A Long Winter's Nap
"Casey?" Kelly looked around the empty kitchen.
It was going on 8 o' clock in the morning. The coffee was made but there was no other indication that breakfast had been started. He'd heard Casey up and around earlier, and he'd seen the light on in Casey's room sticking out under the door when he came out this morning, but the Truck lieutenant was nowhere to be seen.
"Casey?" he called out again, receiving no response.
Kelly poured himself a cup of coffee and grimaced as he sipped it, it was warm but not really warm, apparently it'd been made quite a while ago.
"Casey?" he headed back to the bedrooms to see if he could figure out what was going on.
The light still shone under the door, Kelly turned the knob and opened it, sticking his head in. "Casey?"
The first thing he saw was the pile of wrapped presents on the floor all stacked on top of each other. Bright metallic paper, curled ribbon, big bows, he glanced over the name tags and saw a couple for Casey's mom, a couple for his sister, a couple for his niece, a couple for Severide, and a few other odds and ends. Looking past that, he saw Matt curled on his side on top of the covers of his bed, shivering in his sleep. Around him were small discarded pieces of wrapping paper, ribbons that had been cut off and thrown away, an open pair of scissors, a couple tubes of wrapping paper that were almost empty, and an empty scotch tape dispenser inches from his pillow.
It took Kelly a couple minutes to realize what happened. Casey must've stayed up half the night wrapping the presents then been too exhausted to climb under the covers and just passed out where he lay. His arms knocked against his ribs and his teeth chattered quietly.
It had been a busy week, hell, a busy month. Casey had been taking extra shifts all month long to fill in for First Watch's lieutenant who was out sick, also because he needed the extra money with the pending end of the year expenses that would pile up soon. Neither of them had gotten an early start on their Christmas shopping and Kelly still hadn't gotten his stuff wrapped because there just never seemed to be any time in the day to get it done around everything else going on. Clearly Casey had reached the same conclusion and solved it the only way he knew how, to stay up all night getting it done.
Kelly stepped over to the bed quietly, carefully picked up all the odds and ends from his gift wrapping venture, then grabbed the flannel quilt discarded at the foot of the bed and draped it over Casey until his whole body was enclosed under the warm fabric. It took a couple minutes for Matt to stop shivering and a small contented hum escaped his throat as he moved around under the quilt to get comfortable.
Kelly picked up the stack of presents, careful not to make the paper rustle against one another, headed towards the door and used his elbow to shut off the light on his way out.
Casey lay on his back, surrounded by a calming warmth, feeling perfectly content where he was. Well, almost. His mouth felt dry, his tongue was about stuck to the roof of his mouth, he knew that that meant he'd overslept, probably by a great deal. Despite this he didn't feel in any rush to wake up and find out what he'd missed out on for the day.
He tried to sit up and his whole body ached in protest, it didn't want to get up anymore than he did. He forced his eyes open and saw the sunlight shining in the window, but not like morning...like it would be night soon.
"Kelly?" he called out as he tried to get up again.
The door opened and Severide stepped in, "Hey, Casey, how're you doing?"
"Wha' time is it?" Casey rubbed his eyes.
"4 o' clock."
"What?" Casey was frantic, "why didn't you wake me up?"
"Because any idiot could see you were exhausted and needed to rest," Kelly told him. "How long were you up wrapping presents?"
Casey grumbled as he tried to remember, "4:30...5..."
"That's a long time."
Casey grumbled again as he rolled over and buried half of his face in the pillow, "I hate wrapping presents, I've never been any good at it. They've looked like a 5-year-old did them since I was 10."
"Well they look very good to me," Kelly commented.
"I had to redo all of them three times for them to finally look right," Casey told him.
"No wonder you were up all hours," Severide responded.
"And you just let me sleep all day?" Casey accused him.
"You've been running yourself ragged all month, and, much as people like to forget with the holidays coming up, it is still flu season...if you don't start getting some rest you'll be sick in bed, you needed to sleep."
Casey grumbled tiredly as he poked at a sharp piece of sleep crust jabbing the corner of his eye.
"Since there's nothing we had to do anyway," Kelly said, "what do you say we just get takeout for dinner and watch TV?"
Casey looked at him for a minute as he considered, then shrugged, "Sure, why not?"