I wasn't going to do this, but I slowly came to realize that my story was indeed a cliffhanger, and that seemed awfully douchey of me. So, here is the epilogue to More Than One Way to Catch on Fire. This will address the comfort part of the story. I hope you enjoy it thoroughly, thank you for reading! :

"If you would stop struggling this would probably go a lot faster." I can't believe this is happening. One minute I'm in the hospital next to Casey watching him wake up for the umpteenth time in confusion and disarray. Next thing I know I'm helping him fill out forms for his release, wondering, not for the first time… WHERE THE HELL IS HALLIE!? Because I didn't know a Goddamn thing on those frickin' form… Well, except for like, his birthday… and his insurance policy… and well, a lot more than I thought that I knew.

And now here I am helping him into his house, and if that's not a whole new struggle with life that we have to deal with right now, than I don't what is. It's hard enough dealing with Matt when he's lucid and healthy. The drugs they have in this kid right now are ridiculous. I don't think he knows what's going on in the slightest, and it's only been four days since Matt got out of surgery, but they only released him about an hour ago so, yeah.

Getting him home was supposed to be the hard part. You know, getting him from his hospital room to the car, watching his head lull around on the seat, trying not to laugh as he babbles nonsense about carpeting work and whether or not we need a schedule in the firehouse kitchen for sandwich duty.

It was actually kind of hilarious.

I did not however think the hardest part would be getting him from the car into his house, where there is STILL NO HALLIE!

I don't remember Casey having so many arms. He's like an octopus!

"Matt! Just- could you please- just… Casey!" He didn't have this many arms when I met him.

"Kell… did you- do you know… have- has there…" He trails off after that destroyed sentence and his eyes glaze over like he's going to pass out again.

"Matt, do not pass out on me. I am not carrying your sorry ass all the way up these stairs, I swear to God." I can't imagine that he can hear the 'I would kick your ass if you weren't already this damaged' tone in my voice, but he doesn't pass out, which is a plus, and we do make it in the house and up the stairs.

It's then that I notice that not everything in the house is as I remember it. Granted I hadn't been there in about a month, there are some things that he seemed to be lacking. Like furniture, and finished rooms… and there were three more doors upstairs then there were last time I was here… and there's an upstairs… and was the bathroom always pink?

"This isn't the right house." I say out loud, like there's someone around to hear me. No, this has to be the right house, he has keys for this house; I used those keys to gain entry. This has to be the right house.

"Matt… Did you get robbed?" I look over at Octopus boy and watch him as he swivels his head from left to right checking things, not very thoroughly, but whatever.

"No…. I-I don't think so… Severide? Why- why are you in my house?" I'm about to answer that question… again… literally the tenth time since we left the hospital.

'Kelly, where are we going?'

'Severide… what are you doing here?'

'Kelly, what's going on?'

'Kelly, why are you in my house?'

If I ever wondered what it was going to be like having a five-year-old then I can stop wonder now.

"Matt, where's Hallie?" I seriously want to know now. I mean, the women slapped me a couple of days ago. Not that I want to slap her back… okay, I kinda do, but she should be here. She works at the hospital. I called her and told her Matt was getting released today.

SHE SHOULD BE HERE!

"Hallie? Why- where would… why would Hallie be here? She doesn't live… we don't… she's probably at her p-place." Casey stutters this out as he shrugs out of my embrace and grips the wall for support.

"Oh God, this is the wrong house." I mutter to myself. No, this can't be the wrong house. He has keys, not to mention he's shuffling slowly toward one of the bedrooms, and is that? Yep, this is definitely Matt's place. No one else could have that messy of a room, and still pull off the pristine firehouse lieutenant shtick.

"Is making your bed against your religion?" I can't help it. There are clothes everywhere. Granted they are folded, but that doesn't mean they aren't everywhere. Papers are laying on every surface, and coffee cups are on top of those.

"I would say s-something clever… but… I can't even-" Matt cuts himself off by stumbling onto his unmade bed and thoroughly passing out.

I would be worried about him causing himself further injuries, but with the stuff he's on, I doubt he could feel an earthquake.

I placed his pills on his bedside table and then went down to get a water bottle and a notepad so I could right out the doctor's orders. There is a bottle of ketchup, two beers, a jar of glue, and five water bottles in his refrigerator.

Okay…

I catch a glimpse of the clock as I walk back up stairs and see that it is getting late. As I round the corner and stand in the door way to Matt's bedroom, I look down at the notepad, and then place it on one of his many piles of mess. I put the water bottle by his bed and then find a blanket to cover Matt up with.

