Fire catchers

In a Fire Overseers’ tower, full of nothing but stairs, there was an attic room for recess, right under the rooftop. It was just a lazy hour before noon, streets of the capital already sweltering under the uncharacteristically insistent April sun.

Currently the shift of the firefighters consisted of two differently blond men employing their skills in avoiding the anxiety build-up that was inevitable during the recess-time in their line of work.

“Gonna make coffee,” the whiter blond stood to take a briki. He shuffled towards the other man who was in the middle of his exercises and stretched the vessel toward him sleepily.

“Use the jar,” the man huffed, continuing his squats. His long hair was getting out of the bunch he’d made on top of his head.

“C’mon, Silly, it’s practice for you and zero disturbances for the field around us, just a two-cup of water.”

It was the bit about practice that got him all the time. He hated to do spells: because of his low level they drew too much of the magical field, but they said it’d get better if he trained more.

So Silly stopped, suppressing a smile, and inhaled, invoking water to the briki. It came a little too much, and the barista laughed, “Whoa, boy, eager much!”

The man then flopped two spoons of coffee onto the water, making a face at its reluctance to mix properly, and then produced a fire right on his palm to heat up the briki.

“Could you just… at least… Taunie!” Silly was never happy whenever the fire mage did those kinds of tricks.

“What? It doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t hurt because you micro-manage it. You overcast the field for the sake of what?”

“Of your beloved espresso, child. Also, you know it doesn’t take much of a field, me being a seventh level.” Taunie turned to Silly and flashed a smile. “You’re just worried that I’ll hurt myself, admit it.”

“No.” He did.

“You care for me.” Taunie all but sang, mixing the coffee with a spoon.

“I do.” Of course he did.

“Gotcha!”

“...you’re my supervisor. Of course I care for you.”

Silly turned away from Taunie and his teasing. One never knew how much of a flirt a handsome man could be. Could be not serious. Could be dating this operator girl for all he knew. So Silly kept away not to burn himself.

“Grumpy ass,” Silly heard.

“Daredevil.”

The operator’s voice message interrupted them and the enchanted sounding shell on their table voiced it: “Sielmanen and Taunie to Clementine Park, second floor, building fifty-nine, quarters number from one to four. It's a living quarters. Fire started not two minutes ago.”

Silly gave up on his exercises and came to the table to dispatch a pre-recorded message. It took him half-a-second to tear the magical paper, so it would let off a signal to reassemble itself at the specified place.

“Buddy, why do we need a spiritualist?”

“Because there is a reason I ordered these messages in bulk, T.”

“It was only three times!”

“Correction: three out of five calls only this month. It’s spring. All kinds of crazies come out in spring. Including inadvertent curses. Causing all kinds of trouble. Including fires.”

“Ugh, fine.” Taunie was never happy whenever there had to be anyone else on the call except them. “Let’s first finish the coffee though.”

Silly turned and he was Sielmanen all over: hard stare, hair fixed in a neat bun, and furry eyebrows making it perfectly clear that coffee would wait for them to be back.

“Alright-alright! Rusher.” He put the coffee on the table.

“Slowpoke.” Sielmanen fixed the briki, moving it on the metal coaster so the wooden table wouldn’t heat up.

They arrived at the address within five minutes.

“Those healers and the lot,” grumbled Taunie, referring to the spiritualist girl, who had already arrived. “Why do we have to use our shovel-rides, and not teleports, like them?”

Sielmanen came up to the girl, looking around for the device that tracked the strain on the magical field - the emfit.

“You started?” He motioned at the black smoke coming out of the windows.

“Nah, just waiting for you to explain, why am I on call now all the time? Is there really anything about fires except you know… regular negligence?”

Taunie tsked and all but stormed inside, pulling his mask on.

Sielmanen gulped his indignation at the girl, deciding to pursue his indignation for Taunie, and rushed after his colleague.

