you're looking at every job like it's a long-term relationship. They're one-night stands, man. In that moment, they mean everything to you, but once the next morning comes, it's onto the next one."

Ezra fixes Chimney with a glance and tilting his head in the direction of the kitchen. Chimney looks at him, a confused expression on his face before he gets the message and rises from his seat.

"Listen," Ezra says, leaning closer to Buck as Chimney walks away from the table. "They're just...used to it. They've been doing this for years. The first one is always the worst. But just because it's part of the job doesn't mean that you have to be okay with it. It's okay to mourn what you lost as long as you don't get caught up in it, you know? There was only so much that you could have done so there's no use entertaining those what-ifs, no matter how tempting they feel. These losses are always going to be a part of you, and it's never going to really go away. The best thing you can do is talk to people."

Buck nods quietly.

"I'm here to talk if you need it," Ezra adds.

Buck offers him a half hearted smile. "Thanks."

"Hey!" Hen calls.

She crests the stairs with Athena in tow. Ezra doesn't miss how Buck lets out a quiet sigh and rolls his eyes at the sight of Athena on Hen's tail. Ezra grins and waves to Athena, who smiles and waves back. "You guys don't mind, I brought company to family dinner. Athena's going through some, uh, stuff at home, so she could use some TLC."

Ezra nods. It was May who called him and told him everything had happened—about Michael, her father, and Athena's husband coming out to them as gay and how it felt to May as though the entire family was falling apart. It was in the middle of dinner with Sal, but that hadn't mattered to Ezra. Even when Sal insisted that he call May back later and finish eating dinner with him. He spent the next few hours on the phone with her and didn't hang up until she wanted to go. She may not be related to him by blood, but May is Ezra's little sister in every other way that matters. May is six when Ezra meets her for the first time and watching her grow along with him for the past eight years was such a surreal experience to Ezra—it's something that he never thought that he'd be able to witness. May had always seen him as a kind of superhero growing up—she'd tell all of her friends about him and tell her teachers that her big brother was a firefighter. When Athena and Michael asked May who she wanted to invite to her birthday parties, the only person she ever wanted to be there was Ezra. May always came to Ezra when she wanted to talk to him about things that she didn't feel that she could talk to her parents about (they love her, but they don't always understand her, she'd explained to Ezra one day); lately, May just sits next to Ezra in silence—he's fine with that, he's fluent in silence, too. May is his little sister. He will always have time for her.

"Well," Bobby says approaching Athena to give her a quick hug, "we don't usually allow at secret firehouse meetings, but, uh, I'll make an exception."

"Mm. All right. Appreciate that," Athena replies with a smile. It only spreads when her eyes land on Buck who has made a point of looking anywhere but at Athena. "Oh. Well. You know, I ain't sold on you yet, but...I think keeping me from getting shot deserves a second chance."

Athena extends a hand toward Buck.

Buck looks at it for a long moment before a smile crosses his face and he grasps Athena's hand in his own.

"Hey, there won't be a third, though," Athena warns Buck, but there's a smile on her face that tells them that she's joking.

"Buck here is having a little trouble moving on from a call that didn't go his way," Bobby informs Athena.

"Oh," Athena says, settling into the seat beside Ezra. He smile over at her and knocks her should with his own. "You know why they make us wear these uniforms, right? Cops, firefighters, paramedics?"

"Uhhh, sex appeal," Chimney says with a cheeky grin.

"Gross," Ezra replies with a smile of his own.

"So people can easily identify us?" Buck supplies.

"Both true," Athena replies with a nod to Chimney. "But it's also for our own good. Because when we take the uniform off at the end of the day, it symbolizes letting go of all the sad, crazy, inhumane things we've seen that day."

"I see his face every time I close my eyes," Buck tells them. "That happen to you guys?"

Buck looks right at Ezra when he says this, as if he's posing the question for all of them, but really just asking Ezra. Ezra musters up a weak smile and nods. When he first loses a call, those last few moments replay in his head and it feels like he's trapped and that he will never break free of the cycle. But the more time and distance that he puts between himself and the call, the easier it is to cope with it. Eventually, it passes. Just as everything passes; changing with the wind.

"It'll pass," Athena assures him.

