Inside these walls was undoubtedly the most painful Stellaride episode...S7 E10.
But behind that emotionally charged scene were two people who were hurting....
This chapter has a little insight into their headspace E10 to E22....
This is written for everyone who ever wondered what each of them was feeling, for everyone who wanted to throw something at the t.v and scream.....No! No! No!! And most of all it's for everyone who still cares...
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"I love you. But I can't be with you."
Kelly stood staring out at the Chicago river in the darkness of the Loft, his girlfriend's......rephrase that, his ex- girlfriend's words spinning around his head on a loop like a record. That's if there were things like records anymore. Well, there were in his head. Especially tonight. He closed his eyes, the trendy brick walls closing in on him, the Chicago city lights that were usually a balm to his frayed senses, tonight a taunting reminder of all the times she had stood in this very spot, with her arms around him, mesmerised by the view.
When he had first seen her waiting outside his apartment building, his initial reaction was one of worry. She had looked upset and his instinct was to pull her into his arms but before he could say or do anything, she had broken his world and his heart by telling him all the reasons why she couldn't be with him anymore. And he had just stood there and said nothing, while each of her words had cut him like a whip.
" I've been a lifeline for a drowning man, and I"ll never do that again."
That one had hurt. A lot. Is that what he was? A drowning man? Perhaps she was right because he certainly fucking felt like one right now.
Even when she had turned and walked away, he had just stood there silently. Maybe because he was used to this. Everyone that meant anything to him leaving him. Eventually.
Across town, above Hermann's garage, Stella was curled up in her bed like a wounded animal, wearing his T, the one pulled from her laundry basket, which smelled of him. Her eyes were sore and swollen from all her crying even though an accusatory voice reminded her that she was the one who had ended it. She didn't want to do this! But for her own salvation, she had to. Their relationship had become a form of torture, chipping away at her self-worth until she knew there would be nothing left of her.
She choked on another sob, her insides twisted into a thousand knots burying her face into her pillow, soon drenching it in damp, a mixture of the output from her eyes and her runny nose. But even with her eyes tightly closed, his face swam in front of her, his beautiful smile when he was happy, his post sex lazy grin, his broody face when he was tired, and then tonight his vacant stoicism when she had laid into him......even while she was hoping somewhere in the recesses of her broken heart that he would fight for her and argue that she was wrong. But he hadn't. Oh fucking fucking shit! He hadn't...... and her heart splintered into more shards of broken glass than she would ever be able to count.
And if either of them thought work would be bearable...... it wasn't.
Each of them tactfully stayed out of the others way while the rest of shift two very quickly worked out that Severide and Kidd had split up. The new unsmiling Stella called out the likes of Mouch, Hermann and Otis when they took pot shots about the reasons why firehouse relationships shouldn't be allowed, reducing them to quivering wrecks with her one solitary hard eyed glare.
But out on a call, it was impossible for the ex lovers to avoid each other, and both were far too professional to let their bruised hearts get in the way of doing their job.
"Thanks for under there."
Kelly hesitated, searching for a sign, any sign that she still cared.
"Anytime."
A one word response that said nothing.
In the close confines under the crashed bus, she had practically drowned in the hundred different emotions swimming around in his eyes, her head tangling up in fifty ways.
But there had been too many weeks of being shut out by him, too many moments when he had made her feel like an intrusion in his life. So, now, she responded with a polite ' anytime' and turned away instead of refexively pulling him towards her like she once would have done.
Back at the firehouse, walking in on him in the turnout room, she forced back the overwhelming tidal wave of pain that threatened to consume her every time she saw him and swallow the sandpaper perpetually clogging her throat.
"This is harder than I thought it was going to be."
Undone by his admission, everything inside her wanted to scream at him that YES! This was fucking hard and that she was struggling to even remain sane. And it was his fault! His! For pushing her her away until she had nowhere to go but downwards.
And despite the helpless look on his face, that same sanity told her to keep him at arms length, warning her that he had the ability to destroy her in a way that even Grant couldn't.
So she bit her back her love and instead wondered what she could say that wouldn't give away her broken heart.
"We are never going to be able to work together if we can't move past this.....Kelly."
Was that really her voice? So emotionless? So pragmatic.
