A/N: Set somewhere in early Season 6. I've picked at and played with this random fic off and on for months while writing The Sound of Her Footsteps and battling writer's block on The Idiot's Guide and Lilies of The Valley. It's not total fluff, but it's not exactly plot-heavy, either. If you enjoy it, let me know—I might attempt a follow-up with more substance 😊
"I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking." ~ Albert Einstein
3:52pm ET
Calleigh glanced anxiously at her watch. What the hell is he doing?
"It's clear in here, H," Eric informed his LT over the phone. "Our guy is long gone, and this building isn't going to last much longer. I'm on my way out now."
"Be quick," Horatio responded as he surveyed the scene in front of him. The warehouse where their suspect had holed up was wreathed in flames on the south side.
"Is he headed this way?" Calleigh inquired, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.
Horatio started to respond to his second in command, noticing her unease, but a massive explosion interrupted whatever he might have said.
Calleigh stood paralyzed, watching in slow motion as the roof of the warehouse rippled with the blast and caved inward. Amid the deafening roar of the collapse, she couldn't hear the gut-wrenching scream leave her lips. "ERIC!"
She couldn't hear her cry, so she didn't register the panic in her voice, but the two men beside her did, and when she attempted to bolt toward the wreckage, Jake and Horatio seized her arms to forcibly restrain her.
"Let me GO!" she screamed as she fought against them. "He's in there, Horatio, he's still in there!"
Horatio tightened his grip on Calleigh's arms. "Calleigh, wait," he ordered as she struggled against him. "The structure isn't stable."
But she didn't hear. All she could hear was the screeching echo of the collapsing roof, the reverberation of the falling steel and concrete.
"Cal, just wait a sec. Fire and rescue are here, they'll—" Jake began, tightening his own grip on his girlfriend.
"They'll take too long!" Calleigh exclaimed, wrenching herself free of his grasp, anger and panic taking over. "They don't know where he is in the building, and we just got off the phone with him."
Jake saw the fear and the fight flare in Calleigh's eyes, and he took an unsteady step backward. Glancing over to Horatio, he sent the man a silent message. They couldn't stop her, and she would never forgive them if they tried. Either way, they risked losing her.
Horatio relented. "Let's go," he stated loudly over the chaos now reigning at the scene.
Calleigh took off so fast that Jake and Horatio could barely keep up with her. When they encountered the first rescue team, she rapidly communicated there was an officer inside, that he was located in the northeast quadrant toward the back of the warehouse.
The entire group immediately set off around the perimeter of the destroyed building, taking the fastest route to the other side. As they rounded the corner, Calleigh's heart sank to her stomach, and she felt sick. The wall on this side of the structure had completely collapsed. How could he still be alive?
Cal didn't have time to process her rising panic or the burning sensation in her throat, the tears threatening to fall. She simply needed to find Eric.
"Here! Over here!" a firefighter called. "There's an opening. We need to brace this!"
"There's no way we're getting in through here," another man declared. "Where's the saw?"
A voice sounded from the back of the group. "On its way!"
God, we don't have time for this, Calleigh swore to herself.
"Calleigh, no!" Jake yelled. It was too late; the woman was already several strides ahead of him and darting for the small opening.
"Ma'am! Hold up!" shouted the nearest rescuer. He tried to catch her with his outstretched arms, but she was too quick.
"Just brace this," she yelled at him in passing.
The group of men could do nothing more than look on as Calleigh lithely twisted her body through the opening and into the smoldering remains of the collapsed warehouse. Horatio immediately started issuing orders to the first responders. He couldn't lose them both. What was she thinking?
Horatio knew exactly what she was thinking, actually, and so did Jake Berkeley. Or, rather, they knew she wasn't thinking; she was acting on pure feeling and instinct. Horatio chanced a look in Jake's direction and saw heartbreak and resignation written on his face.
4:01pm ET
Calleigh crawled on her hands and knees as far as she could go before she was blocked by fallen beams. Concrete dust coated the floor below her, the cloud she created as she inched forward filling her lungs and obscuring her view.
