Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I don't own Horatio Caine. Wish I did, but Mr. Bruckheimer hasn't decided to make a present of him to me yet, despite my many pleadings and pitiful entireties. Ah well. None of the other characters are mine either. Story is though!
Spoilers: None, haven't seen enough episodes to really spoil anything.
Pairings: Horatio and Calleigh, duh! As if any other relationship could exist in this show!
Summery: I was mowing my lawn for the first time ever and this came to me after my dad laughed at me for my system. Well, Horatio is a guy, I'm sure he mows the lawn….
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"One way to truly show your affection for another person: do their yard work."- Family Proverb.
"Alright Ray, slowly push the mower in front of you. No, that's too fast." Horatio corrected gently, walking next to his nephew in the blinding Miami heat.
Horatio took the day off from the job he loved to teach something to his nephew his father really should have been teaching him. It was hard, watching Ray Jr., his younger brother's only son, pass the milestones of his journey to manhood and have to remember why he, Horatio Caine, was leading him through them. But he did it. He needed to take care of this boy, he was all he had left to remind him of Raymond. Yes, he knew he needed to, but it didn't make the doing any easier.
"Why do I need to go so slow Uncle Horatio? I'm not old like you are." Ray Jr. complained from his place behind the lawnmower. Horatio looked down at his nephew with a startled smile.
"Old, huh?" He asked him, Horatio's blue eyes sparkling. "I'd rather be old than not know how to properly mow a lawn."
Ray stuck his tongue out at his uncle and tried again, more closely following directions.
"Horatio? Have you killed my son yet?" Yelina called from the porch. Ray turned around to smile and wave at his mother, ignoring the bush he was about to run over.
"No, but your son just killed your plant!" Horatio called back to his sister in law. Yelina smiled and went back inside, not wanting to interrupt this male bonding ritual. And she didn't want to get her foot chopped off either.
"Uncle Horatio, why don't you mow your own lawn?" Ray asked, trying to maneuver the mower away from his mother's azaleas. Horatio looked down at him and smiled.
"I don't have a lawn. I live in on the beach."
"Mow your girlfriend's lawn. You're good at mowing the lawn, and Mom told me that a man should never let a woman do her own physical labor." Horatio smiled and chuckled at the 'important life lessons' Yelina was imparting to his nephew.
"I don't have a girlfriend." He replied carefully. Only because the woman I'm in love with is one of my CSI's and consequently off limits, he almost grumbled to himself, scowling a little.
"Mom says you do."
"She does, does she?"
"Yeah, that blonde lady you're always talking about. The one with the funny accent. Mom says that you're in love with her but are too scared of losing control that you aren't ever going to just say 'to hell with it' and kiss her like you want to."
Horatio could feel himself turning the same shade as his hair as he sternly told Ray Jr.,
"Don't you ever repeat that in front of the blonde lady. Ever." Ray grinned up at him mischievously.
"Whatever you say Uncle Horatio. I think you're in love with her, want to have kids with her and should mow her lawn and just tell her already."
"You're mother put you up to this, didn't she?" Horatio asked, annoyed and embarrassed.
"No, I don't think you should drool over her like a lost puppy, I think you should ask her out, 'cause you're a man, not a puppy."
"That you over heard from your mother." Horatio insisted.
"Yeah, I stole that one from her."
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What am I doing? I'm following the love advice of a ten year old! Horatio berated himself as he lifted the lawn mower out of his Hummer. Wheeling it up to the front of Calleigh's house, Horatio wondered if the Miami sun had finally fried his brain. Oh God, she's going to come out and see me doing this and she's going to figure it out and she isn't going to feel the same way…
And with these despondent and pessimistic thoughts running through his head, Horatio started the mower and began doing Calleigh Duquesne's yard work.
A sudden loud humming brought Calleigh from the murky depths of sleep on her one day off. Oh good Lord, she thought, rolling out of bed. Who mows their lawn at ten in the morning? She shuffled to her front door and checking to make sure that she had worn decent pajamas to bed, opened it to greet the perpetrator with a sharp Southern rebuke.
"Horatio!" She called, stunned to find her boss outside of her house, mowing her lawn.
Hearing someone call his name, Horatio turned the mower off and looked around. He was greeted by the sight of an early morning Calleigh, pre-well, every morning ritual, a sight he had never even dared to hope he would see. Standing on her porch in a small pair of shorts and a ripped up Tulane University shirt, arms crossed on her chest, Calleigh was the vision of beauty he always saw her as. Hair pulled back to keep it neat as she slept, Calleigh looked a little confused, and, dare he think it, maybe slightly happy to see him?
"Hi Cal."
