AN: Hi guys! Thank you for your reviews! I appreciate you taking the time to write. So with this chapter we move into M rating territory. I will edit the overall story rating as such. Forgive me if I panic. It is not gratuitous nor overly explicit per site standards. There is actual plot development forward with the characters. Okay I'll shut up and let you read now. Thanks again for reading!

The problem with bad decisions to Dawson's mind, was that you kept on making them; compounding your early foolishness brick by brick with each successive action. She should have felt wrong but she didn't. Kelly had her pressed to a wall, her back to his chest, his soft crooning voice in her ear as they moved against each other just a little too perfect feeling for coherent words. He had decided on calling her Bri, the second syllable in her four syllable name and right now it was Bri baby just like this please you amazing gorgeous- he choked back a groan when she shifted and sighed, both his hands clutched over both of hers. She should have felt powerless but she didn't. She spoke to him in Spanish, curled her tongue around lies he couldn't understand but when he kissed her neck like it was the only place he wanted to be, she let herself believe it.

Shay still didn't know. Their mutual silence on bringing her into their secret was only bitter because neither was sure how she would handle this shift in their dynamics. It wasn't a relationship. It was definitely a problem. She really needed to read the anti-fraternization regs…

"Stop thinking baby" and she definitely needed to start hating him for adding baby to every third thought in bed. She was about to retort. To snark at him when he took one of their joined hands, skimmed it down her stomach to the top of her thighs and began rubbing both their fingers over her clit. She gasped loudly and he bit gently on her ear. "Stop it Bri. Feel this. Yeah?" and she nodded leaning her head back on his bad shoulder with a loud sobbing cry as he kept going and going bless his stamina.

"K-Kelly" she warned. She'd never picked a nickname. What was the point anyway. "I can't. I can't. I can't" right up until she could her body bowed and him catching her to his body still going, his sweet laugh in her ear turning into a full body shudder and groan, his arms wrapped all the way around her smaller form and all his usual words pouring out until he collapsed them both on her bed.

He surprised her but she'd never admit it. She assumed he'd be stoic and silent in bed. There to get off and show off given his revolving door of lovers but it turned out Kelly really loved women. He loved their bodies and their sounds and he was vocal about all of it. He was always completely present during sex. It had made her feel shy at first which had made her just furious. Just because he was a manwhore didn't make her a prude. She lashed out more than once, rattling off a stream of words while he sat and blinked before she realized that this was part of him. This was baseline Severide and he wasn't giving her a line. He was giving her his awed and pleased opinion on being so close he got to see the dimples in her back. Who even looked for that?

She leapt back into the moment when he turned her towards him. His hand rifling through her hair.

"Talk to me" there was a silent thread of demand in his voice. She heard it but she never obeyed.

"Work is all" she was smart enough to not say nothing. Kelly was by no means an obtuse male when it came to the fickle moods of women. He didn't exactly cuddle but his left hand made sweeping passes down her side, back and forth, his callused fingers catching here and there on her skin. The look on his face was contemplative and she was lulled into something like complacency by his gentleness, so at odds with their previous activity. Dawson closed her eyes.

"We can stop if you want Bri" It took her more than a minute to understand what he meant by that. She made no sudden movements, her face carefully composed as she opened her eyes to his face, his hand still making their gentle sweeps up and down her body.

"Why?" it slipped out before she wanted it to but he'd surprised her again. She watched him shrug and turn away for a second, reverting to the cocky posturing they both knew was bullshit and a surefire way to piss her off. "I'm not a mind reader and you aren't half the jackass I thought you were. Why would you put that on me you prick" Okay, so she was a little mad at his cowardice but he maybe shouldn't have made this suggestion right after sex. Even Severide was fallible. Apparently. He made a sound of frustration and sat up his hands splayed before him. She watched him rub one hand through his hair and stare across at the wall they'd just used as a prop.

"You're not happy. You're worried all the time and your anxiety is fucking palpable at the firehouse" he started before he took a deep breath and shook his head. "I'm not trying to make anyone's life harder than it already is Bri". To say Dawson was speechless was an understatement. It suddenly hurt to look at him, sitting there, saying things that were all about her being okay when she assumed he was ready to cut and run because, well, he could. That was his usual mode and nothing in their history suggested differently. They'd been at this for what? Two months? Spring was almost here and she hadn't been looking. Not at him. Not really it seemed.

She sat up next to him and kissed his shoulder. "You don't make my life difficult Kelly" and it was true. While them together was a bad decision, complicated and absurd, she could not regret it. He made her feel found. He made her feel like who she was in that very moment was enough and he treasured every particle of her existence.

"Then what do you need Dawson? I'm here. I know it's weird and we don't talk about the other stuff because it makes this thing more real but it already is because I'm here and not on the other side of town watching Rocky with Shay"

Dawson didn't want to have this conversation but here she was. Sitting next to the ladies' man of Firehouse 51 having a sincere talk about what they were doing. She was unclear on which episode of the Twilight Zone this should be filed under but she figured no matter what she should have it face to face. She slid in front of him and straddled his lap as naked and as vulnerable as she'd ever felt and stared at him. Really stared at the man who had spent at least half a month's nights in her bedroom over the last six weeks. Like it was just that natural, that easy to be with her. He was so beautiful it hurt right down to that little gap between his two front teeth. It was brutal, all six feet of him and how he could use it. The absolute strength in him as well as sheer stupidity. What on God's green earth was she doing with him.

