AN: Chapter 12 is a quiet chapter because a bit of action is coming Firehouse 51's way. Hope you enjoy.
I continue to not own any of these characters. Thanks as always for reading and reviewing.
"Listen up! Boden's voice carried out over the break room like a horn and everyone gathered, eyes glancing at the man who walked into the room beside him. The dreaded relief lieutenant for Severide had arrived. It filled Boden with trepidation just as much as his men. He had too much respect for Severide to wish this to be the beginning of a permanent change in Firehouse 51 staffing. Looking out at the carefully blank faces of his men, he hoped it wasn't with a fervor that would have surprised his subordinates. He spent as much time yelling at Severide as he did praising Casey. Still. Severide was a lifer. A firefighter through and through despite his father's absence and they knew him. They didn't know:
"This is Lieutenant Jim Campbell. He'll be helping out while Severide recovers. I'm sure you will all give him a warm Firehouse 51 welcome". His tone was purposefully bland. Non-committal at best. He knew his men would and wouldn't welcome the new guy. Boden had no desire to grow attached to the man. Squad would continue to be as insular as they ever were despite losing their cocky lieutenant leader in the interim. Boden watched Hermann walk forward to shake Campbell's hand and assess the man's strength no doubt. Soon the other men followed suit. There was no way to know if he was a doorway dancer until they were out on a job which was the worst way to learn if you could trust someone. Boden sighed.
"Chief Boden?" he turned when he heard her voice behind him. Ingrid. Boden stifled a nervous smile. Mills' mom stood at the break room entrance like she had twenty odd years before. Still cool and collected for all the wasteland between them.
"Mrs. Mills. What brings you to the firehouse? Peter come-"
"May I speak with you, actually?" she cut him off politely. Theirs was a history rife with too many words. Too many excuses. Ingrid had never had patience for anything she didn't want to hear. Boden nodded curtly and gestured her back to his office while her son and his peers watched.
"Has Peter been different lately?' Ingrid began without preamble. Boden closed his office door with a soft click. He carefully considered Ingrid's words as she worried at her purse strap, refusing to sit. Refusing as always, to be comfortable in his presence.
"Different how?" He recognized the fear on her face. After Benny Severide's loud declaration of his father's cowardice, Mills had seethed and Severide had helped to direct his anger into a pursuit for squad. A gesture that he remained grateful for, his attachment to Peter notwithstanding. It was possible his preoccupation with Severide's injury had distracted him. But Peter had seemed to be taking things in stride. Doubling up on shifts whenever possible to defray the cost of classes. Being so busy that maybe Boden had forgotten to look for trouble.
"He's cold. Abrupt. He won't talk to me at all". There was a silent inquiry in her statement. She was wondering what, if anything, her son had learned and was he responsible. He wasn't and Boden struggled not to sigh audibly. It was not his fault the boy sought to be everything his father was and more. He felt an immense debt to Henry Mills that would never go away. He knew that. Peter's success or failure. His happiness or discontentment with firefighting would reflect his relative merit or lack thereof as a mentor. Boden approached Ingrid slowly, hands gripped tight on his hips to stop him from reaching out to her.
"I'll find out what's going on Ingrid. I promise you"
"You and your promises," she muttered dryly. It was twenty years over and not at all and Boden swallowed his indignation. His own pain. He had loved this woman with all he had and failed her. He didn't say. I've never stopped. Words and excuses were always their problem. He had attempted to be rational about an emotion and ruined it into unmaking. Boden set two fingers on her elbow and leaned in.
"I will always protect you and those you love," even from myself. They lingered one long minute in that space before Ingrid nodded and Boden turned towards his desk, incapable of looking at her walk away.
It was late. Pouch was begging and Dawson was having a difficult time refusing her. She wasn't even sitting up. Lazy dog. She was making that pitiful half nasal whine dogs do when they can't be bothered to open their mouths and Dawson was just trying to stave off her own small hunger with some scrambled eggs. Breakfast for late night snack.
"No." she tried to make her voice firm but Dawson couldn't have pets in her building. Never mind her schedule would never allow for puppy training. She loved the adorable mutt.
"Dawson,"
"Yeah Mills?" she wondered if he wanted to talk about his mom dropping by the firehouse to see Boden. Unlikely. And really, she hoped not. It was her fault he even knew there was a sordid history there. He was still in the midst of punishing her for not being upfront about a story that wasn't hers to tell. That she had been asked not to tell, by her superior. Because it would hurt him. And it had and still was hurting him if the ill look on his face was any great indicator. She watched him lean down to roughhouse with Pouch.
They were civil to each other at least. Professional. In the wake of Severide's accident and their forced intimacy in the ambulance, respect at least, was granted and received. He was still a sore spot under her breastbone. She cared for Mills, deeply. He was earnest and tender and admired all her best qualities with a skill that she missed. He knew the secret ingredients to three of her favourite dishes and had been more than generous in bed.
She watched him play with Pouch. Mills was gearing up to say something and he was trying to parse his words. To be careful. Nothing he'd ever said to her in the midst of their break-up had been malicious. For all his self-professed anger at her, he had never lashed out the way she could. Mills was, at his core, too decent a guy to be mean in that way. This is what made their split so difficult for her. The mistake she had made, the decision she took away from him for as long as she did, he could have been spiteful in a dozen ways. Made his distrust of her a mask to hide behind. Sometimes he did, when it was one on one. Around their colleagues he was polite and chill. Letting none of their personal awkwardness infect their work.
There was no shell in this particular moment and she was reminded of how sweet and good and in love with her he had been. She stirred the eggs. The kitchen was quiet, the other men had wandered off to nap, and Pouch was wagging her tail.
