DOWN, NOT OUT.

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trigger warnings: death

born and raised in blue harbor, lucas gamble was the product of a one night stand. all he’s ever known of his father was that he had been passing through town one night on his motorcycle and that he’d met lucas mother at a bar. she never knew his full name or where he was from, so when she found herself pregnant she knew she’d be on her own. 

the pair did the best they could. luke tried to be easy for his mom so that he didn’t stress her out but he was something of a young tarzan as a child and teenager. luke had an aversion to wearing a full set of clothing and shoes and loved anything risky and adventurous. 

too often he came home just at sundown with bumps and bruises, sometimes worse, but wore a smile on his face regardless. 

he helped around the house and as a teenager began taking care of his moms errands that he could take off her hands. when it came to school however that was a different story and luke was often in trouble for truancy. his grades weren’t good either and not because he didn’t have the smarts but because he did the bare minimum when it came to school. 

since he was a child he had an obsession with cars and motorcycles but when it came to his way of getting around it was a dirt bike. as a young teenager it was all he and his mother could afford. she struggled to make ends meet and keep them afloat and his way of helping out had come by means of taking bets. those bets eventually became stunts that he performed with his bike. he also took in some money from racing and while a thrill it wasn’t the biggest draw for luke. 

around the time he barely scraped by as a high school graduate he found himself fully into a gimmick. there would be periods of times where he would travel with a group for stunt shows. and looking back now in his thirties luke would admit these were some of the best times of his life. 

he fell in love for the first time. the usually quiet and solitary type, luke had found that things were a little bit brighter during the time period that she was in his life. 

everything derailed when he lost his best friend in a horrible accident that luke hasn’t stopped blaming himself for since the moment the loss occurred. it had been a stunt he designed and one that he’d barely been able to accomplish himself but at the time luke had been at odds with the event organizers and had refused to perform that night. without his knowledge his best friend had been convinced to take his place and ended with luke having to bury his friend and say goodbye to the things he had thought made up his life. 

he retreated into himself and returned home fully. no more traveling or performing stunts and instead went into the fire academy. his mother could no longer survive without some help, debts were racking up and she was drowning with her meager earnings. 

it was time to become an adult and take care of the only family he had. tall, strong, and fearless being a firefighter was something he took to easily and after a while was able to pay off his mothers home and have his own place with some land that he’d made a track on.