I was planning to go back to my place, and then drive-by and check on him in the morning, but I figure that it is getting kind of late, and what if he gets up in the middle of the night, slips on a pile of clothes, knocks his head on a dresser, gets a million paper cuts from landing in a pile of papers, and Dawson and Shay kill me after his funeral?

That would be bad.

I make sure that he's alright, and then I go and grab a blanket for myself and head down to the one piece of furniture that Matt does have: A couch.

It's not the most comfortable couch in the world, but it'll do.

Waking up in a strange place is not the problem with my life right now. Waking up in the living room of one of my ex-ish best friends, and my shoulder on fire from sleeping on the world's most uncomfortable couch, and knowing that life just isn't gonna be normal for a while… that's the problem with my life right now.

So I did it. I stayed like a good friend to make sure that everything was going to be alright, and the hopes that Matt wouldn't die in the middle of the night, because that would be really hard to explain to everyone.

In retrospect, I should probably stop joking about that because of… reasons. So, I wake up on TWMUI – The World's Most Uncomfortable Item, abbreviations are a Godsend, so I wake up on Matt's couch to see a fuzzy looking Casey stumbling toward the kitchen -I'm assuming it's the kitchen- stumbling toward the kitchen looking like he hadn't taken his pills yet, and he still looks like death.

"Matt." I say as I stiffly sit up on the couch. I see Matt jump slightly -which couldn't have been fun- like he didn't know that I was there. The way that he turns toward me all sway-ie-like, and looks a whole new level of confused suggests that he literally didn't know that I was here.

"Kelly?"

'What are you doing here?' Is the question that I'm prepared for right now. I'm gonna write my intentions on his forehead, backwards, and in permanent marker, and then tell him to look in the mirror ever time he's confused. I was not however prepared for:

"Want some coffee?" Which is what he asked, and now I'm on that same level of confusion that he was on, sweet.

We sit down and he gets everything out to make coffee. I can tell that he hasn't taken his pills because of how he's griping his chest casually like it's nothing, and not like he had major surgery a few days ago, whenever he thinks I'm not looking; which at this point my mess of a situation known as my shoulder/neck area is taking precedence. This hurts like a mother-

"So, should I even ask why you're here, or is this just nothing new?" He asks as he sets my coffee cup down and sits across from me. He has a dining room table and some very nice… folding chairs.

"Should I even ask where Hallie is, and why it looks like your place was looted for all the valuables?" I retort. I can't help but think that it's really none of my business, but I'm about to get to the bottom of this Hallie not being here shit right fucking now.

"We haven't… um, sorted everything out yet. She- we decided that now wasn't… that we needed a break for a while." Casey says as he stares down into his coffee mug. "There weren't really any valuables in here to begin with so looters probably would've been pretty pissed."

"When did-"

"A couple weeks ago… it was the- the 'kids thing' again." He's begun to uncomfortably wince every time he takes deeper breaths.

That's when I notice that Matt seems totally normal with this – with us; maybe even more than normal. We – Matthew Casey and Kelly Severide – are actually having a normal conversation without any blaming, or yelling, or threats of death. This is probably as good a time as any.

"Have you taken your meds yet?" That… is not what I wanted to say.

The way that Matt is looking at me suggests that that's not what he thought I was going to ask either. I watch as he stiffly pulls his pill bottle out of the pocket of his sweat pants.

How did he even get dressed without… Never mind.

"I- they make everything a little fuzzy and the chief called. He wants us to come in… Something about a serious talk that you would know about?" I reach over and grab the pills proceeding to shake two out of the bottle. I hand them to Matt and put the bottle back down again.

"Trust me; if we're going in for what I think we're going in for, you're gonna want those." I've taken to rubbing my shoulder on instinct, not even really think about it anymore. Hell, if I don't notice it most of the time, then who else will really care at this point.

Matt looks down at the pills and then back up at me. I can't believe what's happening in the world right now because he doesn't argue at all. He just picks up the pills and then… and then he takes them! He actually takes them without saying a word.

He then picks up the bottle and glances at the instructions for a second. He opens the bottle again and then shakes two more out.

"First you didn't want any and now an overdose is in your future." He glances at me and then puts the two pills down in front of me. I look back up at him like I don't even know what the Hell he's doing.

"I'm not blind Kel, you've been griping that shoulder more and more lately, and don't worry there only mild morphine pills." He says with raised eyebrows, but less in that 'Condescending Casey' way and more of a 'Concerned and Stubborn Casey' way.

