A/N: Sorry it took me so long to update. I'm a lazy procrastinator. And now I'm an unemployed lazy procrastinator. Hopefully, with all the time I now have on my hands, I can get some serious writing done.

Thank you guys so much for the continued reviews! You have no idea how much this means to me!

Later that afternoon, after Calleigh and Ryan had returned from the harbor, where they found the body of a young woman floating among some dead fish, Ryan found himself at a loss. He had never heard the lab so quiet. It was eerie, and just this side of creepy. Normally, the lab was bustling with lab techs, CSIs, and cops racing around struggling to catch the bad guy. People very rarely strolled anywhere in the lab; they strode with purpose, with intent. They got where they were going and they did it as quickly as possible. Time was of the essence. Precious seconds could be wasted.

Now, time seemed insignificant. Ryan absentmindedly wandered the lab, unsure of where to go or what to do. He knew he should probably head to DNA and pick up the results of the hair follicles he had found at the dump site, but his feet just didn't want to take him there. Valera had paged him nearly fifteen minutes ago, and under normal circumstances he would have been there before his phone was even finished alerting him that he had a page. Today, though, it didn't seem important.

He ended up in the locker room, seated on the bench, staring at the broken, busted locker that bore his name. The locker directly beside his, on the left, still said "Speedle". It was a constant reminder to Ryan that he was someone's replacement, that he was only here because someone had died. In two years, no one had removed Speedle's name or bothered to fix Ryan's locker.

Ryan hooked the toe of his shoe around the protruding bottom of his locker and pulled it open. It clanged against Speed's locker. Ryan then used his foot to push the locker shut. He did this for a while – open, close, open, close – just to keep his mind from wandering. He knew he should go to DNA. He knew he should do his job, but he couldn't bring himself to think of anything but the fact that Horatio and Delko were on their way towards certain death, and he was left behind.

He was so absorbed in what he was doing that he didn't even realize that Calleigh was behind him until she spoke. That in itself was odd, since he seemed to be unusually attuned to her presence. He could often sense her coming before she appeared. Today, though, he obviously had other things on his mind.

"Ryan?" Calleigh said. She sat down beside him on the bench, so that their legs were touching. He sucked in a ragged breath. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he said, trying to ignore the fact that he could feel her heat through the fabric of his slacks. Oh god, she was trying to kill him. He went back to opening and closing his locker door, but the action only served to bring more of his leg in contact with hers, so he stopped.

"I'm worried about them, too," she said. He resisted the urge to look at her. If he looked at her… He didn't want to think about what might happen. "But it'll be all right."

He failed his inner battle and turned to look at her. She wasn't looking at him, though; she was staring at some random spot on the locker in front of her – Speed's locker. Her face was sad and her eyes were haunted and Ryan was suddenly extremely pissed off at Horatio and Delko for putting that look on her face. He was going to say that she couldn't possibly know that everything was going to be all right, that there was no way this whole situation could have a happy ending, that they could very well lose another one of their own before the end of the day tomorrow, but the words died in his throat. Seeing her like that, she looked so helpless. He only wanted to reassure her, to destroy that haunted look in her eyes for good. He never wanted to see her sad.

"Sure," he said, pumping as much false brightness into his tone as he could muster. "Of course it'll be all right. H has nine lives. He can do anything."

Calleigh smiled, but it didn't quite touch her eyes. Even without her looking at him, Ryan could tell. "The point is," she said, and now her voice matched her expression, "that we have to go on without them here. We have to do our job."

Ryan hung his head, ashamed. Some poor woman had died and they had no leads – Alexx was still working on cause of death, Calleigh had been in trace all afternoon but the water had destroyed most of it, and instead of answering Valera's page and finding out if she had made any headway with the DNA, Ryan had come into the locker room to mope. What was he becoming? Nothing would be solved this way.

He shifted on the bench, straddling it, so that he now faced Calleigh fully. "Find anything in trace?"

She shook her head, her body rigid. "No. And Valera didn't get anything off the hair follicles either. No tags."

He sighed. "So we've got nothing."

At this, Calleigh turned to face him. She pulled her one leg onto the bench and angled her body towards him. "We've never got nothing, Ryan. There's always something. We just have to find it."

Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. She'd been crying. Ryan felt a lurch somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. Damn Delko and Horatio for making Calleigh cry. He choked down the urge to brush her hair out of her face, but he wasn't sure how long he could resist this growing need to kiss her. She was just so…kissable right then. Her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed and…

He coughed, suddenly uncomfortable. He could feel the blood rushing south and knew that if he stayed here much longer, he would pass out from lack of blood flow to his brain. "Say, do you… Do you want to go out after shift tonight?"

Calleigh raised her eyebrows, and he saw a hint of a sparkle appear in her eyes. "Go out?"

Ryan nodded. "Yeah. I could use a drink, or something."

The corners of her mouth tugged upwards in the trace hint of a smile. She leaned forward slightly. "A drink."

He could feel her breath on his face. Oh, this was a bad idea. A very bad idea. "Or something."

She was coming closer. Her eyelids had fluttered closed. He felt his body move to meet her of its own volition, since his brain was screaming at him to stop.

"Ryan!"

The two of them jumped apart as if they'd been burned. Ryan bit his lip to keep from screaming in frustration and turned to face the source of the interruption. Valera was standing in the door to the locker room, waving a piece of paper with more excitement than he was sure the situation warranted. "What is it, Valera?"

"I've got something," she said. She seemed to have no idea what she had just walked in on. "You need to see this." She nodded at Calleigh. "You, too."

Calleigh slid down the bench, away from Ryan, and stood up a little too eagerly. She practically bolted for the door. Ryan stayed in place. Calleigh turned when she reached the door and realized that Ryan wasn't behind her. "Aren't you coming?"

He bit his lip again. "I'm right behind you."

She disappeared through the door and Ryan released a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding. He glared down at his offending appendage and desperately tried to deflate it. He would never survive the rest of the day if he and Calleigh kept having these moments together. He might very well have a heart attack before the day was out.