Disclaimer: I own nothing. CSI: Miami and everything related is owned by its creators.
Spoilers: Everything through 10-7. From there I happily depart from canon screaming.
Monday Days:
Come Ye Back My Own True Friend
After Hagen's funeral you ask H' for a week off.
Standing in his office, watching him fiddle with his sunglasses, you ignore the urge to grab and crush them. You want to wipe the concern off his face with a well-placed punch. It makes you feel like you're the baby of the lab again and you hate that.
(You haven't been the baby of the lab since before Wolfe joined the team.)
His silence as he mulls over your request is reminding you how much you don't want to be here, sounding like you're accepting defeat and admitting you can't handle your professional and personal life. The line between them has become blurred after Speed's death and you can't separate them. Your shrink told you this is a sign of strength; of your ability to admit you need time to heal.
(You wonder how pathetic it is that you talked with your shrink, when you haven't talked with your best friend.)
He breaks the silence just before you make the decision to leave. He looks up from his sunglasses and holds your gaze as he tells you to take the week off or come back when you're ready. You nod in thanks because you aren't certain what you'll say in reaction to the sincere concern he's shown you.
You're at the door when he calls back to you.
"Calleigh hasn't taken any time off," he states.
You realise that it wasn't just you he was thinking of while he accepted your request.
You knew she wouldn't take any time for herself. "That's not how she works," you reply wryly.
She would take a sick day when she died. Which could happen all too soon and Oh God if it did...
"If her work becomes affected in any way..." he trails off, mercifully interrupting your thoughts.
"Mandatory Sick Leave? She'll love that," is what you want to say but you nod again and escape into the hall.
In the locker room, after packing up your badge and some spare clothes, you find two forgotten pictures under many forgotten second copies of old reports. The first picture is of your family, taken on a Thanksgiving five years ago. You remember hiding it behind your lab coat on your first day in the lab. The second picture is a memory that has become fuzzy and faded and you can't believe you've nearly forgotten.
The picture is of you, Speed and Calleigh covered in mud after processing a crime scene during the rain in the Everglades. Speed is standing between Calleigh and you looking grumpy, tired and irritated, while you and Calleigh are caught mid-laugh after engaging in a quick and satisfying mud fight. (Far away from the crime scene of course.) You had started the fight when you wiped your muddy hand across her cheek and been completely caught off guard when she retaliated by rubbing mud into your hair.
Calleigh had won, managing to slide mud underneath the back of your jumpsuit. You had managed to get few good body shots in though. Her jumpsuit was covered in splattered mud balls when you finished. Speed had watched you fight, looking faintly amused, until you and Calleigh splattered mud balls on his chest.
Nobody had noticed Alexx take the picture.
You're surprised to find yourself smiling at the memory, now clear and restored, feeling the weight of grief lighten a little.
(You miss her laugh and full smiles.)
Your smile fades and you decide to try and convince Calleigh to take time off. Ignoring the hyprocrisy of offering help when one doesn't want it. Because that's what friends are for. To get in your face when you don't want it but when you most need it. Friends took care of each other.
You know she won't say yes but you'll try.
You tuck the picture into your jacket pocket and leave the locker room to find Calleigh.
You find her in the break room, reading an open folder over a cup of coffee. She smiles at you when you sit in front of her, a small ghost of the one in your picture. You tell her you're taking time off and that she should think about doing the same thing. You make a joke out of it, telling her you'd bring the movies if she ordered the pizza and you could have a movie night.
You aren't surprised when she tells you that she has too many cases piling up and can't afford to leave them for week or even a day.
She's looking at you, her face a mask of determination and resolve and it's all you can do to keep from trying to shake some sense, or a reaction out of her. Couldn't she understand that no one would think less of her if she took some personal time? At least to the people that care about her? That you wouldn't?
But that's not how she works, you remind yourself. She's strong and independent to a fault, stubborn and words and phrases like 'help' and asking for it aren't in her vocabulary because she's fine, even when she's not.
You swallow your frustration and tell her you'll be at your apartment for the whole week if she reconsiders.
She gives you a polite thank you and a concern-tinted 'take care of yourself'. You wonder if she would come and kick your ass if you didn't. Speed would have, for all the stupid things you've been doing lately, for your selfishness. But then, she could do that with a look and a calm, logical conversation.
You leave her with her case notes and coffee.
Wishing you could be the refuge work is for her and knowing she doesn't need it.