"Eric!" she coughed out. "Eric, can you hear me?"
Her heart soared when she heard a cry some distance ahead of her. "Cal!"
The cry was weak and filled with pain, but she heard it. "Eric, I'm coming, but I need you to keep talking so I can find you," Calleigh called to him again.
"Cal, I'm stuck," she heard him say. "I can't…move."
"It's okay, I'm on my way," she said loudly, for she was still about 30 feet away. She studied the path ahead of her and cursed. Given her small size, she'd be able to navigate the rubble to get to Eric, but it would be tough to get him back out, especially if he was injured, as the pain in his voice indicated.
Calleigh fought hard to quell her panic and reminded herself that at least he was conscious and able to speak, which was a good sign. She crawled under steel and contorted her body around shrapnel, slowly bringing herself closer toward her partner.
"Are you hurt, Eric?" she asked. She had to keep him talking.
Silence filled the air for a moment and Calleigh's stomach flipped, but then Eric's voice sounded out with a groan. "Blood. There's blood but I…don't…know where it's coming from," he managed to say.
Suddenly, Calleigh caught sight of Eric's brown dress shoe, then the other. Her knees were screaming and her lungs burned with the onslaught of the dust, but she pushed herself forward—just a few feet more.
When he came into full view, Calleigh suppressed the gasp that rose to her throat. Eric lay trapped under a steel beam, his legs writhing as he tried hard to extricate himself without success. The beam pinned him at an odd angle, stretching from his left hip to his right shoulder.
Calleigh finally reached Eric and moved to hover over him, her hand cupping his face and her eyes locked on his. His chocolate eyes were filled with fear and pain, etched with relief at seeing her there, and begging her for help.
"Please, Cal. Hard...to breathe. Hurts," he managed to gasp.
"I've got you, just hang in there, okay?" Calleigh replied with more confidence than she currently felt.
"It's just…you?" he gasped again and searched out her eyes for the answer. "How…?"
"Don't talk," Calleigh soothed. "We've got to get this thing off you."
Calleigh's training kicked in as she began to assess the situation. Blood streamed from a cut at the edge of Eric's hairline. He'd need a CT scan later, but his eyes weren't dilated and he seemed alert enough at the moment, so she moved her eyes further down his body.
His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Calleigh could tell the weight of the beam was crushing his lungs; he didn't have much time. Her eyes quickly darted to either side of him and down to his legs. Both legs were free, as was his right arm, although it was pinned at the shoulder. She observed his left arm completely pinned under the beam.
Her breath caught in her chest when she noticed the blood slowly pooling between his side and his left arm. Calleigh swallowed hard, willing her voice to be calm.
"Do you think you can bend your right hand up under the beam and help me lift?" she asked.
"Maybe," he panted. "But you're not…strong enough."
Eric was right, she didn't have the strength, even if he could assist her some. And if the small pool of blood growing at Eric's side was any indication, he didn't need to try to exert the energy required to lift the steel beam. Cal desperately searched around for something, anything, to help leverage the beam off her partner.
"Yes!" she exclaimed to herself when she spied a steel pipe ten feet to her right. Unfortunately, mangled rebar obstructed the path between her position and the pipe. Her chances of sustaining an injury from the protruding metal were high, but she knew she had no choice. C'mon, Calleigh.
"Eric, I'll be right back," she assured him with a squeeze of her hand to his free wrist.
"Cal—" Eric replied, fear in his voice. He didn't want to be left alone.
Calleigh backtracked quickly and hovered over him once more, cupping his face with both her hands this time. "I'll be right back," she whispered, and carefully leaned down to brush a barely-there kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I promise."
When he sighed and his eyes closed in acceptance of her promise, she felt enough comfort to leave him. She picked her way through crumbled concrete and deftly maneuvered around most of the rebar. As Calleigh focused on clearing the largest of the bent and broken bars, she failed to notice a singular piece of remaining rebar impeding her path. It sliced across her arm and forced a cry of pain from her lips.
"Calleigh?" Eric called after her in terror. "Cal, what happened?"
