A/N: Set right after "Stand Your Ground." My first fanfic, not beta'd. Constructive criticism much appreciated!
Disclaimer: I do not own CSI: Miami or any of its characters.
"After all these years, after everything that we've been through, Eric, you and I both have a hard time letting people in," she said slowly.
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"Okay, but that doesn't explain why her skin was found underneath the victim's fingernails."
"Actually, Ryan, it could. Eric, bring the security footage up again."
Calleigh, Ryan, and Eric sat in the A/V lab hammering out theories in the Abby Jensen murder, coming up with nothing and becoming more frustrated by the moment. Horatio had called all of them in at four o'clock this morning to handle the case, and they had been working non-stop for fifteen hours trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together.
Eric cued up the hotel's security footage. "There. Right there, see? Lucas Thompson and Emma Waters enter the front doors at 2:16 AM. Fast forward, Eric. And there—at 3:03 AM Emma exits alone. Her story checks out."
That meant their prime suspect was Lucas Thompson, who unfortunately was scheduled to board a plane to South Asia in less than three hours. Eric chimed in, "We've gotta find a way to search his SUV. He's had a radio car on him all day, and he had no time to ditch the murder weapon earlier. It's got to still be there."
"You're right," Calleigh sighed, "But there's no way we're going to get a warrant in time."
"Delko, what about that girl you were seeing in the prosecutor's office—what's her face? Lisa? Leanne?"
Eric paused uncomfortably before he shifted his weight and briefly looked up at Ryan. "Yeah, um, not a good idea."
Calleigh wished she could have been anywhere but driving in the Hummer with Eric this afternoon when Lydia called…
"Delko." Eric turned down the radio in the vehicle so he could hear the person on the other end of the line. Unfortunately, that meant that Calleigh could also hear the voice coming over the phone.
"Eric, hi it's Lydia. Listen, I know we parted on a bad note last night. I thought we could grab drinks after work and smooth things over." Her voice was like silk. The confidence of her tone let Calleigh know that she didn't expect a negative answer from Eric.
Calleigh peeked a glance at Eric's face, surprised to see anger there. Now, that was different. "Lydia I told you last night, it's over." Whoa, what was going on? She hadn't seen Eric react that strongly to anything in a long time. Calleigh wondered if this Lydia woman had done something to hurt Eric. Cheated, maybe?
"Eric, don't be like that. I just want to understand why this is so important to you, so important that you would end things out of the blue."
He sighed in frustration. He didn't want to have this conversation, especially not with Calleigh in the car. "I told you, it's personal."
"And we've been dating for almost two months now. I think I deserve some kind of explanation for why you behaved the way you did. I think we could really have something, but obviously you don't."
"Lydia… I just—no, I don't. I'm sorry."
Calleigh heard an exasperated huff come over the speaker. "You know what, you should be. Goodbye, Eric." Click.
Eric clapped his phone shut and threw it at the dashboard in front of him. It clattered loudly to the floorboard where he ignored it. The silence in the Hummer was almost deafening before Calleigh pulled into the driveway of the witness they were headed to interview. She placed a gentle hand over his forearm to stop him before he could get out of the car. "Eric—if you need to talk, you know where to find me," she offered him a small smile, which he returned.
"I know. Thanks, Cal." Back to business…
Ryan's short laugh broke Calleigh out of her reverie. "What, no joy? You two were going for like six weeks! That must be some sort of Delko record."
Eric's head snapped up, his entire body suddenly rigid. Calleigh's eyes also jumped to Ryan's, face hard. "What the hell is that supposed to mean, huh?" Eric spat. Ryan had an uncanny ability to get under his skin. What right did Wolfe have to comment on any part of his life?
Ryan took a step back. He had obviously struck a chord, and he tried to backpedal, "No, I mean, it's just that… that's not really your…style, is it?"
"Not my style?" Eric quickly tore off his rubber gloves and threw them roughly into the trash can, pointing a finger at Ryan as he headed past him toward the door. "Mind your own damn business, Wolfe, okay?" And he was gone.
Ryan looked to Calleigh with a dumbfounded expression on his face. "What did I do?"
Calleigh watched Eric leave, her irritation from the long day and sympathy for Eric winning out over any desire to scold Ryan gently. She stripped off her own gloves as she responded, "Seriously, Ryan? Do you have any idea how insensitive that was?"
Ryan's face became even more incredulous. "Insensitive? It's Eric! Is it supposed to be some kind of lab secret that he loves women?"
"God, Ryan," Calleigh forced out. "You really don't know anything."
"That's not fair, Calleigh. I'm not saying he's a womanizer, by any means. Exactly the opposite. But you know as well as I do that Eric's not the kind of guy to go on more than a couple dates with a woman."
