Obsession
It was after midnight. It had been a slow shift. Everybody was asleep in the bunk room, the lieutenants in their respective quarters, the whole station house was as quiet as the dead.
Despite this, nobody heard the door open, nor the four sets of footsteps that entered 51. One of them was barefoot.
Kelly maneuvered his eyes through the dark, there was just enough light to see by that everybody wasn't walking into the walls but not enough that it would keep people up when they were trying to sleep. He knew where they were going, he just hoped they could get there without any trouble.
As the four of them moved through the darkened halls, nobody spoke, nobody even dared breathe too loud.
He saw the door to the locker room up ahead and he turned to the others and told them, "Watch the door, don't let anybody in."
"You got it, Kelly," Tony said as he and Capp parked themselves on either side of the door and looked up and down the corridors.
Kelly pushed the door open and closed it behind them, and reached over and hit the lights.
Casey groaned and raised his hands to his face to block out the light. Kelly dimmed it slightly, he needed it bright enough he could see what they were doing. He needed enough light to see the full extent of the damage.
Casey's clothes were filthy and covered in half dried bloodstains, there was also blood on his skin and in his hair, some of it half covered large bruises on his face, his bare feet were about the only part of him not covered in dried blood and dark bruises. He stood unsteadily on his feet, and though he tried to hold himself perfectly still, his legs wavered from one side to the other, he didn't say anything, he hadn't said anything the whole trip to 51.
"Casey, we gotta...we gotta..." Kelly knew what he had to do, but he wasn't sure if Matt would cooperate. Shifting gears, he went to one of the shower stalls and pulled back the curtain. "In here." Casey's clothes would have to be destroyed anyway. Any and all evidence of what happened this night was going to go either down the drain or in the trash. He turned back to Casey and saw he hadn't moved an inch, he took a step towards Matt, and Casey stepped back, his arms hugging himself, a small, animalistic sound escaping from his closed mouth.
"It's alright, it's alright," Kelly told him, "you need to get cleaned up. Just toss your clothes out."
Casey's eyes wandered and looked to the shower, pursing his lips together he hesitantly took a step forward, and another, and another, and stepped into the stall. Kelly pulled the curtain shut behind him.
Casey stood in the shower and looked around at the tiled walls for a minute, then slowly removed his clothes and dropped them in a pile on the floor. Then he kicked them with his foot and they were shoved under the curtain. After a minute, he reached over and turned on the water, he stood in the corner of the stall while the water warmed up and only stepped under the spray when it was burning hot.
"I'm right out here, Casey," Kelly told him from the other side of the curtain, "you need anything, just say so."
Severide headed towards the door, opened it and whispered for Tony to come in.
"What is it?" Tony asked as he entered the locker room.
"Stay over there," Kelly pointed towards the shower, "I need to get a change of clothes out of his locker."
After Casey's head injury and his noted memory lapses associated with it, he'd reluctantly entrusted his lock combination to Severide incase he forgot again, and now Kelly was thankful for that. He got a new set of clothes out of Matt's locker, then headed back to the shower, where so far there had been no sounds whatsoever coming from the stall aside from the running water. Kelly mouthed a quick 'thanks' to Tony and had him leave the room.
"Casey? You doing alright, buddy?"
The silence worried him, and he couldn't pretend it didn't. He grabbed the edge of the curtain and slowly pulled it back, he had to look down, Casey was sitting on the shower floor curled in a ball, some of the dried blood stains gone meaning he'd actually washed himself, other parts were still coated. Casey had his arms wrapped around himself and a dead look in his eyes that stared straight ahead and saw nothing. Kelly inhaled, and sighed as he considered their options. He pulled the curtain shut, went to his own locker and took out a change of his clothes. Then he sat on the bench long enough to untie his boots and stripped down to his boxers, went back to the shower and pulled the curtain open and crouched down in front of Casey, who hadn't moved and didn't even seem to have blinked.
Kelly slowly inched his way towards Casey and was bombarded with the near scalding water, but ignored it as he calmly spoke to his friend, "It's okay, Casey, we're gonna get you cleaned up and get out of here."
No sound came out of Casey but as Kelly neared him, the Squad lieutenant could see the blonde man's whole body starting to shake and tremor. Kelly fell on his knees and leaned over and pulled Casey into a restraining hug and told him, "It's gonna be okay, it's over, you're safe now. Nobody can hurt you again."
Two days earlier-
Casey's cell phone rang on the bench in the locker room. He was in the shower so Severide grabbed it to answer.
