Chapter Text
Hour -18 || 05:00 PM MST || 0000 UTC
The office is quiet. Night shift should’ve arrived twenty minutes ago, but as per usual, the daytime interns’ lack of a halfway decent worklife balance is gleefully exploited.
Jisung doesn’t mind too much. There’s not a whole lot in the way of engaging pastimes at home anyway. It’s been nearly six months, and he still hasn’t furnished his apartment beyond the raggedy bean bag he dragged back from Madison and his equally worse-for-wear mattress. He doesn’t even have WiFi. Call him a bore, but he’s not terribly keen on placing roots here, merely biding his time until life carries him somewhere he’d rather be.
So he stays at work as long as it takes for his supervisors to chew him out for wracking up too much overtime.
Tonight’s decently uneventful. Actually, if he’s honest, most days tend to be. The only interesting occurrences in the office since the first day he set foot in it has been the twice-daily bickering matches with the air traffic controllers at DIA. MIC Wyatt likes to call them ‘aviation correspondences,’ which Jisung finds particularly amusing given that he’s pretty sure there’s never been a single instance in which the AMET team and DIA have genuinely ‘corresponded’ or even remotely communicated in any discernible way.
DIA’s still a functional airport though, so he figures there must be some kind of secret code woven in between passing petty insults and sophomoric jabs.
That said, he’s not part of the AMET team, so he just spends eight hours or more every shift sunken into a chair in front of a dual monitor and cycling through HRRR runs, NEXRAD composites, and GOES imagery with a film over his eyes. As fate would have it, today’s been no different.
Sure, Felix caught some potential for high winds along the Front Range yesterday, and Wyatt sent out an official watch for tomorrow morning, but that is, truly, the one moderately exciting stir in the local atmosphere since July. Even then, high winds aren’t exactly hard to come by this time of year.
Jisung heaves a labored sigh, slouching further into his chair. He swivels it back and forth aimlessly, arm outstretched to keep his hand lain over the mouse. His eyes stay fixed on the time at the bottom corner of the screen--4:59 PM--as he counts down the seconds.
The moment it turns over to 5:00 PM, he refreshes the model on the screen and begins clicking through the 18-HR forecast products--2-m temperature, 2-m DPT, accumulated precip., 10-m WSPD…
He almost doesn’t catch it, almost moves right past it, but he manages to spot it just before he shifts his attention to the next product:
HRRR-NCEP 10-m Wind Speed (kt)
Init. 0000 UTC Dec 30 2021 Forecast Hour [18] valid at 1800 UTC Thu, Dec 30 2021
MAX SPD: 80-90 kts
“Holy shit…” Jisung mutters to himself. He straightens in his seat, dragging the mouse across the shaded map to grab a cross-section through the brightest bullseye of color.
X-sect [Kremmling, CO, 40.05N,-106.36E] to [Denver, CO, 39.87N,-104.67E]
MAX SPD: 86 kts at [40.05N,-105.35E] BLDR CNTY
Jisung stares for longer than he probably should. Hell, he even refreshes the model a few times and takes the cross-section twice more, each result highly similar to the last. Determined not to get ahead of himself, he turns to the second monitor on his desk to sift through the local watches and warnings issued by NWS-Boulder in the last twenty-four hours. The only one since Tuesday morning: the high wind watch for Boulder, Jefferson, Larimer, and Weld counties.
He skims it swiftly. Sustained wind speeds up to 50 mph and gusts up to 70 mph…
He glances back at the max value on the cross-section and runs the conversion in his head. A beat passes, realization dawns, and he’s up on his feet in an instant, scuttling off to Wyatt’s office at the far end of the operations floor.
Someone’s inside chatting with Wyatt—there’s muffled laughter coming from behind the door. It deters Jisung for a lingering second; it’s bad enough that he’s an intern about to deliver news to his boss of a potential catastrophe coming their way (talk about a laughingstock waiting to happen), but now he has to do it in front of two of his bosses?
He inhales deeply, composing himself, then raises his fist to give the door a good, solid knock.
The laughter pauses, and a less-than-enthusiastic, “come in,” follows.
Jisung can’t blame Wyatt, really. It’s end of shift for him, too. God knows an intern coming by to sound the alarm on something that may or may not be worth lifting a finger over is the last thing he wants to deal with.
Nevertheless, Jisung enters--more timid than he’d care to admit, and thrown utterly off his axis once he catches sight of the other presence in the room. Stood frozen in the doorway, he blinks dumbly at the man occupying one of the two leather chairs in front of Wyatt’s desk, his feet kicked up lazily onto the mahogany surface, elbow braced on the armrest, and his chin propped in his palm.
