The mood at Molly's the next time everyone went was still vastly different from the usual atmosphere, but it was an improvement over the last time everybody gathered together after the funeral. People were ordering drinks, they were making small talk, they were actually able to make eye contact with one another, but it was still a somber environment. While everybody else was engrossed in their own small talk, Herrmann was discussing something with Cruz at the bar.
"After Gabby moved to Puerto Rico, Otis and I divided up her share of the bar's title, now that he's gone, I gotta find someone else to help own and run this place or we're gonna be closed in a couple months."
Cruz nodded in understanding but said, "I'm happy to fill in for a bartender, I can be a bouncer, but I just don't have the money to buy part of a bar, especially with the wedding coming up."
"Yeah well the way things are going right now, I couldn't afford you for a bartender either," Herrmann replied. "I don't know what I'm gonna do...Otis had a real head for this stuff, he knew what he was doing...I probably shoulda told him that more often."
Cruz looked around the bar and commented, "It's like the firehouse...when you're gone, who remembers you?"
Herrmann sighed, "Yeah, guess so."
Cruz shook his head, "Ain't right...soon it'll be like he wasn't even here. There's gotta be a way to fix that."
Stella anxiously tapped her foot where she sat hunched over on the couch with her fingers interlocked between her knees, "It's so...quiet."
"Hey, bite your tongue," Herrmann told her, "all firefighters know better than to use that word in a firehouse."
"But it is," she said. "It's too quiet..."
As jinxed as that word was in any firehouse, everybody in the common room silently found themselves agreeing with her.
"I feel like I should be doing something," she added as she started wringing her hands, "it's so...empty here now."
It was hard to argue with that either.
Stella continued to tap her foot against the floor, before she half stood up and said, "I need to take..." but the sentence died then and there, after a second she made a small sound and sat back down.
A few minutes later she stood up and went into the kitchen and rifled through the fridge and just wound up slamming the door when she realized she didn't even know what she was looking for. Then she opened the doors to the cupboards over the sink and after a couple minutes realized that whatever she was looking for wasn't there and slammed them shut. She wondered if this was what it felt like to lose your mind.
Kelly was starting to rethink Casey's question about feeling too old. Every morning he woke up stiff and sore with various aches and pains he didn't remember having before. Of course it didn't completely slip his mind part of that might be from sandwiching four people into a double bed. He never seemed to have any memory how they all got there when he woke up in the morning, but for the time being anyway, he wasn't going to question it. Brett didn't want to go back home, and right now Casey wasn't capable of sleeping alone even though it was just 10 feet away from their bedroom. He'd returned to Severide's quarters at night during shift, more than once, sometimes he stayed all night and they slept sardined together on his bunk, sometimes he stayed an hour or so before reluctantly heading back to his own office.
Life just didn't seem to make sense anymore, and if the whole world was going to hell it didn't make sense for them to continue sticking to the rigid rules of what was 'appropriate' or 'proper'. Kelly had had more than his fair share of regrettable bedmates in his life to know that although nobody else at 51 would probably understand their current sleeping arrangement, what was going on with the four of them right now was in fact one of the least bizarre things that ever happened in someone's bed.
Everybody just seemed to sleepwalk through the days. Every day seemed the same, on shift or off, and every day just seemed like going through the motions to get right back to the exact same situation. The firehouse was quieter than usual, people hardly talked to one another, many times during the day one by one they all got lost in their own thoughts.
People always dealt with their grief differently, they all had their own methods for moving forward and taking what they could from a tragedy. Every day when Herrmann got home from a shift he hugged Cindy and all his kids and told them he loved them, even though Lee Henry was almost 18 and insisted he was way too old for it. He'd started closing Molly's an hour earlier at night so he could get home and see his kids before they went to bed, to know they were alright and all there and safe.
Casey had started burying himself in construction jobs on his days off shift, he'd be gone all day, sometimes never even got home in time for dinner, as the sun was going down he'd stagger in the door coated in dirt and debris, take a shower, change his clothes, grab a beer and park himself on the couch.
Sylvie had started staying on regularly at their apartment, she only went back home long enough to shower and change her clothes, even though she was practically another roommate she never saw a need to bring a bag over with any of her things.
