[chicago fire] fic | For the Lonely Ones
Title | For the Lonely Ones
Fandom | Chicago Fire
Characters | Kelly Severide + Andrew Darden + Leslie Shay [also Heather Darden]
Word Count | 6600
Rating | MA [language and drug use]
Author’s Note | IMPORTANT!! This takes place in the There Goes the Ending ‘verse. It will make more sense if you’ve read that first. I promise. Though it’s still a continuation of that experiment so, I can’t promise it’ll make total sense!!
Summary | This carries on from There Goes the Ending, which was an AU following season one, episode five, Hanging On. Kelly recovers from surgery, Andy is still along for the ride but this time Shay is there too. For the most part.
Disclaimer | At my user info. page
the streets look familiar
i remember the park
where i buried my head
so deep in my hands
all around me was dark
“So, I think we should be mostly excited about what these images are showing us,” the surgeon says, turning from the computer screen where the latest round of scans are displayed, her grin wide and her head bobbing furiously. I think the ‘mostly’ tossed into the middle of her sentence makes for an interesting choice of words and I’m nowhere near naïve enough not to see the disclaimer for what it is; a get out of jail free card.
For her, not for me.
I don’t ask about what’s going on with my right arm or why it feels like all movement beyond a certain point that I instruct the limb to carry out must first push its way through layers and layers of cotton wool. I don’t ask because I don’t want to know the answers.
They are given to me anyway.
“The report from your physical therapist says there’s still a fair bit of weakness in your right shoulder?”
She says the words like they’re a question even though I know that they’re not. I nod because she pauses for several beats, waiting, like she’s watching for some kind of confirmation that I’m not in denial.
There can be no denying this.
You can’t really blame her, and Andy’s right here suddenly, perched on the end of the exam bed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. His eyebrows are pushed up towards his hairline, his forehead creased, and while he doesn’t actually shrug, his whole demeanour spells out his thoughts on the matter perfectly. You’ve been a champion at denial most of your life, Severide.
I stifle the desire to shake my head and staunchly refuse to acknowledge the truth in what he says as I perpetuate the cycle.
All over again.
We’re teenagers, about fifteen years old I think, and the basketball we’ve been tossing around has come to a standstill against my discarded sweater at the edge of the court. In the blur of what’s just happened I’m relieved to find it hasn’t rolled down the hill and disappeared into the afternoon traffic on the road below.
The ball has Scottie Pippin’s signature across one side of it, faded from the years that have passed and the almost constant use. Every now and then you’ll convince your mother to buy you a brand new, black Magic Marker so you can painstakingly copy over the letters and bring the sloping script back into focus. I watched you do it once and the care you put into being accurate made me laugh so hard you kicked me out of your house for the rest of the day.
It’s your most prized possession and I use the sight of it in my peripheral vision to ground me, to stop me from screaming or crying or worse.
“I’m pretty sure your arm’s broken,” you tell me.
“It’s fine,” I say, not really listening. There’s a buzzing by my ears, like flies or mosquitos, and I shake my head in an effort to dislodge it. The ground is hard beneath the side of my face and I can’t quite figure out what it is about the notion that is important.
“I’m gonna go get help,” you say, and your voice betrays your nervousness even as your movements are sure. Fast.
“No,” I say, swallowing forcefully around a sudden spike of inexplicable nausea. “Don’t go anywhere. Andy, it’s fine. I’m fine. I promise…”
“Nerve damage repair is notoriously difficult to predict,” the surgeon continues, turning around and leaning back against her desk so that we’re face to face.
“I know,” I say, give the sentence some unnecessary force because it is the answer she is wanting and we both know it.
Shay’s waiting for me when I come out, leaned up against the wall and staring blankly at the back-lit screen of her phone.
“Hey,” she says, her whole face falling into a smile at the sight of me that makes my insides shift. “How’d it go?”
I sling my good arm along the line of her narrow shoulders, drag up some half-way genuine light-heartedness from my bootlaces where it seems to live these days and ignore her question entirely. Set about convincing her to take me with her to the firehouse for the afternoon instead, make jokes about the place falling apart completely without me even as I know it’s likely the polar opposite of that is true.
I spend the next hour cleaning the kitchen because the station empties out not five minutes after we get there. A factory fire twelve blocks away with several employees still unaccounted for. I switch the television on as the sirens fade off into the late afternoon sun, ramp the volume up to something just below blood-numbing and pretend that I’m fine with all of it.
They’ve been gone well over two hours when I suddenly remember the temptation of what’s high on the top shelf and pushed to the very back of my locker.
Barely another seventeen minutes pass before the itch under my skin builds, a cacophony of screaming that has me locking myself in a bathroom cubicle and pressing my face against the icy tile on the back wall just to quieten the noise in my veins.
I see the tips of his toes beneath the dividing wall. Can imagine him sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in the next cubicle, shaking his head maybe, disappointed or worried or some hybrid combination of both.
You don’t need that crap anymore he says, and I want to punch him in the face because, fuck.
Fuck.
It’s exactly what I need.
It’s exactly what I want.
I can remember, vaguely, waking up for the first time in recovery. It’s cold and I’m shivering and I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to find a silhouette that I recognise.
There’s a nurse all up in my face, she’s pressing an oxygen mask into position and ghosting her warm hands over my shoulders as she calls for a heated blanket and authorisation to administer additional pain medication.
I try to shake my head, to tell her no for the meds because it’s a bad idea, a bad idea, the worst, but nothing’s moving and I feel like a dead weight, like I’m little more than a set of head and shoulders on a pillow, and the raging panic I’d fought to swallow back for months makes a sharp, sudden dash for the finish line.
“Shhh,”she’s saying, her hands on my face now, holding the mask in place and curving up into my hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay. Your surgery went really well but we had to pop you in a halo brace,” she says. “You remember what that is right?”
She’s waiting for a reply but there’s not enough air in the world for all the screaming I have inside me, let alone for creating comprehensible responses to her questions.
“Are you in any pain?” she asks, and the answer is no and yes and a thousand other variations of the words, but I can’t give her any of them and so she nods, like maybe she can read my mind, and her hands disappear just moments before the whole world does.
When it’s quiet again, when my veins are no longer raging with unspeakable terror, when the edge between awake and asleep looms, perilous, I think, where are you? and, why aren’t you here?
I’m sorry he says, but the words are useless by now. Worn down and faded by repetition. He says the same thing every day after all. The heel of his boot is tapping at the enamel base of the toilet and the sound is a dull thud that pulses through the floor space that separates us.
I long to sink down beside his feet, to wrap my fingers around his ankles and never let them go. I don’t but only because it breaks all the rules.
“I’m sorry, too,” I whisper, the words muffled into the palms of my hands.
I’m out in the kitchen again when the others all straggle back in. Propped up on the wide countertop, like maybe I belong there after all, I bite into an apple with my eyebrows raised. The nonchalance of the pose is very deliberate and I’ve spent the last half hour choreographing every stammered second of it. Casey walks past, his gaze lingers and his step falters for a beat or two and, for a single, ice inducing moment, I think he’s going to stop.
And maybe speak to me.
But he shifts again just when I think it’s about to happen, reins his gaze back in the direction of the doorway and heads towards it without so much as a hello.
I smile, wide, and nod my head once for no real reason at all.
Chalk myself up one more hollow victory.
Cruz steps through the door last, his gloves still tucked beneath his arm and his helmet in one hand, like maybe he’s been interrupted while getting changed.
“Severide,” he says, stops and indicates with a point of his chin back in the direction of the garage, “visitor.”
