Title: The Horoscope
Author: takingbarcelonaSummary: His hand of cards on the table, her feet in his lap, and their mugs of coffee long forgotten, Eric's question catches Calleigh off-guard.
Author's Notes: For anyone who is/was very attached to Mr. Tim Speedle, he makes a brief appearance.
As tradition deemed, they sat together on her couch, sipped good Cuban coffee, quizzed each other on mindless things that took away from the seriousness of the job they faced each day. Though only three weeks old, this tradition of theirs' was one easy to follow, its only requirement being that one show up at the other's place in time for a game of bourreé and baseball trivia. Mindless things.
Mindless things that they hid behind, because now, with his hand of cards dropped on the table, and her feet in his lap, their mugs forgotten, there was still a trace of hesitancy, a speck of professionalism that needed to be squashed occasionally with the reminder that this was just coffee. But once Eric's hand had started rubbing her stiletto-abused feet, Calleigh decided that all the professionalism she had been harbouring could be shoved in a box, stuffed inside a suitcase, crammed under the bed in the spare bedroom down the hall and only taken out for special affairs, so long as he kept rubbing her feet like…wait for it…wait for…oh! that.
Voice mulled and mellowed by her relaxed state, she said, "Tell me about Russia." Eyes half-lidded and breaths even, she'd nearly fallen asleep, and Eric couldn't help his laughter.
"Wha'?" she'd mumbled more than argued; her tone was friendly, lacked all venom.
"You," Eric had replied, humoured. "I've only been twice. Once for a wedding, once for a funeral. Never saw much of it either time."
Her lips were pursed and her eyebrows scrunched. "Oh." It was a soft sound, more of disappointment than anything else. Then, as if she had ignored his statement, she asked, "Was it cold? 'Cause everyone seems to think that it's always five bajillion degrees below over there." She looked puzzled when Eric chuckled again.
He traced the outline of her left heel with his hand, unable to hold back his laughter. "Yeah," he said eventually, shaking his head. "In comparison to Miami, it was frigid. But there were little kids on all the playgrounds, and they didn't seem miffed at all. I bet it was like summer in their minds."
Calleigh huffed. "That's because their brains were frozen into states of constant and continual hallucination." She quirked an eyebrow, and seemed uncharacteristically proud of herself for clearly stating her point.
And it was like this that conversation continued, Eric made points, Calleigh shot them down with her trademark, spot-on aim, and Eric's laughter at her thoughts and his memories. Without their notice, the hands of the clock had slinked along to a remarkable hour, but neither acknowledged it.
Their game of bourré was forgotten, but the challenging competition of calibre facts and baseball averages was vocalised in a fast paced back and forth, only stalled when Calleigh became tongue-tied over a particularly strange name, and consequently dissolved into a fit of giggles.
Eric's hand had gone from rubbing her feet to working up her calves, and he gently pushed the denim of her jeans up to her knees and caressed the soft, glowing skin of her shins. His ministrations had very nearly melted Calleigh into a puddle of gun-loving goo. Yawning, squirming, and sinking deeper into the couch's cushions, she was unprepared and caught off guard by Eric's question.
"Where's your tattoo?"
It was all Calleigh could do to keep her mouth from falling open. Trying to keep herself together, she inhaled slowly, but was still unable to find any words.
Eric smirked. It was hard to believe that it had been more than four years since Speedle had been shot, but the quick conversation they had shared in the locker room was hard to forget.
It was late, and Eric, who had just had a scalding hot wake-up shower was quickly doing up the buttons on his shirt when an exhausted and caffeine-deprived Speedle walked into the locker room.
"Hey, man," Eric called out as Speed thumped down onto the bench in front of his locker's door. "Long day?"
Speed grunted and scrubbed his hands over his face. "Yeah." He turned, and glanced at the towel hanging over Eric's shoulder and his damp hair before asking, "You got a long night?"
Eric chuckled humourlessly. "Don't I know it."
"At least you didn't have to stare n' compare all of Miami's bad tattoos."
Now Eric laughed with mirth. "It was a bust, huh?"
"It was more than just a bust. I even called Ernie, the guy that did Calleigh's-" Speed was interrupted yet again. There was something about this sentence that just seemed to shock all of MDPD's male crime lab employees.
Eric wheeled around and fully faced Tim. "Did Calleigh's?"
Speed chuckled. "Ya'know, H had the same reaction."
"H knows?" Now Eric was just plain incredulous.
