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It was a truth universally acknowledged that no firehouse shift containing one John Roderick Gage could ever be truly considered boring.
The exact reason for that, however, was always a wild gamble. Sometimes Johnny would already show up all fired up to dump some kind of nonsense on his poor fellow men, be that some kind of strange rabbit hole he'd somehow gotten into over the past 48 hours or some kind of perceived personal slight he just had to tell Roy all about in excruciating depth before spending the rest of the shift all prickly and huffy and with a hair-trigger temper. Sometimes, he'd come back having spent the past two days doing a grand total of nothing, and that was arguably worse. Johnny, bored and pent up with that jittery kind of energy he just accumulated over time never ended well. Sometimes, he came back basically straight from hiking or some other athletic venture, and that usually made for a pretty quiet start to the shift — which, because they were the unluckiest bastards around, usually meant that the universe was going to find another way to apply some swift force to their collective metaphorical nether regions in the next hour or two.
This particular shift was a rarity, though: For once, Roy was itching to hear all about how Johnny'd spent his time off. Wasn't every day that Johnny went out on a date with someone he actually liked for a change. Wasn't every day that Johnny went on a date that could ruin his life so thoroughly in the long run, either; but the way Roy saw it, it was either that or the kind of dependable, average relationship he himself was so comfortable with; the kind that Johnny would have to whittle himself down into nothing for just to fit until all that was left was hollow resentment. How did the line go — better to have loved and lost...?
Maybe it was this strange sense of anticipation that had Roy turning up at the station a couple minutes earlier than usual, slipping into his uniform in blessed silence in the empty locker room, hoping to catch his partner alone for a while. He figured Johnny probably would've called him if anything too dramatic had happened, and yet.
He could feel tension he hadn't even known was there leaving his shoulders when Johnny's impending arrival was heralded by off-key, cheerful whistling a few minutes later, bright as anything despite the early morning hours.
Good.
His relieved grin was well-hidden and schooled into a carefully neutral mask by the time Johnny stepped through the door, song on his lips, car keys twirling around his finger.
"Mornin', Roy," he said when he spotted his partner, all wide-eyed innocence.
"Mornin', junior," Roy replied and waited for the usual veritable waterfall of words to start.
Nothing.
He looked over at Johnny, who was trying hard to keep a wide, mischievous grin in check.
"Well?"
"Well what?" Johnny asked back, took off the well-worn leather jacket he'd been donning, and fished a hanger from his locker, his grin widening as soon as he thought Roy couldn't see from his angle.
Little shit.
Roy sighed. Curiosity won out.
"Come on, don't leave me hanging," he grumbled. "How'd it go?"
"How'd what —"
"Johnny."
"Alright," he said, hands lifted in a pacifying gesture, "alright! I'll tell ya!" And there was that bright grin again, excitement tinged with a wry kind of amusement. "How come you're suddenly so interested in my dating life?"
Roy just gave him a long-suffering look, and his partner finally relented.
"It went good, Roy," he said, voice going just a little softer. "I think it went real good."
A quick, probing look around the locker room. Still empty; squad and engine were gone and hadn't come back yet. Cap was there already (sometimes Roy wondered if the man ever went home), but it was a good distance from the locker room to Cap's desk even when he wasn't actively trying to tune out the rest of the world so he could tackle the ever-growing stack of paperwork collecting on the chipped wood laminate before the shift had even started.
Johnny must've come to the same conclusion, because he gave Roy a conspiratorial grin and leaned in a little closer.
"Gil paid for breakfast", he proudly announced.
"Did he now," Roy dryly replied, not quite as easily impressed.
"Nobody's ever done that before!"
Yeah, because you usually go out with women and would be real offended if one of them tried to pay, Roy thought. Which, given his scrappy young partner's insistence on equating free meals with friendship, had probably been a solid indicator that Johnny simply wasn't built for a nice, socially acceptable relationship, now that he thought about it.
"That's... great," he said instead. "Real nice. Did you have fun?"
"Hm?" Johnny asked. "Oh! Yeah! Kinda figured that was a given. I mean, it's Gil, right? Man's damned good at telling a story, I always liked that about him. Great listener, too; it's actually pretty wild how easy talking to him is."