Kelly's stomach churned at the empty look on her face, realizing that for her, it really was over, and he didn't know how he was going to stop missing her.
"I agree."
Why did he say that?
He didn't agree at all. He didnt fucking agree with any of this!
She nodded as if they had reached some kind of concensus and in his Kelly Severide way, he let her walk away and only when he was alone did he drop his head and close his eyes in defeat, trying to block out the bleakness that had taken root inside him since she had walked away from the Loft that night.
Kelly started staying in his office more than usual, absently playing with her hair tie that he had found on his bathroom floor and now kept in his pocket, staring at the framed newstory on his wall of her rescuing him from the Chicago river.
More often than not, he took his meal alone, broodily pushing the food around on his plate. Inwardly, he just wished he was sitting next to her at the dining table, trying not to wriggle and give away to everyone else that under the table, she was teasing his balls.
And when he did come out of his office, he didn't even know that he took to surreptitiously watching her trying to train Tuesday the dalmation for the Fire safety dog competition. Her gentleness with the dog, a stark reminder of her inherent goodness. And he missed her a little bit more.
The rest of the time he looked for distractions and for a while the boat repair gig for Bradley Boyd, was a god send and kept him away from Stella and Molly's and his head and body beat. Until it wasn't. And it ended badly between the two men, like a lot of things for Kelly lately.
At times, it was as if no matter what either of them tried to do to put the past behind them, it only seemed to shunt it further forward in their heads, and if the sleepless nights had reduced slightly, it was only because there were more hangovers. Their respective apartments felt empty, despite Casey deciding to stay permanently at the Loft, but each day was missing the little things that added up to the huge hole they carried around inside them. The dozens of spontaneous touches, the exchanges of secret smiles, and then there was missing the sex. The mind-blowing, no holds barred sex.
Hermann tried to nursemaid Stella, turning up at the studio above his garage often, to check up on her, and even at Molly's, he spent some time trying to impart wisdom.
"Everybody deals with breakups differently. But if you're not totally fine and you're just trying to find your way through it, hey.. it's okay, too. Doesn't make you any less badass.."
She finally let down the steel curtain she had put up around her, hoping that maybe in time, she would just grow used to feeling like this.
"Okay. So maybe I'm not
completely over it. Yet. But I will be."
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On the morning it seemed Stella was the first one, "moving on," Kelly clocked the night club wrist band, still around her wrist. The knot around his chest tightened.
"Fun night?" Dont say it was please.
But the sheepishness on her face gave her away.
"Oh yeah, um, I went out dancing. with a couple of academy buddies, it got real dumb in the best possible way."
Great. That was just fucking perfect.
But he nodded as if it were. She was moving on.
Stella walked away, cursing herself for not remembering to take the band off because as much as she loved dancing, it wasn't anywhere near 'in the best possible way' as lying cosied up with Kelly on his couch, watching an old James Stewart movie.
It was that wristband that finally fired him into regressing to old behaviours. If Stella was over him, then maybe it was time he stopped hibernating too and got back out there doing what he did best. One nighters.
The next night, he talked Casey into hitting a pop-up club in Canaryville, and in the morning, he wore the type of smile he thought he'd left behind him a while ago, waking up with another nameless girl that he would forget about as soon as she had walked out of his apartment.
Only he knew that the the only way he had been able to shoot his load last night was by replaying in his head the countless times Stella had ridden him senseless in that bed.
As the weeks dragged by, and Kelly and Stella found their new normal, there were still days when she found it too hard to be around him. She talked Brett and Foster into a girls' road trip to avoid the worst day of the year for anyone nursing a broken heart. Valentines Day. The trip hadn't gone to plan, but at least she hadn't had to negotiate hundreds of loved up Chicago couples and every other store front dressed in red hearts. Or spent every excruciating moment of the day wondering if Kelly had sent anyone a sweet little card and a dozen red roses, like he had her last year.
But Kelly too was struggling from the missing her. Every day in the firehouse was a sadistic torture, with her proximity an open wound and a balm at the same time. He didn't know how to tell her how sorry he was.... about everything. but at least she was smiling at him again, so he started thinking about plucking up the courage to approach her. Maybe?
So he wasn't ready when Stella got herself talked into going out for a few dates by Brett and Foster with Keith, a guy she had rescued, despite her reservations that it was a rescue crush. And even less ready to see Stella take a weekend trip with someone that wasn't him.
