Christmas

A/N: A followup to White Thanksgiving. Sorry it's late.

Kelly made his way into the apartment and kicked the door shut behind him, shaking off the snow that had fallen on him from the short trip from the car to the front door. A typical Chicago Christmas, there'd probably be 8 inches of snow out there tomorrow morning.

As he shrugged off his coat, before he could even get a word out his attention was suddenly drawn to the image of Matt Casey curled in a ball on the couch, asleep.

"Casey?"

It was only 8 o' clock, surely Casey wasn't getting sick. That would be the last thing they needed.

He was halfway to the couch when he smelled something, and instead he went into the kitchen and looked around. The room reeked of celery, but all the dishes were done, the stovetop and the table were cleaned, but the oven was on. Kelly turned the light on and pulled the door open and saw a turkey wrapped in foil in a heavy roasting pan sitting on the bottom shelf, the top shelf had been removed to accommodate it.

Kelly shut the door, then went over to the fridge and peered in. Large containers stacked the shelves with mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes already mashed and just waiting to be browned with marshmallows the next day, a pack of Hawaiian rolls being kept fresh until tomorrow.

Ever since Thanksgiving, Casey had insisted he wasn't going to forget at Christmas, and swore they'd do it right this time. And he'd definitely been prepared, he'd gone out and bought all the groceries a week early to make sure they didn't have a slip-up like last time. And Kelly knew he was going to do it, but they'd planned to get everything ready together when Kelly got home that night.

So what had happened?

Kelly returned to the living room and went over and nudged Casey to wake him up. The lieutenant tiredly mumbled but didn't open his eyes.

"Casey, wake up."

"Hmmm?"

"You alright?"

Casey blinked a couple times and tiredly nodded, "Yeah, yeah, fine..."

"What's going on?"

Casey tiredly smirked and answered, "I made sure I didn't forget anything this time."

"You knew I was coming home to help you, you didn't have to do everything yourself," Kelly told him.

Casey closed his eyes again and yawned, "Didn't want to take the chance an' forget something...now it's all ready for tomorrow."

"Are you sure you're okay?" Kelly asked.

Casey weakly nodded, "Yeah...yeah, just gonna rest for a minute..."

Even Kelly knew better than that. In five minutes Casey was dead to the world, and though this wasn't how he'd planned for Christmas Eve to go, Kelly knew there wasn't much point in leaving him there. So he put his firefighter training to good use and carried Matt to the bedroom and got him settled under the covers. He looked at the blonde man breathing slowly and rhythmically, completely unaware of anything at that point. As Kelly reached to shut off the light he murmured a quiet, "Merry Christmas, Casey."

Matt's eyes opened and he shot up in bed before he realized the noise that had woken him up was Freddie Mercury singing "Thank God it's Christmas". He looked around and saw the sun coming in the window and saw Severide standing over him, laughing.

"What the hell, Kelly?" Casey asked as he struggled to fully come around.

Kelly merely shrugged and responded, "What? It's my favorite song."

Casey reached over and tried to punch him.

"What happened?" Casey asked.

"Well you slept clear through Christmas Eve," Kelly told him.

"What?" Casey tried to think back and grimaced, "Oh man..."

"Hey, we still got today to enjoy before we go back on shift," Kelly said. "And the turkey looks great."

Casey slowly inhaled as he wracked his brain to remember what he did last night. "I was worried something would come up and it wouldn't get done in time."

"Well, it will be," Severide responded, "You did a great job."

"Thanks."

Casey pushed the covers back and got out of bed, and followed Kelly out to the living room.

Casey took a minute before the big meal to actually look around at everything as if he couldn't believe he'd actually pulled it off. For a month the back of his mind had constantly been nagged by the idea that something would happen, something somewhere would go wrong and they'd be in the same position they were at Thanksgiving, without a complete and traditional dinner. Granted traditional was a term open to interpretation for both of the men, and Kelly had managed to pull it out out of the fire last time and it actually turned out well. Still, Casey hadn't wanted to go through that again, he'd been determined everything would go right for Christmas. And as he looked around the kitchen at every available space on the stove top, the counter and the table with food, he realized that it actually had, but it still took a few minutes to finally sink in.

"Casey?"

Severide's voice drew him out of his thoughts and he realized he was standing by the table with a plate in his hand resting flat against his thigh.

"You okay, buddy?"

Casey looked at him and nodded, "Yeah...sorry."

The turkey had already been carved earlier, the two men dished up slices of meat, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, and Hawaiian rolls, two pies, one pumpkin and one cherry, were currently in the oven and would be done later. Once their plates were loaded down wit has much food as they could hold without anything falling off, the two lieutenants relocated to the living room and sat on the couch to enjoy their meal in peace while they watched another repeat of 'A Christmas Story' on TV.

"Merry Christmas, Matt," Kelly said suddenly, surprising Casey.

He blinked, then replied, "Merry Christmas, Kelly."