The quick stab of jealousy he felt completely took Roy off-guard. He honest-to-goodness wasn't into Johnny like that, Gil shouldn't have been a threat by any stretch of the imagination, but still — normally he could rest assured that, no matter which kinda girl turned up in Johnny's life, Roy would still be his undisputed favorite person in the world. He may not have wanted to date the guy, but for all his griping and complaining, Johnny was his best friend, and he took that more seriously than he was usually willing to show.
Normally, he could see Johnny run the mental math after he got back from one of his dates, calculating how much of a trophy he'd have snagged if he managed to put a ring on the poor sap he'd just spent a couple hours talking at. There was none of that now. Maybe Roy should've felt bad about how much that bothered him, but he'd been dealing with his partner's whims and woes for nigh-on half a decade now, he figured it was his good right to get a little attached to their friendship.
"So, what now?" Roy asked, and he figured he was doing a pretty good job at keeping the bitterness out of his voice. "Did ya kiss? Are you... I dunno, boyfriends?"
"C'mon, you know me — I would never kiss and tell," Johnny grinned.
Roy huffed. Insufferable.
"Seriously? Normally you kiss and refuse to shut up about it no matter how much we beg and plead for a moment's respite."
Johnny had the audacity to cackle about that, before growing... some measure of serious again, even if that amused twinkle refused to leave those big, expressive eyes.
"We did not," he said. "And we're not — yet."
"Then what on earth are you so happy about?" Roy asked.
"Well, we talked about it and agreed to take it a little slower. This is kinda new territory for both of us. I've been with... y'know, guys — but I've never actually really dated one. That's not what most men who are into that kinda thing are looking for, as it turns out; at least not any I've ever found. And I dunno Gil's, uh, history but I'm not getting the impression that he really does casual. That straight-laced goody-two-shoes image? That's the real deal, even if he's being a bit unconventional about it. Anyway, we're gonna go out again next week — no, wait, it's Monday, so end of this week, I guess — and we're thinking about going for a hike as soon as Gil gets his schedule for the next couple weeks and we figure out a time that works."
And that was about the moment where Roy suddenly realized that this might actually work out. Obvious mutual respect? What seemed like good, solid, open communication? A dash of genuine romance and shared interests to round it all off?
The sudden image of him and Joanne and the kids and Johnny and Gil Robinson at a backyard barbecue was as vivid as it was unexpected, but it didn't feel wrong.
Which, in a way, made it scarier.
And Johnny, because he was ridiculously perceptive when he had his head on right, didn't miss a beat.
"You know you're irreplaceable, yeah?" he said, like Roy's insecurities were a goddamn open book. "You're my best friend and my partner and no Gil Robinson will ever change that. 'Sides, you don't seem to dislike the man, and that seems like a step up from my usual."
Roy sighed. Got it in one.
"Right," he said. "That's not really all of it, though. You know this'll be hard even if it works out, right?"
Johnny smiled at him, but it didn't look right — there was something murky about it.
"It's been hard anyway," he muttered, and Roy knew he wouldn't elaborate. He just flashed another, brighter smile that didn't quite touch the sadness. "'Sides, this isn't my first brush with the law."
"Oh?" Roy asked.
The mischievousness returned with a vengeance: a sly grin, the raise of a graceful eyebrow.
"Let's just say that some people don't deserve to have hubcaps," Johnny said and closed his locker door with a practiced flick.
"I had no idea my partner was such a hooligan," Roy replied flatly. Trust Johnny to make a joke out of anything if he didn't want to talk about it.
"Barely even sold 'em because I thought that'd get me in trouble," his partner added, "but the more of an asshole the owner of that hubcap was, the further away it would end up." He shrugged. "Anyway, don't worry about me. Besides, there's parades 'n stuff for that kinda thing these days."
"What, hubcaps?" Roy asked.
"Wiseass," Johnny shot back, but Roy had heard the choked laugh. "You know what I mean. Maybe it'll all be totally fine in a couple years."
"Don't hold your breath, junior," Roy sighed. He'd read enough history books to know better, and he was pretty sure that Johnny had, too.
"Yeah, I know," his partner said. He kept his voice light, but there was still a kind of gravitas to it. He wasn't taking this lightly. "Still, I think it'll be worth it."
"Y'know what?" Roy smiled as he opened the door to the engine bay and prepared to properly start the day, "I think it just may be."