"I don't care about anything else but coming clean to Shay. She's family." Severide wrapped his arms around her as she held his face between her palms, still staring right through his blue eyes.

"So is the firehouse and every bit of the complicated mess we both have there" he countered. She appreciated that he said we. It made her start to tremble. Her and Severide, a we. The sky most definitely was falling somewhere. And he wasn't wrong. His drama with Casey was nothing compared to her clusterfuck with Mills and Casey and knowing more about Mills' dad's history than she really should which brought her to Boden and…

"Hey hey Bri look at me" she hadn't realized she'd squeezed her eyes shut. She took a deep breath and blinked her eyes wide. It floored her that he was cracking himself open. That what he was even slightly suggesting came from him and not her. He'd been hurt like Shay had been hurt by a woman and his preferred method of coping was what it was. She almost couldn't handle his earnest gaze.

"My father is an asshole. Married three times and just as many divorces…"

"Are you seriously bringing up your father while we're naked?" She cut in because she had to. Because she was nervous and this was actually absurd and what had begun as small tremors with her hands on his face was now outright shaking because she felt cold and vulnerable and seen by a man who should have been a one time deal when she was sad. He pulled her closer. Wrapped his calves against her lower back and his forearms around her shoulders, his hands still smoothing up and down her skin.

"Could you let me finish? My idea of romance is a second date and we are so far beyond that I am bound to screw up and you know it. Don't lie to me" Severide rubbed his stubbled cheek along her palm and glared at Dawson til she nodded. "Okay then. I get that you're in own head with this Bri. I get that you don't trust me. I get that you feel alone and stupid and primed for the next crappy thing I do. And I really really suck at using my words. But I already know you aren't worried about all that because you're prepared for it. You're worried about everyone else"

Dawson wanted to interrupt but he pushed forward. "You're worried about what the chief will think because of Peter Mills and whatever the hell is going on there with my dad. You're definitely freaked about Casey and I shouldn't tell you that he is a Grade A idiot for making you wait. Who the hell could make you wait? I can't. It's why I'm here. I may fuck this up but at least I want to try"

Dawson felt her eyes begin to tear up and she swallowed against it. "And I am an idiot. Like my dad so who knows. I became a firefighter like him at the same damn firehouse trying to make a man who was never there for me proud. Bri, I have what might be politely described as issues" he laughed a little at his own joke but Dawson wasn't smiling. She ran her hands through his short hair and watched him sigh at the feel of her fingers running along his scalp. This much eye contact was making her heart race but she held it, sensing that he needed her to see him as much as hear him and how ardent he was about this.

"If you want to try then why even suggest we stop?"

"Because I'm not going to lead you somewhere you don't want to go. I am not that guy. I have some pride Bri"

She kissed his forehead and smoothed the worry lines she had planted there. It was bizarre being like this with him after pining so long for someone else. Someone good and stable and noble. He didn't have to say it but he must have known that she compared him to Casey, unconsciously. It horrified her to think that he might feel unworthy, the way she had when he kissed her, drunk and grieving on that sidewalk not so long ago. She traced her index finger along his chin and frowned.

"What do you want Kelly?"

"You to stop worrying and just let us be whatever this is."

"It's not that simple" she argued.

"It is if you focus on the fact that what we do is no one's business but ours" he insisted with a fierceness that had her blinking rapidly. She expected the protectiveness and privacy spiel from Casey. To see Severide hold her to the same code was heady.

"Everyone will cope or not cope. So what? Nothing, I mean nothing, we have done is wrong. I am not your superior. You are a paramedic in charge and I am a lieutenant in charge of the rescue squad. Just in case you were going to argue about fraternization regs and public employees.

She had been, but she lost her train of thought when he braced his hands on her hips and pulled her down onto him with a small sound she echoed. Dawson gripped his shoulders tightly, waiting for him to move, waiting for him to push the argument away with what he knew best and she was glad to receive. Except he didn't. Severide stayed still and quiet; gave her his forthright stare and Dawson was nonplussed. He was waiting for her response about fraternization and Dawson hesitated. How she replied was important.

"You know I've never cared about that." if she had then she would never have dated Mills or hoped for Casey. She would never have ended up drunk and in his arms at all.

"No. You care about your coworkers" he prodded quietly, bringing them back to his original question of what she needed from him. He was rocking her slowly, back and forth, clearly not in a hurry and forcing her to focus. To stay present and aware. She found it more soothing than anything else.

"I care about you," she said it just as quietly and was rewarded with a blinding smile. He kissed her softly on the nose, still moving gently back and forth and her hands were clenched over his shoulders. "You're good at this. You're very very good at this but I see you Kelly. I care about you" Dawson panted. And truly, he amazed her sometimes with his depths. So she gave herself up to the moment, to him because all he was really asking was for her to be there with him and she could do that. She could exist in the sweet burn where their edges blurred and he made a feast of her body, kissing and stretching and all the while saying Bri and baby like she was a totally different person when they were so close a sheet of paper couldn't fit between them. Maybe she was.

He was planting kisses on her spine when she woke. Nothing had really been resolved but he'd pulled a confession from her and declared his own desires and she smiled into her pillows when he kissed each dimple above her butt and whispered "Damn". He was such a silly idiot but somehow, he was hers.