The Evening Dependability
…
It was all part of Eric's routine, and he rarely varied. EricCalleigh.
…
Eric Delko was a routine man. He wasn't obsessive, or needy for control, but he was methodological- he had a system for working scenes, a particular order he always followed in processing evidence. He always began in the same manner, and nearly always finished the same way, as well. Routines on the clock, routines off the clock as well.
Now, in the last few weeks, of course, his routines had all changed. Things with Calleigh had changed, his life had changed. It had surprised him, but it shouldn't have. They had rediscovered each other, but not really. After the trauma of his injury almost five years ago, and the bleak prognosis of the first few days, he suspected they realized just how much they relied on each other.
He'd laugh, tell her he loved her all along, reassure her that he was going to be fine, he was fine, but then he'd see the tears well in her eyes, and he'd remember how, for twenty minutes, she thought he had left her all alone.
Making his way to the bathroom, Eric turned on the tap, spilling water over his toothbrush. When he was a child, he brushed his teeth in the kitchen, any or all of the Delko girls always battled out bathroom time, hogging hot water and turning the air in the tiny room into carbon dioxide much too quickly for his taste. As a child, he'd lean against the cabinets, too small to hop onto the counter, but as a grown-up, he easily slid up there, sitting next to the sink, surveying the remnants of the tornado that had assaulted the room.
Hanging on the wall, beside the medicine cabinet, a framed photo of one of the busier streets in Havana, an old man drinking coffee at an outdoor café, a propaganda poster for Castro, a little girl skipping down the cobblestone street, pigtails waving in the breeze. Scanning the room, his gaze passed over numerous rubber ducks and foam letters, still clinging to the ceramic tiles of the wall bordering the tub, where his son had left them.
Eric hopped off the counter, leaning against the enclosure, inspecting the photograph hanging above the tub- a shot of Bourbon Street, taken in the years that the rest of the country appreciated the jazz that had been born along its length. He turned, spitting into the sink before resuming his scrubbing, pushing back the shower curtain to reveal a menagerie of knocked over bottles of shampoo and body wash, casualties of whatever bath time play had been conducted. From the distinct sounds of sudsy splashes and the little-boy giggles he had heard that evening, he assumed it was more playing than washing. He bent, righting each item to its standing posture, returning it to its place in a handful of seconds, before turning back to the sink and rinsing his toothbrush, dropping it in the holder beside hers.
As he moved quietly from the bathroom in the back of their apartment, to the front door, checking the lock, and each window, he thought briefly of his father, going through an identical set of motions, securing the house for his family, sleeping easier. When he was a child, his father locked out the America that grew in Miami after dark, settling instead for the precarious preservation of whatever Cuba they could remember. Singing with his mother songs Castro banned from the airwaves, responding to his father in Russian, doing his homework in English by the dim, yellow light of the fifty watt bulb affixed to the bulb in the hall.
Now, he locked to doors and checked the windows not because Miami was something foreign, but because he knew, intimately, what brewed out there below the law. His father locked Miami out because it was the unknown… the stranger in their family. Eric locked it out for its familiarity, and its heavy presence in their lives. As he moved through their apartment, he shut off lights as well, something his father would do, and he would echo- but really, it was just to save money on the electricity bill.
He then made his way to Anthony's room, lean against the doorway silently, watching Calleigh kiss his son goodnight, before following her to their bedroom, leaving their door open a few inches, just in case. Eric double check the clothes they had both set out, in the event the call from Horatio came for either one of them, in the dead of the night, listening attentively to Calleigh pull back the covers and climb into bed. Next he moved to their kits, opening and closing his own, double checking that he had restocked the swabs. He could feel her gaze on his shoulders, and he smirked, shucking the shirt and quickly unbuckling his belt, dropping the pants he had worn to work.
Sitting on the edge of their bed, Eric checked his cell phone, making sure the ring was set to be loud enough to wake him, but not the sleeping baby, or his wife. His smile turned soft; it usually did when she reached out for him from the blankets. He nearly always had trouble sleeping without her these days- since their quiet romance and equally quiet wedding they had grown accustomed to curling up to each other every night.
The last bit of Eric Delko's routine evolved from living with Calleigh, specifically. He didn't look at her, feeling her eyes on him with a studious intensity that he knew had origins in their collective history. He slid open the drawer of his bedside table, extracting his department issue firearm. He pulled out the magazine and emptied it, one bullet at a time, into his hand, counting and recounting the rounds before reloading and setting the cartridge on the little table, beside the dimmed lamp. He unlocked the safety, pulling off the slide in a detached, mechanical manner. Eric reached into the drawer again, pulling out a cloth, and thoroughly wiped down his piece, cleaning out the dirt and debris that may have taken up residence in the last twenty-four hours.
