Christmas Lights
"You think it's stupid, don't you?"
Kelly snapped his mouth shut before responding, "No...no, I don't."
But the pause between Casey's words and his own had been enough to create more than reasonable doubt for the blonde lieutenant.
"You think it's stupid," Casey repeated.
Kelly didn't make it a habit of going to Casey's room in the middle of the night, but he'd been woken up because the ice-maker in the freezer got stuck, and while he thought he knew how to make it stop, he didn't want to risk doing the wrong thing and breaking something and then having to tell Casey about it. So instead he'd gone to Matt's room, knocked on the door, and when Casey answered he told him what was going on and the two went back to the kitchen to see what was the matter. Casey had to pour hot water over the top of the machine for the nerve wracking clanking noise to finally stop and the ice to drop. That over with, Casey went back to his room but hadn't shut the door yet, and Kelly had stepped in to mention something for tomorrow before he forgot, and that was when he'd noticed the lights in Casey's room weren't from the ceiling, or even the lamp by the bed. Instead it came from several LED touch lights placed around the room, one on the dresser, one on the night stand, one on the trunk, another mounted on a nail on the wall. Severide looked around at them curiously, and it took him a minute to figure out what it meant, and as he looked around the room, Casey's eyes had followed the direction he turned in, and with no words exchanged between them, he knew that Kelly knew.
"If you breathe a word of this to anybody at 51, I will kill you," Casey told him.
"I wasn't going to say anything," Kelly replied, "but...can I ask what it's about?"
Casey sat on the edge of his bed and sighed as he looked at the floor. Then he looked at Kelly and explained, "All the times we were in a fire with zero visibility...all the times I dream we're still back there, the people we can't save, our air running out, the structure about to collapse...the times I wake up screaming, remembering those calls...if there's light, then I know I'm not still back there."
Kelly didn't say anything for a minute, then finally he asked, "And you think nobody at 51 would understand that?"
"It's pathetic, Kelly," Casey said, "Do you really think Herrmann, or Boden, or Mouch, needs a night light?"
"Well at their ages it might be possible for all those trips to the can," Kelly said half jokingly. When he could see it wasn't getting the reaction he intended, he switched tactics and became more serious.
"You know how many people sleep with their phones right next to them? Nobody sleeps in total darkness anymore, Casey," Kelly told him. "Besides, it's a good idea to be able to see where you're going when you get up in the middle of the night, saves you the trouble of kicking all the furniture on the way back from the bathroom."
Casey cupped his hands over his mouth and let out a moaning yawn, then with eyes half open he told Severide, "I just want to get back to sleep."
Kelly merely nodded, "Okay, sorry to get you up."
Casey murmured something as he crawled back into bed and pulled the covers up, but he was quickly out of it.
Casey felt half asleep and was content to stay where he was and try for the other half. He felt the soft, warm covers over him and the soft pillow behind his head and he was aware of his slow and even breathing. Against his closed eyelids he felt a sensation of light, a feeling he had grown used to over the months when he first started using the touch lights at night. At first it had kept him awake since he had been used to sleeping in the dark, but after a while it stopped bothering him and he was able to fall asleep at the drop of a hat when they were on.
"Casey...hey, Casey."
"Hmmmm?" Casey forced hie eyes open and saw his room was lit up, far brighter than from the touch lights. He slowly turned his head, still not fully awake, and suddenly became fully awake when he saw Severide standing by his window, which the entire frame had been wrapped around with Christmas lights, both clear and color.
"What the hell are you doing?" Casey asked as he slowly sat up in the bed.
All Kelly was willing to say was, "Hey, it's Christmas, this looks a lot better."
"A lot brighter too," Casey rubbed his eyes.
"That's the idea."
"You are a strange man, Kelly Severide, you know that?" Casey asked as he looked at him.
Kelly just stood there with a wide grin on his face, looking like he was trying not to start laughing.
"And the good thing is they don't have to come down in three weeks," he added, "You can keep them up until they finally burn out."
Things were slowly coming to Matt as he tried to figure out what was going on, and it finally clicked for him, "You did this...while I was sleeping?"
"I was quiet," Kelly said.
He'd taken the liberty of pounding the nails in place to latch the light strings onto earlier that day when Casey had been out, then once he was sure Matt was in a dead sleep, he crept in with two new boxes of lights and carefully unraveled them and looped them on the nails until they spanned the entire window frame, and he'd taken the fact that Casey never stirred once when the 200 bulbs lit up the room as a good sign that it wouldn't be anymore distracting than the LEDs has been. He'd spent the last couple days thinking about what Casey said since he'd found out about the lights, and while Matt's idea hadn't been a bad one, Kelly thought given the season, he could come up with something better. For the time being he'd shut off the LEDs and retired them to a drawer until the Christmas lights came down.
Casey was quiet for a minute, then he shook his head like he couldn't believe it, and told Severide, "Thanks, Kelly...it's..." he looked towards the window again, "it's nice."
Then he thought of something else and asked the Squad lieutenant, "What time is it?"
"3:30, go back to sleep," Kelly said as he headed towards the door.
Casey flopped his head back against the pillow tiredly laughing.