The first night of your 'vacation' you jolt awake, sweating and grasping for breath. Your alarm clock flashes five o'clock, three hours after you finally fell asleep. You fumble for the bedside lamp and notice your hands are shaking. The light chases away the dark but the nightmare still clings to your skin.
Moving to sit on the side of the bed, you brace your elbows on your knees and press the heels of your palms to your eyes. The echo of a gunshot repeats in surround sound. The image of Calleigh's cold, empty eyes staring up at you from the floor with a halo of blood around her head, is seared into your mind. You press your face into your hands harder, trying to push the nightmare out of your mind, as it plays over and over again.
Fuck.
You need to do something, anything, instead of sitting here, hating that selfish, bastard son of a bitch Hagen.
So you run. The crisp morning air slicing across your face. And you run. The cold ocean water slapping at your ankles. And you run. The nightmare chasing you in your attempt at escape. And you run. Feet pounding on the pavement, echoing the gunshot you hear in your mind. You run until your lungs burn and all you can hear is your heart pumping blood through your body. Bang. Bang. Bang.
You rush to your bathroom when you return to your apartment and throw up nothing but nightmares and acid. You see the face of an exhausted man with a week-old beard stare back at you from the mirror and you don't recognise him. You leave the bathroom without showering and fall onto your couch. Absently, you note that it's 8 o'clock before your eyes close and you slip into unconsciousness.
You wake up hungry ten hours later. You don't eat, instead, you run and run and run. You run until all you focus on is the feel of movement. After, your body aches, your chest burns and you barely have the energy to climb into the shower. You turn the water scalding hot, letting the water scour away the sweat and aches. The spray rushes past your ears in a waterfall of white noise. You lean your elbows and head against the cool tile, the sound of the water almost covering the noise of your thoughts. Almost.
You think about Calleigh.
The terror you saw in her eyes, holding the gun on you.
The soft, solemn tone she used when she asked you if you put a gun to her head.
She sounded small. And the Calleigh you knew was never small.
Even when she was crying in your arms.
The terror that you would fuck up the trust she placed in you as you held the guns to her head.
That you didn't deserve.
The prayers to the god you aren't sure you believe in anymore when you heard the shot.
That it wasn't Calleigh, couldn't be Calleigh. Please don't let it be Calleigh.
The total helplessness you felt when you saw the guilt in her eyes.
The inadequacy of your offer of a drink away from the lab.
Just to get her away.
Rage at that bastard Hagen for taking Calleigh with him in his despair.
Pride and frustration in her strength, her control, even when she looked a step away from falling apart.
The gunshot echoing through the lab.
Her empty eyes staring up at you from---
No.
You slam the water off and get out.
You ignore the mirror when you leave the bathroom
You pull on a pair of sweats and lie down on the couch with the TV on. You let the images and sounds of late night talk shows, over-drawn musical scores and perky, you-haven't-seen-anything-until-you-try-this-new-piece-of-crap infomercial hosts soak into your mind and drown out original thought. Still, it's one o'clock before you finally slip into a dreamless sleep to the TV's chaotic lullaby.
You wake up four hours later with her name on your lips.
On the third night you dream of Horatio in the robes of a catholic priest, asking you if you want to know and understand. Asking you to confess your sins.
You talk with Speed and he gives you advice. And guilt settles heavier on your shoulders.
You dream of Calleigh, calm and serene, without any trace of pain in her eyes when she smiles at you. She says you are not and never were and holds out her hand, waiting for you to understand.
The dream ends just as you feel your fingers interlace with hers while Speed's voice echoes in your head.
You're dead.
Yeah, well, shit happens. I'm dead only if you forget me.
You haven't.
You are, he tells you.
How can you remember?
Get off your ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You aren't the only one suffering. Do your job. Help find closure. Help. Be a friend to Calleigh. You need her and she needs you. Give and you will receive.
You wake up with a sense of direction and determination you haven't felt since you accepted Horatio's offer to become a CSI. You are getting off the couch and you are going to do your job. This time you are going to do it right. Without cheap sex every night. Without losing your badge and disappointing Horatio. Without falling into petty fights with I-walk-on-water-Wolfe. No matter how much you want to make him Stop. Talking. Forever. Without showing any attachment to cases. Without emotional involvement. Without betraying the trust Calleigh has in you.
You will be stronger, more controlled, more focused; better and you won't mess up again.
Five days with only the avoidance of thoughts for company, your apartment begins to feel like a cage.
