What if there was something nobody knew that led Ryan to the Crime lab?
Ryan Wolfe walked into his downtown condo and sank down on his couch. He had finally closed his case after pulling a triple shift to do so. He felt physically and emotionally exhausted. He loved working at the crime lab, but it had the ability to take its toll. Ryan loved being a cop, had always wanted to be a cop, but being a criminalist was a little different. When he was a cop, he had not had to pull triples, he had not had to actually see dead bodies, or Alex boiling people's heads. When Ryan had become a cop, he had not even thought of being a CSI, but that was all before.
Before, with that word Ryan looks over at the picture on the mantle. They were so happy back then. Nobody knew about them, but that was how they wanted it. They were able to live in their own little perfect world. Still nobody knows, nobody even suspects, and Ryan doesn't plan to tell them. He respects his late lover's right to privacy.
He was the reason that Ryan joined CSI. Horatio and the team did not know it, but he had always been proud of his work. He would tell Ryan about the science behind it, would occasionally urge Ryan to come join him at the lab, but he always excused the offer away, claiming it would be too hard to work together and still hide their relationship.
When he and his partner got a radio call that day about an officer involved shooting at a jewelry store he had no idea what he would be walking into. It's extremely hard to lose someone that you love, the most important person in your life, and it's made even harder when you don't have any friends who know what he meant to you and can be there.
He felt useless that he couldn't do anything to change what happened. He did feel though, that there was something he could do to make sure that it wasn't all in vain. Nobody knows it, but that's why he decided to join the CSI team. He felt that if he could do a good job, make him proud, then at least he would be doing something.
To mentally exhausted to think much more Ryan stood up, to drag his tired body to bed. On his way, he stopped at the mantle to look again at the picture. He touched the photograph traced the features of his lover. As a single tear fell from his eye Ryan looked up and whispered,
"I hope you're proud of me Timmy."