"Grissom?"

He looked slowly up from the review form he had been writing on. His focus had been unshakeable lately. Even his desk was devoid of the usual piles of paperwork.

Catherine sat down in a chair facing him and laced her fingers, looking at Grissom appraisingly.

He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. "Did you need something?" There was nothing deliberate in the shortness of his tone, but it was there never the less.

"Yeah, I need my friend back. He's been missing for about a month, have you seen him? Races cockroaches, neglects paperwork..." She raised her eyebrows at him, as good as saying he better not feed her a line.

Grissom sighed and removed his glasses, leaning back in his chair. "I've been meaning...I should have talked to you Catherine."

"Hey, I know that. Start talking now." Her voice was gentle.

Eyes narrowing, Grissom placed two fingers on his lips as he gathered his thoughts. The way he told the story, Catherine could tell he had removed himself from any emotion regarding it, like it was a case to be worked and left at the end of the day.

"I'm guessing that's what Delko was doing here."

Grissom leaned on his desk. "Yeah. Flew all the way to tell me...to tell me why, I guess."

Their eyes stayed locked throughout the conversation, the trust they shared absolute. Grissom hadn't talked to Catherine about it because he didn't want to talk about it, not because he didn't want to talk to her. The blonde understood this.

"It doesn't change what he did." Grissom looked pensive. "How can I not question what kind of person he is after this?"

Catherine gave him a patient look. "Grissom, you were seeing him for a year. You know what kind of person he is, you do."

She watched sadness creep into his face.

"That's why you're so damn morose." A vague smile parted her lips in clarity, "you still love him. He killed someone and you still love him." Catherine hit the nail on the head, she could tell from Grissom's expression. "Oh, Christ Gil," she said gently, "both of us have taken a life-"

"How can you say that like it's the same thing?" He looked at her with incredulous distress. "You shot someone to save me. I shot someone to save a child. We didn't...hunt down someone we felt had wronged us and stab them to death," he said quickly. He looked at her and saw that she didn't share his opinion.

Catherine rubbed her palms together, looked about the room to gather her thoughts and drawing on her patience. "Imagine the people you care about the most. Your mother, Horatio...me." Grissom smiled briefly at her.

"Imagine someone took one of us from you...and then they walked. You're telling me the thought wouldn't even cross your mind?"

In Catherine's eyes, Grissom saw the uncompromising love of a mother. He looked down at his fingers laced over his stomach, uncertain. His face clouded over. "How can I know?

