A note to the reader: If you are looking for a warm, sensual, and/or smutty romance, stop right here. Don't bother reading any further because this isn't one. This is a story about how awkward it can be to turn a friendship into a relationship. And who better to be awkward in a relationship than Boa Vista and Wolfe? ;)
I felt compelled to write this after reading the many lovely DuCaine fanfics out there. Don't get me wrong - some are beautifully written, and the pairing is growing on me. But after so many loving glances and sensual touches, moonlit walks on the beach and candlelit dinners, I was struck by just how damned perfect all of these interactions were. Real life isn't like that. Real life is messy. And so, I felt compelled to write an anti-romance romance. Because even when everything goes wrong, two people can still love each other and that love is just as beautiful.
I own none of CSI: Miami. Clearly, if I did, the show would have prominently featured RaiN (BoaWolfe, Wolvista, RyanxNatalia, or what have you). My thanks to Gooniegirl3333 for beta reading and to my husband for proofreading for me. Any random goofiness or remaining errors are mine.
"Ryan!" He felt a hard poke to his ribs. "Roll over! You're snoring."
The dark-haired CSI curled the other direction in the small bed to face his girlfriend. "Was not," he mumbled. Yawning, he stretched and sat up next to her. "I wasn't even asleep. How could I be, when you still have the light on?" He gave her a gentle poke.
Natalia looked up from the book she was reading with a frown. "I can't sleep with you snoring like that." She dropped her eyes back to the page and gave him another shove. "Go take an antihistamine or something."
Ryan gave her a cross look, which she completely missed as she was engrossed in her novel. He snuck a peek at the cover. A scantily clad couple straddled the book jacket surrounded by what appeared to be a bed of roses. He rolled his eyes. Slipping out of bed, he winced slightly when his left foot touched the floor. He'd twisted his ankle earlier that day chasing a suspect and it had stiffened up. It didn't help any that Natalia had set the thermostat in her apartment to subarctic conditions, and as a result, the hardwood floors were freezing. He wrapped his arms around his waist, shivering in his boxers, and wondered aloud if he should put on his flannel pajama bottoms for the short walk to the bathroom.
"Oh, please." Natalia didn't even look up from her book. "It's not that cold in here."
He narrowed his eyes to glare at her, but it didn't help much. Without his contact lenses in, the double vision that had plagued him since the nail gun injury returned, and he found it hard to focus.
Sighing, he made his way across the cold wooden floor to the even colder bathroom tile. Squinting into the medicine cabinet, he called out, "Hey Nat, where do you keep your allergy meds?" Her entire supply of toiletries was one big jumble, setting his chattering teeth on edge. He had to fight the urge to take everything out and reorganize it.
He heard her slam the book shut before she stormed across the room to join him in the bathroom. "Honestly, Ryan," she snapped, reaching past him to the closest shelf and grabbing the medicine. "It's right here." She slapped the pill bottle into his palm. "If it was a snake -"
"... it would have bitten me. I know." He read the dosing instructions with one eye shut, hoping he wouldn't suffer any ill side effects. Ryan wasn't opposed to taking an antihistamine - he was worried that he might be allergic to something in her apartment anyway - but he hated changing brands.
Focusing on the label, he wasn't aware that Natalia had remained standing right next to him until she spoke. "Ryan, is something bothering you?"
He looked up at her, right eye nearly closed. "I'm fine." At the look she was giving him, he blinked open both eyes. "What?"
"Oh, nothing." Natalia crossed her arms over her pink satin baby doll pajamas and glared at him.
He resumed reading the antihistamine label, but it was much harder to see using two eyes. He sincerely hoped he wouldn't die from the medication.
"Seriously, Ryan?" She grabbed the bottle from him, popped open the lid, and took out one tablet. "It's not going to kill you." She handed him the pill and he stared at it for a long moment before he swallowed it, reluctantly, with a handful of water from the tap. When he turned away from the sink, she was already crawling into bed and turning out the lamp on her nightstand.
As he made his way across the room in the dark, his left big toe came into contact with something hard, probably one of the boots she had irresponsibly left in the middle of the floor. The jarring caused his injured ankle to flare with pain.
"Ow!"
The lack of a compassionate response - or any response, for that matter - from the woman in bed surprised him. All night, it seemed, she'd been frustrated by his presence. Finally, he'd had enough. He sat down on his side of the bed, as far away from Natalia as possible without sitting on the floor, and snapped on the nearest lamp. "If you don't want me here, why don't you just say so?" The words came out in an angry rush.
She sat up and turned on her own bedside lamp. "Me?" Her voice practically squeaked with anger. "You haven't touched me all night! I bought this nightgown especially for you!"
He rose to standing and began to pace. "I can't do anything right tonight as far as you're concerned. Why should I even bother?"
"It's not like I'm asking for much," she declared, pouting. "It's like you can't stand to look at me."
He stopped mid-pace and turned toward her. Folding his arms, he admitted in a low voice, "'Talia, I can't see you very well. I took out my contacts."
Her forehead crinkled. "You wear contact lenses? Why don't I know that?"
Ryan stared at two images of the floor. "No one at work knows, except H. I've had double vision ever since the nail gun injury. I've got corneal scarring on my right eye."
