Title: Little Brothers

Rating: Varies from PG to high PG-13/R-ish. Warnings will be posted before any chapters with mature content.

Disclaimer: CSI: Miami and all characters and situations thereof are the property of CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer, et al. No copyright infringement or personal profit is intended.

Info: This is a series of one-shots; each chapter is self-contained and details a day (or two) in the childhood and young adulthood of Horatio and Raymond Caine. A few notes before we begin:

1) I don't recall anyone ever saying what the age difference is between Horatio and Ray, so I have them four years apart. This is as much an issue of narrative convenience as anything else; if there's a huge age gap between them, then they wouldn't get nearly as much of a chance to interact.
2) I'll note the brother's ages before each chapter begins, since that's easier than try to work a discussion of their ages into each story.
3) For obvious reasons, some details of this story, such as the elder Caine's first names, where exactly they live, the boys' friends and hobbies, the precise order in which things happened, etc., must come from my own mind and may not turn out to be precisely canonical. Also, this fic's timeline was stamped down and finalized in the latter days of Season 5, with only a minor adjustment made for very early Season 6 canon; all plot developments after that will not be incorporated. Thus, this fic is slightly AU.
5) These aren't in chronological order.

After that far-too-long Author's Note, on with the show!

Chapter 1: Names

Horatio: 11

Ray: 7

"Mom?" Horatio Caine walked into the door, unceremoniously dropped his bookbag, and sat down at the kitchen table.

"Hmm?" Mom didn't look up from washing her dishes.

"How old do I have to be to get my name changed?"

She stopped in mid-scrub. "Eighteen, I think," she said. "Why? What's wrong with your name?"

"I don't like it." He slumped forward onto the table and stared at the wall. Mom put down the pan she was scrubbing, dried off her hands, and sat down next to her son. He continued, "It's too long. And it just sounds weird. And nobody else is named that."

"Well, why would you want the same name as everyone else?" She asked. "How many kids do you know named…John? Or Andrew? Or Dan?"

"…a lot," Horatio replied, knowing where this conversation was going.

"But you're the only Horatio, isn't that right?"

"Yeah." But that was the problem.

Mom smiled, seeing the dejection in her son's face. "It may not seem like it now," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "but when you're a little older, you might appreciate not being mistaken for anyone else." She got up and went back to her scrubbing. Horatio didn't move.

"Besides, 'Horatio' is a beautiful name," she continued. "It's dignified. It's a name for Shakespearean characters, and for naval heroes, and for the greatest novelist who ever put words to paper…"

He tuned her out, absentmindedly biting on his fingernails. He'd heard this before, and he really didn't care if 'Horatio' was a heroic or dignified or Shakespearean name. The fact remained that it was cumbersome and awkward and didn't fit him right, like a hand-me-down sweater.

Besides, since when was "Shakespearean" a good thing in a name? Nobody named their kids Hamlet.

"Stop biting your nails, dear." Mom's voice cut through his thoughts. She hadn't looked up.

Giving up, Horatio picked up his bookbag again and retreated to his room. Ray wasn't home yet; Dad wouldn't be back till late; he had a moment, at least, to himself. He collapsed on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Maybe it was just a name you needed to grow into. There were plenty of names you grew out of; no reason it shouldn't work the other way around.

He picked up his book off the floor, opened it to the bookmark, and started to read. And that normally would have been enough to keep him occupied for the next hour or three.

But after about a half-hour, he put the book back down. Something was different today; the quiet of his room was not calming but suffocating. His oasis felt more like a prison cell.

Maybe he'd spent a few too many days in here.

Taking the book and the bookmark with him, Horatio headed back to the kitchen and returned to his place at the table. Mom was still there; she'd almost finished with the dishes by now.

"You still mad?" She said after a while.

"About what?" He looked up from the book.

"I thought you were upset with me." She put the last of the dishes back in the cabinet and shut the door. "After you went stomping off to your room like that..."

"I wasn't stomping."

"If you say so." She turned to leave, and Horatio noticed a bruise on her wrist that he hadn't seen before.

"What happened?" he asked, before she could leave.

"Hm?"

"Your wrist. What happened to it?"

"Oh." She seemed taken by surprise. She smiled nervously, looked away, rubbed at the purple-and-black mark. "I slammed the door on my own hand, if you'd believe it."

He didn't. And he was about to ask a second time when he saw the look on her face.

The wan smile was still in place, but it might as well have been taped on – it was too thin and too weak to conceal the worry underneath. And the light was suddenly gone from her eyes; she looked tired, too tired to argue, too tired to explain. She very clearly did not want to talk about it.

He went back to his book, but all he could think about was that face.