flash friday on a monday but let's pretend it's 2-7-14 and the prompt is Ice storm in Flash Friday

We called her ice storm. Ok, I called her ice storm, it doesn’t matter what the other pricks called her, I’d chosen my lot and being part of the pricks made me a prick in the singular. I’m sure to her friends we were the swinging dicks.

I know it happens to every chick in the workplace, and yeah, there are less of them in the fire department and in West Springfield there’s only her. But in a bank she’d be bitch goddess, in an auto parts store grease ho, and it goes on.

As a rookie I tried talking to her. Honest mistake, she was the only one not yelling at me every time I did, well, anything. She was not speaking to me at all. Sure I might have started out with something cheesy, I don’t remember, and it makes sense that she thought I was trying to pick her up, so she said something cold. Ice storm. Not only cold but a force of nature, a wild wrath of god storm of cold.

I’d like to tell you that even so there’s nobody I’d rather have at my back. That’d make things all hallmarky and wrap ‘em up in a pretty bow. Truth is, and Christ I wish I could tell her this, like any of the guys I like having her at my back. I mean I trust her with my life the same as I do anyone in the squad, no more no less. She’s good at her job, not a super woman or hero, not any better than anyone else who made it through the training and works the job.

Sure, maybe I’d like to date her, but that’s because she’s not ever going to date anyone at work or maybe any fireman at all. I mean that’s what I think, it’s not like we’ve had a heart to heart, and, honestly ice storm is a cooler nickname than, I don’t know, butch-hose. Some of the guys have come on pretty strong and some of them think they are god’s gift, and, yeah, the local watering hole is packed with fireman groupies. Shit we do a calendar every year as a benefit and sell every copy. I’m never in it; ice storm is never in it. I know those guys figure only a dyke would refuse to go out with them.

The first time I got to abuse a rookie I took him aside when he got the brush off from her.

“You don’t shit where you eat man” I did that more for her than him. I also knew I was setting myself up as the guy to talk to. I mean I figured he was like me, just looking for a friendly face.

Maybe he was, is, will be, I don’t he’s a rookie. Maybe him and ice storm will burn tomorrow getting some kid out of a tenement. All the swinging dicks, these are my guys, my partners; the rookie is just a kid, the ice storm just a fire woman, but somehow it seems like losing them would be more tragic. I’d never say that out loud. It’s one of the excuses for keeping women out of jobs like these; that guys like me will try to protect them. There’s no reason to not talk on ice storms behalf, she can not talk perfectly fine on her own.

Not real happy with this. Got to involved in the narrative, but I was speed typing and that's the way it came out. Some days are really more prosaic than others.

Prompts

Essence, double reed, wall of sound