I had to write it. Because no one else was writing any, including Yana at
that point. Horatio, Speed, slash. CSI Miami don't belong to me, and it
wouldn't be half as much fun to play with if it did. 'Sides, I'm not into
treading lightly around cranky actors.
Almost.
Murmur.
Whisper.
I don't want to open my eyes. I don't want to breathe. I don't want
to wake up. I don't want to dream.
Beyond the window is the drawn out swish of a car going down the
road.
His lips were warm, sort of dry and smooth, and when he broke off he
smiled at me and smoothed out my hair, and then we kissed again.
I lick my lips like it's a dream, like I'll open my eyes and his body
won't be warm next to me, it'll just be the cat or worse, just my
fucking imagination.
But the sun scribbles on the inside of my eyelids and I peer, for a
moment the world hazed and blurry, and then clear, and he's already
looking at me like he's waiting, and my dream never did that before.
//"I keep thinking..."
"Yeah?"
"I keep thinking she'll be there tommorow morning. When I come in."
"Me too."//
I want to reach for him, hang my arms from him, rest, sleep, drift
and not have to get up and pretend it's all a dream again. But my
arm is already draped across his ribs, my fingertips ruffling the
fine hairs between his shoulder blades.
Everything's perfect but it's all falling apart, like when I was six
and built the biggest castle out of blocks, and then when I topped it
with a plastic flag it collapsed. It was so close to perfect, and it
was for just a second and then eternity was the blocks crashing to
the carpet and the sudden, distant pain when one struck my head.
Then it was real.
I swallow, throat sandpaper.
I'd think, I'd do something, but he's got that not-even-half but kind
of a quarter smile, mouth quirked up and mostly in his eyes, and it
makes me feel safe even though the blocks are falling in a hail of
color and...
//"It's like she's dead, y'know?"
"I know."
"Did you think she'd leave?"
"I'm not sure...I guess, in the back of my mind, I knew it was
possible."
"I...did try and call her."
"And?"
"She wasn't there."//
"You're gonna hate me," he says, a little sleepy but aren't we both,
at least he can put words to whatever's going on in his head, "but I
really like to watch you sleep."
"Uh?" He does? It seems cliche, but I guess there's a reason why
it's cliche because it kinda feels nice, when someone says something
stupid like that and it's the asscrack of dawn and you're hoping
they're as head-over-heels as you are. "How come?"
He shrugs, and then out of the blue kisses me again, on the
forehead. Slight stubble tickles my skin and I close my eyes just to
feel it, the touch wriggling through my spine.
"I don't hate you." I say to his throat. Do I? "I don't think I
do."
"I hoped not."
In all fairness, this is technically a bad thing. I mean, it's not
in the rules or anything. There's nothing in the handbook, in my
contract, that says I can't fuck (or get fucked by) my boss. But...
I curl into his neck and he tickles the hair at the base of my
skull. God I like that.
...but it just isn't done. Or at least not that I've heard. So...
He kisses the top of my head and I don't *want* to leave, I don't
want to have to let go of him and actually get up, get out of bed and
act like things are just the same as they were before.
...so what can I do? I want to keep it. To myself, I mean.
Otherwise it'd be like telling a dream to someone. They just don't
understand, and then the colors fade and the glassy glinting surface
of it all seems to shatter and you step on the pieces, and there's
the color, all right, all red.
Things aren't the same. I don't know if it's good or bad. It feels
good, though.
Stupidity stumbles from my sleepy mouth before I can really
think. "Did you want this?"
But he fields it. "Would I be here if I didn't?"
I shift a little. His skin is cool with dried sweat. "I...guess
not. This hasn't happened before."
He laughs, stirring my hair, the tingle in my scalp like home, like
safe. "Oh, Speed..." no words but that and then he wrestles me
closer.
Like a dream, please god, don't make me have to wake up.
"You know, I think there's something I oughta be saying."
I do pull back, I pull from his arms for the first time since last
night, and I look at him, frowning, almost afraid, waiting for the
blocks to come down
the sleep to wake
and the dream to shatter.
"I just have no idea what it is."