I widen my eyes comically and take one more bite of the apple still clenched between my teeth before jumping off the countertop with a feigned sort of enthusiasm. “Is she hot?” I ask, because that’s what’s expected.
Cruz pauses, like he’s not sure how to answer, and my fingers fold into fists in anticipation. Awkward pauses have come to mean just one thing, nothing good. My response to them is now well and truly conditioned.
“It’s Heather,” he says eventually, once we’re almost shoulder to shoulder. “She asked me not to make a big deal of it.”
I nod, the movement feels robotic and like I don’t have complete control over it.
“Got it,” I manage to say and he follows me out, heads back towards the truck as I continue on straight to where I can see her car parked.
She lowers her window as I approach and something in me deflates as I register that the back seat is kid-free.
“I know your birthday was weeks ago,” she says, turning away as I lean one hand against the top of her car, “but I only just found this and he went to so much trouble to get the damn thing back that I figure you might as well have it anyway.”
She turns back around, a large parcel of some sort wrapped in a plastic Macy’s bag held in both hands as she pushes it out the window towards me. I take it automatically. The robot is back and when the space between us is clear again she’s looking at me like she’s waiting for me to say something but I can’t. I can’t.
So I don’t.
She brings her window back up then, tucks her hair behind her ear absently and slides her sunglasses into place even as she’s signalling her intentions and pulling her car out into the street once more. It is only then that I realise she’d not even bothered to cut the engine.
I look up and Shay’s staring back at me from the shadows of the firehouse, her stance, a mirror of my own.
I stow the parcel away without so much as peeking inside the first layer. We never really did the whole wrapped up with a bow birthday present thing in the past, always preferring instead to buy each other booze or concert tickets or court-side seats to a Bulls game. I can’t begin to fathom what’s wrapped in the Macy’s bag and I put it on the bottom shelf of my locker as far away as possible from all the other hidden contents I can’t bring myself to acknowledge.
“What was that about?”
Shay’s some six or seven steps away when I push the door closed with a degree of unnecessary force. He’s standing by her shoulder, could almost reach out and touch her if touching were still something that he did. The sight of them together, side-by-side, is morbidly fascinating. Today is fast spiralling out of control, just one more thing that’s slipping from my grasp.
Along with my scraped together sanity and what remains of my will to live.
“I’m not really sure,” I tell her, which is half the truth, half bald faced lie. I’ve found this particular combination to be the most successful when attempting to ward off a Shay that’s firmly set to Protective Mother Hen Mode. He snorts, and I half expect Shay to react to the sound.
She doesn’t and I blink heavily.
“That was Heather though, right?”
Her head’s tipped to one side and she’s looking up at me through her lashes like she always does when she’s trying desperately to avoid a confrontation. I want to tell her that she doesn’t need to worry, that any fight I might have had in me this morning at breakfast up and disappeared hours ago now.
“Yeah,” I say instead, force a degree of levity that I haven’t felt in months. “She was in a hurry though so she didn’t stay.” I turn back to my locker and open it again for something to do, sink down onto the bench seat behind me and rifle through some paperwork tossed into the bottom like it had been my intention all along; studiously ignoring the Macy’s bag in the process.
“She said to say hi though.”
There is no half-truth in that sentence and I’m not sure why I say it. Shay, just like I knew she would, sees through the offering in an instant.
“So,” Heather says, and it takes me a second or several to realise she’s addressing me and not you.
“So,” I parrot, and you roll your eyes like I’m being an idiot, which, to be honest, is not far from the truth.
“So” Heather says again, pointedly, “what’s up with you and the new girl?”
I pretend like I don’t know who she’s talking about, even though I most definitely do. Everyone knows who the ‘new girl’ is.
“Leslie Shay, the paramedic,” Heather explains, her words slow and deliberate.
“What do you mean, what’s up with me and her?” I ask, immediately on the defensive and not yet completely sure why.
“I thought she was meant to be gay,” Heather says, not bothering to hide the bite in her words. You at least have the decency to slide your elbow across the few inches that separate the two of you and nudge her with some degree of disapproval.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, curious and more than a little shocked at Heather’s outburst.
“I was watching you two dancing before and it didn’t look like she was gay to me.” Heather’s twisting her recently emptied shot glass around and around and around distractedly. The tone of her voice is petulant and my confusion grows.
“Hey,” you say, speaking up finally, “that’s enough, yeah?” You catch her fingers in yours and the glass tips onto its side, the last dregs of a tequila shot spilling onto the surface of the table we’re crowded around.
Heather looks up at me, all narrow, serious eyes. “I’m just saying, be careful, okay?”
“We’re friends,” I explain, even though I’m not sure I need to. “Not that it’s any of your business, really.”
The toe of your shoe connects solidly with my shin beneath the table and I ignore the contact studiously, pushing my stool back suddenly as Shay rounds the pool table directly behind you and Heather. She’s out of your view and grinning at me, wide-eyed. She gives her hips a deliberate wriggle and rolls her eyes theatrically, swirls her finger around her right ear several times before pointing it at Heather’s back and poking her tongue out.
Completes a trifecta of offensive gestures that tells me she knows exactly what sort of conversation I’ve just been having.
I grin back at her, let myself laugh at the non-verbal confirmation of what I’d already started to believe.
“We’re probably gonna be best-friends,” I finish, immature, my tone intentionally mocking, laced through with a degree of bitterness that only half a dozen beers can bring about.
She just didn’t really understand what you two had going back then, he says from where he’s suddenly seated on the far end of the locker room bench. And he’s still trying to smooth out his wife’s behaviour with his own tentative words, even after all the years that have passed by since then.
Shay’s arms end up over my shoulders and locked together across my chest. Her hair falling over my face and providing exactly the kind of cover I’ve been searching for. I squeeze my eyes shut, tight, hold my breath, safe in the knowledge that she can’t actually see me right now.
“You know I love you,” she says, firm and sure.
Something unhitches then, breaks away with speed and disappears before I can even attempt to figure out what it was.
I nod, the top of my head rubbing loudly against the underside of her chin.
“And I’ve got your back,” she adds, the words almost whispered. “Always.”
There’s a raised scar than runs a good three or four inches down the back of my neck. I’ve never seen it, I don’t want to see it, but I remember touching the skin on occasion as it morphed over time from hot and tight and itchy to scabbed over to smooth once again. There are less obvious scars on my forehead from the halo brace I’d been screwed into for three and half weeks, and sometimes, when look at myself in the mirror, I can still see the metal framework wrapped around my head, trapping me in place.
It made you look like Frankenstein he says; helpful as ever.
I was never been more terrified of breathing than I was during that time.
I’ve been without it now for almost a month.
This is a lie.
I don’t think I’ll ever be completely without it.
I have a eight o’clock hydrotherapy session the next morning and I drive myself because Shay’s still in bed even though I know she’ll be furious with me when she finds I’ve gone without her. I have the driver’s window down and I let the first snowflakes of the impending winter join me inside at the wheel. The wind that rushes past my face is freezing and the temperature keeps me awake.
I can’t remember the last time I slept. At least, not without a little help. Booze, sleeping pills, pain killers; I don’t even have to prostitute myself out to maintain a steady supply anymore.
Turns out having a broken neck gets you access to all kinds of things.
Not that I use them. Much.
Andy’s chosen the backseat again today, every now and then he’ll slump against the passenger door beside me but, more often than not, he’ll perch himself square in the centre, behind my right shoulder. I’m convinced he only does it so he can roll his eyes at me in the rear-view mirror.
