AN: Blame the holiday weekend for the frequent posting. I got bored and finished up editing more that I thought I would. But there will be a slow down in updates after this post. I won't really have time for the next couple weeks as the holiday season makes everything at work into a crisis mode event. So, thank you for your patience and your comments and your pleasure in reading this story. I cannot, truly cannot believe my ADHD, never finish anything self has gotten more than 50,000 words into this idea. Dawseride man... I really love writing them together. Anyway.

Onward!

What the fuck happened?

Shay was at her wits end with Kelly and Dawson. Neither would tell her what was wrong. That was her fault. She'd spent so long railing against their relationship that the first sign of trouble had their walls slamming down. Everything was fine. Why was she even asking? How was Angie doing? So much deflection that she was too damn scared to yell and make them retreat further away. These two were usually so upfront. They'd bitch and complain to her about everything. It was part of why she was so against them together. She didn't want to pick a side, would have had to pick a side and that side was always going to be Kelly's. Except Dawson looked close to exploding more often than not. Or just plain damn bewildered when she looked at Kelly. The bruised wrist clearly did not help. And Kelly looked like he wanted to rip someone's head off or just plain sick. Such a fucking grouch, but they weren't fighting. Shay could tell that much. She watched Dawson reach out and Kelly smile weakly and whatever had pulled them to a screeching halt was destroying them both as well.

They loved each other. She saw it. Was absolutely floored by it. Figured they both had their heads up their asses about it and she was sooooo not going to help with the extraction. Not her job. Nope but if this continued it was going to be a fight. A bad one. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. They needed to learn how to actually talk to each other and she didn't know if they had. She'd never seen them be more than casually affectionate. Well, aside from when Dawson kissed Kelly's face all over and then cried herself into a panic at the hospital. She'd never seen them do the day to day couple things except show up to the cookout and be themselves only… more. Dawson had punched Kelly's arm and he'd fake choked her with his arm around her neck before kissing her hair and her cheek, laying his forehead against hers. Shay hated to admit it but they were kind of beautiful together. They'd radiated pure joy on the 4th of July but now…

"Why won't you just tell me what I did wrong?" Uh oh. So they were fighting now.

"D. You did nothing. Nothing is wrong. How many times do I have to tell you that!" Shay peeked around the corner. They were in the officers quarters, door slightly ajar but clearly they didn't notice.

"You're pulling away! I can feel it and I don't know why-"

"You're imagining things baby. I'm just-"

"You're not just anything! What happened? We're out in the open! We're not hiding! We did everything you wanted-"

"Didn't you want it too? Are you saying I pushed you into-"

"Do not put words in my mouth Severide."

"Gabi-"

"WhotthefuckisGabi? I was never Gabi with you!"

Shay walked over then. She could hear the tears in Dawson's throat and see the pain in Kelly's eyes through the glass walls and she didn't even knock. Shay just opened the door and looked at them. Watched as they both shut down because the last thing either of them seemed to want was for her to be right about them being bad for each other. They were united on that at least and Kelly folded Dawson into a hug to hide her from Shay and yeah, that definitely hurt. That in the midst of their own fighting, her friends felt the need to keep it from her. To tuck their pain away, obvious though it was and pretend it was fine. Their instincts were already honing in on each other. Becoming their own team even when they fought. Shay could appreciate what it meant while still thinking it sucked to be on the outside.

"Maybe keep it down if you don't want everyone to know what's going on" Shay murmured lowly

"Or don't. Please remind all of us why Severide is the stud of 51. We're really all ears."

Shay turned to see Casey walking over. The look on his face plainly irritated. "Gabi. Go take a walk. Get some fresh air. You're lucky Boden wasn't around to hear this." Shay glanced at Dawson. She was surprised to see her ignore Casey's words. She was looking up at Kelly, a palm on each cheek. His hands wrapped gently around both her hands. Still mindful of the bruises on her right wrist.

"I'm gonna make you talk eventually you know that right?" Dawson said and Shay watched a light go on in Kelly's face that hadn't been there before with Dawson's words. He gave Dawson a small smile and nod and kissed her forehead while she and Casey witnessed what had to be the most reverent way he'd ever been with a woman. At least in a very long time. He straightened the collar on Dawson's shirt and smoothed back her hair and thumbed away whatever traces of tears had been on her cheeks. For a minute they just stared at each other. And when he stepped back it looked like it hurt but he mouthed sorry and Dawson nodded okay and then she was walking out without acknowledging Shay or Casey and Kelly was gesturing Shay after her but something told her to stay. If she had had any doubts about Kelly's intentions with Dawson they were gone but Kelly was clearly hurting and Kelly was always going to be her priority.

"You need to stop playing with Dawson, Severide" Shay turned her head to Casey who had spoken so firmly.

"For the last time Casey, I've never played Dawson. We just happened."

