Trigger warnings for this chapter: those who have dealt with traumatic invasions of privacy, especially the nonconsensual dissemination of private images, this warning is for you. It doesn't go too into depth, I don't think, in regards to emotional reactions by the victim, but if this is likely to cause you grief, anxiety, or any related emotions, you might...want to wait and skip to Chapter 29 when I post that.

All of the second shift at 51 had been invited to one of the biggest New Years' Eve parties in Chicago, held at Navy Pier and thus guaranteed to offer a great view of the fireworks show. The gala was honoring first responders for the year, and several firehouses had been selected to represent the CFD at the party. Second watch had to work at 8 am the next day, though, so she was pretty certain that no one was going to be drinking too heavily particularly not in full view of the bosses, who were all going to be there. It was, for her, a wonderful excuse to get really dressed up with her friends and feel glamorous. So they all went dress shopping, and she opted for something in the same shade of red as Matt's favorite things to go underneath the dress. It was a little risqué, but not so much that she was going to feel bad if they ran into Commissioner Grissom or someone like that. She got exactly the effect she wanted when she arrived at the loft – Severide looked impressed when he opened the door, and Matt looked like he was more tempted than anything else, and that was the facial expression (and feeling) she was going for.

Matt had arranged a car service for them, saying he didn't want to mess with a taxi and definitely not trying to park down by the Pier tonight. They also all agreed to leave at 12:15 precisely, so they could hopefully be in bed by 1 to get up at 6:30 to make shift. Once they arrived at the party, they managed to find the rest of 51 fairly quickly. Unfortunately, that meant she found Emily quickly, and God love Foster, but Sylvie always seemed to end up drinking too much when Emily wanted a party. Matt was busily trying to keep an eye on 51 and apparently 29 as well, who had also been invited. He introduced her as his girlfriend to some of the guys from 29, which made her weirdly proud. Not that she had expected him not to, it was just nice being officially known by more people than their friends at 51 as Matt Casey's girlfriend. She wasn't entirely sure what to make of some of their faces – shock was the most common reaction, unease though on a few faces, and couple looked almost angry or something. She brushed it off, though, just happy to be with Matt.

She must not be the only one of them who'd been drinking a bit, because she actually got Matt to dance with her. He was not the best dancer, but he was also far from the worst – the closer they got to being completely inappropriate for an event where they were representing the CFD the better he was actually. This was not a 'gala' with ballroom dancing, this was a New Year's Eve party with club music, which she liked because it gave her an excuse to dance up against him on some of the songs. If she caught him looking at her cleavage a few times, well, that was kind of the point of a neckline this plunging, and besides he kind of had the right, just like she kind of had the right to let her hands wander a little lower than his back sometimes. Mostly, though, they just enjoyed a night out with the rest of their house. She was drunk enough to get affectionate, but no one minded her kissing Matt a few times, or his possessive arm around her almost the entire night.

"Matthew, it's good to see you." Sylvie didn't even have to turn around to know who it was. Matt tensed a little, but his voice stayed even as they turned to face his current boss. Chief Gayan looked very nice, Sylvie had to admit, even if she did dislike the other woman. She didn't know her except through Matt, but that was enough.

"Chief Gayan, good to see you, too."
"Terry, you've heard me mention Matthew. Matthew, this is my husband, Terry Anderson."
"Very nice to meet you, Matthew. My wife has only good things to say about you." Matt shook the man's hand politely, but she could tell there was something he didn't like about this situation. She just didn't have a clue what it was. "In fact, if she had her way, I think you'd be a permanent addition into our house."
"She has made that clear." Matt replied evenly. "Chief Gayan, Mr. Anderson-"
"Terry, please."
"This is my girlfriend, Sylvie Brett." More pleasantries were exchanged, but she could see something a little unpleasant beneath it all in the other couple's eyes. There was something really weird going on here. Matt turned slightly over his shoulder, and indicated to Chief Boden. "And this is Chief Wallace Boden, my boss at 51, and his lovely wife, Donna."
"Ah, the gentleman who's holding up my efforts to have you brought over to 29 permanently." Chief Gayan announced, and Sylvie could practically feel the shock ripple through everyone from 51. Maybe that was what had been going on with Matt all this time, he was too damn good at his job and his new chief wanted to make his move permanent. Sure, Dvorak was inoffensive enough, but everyone at 51 wanted Casey back, no one more than her and Kelly Severide, who looked surprised and also a little pissed at this revelation.