The man stares impassively at Jisung, brows raised, but only just so. His eyes are sharp and especially dark in the dim lighting of the room, obsidian pools that, frustratingly, reveal nothing--though Jisung recalls that, however rarely, they are capable of being a warm, honey-brown. His hair softens his generally imposing aura more than it usually does, having been freshly dyed back from jarring white-blonde to his natural, sleek black since Jisung last saw him earlier in the week. Still, Jisung is about as intimidated as ever.
Senior IMET Minho Lee. OU School of Meteorology grad, class of 2011. He has three cats but otherwise lives alone in a house he built from scratch off of Fourmile Canyon Drive. He enjoys hiking and camping--also alone--and he loves food spicy enough for the steam to sting a passerby’s nostrils right when it’s taken out of the breakroom microwave.
And that’s all Jisung knows about him. It’s not for lack of trying. He’s made multiple attempts over the past several months to unravel the mystery that is Minho Lee, though Felix would tell him that ‘drooling from afar’ doesn’t count as a legitimate information-gathering strategy. Frankly, Jisung resents that accusation. He doesn’t drool, nor have his passive, distanced aims to figure Minho out been completely for naught.
For instance, Minho has this odd fluttery, blinking habit when he’s listening intently to something, and his long eyelashes cast pretty shadows over his high cheekbones every time he does it--and Jisung never would’ve noticed if he hadn’t been paying so much attention from afar. So, clearly, his strategy works just fine.
“Yo, Rook!”
Jisung flinches and whips his head around to face Wyatt, whose simultaneously stern and confused expression indicates Jisung’s likely been gawping at Minho like a fucking idiot for much longer than a passing second. “S-sir?” is all he can manage in response, too, which, of course, makes him look ten times worse.
“Why are you here?” Wyatt asks, exasperated.
“I, uh…” Jisung glances back at Minho, but just as soon tears his gaze away. It’s best if he pretends Minho’s not here at all; even better if he pretends he can’t feel that infernally intense gaze of Minho’s plastered to the side of his fucking head while he’s at it.
He clears his throat, shakes his head minutely, and steps farther into the room. Making a point of addressing only Wyatt, he says, “sir, I just checked the most recent hour-18 HRRR forecast, and it’s predicting wind speeds for Boulder County that are far beyond what the current wind watch we have issued for tomorrow says.”
“What’s the max speed?”
“Eighty-six knots, east of the Flatirons Ridge.”
An impressed whistle sounds from Minho’s direction; Jisung doesn’t allow his attention to stray toward him.
Wyatt, on the other hand, grins and directs a look at Minho. “Might be a busy day for you then, huh, Lee? Fifty bucks says one of Xcel’s unburied powerlines goes down and catches the whole damn city on fire.”
Minho snorts at that. “I’m not in the business of taking losing bets.”
Wyatt clicks his tongue and tuts, “no fun.”
Jisung fights the sourness working its way onto his face. Without acknowledging the insensitive jest between superiors, he continues, “sir, what we were originally forecasting to be a moderately strong storm is now projected to involve hurricane-force winds and gusts potentially exceeding a hundred miles-per-hour. I think this warrants a redaction and re-issuance of the wind watch and a red flag warning.”
Wyatt’s grin sinks off his face as he returns his gaze to Jisung. He almost looks… Pitying. Like Jisung’s some lost puppy who just happened to stumble into a forecasting office one day. “We’re only joking, Rook. These types of windstorms happen every year, and there has never been a wildland-urban-interface fire in the entire century-and-a-half this state’s existed.”
Jisung’s eyebrow twitches, jaw tightening. “I understand that, sir, but--”
“You ever heard of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’?”
Jisung blinks blankly. “Sir?”
“This is only the first time the HRRR is showing wind speeds like this. We don’t modify standing watches without validation runs, and that takes at least two more run-to-run refreshes. Besides, the relative humidity doesn’t meet the criterion for a red flag warning. If we issued watches and warnings for every slightly anomalous case the models spit out, they’d lose their impact when they really mattered.”
“The relative humidity is barely above the threshold,” Jisung says, perhaps more argumentatively than he should.
“And my point still stands.”
Jisung wants to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t. He’s not stupid. He knows the precarious nature of relying on mesoscale models this far out from a predicted event, especially with complex topography in the mix. But he also knows the precarious nature of issuing watches and warnings too late for people to act on them.