And before Buck can respond, the alarms go off.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Ezra finds solace in the drivers seat of the ladder truck as he stares at the small picture from his wallet. Before he lived with Sal, when Ezra had a particularly rough shift and couldn't face the thought of returning home to an empty apartment, he would hide out in the ladder truck. He'd fallen asleep in the driver's seat more times that he could count, and eventually, it just became an unspoken sort of thing that whenever Ezra was sitting in the ladder truck, he wanted to be left alone. Though, it was more of a solitude than and actual loneliness—solitude was always easier for Ezra to deal with. There was always a sort of ribbon of loneliness that ran though Ezra, reminiscent of his childhood. He wasn't always lonely, but when his life splintered apart, so did everybody else. He had lead an isolated life for the most part during high school; he'd frequently missed school because he was trapped in the house with no way of getting out, and being outed as gay in a conservative rural small town where going to church was a weekly occurrence for everybody didn't exactly help him.

The picture in his hands is faded at the edges, soft in the places where it has been folded and unfolded more times that Ezra can count. The little boy in the picture beams up at him—his two front teeth as missing and there are already creases from around his eyes from how much he smiled. Ezra carries the picture in his wallet everywhere he goes. Most days he forgets that it's there, but all this talk of loss has stirred up old memories. It serves as both a reminder and a comfort despite the reason he carried the picture around in the first first place.

He's so transfixed by the picture that he doesn't notice Buck climbing into the ladder truck.

"Cute kid," Buck says.

Ezra jumps and folds the picture up.

"He yours?" Buck wonders.

Ezra swallows as he tucks the picture back into his wallet and shakes his head. "Uh, no. No, he, uh...he was my first loss."

"Oh," Buck says. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have assumed..."

Ezra shakes his head and gives him a soft smile. "Nah, it's okay. You had no way of knowing."

"I thought, um, you said not to get caught up on the losses," Buck says.

"I did," Ezra replies with a nod. "But this is uh...different. It's not so much getting caught up on it, but more to remember him."

"Oh," Buck nods. "Was he, uh...close to you?"

Ezra looks at Buck then. Really looks. There's almost a desperation in his eyes; a kind of sadness that strikes Ezra deep to his core. "What's going on with you?"

"I, um, I went to Devon's memorial service," Buck tells him. He seems started by the abrupt change in subject but chooses to keep quiet. "I thought that maybe it would help. And I talked to my sister and..." Buck tears his gaze away from Ezra and stares down at his hands which rest in his lap. "She said I failed him."

Ezra shakes his head. "But you didn't. Okay?"

Buck shakes his head. "Maybe I did."

"Buck, listen," Ezra says. "People can say and do terrible things in times of unimaginable grief. You did everything right. It's not your fault. Okay?"

Buck doesn't answer.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

"Seriously? It's gotta be a jumper?" Buck asks as they make their way toward the apartment complex. "He couldn't threaten himself with a gun?"

"Right, cause that would be preferable," Athena comments dryly.

They pause at the edge of the sidewalk to crane their necks to look up at the man. Just barely, Ezra can see two figures—one belonging to the man, balancing precariously on the railing of the balcony, and the other belonging to the girlfriend who stands on the living room balcony, she's shouting words that are accompanied by emphatic gestures, though Ezra can't hear exactly what they're saying. Chimney blows and pops a bubble with his gum from beside Ezra.

"We're gonna have to do The Maneuver," Bobby decides.

Buck makes a face from beside Ezra.

"Cap, I can do it," Ezra volunteers, glancing over at Buck.

Buck sends him an appreciative nod. Ezra gets it. It didn't exactly take a rocket scientist to know that Buck doesn't think that he's ready for saving people from precarious heights. It's still too much and too soon; it will only rub salt into the still-fresh wounds.

Bobby shakes his head. "No, I want Buck to do it."

Buck shakes his head. "Oh, Bobby, no, I..."

"I'll do it, then," Chimney volunteers.

Ezra raises an eyebrow and gives him a questioning glance. Everybody knows that Chimney can't actually do The Maneuver.

"No, Buck's got this," Bobby assures them. Buck sends Bobby a pleading glance, but Bobby only steels. "You got this."

Ezra isn't even in the apartment when he hears the yelling. The door is left unlocked, and he and Bobby are able to walk through the apartment and onto the balcony where the girlfriend stands. She's yelling across the gap between her and her boyfriend who balances precariously above the ground, several hundred feet below. Chimney had gone with Buck, manning the winch as he slowly lowers Buck into position just above the boyfriend.

"You're not that terrible!" The girlfriend is shouting as they step onto the balcony. "Will you please get down so we can talk about how you can improve?!"