You go diving and feel more alive than you have in a year. You had forgotten the freedom of diving without the added weight and urgency of searching for a weapon or body. You take the time to explore the ocean floor telling yourself you aren't searching for treasure. That you aren't searching for something to give Calleigh and hoping she'll smile.
When you return to the surface, air and reality press in on you again and for a moment you can't breathe. And it's all you can do to keep from escaping to the calming chaotic order of the water, to dive deeper and deeper until reality is nothing but a vague memory.
But you won't, because you don't want to be that person.
Two days before you go back to work Calleigh is at your door with a warm pizza and a bag of movies.
You open the door without a shirt, and are rewarded with a startled Calleigh, betrayed only by a slight widening of her eyes as they flick from your chest to your face. You don't let her in and she doesn't speak as you look at each other guardedly. Silence settles awkwardly between the hallway and the door.
She's nervous, you notice with surprise, her eyes are too wide, her back too straight, and she's clutching the pizza box a little too tightly. It's usually you who is at her door, pizza in hand and a bag full of movies and she knows it. She's breaking the rules she set up at the beginning of the movie night routine and friendship. You can come to her but she won't come to you. The only reason she would break that rule is if...
Something is wrong.
Without saying a word you move out of the doorway and she walks past you into the living room like a soldier on a mission. You shut the door and watch as she efficiently clears a space on your coffee table for the pizza and movies. You smirk at the Calleigh-ness of it and ignore how much you missed it. She's midway through stacking a pile of magazines alphabetically, when she stops and looks at you, slightly embarrassed. She opens her mouth and you know she's going to apologize for barging in and touching your stuff but you don't care. You care that she's here.
"Get comfortable Calleigh. I'm going to put on a shirt." You leave her in the living room, hands poised over her magazine stack, to find a shirt in your bedroom. You choose a long sleeved, wine coloured shirt, the one you wore the morning you held her in your arms as she cried.
Back in the living room you find Calleigh sitting stiffly on the couch staring at the pizza box. She looks up at you when you sit with your back to the TV, facing the coffee table between Calleigh and you. Silence stretches and pulls uncomfortably at you but this time you won't give in before she does. She needs to talk and you need to listen.
"Too lazy to shave Delko?" Her voice rings with false brightness.
You give her the blunt truth. "I'm not the same person I was two years ago Cal." you say it as if it's the most obvious thing in the world, knowing you'll get a real reaction from her. Undermining her intelligence is never a smart thing to do and you've never claimed to be smart when it comes to Calleigh.
You can almost see armoured doors behind her eyes slam shut in shut in anger. The false smile quickly changes into an angry line. "So who is this man with the beard? And could you ask him if he's seen my friend Eric Delko?" She asks with carefully controlled politeness.
You hate that she has control of herself when you can barely keep frustration out of your voice. And you hate that even though she's a coffee table away from you, she feels an ocean away, unreachable behind the armour she wears so beautifully.
"Friends? Are we even that Calleigh?"
Your softly spoken question settles between you and you catch the hurt that flashes across her face before it's replaced by sincerity. A sincerity that doesn't quite match with the edge of desperateness? anxiety? in her voice when she repeats: "I trust you with every fibre of my being. You know that Eric." Her eyes search out yours, seeking to help you find the trust she has in you she thinks you've forgotten.
(You've only lost it once and you plan on never letting go again.)
Maybe the reason you and Calleigh have drifted so far away from each other isn't the grief or lack of trust but because you didn't take advantage of the trust you place in each other. There have been only a handful of times that you let yourselves trust each other. You were and are too busy being strong for the others benefit and too stubborn to admit you need each other. To listen. To talk. To be there. It has never been that way before but maybe, maybe you both need to start.
When you don't respond to her, she begins to pull farther away from you, once again locking any 'emotional weakness' from view.
Maybe now is good place to begin.
You hold her gaze as you begin to speak, your voice rising in intensity, "You want to know who this man with the beard is Calleigh? He's a man who's lost one of his best friends and is on the verge of losing another. He's a man who's worried that his other best friend hasn't taken one day off to rest, even though she has experienced her ex-boyfriend hold a gun to her head and kill himself with that same gun. A man who's worried that his best friend is too busy being strong for others that she's destroying herself!" You are leaning over the coffee table, on your knees, palms pressed flat to the top, daring Calleigh to look away from you.