"Hello? ...Yes it is...well it...I'm not...yeah," Kelly was trying to answer the questions of the man who wanted to hire Casey for a construction job, as little hands on experience as he had in the work, Kelly was looking for an opening to explain he wasn't the guy to talk to, but it didn't happen. Instead the man's questions were partially within his realm of ability to answer so he winged it. "It's mainly just a one-man crew...yeah, I'm sure that would work out fine...uh...hold on, let me write it down." Kelly found a pen but with nothing to write on he improvised by scribbling the address on his forearm. "Uh huh...got it...I'll...I'll see what I can do. Yes sir, thank you."
"What was that?" Casey asked as he poked his head over the shower curtain.
"Some guy wants you to come out to his place tomorrow for a job," Kelly answered.
"He say what it was?"
"Something about putting on an extension, you do that?" Kelly asked.
"Preferably with more hands, yeah," Casey's head disappeared back under the curtain. "Get the address?"
"Uh...yeah," Kelly answered as he opened his locker, took out a notepad and copied it on there.
"Good, after today I could use something normal to look forward to," Matt replied.
"Oh come on, Casey."
The curtain opened at the side and an arm reached out and grabbed a towel and slithered back behind the curtain. A minute later the curtain drew back and Casey stepped out and replied, "I will be glad to put this whole day behind me." Grumbling he added half under his breath, "10th annual 51 watermelon eating contest...why do we still do it?"
"You know why," Kelly replied. "At the end of the season Boden gets all the melons the people at the farmer's market didn't sell, that way the farmers still turn a profit...and we get to have a little fun," his eyebrows arched mischievously as he spoke.
"I don't even like watermelon," Casey complained as he got a fresh change of clothes.
"Who doesn't like watermelon?" Severide responded. "That's like not liking white bread."
"I don't like that either," Casey told him.
"You're just mad because you came in dead last," Kelly ribbed him.
"I did not, I just didn't cheat like you, starving for two days to eat as much as possible," Casey reached over and poked Kelly in the stomach, causing the Squad lieutenant to double over moaning.
"Don't do that."
"It's your own fault," Casey told him with a half smirk. It quickly disappeared as he grumbled, "I'm gonna be picking seeds and pulp out of my hair for weeks."
Severide laughed in response and tore off the sheet from the notepad. "Here's that address."
"Thanks."
"So you want some of us to go with you?" Kelly asked.
"I'm gonna check it out and see if I even want the job first," Casey told him. "If I take it, then I'll swing by Molly's tomorrow night and see who's interested in helping."
"Suit yourself."
"Hey Severide, I know we're off shift but you think you can keep your guys in line?" Otis asked the next night at Molly's.
Kelly turned on his bar stool and asked him, "What're you talking about?"
"I mean we're not going to have any customers left if Capp keeps making faces using the cocktail onions for eyes," Otis explained, "He's freaking people out."
"Ah he's harmless," Kelly said.
"Yeah, but collectors' notes aren't," Herrmann replied as he came over to the bar, "you wanna reel him in before we lose all our business?"
Kelly grumbled something to himself and spun around on his bar stool and called over to the bald man at the end of the bar, who had now switched to using green olives for props, "Capp, cut it out, you're scaring the customers away."
"By the way," Herrmann said, "where's Casey? I thought you said he was coming tonight."
Kelly looked at the clock on the wall for the first time that night and realized how late it was getting. "He must've gotten held up on that construction job, he said he'd be over when he was done." He took out his phone and dialed Casey's number, it went straight to voicemail.
"Where're you going, Kelly?"
Severide turned around and saw Tony and Capp had followed him out of Molly's to the parking lot. The place had been fairly active that night and he didn't think anybody had noticed him slipping out.
"Casey's not answering, I'm gonna go over and make sure nothing went wrong," he answered as he headed for his car.
"You want us to come?" Capp asked.
"I don't know, it's probably nothing." Kelly couldn't even convince himself of that but if he'd happen to be wrong, he wasn't sure about dragging other people into this.
At that moment his phone rang, and the number on the screen was Casey's.
"About time," he said as he answered the phone, "Casey, what the hell-"
The screams that came over the phone were so long and so loud that Capp and Tony were able to hear them even without the phone being on speaker mode.
"Casey?" Kelly was panicked now as the garbled screams and noises of a struggle came over the phone, and a million different ideas were running through his head of what it meant.
"Oh my God," Kelly exclaimed as the phone went dead.
"You know where he is?" Tony asked.
"I know where he's supposed to be." After last shift Kelly never got around to washing the address off his arm, it was half faded but still legible. "That's where we'll check first, let's go!"
The others ran to their cars as Kelly hopped in the driver's seat of his Mustang, praying that they could find Casey before it was too late.