"That would be me." Chief admitted easily. "I'm afraid Captain Casey is not on the free agent list – once Polanshek is back at 29, I need him back at 51. I have a lieutenant in his spot currently, and 51 is short a captain in the house."
"I'm trying to convince headquarters for a swap – you get Captain Polanshek – so it'd be an even trade. I need younger blood in the house." Chief Gayan answered back immediately. "Matthew has done wonders for us. I've been trying to pressure him into staying on, but he seems very attached to 51. Now I see why."

"Well, Captain Casey has been at 51 a lot of years. We've built up a certain rapport around the house." Boden kept his tone light, but Sylvie could tell that he was basically trying to warn Chief Gayan off. Good. Matt was staying right here, with her, or well, at 51, with her. She tightened her hold on his waist as if he was going to be pulled away right now. Nope, not happening. They could just stamp House 51 and Sylvie Brett on his ass because he was spoken for.

"You can hardly blame me for trying. He's certainly a very fine firefighter, a great asset to have in my…tool-belt, you might say." Chief Gayan's words were polite, but again, there was something very passive aggressive about her tone that just set Sylvie on edge. And her husband was looking at Matt oddly, Sylvie couldn't place the expression quite. The couple walked away from the grouping of 51 then, though, and Matt sighed before turning back to face everyone.

"You never said she was trying to shanghai you, Case." Leave it to Kelly to make that sound like an accusation.

"It's not happening. Got Grissom's personal word on that one – I'm back at 51 the shift after Polanshek is cleared."
"Her husband seems familiar." Mouch mused aloud.

"Terry Anderson, he's a big real estate developer. He's a major donor to a ton of things, especially local political campaigns."
"Know him from your time as an alderman?" Herrmann asked.

"Of him. I wasn't around long enough to get the sort of donations he makes." Matt shrugged.

"You didn't seriously consider leaving 51, did you?" Foster asked.

"Not for a second." Matt replied, but he was smiling and looking right at Sylvie. "I'm not leaving Truck 81, or House 51-"
"or Ambulance 61?" Kelly asked with a laugh, clapping him on the shoulder. "Good decision, man."
"Not even a decision, there was never a question."

Shift on New Year's Day was always interesting. Ambulance was easily the busiest of all the vehicles, and they barely seemed to stop in at 51. She had just enough time at dinner to take a lot of good-natured teasing about her midnight kiss with Casey (which had, admittedly, gotten a little intense, but hardly worthy of this much teasing) before they were back out on runs. She hadn't had so much as a text from Matt in the whole 24 hours, which was unusual, but she presumed he was just busy, too. She did at least get a short text from him that he had an appointment that morning, but he wanted to stop by and talk to her about something around noon, if she wanted to do lunch. She sent back an affirmative response, then decided to take a nap since she'd gotten relatively little sleep on shift. She had just about dozed off when she got a call from, of all people, Allison.

"Hi, Allison."
"Hi, Sylvie. I hope, I mean, you're not working are you? I'm not interrupting?"
"No, I just got off shift this morning. What's up?"
"Have you checked your Facebook recently?"
"Not in a few days." She admitted, though she was usually a bit better about checking in once a day or so. "Did something happen?"
"Uh, you could say that. I guess. Leo doesn't, I think he doesn't know how to, well, I don't either, but anyway, you're going to want to check it. But I wanted to warn you. You know. I mean, I liked Matt, but this is…I don't know if he's been hacked, I kinda hope so."
"Matt?"
"Yeah, his Facebook, Sylvie…and he tagged you in it, that's how we all figured out it was his account because you know, I wasn't looking for him but when he tagged you the first time on New Year's Eve, I friended him because he seemed really cool and nice when he was here. And you seem really into him."
"Let me pull it up, give me a sec."
"It's kinda bad, Sylvie. I mean, just to warn you. Your mom saw it. I think my mom saw it. Everyone's seen it."
"Seen what?" Sylvie asked as her computer powered up.