"Yeah. I told him the same thing I've just told you. 'Sides, it's not like she's ever going to let anybody see it-"
"See it? She's gonna be pissed at the idea that people know." Eric rubbed the towel over his still damp hair absently. This was crazy. Calleigh? Tattoo? Since when had Hell frozen over? Then, a thought struck him.
"Speed, man, how do you know about it?"
"Long story-"
The 'I'm a pissed and dangerous half-Russian' expression settled over Eric's face. His lips dropped in slight disgust and he could barely stop his left eyebrow from arching. Speed rolled his eyes.
"Down, boy." Speed raised his hands in a surrendering gesture. "I found out the year before you arrived from Recovery. She was still fresh from New Orleans. It was an arson case. Big rubble, big evidence. She asked me to lift something because it was hurting."
Recognition hit Eric, and the defensiveness in his tone disappeared. "Where is it?"
Tim chuckled. "No clue." He shook his head and gave Eric a calculating look, and finally he said boldly, "Wouldn't you like to know."
Eric took on the expression of a fish out of water as he blinked and tried to find a response.
"Easy, man." Speed said, as he laughed at Eric. He stood, tossed his jacket on, and slammed the locker door. Eric sighed and went back to his locker, putting on his watch. Before Speed got to the door, he turned around, mischief in his eyes as he pointed to Eric and said, "Two things; One, you didn't hear from me. You know Cal's the best shot in three counties. And two," he finished, smirk on his lips, "I want to know where it is after you've seen it."
And it was then that Speed turned and left, Eric fish-faced for the second time and shirt still undone, watch cradled in his free hand.
Eric wandered back from memory lane. "Ya'know Cal, denial would've worked before the vacant stare." he smirked.
"I- You…how…who told you?" Calleigh's accent thickened with her panic.
Eric gave a doleful smile. "Back when we still had Speed…"
Calleigh's mouth opened, and her eyes widened before she dropped her face into her hands and rushed them through her hair.
"I can't believe he'd told you."
Eric chuckled. "Told H, too."
Calleigh made a disgusted noise of dismay into the palms of her hands and shook her head, which caused Eric to resume rubbing her calves patiently.
"I don't believe it," she mumbled quietly.
Eric traced tiny swirls along her ankles. "Kind of hard for me to believe, too," he said jokingly. "Ya'know, I got angry when he first told me."
Calleigh looked up and studied Eric, the carriage of his head, the set of his jaw, the angle of his wrist, the tilt of his fingers as he worked magic on her feet. "Why?"
"'Cause," Eric said defensively, like a child. "It's not obvious. Not on your wrist. Not on your forearm or your upper arm, or I would've seen it from your sleeveless shirts. I've seen you barefoot," at that, he tickled the sole of her right foot, and she squirmed, wiggled it away until Eric gave up and she settled it back. "So I knew it wasn't on your ankle. Not on your lower back," Calleigh raised an eyebrow, and Eric added correctively, "'Gator wrestling. Your shirt, it uh, it untucked."
"Anyway," he continued along, "it wasn't obvious. Meaning it has to be somewhere un-obvious. Meaning somewhere private. I thought Speed knew because he'd seen it." Eric lowered his voice, running his finger over the surface of her big toe. "And I didn't think he'd seen it because you showed him. I thought he'd seen it…"
Calleigh sighed, and smiled sadly at Eric. "No." She said gently.
Eric looked at her, puzzled.
"Speedle never saw it. No one from the lab has." She shook her head slightly. "I forgot that Speed even knew. He told Horatio?"
Eric chuckled at her misfortune. "Yeah, he did. Nobody knows where it is, though," as he said that, he pressed two heavy, quick lines down the back of her calves to emphasize his point.
Calleigh looked down at her coffee mug on the floor, yawning behind her hand. She glanced behind her, but blessedly, not at the clock. Time hadn't waited for them, and now, the hour was ridiculous. She twisted her neck and checked over her other shoulder, she shook her head, more to herself than anything. Eric continued to circle his fingers around her ankles, hoping that she wasn't thinking of balking.
Finally, she turned and faced him, and gave Eric the same calculating look she had given the remnants of her café cubano. Speaking at last, she whispered dangerously, "You don't breathe a word of this to anyone, especially Valera, or I'll shoot you. I can't believe Horatio knows."
Eric chuckled in response, and Calleigh arched a threatening eyebrow. Eric sobered immediately, and raised his right hand solemnly, and said, "You have my word."
The strangeness of the situation, coupled with Eric faux-seriousness, nearly dissolved Calleigh into giggles. She swallowed them, shifted her weight onto her elbows, and flicked open the button on her jeans.