She didn't bother to examine the wound, she simply kept going. "I'm fine, just a scratch," she stated loudly so he could hear her. Again, her voice sounded with much more confidence than she felt.
4:10pm ET
Calleigh at long last reached her target, grabbed the long pipe, and started painstakingly navigating her way back through the twisted maze of debris when a loud creaking noise permeated the air. This whole building was about to flatten, with her and Eric inside. In the distance, Calleigh faintly heard the shouts of the FROs still struggling to gain entry. She knew the two of them were too far away, too tangled in metal and concrete for the crew to reach them, and she quickened her climb through the wreckage.
Another creak, and this time Calleigh felt her surroundings shake. The cries of the rescuers increased in volume. "Back! Get back!" she heard.
A jolt of fear coursed through Calleigh. The two of them were on their own now. I can do this, she told herself. I have to do this.
Her senses were on peak alert for more hazards, and she forced herself to feel the fear that now buzzed in her bones. She let it flow in her veins and course through her body, surrendering to the part of it that kept her moving and exiling the rest.
Precious minutes later, once again at Eric's side, she performed another quick assessment and determined his breathing had shallowed even further. The pool of blood at his side seemed to have stopped spreading, which she knew could be a good or bad sign. He might be bleeding internally now, or the pressure of the beam could be the only thing keeping him from bleeding out. He could die if she moved it, but she knew they'd both die if she didn't.
"What're you doing?" Eric asked her weakly.
"I need a fulcrum," she explained. "For this pipe—ah!"
Calleigh spotted a smaller block of concrete to her left. Crawling to it, she used her legs and feet to push it into position in front of the beam.
"Eric, I'm going to leverage the beam off you, but you're going to have to move fast. Can you do that?" she asked him.
"I think so," he replied. "Tell me when."
Calleigh fitted the pipe under the beam and against the concrete block, then she took a deep, dusty breath and braced herself. If only she could stand up all the way, she'd have more leverage. As it was, she was on her knees and would have to use her full body weight against the pipe.
"One, two, three…now!" she shouted.
She exerted every last ounce of her strength, her feet almost leaving the ground as she pushed on the pipe, not hearing her strained cry mix with Eric's scream of pain as the beam lifted off him an inch and he slowly dragged himself to safety.
"Clear!" Eric exclaimed through his excruciating pain.
Calleigh let the beam drop and fell to the floor in a heap beside him. Her chest heaved with the effort of raising the beam. Next to her, Eric rolled to his right side, gasping for air and clutching his abdomen.
Although her head still spun, Cal immediately reached for Eric, touching him gently and reassuring herself that he was still alive and breathing. Her hand landed on his where he applied pressure to the left side of his torso, and she felt the slick warmth of his blood on her palm and fingertips.
4:18pm ET
"Eric, please talk to me," she pleaded. She sought out his eyes, but they were squeezed tightly shut. "Look at me, please."
He groaned and his body rocked slightly back and forth, but he complied. Their eyes met briefly before Calleigh couldn't bear to see the pain in his depths, and she dropped her forehead to his. She didn't even care that the blood from his cut now soaked her own face. She just needed to feel him.
Cal held onto him for a long moment so Eric could catch his breath. He inhaled long, slow drags of air and soon his chest heaved less and his pulse began to even.
Another loud crash rang through the air. The sound of screeching metal sent shivers up Calleigh's spine. We have to get out of here, NOW.
She shifted her body against his so she could inspect the wound in his side. The gash was deep—how deep, she couldn't tell—but she could see it bled profusely.
"Are you able to move?" Cal questioned. "We need to leave."
"I think so," Eric answered, his words clipped as he fought the pain. He slowly moved to a kneeling position.
"Keep pressure on that wound," Calleigh warned.
Eric nodded. He surveyed the small space in which they sat hunched. "How the hell did you get in here?"
"I crawled," she explained. With an apologetic look in her eye, she added, "And you're going to have to do the same to get out."
"God, Cal," Eric said, a sick comprehension dawning on him. "You came in alone."
Calleigh simply looked him in the eye and murmured, "I couldn't leave you."