Taunie was inside, gulping down the flames like a hungry and sped-up caterpillar on the roll. There was a reason a fire mage was a more effective firefight than a water mage: it cost much less to undo the fire of whatever origin than to negotiate it with water. Sometimes it wouldn’t even do the trick, if the fire had some weird concoction in the start of it.

Sielmanen made sure the magical field felt fine - emfit lights were off. He heard something snap and fall. The corridor was clear. Sielmanen had to crawl in. Simultaneously he awkwardly triggered his counting signet on the middle finger. It scoured the house, reporting four bodies, two of them past salvation. Conflagration from within, he figured, hence - magical.

“Taunie!” He called at the top of his lungs, trying to breathe normally. Should he summon water? The signet did not tell where the bodies were, it only counted. Where had this dumbass gone off to?

Constantly checking the emfit, he proceeded to where he heard the fall, finding the wooden stairs leftovers, and seeing Taunie trying his damndest best to pull himself up on the second floor and failing spectacularly.

“Did you out the fire?”

“Yeah,” came the pathetically panting answer. “But they just… kinda… respawn?!”

“Nobody left to save, though. Could be done here.”

“Nope, not done,” Taunie huffed, and just hung from the second floor, looking at Sielmanen in exasperation.

“What?”

“What, he asks! Come on, just grab my sexy ass and help a little?”

Sielmanen grew hot at that but complied. The ass was sexy.

“Gotta train this derriere, if you call it sexy.” Sielmanen stuck his head between Taunie’s legs, and encouraged him to stand on his shoulders.

“Training sucks for a mage of my level,” Taunie brushed him off, “Thanks, hon.”

“Braggart! I’m gonna call our girl in, wait up.”

He didn’t wait up, as was expected. When Sielmanen and the girl came in, the girl reluctantly sliding her eye-patch for spiritualistic vision on, Taunie was nowhere to be found. Sielmanen was about to help the girl up, but she strongly and independently used his forearm to just jump up.

“What’s he doing?!” Came her annoyed voice, “Sucked the field dry, what the hell!”

Sielmanen checked the nearest emfit on the wall and with fear saw it red-lighting at him.

They saw Taunie on the floor in the furthest rooms, that used to be a bedroom, he was black from smoke - but alive. Sielmanen rushed to him, the urge to summon water as a helpless cry stuck in his chest.

“Dude, the Mercies you’re doing?!”

But Taunie couldn’t answer - he was inflaming on the spot, and with his eyes closed he whispered the put-out cast.

“Make out!” The spiritualist cried.

Sielmanen’s panicked brain managed a laugh. “W- what?!”

“I can’t pull mana, thanks to this dimwit! Fulfill the curse condition: make out!”

“With - with you?!”

“No, dumbass, with the one who’s on fire!”

“Why me?!”

“Because apparently there was a long-term flame within him that caught this curse, ugh!” She then rushed to Taunie, furious as the flames that began to lick the skin of the fire mage again.

“Taunie, can you hear me?! Don’t cast, stop eating fire!” She swore profoundly, huffing under her breath something about moving to some other floor to change the field.

“I’m gonna try to get you to another place - my teleportation is one-person only - and you - you’d better make out with him as passionately as you can!”

Now that was a challenge to anyone’s libido.

While Sielmanen wasn’t the one to deny his desires towards his buddy, he was having a hard time to accept that Taunie wasn’t trolling him all this time and also, how do you make out with anyone who is literally dying in fire???

Not even a piece of fabric around them - everything scorched black, in ashes, and oh - there were two skeletons in the place where the bed used to stand, right.

“S-s-silly,” whimpered Taunie, his body wrecking in shivers, small tongues of fire running here and there. Sielmanen couldn’t stand it. He knew he had to cover him. Maybe some lack of oxygen would make it better.

“Sorry if it hurts,” He excused and did right out a planking over his friend, unfurling his hair bun in hopes to provide even more cover. He also committed to his hair catching fire. Whatever. He wanted to suffocate the fire. He wished he could cast just a little bit.