He forces himself to take another self-composing breath. “All I mean to say, sir, is that the HRRR does a good job of showing what’s possible, even if it changes its mind down the line. As someone whose doctoral research depended on intimate knowledge of the inner workings of this specific model, it’s my professional opinion that these results be brought to the attention of local Sheriff’s offices, USFS, and state DPHE officials. At the very least, preemptive burn bans should be instituted and rigorously enforced, just in case.”
Wyatt bursts out into laughter, and Jisung has to suppress yet another scowl; it’s no secret that Wyatt doesn’t exactly like him. He doesn’t even respect Jisung enough to call him by his name like he does with all the other interns. Rook. Rookie. Sometimes, just: Intern. What an ass.
He thinks Jisung is too haughty, too pretentious, and maybe he’s a little bit right about that. That still doesn’t undermine Jisung’s expertise though, and that’s why Wyatt’s frequent dismissal of his input gets under his skin so damn much.
“Well, I’m not denying that, Rook. That’s a different conversation altogether,” Wyatt says. “But good fucking luck getting ahold of ‘em. It’s afterhours three days before a federal holiday. You’ll be on-hold till a week into the New Year.”
Jisung deflates. Honestly, this was the most predictable outcome to this scenario. He should’ve prepared himself better for the embarrassment of being waved off like a buzzing fly, but in fairness to him, he didn’t expect that embarrassment to take place in front of Minho fucking Lee. Actually, because of Minho’s presence, he wound up doing exponentially more embarrassing shit than he would’ve otherwise.
Puffing his chest and flexing his doctorate to a supervisor as a lowly intern? The fuck was he thinking, truly?
“Go home, Rook. Let the night shift handle it. This ain’t an intern’s job anyhow.”
Jisung grits his teeth and ducks his head before the light can catch the red heat rising to the apexes of his face and ears. He mumbles, “yes, sir,” before pivoting on his heels and making his hurried exit.
Once the door is closed shut behind him, he flops back against the nearest wall and digs the heels of his palms into his eyes--hard, until he sees kaleidoscopic stars.
“Stupid,” he whispers, letting his arms fall back to his sides.
Through the door, he can hear Wyatt and Minho pick their conversation back up where they left off. A joke here, a shared laugh there… Jisung’s insecure enough to entertain the thought that they’re laughing at him, but he’s also smart enough to know they have better things to talk about than him.
After the joviality dies, Minho says, “I’ll monitor the HRRR for the next few hours and issue a new wind watch myself if warranted.”
“What for?” Wyatt asks, and even through the barrier between them, Jisung can tell he’s baffled by Minho’s declaration. “You’re off the clock, and you despise grunt work.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I have a feeling this is about to become my next case. Might as well see to it from the beginning.”
That gives Jisung pause.
Is… Is Minho actually taking him seriously? Jisung must be hearing wrong, surely.
“You really think the kid’s got it right?” Wyatt sounds so unbearably incredulous it almost makes Jisung forget his pleasant shock in favor of bristling with disdain.
There’s an extended bout of silence, and Jisung imagines that pensive sort of crease Minho gets in his brow when he’s in deep thought.
Eventually: “has he ever had it wrong?”
It’s abject—Jisung knows it—but his heart actually soars when the words reach his ears. It’s almost praise in a roundabout sort of way, and having it come from Minho of all people? It feels like winning the damn lottery.
That is, until he crashes back down to Earth and remembers that Minho hasn’t ever bothered to give him the time of day before and generally moves about the office as if he doesn’t know Jisung exists.
Suddenly the praise feels both confusing and exceptionally hollow. What the fuck does Minho Lee know about Jisung Han?
Upon further consideration, the praise doesn’t feel like praise at all. Because it isn’t. All it is, is a genuine, honest question. Has Jisung ever had anything wrong before? Should I bother spending my valuable time chasing down the lead this random intern has presented me with?
Jesus.
Jisung’s done it again. He’s read things completely wrong because of this absurd, childish crush he just can’t seem to shake no matter how hard he tries.
He thunks his head back against the wall and glares up at the ceiling tiles, scoffing at himself. “Stupid,” he chastizes once more.
He leaves the office before he can dwell too much on it, passing the gaggle of tardy night-shifters in the parking lot with his head down and his flaming face tucked behind his scarf.
Hour -12 || 11:00 PM MST || 0600 UTC
Jisung’s curled up under the covers in the dark, scrolling idly through his Instagram feed. It’s chilly in his apartment; with an intern’s salary, he tries to minimize heat and A/C usage as much as possible, though, frankly, he’s not convinced the baseboard heaters ever worked to begin with. The building is old and run-down, and the landlord has always struck him as someone who likes to cut corners as much as possible.