"It'll be on your wall. You were tagged. Which you should change your settings to where you have to accept a tag for it to hit your wall, you know."
"I'm so confused right now." Sylvie muttered as she pulled up her Facebook. Her brain just froze for a second. She couldn't even immediately understand what her eyes were seeing. Because that was definitely Matt, and he was definitely fully nude, and he'd tagged her in the photos because…oh the captions made it worse. They were filthy and something slammed into her brain suddenly and was out of her mouth the next instant. "That's not Matt."
"Sylvie, that is Matt."
"No, the picture, that's Matt, but this whole page, it's…Matt doesn't have Facebook."
"Yeah, the account is like 3 days old, Sylvie – he said in his first post he's just getting into it, which, I mean, where's he been for a decade or so. I only have Facebook because like my cousins have it and that's where they do most of their updates instead of the better apps. But he's kinda old, so Facebook maybe seems new to him."
"No, Allison," Sylvie finally was able to organize her thoughts more, "Matt does not have Facebook right now, either. He hates social media. He doesn't believe in it. He says it's invasive and self-important and basically mass hysteria. And he'd never do this. He'd never…he wouldn't even send me a picture like that, let alone brag about…this stuff on the internet!"

"Well, someone did. And they tagged you. Which you know, undo that part, right now."

"Yeah, good idea." She clicked on the necessary things to remove the tags for her, and went one step farther and just blocked that account entirely because whoever it was that had…how had anyone even gotten those photos of Matt? They didn't look old, and besides, Matt would never have taken pictures like that. Not ever. He didn't really like having his picture taken at all, she couldn't even imagine him doing shirtless pics, let alone things that explicit. "Allison, unfriend and block that account. Tell everyone to do so, if they've friended whoever it is. That's not Matt."
"Sylvie, those pics are Matt. Or someone with some fantastic photoshop skills."
"That's not Matt. It's Matt face, but that's not Matt. I promise you. Oh, God, I have to call Mom don't I?"
"Oh, she's probably going to call you, once she decides if she's going to lead a march of angry church ladies up to Chicago to hunt down Matt."
"Oh, no. I have to call her. And him, maybe him first. This is…I can't believe this. Who would even do that? I mean, what's the point? Pretending to be Matt? Oh, can you see how many friends does this account have? I forgot to check for mutuals before I blocked."

"I don't know any of your friends in Chicago so I can't really see that, but it looks like a few people at least from Fowlerton."
"The account is days old, you said."
"He tagged you in a really cute New Year's Eve pic." She could pretty much hear Allison shrugging. "And those pics were clearly really the two of you. Maybe that's where they got the face to put on that other body. It looked like a big party though, so that's probably not helpful in finding out who it was, huh?"
"No, it was…the gala is really big. I need to report this account. Thanks for letting me know about it, I really appreciate it." She sighed, her hopes of a quiet day having just exploded. If Mom was upset, and of course she would be, if the church ladies who'd like Matt so much at Christmas had all seen that, Sylvie was upset, let alone Mom.

"Those pics just went up like late last night. We saw them this morning. So…the tag didn't last too long at least. I'm sorry, Sylvie. He seemed like a nice guy."
"He is a great guy. That's not him."

"I guess you'd know. Talk to you later, bye."