In that moment, an understanding passed between the two friends. Calleigh exhaled quietly at the force of it. "When we get out of here, we can talk about it, okay?"
"Okay," Eric replied softly. His fingers found Calleigh's and gave them a tender squeeze.
"Let's go," she could only breathe in response, tugging him by the hand in the direction of the narrow gap.
Tendrils of smoke slowly filled the air as the two clambered through the rocky debris. Once or twice, Calleigh's shirt caught and tore on razor sharp metal. She stayed ahead of Eric, carefully widening the path where she could and alerting him to any dangers.
They moved agonizingly slow. Calleigh heard Eric's replies to her encouragement grow weaker and weaker. The smoke only continued to thicken, too, making it increasingly difficult for Calleigh to see the obstacles in front of her. The noise of the raging fire approached behind them.
4:30pm ET
Finally, they could move forward no more. "Shit," Calleigh swore. She could see faint sunlight through the smoke and knew they were close.
"What's wrong?" Eric asked with a cough.
"When the building shifted, some of the beams must have fallen and blocked the way I came in," she told him. "We can't get through this way."
Behind her, Eric coughed again. "Can we go up and over?" he suggested.
Calleigh turned her eyes upward to investigate the ruins above them. One wrong move and they'd be crushed. But, that had to be better than being burned alive. If they shifted that pipe to the left, and used their momentum to push against that concrete column…
"I think we can!" Cal said. "Eric…if this doesn't work."
"Then we died trying," he laughed ruefully.
"Not funny, Delko," she threw over her shoulder in his direction. "Be ready to move quickly. I'll have to help lift you, so use your legs as much as possible."
For the second time, Calleigh's strained yell mixed with Eric's prolonged, painful cry. Calleigh had managed to dislocate the pipe blocking their exit, shimmy upward and heave Eric up behind her.
"There!" Calleigh panted, pointing to the light streaming in from the hole in the outside wall. The rescue crew had successfully widened the space before the building shifted and forced their retreat. "We just need to make it there. Can you jump? It's about eight feet, narrow clearance."
Eric looked pale and his body shook next to her. Both hands gripped his side and Calleigh could see they were soaked in blood. "I don't know," he coughed.
Calleigh coughed, too. Slowly, she leaned in close to rest her head against his. "You can do this, Eric. We're almost there," she whispered.
He pulled back and gave her a tired, crooked grin. "On three?"
"Let me go first," Calleigh countered. "I can help cushion your fall."
"I'll crush you, Cal," Eric wheezed.
"I'm tougher than I look," Calleigh quipped.
"Fine," Eric sighed and coughed. "But…don't…do…anything stupid."
Calleigh nodded, and with a caress to his cheek, she said, "See you in a sec."
She turned to jump, and she thanked her lucky stars when she landed on her feet, slightly off-balance but not enough to send her flying. When she looked up, all she could see was smoke. "Eric?" she cried. "You have to jump!"
In the next second she heard him call, "Make some space!" and then she saw him hurdling toward her. His feet hit the earth with a thud and he crumpled to the ground. Calleigh, who caught him in her arms as he fell, managed to slow his descent and cushion his fall, just as she promised. He groaned in pain, nonetheless.
"Cal," he gasped.
"Shhh," she said gently. "Come on, just a few more feet."
Half-carrying, half-dragging Eric with her, Calleigh put one foot in front of the other, pressing forward toward the light ahead.
Finally, when Calleigh thought she couldn't take one more step, they made it to the exit and breathed in their first gulp of fresh air. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she registered shouting. A few moments later, she felt hands on her shoulders and someone pulling Eric out of her arms.
4:37pm ET
"Help…him," she gasped.
"We will, Calleigh, we will," came a calm voice.
Her eyes stung from the smoke and the suddenly blinding light of the sun, blurring her vision, but she knew Horatio's voice.
"Please, Horatio," Calleigh pressed.
"He's safe," the man assured her. "You both are."
After a few more blinks, Calleigh's vision mostly cleared, although her head spun. "He has a laceration to his left side," she persisted. "He's bleeding."