I let him; roll my own back when it’s just the two of us; think back to when we were both seventeen and he’d saved and saved and saved to buy his first car.
You come bursting into the kitchen like you’re being chased and my mom appears from another room, panicked and confused as you ask her over and over again where I am.
“Mrs. S.,” you say, and I can hear you from my bedroom, the music I’m listening to turned down low, “Where’s Kelly?”
I’m half way down the stairs when you arrive at the base, you’ve still got your work t-shirt on and it’s grease stained, faded almost beyond recognition. You’re beaming up at me, your face so red you look sunburned even though we spent the whole day in class before you left to head to the garage for the afternoon.
“You’re not gonna believe what’s happened,” you say, like the fact that you’re at my house barely ten minutes after your shift was due to finish, clutching a set of keys in your hand like they might disappear if you loosen your grip isn’t any kind of clue.
“What happened?” I ask, mostly because it’s the next line in this predetermined social exchange and not because I haven’t already figured it out, my insides torn between petty jealousy and being really fucking excited because, fuck.
“I got a car!” you say, and the wonder laced through your words is almost enough to floor me. “You’ve gotta come have a look. We can drive around the block, come on, let’s ask your ma, you should hear the fucking stereo - sorry Mrs. S - you should hear the stereo, man. I still can’t believe it finally happened.”
You’re turning then, not waiting for me, not needing to because you know I’ll be right there behind you, at your back like I always am.
I glance up into the rear-view mirror of my own car now, catch a glimpse of him sitting there, patiently waiting to pick up the pieces, inevitable as my falling apart has now become, and can’t help but wonder when our roles became so irrevocably reversed.
Shay calls several times over the course of the day. In lieu of actually speaking to her I tap out completely fictitious text messages at semi-random intervals to keep her happy. Create an entire day’s worth of activities and errands and use them as cover to obscure the fact that I’m sitting at home. On the foot of my bed. Pretending that I can’t see the unopened Macy’s bag in the corner, still tucked beneath my coat where I’d hidden it the night before.
He’s laid back on the pillows behind me. Every now and then I imagine the toe of his shoe nudging into my hip as he rolls his eyes and says just open it you idiot, it’s not going to bite; his exasperation, palpable.
A paradoxical reflection, perhaps, of my own earth shattering apprehension.
“So?” you say, your eyebrows raised and your smile wide and, although you haven’t actually told me yet, your face betrays everything I could hope to know and then some. You got a position; the news is practically lit up in neon-lights above your head as you try unsuccessfully for nonchalance, slumped as you are against the door frame in my living room.
I shrug my shoulders tightly, the realisation that you’ve made it, that you’re fire-fighter bound with or without me, is terrifying suddenly and I want to start the day over again, make plans so I’m not home when you knock, or so I can actually open my letter first, anything to lose the feeling of horror that comes with the notion of potentially being left behind.
“Did you get a letter?” you ask, genuinely curious, and I nod back in the affirmative.
“Yeah, this morning.”
“And?”
I shrug again, turn to look at you this time as I do.
“You’re kidding me,” you say, incredulous to a degree that makes me feel stupid even though I know it’s not your intention. “Haven’t you even opened it yet?”
“Haven’t got around to it,” I say, the words barely audible as I turn my back on you, make a show of collecting the discarded newspapers and take-out menus and scraps of paper from the coffee table and bundling them up.
“God,” you say, barely hiding your amusement, “I have no self-control. I practically tore the mail out of the poor delivery dude’s hand this morning waiting to open mine…”
I laugh, the sound bordering on hysterical because you think this is about self-control, that I’m somehow better than you because I’ve managed to leave the letter discarded on top of the microwave all day, hidden beneath a credit card statement and a phone bill.
Out of sight.
Definitely not out of mind.
This is about the absolute opposite of self-control and it’s when I’m hands and knees on the floor, head buried between my elbows and barely breathing that you figure it out too.
I always was a little slow on the up-take…
He’s being generous now because the notion that he couldn’t figure me out ninety nine goes out of a hundred, and do it faster than I could ever do it myself most of the time, is a complete fallacy.
I was slow this time, though.
And yeah, maybe he was, but I was also a champion at hiding it by then. I’d channelled every waking moment into becoming a CFD fire-fighter. There were no other options.
There are no other options…
Ah ha he says, and I imagine if I look up I can see his reflection propped against my headboard, arms crossed, chin tilted slightly as though he’s analysing every movement I make, every thought I manage to stumble through. And there we have it, folks…
Like maybe something revolutionary has happened.
It hasn’t.
I am nothing without squad. That is all.
And that is certainly not new.
God, he says, eyes rolling comically, stop with the damn melodrama. It could be worse, you know, you could be dead.
The bedroom floor is littered with tissue paper where I’m tearing at the wrapping around the delayed birthday gift in a furious frenzy. An attempt at a pathetic fuck you to the smart assed drug use, drug abuse, drug withdrawal, complete mental break hallucination my best friend now is. The Macy’s bag is barely visible from where it’s come to rest beneath my bed. He’s wrapped the gift himself; that much is more than clear from the moment I pull it awkwardly from the bag. It’s messy and misshapen, held together with what must be at least half a role of tape.
I guess the contents fairly quickly, the size, the weight, all of it adding up to only one possible answer even before I started the process of shredding the paper that covered it.
It takes me longer to work out the specifics of its significance though.
At first I think it’s a match ball because it’s well worn, but it’s probably too well worn for that, the black Spaulding logo faded almost beyond recognition in parts, the surface smooth to touch. It needs inflating, badly, has too much give in it as I press my fingers together.
I spin the ball between my hands, the motion little more than instinct, and the flash of black scrawl that passes beneath my fingertips is shocking.
And instantly familiar.
Do you get it now? he’s saying, his voice echoing through the room, echoing through me.
Do you get it now? Do you get it now? Do you get it now?
On loop.
And all of a sudden it’s not even his voice anymore, not really. The sound of him has morphed, become irreparably tainted by my own special brand of crazy.
The difference should make it easier to tune him out but it doesn’t. If anything, it’s harder. Panic building against the notion that my Andy might be about to disappear for good.
Do you get it now, Kelly? It’s the ball from before. The one we used to-
I get it.
The Magic Marker spelling out Scottie Pippin’s name is fresh and I have to clench my eyes closed against the image of him, hunched over and tongue poked out, the picture of intense concentration as he carefully brings the letters back to life.
Again.
If only it were always that easy, hey?
I pop out three of the painkillers I have left over from when I was exchanging sex for drugs with Anna. I crunch the bitter pills between my back teeth out of habit; the process of effective self-medicating in the face of unspeakable agony, one I have become well versed in.
From rescue squad fire-fighter to drug addicted loser in less than six months. It turns out the space that separates the two is not as vast as you might think.
I make several half-hearted attempts at vomiting the crushed pills back up again, despite the lack of any real intention to carry through.
It’s the thought that counts, hey?
Andy’s voice in my head, achingly recognisable again now, is much clearer when I’m high.
And I can handle the sound of his so much more than I can handle the sound of my own.
“Tell me something,” I say. We’re side by side on the cots at the station. The rest of the room is empty, almost dark, but soft sound travels from elsewhere indicating that the others are still around, still awake.
“Tell you what?” you answer, and I don’t need to see through the dark to read your confusion.
“I dunno,” I say. The echo of fierce burning fills my skull, of windows exploding and terrified people screaming, screaming, screaming; the sound of them laced through with a litany of what ifs and maybes that I can never quite manage to shut off completely… “Tell me anything.”
