Chapter Text
Once upon a time, Howard Han had a deep sleep. He slept through Kevin returning home late and drunk, slept through the sounds of the city, through noisy neighbours and screaming in front of the pub across the street.
As he got older, that changed.
Be it his sleeping habits changing with age, be it working as a first responder, or being the father to the most adorable little girl with a knack of waking just as her mother had fallen asleep.
He wakes not with every sound down the hall, not with every shuffle of feet in the room.
But he wakes if there’s something sudden, something unexpected, something that needs to be dealt with.
The sudden jolt that goes through him could have woken a dead man.
With a start, Chim sits up in his cot in the bunk room at the station, one hand reflexively grabbing the side of the bed while the other hits the wall in an attempt to find something to steady himself.
But the wall is shaking under his hand, just as the bed is.
He looks around the room, dim lights letting him meet eyes with Hen, then Eddie, and Buck. They all are wide-eyed and startled, but as he watches, their focus sets in.
They have a job to do, they were trained for this.
But waking up to an earthquake is never fun.
A light snore makes all three of them look around at Percy, still soundly asleep while the world shakes around them.
Buck grabs his pillow, throws it at their most recent hire. It hits Percy square in the face and the man startles awake, after all. Percy jolts upright, hands flailing in response to the pillow being thrown at him, legs tangling in the sheets as he tries to move.
Instead of getting to his feet, he rolls to the side, off the bed and onto the ground.
Just as he hits the floor, the first wave of shaking earth subsides.
Percy looks around at them, surprise clear on his still half-asleep face. Being from New York, he probably never had to deal with the fallout of an earthquake before.
Hen takes a deep breath, throws back her covers. “Brace for impact.”
When the first call comes in not two minutes later, they’re already halfway to the engine. “This is currently categorized as a magnitude of 5.4,” Bobby tells them as they’re headed out to their first scene. “The centre was about a mile off from the station.”
There is something cautious in his voice, something doubtful.
5.4 isn’t all too bad, all things considered, they’ve dealt with worse. Still…
“Are you sure? Felt like less,” Hen puts in, who’s lived in this city all her life and been through more earth quakes than any of them.
“That’s what I thought,” Bobby says. “But authorities currently put it there.”
And it’s not like it changes things, here on the ground. It doesn’t matter all that much what number is applied to a situation if it’s all-hands-on-deck, anyway.
Hen turns to Percy, who’s been uncharachtaristically silent since he woke up. “You alright there?” she asks. “Your first earth-quake?”
Percy’s smile is thin. “No, can’t say that it is.”He makes a visible effort to look relaxed. “I’m fine, though. Don’t worry about me.”
It’s a futile request, but they don’t really have time to get into it, because they pull up in front of a half-collapsed house with people trapped inside. By the time the residents are back on solid ground and out of their collapsing home, a dozen more problems have lined up for the 118 to take care of.
They update each other on the state of their loved ones in between scenes.
“Chris just texted, says the earthquake woke him up, but it wasn’t that bad at the house, nothing broke, he’s fine.” Another message comes in, Eddie laughs. “Listen to this: You think I can convince abuela that hideous vase she got us for Christmas was out during the earth-quake and fell down the shelf?”
“Karen says there’s a busted water pipe on our street, so I should shower before coming home, but not to worry about them.”
“Maddie is headed in for work early, says the neighbours are taking Jee to daycare later.”
Getting from one scene to another, Percy’s phone lights up with a series of texts. He reads them, puts the phone away. Everyone waits for him to say something. “What?”
“Everything alright at yours?”
Percy shrugs. “Estelle is considering this a personal attack, the kids are having fun, Annabeth is planning on heading to work now. Kasem says the earthquake broke up one of the most boring parties he’s ever been to.”
It’s a level of weirdness they’re almost used to from Percy, so no-one quite feels the need to ask while Percy’s kids are enjoying what might be their first earth-quake.
So, Chim happily takes the in for another topic. “How’s Kasem doing? Maddie thinks there might have been something going on between him and Josh at Jee’s birthday party.”
“Might be going on?” Percy echoes on a laugh. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”
Before Percy can get into whatever is currently going on with the two men, they’re pulling up at the next scene, spilling out of the engine and tabling all small-talk for a later time.
They’re outside the residential areas for a change, a street lined with trees and a power lane to one side.
A tree has been uprooted by the earthquake, listed and fallen to lean against another tree. It’s teetering precariously in its current place, but it won’t be staying upright for long. Were it to fall to the right, it would land harmlessly on a patch of grass and shrubbery. Were it to fall to the left though, it’ll take out the power lane and leave a whole residential area without power for days and the 118 dealing with the problem for the rest of the night.
“A strong burst of wind and that thing falls,”Buck announces, having come to the same conclusions as Chim. “Should we pull it down?”
“What? Are you planning on climbing on there to secure the rope yourself?” Eddie asks, sounding incredulous and almost convincing Chim he hadn’t had the same thought himself. Hen is already off in the other direction, approaching a family of five with a bleeding teenager to take care of.
Campers, by the looks of them, caught off guard by the shifting ground.
Chimney is a medic, he should probably go help her.
But for a moment, he’s stuck watching Percy.