And it wasn't the same for Stella with Keith. Of course, it wasn't, and poor Keith didn't stand a chance being secretly compared to the man she was still trying not to be in love with. She knew she was nowhere near ready when lonely and awake in the middle of the night she would reach for her battery-operated 'bullet' hidden in her nightstand drawer. Because it seemed the next best thing to Kelly Severide.
Slowly they established a friendlier way of communicating, it was still there between them, the look that lasted a second too long, the smile that he only used on her. The moments when both pretended they didn't take a deep breath when they saw the other coming out of the 51 showers and a friends with benefits option seemed incredibly tempting. The evenings he hung around Molly's till closing because he liked being around her and despite her not wanting to notice whether he was there or not. She always did.
"There's no one like you."
He told her in an unguarded moment after she had followed her instinct and badgered him to help her until she was able to rescue two kids. A moment she stored inside her racing pulse, missing him all over again. And thinking..... what if?
The mellowing between the two didn't go unnoticed. It wasn't until Foster had breathed fire at him that Kelly stopped to think.
"If you're not ready to step up and be worthy of Stella, then you need to back the hell up. And let her move on."
Only then did he consider that just because he wanted to be with Stella. It didn't mean he was good for her.
So it started again, the pulling back, the disappearing just when Stella had started to think about, maybe. But this time he was doing it to save her.
She stood behind the bar at Molly's watching the door all night, deflated that she'd got it wrong again, and across town, alone in his apartment Kelly sank another beer because it was the only way he was going to be able to sleep without thinking about her.
If it hadn't been for a chance interception of an uncomfortable look between Kelly and Foster and a 'I've been busted,' admission from Foster, Stella would never have known that he had withdrawn because Foster had made him take a hard look at himself about about whether he had enough in his locker to offer Stella. And by that, meant enough of him.
And that was when in Stella's head that 'maybe' and the 'what if' became a 'possibility.' The subtle changes that had started before Foster had said anything, returned, and the guarded looks became more open smiles, and the way he looked at her was open, more hopeful.
An old case arson case of Benny's had Kelly fixated, in the way these things got to him. Casey gave Stella a nudge that she was the one he needed so Stella took herself to her bunk and came up with the old dogmatic version of herself and showed up in his quarters to help, refusing to take 'no' for an answer.
Kelly smiled up at her, a little piece of their jigsaw slotting right back alongside the pieces that had never been removed.
And a few more fell into place when she sat next to him in at the home of Doug and the arsonist Carol Spears laying bare her marriage to Grant. Although he felt a shame course through him that she had suffered a similar bleakness at his hands.
"I realized that I was the only
person in his entire life that ever tried to make him better. And it drained me.
Drained me until I-I had nothing left to give. So I know where you're at, Doug."
Was that when he decided or was it later when he watched the EMT dress, the superficial cut on her face inflicted by Carol Spears? Even after the frightening attack inside the house, she still managed to laugh at herself, and he couldn't help but just look at her, drinking in everything about her. There really was no one like her.
Afterwards trying to unscramble his thoughts he ran away to Benny's cabin to make sense of himself and of them....if there was going to be a them and whether he could ever be what she deserved.
But Stella was never good at leaving things alone and in the same ways as Kelly, she knew that they burned as strong as ever and she had to know what they did next.
So she found herself rapping on the cabin door, a long suspended moment later when they both just looked at each other, everything that had passed in the months before waiting to be pushed aside.
"You deserve a better man than me....... "
Her heart stopped, thinking that they weren't enough.
"So I decided... I decided I'm gonna be the man you deserve."
And there it was, the lifeline for each of them. Him, staring at her, helpless in his own hope for another chance to be the best man he could be for her. Her heart exploding that he wanted to do this for her, for them. So she gave him her answer in the only way that said everything he needed to know.
Her hands went around his face, and then the hope sprang into everything else that had always been between them. Clinging to each other, kissing desparately, like the starving. Everything that had gone before was forgotten, the long lonely months, the sleepless nights, discarded along with their clothes amidst whispered promises and a homecoming of two people who only found solace, safety, and love with and in each other. No fantasies, no 'bullet' aid needed..... just each other.
A/N
Ah...and a BIG sigh was released by all....