He shivers a bit, tugging the covers tighter around himself. He’ll acclimate to the cold in due time; he always does. Not much can be said about the usual quality of his sleep since moving out of Madison, but he doesn’t care whether or not he’ll acclimate to that. In fact, he kind of hopes he doesn’t. Rehabituating himself to Colorado so much he can really sleep here is decidedly not an item on his bucket list.
Minutes tick by, and he continues to scroll. Midnight comes and goes, and he’s still wide-awake. He’s not ordinarily this restless, but there’s a nebulous sense of unease parked behind his ribcage, taking up room it’s not owed, making his chest tight and dull.
He frowns at the cat video playing on his screen, swipes out of IG, navigates to the weather app. He’d never tell a soul, but sometimes he does look at Apple Weather. It’s almost never accurate, and he’d never hear the end of it from any accredited member of his field, but in his defense, he usually only uses it to make fun of it and compare it against his own forecasts.
He could use the distraction, so here he is.
At the top of the screen is the high wind watch advisory from yesterday--taunting him. Nothing’s changed about it. It still claims threats of only 50-mph winds.
He scrolls down, picks through the twenty-four-hour forecast. It’s believable enough, he supposes. Sunny as hell all day, clear skies until nightfall, maybe a chance of snow, but he knows better than to trust that. How many times has the weather app proudly stated there was a chance of snow--or any precip--in the last six months and been dead-wrong every time?
He’s about ready to set his phone down and make a fruitless attempt at sleep when a soft ding abruptly signals a notification--from the weather app:
High Wind Watch in your area
These conditions are expected by 11:00 AM, Dec 30. (National Weather Service)
Breath bated, Jisung clicks on the notification and scans through it.
High Wind Watch
Severity: Severe
Significant threat to life or property
Weather Event Onset
By 11:00 AM, Dec 30
Description
WHAT: Possibility for 50 to 75-mph winds and gusts up to or exceeding 100 mph.
WHERE: Larimer and Boulder Counties Between 6000 and 9000 Feet, Larimer County Below 6000 Feet/Northwest Weld County, Boulder And Jefferson Counties Below 6000 Feet/West Broomfield County.
WHEN: Until 5:00 PM MST Thursday.
IMPACTS: Damaging winds could blow down trees and power lines, and strip exteriors of homes. Objects not well-fixed to the ground could be lofted or thrown. Widespread power outages are possible. Travel could be difficult, especially for high-profile vehicles. Those working or participating in outdoor activities are at elevated risk of injury.
Issued By: NWS-Boulder Meteorologists Lee, M. &—
Jisung’s breath snags in his throat. He carefully reads the last line one more time, convinced his eyes must be playing tricks on him.
Issued By: NWS-Boulder Meteorologists Lee, M. & Han, J.
Jisung reads it again.
Lee, M. & Han, J.
Not only did Minho go through the trouble of monitoring the refreshes until nearly one in the morning to validate Jisung’s findings—but he also credited Jisung in the re-issued watch? Moreover, he did it despite reporting meteorologists almost never getting credited in NWS advisories.
Jisung swallows roughly, hastily clicking his phone off and setting it face-down an arm’s length away from his head. He rolls onto his back and stares, wide-eyed, at the ceiling. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, the dead-quiet of the room; it’s fast, pounding. He feels dizzy and confused and… A little pathetic for feeling either of things in the first place.
“What the fuck…?”
Now he really can’t sleep.
Hour 0.15 || 11:09 AM MST || 1809 UTC
Jisung gnaws mindlessly on the capped end of a pen as he stares at Minho from his desk. Minho is in a huddle by Wyatt’s office, hunched over a table that ordinarily isn’t there while he explains some protocol or another to his IMET team. He looks serious, laser-focused, decisive, and somehow calm on top of it all. He’s in his element.
A real leader, or so Jisung’s heard through the grapevine. He’s never actually gotten to see Minho work before. And it’s a good thing, too, because Minho is wildly distracting when he’s working.
The office has been hectic since Jisung arrived at eight-thirty this morning. The winds had already begun to kick up by the time he left his apartment, gusty enough to make driving a little precarious but nothing too bad. Now, there are reports flooding in from all corners of the northern Front Range--power outages, felled trees, flying debris, even injuries on a construction site.
Naturally, it caught the attention of the entire IMET division. Minho had asked for a makeshift ‘command center’ to be set up on the operations floor so he and his team could be close to the action, and not a soul wasted time in doing as he requested. Safe to say he effectively commands any room he happens to walk into. He technically doesn’t even supervise anyone aside from the interns on the operations floor, and yet his authority goes unquestioned.