"No, I don't know that, Ryan. And neither do you! You call yourself perceptive? If you really knew Eric you'd realize that he's not the player everyone thinks he is." Calleigh quelled Ryan's derisive laugh with a nasty glare.
"Eric's the forever guy. The man that will settle down with one woman, raise a house full of children and grand-children, die lying next to the love of his life sixty years from now."
"I just don't see it." Ryan would have scoffed out-right but Calleigh was still shooting him daggers.
"You wouldn't, would you? Like Eric said, just mind your own damn business." With that, Calleigh turned on her heel and stalked out of the A/V lab, leaving Ryan behind, more than a little confused at the can of worms he had inadvertently opened.
Two hours later, Calleigh watched as Eric and Horatio brought in Lucas Thompson wearing handcuffs. Ryan called in a favor to patrol and managed to have Thompson pulled over for an obscure moving violation. Tripp was conveniently waiting in the wings to search the car on probable cause. One bloody knife later, and they had their killer. Ryan and Eric had barely exchanged three words after the scene in the lab.
Twenty minutes in interrogation yielded the team a confession. Case closed. Finally. Calleigh finished shuffling the papers on her desk into neat piles, locked her file cabinet and entered the hallway. She peered into all the labs, but didn't see Eric anywhere. Next, she tried the break room on the way downstairs to the locker room. No luck.
When she turned the corner into the locker room, she sighted the man she was looking for, sitting on the bench in front of his open locker, head in hands. That couldn't be good. "Hey," she called softly after a minute of watching his unmoving figure.
Eric jumped slightly at Calleigh's gentle greeting. "Hey," he answered without smiling and without meeting her eyes.
Calleigh stepped around the bench, moving to sit next to her best friend. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if they were back to that place in their friendship where he wouldn't mind a little invasion of space. She decided to risk it, laying her left hand lightly on the top of his thigh. He didn't pull away.
"Eric," she started. "Talk to me." He still did not move away; if anything, he leaned closer toward her. Calleigh sensed defeat in his demeanor, although he had yet to say anything. She could wait.
Several minutes later, he let out a deep breath. Calleigh obviously didn't intend to go anywhere. The thought was comforting; Eric smiled inwardly, intensely grateful for the trust he shared with Calleigh.
"I shouldn't have gone off on Wolfe like that," Eric started.
"Yeah, you should." Eric wasn't expecting that, and he turned his head slightly to make eye contact with Calleigh for the first time since she entered the locker room. She was dead serious. "What he said was completely out of line." Count on Calleigh to understand.
"He didn't say anything that everyone else isn't thinking," Eric lamented.
"And since when do you care what everyone else is thinking, Delko?" Her use of his last name forced a grin onto Eric's face. His grin faded, though, as he muttered something indecipherable and looked down.
"What?" Calleigh asked.
"I said, I care about what you think," his eyes still trained on his hands, elbows on his knees.
"Eric," she moved a little closer to him on the bench. What was she supposed to say? Eric's record in the love department certainly wasn't clean, Calleigh knew that. But she also knew him, she knew that he held back, that he didn't trust easily. She knew the reasons why.
"I get it. You don't have to explain yourself to me." She stopped there, afraid of saying too much. She needed to get her point across, though, so she continued, "The things we've been through… you can't go through those things and not… they change you."
God she was being so eloquent. Deep breath, try again. "Other people wouldn't understand. Eric, I know you better than anyone. Don't ever think I don't see you for anything but what you really are."
Eric's eyes brimmed with unshed tears at her definitive statement. He dropped his head into his hands again and let out a shaky breath. Calleigh felt him tremble next to her and moved impossibly closer, running her hand to stroke his back and placing the other on his knee. They stayed that way for a while before Eric spoke. "The thing with Lydia…" he couldn't form the words into coherent sentences.
"You don't have to tell me anything, Eric."
"Yes, yes I do. You heard that phone call today, and I just—I need to get this out."
"Okay."
"Lydia. I, um, I broke things off with her last night." He dared a brief glance at Calleigh's face. She wasn't surprised at the revelation, which told him he was right in guessing that she could hear the entire conversation.
Again, he had trouble forming the sentences. A long lost memory surfaced in Eric's mind and caused him to laugh. He looked up at Calleigh's bemused expression. "Sorry," he laughed. "It's just that I was thinking of Speed and his damn rules." Calleigh smiled. "Rule number nine."
"Don't discuss your sex life with Calleigh?" Now she was really confused, which made Eric laugh even harder. Speed had formulated that particular rule after Calleigh walked in on a very awkward debrief of Eric's date the night before. In her bold Southern way, Calleigh had no problem jumping right into the conversation, but Speed vehemently objected, saying that it was like talking about sex with his sister; he certainly didn't need to know the steamier details of her life.