“Silly, cast.”

“No.”

“Id-diot. Do it!” Taunie hissed at him, coughing up a flame burst not unlike a mythical dragon, right in Silly’s face, burning his moustache and brows. “Sorry,” he whispered and giggled, pained.

“We’re gonna rip one big hole in the capital and die guillotined,” murmured Silly, wrapping himself bodily closer.

“Whatever,” wheezed Taunie, “Just make me wet.”

Sielmanen concentrated hard. He didn’t see the judging emfit to stop him from trying. He inhaled and summoned all the water from lower floors. Down below there were altars, home-use ones. Altar water obeyed and came right out of his own skin, dripping and seeping through his clothes on Taunie’s burnt skin.

“This isn’t what I signed up for when enlisting as a firefighter,” Taunie voiced Silly’s thoughts, “But damn right I’m loving it. What with the whole you-on-me action here.”

“You’re crazy.” Crazy to like it. What if he was sincere?

For a second they just hovered in front of each other, eye-to-eye, a frantic glance at lips. Silly’s courage cresting over into a slight forward move.

The sirens outside spooked them into a clumsy kiss, mouths finding each other like a lock finally snapping closed. Tasting a tongue, Silly felt himself shake with tenderness and greed. He was scared to hurt, but felt Taunie’s smile breaking the smoothness of the flow of the kiss.

“You better?” He restrained himself from nuzzling the burnt neck, finding Taunie’s hands tug him closer.

“Much,” Taunie pressed up his hips, “More.”

“IDIOTS!” Their spiritualist barged in this moment, “I told you not to cast! Now I’ll have to spend the rest of the afternoon with you in the Guards’, explaining the broken field!”

Sielmanen had full intention to jump away from his mate, but Taunie kept him in place forcefully.

“Oh!” The girl noticed their predicament. “Oh, you’re actually doing it! Go on, go on, go on! You do you, guys… I’m gonna just… see myself out… It’s working!”

Taunie’s skin visibly healed over, miraculously so. Altar-waterly so. Sielmanen was happy to notice that not only because he finally got to taste it, but also because in his panicked state he forgot to apply any healing spells from his trinkets. It was usually himself who got injured on calls, not Taunie.

Half an hour later they were being chastised by the Clementine Guards Captain, who, in her righteous fury, was dramatically failing to win the argument against their spiritualist.

“You nearly blew up the whole city! He should have let him die!”

Taunie raised his eyebrows at that, all the while looking at his bare toes.

“And let the curse find another victim and cause even more conflagration around Clementine Park?” The spiritualist held her ground.

“And why would a wild-borne curse stick to other people like that?” Obviously the Captain knew some ropes about spiritualism.

“Because its condition is as catchy as an autumn fever!”

“Yeah, and what is it?”

The girl squinted at the Captain.

“Say, Captain, have you ever denied intimacy to your husband?”

The red-haired Captain grew similarly red in the face. As did the firefighters.

“What’s-”

“Well, the condition was literally the unrequited burn for the lover!”

Taunie and Sielmanen visibly started at that statement. Unrequited?

“Apparently the deceased couple had issues in the bed. The amount of want the curse sticks to is rather high, too. So it’s not a dooming one, but a regular unsatisfied male usually produces this much.”

“And how, may I ask, you eliminated it then?”

The girl nodded her head towards Taunie and Sielmanen.

“It stuck to one of them. Luckily, the other was ready to quench it.”

And both women smirked at the fresh lovers.

It became obvious that no guillotine was awaiting them this evening. The two of them allowed themselves to breathe a little.

“So, ehm… still up for that coffee?” Taunie said in half a whisper.

“As long as I won’t have to rip the field to please you, yes.” Silly was putting up the stoic mask over his embarrassment.

“Well, I had to almost die for you to admit you care, so I wouldn’t mind some… requitedness in there.”

Yeah, that, thought Silly. Requitedness felt good.