It’s…
Well, it’s unbelievably hot, is what it is. No point in skirting around that fact.
“Holy shit, you’re being so embarrassing right now.”
Jisung blinks himself out of his daze and turns to Felix, who’s actually doing the job he’s paid to do at the next desk over. “What?”
“Drooling,” Felix accuses pointedly. He doesn’t take his eyes off the monitor in front of him, furiously clicking through anemometer data like it’ll physically run away from him if he doesn’t comb through it the very millisecond it uploads to the server. He looks frazzled, freckled face paler than usual, bleach-blonde hair tied into a low bun that Jisung knows isn’t meant to be messy but wound up that way after hours of severe weather analysis.
“Am not,” Jisung mutters, and returns his gaze to Minho.
He’s not hunched over the table anymore; he’s on the phone--one of the office phones usually used for tips from weather spotters, off-duty METs, and 911 dispatchers. His hand scrubs at his brow as he talks--a tell of stress. Alas, he is not totally impervious to human nature.
“He knows my name,” Jisung says, absentminded. He taps the end of his chewed-on pen against his lower lip, narrowing his eyes studiously.
He hears Felix scoff and retort, “no. The grunt that issued the watch on behalf of Minho knows your name.”
“How would the grunt have known to credit me if Minho hadn’t given them my name?”
“Everyone in the office knows who Minho’s referring to when he says ‘coffee gopher,’ Jisung. Honestly, this crush of yours is tragic.”
“Not a crush,” Jisung lies. He makes a conscious choice to skate right on by the ‘coffee gopher’ comment, saving himself the humiliation of remembering his first miserable week here; some guys from the satellite division decided it would be a fun prank to tell him interns were responsible for bringing coffee in for the senior METs every shift. They let Jisung believe it for the whole week before taking pity on him.
On one hand, he’ll never fucking live that down. On the other, he did earn himself a confused but nonetheless dazzling smile from Minho the first day he brought him coffee. So… He won a little there.
“Right.” There’s a blatant eye-roll in Felix’s deep, weary voice. “You’ve only been analyzing his every move like he’s the subject of your next research article for the past six months because you feel nothing more than a healthy, professional admiration for him.”
“Precisely.”
Minho’s still on the phone. He hasn’t put it down. He’s been pacing back and forth and intermittently referring to the local map spread over top of the table since the phone was handed to him. His eyes do the fluttery blinking thing that signals he’s listening attentively. A harsh wrinkle forms between his brows; he’s in deep thought. His plush lips bow into a tense frown, and his jaw flexes.
There’s a brief beat where he stands rigidly in place, staring into the middle distance, lips parting faintly--and then there’s urgent conviction written all over his face. He slams the phone down on its console and marches out to the middle of the operations floor.
“Alright, listen up!”
Everyone and everything in the room comes to a screeching halt, dozens of wide eyes all landing on him at once.
Jisung lurches in his seat, back straightening. He shares an apprehensive glance with Felix, then looks right back at Minho.
“We have a grassland ignition near the intersection of CO-93 and Marshall Road. That is a major suburban crossing in this storm’s hotzone, meaning it will spread through densely-populated neighborhoods and business centers very quickly. As of right now, you are all real-time forecasters; weather that is not happening this very second is your lowest priority. There will be hundreds of frantic calls from civilians, and it will be your job to inform them of the latest evacuation perimeters, road closures, and safety procedures; if you cannot accurately convey this information, you will be responsible for directing people to the right emergency hotlines as efficiently as possible--that would be Boulder OEM and the Boulder County Sheriff’s Department. If you do not know the contact information of these agencies, learn it now. It will also be your job to remind the ATCs at DIA that you outrank them by order of the FAA. If you see anything remotely threatening airport operations, you tell the ATCs how to proceed and do not let them question you. Does everyone understand?”
An instantaneous and unanimous chorus of “yes, sir” resonates from all corners of the room.
Minho nods once and continues, “if you have family in Superior, Louisville, or Broomfield, you are free to call them to notify them of the fire, but know that we do not yet have a grasp on its propagation other than the fact that we expect it to travel generally eastward. Only relay evacuation orders to loved ones if directly applicable to them. Whatever you do, do not stir up panic. Hysteria kills; it gridlocks traffic and places civilians and emergency operators at greater risk one-hundred percent of the time. Please do not make my life harder today. Is that clear?”
Again, collectively: “yes, sir.”
