Title: Five Words
By: Jessica
Pairing: Eric/Calleigh
Rating: K+
Timeline: Post 8x05, "Bad Seed."
Summary: Five words were spoken, but more important than those spoken five were the unspoken three just beneath the surface.
The quiet click of the closing door echoed softly through the locker room, ushering in the inevitable sense of solitude that Calleigh had already begun to feel moments before. It brought with it a certain chill, one that hung in the air long after the initial surprise had worn off. It was a welcome chill, though, one that soothed aching joints and heated skin, and as tense as Calleigh had been for the last couple of hours, she could use all the relief she could get now.
She would never be sure how long she'd stood there, simply watching the expanse of empty space where seconds – minutes? Hours? She didn't know – before, Eric had stood in front of her. Calleigh had watched him walk away; had wrestled the growing desire to call out to him, to run to him. But she'd stood silently still, first watching his quiet retreat, and then watching the emptiness.
Her knees wobbled dangerously for she could still feel the tingle of his lips against hers, a brief kiss though it had been. Brief, yet it was enough to say everything that Eric had strayed away from lending his voice to. And it was all that remained unsaid that Calleigh lingered upon now, that kept her only partially aware of anything else, even as she regained shaky control of her motions.
Weakly she lowered herself to the bench, one hand above her wildly fluttering heart. She couldn't breathe, could barely see – Calleigh was lost in a haze of delirium, delirium that left her head spinning one way and the locker room around her spinning in just the opposite.
She felt dizzy.
But not nauseated.
It wasn't a sickening dizziness, not by any means. Calleigh felt too light for that; she felt almost as if she were floating, her entire being lost within the feelings washing over her in waves. The emotions were much too numerous to name; to even try would exhaust her. All she really knew was the overwhelming lightness she felt – it was as though she'd just woken up from one of her darkest nightmares to find that it was, in fact, just a nightmare. She felt like a massive weight had been lifted from her shoulders, and, much too weakened to deny it right now, she couldn't help but realize that that weight was in fact the fear that had plagued her for weeks now.
Calleigh Duquesne had exactly one real fear.
Not failure.
Not being alone…exactly.
For years, Calleigh had held herself back, cautious and wary in her relationships, her connections. Heartbreak was not something she responded well to, and the gripping fear of that had kept her from giving too much to something she could never be too sure about; giving too much to someone who couldn't – or wouldn't – give her the same in return. Relationships rarely had unquestionable certainty, and Calleigh Duquesne loved predictability. She craved routine, structure, and there was always just something about giving away her heart that meant sacrificing those constants as well.
She'd freely given her heart once before, only to have it shredded and crushed right before her youthful, naïve eyes. Nothing had ever hurt quite so badly before; the agony was physical as well as emotional, and a twenty-four year old Calleigh had sworn beyond all else that it would never happen again. It affected her work, her life, everything, and in a world where blonde hair and undeniable beauty already tended to leave her looked down upon in the workplace, she couldn't afford another reason for anyone to doubt her.
A year passed. And then one day, Calleigh woke up and finally forced herself to pick up the pieces. Gingerly she bandaged the shards of her still-aching broken heart and locked them away, throwing away the proverbial key. She would never be subjected to that kind of agony again.
Love might be what all desired. But to Calleigh, suddenly, love was nothing to her if it only ended in sheer, gut-wrenching agony. There was nothing about that which she ever wanted to repeat.
A life of loneliness was preferable to a lifetime of heartache.
It was the philosophy to which she'd clung so tightly, only to have it so intensely challenged by Eric Delko. The barriers she'd placed around her heart were strong enough to withstand the most powerful burst of cannonfire, and yet, all it took for Eric to break through those walls was little more than a smile. With that brilliant, knee-weakening smile, he had rendered Calleigh defenseless, leaving her heart out in the open, free for the taking.
Looking back, Eric had never really given her the chance to give him her heart – he'd stolen it before she could sufficiently guard it from his gentle hands, his strong arms. And Calleigh had spent years ignoring that; when finally she'd stopped and accepted it, she'd never regretted it.
Until recently. The entire Alexander Sharova ordeal had left her questioning everything she thought she'd known about Eric, about his supposed devotion to her, to them. It was as though the man she'd fallen so hard for was changing right before her eyes, and it hurt so badly because she'd fallen so far and so hard for him.
She couldn't really pinpoint the first time she fully realized that she'd been falling in love with him. Had no idea if it was a year ago, two years, five, maybe even ten.
It really didn't even matter – what mattered was that it wasn't something Calleigh could undo. And that was almost as chilling as the mere thought of Eric leaving at all – if he left, Calleigh would be broken, loathe though she was to admit it, even silently. She could never go back to the way she'd been before; Eric had simply left too deep of a mark upon her heart. She believed with every part of her heart that he was her other half – there would be no completeness without him.
And that had intensified the consuming fear she'd felt.
Because, after all, Eric was right. Calleigh had always been able to read him. And it hadn't taken her very long at all to deduce what she feared – that Eric was leaving CSI. She still shuddered, remembering the icy blow to the chest that realization had been. Calleigh had witnessed firsthand how badly this case had gotten to him – she'd rarely seen him quite so shaken before. He'd been pensive, lost in thought, and Calleigh had struggled with the thought of approaching him – she still hadn't been entirely sure where they stood.
And then, it hit her. She'd stayed late under the premise of finishing up some old cases, but really, she'd been waiting for the chance to talk to him. It hadn't taken very long before she'd gotten the impression that he was avoiding her – she'd never found it difficult to find him before.