"Do you want some?" she offered. It was both peace offering and conversational opener. He'd made her eggs for breakfast more than once during their brief romance. Two chefs one kitchen and enough opinions to burn every dish if they weren't looking.
"Sure, thanks".
They settled in at the long table and watched Pouch dance attendance between them. Dawson raked her fingers through Pouch's short hair but didn't feed her and the dog switched her focus to Mills with a blink of wide brown eyes. Mills cleared his throat and Dawson glanced up.
"I know I took it out on you because you were there and you lied but…"
Dawson figured he wanted to give them another try. That what he was working his way up to say was sorry for hurting her. At least he was using more words than Casey. She didn't doubt that both men were sorry but where Casey struggled to understand her choice as valid if personally reprehensible, Mills struggled with understanding her intent. The confused string of sentences he blurted out underscored that.
She couldn't give him another chance. She really couldn't with Kelly in her head and everything so fucked and strange that Shay still looked at her incredulously despite distancing herself from him. Dawson wasn't moving back, only forward even if she was totally alone. In fact alone might just be better.
"I hope one day we can be friends again."
She propped her chin on her palm and looked right at him. Mills was giving her the weird half smile he did when he was feeling nervous and awkward. He wasn't asking her to excuse his behavior. He wasn't reiterating how she was wrong. Mills looked a little lost and sad and she remembered how Kelly had taken care of him and supported his desire to join Squad the last few months. And how pissed off Truck was about it to the tune of pranks and general mockery. Dawson remembered how they'd been friends first before everything else got in the way. She smiled weakly. He was asking for a re-do, too young and naive to recognize the past would always be with them.
"Tell me what's in the eggs" and Dawson studied him as he took a big forkful. When he closed his eyes, she turned to Pouch and finally gave the poor dog what she wanted.
Severide stared up at the ceiling. Shay was at the firehouse working her shift so the tv was on. Cubs were losing. No surprise, but the sound was soothing in his otherwise empty apartment. His leg was burning. It felt like the pain was a hot poker itching millimeter by millimeter up the underside of his skin from big toe to knee. He clenched his teeth against it. Three more weeks to go at least before physical therapy began and no one had told him how long that would go. It was more wait and see. It was more of what the doctor had told him a year ago with his neck and how very lucky he was to be feeling pain of any sort and his fingers were clenched into his sheets for purchase. He did and didn't want to get up.
He wanted to fumble into the kitchen and take a pill but it was off schedule and he was tired and wherever Shay had hidden the rest of the pill bottle was nowhere he should look at this hour. He was feeling confused again. Disoriented. Its why he was staring at the ceiling trying to focus on one small tile at a time, counting until he lost count and started over. The habit reassuring because it meant his memory wasn't completely shot. Short-term memory at least seemed spot on. He was thinking about Shay's implied ultimatum regarding Dawson. He was thinking about D's cryptic text the other day and how good it had felt in the midst of his own radio silence. He wondered if things would have fallen apart so quickly regardless of his third storey drop. Severide liked to think he could handle whatever had scared D off so badly. He wondered if her withdrawal was motivated by Shay's displeasure. He knew his was. It was simplest and temporary because he was injured and Shay was his entire support network. He didn't want her to be more stressed and unhappy than she already was at the moment. He didn't think she'd stop taking care of him if he continued to pursue Dawson. It wasn't like he could do much pursuing on crutches. Never mind that he didn't push. Life was too short and there were too many women easy and willing to spend time with him.
In a fit of amusement, Severide wondered if he should invite one of his former lovers over to help him when Shay was on shift. Nights like this, the Cubs losing, his leg on fire reminded him that he was fallible and there was no one around to hear him bellow. Occasionally, Severide recognized that he needed help. He was just universally opposed to seeking it out. Calling up one of the many women in his life wouldn't alleviate Shay's anxieties about his pursuit of Dawson though. And honestly he had less than perfect confidence in the nursing skills of any his prior lovers. Living with a paramedic had undoubtedly elevated his standards in caretaking. A trained EMT was probably the best sort of help to have at the moment. Too bad both of his top picks for the role were on shift and in an ambulance together probably being as awkward as he felt. Losing the use of a limb was unpleasant in the extreme, no matter how temporary.
Severide disliked ultimatums. He chafed with any curtailing of his free will. Being told what to do felt wrong even when Shay had his best interests in mind. Life was messy. Conflict happened. He wasn't usually one to run from an uncomfortable confrontation. It was a mark of how much he valued Shay's presence in his life that he was willing to give up something that was truly none of her business. She loved him. He knew that and reciprocated the emotion tenfold. Shay was a misfit of a lifeline but she was still his lifeline. His only one when shit hit the fan. She deserved better than his casual dismissal of her concerns.
He didn't want to be like Benny but knew in some ways that was unavoidable. His pursuit of women was as natural as breathing but he never made promises he couldn't keep. His father's string of marriages left a sour taste in his mouth, right along with his own failed relationship with Renee Whaley. It surprised him to realize that all things being equal, if Renee hadn't cheated, he'd be a husband right now. What would that even look like?
The pain in his leg sent an echoing throb through his body. Severide began to sweat in earnest. It wasn't fair that he'd beat his near addiction to pain pills once only to need them again. He'd worked so hard and come out of it with his job back and Boden cautiously happy and could he do it again? Could he persist through this newest onslaught alone in the dark with only his thoughts for company as he counted the ceiling tiles? Severide glanced at the pill dispenser carefully organized on the kitchen counter so very far away. He tensed himself to stand.