A/N: Post ep.5x15, "Man Down." Not beta'd. Still on vacation, typing quickly, again. Lo siento. Read and Review, as always!
This story is based on a song by Matthew West called, "The Motions." He is a Christian artist, but much of his music crosses over into the secular realm. Partial lyrics included.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
This might hurt, it's not safe
But I know that I've gotta make a change
I don't care if I break,
At least I'll be feeling something
'Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of life
I don't wanna go through the motions
I don't wanna go one more day
Without Your all consuming passion inside of me
I don't wanna spend my whole life asking,
"What if I had given everything,
Instead of going through the motions?"
No regrets, not this time
I'm gonna let my heart defeat my mind
Let Your love make me whole
I think I'm finally feeling something
'Cause just okay is not enough
Help me fight through the nothingness of this life
Calleigh came in the night, mostly. The rest of the world seemed like a blur, except for her. Horatio, Alexx, nurse, silence. Wolfe, nurse, and more silence, more silence, all but the beeping of the countless monitors attached to his broken body. Natalia, Horatio, nurse, silence. Then Calleigh.
Always Calleigh. She stayed all night sometimes, perched in the chair by his bed like a sentinel keeping guard over a precious treasure. He couldn't know it, but that's exactly how she felt.
The first time she visited, Cal slipped a crucifix in his hand. It remained clenched there tightly until the day he was discharged, a week later. Now it hung around his neck, occasionally stuck to his skin in the Miami heat.
Eric faintly remembered talking to her that first day. He woke up to the sound of her voice and the first thing he registered was her bright golden hair. Then her eyes, her lips, rosy cheeks. Black shirt—his favorite black shirt. She looked incredible, and he felt like crap.
The main thing he recalled from that conversation was Mari. He found out later that Marisol was gone, but he couldn't remember losing her. He couldn't remember anything from the last six months, and he was terrified. After that, he talked to no one. Calleigh stayed with him through it all.
Tomorrow would be his first day back at work, and Cal had spent the weekend helping him get ready. When she came over earlier that afternoon, she brought an entire notebook of material she'd typed up just for him, full of cheat sheets and lists of protocol and diagrams to help him ease back into his normal routine. She helped him repack his kit, they went over everything in it, she made him recite orders of procedure and witness questioning and on and on. With the exception of one or two stumbles, he nailed everything.
"Eric, I think you're ready to go," Calleigh said, her face lit with pleasure. "You remember this stuff better than Wolfe does without a bullet in his head."
Eric grinned, albeit tiredly. "Well, you know…"
"You promise to tell me if you start to slip?" she asked, pinning him with a glare that said she meant business.
"I promise, Cal."
Calleigh took a long, hard look at her best friend. She tossed her stack of papers onto the coffee table and closed the space between them on the couch. "Something is bothering you. Are you nervous about tomorrow? Because you don't have to come back, yet, not if you don't want to."
Eric remained quiet for a minute. The thoughts churning in his mind had been his constant companions since he regained consciousness in the hospital three weeks ago. Reaching over to Calleigh, he took her small hand in his and examined it gently, tracing the veins in her wrist, the lines on her palm, reveling in the softness of the skin between her slender fingers. She wore an antique pearl ring on one finger, and Eric turned it over and over, thinking.
"It's not work," he said finally.
Calleigh waited patiently for him to continue, enjoying the sensation of his hand on hers and thanking God that he was alive right now for her to feel it.
"You know," Eric started slowly, still staring at their hands, marveling at the way they fit together, "when I was in the hospital, at first all I could hear were the beeps. The beeps…beeps…beeps." He shut his eyes tight against the memory as he painfully repeated the last words. "All I wanted was for it to stop."
Despite her best efforts, Calleigh's eyes were slowly beginning to water, the lump growing in her throat. She'd watched Eric struggle for his life. Watched as he tried to surrender to the peace and calm and fearlessness of death. She was also with him the day he started to fight back. The day he truly opened his eyes and focused them on her, clear for the first time since his shooting. Full of pain, sadness, but clear and steadfast with resolve.
"What changed your mind?" she asked, voice just above a whisper.
Eric's gaze travelled to Calleigh's porcelain face and locked on her deep green eyes, the color of the sea. "You did."
"What?" Surprise, confusion, and a hint of pride crossed her delicate features.
He nodded. "I only remember bits and pieces after… after," he explained. "Except you. I remember every word, every touch, Cal. And then nothing. Nothing but the goddamn beeps."
Calleigh took a deep breath and let it out with a quiet, 'hmm.' Eric's gaze returned to their interlocked fingers, still resting on top of Calleigh's knee.
"When you came and sat and talked to me, that's all I could think about. The beeps. My heartbeat."
He stopped talking and gave a heavy, burdened sigh. Cal gently squeezed his fingers and prodded, "What, Eric?"
"I've spent my life going through the motions, you know? Over-thinking things, planning tomorrow. Then, suddenly there I was and I didn't know if I had another tomorrow."
"Eric, that's natural. You nearly died. You're entitled to take stock of some things." The doctor had warned them that Eric might experience some depression as he recovered from the trauma to his body and his psyche. She was determined not to let that happen.
He fixed her with a startlingly honest look, one that made the hair stand up on Calleigh's arms. "I don't want to wake up one day forty years from now and ask myself what could've happened if I had given more… I don't want 'just okay,' Cal. I want…I want 'amazing.'"