"So are you," Horatio countered.
Calleigh coughed roughly and nodded, but the motion sent a wave of dizzying nausea rushing over her; one second, she saw pavement, and the next, she saw sky.
Then, nothing.
8:20pm ET
"Calleigh, baby? Can you hear me? Wake up, now, that's it."
"Alexx?" Calleigh muttered groggily.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and tried to adjust them to the light, what little of it there was in the room. Only a single glowing panel shone down from the ceiling of what Calleigh quickly discerned to be a hospital room, casting the sterile space into soothing half-darkness.
She couldn't recall why she should find herself here or why the room spun a little more than it rightfully should as her eyes tried to focus.
It all came back to her in a rush.
"Eric!" she breathed. The sudden exclamation brought on a round of coughs, made worse by her attempt to extricate herself from the bed and a jumble of baffling tubes and wires.
"Whoa, whoa, there," Alexx said. Her hand flew to her friend's shoulder, gently easing her back down. "He's okay, baby."
Calleigh exhaled and collapsed against the bed, only to succumb to another coughing fit. Alexx immediately reached for a pitcher of water by the bedside, poured it into a cup with a straw, and held it up to Calleigh's lips.
"Drink," she commanded. "Just a little, not too much."
Calleigh knew better than to argue with Alexx in "Dr. Woods" mode, so she complied, sipping until she felt the burn in her throat and chest momentarily subside.
This only partially satisfied Alexx, who, in her anger, didn't care that her unofficial patient had just awakened or that she still lay confused by her surroundings, or that her mind was somewhere else, on someone else.
"What on God's green earth were you thinking, Calleigh?" she questioned fiercely.
"I wasn't." Calleigh's confession rang quietly in the room as she averted her gaze from Alexx's.
"You could have been killed. Both of you would have been dead!" the woman admonished, her voice breaking.
Cal's eyes immediately filled with tears, a painful thing since the earlier smoke and dust had irritated her lids and tear ducts.
Alexx relented with a sigh and moved to wrap Calleigh in her arms. "Oh, you know I don't blame you. But, Lord help me, you scared us."
A watery chuckle escaped Calleigh's lips, slightly muffled against Alexx's shoulder. She quickly turned somber at the thought of the terror she caused her team, her closest friends, by her brash actions this afternoon. She considered them her chosen family, and she never wanted to hurt them.
But Eric…she couldn't wake up tomorrow and face a world in which he didn't exist. She'd discovered her non-negotiable today.
"I'm so sorry, Alexx," Cal murmured. "I had to. I couldn't…I-I just couldn't…"
She felt a loving hand caress her hair before her friend pulled away. Alexx held Calleigh by the arms and searched her eyes, reaching up to brush a stray hair from her forehead before speaking again. "I know."
Behind them, the soft clearing of a throat interrupted their moment. Horatio stood in the doorway.
"Ms. Duquesne. Good to see you awake," he stated.
Calleigh couldn't read her lieutenant's face, not an unusual occurrence, but one that especially worried her now. She steeled herself and asked, "How much trouble am I in?"
Horatio ducked his head to stare at the sunglasses thoughtfully twirling between his fingers, then gently re-captured Calleigh's concerned eyes. "Quite a bit. Quite a bit, but we'll deal with that later."
"And—and how is Eric?" she asked in a tentative way neither Horatio nor Alexx were accustomed to hearing from her.
"I just left him. He's conscious, very sore, and asking for you." Horatio's knowing smile forced an embarrassed blush onto Calleigh's cheeks.
"You're free to see him when you're cleared. However," he cryptically motioned with his head to the hallway, "I believe someone else would like to speak with you first."
Her eyes tracked in the direction of the hallway, where, through the open door, Calleigh spied the toe of a beat-up leather boot. Shit.
8:46pm ET
Jake didn't hate her, but he left hurt and angry. She supposed that's all she could ask for. She witnessed the heartbreak in his eyes, but also the understanding. He got it—what she'd done was stupid and irrational, but he got it, because he'd do the same for her if their roles were reversed.