You sigh roughly, your weight shifting against the mattress as the springs moan out their protest. I guess that you’re looking across at me now, but I’m flat on my back, eyes open wide and burning as the black threatens to fill me up completely.
“Are you okay?” you ask, genuinely concerned. The last call had been awful and the question is a legitimate one even as I know I’m not going to answer it with the truth.
“I’m fine,” I say, fighting desperately to keep my voice level as I try again and with something a little more specific this time, “Griffin must be getting big. Feels like I haven’t seen that kid in months…”
Griffin… he says now, slow and deliberate, the word rolled around in his mouth for no reason other than he enjoys the feel of it.
And it’s only when I’m properly high that I let myself think about his kids these days, the longing that fills the sound of his voice in my head is too much to bear otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though the words are hollowed out to the point of being meaningless.
Turns out we’re both getting good at that.
Despite solid intentions, fuelled by little more than fierce avoidance, to be well and truly asleep before Shay comes home, she shocks me by walking in early. I’m self-aware enough to know that I’m still high, and I stupidly think that this means I’m also sober enough to hide it.
Her hand appears in front of me all of a sudden. Opening and closing pointedly in a silent gesture indicating her intention to haul me to my feet.
It’s only then that I realise I’m still sitting on the bathroom floor.
So much for hiding it…
When I make no move to reach for her hand, she steps around me, sinks to seated with her legs crossed and her head tilted so it’s resting on my shoulder.
“Please talk to me, Kelly.”
My first instinct, instantly defensive, is to reply with a petulant about what?
Don’t.
He’s in the base of the shower, which even I can recognise is ridiculous.
You can’t do this. Not to Shay…
I tilt my head back as far as I can even though the angle is painful and stupid.
“Kelly, please…” Shay says again, “You’re starting to scare me.”
It’s a week after your funeral and I’m the most drunk I have ever been in my life. I’ve had a fight with Casey, another one, I can’t remember how it started, but it finished with Vargas pulling us apart in the parking lot outside the pub we’re all at.
Hours earlier I’d kicked off the night with a fistful of over the counter Tylenol 2s and half a bottle of scotch. I don’t remember what I’ve had since then but my wallet is empty and standing upright is no longer an option.
On the plus side, my neck feels just fine.
For a change.
Shay’s got her arms around me, trying to keep my head up as I vomit repeatedly into the gutter at our feet. Her shoes are off, discarded on the sidewalk beside us, and I know she’s had quite a few drinks herself.
She’s talking, I’m not sure if it’s to me, if it’s to Vargas, if it’s to someone else entirely, and I can’t still the pounding screams in my head for long enough to figure it out.
Whole expanses of time keep disappearing into a blank void, I don’t remember arriving at the bar, I don’t remember walking outside. I don’t remember who started the fight.
This time.
We’re back at the apartment next, Shay and I, she’s holding my head up still, struggling to get the key in the lock while I’m standing there, next to useless, and doing nothing to help her out.
I don’t even have the energy required to hate myself, though I’m sure that’ll come soon enough.
She shoves me up the stairs; I lose count of how many times I fall, of how many times we both fall.
Ice cold water on the top of my head is the first clue I get that I’m in the shower. I still have all my clothes on and if I open my eyes I can see my denim clad knees bent up in front of me. I fight against the assault, scramble for the door, fumbling, fumbling, trying to slide it open.
Shay’s on the other side of the glass, she’s screaming at me, furious.
“What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?” Over and over and over as the intention in her words morphs from angry accusation through to genuine question.
“What’s wrong with you, Kelly?” Quiet now, her head still on my shoulder, her fingers twisted through mine.
“I don’t know…” I finally offer.
Half the truth. Half bald-faced lie.
I hand over what remains of my Anna-supplied stash the next morning. I still have the legitimate prescription pills in a drawer in my bedroom but I figure it’s not bad as far as first steps go.
“Thank you,” Shay says.
I don’t really understand what she means by that but I nod my head anyway, pretend that I do.
I turn to walk away, embarrassed and exhausted, but her hand catches my arm, effectively stopping me in my tracks.
“I get that you don’t want to talk to me-” she starts, and I jump to cut her off.
“Shay-”
“Please just listen to me…”
She side-steps ‘til we’re face to face, both her hands in mine now, her gaze somewhere beneath my chin.
“I get that you don’t want to talk to me,” she tries again, “or that you can’t or whatever, but you have to talk to someone-”
“I talk to Andy,” I admit suddenly and she goes silent, her eyes snapping up to lock on mine.
“What?”
“I talk to Andy.”
I’m standing stock still, afraid that if I move I’ll lose all the reluctant words I’ve suddenly found to explain myself.
“I talk to Andy all the time. Every day. About everything. And I know how crazy that sounds, okay? I know that-”
“It doesn’t just sound crazy, Kelly-”
“No,” I say as I take a step back, moving out of her grasp. “No, you don’t- I-” I drag in a breath, use the space of several seconds to pull my thoughts together, rapidly fraying as they are, “I’ve talked to him every day since I was seven okay, and that’s- it’s not just something you can stop doing overnight.”
You go to camp the summer we turn eleven. It’s only for a week, and you’re so excited it’s literally the only thing you talk about in the days leading up to your departure.
I can’t decide if I’m angry or if I’m jealous, but I’m eleven so it’s not ‘til years later that I recognise the truth. I was scared.
I write you every day that you’re gone. Fill a lined page with careful lettering that recounts the things I’ve done, the things I’m going to do. The fact that I saw an actual naked boob, just one, at the swimming pool yesterday.
I put the letters in an old shoe box, pile them one on top of the other, folded neatly and with the day spelled out on the front so that you’ll know which order to read them in.
You come back with a half-healed cut through your left eyebrow and a thousand impossible stories to tell me. You present me with your camp cap, it’s kind of squashed from being shoved in your backpack, and the peak is smeared with dirt, but I don’t take it off for the rest of the summer.
“It was the best time, Kelly,” you say, eyes flushed with excitement. “But I don’t think I’m going to go again.”
“Why not?” I ask, confused, not following your logic.
“It’s more fun here with you,” you answer with a shrug, like it’s obvious and I’m dumb for having to ask.
I find the letters I’d written you years later when my mom and I are moving house. You and I are both attending the academy after school together by now, getting ready for what comes next, and so I dump them all in a metal bucket and set fire to the lot without re-reading them.
The gesture seems fitting after all.
Shay rushes forward then, catches me off guard as she wraps her arms around my neck, and buries her face against my chest.
“It’s okay,” she says, voice muffled into the fabric of my t-shirt, “it’s okay, I get it, but-” She takes a step back so we’re at arm’s length again, face to face, “I need you to talk to me too.”
Her eyes are bright, filled with all the tears she’s not quite ready to shed.
“Andy might have been your best friend, Kelly Severide,” she says, head tilted to the side, “But you are my best friend… and part of the job description for that is that you have to talk to me too. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I say, couple the word with a sharp nod. “Okay, got it.”
Best of both worlds, hey?
Best of both worlds.
I sigh slowly, drag Shay back into my arms and try not to think too hard about the relief that’s flooding through me at her easy acceptance of what I’ve just said. I look over the top of her head, to where he’s seated on the last of the spiral stairs, knees up under his chin.
So, that’s one half of the truth he says, figuring me out in a beat. Like always. Do you plan on telling her the rest?
I close my eyes so I can’t see him, just for a moment. Try out the sensation of him being gone while I’m safe in the knowledge that Shay is right here.
Testing the waters to see how hard it’d be. To see if I’m ready…
Think to myself; maybe one day.
But not yet.