Eric nearly died.
Catching his wide eyes, Calleigh felt a blush creep up her neck. She let out a little laugh, and called softly, "Eric, stop it."
Trust in God, he tried, but then Calleigh shifted her hips upwards, and slid the denim down about two inches on the left side, the rest of his resolve shattered. Calleigh had exposed what he recognised as two solid black fish circling head to tail, the zodiac sign for Pisces. The fish were surrounded three old-fashioned keys, tilted to create a triangle around the fish. Each key, Eric guessed, was a little more than two inches long, and the fish in the centre were small, probably only an inch and a quarter from eye to tail.
Impulsively, Eric rushed his hands up to bend behind her knees and gently tugged Calleigh forward, closer into his lap. She blushed at the sudden, close proximity, tilting her head back to hide her face when Eric brushed a thumb over the pattern, woven tightly and smoothly onto the skin of her hip. One of the keys was set into the valley that the ridge of her hipbone created, perfectly parallel to the bone. Eric traced the triangle, and then swirled his finger around the fish.
"When?" he asked quietly.
"When I left home, I had the fish done," she whispered. Calleigh swallowed, and her accent dropped a few degrees southward as she continued, "got the keys when I moved here," she said quietly. Now she faced Eric, and despite how close they were, the blush in Calleigh's cheeks had faded, and it left her with a sense of calmness that she wasn't used to.
Another question, this one more personal. "Why?"
Calleigh worried her lip for a moment before answering. "Each time I had them done, I, uh, I was looking for balance. For something stronger than I was." Her voice was quiet, mulled and sleepy, but it was honest. Eric let his hand leave her tattoo and tucked a strand of flyaway blonde behind her ear.
"Cal, do you know how strong you are?" Eric said boldly, keeping his hand by her head, gently cupping the back of her neck. "I wouldn't have gotten through…gotten trough Speed, or Mari;" his voice is quiet and thick, heavy with emotion. In their physical closeness, Calleigh thought she would've been uncomfortable. Jake had never been what could be called emotional, and Hagen had been even less so. But this kind of openness seemed natural to him. Eric softly cradled Calleigh's face in his hands, and then continued, "After being shot… I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. That's how strong you are; don't ever doubt yourself."
Calleigh had somehow been pulled closer and closer to Eric, and was now practically in his lap. Circling her fingers around his wrists, she absorbed herself into his touch. At his final words, Calleigh leaned in close to him, slow and almost magnetically, then stopped just a whisper away from his lips. It was Eric's turn to lean, and he did, bringing their foreheads and noses together. Their breaths mingled for a moment, and then they moved in unison and brought their lips together.
Soft. Alive. Certain. It was a kiss that brought them together in so many ways, and with it, Calleigh decided that all hesitancy, all the professionalism she had been harbouring could be shoved in a box, stuffed inside a suitcase, crammed under the bed in the spare bedroom down the hall and only taken out for work, because this feeling of absolute security, of safeness, of perfection was something she couldn't live without.
Eric's mouth left hers in favour of her jaw line, which he gently kissed and nipped until he made his way to where her jaw joined the column of her neck. Calleigh inhaled deeply at the sensation, and called his name out softly.
He stopped his ministrations and sat up straighter, looking in her eyes carefully. He would've had to be blind to not notice that he'd never seen her eyes quite this shade of green before. "What is it, Cal?"
She dipped her head before looking at him. Calleigh smiled softly and said, "Do you know what it means?"
Eric furrowed his eyebrows. What did she mean?
Calleigh chuckled quietly at the expression on his face. "Remember the Russian mob case we had, about a month ago? How you could read the vic's tattoos?"
Eric nodded quickly. "Yeah, yeah. But your's? It's Pisces, the zo-"
She smiled and shook her head. "Yes and no. Yeah, it's my zodiac sign. But that's not what this means." When she said 'this', she gestured to the air that surrounded them. "This means, this means I'm ready to try…this. Ready to try us."
Eric caught both of her hands in one of his, and held them as he trailed the other hand down her side and brushed his thumb over the filigree of ink, and then went completely still. "You're sure?" he asked reverently.
"You told me not to doubt myself." she said calmly, the southern lilt weighted her words. "So yeah," she smiled, shook loose one hand and cupped it to his face. "I'm certain."
As they fell into a second kiss, his hand of cards and her mug of café Cubano long forgotten, Eric traced a pattern of letters along her exposed stomach.
Without a doubt.