"I wasn't worried, but one of us has to drive to the station, and I'm not letting you get behind the wheel right now. As for what that is all about…" I don't know how to start this conversation. I don't even know what the middle or the end sounds like. I had all this time to come up with a decent way to ask, 'So hey, what was up with that Sybil thing you did in the station right before you passed out from blood loss?' Yeah, cause that sounds totally acceptable.

"I- I said somethings after the fire didn't I? Somethings about Andy… and us… I don't remember it all, but I do remember that much." He does not look up to this conversation right now. He's obviously still in pain despite the pills he took and the rest he got. In all honesty he should still be in bed right now resting, but telling Casey what was best for him was like trying to… was like… trying to stop a firefighter from rushing into a burning building.

"Matt, I'm going to tell you something, and you better damn well listen. Not now, not ever, not in the several years I've known you, or the last shit filled month have I ever wished, not once, have I ever wished that it was you in the fire that killed Andy. Not once." He doesn't really look like he believes me, but if I'm going to do what I told the chief I was going to do, then I'm gonna have to make him understand.

"I know that it's been rough the last few weeks. I had no idea how rough until I took a look inside your fridge; but seriously, I cannot begin to tell you how much I wouldn't have blamed you if you would have dropped me in there. How sorry I am for blaming Andy on you and for everything else." I'm not sure that I'm ready for this conversation, but I have to tell him this; to get this out before I wuss out and never say anything about it ever again.

"Before… before all of this happened… before Andy and everything that went down after he died. I can't even begin to understand what was going through my head. I know… logically I know that there was no way that you could have stopped Andy from going into that damn building, that would have been like trying to stop a stampede. I know that. I just wanted it all not to be true so badly that I took it all out on you." I look up at him because I'd been staring at a spot in front of his mug for a little while now. He looks like he's not doing okay, and I know that as soon as I stop speaking he's gonna try and deny everything that I'm saying.

"I know that things can't ever go back to the way that they were, but after everything that's happened since… I hope that… that we can…" I don't know how to land this. If I say the right thing than maybe we can fix this eventually, but one wrong word and it'll never get better again.

"I know… I get what you're trying to say. Kelly… I've just wanted it to go back to normal for so long. I- I don't know why I said those things… any of those things in the locker room. It was like I could hear myself talking, but none of it made any sense." Matt has this weird eye contact thing he does when he's being brutally honest. I try not to let it get to me most of the time, but this conversation is way too serious for me to be messing around right now.

"Make no mistake you don't usually sound like you make a lot of sense anyway." I can't help it. I'm a slave to my wry sense of humor.

Instead of glaring at me and giving up on the conversation like he would have done so many times before now; Matt actually smirks! It's small, but it totally counts.

"As I was saying… I know that things are very screwed up right now, but… I think I'm beginning to understand what the chief meant by that… rift he was talking about."

And that's why we were friends.

No matter what anybody says: not because of convenience, or Andy, or formality, or anything else. The fact that Casey- that Matt knew what was up; that he knew what I was thinking or about to say before I could say it, because of despite that Goddamn rift!

Just because…

"Speaking of," He continues, "What's this meeting about?" And just like that it was mostly over. The hardest part was done. Matt still had a lot of recovering to do, and so did our friendship, but it was being taken care of.

Changing the conversation is like the universal, 'We good?' for guys. Accepting the change is the universal, 'Yeah, we good.' for guys too.

"Um… yeah, you're gonna want to rest up a little while before we go into the station…. There are some… some things that the chief and some of our squad members want to talk to you about." I can't avoid this forever, but Matt and I just got back on decent terms again, and Hell if I was gonna screw that up so soon.

"I'm not gonna like this am I?" Matthew Casey, Lieutenant of Truck 81 in Station 51, my friend, asks as he leans back a little in a folding chair at one of the only pieces of furniture, a dining room table that he has in his house; that he's probably going to need a little help with.

"Look at it this way, after the month from Hell that almost couldn't have gotten any worse if we really put some more work into, an intervention will be a cake walk." I- Kelly Severide, Lieutenant of Squad 3 in Station 51, the fixer of monumental fuck-ups, who will definitely be here to help pick up the pieces to Matt's house and everything else, say as I lean back in a folding chair too.

Yeah, what rift?

"Wait… did you say intervention?"

... Dammit!

-fini-

Thank You so much for reading, I really hope you enjoyed it. I don't really want to do the intervention, but if anyone wants to write that up, and post it as like a sort of prompt fulfillment, that would be extraordinary! Thanks again. See ya! :