-
Fandom | Chicago Fire
Characters | Kelly Severide + Andrew Darden + Leslie Shay [also Heather Darden]
Word Count | 6600
Rating | MA [language and drug use]
Author’s Note | IMPORTANT!! This takes place in the There Goes the Ending ‘verse. It will make more sense if you’ve read that first. I promise. Though it’s still a continuation of that experiment so, I can’t promise it’ll make total sense!!
Summary | This carries on from There Goes the Ending, which was an AU following season one, episode five, Hanging On. Kelly recovers from surgery, Andy is still along for the ride but this time Shay is there too. For the most part.
Disclaimer | At my user info. page
the streets look familiar
i remember the park
where i buried my head
so deep in my hands
all around me was dark
“So, I think we should be mostly excited about what these images are showing us,” the surgeon says, turning from the computer screen where the latest round of scans are displayed, her grin wide and her head bobbing furiously. I think the ‘mostly’ tossed into the middle of her sentence makes for an interesting choice of words and I’m nowhere near naïve enough not to see the disclaimer for what it is; a get out of jail free card.
For her, not for me.
I don’t ask about what’s going on with my right arm or why it feels like all movement beyond a certain point that I instruct the limb to carry out must first push its way through layers and layers of cotton wool. I don’t ask because I don’t want to know the answers.
They are given to me anyway.
“The report from your physical therapist says there’s still a fair bit of weakness in your right shoulder?”
She says the words like they’re a question even though I know that they’re not. I nod because she pauses for several beats, waiting, like she’s watching for some kind of confirmation that I’m not in denial.
There can be no denying this.
You can’t really blame her, and Andy’s right here suddenly, perched on the end of the exam bed, elbows on his knees and chin in his hands. His eyebrows are pushed up towards his hairline, his forehead creased, and while he doesn’t actually shrug, his whole demeanour spells out his thoughts on the matter perfectly. You’ve been a champion at denial most of your life, Severide.
I stifle the desire to shake my head and staunchly refuse to acknowledge the truth in what he says as I perpetuate the cycle.
All over again.
We’re teenagers, about fifteen years old I think, and the basketball we’ve been tossing around has come to a standstill against my discarded sweater at the edge of the court. In the blur of what’s just happened I’m relieved to find it hasn’t rolled down the hill and disappeared into the afternoon traffic on the road below.
The ball has Scottie Pippin’s signature across one side of it, faded from the years that have passed and the almost constant use. Every now and then you’ll convince your mother to buy you a brand new, black Magic Marker so you can painstakingly copy over the letters and bring the sloping script back into focus. I watched you do it once and the care you put into being accurate made me laugh so hard you kicked me out of your house for the rest of the day.
It’s your most prized possession and I use the sight of it in my peripheral vision to ground me, to stop me from screaming or crying or worse.
“I’m pretty sure your arm’s broken,” you tell me.
“It’s fine,” I say, not really listening. There’s a buzzing by my ears, like flies or mosquitos, and I shake my head in an effort to dislodge it. The ground is hard beneath the side of my face and I can’t quite figure out what it is about the notion that is important.
“I’m gonna go get help,” you say, and your voice betrays your nervousness even as your movements are sure. Fast.
“No,” I say, swallowing forcefully around a sudden spike of inexplicable nausea. “Don’t go anywhere. Andy, it’s fine. I’m fine. I promise…”
“Nerve damage repair is notoriously difficult to predict,” the surgeon continues, turning around and leaning back against her desk so that we’re face to face.
“I know,” I say, give the sentence some unnecessary force because it is the answer she is wanting and we both know it.
Shay’s waiting for me when I come out, leaned up against the wall and staring blankly at the back-lit screen of her phone.
“Hey,” she says, her whole face falling into a smile at the sight of me that makes my insides shift. “How’d it go?”
I sling my good arm along the line of her narrow shoulders, drag up some half-way genuine light-heartedness from my bootlaces where it seems to live these days and ignore her question entirely. Set about convincing her to take me with her to the firehouse for the afternoon instead, make jokes about the place falling apart completely without me even as I know it’s likely the polar opposite of that is true.
I spend the next hour cleaning the kitchen because the station empties out not five minutes after we get there. A factory fire twelve blocks away with several employees still unaccounted for. I switch the television on as the sirens fade off into the late afternoon sun, ramp the volume up to something just below blood-numbing and pretend that I’m fine with all of it.
They’ve been gone well over two hours when I suddenly remember the temptation of what’s high on the top shelf and pushed to the very back of my locker.
Barely another seventeen minutes pass before the itch under my skin builds, a cacophony of screaming that has me locking myself in a bathroom cubicle and pressing my face against the icy tile on the back wall just to quieten the noise in my veins.
I see the tips of his toes beneath the dividing wall. Can imagine him sitting on the closed lid of the toilet in the next cubicle, shaking his head maybe, disappointed or worried or some hybrid combination of both.
You don’t need that crap anymore he says, and I want to punch him in the face because, fuck.
Fuck.
It’s exactly what I need.
It’s exactly what I want.
I can remember, vaguely, waking up for the first time in recovery. It’s cold and I’m shivering and I can’t keep my eyes open long enough to find a silhouette that I recognise.
There’s a nurse all up in my face, she’s pressing an oxygen mask into position and ghosting her warm hands over my shoulders as she calls for a heated blanket and authorisation to administer additional pain medication.
I try to shake my head, to tell her no for the meds because it’s a bad idea, a bad idea, the worst, but nothing’s moving and I feel like a dead weight, like I’m little more than a set of head and shoulders on a pillow, and the raging panic I’d fought to swallow back for months makes a sharp, sudden dash for the finish line.
“Shhh,”she’s saying, her hands on my face now, holding the mask in place and curving up into my hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay. Your surgery went really well but we had to pop you in a halo brace,” she says. “You remember what that is right?”
She’s waiting for a reply but there’s not enough air in the world for all the screaming I have inside me, let alone for creating comprehensible responses to her questions.
“Are you in any pain?” she asks, and the answer is no and yes and a thousand other variations of the words, but I can’t give her any of them and so she nods, like maybe she can read my mind, and her hands disappear just moments before the whole world does.
When it’s quiet again, when my veins are no longer raging with unspeakable terror, when the edge between awake and asleep looms, perilous, I think, where are you? and, why aren’t you here?
I’m sorry he says, but the words are useless by now. Worn down and faded by repetition. He says the same thing every day after all. The heel of his boot is tapping at the enamel base of the toilet and the sound is a dull thud that pulses through the floor space that separates us.
I long to sink down beside his feet, to wrap my fingers around his ankles and never let them go. I don’t but only because it breaks all the rules.
“I’m sorry, too,” I whisper, the words muffled into the palms of my hands.
I’m out in the kitchen again when the others all straggle back in. Propped up on the wide countertop, like maybe I belong there after all, I bite into an apple with my eyebrows raised. The nonchalance of the pose is very deliberate and I’ve spent the last half hour choreographing every stammered second of it. Casey walks past, his gaze lingers and his step falters for a beat or two and, for a single, ice inducing moment, I think he’s going to stop.
And maybe speak to me.
But he shifts again just when I think it’s about to happen, reins his gaze back in the direction of the doorway and heads towards it without so much as a hello.
I smile, wide, and nod my head once for no real reason at all.
Chalk myself up one more hollow victory.
Cruz steps through the door last, his gloves still tucked beneath his arm and his helmet in one hand, like maybe he’s been interrupted while getting changed.
“Severide,” he says, stops and indicates with a point of his chin back in the direction of the garage, “visitor.”