Jisung can’t help the passive thought that the operations floor is sounding a hell of a lot like a military bootcamp right now. He’s never seen such uniform attention from the office before. Minho really is something else.
At Minho’s say-so, the office is straight back to work--hectic again, but somehow with a level of organization under the surface that wasn’t there before. Jisung can’t help but marvel at it.
“Han!”
Jisung flinches, gawking idiotically at Minho, who’s looking right at him from the command table—and pretty damn expectantly at that.
Lost for how to respond, he does perhaps the dumbest thing he can do and points at himself as if there are any other ‘Han’s in the vicinity that Minho could be referring to (there aren’t).
“Yes. You. Get over here,” Minho says impatiently.
Jisung’s heart bounds up to his throat as he pushes himself to his feet. Halfway to the table, he turns his head to see Felix staring after him, looking about as bewildered as Jisung feels.
Despite his nerves, Jisung smugly mouths the words, ‘he knows my name!’ at Felix.
Felix just shakes his head and mouths back, ‘tragic.’
When Jisung reaches the command table, his hands are fidgeting anxiously and his voice is thin as he tries and fails to nonchalantly ask, “you needed something?”
Minho doesn’t look at him, too busy rifling through an unlabeled box of miscellaneous contents. Whatever’s in it, it’s dark blue and has a raincoat texture. “You’re coming with me,” he says.
Jisung’s jaw drops wide-open. “I am? Wait—where?”
“The on-site ICP.”
Jisung’s stomach twists. He feels sick and lightheaded all of a sudden. This is a joke, right?
“Sir, I’m not an IMET. I’m not trained to—”
“It’s all hands on deck, Han. Your talents would be wasted answering calls from scared civilians all day. Here—” Minho hauls out one of the raincoat-textured items from the box and tosses it Jisung’s way; Jisung catches it clumsily. “Medium, right?”
Jisung looks down—surprise, surprise, the raincoat-textured item is a raincoat. An NWS-branded raincoat at that, reminiscent of FBI and CSI jackets, only more practical for weather purposes.
Holy shit, this is actually happening—wait, did Minho just correctly guess my coat size like it was nothing?
Jisung internally flails to shove the thought to the back of his mind before it can run away with him.
He lifts his gaze back up to find Minho shrugging on a raincoat of his own in one fluid motion. It suits him, because of course it does. Though Jisung thinks the tight evergreen Henley Minho was apparently hiding under the ratty old OU sweatshirt he’d walked into the office with that morning is what really stands out here.
Dazedly, Jisung slides into his raincoat. It fits like a glove.
“‘Kay, let’s go.” Minho pats Jisung’s shoulder as he brushes past him, effectively hauling him out of his half-trance and making him cringe in the process.
That was a ‘bro slap’ if Jisung’s ever felt one. He’d almost forgotten, amid all his analyzing and ‘drooling,’ that Senior IMET Minho Lee is one of the straightest men Jisung’s ever met.
Minho’s already at the other end of the office when he yells, “move it along, Han!”
Jisung scrambles after him, deciding officially to set aside his fixations--at least until the day’s over.
Hour 1.2 || 12:12 PM MST || 1912 UTC
The incident command post is stationed a little over a mile northwest of CO-93 and Marshall Road. It’s uncomfortably close to the ignition point. Any change in wind direction could place the entire base of operations right in the fire’s crosshairs.
Minho had driven himself and Jisung in a state-of-the-art DOW truck, blasting down 93 at a good thirty miles over the speed limit and weaving expertly through traffic all the way down to Harlow Platts. It was truly bewildering to see the ordinarily nonchalant and unrevealing character of Minho Lee act with such urgency, and do so like an F1 driver in a fucking WorkStar at that. Bewildering enough, in fact, that Jisung had been too distracted to take stock of the disaster raging on directly in front of him until he stepped foot on ICP grounds.
He stands, now, eyes and nose stinging from kicked-up dust and ash, erratic gusts out of the west threatening to throw him onto the ground--and he’s staring, mouth agape, at a billowing tower of thick smoke that looks almost as though it’s somehow already blown over to the Eastern Plains. Flames crawl rapidly along grassy fields, into neighborhoods, across roads, hugging the ground as they’re carried along by vicious gales. There’s an endless, eerie chorus of sirens in the distance, flashes of red and blue peeking through the noxious haze.
The fire only began about an hour ago, yet it looks like a fire that’s been going for a day or more. Hundreds of acres must’ve been burned. Dozens of homes must’ve been lost. It’s only been an hour. It’s only been an hour. Jisung’s never seen anything like it.