She watched him, he knew; resting easier knowing that he went into each shift with a clean firearm. She was, after all, the bullet girl. They did, after all, bury a colleague because of dirt in a gun. He quickly reassembled it and passed it to her without argument- he rested easier when she inspected it. Calleigh leaned up on her elbow, his gun a foreground to the soft swell of her chest, clothed with a hint of suggestion in a thin camisole, the faded light from the lamp making her skin darken a shade against the white of their sheets, her shock of blonde glittering as she moved. After several moments, she handed it to him with her slight half smile of approval, laying back against the mattress, waiting for him to come to bed. This particular set of motions was sacred; it was a method of keeping Tim with them. Neither Eric nor Calleigh had completely recovered, even after nearly a decade.
It was all part of Eric's routine, and he rarely varied.
He laid back into the pillows, instantly rolling over on to his side and lazily crashing his lips into hers, pulling her slight frame against his. He groaned with contentment, feeling her leg wrap securely around his hip; her bare skin burning his side, even through the thin, worn material of his tank top. He curled into her, laying his head in the crook of her shoulder, sighing deeply, relaxing at her touch. Calleigh wrapped her arms around him affectionately; pressing a kiss to his forehead before closing her eyes. He reveled in the simplicity of his closeness to her- it had been little over a month since the birth of their daughter, and Eric had been anxious, in the later months of her pregnancy, to transition back to invading her sleeping space.
Grace made a faint gurgling noise from her bassinet, causing Calleigh to untangle herself from Eric's grasp and cast a halfway sleepy, halfway concerned gaze at the cozy little cocoon of blankets mere feet from her side of their bed. After a few silent moments, he pulled her back, his fingers able to convince her that the baby was fine. Their second child had been carefully planned, unlike their first, and Eric felt confident in their ability to tackle the challenges of infancy that lay ahead.
His wife curled back into him, interrupting his thoughts, laying a gentle kiss along the underside of his jaw. Eric caught her mid-kiss, rolling her on her back and looming over her, throwing her an adoring smile before kissing her again, smirking at her light chuckle, the amusement rumbling though his chest with familiarity. Calleigh arched into him, resting her knee against his hip. He relaxed fully, straddling her other leg, pillowing his head against the thin material of her camisole, the front of his body flush with the side of hers.
It soothed him, her rhythmic, even breathing. More often than not, there was a steady rush of adrenaline that pulsed through him during the daylight hours. He felt it almost painfully in the thrill of evidence and the culminating hunt for the bad guy. His muscles were raw at the end of each shift, weary from the hours he had pulled for the county. It differed than the doses he felt since beginning a family. At home, the surges squeezed his heart, spending precious time with his children, their children, seeing a little of himself and his wife in each of them. He hugged Calleigh instinctively, running a hand along the length of her arm, pressing a lazy kiss to her fingers when she reached to sift her hand through his hair.
Domestication hit him swiftly; it had surprised him how easily it had been to transition from what he had been before to what he had become since Calleigh had entered all of his life. He lay there, blankets draped aimlessly across his back, covering most of his body and the lower half of hers, his attention focused on the gentle rise and fall of her chest against him, the heat of her body warming him, putting his active mind to ease. She squirmed beneath him; running slender fingers along the muscles in his back, curving an errant leg around his thigh, rolling over onto her side to face him. He kissed her sleepily, pulling her to him closer, snuggling into the crook of her neck again. She had always accepted his need for contact, understood his reliance on tangibility. He had never wanted to depend on anyone- prior to being nearly killed, he had assumed their trust was casual, professional, even, but deep-rooted. He had regarded her handful of romantic interests with a steely temperament, feeling the constrictions in his chest years before he recognized them as the primal burn of possessiveness. Eric bit his lip, turning a throaty moan into a sigh as her fingers wove into the hair at the base of his neck. He treasured their moments near sleep each night, thankful they had found each other, despite the fact they had always had each other.
Their jobs had made them friends, began the trust they had built up. Years later trust had ignited their friendship, creating loyalty that spilled over into the brand of love that had constructed their life, made their family. His wife's familiar timbre broke his thoughts.
"Thinkin' too loud." Her accent was thick in his ear, and husky from sleep. He smiled, kissing her again before letting her pull him close and settling down in their bedding. Routine complete, Eric finally fell asleep.