I widen my eyes comically and take one more bite of the apple still clenched between my teeth before jumping off the countertop with a feigned sort of enthusiasm. “Is she hot?” I ask, because that’s what’s expected.
Cruz pauses, like he’s not sure how to answer, and my fingers fold into fists in anticipation. Awkward pauses have come to mean just one thing, nothing good. My response to them is now well and truly conditioned.
“It’s Heather,” he says eventually, once we’re almost shoulder to shoulder. “She asked me not to make a big deal of it.”
I nod, the movement feels robotic and like I don’t have complete control over it.
“Got it,” I manage to say and he follows me out, heads back towards the truck as I continue on straight to where I can see her car parked.
She lowers her window as I approach and something in me deflates as I register that the back seat is kid-free.
“I know your birthday was weeks ago,” she says, turning away as I lean one hand against the top of her car, “but I only just found this and he went to so much trouble to get the damn thing back that I figure you might as well have it anyway.”
She turns back around, a large parcel of some sort wrapped in a plastic Macy’s bag held in both hands as she pushes it out the window towards me. I take it automatically. The robot is back and when the space between us is clear again she’s looking at me like she’s waiting for me to say something but I can’t. I can’t.
So I don’t.
She brings her window back up then, tucks her hair behind her ear absently and slides her sunglasses into place even as she’s signalling her intentions and pulling her car out into the street once more. It is only then that I realise she’d not even bothered to cut the engine.
I look up and Shay’s staring back at me from the shadows of the firehouse, her stance, a mirror of my own.
I stow the parcel away without so much as peeking inside the first layer. We never really did the whole wrapped up with a bow birthday present thing in the past, always preferring instead to buy each other booze or concert tickets or court-side seats to a Bulls game. I can’t begin to fathom what’s wrapped in the Macy’s bag and I put it on the bottom shelf of my locker as far away as possible from all the other hidden contents I can’t bring myself to acknowledge.
“What was that about?”
Shay’s some six or seven steps away when I push the door closed with a degree of unnecessary force. He’s standing by her shoulder, could almost reach out and touch her if touching were still something that he did. The sight of them together, side-by-side, is morbidly fascinating. Today is fast spiralling out of control, just one more thing that’s slipping from my grasp.
Along with my scraped together sanity and what remains of my will to live.
“I’m not really sure,” I tell her, which is half the truth, half bald faced lie. I’ve found this particular combination to be the most successful when attempting to ward off a Shay that’s firmly set to Protective Mother Hen Mode. He snorts, and I half expect Shay to react to the sound.
She doesn’t and I blink heavily.
“That was Heather though, right?”
Her head’s tipped to one side and she’s looking up at me through her lashes like she always does when she’s trying desperately to avoid a confrontation. I want to tell her that she doesn’t need to worry, that any fight I might have had in me this morning at breakfast up and disappeared hours ago now.
“Yeah,” I say instead, force a degree of levity that I haven’t felt in months. “She was in a hurry though so she didn’t stay.” I turn back to my locker and open it again for something to do, sink down onto the bench seat behind me and rifle through some paperwork tossed into the bottom like it had been my intention all along; studiously ignoring the Macy’s bag in the process.
“She said to say hi though.”
There is no half-truth in that sentence and I’m not sure why I say it. Shay, just like I knew she would, sees through the offering in an instant.
“So,” Heather says, and it takes me a second or several to realise she’s addressing me and not you.
“So,” I parrot, and you roll your eyes like I’m being an idiot, which, to be honest, is not far from the truth.
“So” Heather says again, pointedly, “what’s up with you and the new girl?”
I pretend like I don’t know who she’s talking about, even though I most definitely do. Everyone knows who the ‘new girl’ is.
“Leslie Shay, the paramedic,” Heather explains, her words slow and deliberate.
“What do you mean, what’s up with me and her?” I ask, immediately on the defensive and not yet completely sure why.
“I thought she was meant to be gay,” Heather says, not bothering to hide the bite in her words. You at least have the decency to slide your elbow across the few inches that separate the two of you and nudge her with some degree of disapproval.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, curious and more than a little shocked at Heather’s outburst.
“I was watching you two dancing before and it didn’t look like she was gay to me.” Heather’s twisting her recently emptied shot glass around and around and around distractedly. The tone of her voice is petulant and my confusion grows.
“Hey,” you say, speaking up finally, “that’s enough, yeah?” You catch her fingers in yours and the glass tips onto its side, the last dregs of a tequila shot spilling onto the surface of the table we’re crowded around.
Heather looks up at me, all narrow, serious eyes. “I’m just saying, be careful, okay?”
“We’re friends,” I explain, even though I’m not sure I need to. “Not that it’s any of your business, really.”
The toe of your shoe connects solidly with my shin beneath the table and I ignore the contact studiously, pushing my stool back suddenly as Shay rounds the pool table directly behind you and Heather. She’s out of your view and grinning at me, wide-eyed. She gives her hips a deliberate wriggle and rolls her eyes theatrically, swirls her finger around her right ear several times before pointing it at Heather’s back and poking her tongue out.
Completes a trifecta of offensive gestures that tells me she knows exactly what sort of conversation I’ve just been having.
I grin back at her, let myself laugh at the non-verbal confirmation of what I’d already started to believe.
“We’re probably gonna be best-friends,” I finish, immature, my tone intentionally mocking, laced through with a degree of bitterness that only half a dozen beers can bring about.
She just didn’t really understand what you two had going back then, he says from where he’s suddenly seated on the far end of the locker room bench. And he’s still trying to smooth out his wife’s behaviour with his own tentative words, even after all the years that have passed by since then.
Shay’s arms end up over my shoulders and locked together across my chest. Her hair falling over my face and providing exactly the kind of cover I’ve been searching for. I squeeze my eyes shut, tight, hold my breath, safe in the knowledge that she can’t actually see me right now.
“You know I love you,” she says, firm and sure.
Something unhitches then, breaks away with speed and disappears before I can even attempt to figure out what it was.
I nod, the top of my head rubbing loudly against the underside of her chin.
“And I’ve got your back,” she adds, the words almost whispered. “Always.”
There’s a raised scar than runs a good three or four inches down the back of my neck. I’ve never seen it, I don’t want to see it, but I remember touching the skin on occasion as it morphed over time from hot and tight and itchy to scabbed over to smooth once again. There are less obvious scars on my forehead from the halo brace I’d been screwed into for three and half weeks, and sometimes, when look at myself in the mirror, I can still see the metal framework wrapped around my head, trapping me in place.
It made you look like Frankenstein he says; helpful as ever.
I was never been more terrified of breathing than I was during that time.
I’ve been without it now for almost a month.
This is a lie.
I don’t think I’ll ever be completely without it.
I have a eight o’clock hydrotherapy session the next morning and I drive myself because Shay’s still in bed even though I know she’ll be furious with me when she finds I’ve gone without her. I have the driver’s window down and I let the first snowflakes of the impending winter join me inside at the wheel. The wind that rushes past my face is freezing and the temperature keeps me awake.
I can’t remember the last time I slept. At least, not without a little help. Booze, sleeping pills, pain killers; I don’t even have to prostitute myself out to maintain a steady supply anymore.
Turns out having a broken neck gets you access to all kinds of things.
Not that I use them. Much.
Andy’s chosen the backseat again today, every now and then he’ll slump against the passenger door beside me but, more often than not, he’ll perch himself square in the centre, behind my right shoulder. I’m convinced he only does it so he can roll his eyes at me in the rear-view mirror.