He can hardly hear his own thoughts. All but one are obscured by the roar of wind and the rush of emergency personnel all around him. All but one.
Nobody was warned.
Even Minho--who believed in Jisung’s assessment enough to ensure a re-issuance of the high wind watch--ultimately didn’t send out a red flag warning.
The Front Range was told to expect winds. It was never told to expect a fire.
Livelihoods are being destroyed in droves by the second, and no one was warned ahead of time that such a thing was possible.
“Han, hey--” Minho’s hand lands once again on Jisung’s shoulder, startling him-- “we’re here to work, so let’s get to it, yeah?”
Jisung nods absently before he really processes the words, and Minho only realizes he’s not being followed to the ICP tent a few seconds later, at which point he turns back toward Jisung--who’s still rooted in place--and calls out to him.
“Han!”
Again, Jisung startles, and finally, actually looks at Minho. He appears concerned more than anything, which is peculiar given the circumstances; Jisung would expect Minho to be a lot more impatient with him.
Jisung squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head a tinge, digging deep to access his ability to properly form words. He can only manage, “there was no red flag,” even though that barely scratches the surface of the message he really wants to convey.
He wants to say: you didn’t issue a warning. Why didn’t you issue a warning? Why couldn’t you just trust me? Do you realize how many people will be devastated by this because of this one stupid mistake?
He wants to say it all. His chest burns and his throat tightens and his eyes sear with it. But he doesn’t say any of it. He can’t.
Something must show on his face, or perhaps some sort of serrated edge was carved into his voice as he uttered the words he did say, because Minho’s gaze turns dour, and his lips bow into a deep, sullen frown as he affirms, “no. There wasn’t.”
Guilt. Clear as day.
And it occurs to Jisung, then, why he didn’t say what he really wanted to say: it’s because some part of him knew Minho had to be beating himself up already. Some subconscious part of him that’s stored memories of subtle details about Minho from his months of research knew…
That Minho understood the weight of a mistake better than anyone.
Nevermind the fact that it wasn’t even a mistake. Not technically. Minho did everything right according to protocol. The relative humidity never fell below fifteen percent. A red flag wasn’t objectively warranted…
Jisung breathes deep through his nose, forcibly steels himself, and makes himself move. When he reaches Minho’s side, they walk together to the ICP tent to join the huddle of firefighters.
They don’t exchange another word on the matter. There’s nothing more to be said. They understand each other perfectly well.
Hour 2.3 || 01:18 PM MST || 2018 UTC
Jisung’s been on the move without a second to rest for over an hour. His thoughts race by at a million miles a minute, scrambling to process, analyze, and report findings from imagery at a rate he never believed possible.
And, somehow, it’s still not fast enough. He can’t hope to keep up with the fire’s propagation. Some time ago, the ICP was told that flames had already reached the Costco more than four miles out from ignition; at the time, the fire had been burning for only an hour, and it’d traveled miles in that span of time.
It’s not that Jisung thinks he can miraculously stop the fire in its path if he just forecasted well enough. Rather, it’s the fact that he has to be good enough to inform firefighters how to catch it before it can continue to spread so rapidly, and yet—the firefighters are still stuck chasing its tail. Realistically, until the storm’s over, no one can hope to catch up to it. Everyone just has to get the hell out of its way.
The resignation hits Jisung right around the time the next batch of firefighters arrives at the ICP. Station 200’s guys. A couple dozen of them, nearly all of them young and not the most experienced. C-team, really. But every available body’s being pulled into this regardless of skill-level or experience. All hands on deck, like Minho said.
As if there’s literally any time for it, Minho’s peeled off his post at the NEXRAD monitor by the Boulder Fire-Rescue Chief to brief the new group of firefighters.
“Okay, listen well, kids. Don’t embarrass me in front of the Captain Lee,” the Chief says, maintaining his humor for some fucking reason.
Jisung’s halfway to tearing his damn hair out trying to manage three monitors at once, all of which visualize different streams of data and imagery, and here this old, jolly guy comes acting like the end of the world isn’t happening a mile southeast of--
Wait.
Jisung goes stock-still, gaze sliding up from the monitors and over toward the gathering of firefighters. Captain Lee? Did he hear that right?
Minho gives the Chief a look that’s equal parts miffed and endeared. What an odd combo. It could be an inside joke between colleagues, except Minho doesn’t correct the Chief’s nickname for him when he’s introducing himself to the firefighters. He just launches right into relaying his plan of action. Like…
Well, like a captain does.
Like he always seems to do. Just like he was in-office earlier, he’s serious, laser-focused, decisive, and somehow calm on top of it all. He’s in his element--like the real leader he is.