Her startled face stares back at you, her body completely still when you finish. But with a slow shake of her head, as if to escape the things you said, she stands up, the perfect picture of cool composure. She looks around your shoulder to the door, when you scramble up from the floor to stand.
"I'm fine Eric. I'm sorry I disturbed your vacation," she says, a trace of venom in her voice and moves toward the door.
Frustration and anger overwhelm you at her favourite catchphrase. She is always fine, even when she's not. You block her path, causing her to stand toe to toe with you. She straightens to her full height and carefully blank eyes stare up at you unflinchingly.
"Why are you here Calleigh?"
"To eat pizza and watch movies, Eric. What didn't tip you off?"
Look. Sarcasm. What other buttons can you push?
"Why now?" You ask, as you lean over her, invading her personal space even more. You see her hands curl into fists as she takes a step back from you, never breaking eye contact.
"Because I finished my work and because," she hesitates, her eyes flicking away from yours to take in your messy apartment. "Because you asked me to," she finishes, her eyes returning to yours.
She's lying or she wouldn't have hesitated. Something about her reasoning seems familiar to you. Something from drunken phone call at three thirty in the morning you're sure she doesn't remember.
Shit. She couldn't think...
"I'm not Hagen, Calleigh," you say soft and low, letting the statement settle between you. You step towards her to close the gap she widened.
Stormy blue eyes widen in surprise before narrowing in anger. "Of course not," she snaps. She backs away from you, trying to gain control over her personal space. Her legs slap against the corner of the coffee table and she deftly manoeuvres herself between the table and couch. The coffee table becomes a barrier again but this time the distance doesn't seem so far.
You follow her to the couch, closing the physical distance between as you hover over her. Her chin is raised, daring you to even think about disagreeing with her. "I'm not Hagen, Calleigh. I'm not going splatter my brain all over the ceiling because of you," you wince at the bluntness but continue, "I hate to burst your ego trip Calleigh but I respect myself to much, I--I care about you too much, I respect you too much to do that. I won't be that selfish Calleigh."
(I love you too much.)
Anger flashes across her face when you're finished. "You don't have to put a gun to your head to kill yourself Eric. Where was your self-respect when you were having cheap sex every night?" She raises her hands to your chest to push you away but you grab her wrists gently. She stops, and all her anger, indignation, and pain seems to collapse in on itself to be replaced with sheer, defeated exhaustion. She steps closer to you, and leans her head against your chest. You let go of her wrists and wrap your arms around her waist, pulling her against you, and rest your head on hers. Her fingers curl around your shirt, as if it's all that's holding her up and you're relieved and terrified that she has finally let herself go. That you have too.
Her voice is muffled against your chest but you hear the exhausted defeat in her voice too clearly, "I'm so tired Eric," she sighs. "What do you want from me?"
You let out a ragged sigh of your own. "To talk. To just be here," You answer her.
She looks up at you with a tiny smile. "I can do that," she says, taking your right hand and interlacing it with hers, pulls you to the couch.
You wake up with sunlight on your face and a warm Calleigh in your arms.
You are sprawled on the couch with Calleigh's head on your chest and her hand curled in your shirt with yours and Calleigh's legs a knot of socks, wrinkled jeans and pants. You carefully bring your hand up to run it through her sleep-messed hair and close your eyes again when she begins to stir. She rubs her cheek like a kitten against your chest, her hand flexing in the fabric. Her nose wrinkles adorably and she lazily opens her eyes. A sleep-drunk smile slides softly across her face and she raises her head to talk to you.
"Hey, Stranger," she murmurs, half awake.
You grin back at her. "'Morning. We did agree on 'No Midnight Tiptoe' right?"
She laughs and lays her head back down, obviously too tired to realise what she's doing and begins to trace letters and symbols on your chest. You recognise the Periodic Table after five tracings. The rhythm of her fingers is soothing and you feel your eyes drift closed.
"Eric?" She asks, her fingers still on your chest.
"Hmm?" She's reduced you to grunts already.
"Last night, when we were arguing, you said you cared about me too much and I--" she yawns and you're immediately alert, trying to control your breathing.
"I care about you too. More than I'm supposed to," her words trail off into another yawn and she's barely finished tracing the equation for photosynthesis when she falls asleep.
You breathe and close your eyes.
Maybe there's hope.
Author's Note: The title is from the gorgeous song "10,000 Miles" by Mary Chapin Carpenter. Do yourself a favour and listen to it. I consider this a part of the same universe as "Sweet Dreams, Little One"
Schnoogle