I let him; roll my own back when it’s just the two of us; think back to when we were both seventeen and he’d saved and saved and saved to buy his first car.
You come bursting into the kitchen like you’re being chased and my mom appears from another room, panicked and confused as you ask her over and over again where I am.
“Mrs. S.,” you say, and I can hear you from my bedroom, the music I’m listening to turned down low, “Where’s Kelly?”
I’m half way down the stairs when you arrive at the base, you’ve still got your work t-shirt on and it’s grease stained, faded almost beyond recognition. You’re beaming up at me, your face so red you look sunburned even though we spent the whole day in class before you left to head to the garage for the afternoon.
“You’re not gonna believe what’s happened,” you say, like the fact that you’re at my house barely ten minutes after your shift was due to finish, clutching a set of keys in your hand like they might disappear if you loosen your grip isn’t any kind of clue.
“What happened?” I ask, mostly because it’s the next line in this predetermined social exchange and not because I haven’t already figured it out, my insides torn between petty jealousy and being really fucking excited because, fuck.
“I got a car!” you say, and the wonder laced through your words is almost enough to floor me. “You’ve gotta come have a look. We can drive around the block, come on, let’s ask your ma, you should hear the fucking stereo - sorry Mrs. S - you should hear the stereo, man. I still can’t believe it finally happened.”
You’re turning then, not waiting for me, not needing to because you know I’ll be right there behind you, at your back like I always am.
I glance up into the rear-view mirror of my own car now, catch a glimpse of him sitting there, patiently waiting to pick up the pieces, inevitable as my falling apart has now become, and can’t help but wonder when our roles became so irrevocably reversed.
Shay calls several times over the course of the day. In lieu of actually speaking to her I tap out completely fictitious text messages at semi-random intervals to keep her happy. Create an entire day’s worth of activities and errands and use them as cover to obscure the fact that I’m sitting at home. On the foot of my bed. Pretending that I can’t see the unopened Macy’s bag in the corner, still tucked beneath my coat where I’d hidden it the night before.
He’s laid back on the pillows behind me. Every now and then I imagine the toe of his shoe nudging into my hip as he rolls his eyes and says just open it you idiot, it’s not going to bite; his exasperation, palpable.
A paradoxical reflection, perhaps, of my own earth shattering apprehension.
“So?” you say, your eyebrows raised and your smile wide and, although you haven’t actually told me yet, your face betrays everything I could hope to know and then some. You got a position; the news is practically lit up in neon-lights above your head as you try unsuccessfully for nonchalance, slumped as you are against the door frame in my living room.
I shrug my shoulders tightly, the realisation that you’ve made it, that you’re fire-fighter bound with or without me, is terrifying suddenly and I want to start the day over again, make plans so I’m not home when you knock, or so I can actually open my letter first, anything to lose the feeling of horror that comes with the notion of potentially being left behind.
“Did you get a letter?” you ask, genuinely curious, and I nod back in the affirmative.
“Yeah, this morning.”
“And?”
I shrug again, turn to look at you this time as I do.
“You’re kidding me,” you say, incredulous to a degree that makes me feel stupid even though I know it’s not your intention. “Haven’t you even opened it yet?”
“Haven’t got around to it,” I say, the words barely audible as I turn my back on you, make a show of collecting the discarded newspapers and take-out menus and scraps of paper from the coffee table and bundling them up.
“God,” you say, barely hiding your amusement, “I have no self-control. I practically tore the mail out of the poor delivery dude’s hand this morning waiting to open mine…”
I laugh, the sound bordering on hysterical because you think this is about self-control, that I’m somehow better than you because I’ve managed to leave the letter discarded on top of the microwave all day, hidden beneath a credit card statement and a phone bill.
Out of sight.
Definitely not out of mind.
This is about the absolute opposite of self-control and it’s when I’m hands and knees on the floor, head buried between my elbows and barely breathing that you figure it out too.
I always was a little slow on the up-take…
He’s being generous now because the notion that he couldn’t figure me out ninety nine goes out of a hundred, and do it faster than I could ever do it myself most of the time, is a complete fallacy.
I was slow this time, though.
And yeah, maybe he was, but I was also a champion at hiding it by then. I’d channelled every waking moment into becoming a CFD fire-fighter. There were no other options.
There are no other options…
Ah ha he says, and I imagine if I look up I can see his reflection propped against my headboard, arms crossed, chin tilted slightly as though he’s analysing every movement I make, every thought I manage to stumble through. And there we have it, folks…
Like maybe something revolutionary has happened.
It hasn’t.
I am nothing without squad. That is all.
And that is certainly not new.
God, he says, eyes rolling comically, stop with the damn melodrama. It could be worse, you know, you could be dead.
The bedroom floor is littered with tissue paper where I’m tearing at the wrapping around the delayed birthday gift in a furious frenzy. An attempt at a pathetic fuck you to the smart assed drug use, drug abuse, drug withdrawal, complete mental break hallucination my best friend now is. The Macy’s bag is barely visible from where it’s come to rest beneath my bed. He’s wrapped the gift himself; that much is more than clear from the moment I pull it awkwardly from the bag. It’s messy and misshapen, held together with what must be at least half a role of tape.
I guess the contents fairly quickly, the size, the weight, all of it adding up to only one possible answer even before I started the process of shredding the paper that covered it.
It takes me longer to work out the specifics of its significance though.
At first I think it’s a match ball because it’s well worn, but it’s probably too well worn for that, the black Spaulding logo faded almost beyond recognition in parts, the surface smooth to touch. It needs inflating, badly, has too much give in it as I press my fingers together.
I spin the ball between my hands, the motion little more than instinct, and the flash of black scrawl that passes beneath my fingertips is shocking.
And instantly familiar.
Do you get it now? he’s saying, his voice echoing through the room, echoing through me.
Do you get it now? Do you get it now? Do you get it now?
On loop.
And all of a sudden it’s not even his voice anymore, not really. The sound of him has morphed, become irreparably tainted by my own special brand of crazy.
The difference should make it easier to tune him out but it doesn’t. If anything, it’s harder. Panic building against the notion that my Andy might be about to disappear for good.
Do you get it now, Kelly? It’s the ball from before. The one we used to-
I get it.
The Magic Marker spelling out Scottie Pippin’s name is fresh and I have to clench my eyes closed against the image of him, hunched over and tongue poked out, the picture of intense concentration as he carefully brings the letters back to life.
Again.
If only it were always that easy, hey?
I pop out three of the painkillers I have left over from when I was exchanging sex for drugs with Anna. I crunch the bitter pills between my back teeth out of habit; the process of effective self-medicating in the face of unspeakable agony, one I have become well versed in.
From rescue squad fire-fighter to drug addicted loser in less than six months. It turns out the space that separates the two is not as vast as you might think.
I make several half-hearted attempts at vomiting the crushed pills back up again, despite the lack of any real intention to carry through.
It’s the thought that counts, hey?
Andy’s voice in my head, achingly recognisable again now, is much clearer when I’m high.
And I can handle the sound of his so much more than I can handle the sound of my own.
“Tell me something,” I say. We’re side by side on the cots at the station. The rest of the room is empty, almost dark, but soft sound travels from elsewhere indicating that the others are still around, still awake.
“Tell you what?” you answer, and I don’t need to see through the dark to read your confusion.
“I dunno,” I say. The echo of fierce burning fills my skull, of windows exploding and terrified people screaming, screaming, screaming; the sound of them laced through with a litany of what ifs and maybes that I can never quite manage to shut off completely… “Tell me anything.”