I shrug, meekly. 'I love you,' I want to say, because I think it's
true. I have a hunch, I feel it my gut (among other things), however
you want to say it. I love you and it feels like I shouldn't, but
please, please don't leave me to wake up alone, because I can't do
that, you don't know, do you, how hard it is? Waking up empty and
cold? Waiting for your friend's voice on the phone but he's just not
there. Waiting to hear his snores on the floor in your old sleeping
bag, the gleam of his glasses in the morning light, when it's too
early for either of you to be up?
I swear to god, I love you. Don't know if I want you to be my
boyfriend or my friend or my companion or my lover or what, what I
should call you when I won't call you boss because you're not, not
after hours. Don't know what I want to be to you when you find that
ticklish spot on my spine that makes all the aching muscles and
aching heart and the memories of dead little kids go *away*.
He catches the side of my face in his hand and grazes his thumb along
my cheekbone, watching me unreadable, stop it, you're going to make
me cry, Horatio.
So he kisses me again, lips now, rustling from safe, confined places
something hurting.
//"Jesus, Tim, what the hell is the matter with you?"
"I told you not to call me that!"
"What? Tim? Newsflash, it's your *name*!"
"No, no, *Speed* is my name, understand? Speed. Or Speedle. I
don't care what the fuck you call me but it's NOT *Tim*, got that?"//
His kiss is gentle as his hands, so gentle it hurts, it burns, it
makes me swallow thick as my lips touch his, when last night his
hands skated up my chest and left me reeling wondering why the hell I
didn't do this sooner.
Because I remember.
//Look, Speedle, I'm sick of this."
"What?"
"Listening to your dysfunctional bullshit. I'm leaving."
"Manda--"//
Please god, please, let me not screw something up for once.
I close my eyes, like prayer.
Please god--
His warmth, the way a human touch feels cool against the backdrop of
sweltering swampland south Florida, a smooth all-over comfort like a
fire on a winter night in darkness.
The air conditioning whirrs soft, breeze drifting like breath on cold
windowpanes, frosting us both with last night's sweat.
Content, for a moment or two, to lie still, and I almost want to go
back to sleep, just for a few more hours feeling right at home in his
arms. Funny how it doesn't feel like the betrayal I thought it
would, before, what seems like ages ago before Megan left and when I
started feeling funny, feeling happy in an iridescent bubble sort of
way, whenever he looked at me or touched my shoulder or smiled.
I didn't want him to find out, for my own self-preserving utterly
selfish reasons, and I went to fucking *lengths* for him not to
know.
Funny how that works out, with me clinging to him like a lost little
kid, the taste of his skin in my mouth and faintly bruised from the
razorblade between lust and hate.
//"Shhh, Speed. It's ok. It's ok..." He soothes in my ear, wet and
warm.
"I *know* that..." Grunted with inevitable ache.
"Force of habit." Like a smile against my cheek, the laugh in his
voice.
"Ha-habit?" Sweaty and breathy and frustrated, god, jesus, fucking
*christ*--//
Oh, hell yes I'm sore.
I think everyone, in their way, is some kind of closet masochist.
Otherwise no one would ever have sex. And *then* where would we be?
Well, I wouldn't be dozing naked with my boss.
Might be fantasizing about Calleigh's legs, but doesn't everyone?
Fuck that. Fuck *me*.
"Hey, H."
"Mmm?" His voicebox vibrates against my shoulder.
"We can, like, do this some more, right?"
"Which?"
"Um, the whole, you come over to my place, we have a heart-to-heart
and then you fuck me into the mattress."
"Sure. One thing, though--"
I swallow, suddenly and stupidly nervous.
"We skip the heart-to-heart, ok?" He pulls back, laughing, and
kisses me for the hundreth, the thousandth time, as if he can't help
himself.
Wow, that was an ego boost. Someone wants to hold me. Wants to kiss
me and never seems to tire of it. I smile back at him. "Good plan."
"S'why I'm the boss." He yawns. "Jesus. What time is it?"
It occurs to me, a trivial fact in the face of such revelation, that
it is, in fact, Wednesday. The alarm clock, formerly a resident of
the bedside table and now huddled on the floor (did we do that?)
further elaborates; we have two hours before work.
"Aw, shit." I grumble. "Don' wanna get up. Fucking christ..."
He strokes my chest absently. Can't get over it--he doesn't want to
stop touching me. Me? I could get used to this, hell yes. "We have
to get up."
"Why?"
"Work."
"Nope, sorry, not a good enough reason."
