Our Boy
A Fire Country oneshot
by mew-tsubaki
Note: The Fire Country characters belong to Max Thieriot, Tony Phelan, and Joan Rater, not to me. I know s2 is about to premiere, but I still have fire parent feels, folks. Dx Read, review, and enjoy! *Note: This is set after the season one finale/before season two, so spoilers abound.
- ^-^3
The road ahead of them was going to be hell.
It wasn't the first thought that occurred to Vince when he woke up after the morning after Bode's parole hearing, but it was in the top three…top five, maybe. His first thought wasn't even a thought but a feeling: panic, which subsided when he jolted upright in his armchair in the living room and saw that, no, Sharon was there with him, stretched out, still asleep on the couch.
Vince ran his hand through his hair and then down his face, thoughts of that hearing replaying in his mind, a mishmash of Bode's words (wrong, wrong, all wrong) and Gabriela's sobs mixing with Sharon's in his memory. He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut, blinking sleep dust from them as he leaned forward, careful not to let the armchair creak and disturb his exhausted wife while he got to his feet.
He shuffled into the kitchen, but his movements were mechanical, were learned things, learned behavior. This should be a normal morning. He was up at a normal hour, and it was normal for him to get up first, to rummage through the fridge to find something to fix for breakfast, to put the coffee on before work pulled them from this soft hum of normalcy.
Vince stood at the fridge for a couple minutes, but a handmade greeting card on the counter to the left caught his eye instead. He picked it up.
Oh. Sharon had been working on a—on a card for Bode, for when he came, if he came home—
He squeezed his eyes shut for the second time that morning, his throat no longer dry and waiting for coffee but thick with yesterday's grief.
"Mnm," Sharon mumbled from the couch.
He glanced behind him, otherwise frozen. When Sharon rolled over and tugged the blanket up over her shoulders but stayed asleep, Vince breathed a silent sigh of relief. The next second, he pulled open the silverware drawer and hid the card under the utensil organizer and towards the back. There. Out of sight, out of mind.
His stomach growled at him, but Vince didn't have any appetite, so he turned on the coffee maker (not for the coffee, but for the company, for the normalcy), and he scanned the kitchen. There wasn't much to tidy up, but there were a few dishes waiting in the sink, so he turned on the faucet and waited for the lukewarm water to heat up.
Outside the kitchen window, he spotted movement, and his ears picked up the sound of tires a beat later. The engine cut out and the driver exited as Vince hit the faucet handle, the water squeaking off, and dried his hands. He stuffed his feet into his shoes and opened the front door before their guest could even knock, pulling the door closed gently behind him.
"Cap."
Three Rock's fire captain met Vince with a wide-awake stare. "Chief. How'd you know—?"
Vince shrugged it off. "I didn't. It's…been a quiet morning. Heard you pull up." He tipped his head behind him towards the house. "Sharon's still asleep, and I'd rather let her rest whenever she can." Especially after yesterday, he thought.
Manny pursed his lips and nodded, as though Vince had said that last part aloud. He realized his fist was still raised to knock and lowered it. "…everything went to shit yesterday."
"Couldn't agree more," Vince said, also glad they were skipping over greetings. There wasn't anything good about this morning. "How's the rest of your crew?"
"There's a bit of hubbub, with Bode back inside and Freddy out, but Three Rock's actually pretty calm right now." He locked eyes with Vince. "It's why I felt fine leaving camp in the guards' hands for a bit."
Vince raised his eyebrows.
Manny shook his head and began pacing in front of their stoop. "Things—Things don't add up, Vince. Bode swore up and down to me that he was good. That he was clean, he was on the right path. He swore it for me, for Gabriela. He—"
Manny's pacing was contagious; an antsy itch twitched in Vince's legs, but he ignored it and purposefully sat down on the front step. Still…after a day and evening spent dealing with Sharon's upset and rage, brainstorming with Manny was a welcoming option right about now. "Bode said something similar to me and Sharon. Something about a sleeper?" He squinted up at Manny. The sun was too bright for a day like this.
