Chapter Text
It wasn’t just Halstead who did stupid things, Voight groused as he searched the water frantically for any sign on Antonio.
They’d been chasing their perp, a distributer who’d been cutting the drugs with lethal substances, leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. Antonio, never one to shirk his duties, even more so when several of the junkie’s who’d OD’d were under the age of 16, had taken off in pursuit. Voight had listened to the shouts coming over the radio, Halstead and Erin almost getting him before they lost him in some traffic. Then Antonio’s voice, determined, breathless from running.
Voight had pulled up in his SUV just in time to see Antonio tackle the perp — right over the edge of the docks and into the river.
“There!” Halstead shouted, pointing at the churning water erupting around the two struggling bodies.
“He’s trying to drown Antonio!” Erin observed, gun drawn but inactive by her side for lack of a clear shot.
“Get him out of there!” Voight growled, helpless as the two went under again.
It was mid November and while it was never a good time to fall into the river, the steadily dropping temperatures made it an even worse idea. Dawson would be lucky if he didn’t catch a cold (or pneumonia, a traitorous part of Voight’s mind supplied). Holding his breath as the pair bobbed up again, a little ways away from the last spot they’d appeared, it looked like Antonio had the perp in a chokehold, the man’s struggles lessening as he lost consciousness.
“I called in an ambulance and the fire department,” Olinsky told him. “There isn’t a way for us to get them out of the water without help.”
Voight glanced around, affirming his friends words, watching as Antonio dragged the limp perp to the concrete ledge about ten feet below, just above the waterline, clinging on for dear life.
“Antonio!” He called down, catching his man’s eye. “You alright?”
“I’ll be fine,” Antonio told him, wincing as he moved.
That’s when he saw the red stain in the water. “You’re bleeding!”
The detective looked down, a resigned expression on his face when he looked back up. “He had a knife.” Hand going to his side, grimacing as pain flashed through him. “Think it’s at the bottom of the river by now.”
Voight cursed, echoed by the others as they stood, helpless, unable to help their colleague.
“Make sure he stays out!” Voight called down. He didn’t want any surprises.
The firetrucks pulled up shortly after, familiar faces setting Voight at ease.
“What’ve we got?” Boden asked, getting down to business as he followed Voight to the edge of the pier, Casey and Severide close behind.
“Dawson followed a perp into the river,” Voight was succinct. “They’re down there, no way for them to get back up. Perp got Antonio with a knife, I don’t know how bad.”
“Okay,” Severide jumped into action. “I’ll get into the wetsuit and take Cruz down with me. We’ll get Antonio up first, perp second.”
“I’ll let the medics know what to expect,” Casey said, jogging off towards the ambulance that had just pulled up.
Voight made sure to give Severide a pair of zip ties so the perp couldn’t try anything. Waiting anxiously by the edge, he restrained himself from rushing immediately over as Antoino was pulled up on the backboard, letting the medics cut open his shirt to see the stab wound.
“It’s a good thing the water was so cold,” Brett commented. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but it probably reduced the bleeding a bit. This looks deep.”
Antonio was shivering as the adrenaline wore off, eyes closed as he kept quiet under the medics hands. Voight remembered he’d dated Brett for a bit, pretty little thing. Finally, he moved forward, standing over his man.
“Hey,” Antonio’s eyes opened at his voice, “He gonna be okay?”
“He should be,” Brett reported. “Vitals are stable - one of the luckier placements for a stab wound. We’ll push fluids in the ambulance and start to warm him up.”
“Ride with me?” Antonio asked, putting up a hand to forestall the placement of the mask on his face.
Hank paused. He’d rarely ridden in an ambulance with anyone before. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Antonio said, eyes closing again.
“OK.”
Voight turned away to let Alvin know but the man had been listening and called over his shoulder as the waved for the others to pile into the SUV. “We’ll meet you at MED. The perp is going across town.”
“Right.”
In the ambulance, Voight kept quiet, watching as Brett worked on Antonio, tucking a blanket around him after checking the pressure bandage on his side. It had only been three months since his detective had been cleared for active duty.
“You know,” Voight told his detective, reaching out to give Antonio’s arm a squeeze though the blanket, “I thought Halstead had dibs on heroics.”
Antonio laughed behind his oxygen mask, understanding in his eyes and humor since he understood the irony of his situation. He drifted off, body shivering under the blanket, rocking with the motions of the ambulance.
Voight kept him company - a silent watch dog and a better friend.
————————————
“He’s going to be fine,” Will assured the intelligence detectives where they’d been waiting outside of the surgery. “The knife missed his organs - one of the luckier kinds of knife wounds, you could say. His blood loss was manageable and while he is still hypothermic, I can safely promise a full recovery.”
