The Heroic Heralds of the Hermann Horde

The First Date

To the surprise of actually no one but Kylie, Lee Henry asked her out on a date after months of the pair denying the chemistry between the two of them. The news spread through the firehouse faster than any other piece of gossip had in years. Most thought it was cute, Stella and Hermann thought it was about time, Kelly was the only skeptic. The reason why was fairly obvious; the ex-player was afraid of his daughter being played. It didn't matter that Kelly had watched Lee Henry grow up, he was still a hormonal teenage boy, and Kelly knew all too well what teenage boys were capable of.

The night of the date was upon them much faster than Kelly would have liked. Stella, Sylvie, and Violet were helping an eager Kylie get ready while Kelly was prepping a little 'surprise' for Lee Henry at the kitchen table. Now, Kelly didn't have any guns to clean in front of him and no one in Intelligence would let him borrow any unfortunately, so he was instead cleaning Benny's old axe collection. After his father had passed and Kelly had been put in charge of the estate there hadn't been much he'd wanted to keep. Old files were given to OFI, furniture from everywhere but the cabin was donated, and his various old collections were sold, donated, or thrown out as necessary. The only collection that had actually caught Kelly's interest was of axes. From various fire departments, cities, and states. Benny's interest in axes would've been concerning had he not been a firefighter. 

He was sharpening the third out of seventeen when there was a knock on the door. "Come in!" 

"Hi Kelly, do you know if Kylie's ready?"

"Kelly is that Lee Henry? Tell him that she'll be ready in five minutes!"

"I won't have to, he just heard you bellow it across the loft!" He chuckled for a minute, able to see Stella's eye roll and smirk vividly, despite the brick wall between them. Lee Henry sitting across from him brought his focus back to the task at hand; scaring the crap out of this little bastard. Before Kelly could pull an ominous expression to his face or start to make vague threats while continuing to sharpen his axes, Lee Henry grabbed the second sharpening stone, an axe, and started to... Make small talk while sharpening an axe. This little punk was completely ignoring his attempts to threaten him! "... The donut shop Kylie works at just got some new flavours and she brought some over last week, I'm pretty sure that Kenny's addicted to blue cotton candy donuts now which is hilarious because his tongue's always blue-"

"Are you seriously talking about donuts right now?"

"Well, I hardly thought that you'd want to listen to me talk about how excited I am to be going out on a date with your daughter, but sure, I could talk about that instead."

"Are you out of your?!-"

"Lee!"

"Hey, Kylie, wow- you uh- you look beautiful." She did, she really did. The detailed orange dress suited her well, the white cardigan and brown flats she wore with it complimented it even more, and he did feel proud, knowing that she chose those clothes herself because he and Stella had earned her trust. He still wasn't happy she was dating, though. 

"Thank- why are you and Kelly holding axes?"

"Oh, I don't know actually. He was sharpening them when I got here, and I figured I'd help until you were ready. We can get going now, though."

"Have her back by ten." Kelly's gruff voice stole the attention of everyone in the room, the older women rolled their eyes as Stella wrapped an arm around her sulking fiancé, "what Kelly means is, Kylie's curfew is 11:30 and that while we hope you have fun we want you to be responsible, and that he's sorry he tried to intimidate you with tools that can also be used as weapons, even though that backfired."

"That's what he was trying to do? I thought he was just making sure the axes were sharp, I help my dad with that all the time." Kelly's scowl only deepened as his fiancée, friends, daughter, and her date, laughed at him. He turned to glare and the teenage boy who was holding his daughter's hand, trying to burn a hole through him with his mind, as they laughed themselves out the door.

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"Kelly, are you still staring at the door? It's only been half an hour!"

"Stella, do you have any idea what they could be doing in half an hour? Never mind the extra time you gave them by extending her curfew?"

"Oh, if the teenage Kelly Severide could watch you now, oh how the tables have turned."