Catherine shrugged. "Maybe you should think about that." She rose, tugging down the bottom of her dark, denim jacket. "Maybe you should catch a plane," she said with raised eyebrows.

~~~~#~~~~

Billie Holiday played softly on the stereo of Horatio's condo. He was laid out on his couch with an arm slung over his face. The Miami sun was dying, his stomach was rumbling and there were no lights on in the house. His focus was on nothing, trying to capture it and hold onto it so that his mind couldn't stray to other places. It was almost working except when he started to drift off to sleep and would start dreaming about dancing to the music. Dancing with Grissom in that safe space they had created between them in those moments, surrounded by music.

Then he would startle himself with a violent twitch, the kind that happen in the moment before true sleep, and have to start all over again. He was tempted not to answer the door when the knock came. The chances of it being Calleigh or Alexx, coming by to check on him, were good. All he wanted was to forget and talking about it didn't allow his brain to compartmentalize the pain and shove it somewhere it wouldn't be found for a while.

Thinking about how it wasn't very kind to ignore the worry of two of his closest friends, Horatio dragged himself from the couch on the second knock and went to the door. Unlocking the deadbolt as he ran a hand through his no doubt dishevelled hair, Horatio suddenly found himself staring at Grissom.

The somewhat shorter man looked up at Horatio and for a moment, there was no emotion on either of their faces. As if their brains refused to process that split second and tell them what to do.

Horatio looked down and leaned against the doorway with one arm. Cast his eyes up from underneath his brow.

"May I come in?" Grissom asked softly, hands in his jacket.

A rumbling sound came from Horatio's chest as he tried to make his throat work. He was dehydrated as well. "Yes," he finally managed, stepping aside to let Grissom enter.

As he kicked off his shoes, Grissom's hand found the light switch and turned it on. Horatio blinked a few times in the glare. Unsure of himself, Grissom sat down on the couch with his coat still on and looked up at Horatio.

The red head was leaning on the door with his palm pressed against it. He was looking at Grissom and thinking about what Kyle and said. Thinking about what he needed to say.

This was a second chance. Looking at Grissom as his heart ached for missing the man, Horatio wanted to deliver. Grissom saw how soft and apprehensive Horatio's eyes were, containing none of the anger of their last argument.

"I...can't say I shouldn't have killed Riaz. I can't." There was no challenge in Horatio's words.

"Eric came and saw me." Grissom stated.

This threw Horatio. He frowned and looked about for a minute. "He..."

"He told me everything about...about Rio." Grissom also wasn't challenging. He wanted them to talk. He needed them to talk. "I can't..."

"I know you can't condone it-" Horatio tried to say.

"No, I can't put myself in your place," Grissom said quickly. "I can never know what it must have been been like...I can't." He looked down at his hands.

That was something, Horatio thought.

"What you did...we spend our lives putting people like you behind bars, people who think they're above the law." Grissom looked up at him, not accusatory but conflicted.

Chest tightening at that, Horatio looked to the floor. "You think I belong behind bars?"

Grissom barked a hollow laugh. "No. The problem is I don't know what to think, Horatio." And it was true. Looking up at Horatio, as docile looking as he ever was when they were alone, Grissom new his feelings toward him hadn't changed because of this. "The problem is I love you."

Horatio couldn't fight the small tug at the corner of his mouth, as painful as that sentence was to hear. "Well...no one ever really wants to hear that, do they?"

The tiniest of smiles ruffled the hair of Grissom's beard.

Every muscle in Horatio's body tightened as his mind played out what he needed to do. His breathing and heart rate increased, Horatio could feel it. "I don't...I don't know where we're gonna go...with this. But Kyle gave me some advice and I should really take it." He spoke uncertainly as he walked up the stairs, Grissom's eyes following him.

He returned from his bedroom with what Grissom recognized as an x-ray folio and placed it on the coffee table.

"What are these?" Grissom spoke softly.

"Open it," He said in his quiet gravel, sitting down next to Grissom.

Grissom flipped the file open, his eyes immediately taking note of the fact that these were x-rays of Horatio, taken almost 20 years prior in connection with the Resden case. As he looked over the bones with a coroners eye, he caught it. Caught them.

Thickening of the bone in several different areas of the long bones, especially along the humerus, radius and ulna of both arms. The same could be seen on several ribs and on the left side of the mandible and maxilla. It was evidence of severe trauma, old trauma.

He looked up at Horatio, sitting opposite from him but staring into the space between them, his breathing forced to be level in an obvious way. No one would ever know to look at the man. His fair skin, his soft eyes, his unshakable composure.

Grissom's lips parted for a second. There was something to be said here but he didn't know what. How many years on the job and he didn't know what to say.

"If you're wondering...if the arm fractures were spiral, they were." Horatio nodded. "When he finished with my mother..." His face was emotionless until he said this and winced. It took a minute for him to regain his poise. "When he was finished beating her, if he heard Ray or I crying...we'd be next."

Grissom looked at Horatio with a mixture of horror and disbelief. He had suspected that the elder Caine was a poor excuse for a father, he just hadn't known how true that was.

"I don't drink whiskey because he did. It always happened when he was drunk and...when he'd sober up he'd apologize. My mother and Ray they...they always wanted to believe him." He shook his head. "I couldn't."

Grissom went to place his hand on Horatio's knee but was stopped by Horatio. "I'm not done yet."

"Horatio, you don't have to-" He tried to speak knowing there was nothing he could do. This was old damage, done in Horatio's most formative years.

"I do. I do." Horatio insisted, his breathing laborious. "I need to tell you that I found her when I came home early from school on July second at 1:32. On the floor in her own blood. Knife from the kitchen lying beside her. I have her eyes...and the only way I remember her's is from that day, empty." The tone of his voice was so odd as he spoke this, a little too high.

Grissom wrung his hands and looked at the floor, clenched his jaw.

"My dad was watching TV, his arms covered in blood. I always stayed calm around him because he would feed off of fear...or upset." Horatio held open his right palm and traced a thin scar that travelled across his middle and trigger fingers. "But I was screaming when I stabbed him."

Horatio looked aside to Grissom, so many conflicting emotions in his face, in his glacial blue eyes. The fight to control himself was being lost. "I...I never told anyone before." He shook with the tears he wouldn't let out but didn't take his eyes from Grissom. "And I needed you to know...that I had given you everything, I swear." He finished in a whisper as Grissom pulled him to his chest fiercely.

Tears formed and spilled, one by one, down Grissom's face as Horatio kept repeating "I swear there's nothing else," over and over into his shoulder. Tears shed for the child this man had been, the man life had forced him to become, the life they were making together when the truth of it all came crashing down. Grissom rocked him gently, feeling Horatio's arm wrap around his waist and squeeze hard as he shook.