"I don't think I need to improve!" The boyfriend shouts back.

"Fine!" The girlfriend exclaims, throwing up a hand. "Go ahead and jump!" She drops her hand and lets out an exasperated sigh as she turns to Bobby and Ezra. "I don't even know what to say to him anymore."

Bobby leans against the railing of the balcony with one hand and places the other on his hip. "Telling him to jump is probably not the way to go."

"He will not listen to me, okay?" The girlfriend explains. "He's convinced that I cheated on him, and we keep going in circles."

Ezra glances over at the boyfriend to see that he's shifted his balanced onto one leg and stretches the other over the nothingness below him.

He nudges Bobby. "Hey, uh—"

The girlfriend whips around and points an angry finger at the boyfriend. "DON'T YOU DARE DO THAT, I SWEAR TO GOD!"

Instantly, the boyfriend retracts his foot. Ezra tilts his head. He wonders if the boyfriend even wants to jump or if he just wants something out of the girlfriend—an admission of guilt. Ezra supposes that the boyfriend thinks that if his girlfriend really loved him, then she would do anything to talk him off of the ledge; even admit her guilt—no matter if she were innocent or not. Ezra exchanges a glance with Bobby who seems to have the same gears whirring in his head. Ezra raises his eyebrows and then tilts his head toward the girlfriend.

"Did you cheat on him?" Bobby questions.

"Is this the right time for that?" The girlfriend hisses.

"So that's a yes."

"No it isn't!"

"Just tell him you're sorry."

"Absolutely not," the woman asserts. "Okay, I'm not gonna admit that I cheated on him."

"Listen," Ezra says. "Right now, I bet that he thinks if you really love him, you'll do anything to talk him off. Just tell him what he wants to hear."

Bobby nods. "It doesn't have to be true. He just needs to hear that you're sorry. All right?"

"Fine," the girlfriend says, though her lips are pressed into a thin line. She turns around to face her boyfriend and the gap that stretches between them. "Leonard? I'm sorry. Okay, I don't know what I was thinking. I love you and only you."

Ezra raises his eyebrows. As far as apologies go, that was...the least genuine apology he had heard in his life.

Evidently, the boyfriend thinks so too, because his only response is: "You lying bitch."

"Oh, fine!" The girlfriend shouts back. She turns back to face Bobby and Ezra who both look at her with equally unimpressed expressions on their faces and throws her hands up in exasperation.

"I mean, that was pathetic," Bobby comments.

"He's not wrong," Ezra agrees, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans back against the railing.

"Oh, come on," the girlfriend replies. "I tried my best."

"Hey. Leonard, listen to me," Bobby calls to the boyfriend. Ezra tries to hide his grin. It's time for The Maneuver. "We've all been there, man. I had a girlfriend who cheated on me and...I thought she was the one, Leonard. I saw us going the whole way. Marriage, kids, all of it. So, I went out and I bought her a ring, a nice one. I mean, we were on top of the Eiffel Tower. I got down on one knee. I popped the question. Everybody staring at us. She had tears in her eyes. You know what she said to me?"

Bobby nods discreetly to Ezra, who quietly speaks into his radio to signal Buck. "Now."

"She says to me, 'Bobby....'"

Before Bobby can finish his sentence, Buck swings down from where he was positioned overhead and swings forward, knocking into Leonard and pushing him back off of the ledge and into the apartment. The girlfriend lets out a gasp and reels back, pressing a hand to her mouth. Buck lands on the balcony floor and wipes a spot above his lip as he steps into the apartment.

"What did she say to you?" The girlfriend questions.

Bobby tilts his head. "Who?"

"The girl, on the Eiffel Tower."

Bobby shrugs. "I don't know. We never get that far in the story."

There's a bounce in Buck's step when he climbs out of the truck. Ezra smiles to himself. He's glad that saving Leonard had given Buck some of his spark back. It's still not completely there, but it's enough, Ezra thinks. Enough for now. It'll all return, eventually. It won't ever be as bright as it once was, but that's the case for everything. Buck will be okay. He'll pull through. Ezra is sure of it, now.

"Hey, Bobby, um...thanks for pushing me back there," Buck says quietly as Ezra leans against the side of the truck. "I don't know what happened. I guess I had a moment."

Bobby only smiles in response. "You bounced back and saved a man's life. You did good, kid."

"Five bucks says that guy's getting laid tonight," Chimney says as he approaches.

Ezra wrinkles his nose. "Gross."