Kelly shrugged his shoulders with the last sentence, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. Shay could have called bullshit but this wasn't her fight and she eased back to watch the two lieutenants square off like boxers in a ring. Kelly was off. Something had him hiding in his body, face blank, neck tense and probably fists in his pants pockets.

"Like hell you just happened. I should have known something was up with Gabi when she pushed me away."

"I have nothing to do with that."

"Sure you don't"

Casey prowled closer, hands raised in front of him dismissively. Shay watched Kelly lean on the far office wall. Sink lower to the ground like he didn't have a care in the world which was a lie but she was going to watch this so it didn't get out of hand. This was exactly what she thought would happen. Casey and Kelly fighting over Dawson and no one around to stifle the fuse.

"Are we talking about the same woman? Dawson? EMT who kicked a guy in his chest instead of letting him in her rig? Roadside tracheotomy?" Kelly laughed. "I don't make D do anything"

"I don't trust you-"

"You don't have to! We already know you don't listen to me on a job-"

"Don't you dare bring up Andy!"

"He was my friend! He worked on your team but Andy was always my friend"

"And Gabi's mine! You're going to wreck her! You're going to run her into the-"

That neither Casey nor Shay saw the hit coming was a testament to Kelly's swiftness more than anything. Shay saw it for the glancing blow it was. Kelly had pulled his punch from go and she ducked in to push him off Casey. To be his excuse for not pushing further as she put her hands on his heaving chest and her eyes told him not to engage. Don't be stupid she thought. But it was rather too late. Casey's jaw was slowly beginning to swell. His lip had blood at the corner.

"Okay!" Shay said firmly "I have one question. Do you two want Boden to find out about this?"

She watched the two men glance at each other. Animosity lay thick between them but also, it seemed, some slow bleed of common sense. Kelly put his hands up and retreated. Sat on the corner of the far bunk. Casey sat down in the chair at the desk.

"Great! Smart! Kelly go shower. No. I don't care if you're clean. Go now!"

Kelly trundled off with a small scowl that Shay ignored and she turned to examine Casey's face carefully. He allowed her to touch along his jaw and check for fractures while he tongued the blood from his lip. It was not lost on Shay that Casey and Kelly were as similar as they were different. Tight-lipped, loyal and given to fits of temper that produced nothing but ill will. They cared about each other but like typical men, didn't say it. Didn't say, that hurt me. It seemed both were incapable of showing emotions to each other unless they were screaming. But as she touched Casey's face gingerly, it showed. Casey was hurt by Dawson and Kelly's relationship and she didn't blame him one bit for being furious. Even if she thought he was going about it the wrong way.

"I don't think he's with Dawson because of you,"

"I don't care. You know what he's like!"

She did which was why she shut up. Told him to stay there while she got him an ice pack. Slowly, with more dread than she'd thought possible, Shay walked to the kitchen. She hoped that the whole firehouse hadn't heard but knew it was a lost cause. Everything she was sure would happen was starting. The firehouse crew had begun to fracture even more than it already was and she didn't think there was a thing anyone could do to stop it.

"You want me to re-break his leg?"

Dawson looked down at Hermann with a wry smile on her face. It figured that as private as she wanted to keep some aspects of their relationship, her issues with Kelly would occasionally bleed through at work. She was sitting in the rig, fiddling with a nasal cannula for no reason than to not be in the house. She shook her head as Hermann climbed up into the ambulance beside her.

"No. No, I don't know why he's pulling away but he's not happy. I can see that."

"Eh. Us men. We're idiots. We hook a good thing and we sabotage it. Instantly. It's what we do."

She thought about that for a moment. It sounded right. Sounded like something Kelly would say about himself with a careless shrug before propping a cigar in his mouth. The image made her smile. He hadn't done that with her yet. She'd seen him smoke cigars out in the driveway with Andy and Casey way back. She wanted to see him blow smoke rings and be laid back and easy. She wanted to know what had happened to them.

"You're smiling so he's not screwing up too badly."

Hermann gave Dawson a side hug while she shook her head and laughed. No, Kelly wasn't screwing up but something was screwed up. Kelly had been upfront about his desire to try this thing with her, to see if it could work. He was all in from the morning after, to the restaurant collapse and he'd pulled her out of herself while he was at it. With Kelly mistakes would happen, had been happening all along, and he'd forgiven her and been patient and occasionally an idiot for pushing but still, steadfast through all of it. Kelly had just shown up like he did on her door and fought with her and said all of the things he said he didn't know how to say. And maybe that was the problem? She was saying but not doing enough? Truth be told, she was waiting for that familiar paralysis to hit. That sense that what she was doing couldn't possible be right. Which didn't make sense because Kelly had already said it was okay to be imperfect. To be and get messy with him and they were certainly messy at the moment. Did this count as their first fight? Or was that the spat in her hallway after Joseph and going into a building when she shouldn't have. She was still getting demerits for that from Boden. Boden who'd looked at her with Kelly at the cookout, hands on hips, a spatula in hand and said "Alright" and walked off to enjoy another burger and never discussed it since.

