AN: Not much to say except thank you for your continued support of my non-canon adventures with these characters. General disclaimer I should have put on all my other chapters: I do not own these characters. They are the sole property of Dick Wolf et al. while the story and all its punctuation errors are mine.

Everything hurt. He tried to take a deep breath to calm himself but found his chest incapable of expanding. His eyes hurt and he did not want to open them. The cannula itched his nose never mind the catheter...

"Kel. I know you're awake so stop being a big baby" and he really hated his best friend at the moment. Severide gave Shay the darkest glare he could muster. Shay blinked right back at him and directed her glance to the tray on the side table. Oatmeal. Again.

They wouldn't let him go home. They wouldn't let him move. Shay had practically handcuffed him to the bed and Chief had reamed him out for disobeying an order and almost getting killed. It was still unclear to him which one was more unacceptable in Chief's eyes but he didn't dare make that comment. Severide was staying put and going crazy while the doctors ran test after test to make sure his awkward swan dive didn't have lasting repercussions. He had begrudgingly admitted to having a headache more than once since waking up and they scrambled to make sure he didn't have post-concussion syndrome. Testing his memory, asking if he was tired. Which was just stupid. They did scans of his spine religiously "just to be safe". Severide snorted. They probed him to make sure compartment syndrome wasn't happening in the broken leg. There were too many syndromes and not enough body to go around. He felt and looked like a purple pincushion with all the soft tissue bruises.

He'd landed on his side which was probably what saved him from the spinal fracture they'd all assumed he would have along with the severe concussion, severe blood loss, severe everything else by the doctors' measure. They wouldn't tell him how long it'd be until he could start physical therapy for the broken leg. When he asked, one doctor, Stephenson maybe, had stuttered indignantly that it was a medical miracle he wasn't paralyzed and he wanted to know when he could walk. Well, yes. The point of all their scrambling was to figure out what his most viable game plan for recovery would be. That was their job. He was very polite when he said it. Shay wouldn't let him near his phone or a laptop to Google treatment regimens. They'd already told him that when he did leave the hospital, he'd be on crutches with a cast for a bit. Severide detected a less than subtle undertone of you fucking idiot in each and every one of their responses but he didn't care. So they thought he was an idiot. So what. He was antsy. That's what happened when you put a very active person in a bed and told them to stay. His job was go go go and one bad call made it all come to a long shuddering halt. At least the kid was okay. He'd even drawn Severide a thank you card. You had to smile at stuff like that.

The pain still sucked. He was being cautious of course. Shay was adamant about not letting him slide into addiction and monitored his dosages like a hawk. She didn't like to see him grimace and wince but she also insisted that he not be numb. It was easy to overexert yourself if you couldn't actually feel the pain and trauma your body was fighting.

"Eat the oatmeal Kel. I mean it" Without asking she started to press the button that lifted the bed into a seated position. Severide gritted his teeth soundlessly, the pain meds from the night before had worn off and he'd be damned if he cried out like a weakling every time something in his body shifted.

"I can't believe you had the balls to tell Chief to get a net. A net Kelly!" she pushed the tray table in and handed him the spoon. He poked at the oatmeal. "No one's used nets since the eighties!"

"I wasn't trying to be an asshole Shay" he muttered for the fifth time. "I was climbing out-"

"Climbing?! You fell! You made, according to Hermann, an audible thud. He heard your bones shatter! He…" Severide let Shay have her tirade. Again. It seemed to comfort her. He didn't have the heart to remind her that his leg was a closed fracture. That his ribs were probably in more danger of doing him harm with bone fragments in his chest cavity. She'd probably start crying and he was in no condition for hugs.

He poked at the oatmeal again. Shay had been a constant the last three days and he was grateful. She was there when he woke up groggy and who the fuck took a sledgehammer to my head which cued a sobbing fit he still hadn't forgiven himself for. Dawson had been there too. She was in the corner, crowded out by a doctor and Casey but he'd seen her, lower lip pulled in, hands clasped to her chest like she'd been praying. She'd looked tired and thin. She had smiled when he caught her gaze and given him a little wave but the doctors began their battery of questions and the next chance he got to look over she was gone.

This had and still confused him. He hoped that wasn't because of the concussion. He didn't think he had amnesia. It didn't seem like something the doctors could do anything about really. The amnesia, not D's withdrawal. Over the last couple days, the whole firehouse drifted in and out of his room at all hours to keep him company. Even Chief's secretary and he was pretty sure she hated him. The nursing staff was simultaneously pleased and displeased. D came in once with Mills who tried to sneak him a burger before Shay confiscated it. Severide knew something was up at that point. It was too obvious, showing up with her ex at his hospital bed. It made him think she was trying to prove something and he didn't know what. D was not a subtle person. Neither was he. D and Mills weren't flirtatious or anything but they weren't awkward either. Mills was all earnest attention and offering to try again with the burger. D laughed and told Mills good luck because Shay was never leaving the room long enough to let it happen. Shay had snarled defensively while D detoured around the edge of his bed to look at all the machines he was still hooked up to. She got a funny look on her face examining his index finger in the pulse oximeter but didn't say anything. She glanced across at Shay and they did that thing girls do sometimes where they talked without words and he actually noticed.

"You don't have to get huffy. I swung by your place and got yogurt" D had teased. "Also all your shower products and clothes". The bag she dropped on the chair no one was sitting in was his gym bag. "Since you insist on abandoning me to ambulance runs with Mills" and the conversation slipped away from him after that. Mills protested his competence and Shay asked which flavour yogurt and D just hovered for a minute by his bedside before she opened his gym bag and pulled out Shay's favourite and a plastic spoon.

Severide put his spoon down next to his tray, oatmeal uneaten. For a moment, Shay didn't notice.

"What's wrong with Dawson?" he had no energy to sugarcoat it. It was more than keeping a professional distance so no one would know about them. She was just gone and it stung and he didn't have the luxury of escaping his thoughts in beer or work or exercise so he needed to know. If he had his days right it was only a week since their confession to Shay. Three days of her stalking their moves around the firehouse and then the last painful four with him stuck in a hospital bed.

"Kelly…"

"No. Don't put me off. God knows someone's gonna come in here at some point and you can hide from me then but something is off and she only talks to you. So tell me."

It took Shay a minute to close her mouth when he interrupted her. Severide watched his best friend clench her jaw against whatever curse she wasn't letting fly, as her eyes went glassy and he had absolutely no clue what he'd done wrong now but Shay was falling apart in slow motion and he couldn't even touch her.

"I am so fucking mad at you. You're rude and insensitive and sometimes I want to slap you. And that's me, the person who knows you and how loyal you can be and how horribly decent to people when they are having the shittiest day of their lives but goddamnit Kel. You fucked Dawson. My friend. My partner! One of the most intensely driven women I have ever met and you have scared her out of her mind."

A nurse came in because one of his machines was beeping erratically. His pulse it turned out. His blood pressure too and Severide could not catch his breath with his ribs wrapped tight as Shay backed all the way out of the room. It wasn't an answer. All it told him was that Shay didn't want him to know why.

It would take him another three hours alone to realize that his best friend no longer had any faith in his intentions with women. None at all if she thought he'd jeopardize their friendship by treating Dawson badly. Severide hoped he was reading the situation wrong, that Shay knew better. But it'd been a shitty year with the pills and Andy and every conflict with Casey turning him into the angriest version of himself. He sighed loudly. He wanted to go home but couldn't and, even if he could, Severide was rattled. What would happen to him if she wasn't there?