A Night in the Movies

A/N: This is a very different kind of story. It started as an experiment to see how well it would work to put Casey and Severide in the places of lead roles in some classic and not so classic movies, with few changes to the dialogue and plot when possible, all the while making them feel 'in character'. For the movies referenced, some are old, some are very old, and I hope everybody likes the way the stories turned out. The first chapter has two separate stories because they are both shorter compared to the rest. The first one is a real tearjerker, and I thought it would be better to put a second installment with it to lift the mood a bit. Especially given all the different films referenced, all standard disclaimers apply, don't own so don't sue, hope you enjoy, please read and review. The titles and years of the movies listed will be mentioned above each story.

Wings (1927)

Kelly Severide exited his plane and went to the farmhouse the enemy ship had made a crash landing into. He wanted to look the enemy soldier he'd brought down right in the eyes. As he made his way to the house, he saw one of the plane's flags still attached to the rear of it. He ripped the enemy flag off and carried it with him as a trophy, and entered the house, through the large hole the plane had made in the front wall.

The people who lived there were gathered around the front room, and the pilot from the enemy plane had been removed from the cockpit and was laid out on a table, mortally wounded. Kelly felt his eyes widen as he saw it was not an enemy soldier, it was his own friend and comrade, Matt Casey. The blonde man weakly turned his head and offered a faint smile and just barely croaked out, "Kelly."

"Oh my God...Matt!" he screamed in the horror of realization. He ran over to the table and looked down at the man he'd forced down. How could this have happened?

Matt's eyes looked towards the ceiling and he weakly tried to raise his hand as he explained, "I stole the plane...thought I could get across the lines."

Kelly collapsed beside him and took his best friend in his arms, he felt Casey's blood on him, he felt the lacerations in Matt's scalp as he almost compulsively stroked over the back of his head.

"I'll get a doctor..." he stood up and turned around and noticed nobody had moved from where they stood, he thought he was going crazy, why wasn't anybody helping?

There was a soldier there, who explained to Kelly, "If it were any use I would've gone myself. It's only minutes."

Kelly's heart sank. He knew it was true, and yet, it couldn't be true. This couldn't be how it ended.

Matt lay on the table, no strength to move, but he managed a small smile and weakly said, "Don't go, Kelly, just stay here with me for a little while."

Kelly felt his eyes welling up with tears as he looked down at him, and collapsed on top of his best friend, one arm wrapped around him, the other hand cradled around the back of his head. He pulled himself up enough to look Matt in the eyes and told him, "I was just trying to bring one more enemy plane down for you..." His throat swelled with tears and the ones in his eyes were starting to spill over.

Tears were also starting to form in Matt's eyes as he looked up at his friend and weakly tried to assure him, "Don't, Kelly, oh please don't, this wasn't your fault."

Kelly absentmindedly tightened his hold on Casey as the two briefly argued over Severide's guilt in what had taken place.

Matt tried to smile a little more reassuringly and told Kelly, "You didn't shoot me down, Kelly...you did bring down an enemy plane, don't you see?"

There weren't any more words. Kelly leaned down and kissed Matt on the side of his mouth as Casey weakly wrapped his arm around the back of Kelly's neck. After a couple seconds, Kelly pulled back and looked down at Casey, trying futilely to smile through his tears. "You know nothing in the world means as much to me as your friendship..."

Matt responded, "I knew it, all the time...all set?"

Before Kelly even had time to question the last words, he felt as much as he heard Matt's arm fall lifelessly to his side on the table.

Kelly broke down sobbing, still clinging to his lifeless friend. After a moment, knowing what he must do now, he pulled back, grabbed Matt's lifeless wrist, slung his arm over his shoulders, lifted Matt's body off the table, carried him out of the house, and walked off to find a suitable place for a proper burial.

Rolling Thunder (1977)

Matt Casey followed Kelly Severide into his bedroom, just barely blocking out the family conversation that was taking place in the living room. It had been an awkward dinner and an awkward conversation, a whole family of people that Kelly hardly even recognized anymore, talking about things that didn't mean anything to either man.

"I found them," Matt told him.

"Who?" Kelly asked.

"The men who killed Gabby and Louie." The men who had ambushed him in his own home, wanting to rob him of the silver dollars he'd been awarded after the 8 years he, and several others, Kelly included, spent forgotten in a POW camp. The men who were such lowlives, to get the silver dollars they rammed his hand down the garbage disposal, and shot his wife and son right in front of him. The doctors had replaced his hand with a prosthetic hook, and he'd spent weeks in physical therapy during his recovery, learning how to use it for everyday tasks, how to dress himself, how to grab things. Once he was released from the hospital he'd spent hours of his own physical therapy, learning how to load and shoot his guns with it, how to still be able to hit his targets. He'd been preparing for this day, and now the time had come.