"Ok, how `bout, we go to work and you get first dibs on Mrs.
DeLucca's jacket."
"Right. Ok. That I can live with."
Almost.
Murmur.
Whisper.
I don't want to open my eyes. I don't want to breathe. I don't want
to wake up. I don't want to dream.
Beyond the window is the drawn out swish of a car going down the
road.
His lips were warm, sort of dry and smooth, and when he broke off he
smiled at me and smoothed out my hair, and then we kissed again.
I lick my lips like it's a dream, like I'll open my eyes and his body
won't be warm next to me, it'll just be the cat or worse, just my
fucking imagination.
But the sun scribbles on the inside of my eyelids and I peer, for a
moment the world hazed and blurry, and then clear, and he's already
looking at me like he's waiting, and my dream never did that before.
//"I keep thinking..."
"Yeah?"
"I keep thinking she'll be there tommorow morning. When I come in."
"Me too."//
I want to reach for him, hang my arms from him, rest, sleep, drift
and not have to get up and pretend it's all a dream again. But my
arm is already draped across his ribs, my fingertips ruffling the
fine hairs between his shoulder blades.
Everything's perfect but it's all falling apart, like when I was six
and built the biggest castle out of blocks, and then when I topped it
with a plastic flag it collapsed. It was so close to perfect, and it
was for just a second and then eternity was the blocks crashing to
the carpet and the sudden, distant pain when one struck my head.
Then it was real.
I swallow, throat sandpaper.
I'd think, I'd do something, but he's got that not-even-half but kind
of a quarter smile, mouth quirked up and mostly in his eyes, and it
makes me feel safe even though the blocks are falling in a hail of
color and...
//"It's like she's dead, y'know?"
"I know."
"Did you think she'd leave?"
"I'm not sure...I guess, in the back of my mind, I knew it was
possible."
"I...did try and call her."
"And?"
"She wasn't there."//
"You're gonna hate me," he says, a little sleepy but aren't we both,
at least he can put words to whatever's going on in his head, "but I
really like to watch you sleep."
"Uh?" He does? It seems cliche, but I guess there's a reason why
it's cliche because it kinda feels nice, when someone says something
stupid like that and it's the asscrack of dawn and you're hoping
they're as head-over-heels as you are. "How come?"
He shrugs, and then out of the blue kisses me again, on the
forehead. Slight stubble tickles my skin and I close my eyes just to
feel it, the touch wriggling through my spine.
"I don't hate you." I say to his throat. Do I? "I don't think I
do."
"I hoped not."
In all fairness, this is technically a bad thing. I mean, it's not
in the rules or anything. There's nothing in the handbook, in my
contract, that says I can't fuck (or get fucked by) my boss. But...
I curl into his neck and he tickles the hair at the base of my
skull. God I like that.
...but it just isn't done. Or at least not that I've heard. So...
He kisses the top of my head and I don't *want* to leave, I don't
want to have to let go of him and actually get up, get out of bed and
act like things are just the same as they were before.
...so what can I do? I want to keep it. To myself, I mean.
Otherwise it'd be like telling a dream to someone. They just don't
understand, and then the colors fade and the glassy glinting surface
of it all seems to shatter and you step on the pieces, and there's
the color, all right, all red.
Things aren't the same. I don't know if it's good or bad. It feels
good, though.
Stupidity stumbles from my sleepy mouth before I can really
think. "Did you want this?"
But he fields it. "Would I be here if I didn't?"
I shift a little. His skin is cool with dried sweat. "I...guess
not. This hasn't happened before."
He laughs, stirring my hair, the tingle in my scalp like home, like
safe. "Oh, Speed..." no words but that and then he wrestles me
closer.
Like a dream, please god, don't make me have to wake up.
"You know, I think there's something I oughta be saying."
I do pull back, I pull from his arms for the first time since last
night, and I look at him, frowning, almost afraid, waiting for the
blocks to come down
the sleep to wake
and the dream to shatter.
"I just have no idea what it is."
I shrug, meekly. 'I love you,' I want to say, because I think it's
true. I have a hunch, I feel it my gut (among other things), however
you want to say it. I love you and it feels like I shouldn't, but
please, please don't leave me to wake up alone, because I can't do
that, you don't know, do you, how hard it is? Waking up empty and
cold? Waiting for your friend's voice on the phone but he's just not
there. Waiting to hear his snores on the floor in your old sleeping
bag, the gleam of his glasses in the morning light, when it's too
early for either of you to be up?