Calleigh had taken a seat in the atrium, biting her lip and staring at nothing in particular as the thoughts rushed through her mind. Eric's reluctance to return to work, his discontent with the case, his reserved demeanor and slight lack of confidence, and now he was avoiding the one person who could read him better than anybody.
And that person was also the one person who excelled best at putting two and two together.
Eric was going to leave CSI.
Calleigh was glad she'd been sitting when that realization hit her; even now, hours later and seated on a bench in the locker room, it still shook her. The worst part was that it was completely understandable, after everything Eric had been through. He hadn't really gone into his motives, but as he'd said after all was said and done, "you always were good at reading me."
He'd nearly died so many times on this job. That kind of lifestyle wasn't entirely conducive to the desires of a man like Eric Delko – Calleigh knew that the deepest wish of his heart was to someday have a family of his own. And he couldn't have that if he continued to knowingly risk his life.
Or perhaps he'd simply been granted a new perspective on life – it was, after all, much too short to waste any of it.
Maybe Eric wanted to start over.
A new job, a new life.
Leave it all behind.
Including her.
And that was Calleigh's greatest fear. Over the past three years, Eric had made no secret of his feelings for her – she'd thought they would dissipate with time, but from what she could see, they had only grown stronger. They'd strengthened and strengthened, and, rather alarmingly at first, Calleigh had felt her own feelings for him respond in kind.
With a gentle, outstretched hand, he had waited for her, waited until she was ready to make that final leap. Eric had promised to catch her if only she would fall, and fall she did. From the first embrace, the first kiss, the first time waking up in his arms…Calleigh had fallen for him beyond what she'd ever thought possible. The fluttering of her heart, the butterflies in her stomach – the way he made her feel was unreal, and quickly it became something she wasn't sure she could ever live without.
And now, suddenly she'd found herself faced with the reality that, just like that, he was going to rip it away from her. She'd trusted him, given herself implicitly to him, entrusted her heart to his hands, and now it meant absolutely nothing to him. He was going to walk away from her, from them, and Calleigh was going to be left again with a broken heart, an agonizing heartache she'd promised herself over a decade ago never to fall victim to.
It was a fear that consumed her, making the past few hours some of the most terrifying she'd ever faced.
But it was a fear that, in the end, was blessedly unfounded.
Beneath the low lights of the locker room, one look into his dark, unguarded eyes had been enough to quell that fear, banishing it away, hopefully never to return. It was almost as though he sensed her fear – and really, he probably did. Throughout their relationship, Calleigh had found that it worked both ways; unbeknownst to her until it was too late, Eric had learned her subtleties and nuances better than anybody; she didn't often let people close enough to read her, but with Eric, it had just happened.
And he'd sensed the fear behind her question; had heard the tremble she'd tried so desperately to conceal. But rather than make reference to it, he'd given her exactly what she'd needed – reassurance, irrevocable proof that his promises, so many made, had not and would never be broken.
It wasn't his words though that gave that away – it was everything else.
His kiss, so chaste, so simple.
His touch, so warm against her cheek; his arms, so strong around her.
His smile, so revealing.
And Calleigh still felt it all. Every nerve-ending in her body was sensitized, tuned in to his mere presence, and she knew it would take a long time for the taste of his kiss and the feel of his arms around her to fade from her senses. Her skin tingled; she still felt the goosebumps along her arms, and even her mind which still lagged quite a bit behind her heart and body couldn't help but realize that what she was feeling now was unlike anything she'd ever felt before.
This…was letting go.
Her doubts were silenced; her fears were squelched. Suddenly, there was nothing to hold back the deluge of emotion she'd shielded herself from for…she didn't even really know how long she'd been avoiding it.
And now, she could no longer avoid it.
Didn't want to.
If ever she'd doubted it before, the relief she felt now as she realized he wasn't walking away from her was enough to cement the truth firmly in her head.
She was in love with him.
Tears still pricked at her eyes, but despite the telltale sting, Calleigh felt her lips lift upward, curving into a smile that she could not contain. Beyond the frightening fact that she was in love with him, there was another sure and certain fact, one that made the former so much less frightening.
Eric was in love with her, too.
He had taken five simple words that might've meant nothing at all and skillfully twisted them into a statement bearing more meaning than she had ever heard before. And Calleigh shivered deeply, feeling the electricity rush from her spine all the way to the tips of her fingers. She could still hear the quiet reverence in his voice as he spoke, his voice for her ears only. They could've been teasing words – he'd certainly uttered them in a playful tone to her before, but this time, there was just far too much intimacy behind them, and when they'd reached Calleigh's ears, they nearly melted her on the spot.
"You know me too well."
Five words had changed everything; had left Calleigh wanting nothing more than to launch herself into his arms, wrapping her own around him and never letting go. But she didn't – that just wasn't Calleigh. For the moment, she maintained her professional shield, all the while knowing that Eric had just done the same – those five words, after all, were merely a shield as well; that much had been so beautifully apparent in Eric's eyes.
She did know him too well…well enough to know better than to question his commitment to this relationship. His dedication to CSI might've been rocked, but when it came to his devotion to Calleigh, Eric Delko was one hundred percent all in. And every bit of that devotion was clear, though veiled behind the response he'd verbally offered.
Five words were spoken, but more important than those spoken five were the unspoken three just beneath the surface.
Those unspoken three reverberated through her heart with more fervor than anything spoken ever had.
And it was those three words, words that she'd never really allowed herself to speak aloud before, which Calleigh quietly found herself whispering to the empty room. And though Eric wasn't there to hear them, Calleigh had the distinct feeling that Eric already knew the truth.
After all, he knew her too well, too.