Stocking Stuffer

"Severide."

"Yeah?"

"What is this?" Casey asked as he pointed to the large red and white stocking hanging from a push-pin on the wall.

Kelly entered the living room and looked at it, and closely scrutinized every detail as if he was trying to determine what it was. Finally he turned to Casey and answered nonchalantly, "It's a stocking, Matt."

"I know that," Casey replied in an annoyed tone. "What's it doing here?"

Kelly shrugged his shoulders cluelessly, "I don't know...guess you have to open it up to find out."

There was something in his tone that let Casey know Kelly was in on whatever this was. He looked at the slightly bulging sock and cautiously reached in, and he felt something, he pulled the top open wider and looked in and pulled out small folded up packs of scratch-off lottery tickets.

"What's this?"

"Not solely my idea," Kelly answered. "Stella's been trying them lately, and she hasn't had much luck, but she thought maybe they'd be worth trying."

Casey unfolded the stacks of $1 and $2 tickets, he couldn't right offhand calculate what Kidd must've spent on them.

"Well, let's check them out."

They sat down at the coffee table and bent over the tickets, scratching the latex off with a couple quarters.

Casey looked at one of his $2 tickets and said to Severide, "I got a candy cane on this one, what's that mean?"

Kelly looked at his and answered, "Whatever the prize is, that's it."

"Okay, well that one paid for itself," Casey scratched off the barcode and put it to the side.

They each scratched through five of the Christmas themed tickets and only found up with a couple of free winners. Then they moved on to a $1 ticket.

"Shouldn't it be a rule if you actually get the symbol you're looking for, you get more than the price of the ticket?" Casey asked.

"Get something?" Kelly asked.

"Yeah, a money bag for a free ticket," Casey said as he scratched off the barcode and put it on top of the other winners.

"Hey, get enough of them and they'll all pay for themselves," Kelly replied, "Hey, I got a 2X."

"For what?" Casey asked.

"$2.00," he answered.

Casey snorted.

They scratched through the rest of them and at the last one, Casey paused and looked at his.

"I got a 5X," he said.

"Cool, you got five bucks?"

Casey handed him the ticket. Kelly looked at the bold 5X, and then felt his eyes widen at the prize underneath it.

$100.

"Son of a bitch, you won $500?"

"Shh," Casey said with a smirk, "we won't tell Kidd. We'll get her her money back on them and split the rest."

"Sounds like a plan," Kelly said. "What're you going to do with your half?"

"Get everything for Christmas dinner."