I swear to god, I love you. Don't know if I want you to be my
boyfriend or my friend or my companion or my lover or what, what I
should call you when I won't call you boss because you're not, not
after hours. Don't know what I want to be to you when you find that
ticklish spot on my spine that makes all the aching muscles and
aching heart and the memories of dead little kids go *away*.
He catches the side of my face in his hand and grazes his thumb along
my cheekbone, watching me unreadable, stop it, you're going to make
me cry, Horatio.
So he kisses me again, lips now, rustling from safe, confined places
something hurting.
//"Jesus, Tim, what the hell is the matter with you?"
"I told you not to call me that!"
"What? Tim? Newsflash, it's your *name*!"
"No, no, *Speed* is my name, understand? Speed. Or Speedle. I
don't care what the fuck you call me but it's NOT *Tim*, got that?"//
His kiss is gentle as his hands, so gentle it hurts, it burns, it
makes me swallow thick as my lips touch his, when last night his
hands skated up my chest and left me reeling wondering why the hell I
didn't do this sooner.
Because I remember.
//Look, Speedle, I'm sick of this."
"What?"
"Listening to your dysfunctional bullshit. I'm leaving."
"Manda--"//
Please god, please, let me not screw something up for once.
I close my eyes, like prayer.
Please god--
His warmth, the way a human touch feels cool against the backdrop of
sweltering swampland south Florida, a smooth all-over comfort like a
fire on a winter night in darkness.
The air conditioning whirrs soft, breeze drifting like breath on cold
windowpanes, frosting us both with last night's sweat.
Content, for a moment or two, to lie still, and I almost want to go
back to sleep, just for a few more hours feeling right at home in his
arms. Funny how it doesn't feel like the betrayal I thought it
would, before, what seems like ages ago before Megan left and when I
started feeling funny, feeling happy in an iridescent bubble sort of
way, whenever he looked at me or touched my shoulder or smiled.
I didn't want him to find out, for my own self-preserving utterly
selfish reasons, and I went to fucking *lengths* for him not to
know.
Funny how that works out, with me clinging to him like a lost little
kid, the taste of his skin in my mouth and faintly bruised from the
razorblade between lust and hate.
//"Shhh, Speed. It's ok. It's ok..." He soothes in my ear, wet and
warm.
"I *know* that..." Grunted with inevitable ache.
"Force of habit." Like a smile against my cheek, the laugh in his
voice.
"Ha-habit?" Sweaty and breathy and frustrated, god, jesus, fucking
*christ*--//
Oh, hell yes I'm sore.
I think everyone, in their way, is some kind of closet masochist.
Otherwise no one would ever have sex. And *then* where would we be?
Well, I wouldn't be dozing naked with my boss.
Might be fantasizing about Calleigh's legs, but doesn't everyone?
Fuck that. Fuck *me*.
"Hey, H."
"Mmm?" His voicebox vibrates against my shoulder.
"We can, like, do this some more, right?"
"Which?"
"Um, the whole, you come over to my place, we have a heart-to-heart
and then you fuck me into the mattress."
"Sure. One thing, though--"
I swallow, suddenly and stupidly nervous.
"We skip the heart-to-heart, ok?" He pulls back, laughing, and
kisses me for the hundreth, the thousandth time, as if he can't help
himself.
Wow, that was an ego boost. Someone wants to hold me. Wants to kiss
me and never seems to tire of it. I smile back at him. "Good plan."
"S'why I'm the boss." He yawns. "Jesus. What time is it?"
It occurs to me, a trivial fact in the face of such revelation, that
it is, in fact, Wednesday. The alarm clock, formerly a resident of
the bedside table and now huddled on the floor (did we do that?)
further elaborates; we have two hours before work.
"Aw, shit." I grumble. "Don' wanna get up. Fucking christ..."
He strokes my chest absently. Can't get over it--he doesn't want to
stop touching me. Me? I could get used to this, hell yes. "We have
to get up."
"Why?"
"Work."
"Nope, sorry, not a good enough reason."
"Ok, how `bout, we go to work and you get first dibs on Mrs.
DeLucca's jacket."
"Right. Ok. That I can live with."