A/N: Set beginning S.6. Not beta'd. This is just something I typed up between other stories. Complete for now, although I plan to add more at some point when I'm breaking more writer's block. I'll approach the same story line in a different way and from different perspectives...just a few chapters.
The clean-cut gentleman in the crisp tuxedo stood out in stark contrast to the filthy, haggard homeless man sitting next to him on the park bench.
The random stragglers still left on the streets and sidewalks after midnight caught a few strains of their conversation and wondered what had driven the man in the penguin-suit to spill his heart to the man in rags. Some even laughed a little to themselves, because while one slowly poured out his heart, the other sat listening with a look somewhere between confusion and incredulity painted on his face. But the first kept right on talking, oblivious…
"She looked like an angel," he said. "I froze. You should have seen me with my jaw hanging open like a complete idiot. It's not like I should care, right? We never dated. But we could have…she could have been the one, you know?"
Tuxedo-man slumped hard against the back of the wooden bench. "I shouldn't have even been there. I shouldn't have gone. I almost didn't, after everything that happened last year. Awkward questions. This one guy on the team…God knows he's still holding a grudge. They all are…
"I swear it wasn't my fault! I even tried to fix it. You know how it is, right?" He didn't wait for his bewildered companion's response. "Yeah, you do. You get so deep in things then you can't get out. You hurt people you love.
"That's how it was with Calleigh. That's her name," he added as a side note to his captive (literally) listener. "Calleigh Duquesne. You should see her, because I can't really explain. Southern belle, barely over five feet tall—always wears the sexiest heels though so her legs seem a mile long."
The man appeared to be in a whole other world describing this mystery woman. "Blonde hair, green eyes you could drown in, and her smile…she smiles and her whole face lights up. The whole room lights up.
"And tonight!" he groaned. "I swear every eye turned in her direction when she walked down those stairs. She had this dress—I didn't know a dress could look like that. Some kind of pale-pinkish color, almost the same color as her skin. Fit her curves like a glove." He outlined a woman's hourglass figure one-handed. "She actually glowed, if that's possible. Smoky eyes, naked lips.
"Every man in that place turned and watched when she walked by." His head hung, and he said, "She passed by without even looking at me. I guess some bridges can't be re-built. I watched, though. I watched her all night. With that pompous jack-ass on her arm.
"That dress trailed behind her all night, too, and so did he, hand plastered on her bare back like he was showing off some kind of trophy. Give me a break," he gestured in disgust, "Calleigh Duquesne? Someone's trophy? She's a firearms expert for Christ's sake. She'd kick your ass just for thinking it.
"Anyway," he sighed again, "the band played a few songs before dinner, right? And the chief and his wife went out to dance, then a few other couples. Calleigh seemed to want to dance but her date was busy chatting it up with a couple of detectives.
"I still don't get it. A woman like that on your arm and you ignore her?" He slumped even further against the park bench. "Thing is with Calleigh—and I learned this the hard way—if you're not careful, someone else is going to snatch her up.
"So there he was, of course, waiting in the wings." he said sarcastically. "I should have known, after all the time I've spent with them over the years. If I thought she looked incredible when she walked in—my God you should have seen the look on her face when she saw him."
Once again, Tuxedo-man was lost in his vivid memories of the night. Homeless-man sat beside him and seriously wondered if this guy needed help.
"So she excuses herself—not that her date notices, right?—and they met in the middle of the dance floor, and at first no one really notices them. But then they start dancing. It's kind of like that dress; I didn't know people could dance like that anymore.
"They didn't miss a step. A waltz, it must have been. I don't really know. Either way, pretty soon everyone in the ballroom was half-paying attention to their conversations and half-paying attention to the two of them spinning around the floor like Charles and Diana."
Tuxedo-man stopped talking and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. He sat in pensive silence, and Homeless-man did, too. He wasn't sure if he was more shocked or amused at this point.
"Calleigh danced the first four dances with him," the storyteller began again, quietly. "They never stopped dancing, and her date never missed her. Until just before dinner. I saw a woman pointing—she was asking her friend about the couple on the dance floor—and he must have noticed, too.
"He turns around and his face is like marble, right? Because there is his date slow dancing in the middle of the ballroom with a man that isn't him, and everyone in the room is watching them. But—get this—they have no clue. It's like…it's like all they could see was each other. They were laughing and talking, and he was holding her so close no one in their right mind would look at them and say they were just friends."
He chuckled mirthlessly. "You can guess what happens next, I'm sure. Calleigh's date goes marching up to them right in front of everyone and taps the guy's shoulder to step in. I actually heard the woman next to me gasp, if you can believe it. Whatever happened next, I couldn't tell you. I saw Calleigh's face turn pink, maybe she'd just realized what she was doing. But the host called everyone to dinner right then, so we missed everything after that."
A kind of yearning had filled his voice as he told his tale, but now anguish began to creep back in. "It could have been me out there on that dance floor. I almost asked her to dance, but then she saw him and it was too late. I'm always too late."
He went quiet again for a minute. Homeless-man hoped he was finished, but soon the ranting resumed.
"My table was right next to theirs during dinner. I watched all three of them—hell, I watched their whole table—and I'll tell you this much: I never had a chance with her. I'm sure you know how that goes," he said assuredly. "Having feelings for someone way out of your league. Only, you don't realize she's out of your league until you've already made an ass out of yourself…" He trailed off into thoughtfulness.
