Scenes From the Windy City
A/N: This is a series of snippets compiled of ideas I couldn't find room for in any full length Chicago Fire stories I'm currently doing. Hope you enjoy!
The Morning After
Severide unlocked his apartment door and helped Casey walk in. The Truck lieutenant was half leaning on Kelly and just about to fall down laughing. They'd just gotten back from the New Year's Eve party at Molly's bar. Everybody had been there and they'd all had their fair share to drink, but Severide was still sober enough to drive the both of them home. It wasn't so much that Casey was too inebriated, it's just that he hadn't been able to calm down.
"Everybody else will be on the road soon, the streets are going to be hell," Kelly told Casey as he walked him over to the couch. "You stay here tonight and I'll give you a lift back to your place tomorrow."
Casey was at a point he could hardly even make any noise, he was having a hard enough time just breathing, but he nodded in agreement.
"Are you going to be okay?" Kelly asked sarcastically.
Casey pressed a hand against his face and tried to control himself. It took a couple tries but he finally calmed down.
"Yeah," he said with a small snort.
Kelly paused, and said, "Well, this is definitely going to be one New Year's Eve party nobody forgets."
"Especially since the invention of social media," Casey added.
Now Kelly was having trouble to not start laughing all over again as he went to the closet and dug out come bedding for Casey to make up the couch with.
"How much did Capp have to drink tonight?" Casey asked, "Do you know?"
"Either too much, or not enough," Kelly answered as he tossed a flannel blanket and a pillow at Casey, who despite his somewhat tipsy state, had enough coordination to catch them before they hit him in the face.
"I mean I know he's crazy in general, but I think even he's going to regret this one tomorrow," Matt said as he placed the pillow on the armrest and laid down immediately and just draped the blanket, still folded up, over the top half of his body.
"I want to know..." Kelly saw the position Casey was in, and went over to the couch and untied his shoes and pulled them off so his feet didn't sweat all night, and continued his original thought, "I want to know what the hell he was thinking!"
"He's your guy, Severide, you tell me," Casey said, his eyes half closed from exhaustion, but a big knowing smirk still beaming on his face.
The party at Molly's had started off like the ones they'd had every year before. Aside from the crew of Firehouse 51, the bar had been pretty decently packed with non-regular customers. It was definitely unlikely Herrmann would have any gripes about their profit for the night. Everybody was so involved in what they were doing, it didn't dawn on anyone that Capp had gone missing sometime during the night. Closer to midnight his absence became noticeable, and just as everybody was starting to question what happened, the midnight countdown began, and as soon as everybody was hailing in the new year, Capp came charging into the room wearing nothing but a white pair of underwear and a sash haphazardly torn from a bed sheet, with the words 'Baby New Year' messily scrawled on it in magic marker ink. Half of the people in the bar spat out their drinks in shock at the sight that suddenly beheld them, everybody else instantly busted out laughing, except for Otis who had managed to keep a straight face long enough to say, "Now that's one ugly baby!" before he too doubled over laughing his head off.
That had been over an hour ago, and Casey had just finally managed to stop laughing about it. Severide had been so stunned, because as usual, nobody had any idea that Capp had anything planned, at first he had no idea how to react, and after the initial shock wore off he found himself about to hit the floor laughing as well, but he'd managed to pull himself together far quicker than Casey had, or for that matter, most of the people at the bar.
Casey clamped both hands over his mouth as he started to laugh again, just thinking about it. But he composed himself and asked Kelly, "How long do you think he'd been planning that?"
"After all these years I've found out it's best not to think too much about how or why Capp does anything he does," Kelly said in response.
Casey hit his head back against the pillow as a low series of chuckles worked their way loose.
"Casey," Kelly tried to sound serious but he found his own voice breaking as another batch of guffaws threatened to bubble over, "It's not funny," and his voice broke as he started snickering at the memory of that image.
"No, it's hilarious," Casey replied as his voice climbed several decibels in a series of high pitched laughs.
Kelly watched Casey as he lay flat on his back, his eyes squeezed shut as he spent another minute in a complete fit, then he seemed to regain control of himself.
"Oh well, I suppose it's a good omen if you can start off the new year with a good laugh," Casey's voice cracked at the last word but otherwise he appeared calmed down.
"And thanks to the pictures everybody took, I have a feeling a lot of people are going to be laughing about it for a long time," Kelly responded.