Before she knew it, the memory had Calleigh laughing, too. "Okay, do I even want to know?"
Their laughter subsided as Eric considered her for a moment. "No it's not that bad," he chuckled again, then grew serious. "Last night, we had drinks and I went over to her place. We were—we were kissing, and she—"
Okay, so maybe this was a little awkward, and definitely a lot harder than he thought. How could he explain this to Calleigh without her taking it the wrong way? Was there a wrong way? His hand came up to finger the chain hanging just inside the neck of his collared shirt. Calleigh's eyes followed the motion.
Quickly Eric sat up and reached with both hands to loop the silver chain over his head, holding the pendant out for Calleigh to see. She sat staring at the dainty crucifix in his hand, unable to say anything. She recognized the delicate cross instantly, and a flood of happy and sad memories threatened to inundate her. Her fifth birthday, countless Easter Sundays, dancing with her dad on the Fourth of July. One scene stood out among the rest: Eric lying motionless in a hospital bed, his head wrapped tight with gauze, monitors beeping. She shuddered at the thought and pushed it aside.
"I didn't—" Calleigh paused, "I didn't know you wore it." The emotion was evident in her voice. Such a small gesture, yet it meant volumes to her. It spoke volumes to her, after months of strained relations, that Eric wore that pendant. Her pendant.
"Every day," he whispered simply. "Last night," he cleared his voice a little, trying to hide his embarrassment. "Lydia, she kissed my throat, close to the crucifix, and I… I just… I flipped. I don't know what happened. I just…"
Calleigh resumed her ministrations up and down Eric's back. "It felt wrong," she said knowingly.
"Yeah," Eric breathed. He looked at her sea-green eyes, always so penetrating. Did she understand just how wrong it felt? Eric wasn't sure even he knew the depth of what he was feeling. "All of the sudden I'm standing up and trying to find my keys and telling her things needed to end. I don't remember driving back to my house." He let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand over his shaven head before letting it fall heavily back to his knee.
Calleigh needed to process everything Eric had said. She needed to let him know that she really did understand. But there were also lines that she couldn't cross, lines that they had drawn themselves, lines that she desperately wanted to cross but that needed to be traversed very carefully.
"After all these years, after everything that we've been through, Eric, you and I both have a hard time letting people in," she said slowly. Eric's small nod encouraged her; she didn't like to talk about this stuff any more than he did.
"This is so much more than a cross, Eric," she let the chain slide through her fingers for a moment. He looked up at her, only to drown again in her eyes. "It signifies everything that we have come through. It represents all the demons we've conquered, all of our triumphs and failures. I thought I lost you that day," she concluded softly.
Eric wasn't sure if he could go there yet. Calleigh sensed his hesitation, but she knew they desperately needed to have this conversation. "We never talk about it." She added a few seconds later, "You can do it, you know. Not two minutes ago were you laughing at a memory of Speed. Eighteen months ago we couldn't even say his name out loud."
She was right, and he knew it. Suddenly he was terrified, because he did want to talk to her about his shooting, about Speed, about everything. Calleigh saw the fear etched in his eyes and slipped her hand into his, intertwining their fingers and capturing the crucifix between their palms. He fiddled with the chain while he contemplated where on earth to begin.
"Ryan may have been out of line earlier, but he wasn't wrong." Calleigh said nothing, but kept her eyes focused on their joined hands, bringing her free hand over to play with his fingers. "I wish I could take back everything that happened after Speed died."
"Eric—"
"Don't, Calleigh. Don't tell me that it's okay, because it's not. I wanted to forget. I wanted to wake up the next morning and come to work and see Tim again, just like always. You, me, and Speedle, the Three Musketeers." Calleigh laughed at that.
"Night after night, I tried to escape, but I couldn't. I lost myself, earned a seedy reputation, shut you out. I hurt you Calleigh."
"Yes, you did." Eric's heart broke just a little bit more. "But only because you didn't come to me. The thing is," Calleigh's voice cracked, "I knew you were hurting, and I didn't do anything to stop you from pushing me away."
She wasn't angry with him, Eric realized. She wasn't even hurt anymore. Somewhere along the road, Calleigh had forgiven him, probably about the same time she gave him that crucifix. The thought warmed his heart, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a sad smile.
"Not with Marisol." Another topic he hated to discuss. More pain, more heartache. "I was ready to quit, to give up, when she died. You wouldn't let me."