You sigh roughly, your weight shifting against the mattress as the springs moan out their protest. I guess that you’re looking across at me now, but I’m flat on my back, eyes open wide and burning as the black threatens to fill me up completely.
“Are you okay?” you ask, genuinely concerned. The last call had been awful and the question is a legitimate one even as I know I’m not going to answer it with the truth.
“I’m fine,” I say, fighting desperately to keep my voice level as I try again and with something a little more specific this time, “Griffin must be getting big. Feels like I haven’t seen that kid in months…”
Griffin… he says now, slow and deliberate, the word rolled around in his mouth for no reason other than he enjoys the feel of it.
And it’s only when I’m properly high that I let myself think about his kids these days, the longing that fills the sound of his voice in my head is too much to bear otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though the words are hollowed out to the point of being meaningless.
Turns out we’re both getting good at that.
Despite solid intentions, fuelled by little more than fierce avoidance, to be well and truly asleep before Shay comes home, she shocks me by walking in early. I’m self-aware enough to know that I’m still high, and I stupidly think that this means I’m also sober enough to hide it.
Her hand appears in front of me all of a sudden. Opening and closing pointedly in a silent gesture indicating her intention to haul me to my feet.
It’s only then that I realise I’m still sitting on the bathroom floor.
So much for hiding it…
When I make no move to reach for her hand, she steps around me, sinks to seated with her legs crossed and her head tilted so it’s resting on my shoulder.
“Please talk to me, Kelly.”
My first instinct, instantly defensive, is to reply with a petulant about what?
Don’t.
He’s in the base of the shower, which even I can recognise is ridiculous.
You can’t do this. Not to Shay…
I tilt my head back as far as I can even though the angle is painful and stupid.
“Kelly, please…” Shay says again, “You’re starting to scare me.”
It’s a week after your funeral and I’m the most drunk I have ever been in my life. I’ve had a fight with Casey, another one, I can’t remember how it started, but it finished with Vargas pulling us apart in the parking lot outside the pub we’re all at.
Hours earlier I’d kicked off the night with a fistful of over the counter Tylenol 2s and half a bottle of scotch. I don’t remember what I’ve had since then but my wallet is empty and standing upright is no longer an option.
On the plus side, my neck feels just fine.
For a change.
Shay’s got her arms around me, trying to keep my head up as I vomit repeatedly into the gutter at our feet. Her shoes are off, discarded on the sidewalk beside us, and I know she’s had quite a few drinks herself.
She’s talking, I’m not sure if it’s to me, if it’s to Vargas, if it’s to someone else entirely, and I can’t still the pounding screams in my head for long enough to figure it out.
Whole expanses of time keep disappearing into a blank void, I don’t remember arriving at the bar, I don’t remember walking outside. I don’t remember who started the fight.
This time.
We’re back at the apartment next, Shay and I, she’s holding my head up still, struggling to get the key in the lock while I’m standing there, next to useless, and doing nothing to help her out.
I don’t even have the energy required to hate myself, though I’m sure that’ll come soon enough.
She shoves me up the stairs; I lose count of how many times I fall, of how many times we both fall.
Ice cold water on the top of my head is the first clue I get that I’m in the shower. I still have all my clothes on and if I open my eyes I can see my denim clad knees bent up in front of me. I fight against the assault, scramble for the door, fumbling, fumbling, trying to slide it open.
Shay’s on the other side of the glass, she’s screaming at me, furious.
“What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you?” Over and over and over as the intention in her words morphs from angry accusation through to genuine question.
“What’s wrong with you, Kelly?” Quiet now, her head still on my shoulder, her fingers twisted through mine.
“I don’t know…” I finally offer.
Half the truth. Half bald-faced lie.
I hand over what remains of my Anna-supplied stash the next morning. I still have the legitimate prescription pills in a drawer in my bedroom but I figure it’s not bad as far as first steps go.
“Thank you,” Shay says.
I don’t really understand what she means by that but I nod my head anyway, pretend that I do.
I turn to walk away, embarrassed and exhausted, but her hand catches my arm, effectively stopping me in my tracks.
“I get that you don’t want to talk to me-” she starts, and I jump to cut her off.
“Shay-”
“Please just listen to me…”
She side-steps ‘til we’re face to face, both her hands in mine now, her gaze somewhere beneath my chin.
“I get that you don’t want to talk to me,” she tries again, “or that you can’t or whatever, but you have to talk to someone-”
“I talk to Andy,” I admit suddenly and she goes silent, her eyes snapping up to lock on mine.
“What?”
“I talk to Andy.”
I’m standing stock still, afraid that if I move I’ll lose all the reluctant words I’ve suddenly found to explain myself.
“I talk to Andy all the time. Every day. About everything. And I know how crazy that sounds, okay? I know that-”
“It doesn’t just sound crazy, Kelly-”
“No,” I say as I take a step back, moving out of her grasp. “No, you don’t- I-” I drag in a breath, use the space of several seconds to pull my thoughts together, rapidly fraying as they are, “I’ve talked to him every day since I was seven okay, and that’s- it’s not just something you can stop doing overnight.”
You go to camp the summer we turn eleven. It’s only for a week, and you’re so excited it’s literally the only thing you talk about in the days leading up to your departure.
I can’t decide if I’m angry or if I’m jealous, but I’m eleven so it’s not ‘til years later that I recognise the truth. I was scared.
I write you every day that you’re gone. Fill a lined page with careful lettering that recounts the things I’ve done, the things I’m going to do. The fact that I saw an actual naked boob, just one, at the swimming pool yesterday.
I put the letters in an old shoe box, pile them one on top of the other, folded neatly and with the day spelled out on the front so that you’ll know which order to read them in.
You come back with a half-healed cut through your left eyebrow and a thousand impossible stories to tell me. You present me with your camp cap, it’s kind of squashed from being shoved in your backpack, and the peak is smeared with dirt, but I don’t take it off for the rest of the summer.
“It was the best time, Kelly,” you say, eyes flushed with excitement. “But I don’t think I’m going to go again.”
“Why not?” I ask, confused, not following your logic.
“It’s more fun here with you,” you answer with a shrug, like it’s obvious and I’m dumb for having to ask.
I find the letters I’d written you years later when my mom and I are moving house. You and I are both attending the academy after school together by now, getting ready for what comes next, and so I dump them all in a metal bucket and set fire to the lot without re-reading them.
The gesture seems fitting after all.
Shay rushes forward then, catches me off guard as she wraps her arms around my neck, and buries her face against my chest.
“It’s okay,” she says, voice muffled into the fabric of my t-shirt, “it’s okay, I get it, but-” She takes a step back so we’re at arm’s length again, face to face, “I need you to talk to me too.”
Her eyes are bright, filled with all the tears she’s not quite ready to shed.
“Andy might have been your best friend, Kelly Severide,” she says, head tilted to the side, “But you are my best friend… and part of the job description for that is that you have to talk to me too. Got it?”
“Yeah,” I say, couple the word with a sharp nod. “Okay, got it.”
Best of both worlds, hey?
Best of both worlds.
I sigh slowly, drag Shay back into my arms and try not to think too hard about the relief that’s flooding through me at her easy acceptance of what I’ve just said. I look over the top of her head, to where he’s seated on the last of the spiral stairs, knees up under his chin.
So, that’s one half of the truth he says, figuring me out in a beat. Like always. Do you plan on telling her the rest?
I close my eyes so I can’t see him, just for a moment. Try out the sensation of him being gone while I’m safe in the knowledge that Shay is right here.
Testing the waters to see how hard it’d be. To see if I’m ready…
Think to myself; maybe one day.
But not yet.
-