She wasn't angry with Kelly. How could she be? Whatever this was, felt like more of what she'd done when he was in the hospital. Which just felt plain shitty. She'd told him he'd done nothing wrong. He'd looked so uncertain and she'd wanted to cry and now he was saying she'd done nothing wrong and she wanted to believe him so badly. But believing him meant the problem was him and that didn't sit well either and she was pushing. It was something people complained about a lot with her. She needled and poked people who wanted to be left alone and she always wondered if keeping it buried felt better. She couldn't fathom it. Dawson blurted things out and kept the wrong things in and mixed up what felt right with what ultimately was right and all of it usually got her nothing. But knowing and letting it out had to matter. Right?

Hermann left her alone with her thoughts. It was unhelpful. All her thinking and saying hadn't made a dent in Kelly's armor all week. She'd opened her door and now his was closed, or half cracked and she could see him a little. He was there. He was still there but his head was far away and she couldn't bring him back with words and he'd reverted to proving himself in bed and she was losing him just when she thought…

She cut the thought off before it crystallized. In her mind, she'd been working her way up to it, to that word, that phrase. Even though it all felt super fast, life was short and he was right in front of her and he didn't want her to go where he couldn't follow. That was just… who said things like that? She had no frame of reference for a Kelly Severide who made bold declarations and to her of all people. She had taken it and him and run with it and he said he wasn't running away but it wasn't a line when she said she saw him. Dawson did and that had only been his first layer. What she had learned since then put what she'd seen at first to shame and made her want more. To burrow in and be held in the deepest part of Kelly's being. He made being herself okay. How could she do the same for him? How had they already gotten away from that warm happy feeling?

When Kelly got out of the shower Bri was waiting. Just sitting on a bench by his locker with her lip tucked into her mouth and her hands locked over her knees. He toweled his hair as he walked over. Kelly had already said sorry and Bri didn't look mad but she also wasn't saying anything which usually meant bad things were about to happen and he'd had enough of that for the last few days. He sat beside her without speaking. Waiting for her to say whatever it was she wanted to yell but Bri just took the towel from his hands and began to dry his hair. Kelly continued to look at her. She was sad. He was making her sad and she was trying to hide it. She was drying his hair which he knew she loved to play with and being present and he didn't know how to explain the distance between what he felt for her and what he was doing. The disconnect was not just jarring for her. He could see her reaching out and trying and-

"I want to tell you a story" she started slowly. "I want to tell you why Mills and I ended" Kelly popped his head up. Confused was a good word for his mental headspace just then. Mills wasn't why he was tense and stressed about Bri. He wasn't sure why Bri thought this was relevant at all really. He was pretty sure her best friend thinking they were a dumpster fire in hell away from destroying each other was why he couldn't get his mind quiet. She saw his face and smiled a little.

"Context okay? How I screwed up with Mills… I don't want to do that with you." She draped the towel over his bare shoulders while Kelly shook his head.

"You're not screwing up"

"Doesn't matter. Well... it does. I want to believe you but i can't. Not if it means you think you're screwing up instead."

Kelly was sure Bri didn't know how vehement Casey's reaction to their relationship had been. At least, he was sure they hadn't discussed it like he and Casey did. He sighed as he bent sideways, reaching into his locker for a tee shirt.

"Before you start. You should know I hit Casey"

"Wait. What? When?!"

"Twenty minutes ago."

Kelly waited for her to explode at him. For that slightly infamous temper which probably rivaled his own, to make an appearance. Bri looked incredulous but not horrified. He figured that was good enough. Bri sighed softly and Kelly blinked in surprise.

"What'd he say to you?"

And here Kelly shrugged against her concern, watched Bri's eyes narrow and remembered belatedly that his shrug was his tic. The thing he did when he didn't want to disclose information. He'd assumed Bri would bawl him out. Give him a lecture about fighting in the firehouse, about subordinates and setting an example. He wanted to distract her from talking about Mills, from perceiving that her not screwing up definitely meant he was, and would continue to do so.

"Kelly"

It figured that Bri was as stubborn as he was. She planted her feet on either side of the bench and watched him change, her expression set and focused in like a hawk. She leveled a stare and went so quiet, Kelly could hear her breathing. In different circumstances, he would have found her hilarious, hands braced on her hips, leaning in. Just waiting. She knew he hated prying. Resented it really. It was why, curious though he was about her separation from Mills, he would never ask her directly. It was really none of his business anyway. She could keep it close to the vest, although he knew that she hadn't. Shay was the keeper of all her secrets but of course Shay hadn't been in so giving a mood with the answers lately. Not that he'd asked but still. Bri kept right on staring as he fixed his chain around his neck and combed his fingers through his hair and-

"I'm in this. I don't say it like you do but I am in this with you Kelly"

"Baby-"

"Whatever he said hurt you. Don't play dumb. Tell me or don't but I'm here and I am trying to prove that I'm open which is why I need to explain Mills."