He softly kissed her lips, wished her luck, and slipped from her room. Calleigh knew she'd never see him again.
9:00pm ET
"I'm fine, for the last time," Calleigh insisted. "Can I please go now?"
The doctor clucked her tongue in disapproval and no small amount of entertainment. Her patient seemed to be in a big hurry to leave. "Your oxygen level is still too low for you to leave the hospital tonight," she chided. "But, I don't see the harm in you roaming a few rooms away."
"Thank you," Calleigh sighed.
"Hey, you can thank the overly-insistent Cuban man down the hall," the doctor laughed. "My nurses are ready to quit."
Calleigh grinned apologetically. "I'm sure. And I'm sorry, it's just been a long day."
"Never apologize, hon," the woman replied. "Just go get your guy."
With a wink, she turned to leave. "I'll have someone come in to remove your IV and bring you some clean clothes. You don't want him smelling you in those."
9:12pm ET
By the time Calleigh walked the distance from her room to Eric's, she understood why the doctor told her to take it easy. Simply traversing the length of the hall left her weak and shaky.
She made it to her destination, however, and poked her head around his doorframe to find him arguing with a nurse technician. As soon as he caught sight of her, he stopped mid-sentence.
"Calleigh," he breathed, eyes closed in gratitude at seeing her apparently safe and sound, minus the thick bandage on her right arm.
The technician, also seeing Calleigh enter the room, and noticing the fight leave his patient, decided that Eric would no longer try to escape the confines of his bed, and he thankfully took his leave.
He passed Calleigh on the way out. "Make sure he stays put, ma'am."
She laughed. "Got it."
Alone with him now, Calleigh turned her gaze onto the man she risked her life to save.
"Hey," she whispered when she approached his bedside. Tears pricked her eyes and she didn't try to stop the hand that reached for Eric's cheek of its own accord as she sank heavy onto the bed next to him.
"Hey," Eric whispered back gravelly. His good arm snaked across her thighs and around her waist, drawing her close. "Don't you ever pull a stunt like that again," he ordered, his voice breaking with his own unshed tears.
She sensed the anger in his tone as well as the urgency, but most of all, the fear, and her traitorous tears began to fall.
"You would have died, Eric," she countered, her overrun, anguished eyes locked on his. "How could I ever—I won't ever—"
Her breath caught and she gave up. The lump in her throat prevented her from explaining any further, not that she really possessed the words to articulate what she wanted to say, anyway.
Eric didn't need to hear them, though, and since his words also seemed captive in his chest, he simply leaned forward and did the only thing he knew to do, and seized her lips with his.
The hint of urgency Calleigh heard in his voice before, the faint note of desperation that told her how much he needed her there with him, how scared he felt for her life, and how he longed to know her forever in just the space of a moment…she now drank in every bit of it from his kiss.
His initial collision against her rocked her backward, but their momentum swung the other direction as she responded with fervor, so that he had to use his weight to keep them centered and upright.
The effort elicited an unwelcome groan of pain from Eric; he mostly succeeded in masking it, but she felt it vibrate against her lips and sensed the tension ripple through his body.
Calleigh attempted to pull away, for his sake, but Eric pursued her, his right hand wandering to the back of her neck, knotting in her hair, and pulling her back to him. He tilted his head and tasted her tongue, deepening their already heated embrace, and she was lost.
Their lips danced, soft and sweet and full and aching, until the last ounce of air was spent from their lungs, and they finally parted.
9:25pm ET
Calleigh couldn't be sure whose tears were whose on her face, but she didn't care.
Eric watched her swipe at them and saw that she missed a renegade drop, which he tenderly wiped away with the pad of his thumb.
She sniffled and choked out a laugh, seeing his equally red-rimmed lids, and she returned the favor with a brush of her small fingers at the inside corner of his eye, delicately drying the moisture there before letting her thumb find a resting place on his full bottom lip, her palm kissing the line of his jaw.
"Why, Cal?" he asked.
She sighed and leaned her forehead against his so she didn't have to meet his penetrating gaze. "I just…reacted," she answered so quietly he almost didn't hear her.
