Three on a Couch
A/N: This one ties in to the "Violation" arc.
"Severide, I can't believe I let you talk me into this."
"Oh come on, Casey," Kelly said smugly, "didn't you ever even entertain the notion of a threesome?"
"Definitely not," Casey replied, "and definitely not like this."
Kelly laughed at his friend's apparent discomfort with the situation at hand.
The two lieutenants sat on the couch, both dressed in their pajamas and watching the TV while they waited. Casey heard footsteps approaching and moved over to the corner cushion on the couch. A few seconds later, Rhonda Lind, a blonde psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to their late friend, Leslie Shay, who both men had been seeing off the books for over a year, entered the room dressed in a pair of white pajamas with Loony Tunes on them.
"So, you guys ready?" she asked simply.
"Yeah," Kelly said eagerly.
Rhonda tipped her head to look at the blonde lieutenant who stared straight ahead at the TV and seemed tense. "Matt? Something wrong?"
He slightly turned his head and glanced over at her, then back to the TV, "Uh, no, nothing's wrong."
"Maybe a drink first would help to loosen up?" Rhonda suggested.
"I'll take a beer," Kelly said.
"I'm, good," Casey said lowly.
The blonde woman disappeared in the kitchen briefly, then returned carrying two mugs, and a beer bottle tucked in the crook of her elbow. She held it out to Kelly to take, then sat down on the couch between the two men and held out one of the mugs to Casey. Reluctantly he took it and without even paying attention, took a sip and scalded his tongue and his whole top lip.
"Don't you ever check hot cocoa before just guzzling it down?" Rhonda inquired.
Casey drew his top lip into his mouth for a couple of seconds before replying, "Sorry..." He blew on it and took a smaller sip.
Rhonda huffed on her mug and took a small drink before setting it on the coffee table. "Ready?"
"Yeah," Kelly said.
"I guess," Casey added as he put his mug down too.
Rhonda reached towards the floor and pulled up a giant flannel black and red plaid blanket that was still folded, and draped the ends over the two lieutenants as she started to unfold it. It quickly spread out to a full king sized blanket that adequately swallowed all three of them. When everybody got done scooting on the cushions and straightening out the blanket covering them, Rhonda grabbed the remote and turned the TV on to "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". The three of them sat on the couch and watched several hours of the Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, the Hannah Barbera Christmas cartoons from the 70s and 80s, "A Garfield Christmas Special", and an old black and white TV version of "A Christmas Carol".
Casey hadn't realized how fast the time flew but he looked up at the clock and saw it was after 11 P.M. He'd been on the verge of falling asleep for a while, and looking over at Rhonda and Severide he guessed the same was true of them too. Rhonda finally shut the TV off and they all got up and stretched their legs. Casey took the mugs and the long since empty beer bottle to the kitchen, then headed to the bathroom, and when he came back he saw Rhonda and Kelly yanking the cushions off the couch. Kelly reached in and pulled out a folded up hide-a-bed, they got it set up, then replaced the cushions at the top for extra pillows.
"Severide, can I see you in the kitchen for a minute?" he asked.
Kelly turned at his name, and glanced back at Rhonda and shrugged, then looked back and replied, "Sure, Casey."
He followed Matt into the kitchen and asked him, "What's up?"
"So, you guys actually do this every year?" Casey asked.
"Sometime in December, yeah," he answered.
Casey was still coming to terms with the fact that Kelly and Rhonda had had a brief relationship years before Matt had ever met the woman. There were still some things he wasn't sure he was comfortable with, and he asked Kelly, "So, does this go back to when you two were..."
Kelly caught on to what Casey was trying to ask and shook his head, "We'd broken up long before December, this started long after we made that transition from falling out, to just being friends."
Casey nodded, "Okay, so...why me? Why'd you invite me?"
Kelly shrugged. "Why not? Have you had fun tonight?"
"Well, yeah..."
"And doesn't it beat sitting around your empty apartment all night?" Kelly asked.
Casey nodded, couldn't argue with that.
"There you go," Kelly said. "We do it because it's fun, a good way to relax, forget about everything that's going on for one night...and get a few more hours of sleep than usual."
Casey had to admit, Severide had a good point.
"Come on," Kelly told him, "let's go to bed."
It didn't occur to Matt to ask just where he'd be sleeping, he just naturally assumed he'd be between the two of them on the hide-a-bed.
When Casey woke up it was morning, outside it was still dark but the lights on Rhonda's Christmas tree in the corner of the living room were still on and he could tell it wasn't as dark now as it had been when they went to sleep. He was warm enough, bordering on just enough to start sweating, he had to fight to get his arms out from under the blanket but when he finally did he realized he was the only one up, Kelly was on his right side still asleep, and Rhonda was on his left side, curled on her side also still asleep. There wasn't any way to get out of the bed without waking both of them up, so he just scooted around so he was flat on his back between them and tried to go back to sleep.
It didn't work at first, and as he lay there sandwiched between Severide and Rhonda, a realization slowly dawned on him. Last night had been slightly awkward, he wasn't sure how he'd let Kelly talk him into coming over with him, and he'd had a sinking feeling that he didn't belong there, he felt like he'd intruded on something private. Now, he realized that he was currently stuck between his two favorite people in the world. Kelly was his best friend, that fact would never change, but what Rhonda had become to him in the past two years, was almost as close, if not more so, just in a different way. Each on their own were one thing, granted his relationship with Kelly was more up and down, they'd known each other longer, and they knew everything about each other, all the good and bad and there had been a lot of bad over the years, most of which had been resolved during their unorthodox therapy sessions, but two years into seeing Rhonda unprofessionally, Matt knew a lot about her but he'd never seen her so much as lose her temper. Each by themselves was something in itself, but despite the fact that their relationship had ended before Matt ever met the woman, when the two of them were together, they were something different entirely. He couldn't even put it into words, he just knew that being here with the both of them, he felt safe, he felt...he pulled the heavy blanket up a little higher as he realized what he felt was like nothing could get to him as long as he had both of these people with him. He couldn't describe it, and he couldn't explain it, and he knew nobody else would ever understand, and he was grateful he didn't have to try and make them.
A strange feeling gnawed at Casey; he'd always felt bad that nobody else at 51 could know about Rhonda. Her resemblance to Shay was practically identical, it was doubtful if the guys at the firehouse would be able to cope with it, for that reason, and probably some others Kelly hadn't told him about, nobody at 51 had ever met her. Now, Casey realized he was glad they hadn't, because it saved him having to try and explain a lot of stuff. He was glad that the only people who knew about the three of them were the three of them. With a small smile on his face, he leaned back against the pillows and slowly fell back asleep.
Later when all three of them woke up and the sun had finally come up, they sat around Rhonda's kitchen table for a breakfast of coffee and slices of a huge butter rum cake she'd made. Casey took a bite of his, and for a couple brief seconds his tongue felt like it had been lit on fire.
"That's stout," he noted, "it's good...but stout."
"Old family recipe," Rhonda smiled knowingly, "it was a very notorious tradition for my dad to take to the firehouse."
"I'll believe it."
"So what'd you think?" Kelly asked about an hour later when he and Casey finally left Rhonda's home and headed for his car, his breath appearing in huge white clouds in the early morning cold.
"It was a strange experience," Casey answered, "but I liked it."
"Good, that was the idea."
"Hey Kelly," Matt turned to him and said earnestly, "Thanks for inviting me."
Kelly just looked at him and drew one hand out of his coat pocket and draped it over his friend's shoulder and told him, "Any time, buddy."