"Bye." Sylvie sighed again. Oh, what a mess. And to make matters worse, despite what she'd just told Allison, those pictures were definitely Matt, really Matt. She just couldn't figure out who had taken them. If she didn't know Matt so well, hadn't known him so well for so long, she'd be worried about who he was with and what he was doing, but for all of Matt Casey's faults, infidelity was not among them. Not even a speck of it. He was intensely loyal, it was probably the biggest thing he and Kelly had in common. Oh, hell. She needed those pictures, or copies of them at least. She unblocked the account, and copied the photos quickly onto her computer. She'd have to wipe and like disinfect it later. Then, she quickly scrolled through the friends list, grateful that she recognized only two names from Chicago, and one of those was Lily, the other was Christie. She texted Lily immediately telling her that it was a fake account and to block it. Lily of course did so, only after looking at the first pic (of Matt's bare ass) and saying she'd gotten a winner, which Sylvie swore Matt would never, ever, ever know about. Lily said she hadn't looked farther than that one, since Sylvie had said they were explicit. So one down. She didn't have Christie's number. She just hoped Christie didn't check her account very often, so Matt would have time to get a message to her. She then went through the process of reporting the account to Facebook, both for impersonating Matt and also for the nudity just in case one report wasn't enough. Hopefully it would get suspended quickly so no one else could see any of that. She spent the rest of the morning, now that she was all keyed up and wide awake, checking for any other fake accounts in his name on other social media. There weren't any that she could find, thank God. She still was not in the best of moods when Matt knocked on the door to her apartment.

"I'm sorry." He led with that, which actually only made her more upset. "I'm sorry, whatever I did, I'm sorry and if you could just explain to me, I promise that I will never do it again, I just don't know what your mom was talking about, so I know it's my fault and I know I'm sorry, I just need to know exactly how sorry I am and for how long I need to be sorry."

"My mom?"
"She called me. I didn't even give her my number. But she was really upset and she said something about Facebook, but I don't even have a Facebook, and there was a lot about…it's been a long time since I've been called that many unpleasant things. So I'm just confused. I'm really sorry, but also confused."

"You're sorry, but you don't know why you're sorry." Sylvie shook her head slightly. She hadn't needed any confirmation that it was a fraudulent account, but she supposed there it was. She was just upset that he apologized so readily. There was something off about it, the way he didn't even really stick up for himself, just said he was sorry right away without even knowing what he was supposed to be sorry for, he was willing to say it was his fault and he was sorry.

"If you're half as upset as your mom, I am absolutely sorry. I know I fucked up, and I won't…I know my track record doesn't really back this up, but I will do better, I promise."
"Matt." She realized something important in that split second. "Matt, do you think I'm breaking up with you?"
"I'm pretty sure it's on the table, at least."
"Well, it's not."
"Your mom-"
"My mom called you before she called me. And I should've called her. I didn't think she'd call you directly about it."
"About what?"
"Sit down."

"Okay." He looked uncertain, but he obediently sat in the chair she'd just vacated in front of her computer. She pulled up the photos she'd saved and watched him go so pale she was certain he could pass for a corpse. There wasn't the shock she expected, or at least, not the right kind of shock. Which made her feel worse, actually.

"Matt, what is going on?"
"Where did you get these?"
"They were posted to a Facebook account pretending to be you. I was tagged in a pretty explicit post about…implying I took these and yeah, it was explicit about what we were doing. It was really explicit. But you didn't ask who took them. You asked how I got them."
"I, uh…I know where they were taken."
"Now is the time to be completely honest with me, Matt."
"This fake account, is it…still up?"
"I reported it because I know you and those photos are not you. I mean, physically, that's you, but Matt, this is not you. So what the hell is going on, where were these taken, when, and by whom?"
"They were taken on shift at 29." Matt confessed after a deep breath. "That's the shower room at 29 and the locker room at 29 in the photos."
"Did you know about these?"