Eric needed to see her eyes. Slowly and carefully, only wincing once, he threaded his finger's with Calleigh's, leaned on her for support, and shifted his body away so he could look her full on.
"Calleigh, you rushed headlong into a deathtrap for me. Do you know how insane that was? How stupid?" Eric tightened his grip on Calleigh's slender fingers as he spoke, willing her to understand how devastated he would feel if anything ever happened to her.
She shook her head in defiance and pinned him with a burning look. "I'd do it all over again if I had to," she declared heatedly.
There would be no arguing; she'd given her final word on what happened today.
Eric's chest roared and he tried to think of something to say, but nothing came. So, as he did before, he leaned into her, captured her lips with his, and kissed her until neither one of them could think past their own names, let alone remember the horrors of the afternoon.
Calleigh loved him.
In that infinitesimal moment, that fraction of a second today when her duty came into direct conflict with her heart, rational thought took a shocking backseat, and she discovered the truth…Eric was her non-negotiable.
She loved him—she finally knew it, he could at last see it, and they needed to talk about it…but they both seemed to be past complex thought for the night.
"Are you mad at me?" Cal murmured against his swollen lips when they parted.
"Yes," Eric told her the truth.
"Can I stay here tonight anyway?" she entreated with an innocence that sent Eric's stomach aflutter.
He grinned crookedly and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of Calleigh's mouth. "Yes."
"We'll talk tomorrow?" she whispered.
"Yes," he promised, ghosting his lips against hers as he spoke.
Calleigh gently helped Eric move to the far side of his hospital bed, careful not to disturb his IV lines of antibiotics and pain relievers, and she crawled in next to him, face to face, tangling their legs and nuzzling her nose against his.
"Are you okay?" she questioned in concern when she noticed him suppress a wince as they settled in together.
The deep gash in Eric's side had resulted in a layer of internal sutures hidden beneath a long, angry row of outer staples. He'd recover, but it hurt like hell and healing would take time.
"I'm okay, Cal," he assured her quietly. A sleepy grin spread across his face. "Never better, in fact."
Calleigh's grin grew to match Eric's. She brushed a kiss to his lips once, twice, and leaned her forehead against his. A complex conversation awaited them tomorrow, but for tonight, she'd lay happy in his arms and chase much-needed peace.
"Good night, Eric," she said, attempting to keep her heavy-lidded eyes open so she could watch him as he drifted into sleep. She wished to hear his voice one last time tonight, but, already fast asleep, Eric never heard her, so Calleigh shut her eyes and let herself wander off with Eric into dreamland.
11:52pm ET
Calleigh woke with a start, the terrifying echo of twisting metal and crumbling concrete fading from her ears. A moment passed before she realized she still lay in the hospital, mostly unharmed, tightly cocooned in solid arms that kept her safe.
Eric twitched beside her, and she could tell he shared in her nightmares. She prayed the painkillers in his system would dull more than his physical pain and save him from reliving the most vivid details of their hellish ordeal.
Carefully, Calleigh extricated her arm from under Eric's and checked her watch.
Eight hours.
Had it only been eight hours since she watched that warehouse implode, ripping her heart to pieces with every tumbling wall and column? She exhaled sharply. Don't go down the rabbit hole, Calleigh.
She didn't need to speak with Horatio to know she'd endure a round of psych evals in the coming weeks in response to her recklessness. Aside from the fit reps being a requisite part of her returning to duty—because, without a doubt, she faced suspension—Calleigh suspected the fear and trauma caused by today's events would not leave her soon, and as much as she hated to admit it, she might need to talk to someone.
All remaining thought left her when, despite his deep state of slumber, Eric sensed the absence of Calleigh's arm curled with his, and he unconsciously reached for her. She smiled and tenderly caressed his forearm with her hand, running it oh-so-gently up to his shoulder and back to his elbow so as not to wake him, before burrowing once more into his embrace.
Calleigh released a content sigh as her eyes fluttered close. Whatever happened tomorrow, she would accept the consequences, because this…this was worth every single one of them.