"Where was I? Oh yeah—dinner. The whole group was tense; you could feel it. Not one person at that table didn't know what was really going on, that lines had been crossed."
Tuxedo-man snorted. "I'm so stupid, you know? I've been holding on to her. I felt like we were cheated out of our chance. We both moved on, but in the back of my mind I never really let her go. Was I wrong not to?" he asked his homeless compadre.
He answered his own question, though. "No. Maybe. Damn, I don't know. She was spoken for a long time ago," he admitted despondently.
"Dinner ended—stiffly, I might add, at the table one over—and then the keynote address, the awards, and then dancing for the rest of the night. Calleigh danced with her date and a lot of others, but never with him, and she never quite got her brilliant glow back. Neither did he. Both of them, it seemed like they were...going through the motions, I guess.
"Meanwhile, Calleigh's date is sitting back watching all of this play out and he's not happy. Combine that with an open bar, and…you get the picture. From what I hear, the guy's already got a bit of a control problem anyway. Wears his heart on his sleeve, right?
"I couldn't hear what happened. You wouldn't have known anything happened unless you were actually watching them (granted, by this point I think everyone probably was)," he added. "I saw Calleigh take the drink out of the guy's hand and set it down. She was calm, but the look in her eye—it sent a chill down my spine. You know that kind of look."
Homeless-man simply gaped back.
"Exactly. Calleigh's 'friend' comes walking up at this point. Man, I wish I could have heard what they were saying," he shook his head at the lost opportunity. "The next second, the date is in the friend's face and it looks like all hell's about to break loose.
"This is when you can't help but admire Calleigh Duquesne, because before anything happened she managed to get him under control. No fight, no scene, no nothing. I saw her slip him some cash and push him toward the exit."
He stopped to linger on his next memory before he continued. It was too much to hope for the story to be over, thought Homeless-man.
"Her boss took over from there," Tuxedo-man said, his voice on a strange new note. "Made sure the guy got out without any trouble. You know, Horatio—that's Calleigh's boss—always took an interest in him. I suppose it's because of all the stuff he went through with Ray…you always heard rumors…
"Anyway, sorry, that's not important," he cleared his throat and regrouped. "What is important is the fact that all the sudden Calleigh is back and standing next to him, I mean, really close to him. She's whispering something in his ear, then she slips her hand behind his back, makes an excuse and says that she's tired and wants to go home. Except, when she says it, she gives his side a little squeeze.
"Next thing you know he's offering to give her a ride home, says he's tired, too. No big deal, right?"
Silence greeted the question. Homeless-man thought the strange visitor to his park bench was beginning to sound more bitter and more desperate than ever.
"It was the way they looked at each other…I thought the whole place would go up in flames. I'm surprised it didn't.
"And then, then they were gone," he explained flatly. "A hundred pairs of eyes must have watched them leave. Including mine. And the team's, because after they left all of them burst into whispered conversations. Which, of course, I couldn't hear."
Tuxedo-man groaned and dropped against the back of the bench with a heavy thud. He huffed as if to say, 'life's not fair,' but Homeless-man didn't really care because he already knew that.
"One little choice!" the suit-clad narrator exclaimed. "One choice changes everything! And then another, then another, until you wake up one day and realize that you don't have a choice anymore because someone's stepped in and stolen all your choices! Does that make sense? Of course it does!
"I made bad choices," he confessed sadly. "I never chased after her. I led her on. I got caught up in lies and deceit. Maybe if I'd done something differently? Spoken up sooner? It would have been me going home with her tonight.
"But no. I took the word of Calleigh's deranged ex-boyfriend that they were still together instead of asking her myself. He ended up shooting himself in her lab, by the way, so that clearly wasn't true. I proposed to a woman but didn't tell Calleigh when I should have and effectively ruined what good blood there still was between us."
His voiced rose yet another note as he continued speaking, and his previously measured words spilled faster and faster.
"Oh, and then there's the small little detail of my fiancée making it her God-given mission to destroy Calleigh's team. Monica plants a mole, fabricates evidence, and steals twelve thousand dollars to discredit the lab. Better yet, Calleigh catches me trying to return the money and then forces me to wear a wire and turn against Monica."
His voice and tempo reached a fever pitch, which Homeless-man hoped meant a plot-climax.
"Now Calleigh doesn't trust me, we can't even be friends, she's just realized that Berkeley is an asshole and now she's run off with Delko. And damnititcouldhavebeenme!"
With one tremendous sigh and a crash of his fist on the wooden bench beside him, Peter Elliot finished his story. He looked lamely over at the man sitting next to him and said, glumly, "I'm sure you know how that goes."
Homeless-man sat there silently, still gaping.
He had listened obediently, not sure what else to do when bombarded so suddenly with a raving lunatic in a fancy suit, and he was fairly certain he'd understood the great majority of the stranger's tale, but by the end of it he had no idea what this guy was talking about.
So he simply looked down at the half-empty beer can gripped in his dirty, gloved hand, and shoved it toward Tuxedo-man.
"I think you need this more than I do," he grunted.
Peter took it with a miserable look on his face and didn't hesitate to take a swig. He said nothing as he downed the beer, but Homeless-man knew he was thinking about a blonde-haired, green-eyed beauty in a pale-pink gown, walking away with another man. Or something like that.