Jisung’s heart does a stupid little thump behind his sternum. He doesn’t know what the meaning of that is, but he also can’t be assed to decipher it. He’s far too occupied with the revelation of why Minho made the forecasting office feel like a military bootcamp that morning.
Holy shit. Suddenly, Jisung feels like the end of the world can wait for his attention.
When Minho’s done dispensing information to the firefighters, Jisung’s gaze glues itself to him and follows him all the way back to the NEXRAD monitor set up some feet away. Jisung must be abysmally obvious about it, because it takes no time at all for Minho to call him out.
“What?” he grumbles without looking up from his screen.
Jisung doesn’t know how else to bring it up, so he blurts, “‘Captain Lee’?” like it’s the most unbelievable thing in the universe.
“Oh. That.” Minho pauses, only for a beat. Then, amazingly, he just turns and walks off.
Flummoxed, Jisung swiftly trots after him. “You were in the military?”
“What part of me walking away from you read as an invitation to continue bugging me about the subject?”
“You’re gonna quickly find that I need clearer communication than that, sir.”
Jisung only has a good view of the back of Minho’s head, but he knows he’s scowling.
“Quit calling me ‘sir.’ It’s weird,” says Minho.
“Does it have to do with—?”
“Yes.” Minho stops, heaves an exasperated sigh, and turns to face Jisung. “Look, not that we really have time for an autobiography, but if I tell you how I ended up in the Army and what I did there, will you leave it alone?”
“Yes,” Jisung says without any forethought. Truthfully, he can’t trust himself not to pester Minho further on the matter later, but Minho doesn’t need to know that.
Minho squints at him, dubious. He pivots to hunch over one of the DOW loggers as he says, “it paid for college. It was either ROTC or rot in ruralest of rural Oklahoma with my alcoholic father for the rest of my life.”
Jisung blinks, mildly thrown by the candid and utterly blunt delivery of… Well—what he presumes to be significant childhood trauma.
Minho forges on without ceremony, clicking nonchalantly through doppler imagery as he speaks.
“I graduated a second lieutenant in 2011, and I was deployed to Camp Zama in Japan a few months later as part of the weather council and disaster response team. I quickly rose to the rank of first lieutenant. Four years later, I made captain. Then, in 2019, I was honorably discharged after suffering a TBI and a penetrating abdominal injury while helping coordinate rescue efforts in Nagano during Typhoon Hagibis.”
Jisung blinks some more, rendered speechless. Predictably, Minho’s story only conjures more questions to the forefront of Jisung’s mind—only makes him want to know more.
But, alas, Jisung getting to know more is not what their agreement entails.
“So we done here?” Minho stands up straight, folds his arms over his chest, and eyes Jisung with an arched brow.
“Uh…” Jisung says intelligently. “Yes?”
“Great. Go do your job then.”
“I’m an intern. My job is to follow you around and get shown the ropes.”
It’s a sorry attempt at levity; Jisung’s sheepish grin probably looks more like a grimace, but what’s a man to do when he’s on the receiving end of an unamused death glare from his superior? Strange how Minho could look so concerned for Jisung just a bit ago and now verges on homicidal. The man has range, and Jisung is unreasonably transfixed by it.
“Han,” Minho says flatly—a warning.
Jisung winces and, against his better judgment, mumbles, “guess the chronic use of last names makes a lot more sense now.”
“Jisung.”
Oh. Jisung likes the sound of his name--his actual first name--wrapped up in Minho’s voice. Even if said voice is presently the poster child for barely-restrained annoyance.
Jisung stammers out, “right, yep, I’ll just—um…” He hesitates, gaze darting about; he’s quiet long enough that Minho’s stern glare sours into an impatient bitchface. Yikes.
Honestly, in hindsight, hounding an incident meteorologist about his personal life during a real-life catastrophic incident is not the wisest idea Jisung’s ever had.
He clears his throat awkwardly and, because he has zero survival instinct and only knows how to dig his already-cavernous holes deeper, dares to ask, “d-do I, like… Salute before I go, or—?”
“Get the fuck out of my face.”
“Yes, can-do, will-do!” Jisung spins on his heels and scuttles off.
He doesn’t realize he fucking snapped finger-guns at Minho before he left until he’s parked himself at the nearest monitor and peeked over the top of the screen to find Minho looking simultaneously irritated and befuddled across the tent.
Jesus—Felix was right. Minho makes Jisung act all kinds of tragic.
On so many levels, this is about to be a long-ass day…