Questions And Answers...

I can't go through this again...

For Kaylee... Thank you for waiting...

My favorite thing about writing...? Getting into their heads....what were they thinking when things went wrong....or right?

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Kelly saw Boden heading to his office, so he took the moment to go and put right what had occurred at the fire.
He'd already had his head chewed off by the Chief, and he guessed he had it coming. But Kelly wasn't going to tell him that if it happened again, he would do exactly the same again.

To be fair to the Chief, he let him off lightly, and he wondered how much of that was to do with what he had confessed to him about the real reason he had disobeyed a direct order and run into the building. And to be honest, he didn't know who was more surprised by that confession. The Chief or Kelly himself.

Despite taking a bullet to his neck, Otis had escaped any lasting damage, but all Kelly could think was that Stella had been even luckier, her radio taking the bullet that would have otherwise slammed into her chest, not being able to help the inward shudder that had her radio been an inch to either side, she would very likely have died. Despite himself, his fingers curled into his palms at the mere thought of Stella not being in his life.
And that's what he was desperately trying to deny to Casey when his friend had fronted him about his feelings for his roomie.

"No..I told you..I'm not......"

But Casey dismissed Kelly's half-hearted protests as if he hadn't spoken.

"I know what you told me." Turning to look at where Gabby was sitting with Stella, he carried on. " That feeling, that connection, it won't go away just 'cause you don't want it to be there."

And now Kelly Severide stood staring at his reflection in the 51 bathroom mirror, his head spinning like a roulette wheel with thoughts and counter thoughts.
Closing his eyes, trying to ward off the impending headache from the overthinking, he sighed audibly. Why did this have to happen, and more to the point, why her?

He heard the door open, and he opened his eyes to meet the ones that kept him up at night, belonging to the headfuck that was Stella Kidd.

She smiled.

"Hey... "

He smiled back, that stupid fluttering in his stomach when she looked at him like that.

"I wanted to say thanks for coming to rescue me at the fire the other day, but I keep missing you." She came and stood next to him by the sink, putting one hand on his upper arm, giving it a squeeze.
"Though you shouldn't have disobeyed Boden. Looked like he really laid into you."

"Yeah...well... we were standing there idle. Anyway, it was to help get Otis out..."

Which was an outright lie, he thought. There had only been one thing on his mind as soon as he had heard that Stella was in the middle of that gunfire. To get to her.

"Yeah..of course..... " She amended quickly, standing corrected, "It was still brave of you, though, given all the bullets literally flying around."

He shrugged. "All in a day's work." He purposefully looked away from her, fighting the urge to hang out in the bathroom with his roomie, and went to walk out of the bathroom.

"Kelly.."

He had one hand on the door handle and looked back over his shoulder, his eyebrow raised in query.

"Yeah?"

"Is everything o.k?"
She was chewing her lip, certain she had detected a distance between them these last couple of days, and it had left her feeling really uncertain and bemused about what was going on. Was it because of what had happened with Boden?