AN: So I've finally started watching Season 2 and I have feelings. About a lot of things. There's a pretty insane chance I might blow through 3, 4 and 5 just to get caught up in the next few weeks to watch this show in live telecast because of those feelings. I love Kelly's backstory more and more and I understand some people's irritation with Gabi. Completely. One thing I've complained about to the friend who encouraged me to write this fanfiction is how uneven the motivations of the female characters sometimes are. How convenient tv tropes are trotted out without subtlety so that it is easy to become frustrated with what they do. I did some research because I was getting that annoyed and the writing credits for female writers in the early seasons are scattered at best. It looks like that gets better later on but oh my god I want to shake both Dawson and Shay right now and I'm not halfway through Season 2.

End rant. Dawson focused chapter. I'm in the middle of writing a later chapter for her that is tricky and revising and revisiting what she's thinking about here helped me keep her motivations straight. Hope you all enjoy.

Shay didn't know it but Dawson had made it her personal mission to make the Severide Shay abode a danger free zone for anyone with impaired walking skills. Shay hadn't asked and Dawson knew she wouldn't. She also hadn't stepped foot in the apartment and probably wouldn't for another two days before Chief Boden demanded she return to work but Dawson had cycled between irrational bouts of anger and tears enough in the last 72 hours to know she needed a project. She had never given back the keys after retrieving more clean clothes for Shay and her bedridden best friend and there was no way in hell Severide could manage the spiral staircase on a fractured tibia. It just wasn't going to happen so why even test fate?

It helped that the couch pulled out into a bed already. An upgrade Severide made in deference to his deadbeat dad visiting every once in awhile to stir up his son's insecurities. Dawson bristled just thinking about it but Severide officially wasn't hers to worry over so she'd unofficially rearranged all of his furniture to suit his needs and just called it neighbourly. Dawson wasn't a big fan of denial but she'd lived through unrequited lust feelings before. She could do this.

His bedroom made her miserable at first sight. She'd never slept over or seen it before grabbing his clothes and toiletries but it smelled like him and took her all the way back to that first night with her nose pressed to his back and how good it felt to be held by someone who knew how to carry her weight. She stripped the bed sheets in response. Did a few loads of laundry she was going to tell no one about and dragged his pillows and a clean set of sheets to the pullout couch and started working her way around the apartment, picking up one football, two baseballs, far too many beer bottles and one thong she really wanted to be Shay's but probably wasn't. It didn't matter anyway because she was just being neighbourly after all. Helping an injured coworker. Paying it forward…

Antonio called in the middle of her second batch of brownies and she leapt at her phone.

"What? What happened?" It was safe to say that despite him being the elder sibling, Dawson had grown a bit overprotective since the shooting that almost killed Antonio. Unlike their mother, she had never tried to persuade him away from his chosen profession but unscheduled calls were a reason for panic. Antonio was as driven as her with his work and she didn't trust that he would never get caught up in the same kind of situation again.

"Ay Gabi. Cálmate. I am currently bullet free and plan to remain so for the duration of this call. Where are you?"

Her brother was a prick. Dawson stared at the dishes in the sink she had yet to clean. Her brother asking where she was also meant that he had gone looking for her and knew she was not where she should be. He was either annoyed or curious and neither of those boded well for her.

"Shay's put herself on lockdown at the hospital with Severide so I'm helping her with a few errands. What's up?"

"We need to talk about Voight hermanita"

"Nothing to say hermano but could we maybe delay that conversation until a time where I am not the only competent paramedic staffed at a fire station filled with thrill seekers itching for my scalpel?"

"Fine. You sound stressed. How bad is Severide?"

"He'll be out for six months conservatively is my guess so Squad's down a member never mind their leader"

"Eh, Severide's a beast he'll-"

"You are literally the fourth man to compare him to an animal. What is it with that? He's a human being who fell three stories onto concrete. You are a human being who took three bullets to your chest cavity and lived. Neither of you are animals and I still don't think you should be back at work"

"Gabi, what's wrong."

"I'm tired." she started to rinse the dishes, pressing the phone between her shoulder and ear.

"It's not just tired. You brought up my stint in the hospital in the same breath as Severide's. We are both alive. Banged up but among the living. Where's your head Gabi?" Antonio said the last bit softly, aware as only a sibling could, of his sister's emotional personality. The childhood tantrums and teenage screaming matches were now tempered with sharp wit and a seething reservoir of fury he never wanted to witness. Gabi lashing out concerned him. It meant she wasn't thinking and things quickly went south when that happened.

He heard the sniffle. Barely. His baby sister was playing big strong woman with him and it hurt to hear her pull away. To know she had so little trust in his ability to protect and keep her safe.

"I swear. I'm just tired tonto. I need a break and that's not happening any time soon". She hung up soon after, aware that a call from her mother would happen in the next hour like clockwork if Antonio was as predictable as he'd always been. She gave up on cleaning the kitchen while the brownies were baking. She'd just end up breaking something when her mother called. If Antonio couldn't get through to her when he was worried, their overweening and infuriating matriarch was his next stop. Each call ended in her mother's rapid fire Spanish while Dawson drawled in exaggerated English No, mami I am not giving up my job, I am not getting back together with Hector. I. Am. Not. Pregnant. Yes, it must be hard to be the mother of two ungrateful Americans. God is surely punishing you.

She never felt better and waiting for it was worse than anything when she was already tired and emotionally washed out. Dawson felt stupid and Shay had made her feel terrible but then given her the chance to retreat. An out before the "situation" became so tangled Shay would need to pick a side. When Shay put it like that Dawson knew she would lose. Those two were so close they'd almost had a child together. Might still. Kelly was willing to do that. The more she thought about all of it, the more awful she felt. And alone. She was losing another friend. Casey was still beyond pissed about her deal with Voight and Dawson was sick of being hurt for taking caring of the people she loved in the wrong way.

She was just wrong. Wrong with Casey for Voight. With Mills because of Boden. Wrong whether she did something or said nothing at all. Standing in that hospital bathroom with Severide's blood on her face and his pained gaze flashing across her memory a thin thread of terror had settled. Two men she loved had no faith in her and there was the ultimate smooth operator, out of his head with pain and reaching for her. After six weeks. It didn't make sense and it was only a matter of time before she screwed up or he screwed up and too much had happened too quickly. Mills was a fresh wound and she already inhabited a world where she felt inadequate about her decisions with men. She pined for Casey and he hovered, content to let her love him, take her loyalty and then scream when that same loyalty helped her brother. No thought for what she felt even making that stupid call. And it was stupid to owe such a man a favour and Dawson was even more foolish for keeping what she knew from Mills. Except Boden was her boss and she had too many infractions on her record for bucking authority. Why give him another reason to be mad?

Everyone was mad and she was alone or lonely or both which sounded just about as sad as it felt to be standing in her maybe former friend's kitchen baking brownies for a man she'd decided to let go. Calling it neighbourly. Was this okay? She didn't know. Her ability to reason between her head and heart was shot at the moment. Dawson snagged a beer from the fridge and popped it open. Her cell phone began to ring. Of course. She was glad she had something to drink.

"Hi Mom," if nothing else, this fight was predictable and at the end of it she was still loved.