Joe had lost himself in helping Chloe plan their wedding, and through some odd timing of fate, started receiving more and more orders for his Slammigan, which he bragged would practically pay for the wedding themselves.
The department still hadn't gotten around to sending them anybody new, so to help out, guys from First and Third Watch took extra shifts on Second Watch to help keep the companies full.
Severide found himself standing in front of a store one day, peering in through the front window, not even looking at anything, just staring inside. He didn't remember how he got there, if he drove or if he walked, he wasn't even sure what he was doing there, but for some reason he couldn't pull himself away from the window. It was only when he realized somebody inside was staring back at him with an annoyed expression on his face, that Kelly realized he'd practically pressed his face against the Plexiglass. Straightening his back, he stepped back onto the sidewalk and tried to remember where he was, and why he was there. Finally, he went to the door and went inside the store.
Kelly woke up an hour earlier than usual and found it was just he and Stella in bed, he couldn't say he was disappointed, he liked having a little more room to stretch out. Kidd was still asleep, and he decided to let her alone, he got up, went to the kitchen, started the coffee, poured himself a cup, and quietly padded out to the living room to see what was on TV. For a brief split second he thought to himself how lumpy the couch had gotten, when something under him screamed again. Kelly hit the floor in one swift move, amazingly enough his coffee stayed in the mug and didn't go flying. Realizing it wasn't the same scream he'd heard the first time, he turned his head and saw it was Casey lying face down on the couch.
"Matt, what're you doing?"
"Trying to sleep," the blonde captain tiredly answered.
"Why're you out here?" he asked.
Casey yawned and responded, "Brett's in my bed."
"What?" Kelly asked.
Matt forced his bleary eyes opened and shook his head, "I got in a couple hours ago, she was in my bed asleep."
"Where've you been?" Severide asked.
Matt shrugged, "Just...out..."
"What's going on?" Kelly heard Stella's groggy voice as she came out of the bedroom, "I heard someone screaming."
"Yeah," Casey grumbled as he pushed up on his hands and raised the upper half of his body to see over the arm of the couch, "You'd scream too if Kelly sat on you."
"Again?" Stella turned to Severide, "What is with you?"
Kelly scowled at her, then turned towards Casey, "Go get in my bed, you can stretch out in there."
"Thank you," Casey tiredly muttered as he peeled himself off the cushions and staggered past them to the bedroom.
"Rough night?" Stella asked.
"Guess so," Kelly answered as they sat down on the couch.
Stella groaned as she stretched her arms over her head, then she leaned back against Kelly and told him, "Next time we get paid, we're definitely buying a new couch. One with a hide-a-bed in it."
Kelly tiredly chuckled.
Matt woke up late in the afternoon and at first couldn't remember where he was, or what day it was. As everything started to come back to him, he got up from the bed and stumbled out to the living room, and immediately regretted it when he saw Sylvie sitting on the couch, one hand over her mouth as she cried looking at something on her phone. She heard the door open and looked towards him.
"Sorry," he said as he took a step back.
Sylvie blinked and sniffed and shook her head, "It's okay...I was just looking at some pictures back when, Joe and Otis and I were..." her face scrunched up and her eyes closed as a sob came out.
Casey wasn't sure what to do, against his better judgment he went over to Brett and sat down beside her on the couch and peered over her shoulder. The three of them looked so happy in the picture. It felt like a lifetime ago when that would've been taken.
With a sigh, Sylvie told him, "I miss him, Matt."
"I know, everybody does." Casey looked around the room and asked, "Where're Severide and Kidd?"
"They went out a while ago," she answered.
"You eat?"
She shook her head, "Not really hungry."
"Yeah..." Matt looked on the coffee table and the couch until he found the remote, "You want to watch TV?"
Sylvie half shrugged. "Sure."
Casey flipped through the channels and didn't find much of anything, after about 20 channels he was about ready to turn the TV off and chuck the remote when Brett pointed at the screen and said, "Wait-wait-wait, go back."
"Where?" Matt went back down the channels to see what it was.
"There!" Sylvie said.
Casey stopped. "'Phantasm'?"
She looked at him and explained, "Otis...asked me to go with him to see it once, but...it...didn't happen...I never got around to seeing it. Have you seen it?"
"A couple times," Matt answered, "been a while."
The blonde woman nodded towards the screen, "Let's watch it."