With Eddie and Buck bickering and Bobby troubleshooting a way of getting the tree down without putting anyone at risk, Percy is slowly approaching the tree in question. He does so carefully, at an angle that even should the tree move, it wouldn’t fall or roll onto him. When he’s just a few feet from the tree, he crouches down, puts a hand to the ground to inspect something Chim can’t make out from the distance.
He’s just about to walk over and ask, when the ground underneath their feet starts shaking again.
“After shock!” Bobby shouts in warning.
They crouch down in reflex, widening stances, suspiciously eyeing their surroundings for new threats.
The uprooted tree shakes as the ground beneath it does, branches snapping as it starts sliding off its perch. It lands on unbothered grass, startling a flock of birds as the power lane is freed of danger.
Underneath their feet, the earth goes still.
“Well, that was easier than expected,” Eddie comments dryly.
“Everyone alright?” Bobby asks, his voice raised in that way that tells them he’s asking as their captain, not their friend. Because that’s what they’re trained to do and because it’s the truth, they all reply in the affirmative.
With the tree not a threat any more, the family taken care of and refusing to be taken to the city, they get back into the engine.
Chim finds himself next to Percy. “What did you find?”
Percy raises an eyebrow. “Huh?”
“You went to pick something up before the aftershock hit.”
Percy’s smile looks too unbothered. “Oh, nothing. Just thought I saw something. Did Maddie tell you that Josh and Kasem went on a date last week?”
And while Chim is almost sure that Percy is trying to distract him from something, he easily takes the change in topic, because he is actually more curious about this than whatever had Percy feel the need to touch the pavement in the middle of nowhere.
The rest of the shift goes by in a flurry of activity, though nothing too bad appears to have happened. There’s a few cuts and bruises, people having fallen in the initial shake or injuring themselves trying to clean up the damage.
They get back to the station just in time to hand the vehicles over to B-shift who’ll take care of whatever cases are left out there. As they’re changing, Bobby comes into the room.
“Official magnitude is a 5.3, though there’s still some debate going on, it appears,” he tells them.
Buck pulls on a fresh shirt, looks at their captain. “What kind of debate? I mean, it felt less than a 5.anything, but if that’s what the sensors said, that’s what the sensors said, right?”
Bobby shrugs. “That’s what one would think, right? I don’t know. Apparently, the initial spike didn’t match up witch the follow-through and the earthquake didn’t travel the way it should have.” He makes a gesture over at Percy. “Apparently, our neighbourhood should have had way more damage going by previous models, but half the people didn’t even wake up from the shaking.”
“There was very little in way of aftershocks, too,” Hen puts in, joining the conversation, freshly showered and already dressed.
Bobby’s face does something at the mention of after-shocks. “It seemed like that, didn’t it?” He takes a deep breath. “But apparently, there were actually more aftershocks than usual, we just happened to never be there when they hit, except for the one that downed that tree.”
“Odd.”
They sit in contemplative silence for a moment, until Eddie breaks it. “I’m sure someone is going to come up with some fun model on why the earthquake today did what it did,” he says in the tone of a man who doesn’t believe in curses or higher powers. “But until then, I need to catch up on some sleep.”
Percy lags behind as the rest of them filter out of the changing room, out of the station. Chim slows his steps, waits for him to catch up. “You alright there?”
“Yeah. Just had a long day.” The clock hasn’t even hit double-digits yet, but Chimney knows what Percy is talking about. Long day, long shift, what’s the difference, after all?
The difference is that Percy is never this tired. Even back when he wasn’t sleeping during shift, even when a residential building collapsed and they went far over their 24 hours, it always seemed like he had endless energy. But today, on a day with relatively easy cases, there is something tired about him that seeps outwards.
“New York doesn’t get earth-quakes, does she?”
“No, luckily, we don’t.”
“You said this wasn’t your first one, though?”
Percy hums in affirmation. “Yeah. Back when Mount Saint Helen erupted, Annabeth and I were in the area on a trip.”
Chim isn’t sure if the eruption of a volcano and an earth-quake are the same thing. But for Percy, there’s clearly a connection. But Percy also still seems deep in thought and Chim is loathe to pull him out of it.
“Have you ever had something happen to you and wondered if this was coincidence or if someone is mad at you and facilitated it?” Percy asks, the question out of left field as he is wont to do.
Chim doesn’t think they’re still talking about the earth-quake, doesn’t know how they could be. “Usually, in that case, talking to that person helps.” The 118 is usually so closely-knit that Chimney forgets that not all of them talk openly about their lives outside the station. Sometimes he forgets that Percy has only been with them for half a year and that they don’t know him all that well.
“Maybe you’re right,” Percy agrees slowly.
“You’ve got trouble at home?”
Percy shakes his head. “No, all good, honestly. I just haven’t talked to my dad in a while and I feel like after today, I should.”
In all the months working together, Chimney doesn’t think he’s ever heard Percy talk about his father.
He talks about his mother like she’s the greatest person on earth (second only to Annabeth) and mentions his step-father with familiar fondness. Up until now, Chimney had assumed the father to simply not be in the picture, or to have died a long time ago.
Obviously, he was wrong.
Whatever made Percy decide to have a conversation with him today, though, is a mystery to Chim.