"Not a sleeper." Manny grimaced and upped his pace. "Sleeper. Bode pointed the finger at him, said Sleeper was bringing drugs into Three Rock." He groaned and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. "Sleeper's gone, though! We sorted out that nonsense…!"
"Bode said he was set up." Vince ground the toe of his shoe into the dirt. "The timing doesn't make it seem like nonsense to me."
"That's what's bothering me," Manny said. The energy ebbed from his voice and from his demeanor overall. He slowed to a stop, and his shoulders dropped a full inch. "How…does he go from insisting that he's innocent, almost until he's blue in the face, to admitting the opposite is the truth?"
Vince furrowed his brow. "…I thought he was good to go, too. Even the morning of."
"He was, Vince. I was the last one who spoke to him before he went before the board. Trying to give him some—agh, some stupid pep talk," Manny grumbled. He rolled his eyes.
"Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"You know how highly Bode thinks of you, how highly Freddy does—hell, most of Three Rock." Vince stared up at him until Manny fidgeted. "Your words have value, Manny."
Eventually, Manny conceded with a tiny nod. "…Three Rock has value. Good men come through there, and I want to believe Bode. I do."
At that, Vince couldn't help but chuckle, but he played it off as a cough. A lot of people wanted to believe Bode right now—and that actually gave Vince some hope for his son's future, knowing that so many people had or wanted to have faith in him. What was that saying again? "It takes a village to raise a child"? Here Vince thought he'd only needed Sharon by his side, helping him raise Bode even now, handling Bode being back in their lives once more.
But…things were a little different with Sharon being so weak and needing to prioritize her health and—now—prepping for surgery. Vince could use a village to lean on in these coming weeks.
He stood and stretched, but a detail in Manny's story jumped out at him. "Wait—you said you were the last person who spoke to Bode before the hearing."
Manny narrowed his eyes. "Well, yeah. Why does it matter?"
"You're sure you were the last one? Not his public defender?"
"Oh. I just meant I was the last of us. Y'know, friends and family…" He trailed off, and Manny's gaze strayed as he grasped for some far-off memory. "Wait." They locked eyes. "Vince, there was a woman, an—an investigator. From the, uh, the state A.G.'s office. She practically chased me out of the room, demanding to speak with him in private," Manny finished. He clenched his jaw at the recollection.
"In private? Without his attorney?" The uneasy calm he'd maintained since waking up evaporated, replaced by white-hot fury. Vince turned back to the door. "I'm grabbing my damn phone and locking up."
"I'll drive."
Two minutes later, Vince belted into the passenger seat and Manny pulled out of their driveway a little faster than was safe, but every minute Bode spent back behind bars was another minute Bode had to hang on, so Vince overlooked the speeding…for now.
"What are you going to tell Sharon?" Manny asked as he slowed when they came upon a main road.
"I left her a note, to call me when she wakes." Vince caught Manny's eye, for a flickering second, and the two fathers shared a nod of understanding. "We're getting our boy back, Manny."
- ^-^3
After catching the s1 finale like…two? three? more times recently, I gave in to the itch to write about that s1 thing Rly Bugging™ my entire family, *lol*. I am hoping the s2 opener addresses this ASAP, but still. TT-TT Also—the family feels in this show are too real, and I do love Manny as well as the Leone parents and ofc their friendship. (Altho…ngl I would also dig a Manny/Vince/Sharon OT3, *lol*…she says right after completing Holly Poly 2023 on AO3. XD Maybe next yr!) Anywho! This short oneshot technically reads like a sequel to my 1st FC fic, "Hot Potato," but they're not rly linked/you can read them independently of each other. But urghhhh I am just SO MAD at that Melody Herard for stomping all over Bode's rights like WTF! So Bode's two dads are to the rescue, as hinted by the s2 trailer, *lol*. But srsly. I do like how there's a lot of understanding, since they're both parents but also they do genuinely care for Bode. UGH. I cannot wait for s2 to start…! (Also I rly like writing from Vince's POV. Grumpy dude, ilysm.)
Thanks for reading, and please review! Check out my other fics if you liked this. And, as with my other fics, show your support via tumblr and pillowfort with a reblog~
-mew-tsubaki -w-