"You save peoples' lives, Eric. You don't think that's something to be proud of?"
He shook his head and closed his eyes to ward off his irritation. "That's not—that's not what I meant."
Calleigh, silence, nurse, silence. Beep. Beep. Beep. The rhythm seemed engrained in his subconscious, drumming inside him, invading his thoughts and twisting his mind. Again, Calleigh waited patiently for his words to come.
"My brain wasn't working, but my heart was still beating, Calleigh. My heart was all I had left. When you were there…for once in my life, my head wasn't in the way."
Calleigh was sitting next to Eric with one foot tucked under her. She turned her body to face him and sit Indian-style, her knees against his thigh. She played with his academy ring and cocked her head to the side, considering him closely.
"You're saying," she said slowly and carefully, "you want…'amazing'… with me."
Eric bit his lip and met her eyes. "That's what I'm saying."
"And before you were shot?" Calleigh needed to know this wasn't just some snap decision on his part. Near-death experiences had a way of doing that to people. She'd spent practically every day with Eric over the last three weeks, and she didn't want him to mistake his gratitude for something more.
Eric understood Calleigh's hesitation, why she needed an answer to that question. "Before I got shot," he said clearly and confidently, "I was scared."
Calleigh's eyes darted back down to their hands, and a small quaver sounded in her voice. "You're not scared now?"
Eric smiled his beautiful, toothy Delko smile. "Petrified."
She laughed at his brutal honesty, but her laughter quickly faded into a soft, thoughtful grin. "Well, that makes two of us, then."
Somewhere above her, Calleigh felt the air rush out of Eric's lungs and gently ruffle her hair. A second later, his head dropped down to rest on hers.
"Don't you think we could be amazing, Cal?" he murmured into her hair, longing and hope shaping and guiding his words.
Almost in slow motion, Calleigh withdrew one of her hands from the warmth of Eric's and brought it to his chin. Her fingers tugged softly until his face was mere inches from hers and he had no choice but to look her straight in the eye. She was close enough to him that her warm breath played against his lips.
"Yeah, I do," she whispered. Then she closed the gap between them.
Calleigh's kiss was full and sweet, overflowing with tentative desire and the relief of letting go, at least a little bit. Eric's hand snaked to the small of her back to pull her closer, and hers trailed from his jaw to the back of his neck, trying to do the same.
They parted for air, only for Eric to recapture Calleigh's lips hungrily. His other hand had ghosted up to frame her face and he let his thumb tug ever-so-softly on her chin. She gave in completely, hugging him tighter as their mouths fused, explored. They moved deliberately, took their time, gradually chased away boundaries and hesitations. They savored tastes and sighs and the way they melded together effortlessly.
"Hm-hm," Calleigh breathlessly cleared her throat when Eric pulled away the second time. Her eyes were cloudy with desire. "No kidding."
Eric managed a chuckle, even though his lungs also craved air. "Yeah." He carefully kissed the inside corner of her eye, then her cheek. "Cal," he said seriously, "I know this will be different. And it may seem out of the blue, but it's not. I've thought about you, you and me, for a while."
"I get it Eric," she smiled. "It's not like I never considered this, you know? You're right, it will be different. We can handle it."
"We," Eric repeated. His voice had dipped an octave, and the gravel in its tone sent a flutter through Calleigh.
She leaned in and her lips brushed agonizingly over Eric's. "Yeah, we," she whispered.
A shiver ran down his spine. "I like the sound of th—"
His words became lost in the warm depths of Calleigh's mouth as he crashed into her again. Their tongues dueled, danced. When Cal sighed against him, Eric could hold back no longer and pressed her backward onto the couch. He handled her like a cherished kind of keepsake.
Eric couldn't ignore the sharp pain that shot up his leg when he moved, or keep his breath from hitching in surprise. Calleigh couldn't ignore the groan that emerged unwillingly from his chest. She pushed him back an inch and locked her eyes on his, witnessing the fleeting look of defiance there. He was fighting the pain and clearly not winning.
"You're not ready for this, Eric," she told him, compassion filling her features.
He let out a deep, frustrated breath and shifted to lie on his side between Calleigh and the cushions along the back of the couch. From that position, he could survey his best friend from head to toe, and, as his hand ventured from her neck to caress her hip, he did just that. Slowly, reverently, silently. A quiet fire burned in his eyes that forced a blush to Calleigh's cheeks.
"When your leg heals," she murmured, placing a kiss on his pulse point and eliciting another groan from the man who was currently turning her brain to mush with his curious touch.
"I don't need my damn leg to kiss you," Eric countered stubbornly, causing Calleigh to laugh.
"No, you don't," she uttered with mischief in her eyes. She stole another kiss, and another. Laughter, sighs, brief words of affirmation—they were all that filled the air for the rest of the night. A quick promise that Calleigh would stay. A flip of a light switch. The exhilarating newness of words whispered in the dark, words that grew quieter as they gave in to sleep. Eric succumbed last, dreading and listening and waiting for something that never came, something that would never come again.
Calleigh stayed every night, mostly. The rest of the world seemed like a blur, except for her. Calleigh, and silence, silence. All but the sound of her breathing, the steady beat of her heart. The quiet thumps…thumps…thumps engrained themselves in Eric's subconscious, drumming inside him, invading his thoughts and twisting his mind.
Always, Calleigh.