Kelly slowly turned his head and looked at Casey. No words were exchanged. Then he said, almost disconnectedly, "I'll just get my gear." He went to the closet, got out his bag, filled it with ammo, and got down his riot gun. He changed back into his military uniform and the two men headed downstairs where the entire family was still sitting around the living room visiting, paying almost no mind whatsoever to the two men who left with no word other than Kelly's simple 'Bye, Pops' to his father. Benny Severide, who didn't show any visible signs of concern or question, seemed to have a better idea of what was going on than anyone else in the house. He didn't try to stop his son, but there was a silent mutual understanding between them.

The men who had killed Casey's family were holed up in a whorehouse, so as to not draw suspicion, Kelly went in the front door and asked for a woman. He got a skinny brunette who answered to the name of Candy, and they went to a room, where he made small talk bartering about the price of her services, and he laid back on the bed like an impotent bump and let her do what she thought she needed to get things moving along, all the while he kept his clothes on, had no physical response to her touch whatsoever, and he just kept his ear open for Casey's signal. Soon there was a tap on the wall, and he subtly slipped his arm under the bed and dragged out his bag and started taking everything out one piece at a time, knowing the final showdown was about to take place.

A couple minutes later there was the sound of gunfire from down the hall, and Kelly shot up on the bed, grabbed the parts to his gun and quickly put it together.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" the woman asked him.

Without even a glance at her, Kelly finished assembling his gun and answered in a deadpan tone, "Gonna go kill a whole bunch of people."

Out in the hall Casey was already making his rounds. He kept his 12 gauge shotgun in his hand as he pulled doors open with his prosthetic hook. Nobody this side of the border knew who he was so it had been easy to inquire about the whereabouts of the gang of killers that had murdered his son, and now it was his turn to ambush them. He threw a door open, and as soon as he caught sight of one of the men, he opened fire. Women were running from room to room screaming, trying to get out of the line of fire, and one by one the men came out of the rooms. Casey shot another one and he fell back. Kelly came out in the hall at this time and went to another door, kicked it open and saw three men in a card game, he shot two before the third got to him, during which he dropped his gun and settled for punching the guy in the face, he fell back towards the bed and reached for a knife, but Kelly grabbed it before he could and stabbed the man in the throat, then dropped the knife and walked back out.

Casey put a round of buckshot in another man, when somebody else fired and Casey felt his shoulder explode in a burning pain. He fell to the ground but quickly got to his feet and headed up the stairs to the second floor. Kelly came around the corner with his gun and shot the man who'd put a bullet in Casey.

Upstairs, Casey had switched to his Smith and Wesson model 28 revolver once he ran out of ammo in his shotgun. A man came out a door, Casey recognized him and shot him. Kelly came around the other corner and blasted him with his shotgun, and the man fell to the floor. The two of them ran back around the corner and headed for the stairs, Kelly skidded across the landing and crouched down with his back against the wall to reload. Casey chanced a glance down the stairs and drew back quickly as they were met with a round of gunfire flying up towards them. Casey reached in his jacket pocket and took out spare ammo for Kelly's gun and tossed it to him, and hastily moved to reload his own gun, all the while the leader of the gang downstairs was yelling obscenities at them to come down and die.

As both men reloaded their guns, they looked at each other and knew this was the moment they came for. Kelly pushed back against the wall to stand up straight, as did Matt, and when the gunfire downstairs had ceased for a second, they took advantage of it and charged down the stairs firing. Men were firing at them from all directions, they fired back. Casey hit the ground running and opened fire on anybody shooting at him, he got shot again and screamed in pain as he fell back against the wall, but still got another round off. One of them shot Kelly as he was coming down the stairs, he doubled around in pain and hit the floor and rolled over, but even on his back he was able to drop the man who'd shot him. He crawled along on the floor to advance to his next target. The side of Casey's shirt was stained with blood but he saw the leader coming at him with his own gun ready to shoot, and Casey shot first. The man fell back against the wall, the front of his own shirt stained with blood. Casey got to his feet, walked over to the man, and promptly shot him three more times, then the gun clicked signaling the end of the bullets. Casey looked at his gun almost in disbelief and dropped it on the counter.

It was all over now, Casey stepped over the dead bodies and the broken glass from the bottles of beer and whiskey that had been shot to pieces, and looked down at Kelly, who was seated on the floor, his back pressed against the bar and he was also bleeding out. Casey grabbed Kelly's arm, pulled him to his feet and slung Kelly's arm over his shoulders.

"Come on, let's get out of here," he told Severide as the two of them staggered towards the door and walked out into the night, neither knowing if they would live long enough to get to a doctor or even back home, or if they would bleed out in the car on the way, but both of them finally knowing peace for the first time in eight years.