"Only that one." He pointed to the one that was fully frontal and he was a good way to hard. Now that her attention wasn't just on his dick and the fact that it was so very visible, she realized his facial expression was far from aroused, he looked pissed off. "That's the only one I know who took it, too. Keen took it, as a 'prank'. I told him to delete it, I watched him delete it, and I wrote him up for it – I was in the fucking shower, there's rules about cameras or phones in that whole area of any firehouse. Chief Gayan was supposed to handle it."
"You were, uh, clearly 'busy' on that shift."
"No, actually, I wasn't. That just happens sometimes in the shower. If I'm at home, I can take care of it, but not at work – that seems weird. And would probably be the exact minute the bells go off."

"You are calmer than I thought you'd be." She was really surprised by that.

"I think it's relief that you're not dumping me. Give my brain time to reload." Matt half laughed, half shook his head. "Oh, fuck, your mom…your mom saw these? Tell me I never have to look her in the eye again."
"Well, you're partially in the clear on that, I think."
"She never wants to see me again, yeah, that was clear on the phone."
"God, she was awful, wasn't she? She's really protective of-"
"It's okay." Matt said it was okay but his body language still said he'd been upset by what was said. She knew he'd been happy and proud that her family had liked him, pleased in a way that she sort of found sad because it seemed like he wasn't used to thinking people liked him, and getting an earful from an angry Mom had to have hurt.

"It's not okay, and we'll talk about that later, but I told Allison-"
"Allison saw them?!"
"Half of Fowlerton has probably seen or heard about them by now. Luckily, most everyone in Chicago apparently knew better than to think our Matt Casey had a Facebook profile – and I got a hold of Lily already, but you need to contact Christie."
"Christie's seen them?!" There was the fully horrified utter humiliation she'd expected. Apparently it just took him a minute to get there. Then again, she tried to imagine if Leo had seen naked sexual pictures of her. Yeah, wishing for a merciful death seemed to be about the right reaction.

"Only if she's checked her Facebook in the last few hours. I reported it, so they may be down before she even gets the chance."
"Can I kill Keen?"
"Not in public." She replied, only joking a little bit. If whoever this Keen was had done this, she wanted to cut his throat. No, too quick. Something slower. Because this was an awful thing to do to anyone, ever, especially someone who was supposed to be able to trust you, a colleague in a dangerous job like theirs, and to betray the inherent implied trust between firefighters was a big deal. Those guys spent so much time in each other's pockets, the guys on a truck or engine or squad together, they had to trust each other implicitly. "You need to report this. If you know who took that one, he probably somehow took the others, too, and you have to contact the department, Matt. If nothing else, what if he's done it, taken pictures I mean, to other people? He did it at work. That's all sorts of wrong."
"This seems so…big for Keen. But yeah, clearly I have to report it. God, that's just the mark I need on my record with downtown."

"Well…" Sylvie tried to find some silver lining, no matter how thin, "at least Grissom has found his problem at the house, right? I mean, this kind of guy would kill morale and lead to the high turnover for sure."

"Is your dad going to shoot me?"
"I'll talk to Mom and Dad. Explain it was all faked, fake account and everything." Sylvie reassured him, kissing the top of his head softly. "I already lied and told Allison they were photoshopped, that it was your face on another body. Hopefully that gets around Fowlerton quickly. But that's what I don't understand, Matt."
"What?"
"If this was an attack on you, why tag me? Why use Facebook at all? I mean, whoever did it should have known that pretty much everyone who knows you would never believe you had Facebook to begin with. You hate social media. Everyone knows that. So your friends wouldn't see it, people who know you wouldn't see it. So it's not likely to hurt you."
"It managed to. Your whole family and everyone you grew up with has seen…that. Frankly, I don't even care at this point about why. I'm just…going to never go back to Fowlerton and dodge your mother, and apparently Allison, for the rest of my life. And did you say Lily? Otis already is-"
"I texted her, she unfriended, sight unseen." Well, mostly unseen, but he'd feel better with that tiny little lie. So sometimes she was willing to risk a tiny bit of distance between them, okay? Sue her. This was awful enough without adding that little bit. And even if Matt said he didn't care, she cared, and she was going to get to the bottom of this awful 'prank'. She just had to figure out how to do that, without embarrassing Matt any further.