Everyone gave a sigh of relief at the news.
“Can I see him?” Hank asked, worried for his man.
“He’s been asking for you,” Will told him. “And as his medial proxy, you’re first on the list.”
“Thanks, doc.”
“We’ll give you ten minutes,” Alvin told him as he followed Will, to which Voight grunted an acknowledgment.
Hank had seen Antonio in a hospital bed more times than he would like; now was no different.
“Hey,” He said, stopping by Antonio’s bed, looking the other man over. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
“Sorry,” Antonio slurred, obviously on the good meds. “Wasn’t trying to end up here, ya know?”
“I see they have you on the good stuff,” Voight gave his signature half grin, “Suppose I could sneak you in something later?”
“You’d better,” Dawson says. “Though Will’s sharp man, don’t let him catch you with the goods.”
Voight pushed down a laugh, stroking his hand through Antonio’s thick hair, the detective leaning into the touch. What the man really needed was his wife but they both knew that was a pipe dream.
Antonio hummed, looking up at Voight, some of the haze wearing off. “We got the guy?”
“We got the guy,” Voight assured him. “He’s going to go away for a long time. You did good, Antonio.”
Antonio smiled at the praise, eyes fluttering as Hank continued to stroke his hair. He was almost asleep when Alvin led the others in, warning them with a knock on the door, Hank looking up form where he was on his phone in the chair by the bed.
“He okay?” Alvin asked.
“A bit out of it,” Voight shrugged. “They got him on the good stuff.”
The others lingered for a while, watching Antonio sleep, Adam even leaving a small bear he’d gotten at the gift shop on the side table. But before long, duty called.
“I’ll stay with him,” Olinsky volunteered. “The perp needs to be processed.”
“Ok.” Voight was reluctant to leave Antonio, but crime didn’t sleep, so he motioned to the others to follow him out. “Let’s go get this done. I’ll take over after shift.” Ignoring the looks Erin was giving him, Voight led them back out to the SUV, heading back down to the precinct to finish the case that had landed Antonio in the hospital.
————————————
A few days later, Antonio was still in the hospital and they’d caught another case, the usual combination of a serial murderer mixed with arson. Voight hated not being able to sit with Antonio, but duty called. Last update from Adam was that he was still running a low grade fever, Will saying that they were monitoring him for the possibility of pneumonia since he’d swallowed a fair amount of river water when the perp had tried to drown him.
Voight went to visit during his lunch hour, bringing the juice boxes that Will had recommended, not liking how Antonio was looking — he was pale and the shivers were still present. He’d finished one of the juice boxes before dozing off.
“We haven’t been able to break his fever,” Will told him as they stood outside the room, Olinsky taking his turn at watching Antonio. “If it get’s over 100 we’ll be switching to a more aggressive type of antibiotics and an oxygen mask.”
“But he’ll be alright?” Voight pressed.
Will shrugged helplessly, “We can treat pneumonia - but if we can’t break the fever he’s gonna be in for a hard time. His stab wound is healing, that’s one good thing out of all of this.”
Voight’s phone pinged. Work. “I’ve gotta go. Call me if anything happens.”
———————————
“You gotta come,” Jay said over the phone the next afternoon. “It’s bad, sarge.”
“On my way.”
As he drove, Hank felt his anxiety skyrocket. When he’d left this morning, having slept in Antonio’s hospital room, nothing had changed. The detective had still been running a steady fever of 100 degrees, cooling pads on his armpits and groin, the antibiotics still making him a bit loopy. What could have happened in such a short time to make Jay sound so panicked?
Stalking to Antonio’s room, he halted in dismay at the sight before him. There were restraints on Antonio’s wrists and ankles, keeping him immobile, a full mask on his face as well as additional cooling pads.
“What happened?” He snapped at Jay who’d hurried over from where he’d been sitting beside Antonio’s bed.
“His fever spiked and then he was - hallucinating, I think - he thought he was somewhere else,” Jay said, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I couldn’t calm him down and he pulled a couple stitches so they strapped him down and knocked him out.”
“Your brother around?” Hank asked, striding over to the bed to run his hand through Antonio’s hair, studying his detective’s face.
“I’ll have a nurse get him.”
And that was how Voight spent the rest of the day, eventually sending Jay back to work to help with the case, fielding calls on his phone and getting updates from Alvin. Also sending updates on Antonio; not that anything was changing with his condition.
If anything, Antonio was getting worse, the fever rising to 104.2 during the early hours of the morning.