~~~~#~~~~

Grissom was using the arm rest of the couch as a backrest so Horatio could lean back against him. The first five buttons of Horatio's shirt were undone so Grissom's hand could rest on the pale skin of his chest, an inch from his much slowed heart. His other arm was curled around Horatio, his lips pressed to the skewed red locks. Horatio's hand was over Grissom's through his shirt.

"You gotta let me in," Grissom whispered, his lips brushing Horatio's temple. His eyes squeezed shut. "And you gotta keep me there, Horatio, God," he exclaimed quietly, "how has this not killed you?"

Horatio looked up at Grissom as best he could considering their position, his eyelids drooping. "I'm glad your father was a good man. That your mother was strong." His voice was weak and his head drifted down to rest on his chest after that.

"Did you hear me?" Grissom whispered. But only a soft rumble from Horatio's chest answered him. He was asleep.

~~~~#~~~~

Grissom wasn't tired. He held onto Horatio with the same attention he had watched Nick, afraid lest any new harm should come to him. The beat of Horatio's heart on his palm was reassuring in it's rhythm.

His mind strayed to the small velvet box in his luggage. He had been carrying it around since the day he bought the ring. Staring at the length of Horatio stretched out on top of him, Grissom knew this was it. Nothing could tear him from this man's side, not ever again.

He smirked as he thought about the amount of work it was all going to take, considering where Horatio's communication problems arose from.

"I love you," he whispered, feeling the fierce strength of it that burned in his chest.

Keys would be heard in the door a moment before Kyle entered. He stood still a moment when he caught sight of the two men before he smiled at Grissom. Grissom smiled back.

"Hey Kyle."

"Hey Gil."

They both spoke softly, Kyle not wanting to wake his father any more than Grissom did. There wasn't much to worry about in that case though, Horatio was sleeping incredibly soundly.

"Hungry?" Kyle asked.

Grissom inclined his head. "I don't know how much luck we're going to have," he said with a nod in the direction of the fridge.

Smiling, Kyle reached outside and picked up a couple grocery bags. Grissom chuckled softly at the sight as Kyle brought them in and started to unpack.

Blinking slowly, Horatio looked at the light in the kitchen as his mind finished the leap to consciousness. He sat up quickly but found himself constrained by Grissom's arms. The touch caused him to turn, his face an inch from Grissom's. The panic in his eyes disappeared. "I thought I dreamed..." He started.

"Yeah? Well I'm here," Grissom whispered while giving him a warm smile. He kissed Horatio's forehead.

Frowning at the sound of something frying in the kitchen, Horatio turned and saw Kyle.

"Hey dad. You were really out there."

Grissom extracted himself and went to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water which he handed to Horatio. Downing it, he set it down as Grissom knelt in front of him, looking him over.

"You okay?" He asked, running a hand through Horatio's hair.

"Yes...I do feel exhausted." They shared an intimate gaze, pupils meeting and searching.

"What were you two up to this afternoon?" Kyle said, implying something to lighten the mood.

"Planning our joint storming of the go-kart track. That kind of planning can really take it out of a person, you know." Grissom responded without missing a beat, his eyes never leaving Horatio's.

Kyle laughed as he placed cans into cupboards. "We'll see about that."

Grissom stood and went to the door, slipping on his shoes.

"Um," Horatio swallowed, looking fearful, "are you going?"

Grissom looked up at him and shook his head. "My suitcase is in the car. I should also phone Ecklie...let him know I'll be taking some time off." He opened the door and walked outside.

Horatio exhaled the breath he felt he'd been holding for a month, letting his head hang between his shoulders. He wasn't a praying man but he believed in being thankful. He was thankful for second chances. Silently, he vowed to earn this one.