"Twenty."
It was the first time either of them had spoken since leaving the funeral, and Casey almost missed the muttered word. It came from beside him, where Severide was driving. He blinked at the countryside whizzing past, and glanced over to find his boyfriend clenching the wheel with white knuckles.
"What's that, babe?"
Severide didn't seem to hear him, or if he did, he showed no sign of it. "He was twenty years old," he continued, still in an undertone. "Twenty!" The last word was loud in the otherwise quiet car but Casey didn't flinch. Even when Severide thumped the wheel with his fist, and tears began to line his eyes, he just took the outburst in calmly. Severide glanced over and met his boyfriend's eyes, just for a second before he has to look back at the road. "He was just a kid," he said, and this time it's a whisper.
The kid was Rory Davis, the youngest in a long line of firefighters, who'd given his life in a gargantuan blaze that had ripped through Chicago's industrial district for an entire weekend. Almost every station in the city had responded, but they'd been lucky and had only lost the one man, not that that made them feel any better.
The turn out for the funeral had been massive, friends, family, city officials, almost the entire CFD all crammed into the church to pay respect for the young man who'd given his life. Casey himself had spent the better part of the trip home trying to get the image of the kid's service photo, projected on a large screen near the altar, out of his head. But he could see it was tearing Severide apart twice as much, probably because his squad and the kid's truck company had been working the same building when they'd lost him.
So, knowing that there was nothing he could say to make Severide feel better, Casey said the one thing he could. "Pull over. Let me drive for a while."
There was only a moment's hesitation on Severide's part before he jerked the car sharply over to the side of the road, and came to an abrupt stop. The few cars on the road with them went whizzing past, racing for the city in the distance. Severide shoved open the door and Casey followed suit, passing each other in front of the bumper. He wanted to reach for his obviously distraught boyfriend, especially when he saw the tears streaming down his cheeks, but sensed that it wouldn't be well received.
So he got behind the wheel without another word, and pulled slowly back out into traffic, leaving Severide to fling an arm across his face while he regained his composure. It was only a few minutes later that Casey felt a hand on his thigh, squeezing gently, and he took a hand off the wheel, and dropped it to twine their fingers together.
Heyo, guess who's starting a new writing challenge. Yup this bitch. So this fic will be a series of ways Sevasey say they love each other without actually saying I love you, based on a prompt list I found online. There will be 100 chapters, updated whenever I write them. And they will probs be 500 words or less. Kinda like little flash ficlets. Anyway enjoy, favourite, and review :)