It hurt Hanks’ heart to hear Antonio moan around his mask, struggling futilely against the restraints, fighting something only he could see. He only calmed when Voight talked to him, stroking a hand through his hair, murmuring in his ear until the man calmed, sleeping again. Voight fell asleep eventually, too many days of anxiety and too little sleep catching up with him.
When he woke, Erin was sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed, sipping a coffee, watching him.
“Morning Erin,” Voight said, sitting up, reaching out to feel Dawson’s hand. Did it feel a bit cooler?
“What’s going on with you two?” Erin asked bluntly. “Alvin obviously knows something but he’s not telling me shit.”
“Maybe he thinks it’s none of your business,” Hank told her.
“Bull.” Erin said. “What’s going on, Sarge?”
Hank looked at Antonio’s sleeping face then back at the girl who he considered his daughter, coming to a decision, hoping that Antonio would agree with it.
“What can I say - he’s been growing on me. And all of us in the unit. We’re …”
Knowing that Erin could fill in the blank.
They were all basically alone, except for the Intelligence team.
He took Erin’s silence for understanding, because she left soon after, handing off another cup of fancy coffee to him. Going so far as to press a kiss to Antonio’s hair, something only she could get away with.
“It’s good that he’s got you, you know?” Erin said.
He only hummed, turning back to his phone as she left the room. Once it was safe, he approached the bed, looking down at Dawson’s sweaty tired face.
“You’d better wake up soon,” he rumbled, “There are a lot of people who are waiting to see those brown eyes of yours.”
Whether he heard the words of not, Antonio slept on, but the next morning, the fever broke.
—————————————
His body felt both heavy and weightless at the same time. The light hurt when he opened his eyes, brightness on white walls making him wince. He went to cover his eyes and found he couldn’t move his hands. That’s when he did open his eyes, single-mindedly trying to move his hands and finding that he couldn’t — it was the same with his feet. As he struggled, his mind trying to catch up with his new predicament, he heard a fast beeping in the background and then familiar hands were on his shoulders, trying to push him back down.
He continued to struggle until the voice broke through and he looked up to see Hank.
Antonio stopped struggling, trusting that, even though he was restrained, Hank would take care of him — Hank made everything better. Always. So he let his boss (his friends) help him lay back down, realizing that he had an oxygen mask on and the loud beeping he’d heard was coming from a heart monitor by the bed. Hank answered his silent question once he realized Antonio was aware of his surroundings.
“You’ve been here for a week — you got pneumonia.”
Antonio tried to remember what he’d been doing before he was here. He’d been chasing someone …
“You tackled a perp into the river,” Hank told him, grinning his signature smirk at Antonio’s raised eyebrows, as if to say, Who me? “You gave Halstead a run for his money. You know stunts are his area of expertise.”
Now that he knew the why’s, Antonio turned to his current predicament, tugging on the soft hospital restraints to get Hank’s attention.
“You had a really high fever,” Hank told him, reaching down to hold Antonio’s hand. “Probably don’t remember but the perp stabbed you. Doc didn’t want you ripping out any more of your stitches.”
Antonio tugged at the restraints again, fiercer this time. Hank took the hint, quickly working at the straps, undoing them. Rubbing at his wrists on reflex, Antonio reached up for his oxygen mask, pulling it down.
“Wa’er?”
With surprising gentleness, Voight helped him drink, helping him lay his head back down again, Antonio feeling the sluggishness of his body, knowing the fever had taken its toll on his energy reserves.
“But …” He squints up at his sergeant. “We got the guy?”
“We got the guy.” Voight assures him. “The kids’ll be by in a bit after shift.”
“Look at you,” Dawson grins, molasses slow, still on medication. “All domesticated.”
Snorting, Hank leaned closer to the bed, running his fingers through Antonio’s hair again, the latino relaxing into the feeling. “Let’s just keep that our secret - a’right?”
“Sure,” Antonio said. “Wouldn’t wanna ruin your street cred.”
There were times when Dawson had questioned his position on the team, when he had questioned Voight’s work ethic and honesty. Sometimes he’d wondered if he’d be better off back in Vice. Why did he stay? But watching Hanks face light up with a genuine laugh, Antonio knew why. It was because he’d become Hanks friend. And Hank the friend was different from Voight the sergeant. He was a caring man and he’d tried to be a good father (Antonio knew a lot about mistakes when it came to his own children) and he had put in at least part of his time.
Watching Voight’s face as he gave a genuine laugh, Antonio knew he wouldn’t have Voight any other way, because the knuckle duster was growing on him. He drifted off to sleep knowing there wasn’t any room in the city safer than the one he was in, under Voight’s watch.
And Hank sat, watching him sleep, secure in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be losing yet another friend to the rabid city he knew and loved.