"Is it permanent?" Her voice, hesitant and laced with concern, touched Ryan's heart. He nodded at her.
"But you can correct that with lenses?" she asked.
"Mostly." He shrugged. "It left me with some irregular astigmatism in that eye. I see a lot better with contacts than glasses." Rubbing his eyes, he walked slowly back to bed, favoring his left ankle. "But I almost never wear my glasses out in public anyway. The 'scripts for my eyes are so different, it looks kinda weird. The last thing I need is IAB looking into my medical records."
"Why're you limping like that?" He sat down on the bed and she reached out to him, stroking his back.
"I twisted my ankle this afternoon going after that shooter."
Her hands deftly travelled down his leg and gently inspected his left foot. "It's a little swollen," she commented. "You want me to get you some ice?"
He locked eyes with her as best he could. "Yeah, that'd be nice."
Natalia returned a few minutes later with a bag of ice wrapped in a soft towel. She sat back down on his side of the bed, near his feet, and gestured at him to put his injured ankle on her lap.
He blushed at the attention and caught her wrist with his own. "You don't have to do that."
She gave him a hard look and pointed at his foot. "I want to." Wincing, he carefully maneuvered his leg so that it rested on the pillow in her lap and she placed the bag of ice gently above the arch of his foot. He smiled as the pain lessened. "And now that I have your attention," she said, "we need to talk."
We need to talk. The very words filled him with dread. Was she kicking him out for the night? Breaking up with him for good? They'd only been dating a few weeks. He crossed his arms and nodded warily. "Okay."
"Ry, we've been at odds with each other all night." She sighed. "And it's all your fault."
"My fault? Oh, really?" He gave her his best skeptical look, the one he usually reserved for suspects that were lying to him.
She looked down at his ankle and readjusted the ice pack. "If you'd just been honest with me, this whole night could have been avoided."
"Like you were listening to a word I said."
She frowned at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's freezing in here, Nat," he complained. "And when I told you, you just acted like I wasn't man enough or something."
She removed the ice pack and reached over to hand him the extra quilt folded at the foot of her bed. "Sorry."
She didn't sound that sorry to him. Wrapping the quilt around his shoulders, he gestured at her to put the ice back on his ankle before he went on. "When I couldn't find that medicine, you flipped out on me. You know I have OCD. It's hard for me to find anything when things are disorganized, much less relax in a new place. It's not like you went out of your way to make me feel comfortable here."
"It would have been a hell of a lot easier if you told me how you were really feeling. Am I supposed to guess when you're hurt?" she asked, gesturing at his foot. "And when were you planning to wear your glasses in front of me? On our wedding night?"
He looked up at her in surprise, amused at the blush rising on her cheeks as she realized what she'd said. Reaching over, he grasped her hand and gave it a squeeze. "So you don't mind being with a guy who snores sometimes?"
"I'll just take out my hearing aid." She flashed him a wicked grin before looking down at their clasped hands. In a wistful voice, she added, "As long as you don't mind being with a girl who's better at reading about romance than living it."
He returned her mischievous smile. "The night's still young." Leaning forward, he caressed her cheek before kissing her tenderly. Nuzzling her face, he whispered, "My ankle's feeling better and I don't really need to see you in the dark." When he leaned back to turn out the reading lamp on his side of the bed, she giggled.
"I guess you have a point." Careful not to jostle his ankle, she set aside the ice pack and crept up the bed. After turning out the other lamp, she snuggled in next to him.
He wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. "'Talia," he murmured, kissing her temple, stroking her wavy hair. "We're quite the pair, aren't we?"
She laughed softly and crawled over him to straddle him. "We can be," she breathed, placing her hands on his broad chest. He wrapped his strong arms around her, and their night together finally began.
Another (Overly Wordy) Author's Note (with some spoilers for Season 4):
First off - mandatory disclaimer - I am not a doctor. Personally, I think Ryan would have been left blind in one eye after Season 4, but since he seems okay on the show, I think this is a fairly reasonable explanation of his eye troubles. I've wondered, if he didn't have keratitis, why did he flip out so bad on Dan in "One of Our Own"? My best explanation is that he didn't want anyone digging around in his medical records because he had something else in there to hide, such as corneal scarring.
According to the Miami-Dade Police Department website - which I referenced because I'm a geek like that - minimum police officer requirements state that you need no worse than 20/100 vision uncorrected, down to 20/30 or better with lenses. It's not clear if that's with both eyes together or separate. (The City of Miami's requirements - at least on their website - are stricter; you need no worse than 20/50 vision in each eye uncorrected to become a police officer, with correction to no worse than 20/30.)
So, where would Ryan fall? Let's assume worst case for Ryan and these requirements apply throughout your career. Even if he could technically squeak by, with story I laid out here, I would assume double vision without lenses to be an automatic disqualifier. If it only happens when he's tired, maybe he'd have a shot at passing whatever vision test he had to take, but I'm thinking corneal scarring would be visible to anyone who gave him a complete eye exam. Now, could H somehow help Ryan keep this quiet? You bet. Which is why I couldn't even get Ryan to put his glasses on the nightstand in my fanfiction. He's pretty stubborn when he wants to be. ;)