Calleigh pressed her lips together in thought. Something had broken in Eric; everything was on the table now. She remembered the nights she would stay over at Eric's, sitting on the bed next to him for hours, rubbing his back until he finally fell asleep, not a single word passing between them. He would call and she was there. Sometimes she even came without a call. She saw him hurting, and she needed the comfort just as much as he did.
"When Mari got sick for the second time, it changed everything for me. I threw all of myself into making her better. But it wasn't enough, I wasn't enough. In the end, none of it mattered, anyway, because the Mala Noche took her before the cancer could." He felt like his heart was bleeding, and it showed in the quiver of his voice. Calleigh brushed her thumb over the back of his hand.
"You were my rock, Cal." Her eyes drifted close of their own accord. She squeezed his hand tightly, letting his words sink in. Eric rarely said things like that, so when he did, he meant them. The raw truth of his declaration left Calleigh reeling. Hope fluttered briefly in the pit of her stomach before she shut it down. He couldn't possibly know how much those words meant to her, how much she needed to hear them, from him. She let her head fall until her forehead rested on his shoulder.
"When I got shot—when I got shot, it would have been so easy to just let go. I wanted to, everything just hurt too much." The lump in Eric's throat impeded any further speech. The warmth from Calleigh's hand in his gave him courage, though, and he pressed on. "I could hear murmured voices, muted sounds. I only remembered things in blurs. Until I heard this sweet, angelic, saving-grace of a Southern twang," he laughed through the constriction in his throat, a single tear falling to his cheek.
"Cal, I could hear you. Hear you pleading with me," the tears were falling harder now, "telling me what an asshole I'd be to go and leave you there all alone." Eric swiped at his face with his free hand and slowly became aware of the dampness growing at his shoulder. "I felt you slip your necklace into my hand, squeeze it shut. You told me to fight, to do it for you, that you needed me. All those days in the hospital, you're all I can remember. I couldn't speak, or move, or tell you that everything would be okay. And it was terrifying. But I clung to you, I fought because you told me to, even though living was so much harder than dying."
His voice had trailed to an emotional whisper, and Calleigh could no longer hold back the little sob building up in her chest. Eric shifted their position so that he could wrap his right arm around her shoulders, her head resting in the crook of his neck, left hands now joined. How had they ended up here? Having this conversation, in the middle of the MDPD locker room? Sobering as the thought was, Eric couldn't help but finish what he had started.
"When Lydia touched your cross, I felt… I felt violated, I guess. That someone on the outside could taint something so pure, something that belonged to us. Does that even make sense?"
"Perfectly," she mumbled against his collar.
Eric was drained. The effort required to just think the words, let alone utter them, left him physically and emotionally exhausted. Thankfully, Calleigh understood what he was trying to say. For the first time, she allowed herself to give way to the feelings which had slowly begun to creep up on her over the last two years, and she wrapped her arms around Eric as tightly as she possibly could. Eric was letting her know what he wanted, in his own convoluted, adorable way. He may have trouble expressing it, but Calleigh knew that he loved her. Every look, every touch practically screamed how he felt. With Jake in the picture, he was too much of a gentleman to say anything outright. Jake!
Calleigh cleared her throat and scooted a little away from Eric, just enough to see his eyes but not far enough to break their contact. "You know what? I think we should go back to my place and drown our sorrows over Mr. Chang's and a bottle of wine. Maybe two."
Eric laughed. He recognized an in when he saw one, and he wasn't about to let it go. Nevertheless, something bothered him. As they stood up to gather their things, he asked, "Drown our sorrows?"
Calleigh froze. He caught that did he? Eric stepped closer to her, mere inches separating their figures. "Yeah. It seems we both broke up with someone today." No hint of sadness in her voice, only a sense of…relief? Relief and something more. Could it be promise?
"You broke up with Jake?" Eric stood at a loss for words. This was news to him. "What happened?"
Calleigh slung her purse over her shoulder and shut her locker, turning to face Eric again. In a resolute, very un-Calleigh-like maneuver, she inched forward and took both his hands in hers, locking their fingers together and trapping his eyes with hers. Her gaze burned through Eric until he could no longer stand the distance between them. Achingly slow, he leaned down to touch her forehead with his.
"He was on the outside," she whispered.
Eric's grin could have battled the Miami skyline for brightness and won. Gently, he placed a kiss on one eyelid, then the other, before he pressed one last, feather-soft kiss to her forehead. "Let's get out of here," he whispered against the skin there. Calleigh's smile put both Eric's grin and the Miami skyline to shame. She squeezed his hands and released them so that they could finally go home, together.
On the other side of the lockers, unbeknownst to either of them, Ryan Wolfe sat in stunned silence, feeling like that can of worms had swallowed him whole. I guess I'm on the outside, too.