"Hey yourself Handsome. What are you doing in this neck of the woods? And with a lawn mower too?" The southern accent in her voice was heavier when she had just woken up, Horatio noted with a small smile.
"Well, I was teaching Ray Jr. how to mow the lawn and I was given an obvious piece of advice from him. One that I realized I was very remiss in not taking to heart sooner."
Calleigh let the velvety rumbling of his voice wash over her, repressing a shiver of delight as its fingers crept gently up her spine. Making a mental note to take a cold shower later, she asked in a purr,
"And what advice was that?" Yes, do tell, so I can thank that amazing nephew of yours.
"A gentleman never lets a woman do her own yard work." Horatio told her with one of his smiles that he only gave to her, leaning on the lawn mower casually.
"Huh, my Daddy used to say the same thing. In fact, that was how my prom date convinced him to let me go. He came over for three months every Saturday at noon and he would mow my lawn. My Daddy sat on the porch and watched him till finally he said yes." Only after saying this did Calleigh realize what he could have taken that story as. And Horatio's heart did a tango inside of his chest as he listened to her.
"Well, I guess I'll have to at least out- do a high school kid," he teased, a slow sultry smile beginningto play on Calleigh's lips.
"After seeing the way you handle yourself in the gym, I'd expect at least weeding and painting on top of mowing my lawn." She flirted back. Horatio smiled at her, unable to out- do her in the little game they played.
"You win. Now stop distracting me, or I won't have time to paint, Detective." He admonished win a playful grin.
"You should stop being so easily distracted, Lieutenant." Calleigh purred.
"I think I'm doing pretty well, considering what's distracting me."
"Why, Handsome! You sure do know how to make a girl blush." Horatio grinned again and turned back to the lawn mower, smile glued firmly in place.
An hour later, he was packing everything back into the Hummer and casting wistful glances at Calleigh's door, which had remained closed since she went back inside after their banter. He sighed and was about to open the door when his cell went off. Rummaging around the back seat for it he found it finally and answered.
"You aren't leaving are you?"
Horatio smiled into the phone, looking around all her windows before spotting her at one. He waved at her with a grin.
"I'm done with your yard work."
"I haven't extended my Southern hospitality to you; I'd go to Hell if I let you step on and off of my property and I didn't feed you." Horatio grinned into the phone and chuckled wryly.
"I stink." He warned her.
"I'll spray you with perfume before I let you into my house." She countered.
"I'm cornered, I'm coming in."
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The next day at work found Horatio and Calleigh busy going over the bullets from their latest case.
"This one –oh, hey Eric- came from a .22 caliber, but this one came from a colt-.45." Calleigh informed him, a proud smile lighting her face.
"So that means," Horatio responded slowly. "That either this killer is smart or there is more than one shooter."
Eric nodded, pulling out his cell phone.
"Nice work Calleigh." Horatio congratulated her.
"Any time Handsome."
They shared a smile before she asked,
"Saturday at ten again?" Horatio's smile changed subtly, excluding everyone else in the ballistics lab except for Calleigh, and he nodded.
"I'll be there."
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"I swear, it looked like they were undressing each other in their minds- right there!" Eric reiterated to Alexx and Ryan. Ryan rolled his eyes, not about to get involved in any of Eric's harebrained schemes until he had some real evidence to work with. They were CSI's for goodness sake. Didn't he remember that they didn't work off of conjecture?
"Honey, we need something a little more tangible than that. The two of them have been having eye sex for years and nothing's ever happened so far." Alexx reasoned gently, also a little more then skeptical of Eric's information.
"'Saturday at ten again?' 'I'll be there'? Sounds pretty heavy to me!" He told them. Alexx and Ryan shared a look, both hearing this as a very profitable new development.
"Now, that, is something tangible."
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The three conspirators were piled into Alexx's minivan, watching Calleigh's apartment. They had been sitting there for three hours and were about to give up when they finally saw Horatio's Hummer round the street corner and pull into Calleigh's driveway. Jumping out in sneakers, gym shorts and a ripped up grey tee shirt, he went around to the back of it and lifted out a lawn mower.
"What the-" Ryan breathed before being shushed by Eric. Calleigh stepped out of her house, still in her pajamas and sat on the front porch with two cups of coffee. Horatio walked up to her and accepted one of them gratefully, placing a gentle kiss on her lips before sitting down next to her.
"Did he?" Ryan asked dumbfounded, unable to finish his question.
"Uh- huh." Alexx answered.
"Did she?" Eric asked.
"Uh- huh." Alexx answered.
"Wow."
"Uh- huh."
"So, lawn mowers…" Ryan ventured.
"Are the best things in the world." Alexx and Eric finished for him, exchanging high fives.