Author: Beginner Blue

Title: Calleigh's Outfit

Disclaimer: The characters belong to CBS, I just wish the Bruck would treat them with a little more TLC.

"All of my senses overthrown
by the might of your skin."
 David Gray, Falling Free

"Come on, Handsome, wake up. Wake! Up!"

Calleigh sounded rather urgent so Horatio did his best to comply. He felt someone gently ease his sunglasses away from his face. Calleigh, he supposed. Horatio dragged reluctant eyelids upward and gradually her face came into focus.

"Oh, thank God. Can you sit up, Horatio?"

"Uhhh…give me a minute…"

"I smell gas," she interrupted urgently, hooking his sunglasses into the neck of her shirt. "We don't have a minute, we have to get out." She reached for his arm. "Here, let me help."

"I can't, Calleigh."

"Of course you can," she insisted, panic flaring in huge blue green eyes. "Why can't you?"

He didn't say anything, just reached up and flipped away the left side of his suit jacket.

Calleigh gasped loudly. A sharp section of metal framework had jabbed him in the back, thrust all the way through his body and protruded about an inch upward from his abdomen. Horatio's blue shirt was rapidly becoming soaked in blood.

Calleigh took a deep breath, tore her eyes away from his side and locked them on his face. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to get up. I'm going to help you. Then we're going to walk away from this wreck together. And you are not going to pass out on me until we're at least a hundred yards away. Got it, Lieutenant?"

He considered her words for a second, noting that Calleigh had forced herself to look back at the jagged strip of metal piercing his torso. He saw her judge the angle carefully and when her eyes, wide and afraid, flicked back to his face Horatio managed a soft smile.

"Got it," he whispered. "I'll try. But you have to promise me something, Calleigh."

She was all ready moving into position above him, looking for a spot where she could brace her feet firmly in the wreckage. "You don't have to say it, Horatio. I promise. But you have to really try. Now."

Horatio closed his eyes and sucked in a long, slow breath. "Okay. Let's go." He opened his eyes wide and reached for Calleigh's hands. Pain literally sliced him in half as Calleigh pulled him upwards and away from the framework. He screamed out loud, using the momentum of the shout to propel himself towards her until he was actually standing on shaky legs, freed from the wreckage.

It would have ended right there with Horatio dropping to his knees but Calleigh was a lot stronger than she looked. As soon as he was upright she yanked his left hand up onto her left shoulder, threw her right arm across his upper back and locked her fingers in his armpit.

"Walk!" she hollered, half dragging half pushing him forward, and somehow Horatio gritted his teeth and managed to move his feet, although most of their forward motion was Calleigh's doing, not his. He had no idea how far they went on like that together, could have been ten yards, could have been a mile. But eventually the pain just overwhelmed him, his knees gave out and he went down, dragging Calleigh with him.