Hen scoffs as she closes the door of the ambulance. "A guy ready to kill himself, and you think his girlfriend is turned on?"

"He was punishing her for cheating," Chimney replies with a shrug. "Guilt sex. Help me out here, Buck."

But Buck doesn't answer. He isn't even paying attention. Instead, his attention is directed in the direction of the open garage door where a young woman lingers outside. She's staring right at Buck with a hesitant expression on her face. Buck is the one to make the first move, approaching the woman and inviting her into the loft.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

They're eating dinner in the loft when Harry calls Ezra.

Harry is Athena's son. He was still a baby when Ezra was introduced to the family for the first time. He can't count the days that he'd spent keeping a watchful eye on baby Harry when both Athena and Michael were at work. He'd been there for a lot of it; Harry's first steps and Harry's first words and even Harry's first days of school. Watching Harry grow was always mixed with that same sense of surrealism that came with watching May grow up, and a strange feeling of sickness; he loves Harry with all of his heart, but watching him grow was just a reminder of the house that Ezra had come from—a reminder of what could have been, but never happened. Harry had always seen him in the same light that May had—always boasted about how he knew a firefighter to all of his friends. Harry is just as much of a little brother to Ezra as May is a little sister to him. Harry doesn't call Ezra as much as May does—Harry doesn't even have a phone of his own—so when he gets Harry's call, he instantly knows that something is wrong.

"Sorry," Ezra says, standing from where he sits at the table and walking further to the loft as he answers the phone. "Hey, Bud, is everything okay?"

"Mom told me to call you," Harry tells him.

Ezra swallows. That's never a good sign. "Why? What happened?"

"I'm at the neighbor's house," Harry tells him. "Mom said that May isn't feeling well and went with her in an ambulance to go to the hospital."

Ezra's face falls and he presses a hand to his mouth and collapses into the nearest chair. Buck, Bobby, Athena, and Chimney all whips their heads in his direction. Buck starts to rise from his chair, but Bobby puts a hand on the man's shoulder, signalling for the man to sit back down. Ezra barely notices. Something squeezes in his heart and the room blurs around the corners, and he has to fight to keep his breaths slow and steady. There's a lump in his throat and a tightness in his chest and it's getting harder for him to breathe. He hadn't felt this way since—No. He can't think about that right now. He shakes his head and takes a deep breath, clenching his fist in an attempt to steady his breathing. The important thing is that May is alive. He still has a sister. Harry still has a sister. May is alive. He has to be strong for Harry.

"Ezra?" Harry asks.

"Yeah," Ezra response. "Yeah, I'm still here, Bud."

"Mom told me to ask if you would be able to stay with me tonight," Harry says.

"Yeah," Ezra says with a nod. "Yeah. Of course. Shift's just about over, I'll be there in a little bit."

"Okay."

"Stay strong for me, okay, Bud?"

"Okay, Ezra. I love you."

Ezra smiles to himself. "I love you, too, Harry."

He hangs up and throws his phone on the coffee table before threading his hands behind his neck and hanging his head in between his knees to get the blood rushing back into his head. He's had panic attacks before. They'd hit him all the time when he'd first left the house; they stole his breath away and made him feel as though he were about to die—and sometimes, he wanted to. They don't happen as often now that it's been years since he'd been to the house, still there are the times when he thinks too much about what had happened to him and he finds that he can't breathe. It's a struggle that he's always kept as quiet as he could because telling the rest of his team meant telling them about what happened and that's not something that he thinks he can do. He stays like that for a few moments as the world stops spinning and the edges of his vision are no longer blurred. The whole team is watching him keenly when he looks back up.

Bobby is the first to speak. "What's wrong?"

Ezra doesn't answer for a long moment. He almost doesn't want to say it, because saying it out loud is going to make it more real. Hearing it from Harry was one thing; it was a problem that existed on the other end of the phone and saying out loud would bring the problem into the heart of the firehouse, infecting it with something ugly. He doesn't know if he can face that just yet. But he has to because if he waits until he's ready, he'll be waiting all of his life. It was the lesson that he had learned when he finally made the decision to leave the house behind. He wasn't ready when he chose to leave, but he knew that if he didn't when he did, then he never would have left at all. He would have been trapped in that house for the rest of his life.

"May's in the hospital."

Author's Note: RAHHHH EZRA & THE GRANT KIDS. i adore their relationships so much. ezra is the best big brother to them and he loves them so much.