Kelly let her take his hands and kiss them. Bri seemed nervous enough and he wasn't going to make it harder. And he listened while she explained what she'd overheard between Boden and his father. What his father had accused Boden of and how everything he'd done since Henry Mills' death was about making up for the mistake he made twenty years ago. How she'd confronted Boden who'd told her not to tell Mills. How she didn't and it burned and tugged at her conscience, a weed gnarling at the roots of their relationship until finally, she pulled the weed out by the head and her own heart with it when Mills' rejected her explanation.

Her hands were shaking by the end and he didn't know who had let go first and she wasn't even looking at him, but the bench. Her long hair falling over her shoulder. Bri looked like she was trying to hide in it, the way he did in the mornings when he didn't want to leave her bed just yet. Bri was so consumed with telling him, the history of the animosity between his derelict dad and upstanding boss, that she forgot to note his reaction.

Kelly was a little stunned but not surprised. History, it seemed, repeated itself. Benny and Boden were still fighting over Henry Mills, the way he and Casey fought about Andy. The similarities were a little uncomfortable. Granted, Benny and Boden weren't fighting over Ingrid like he and Casey were about Bri but wasn't it all part of the same kind of betrayal? Boden betrayed Henry Mills, by sleeping with his estranged wife and then Henry died trying to prove himself to Boden. Andy died because Casey let him into a fire that wasn't vented and blamed Kelly. Now Kelly was sleeping with the girl who'd always loved Casey first and it added more fuel to the fire that was their seething antipathy. Kelly was fairly sure that wasn't what he was meant to get out of Bri's confession but it's what stuck. His dad being a dick especially. He waited for Bri to look up. He wasn't certain what kind of response she was looking for from him. The moral of her story, for him at least, was that people would feel what they felt and continue to feel it long after it was worth the bitterness. He respected Boden and acknowledged his father's own experience as a firefighter but the fact remained that twenty years later, Henry Mills was still dead. Benny was examining the son by the father's mistakes and maybe just maybe Kelly should give himself some slack in the "screwing everything up" department if those two men couldn't get a handle on their shit even now.

"Kelly?"

He turned back to Bri's face so hesitant and outright scared of rejection. He seriously wanted to get to the bottom of that. How every perceived mistake she made, made his girl so fucking anxious. Her story involved his own father. He supposed he could be mad about that. It didn't make a difference, really. Benny saying asshole things, and stirring up things best left alone was a trait he had inherited. Bearing the brunt of his father's criticism made him more inclined to side with Boden really. The problem was, as Bri thought of it, was the hiding. She'd kept an essential truth of Mills's past from him. He was absolutely right to be pissed but…

"Why'd you do it?"

"To protect him. Boden convinced me that it would hurt him and it did and when he finally learned the truth it was worse because of how long I waited"

"Boden didn't tell him either."

"Boden wasn't in a relationship with him though"

True. Rational statements all around. Except for the fact that Boden's refusal to be open was more emotional than rational in Kelly's point of view. He peered at Bri quizzically.

"Would you do that to me?" Bri's eyes widened and Kelly almost regretted asking but she'd opened the door to the inquiry with her confession and they were already strained by things he wanted to have control of and didn't. By things he wanted to say to her but didn't know if they made sense.

"Protect you? Absolutely. Hide from you? No" she shook her head wildly.

"Cuz you see me?"

Bri had no idea how much those words had touched him and continued to do so. It felt strange at first and unreal, but she'd waded into the middle of who he was and found nothing wanting. She'd decided he was one of the people she could let in. Without thinking about it, his hand reached out to touch her flushing cheek. Bri nodded while she swallowed around the lump he saw in her throat and Kelly leaned in to kiss her forehead.

"You're not mad?" Bri whispered.

"Are you? I hit Casey".

Bri pinched his cheek.

"It's not the same thing, Sev."

No, it wasn't, and it also wasn't a response but he let it slide. He knew she knew he'd told her as a deflection. As a way to dodge the serious gambit of their conversation and she had flat out ignored it. Which was typical and infuriating but they also weren't fighting anymore. She'd exposed a mistake that still had her raw at the center. An error that probably led them to this moment, if he remembered everything she'd babbled back in January correctly. Things could never really be the same at Firehouse 51 now that they'd made their choice. Or at least, he'd made his. Kelly hugged D close as she seemed to collapse with relief. He'd made his choice. There was really no contest. D was it.

Thank you for reading!