Changes in the Wind
Disclaimer: CBS, creators, producers, etc., own all recognizable characters, not me; I'm just borrowing them.
A/N: this is a follow up to: Caution To The Wind
Changes in the Wind
The Winds of Change
The alarm sounded abruptly at 5:oo AM, assaulting his ears with its persistent buzz. Jarred by the noise, but only partially awake, his first instinct was to tighten his hold on his sleeping girlfriend. He buried deeper into the pillow hoping to block out the noise and forestall the inevitable. She stirred in his arms, enough to rouse him further from the depths of sleep. Finally recognizing the noise for what it was, he turned quickly to his other side, careful not to disturb her and turned off the alarm. He sighed heavily and rolled back to her, lightly laying his arm across her waist. She seemed to be slumbering peacefully, at least he hoped she was. Still early, she didn't need to wake for at least another hour and he hated waking her unnecessarily.
He, however, had no such luxury. If he had any chance of getting home in time to shower and shave, he had to get going now. Unable to resist, he dropped a gentle kiss on her soft cheek before climbing out of the warm bed. Turning onto her back, she surprised him by meeting his lips with her own and pulling him into a different kind of a kiss. The kind that disengaged his brain from any rational thought and left him instead with an overwhelming desire for her. Thoughts of leaving now banished, he wrapped his arms around her, pulled her close and lost himself in the kiss.
"Stay," she pleaded, briefly pulling away from his lips. "It's still early."
Moving his lips into her neck, he heard her voice by his ear. 'Stay'. That one word lodged in his brain, effectively snapping him back to reality. 'Go' was more like it if he had any hope of getting to work on time. As it was, he'd have to forgo shaving and coffee this morning. He moved away from her neck and opened his mouth to speak, but she used the opportunity to recapture his lips before he got anything out. He'd barely have time to shower at this rate and would soon have to skip that if she kept on kissing him like that. And he didn't want her to stop kissing him... ever. But his practical side won this internal battle.
"Can't. I'm gonna be late as it is," he said, instantly regretting his words as he pulled back from her and met her green gaze head on. Some sign of objection or disappointment he expected to see there and he was surprised there was none. Anger even, he supposed, anything but the dull, unreadable eyes that looked back into his.
"Fine," she said flatly.
He kissed her quickly and then climbed out of the bed. Evading her eyes, he felt a rising discomfort in his gut. Seeking his clothes off the floor, he dressed quickly, hoping to avoid what were recently becoming their all too familiar early morning discussions. He had neither the time nor the fortitude for it this morning. Casting a sideways glance, he noticed she had turned onto her side, away from him and closed her eyes. Avoiding him, he suspected. This was just as bad as an unpleasant discussion, maybe worse, because this he wasn't used to.
Either way mornings lately were becoming a minefield. The only way he left unscathed was when he slipped out without waking her and left her a note. Sighing heavily, he glanced over at the bed again, her eyes were still closed, but he suspected she was awake. It would be easiest all the way around to just leave, but he couldn't. Not this morning, not when he felt there was something unspoken in the air. And something about her unreadable eyes didn't set well with him. If he left her like this, it would only make the tension between them worse. Decision made, he padded over to her side of the bed, uncertain what to expect.
"I'll see you in a little while," he said softly as he leaned in and gently kissed her cheek. "Okay?"
"Fine," she murmured, staying on her side and keeping her eyes closed. Sighing heavily once more he made his way out of the bedroom and headed into the bathroom.
He grabbed his toothbrush, which was currently sharing space with hers in the holder by the sink. In fact, come to think of it, it was the only item of his currently sharing space with her, except of course, for him. And wasn't that what all this was about? Occasionally, weekends mainly, they stayed at his place, but most nights he stayed with her. Yet the lone toothbrush was the only concession he made, the only evidence of nearly constant presence. Anything he brought with him at night, he took with him each morning, and he never left so much as a journal behind. What was up with that?
The conversation they didn't have this morning ran through his head while he brushed his teeth. It was the one they had had in a variety of different ways the previous few mornings. Usually it wasn't so bad, she merely expressed her disappointment at his leaving. Occasionally there would be a bit of tension between them, but that usually cleared by the time they saw each other again. But the last one, a couple days ago, had been awfully close to a fight and it left both of them miserable.
"You don't have to get up so early every morning and leave, you know."
"Yeah, I do if I want to have time to shower and shave and still get to work on time. You know that."
"But you don't have to leave to get ready in the morning. You can shower and shave here."
"We've been through this Calleigh, countless times. It's just easier this way."
"Easier? Easier for who?"
"For both of us, I guess. You can have the bathroom to yourself every morning."
"That's not what this is about and you know that Tim. I have no problem sharing a bathroom with you. Let's be honest about what this is really about. You have a problem acknowledging you're in a relationship with me."
"That's not true. Why say that? Why do you have to make this into something? This is just about getting ready in the morning, don't read into everything."
"Then why is getting dressed here in the morning such a problem for you? Is it that you don't want to leave any of your things here? No, it can't be that, because you wouldn't even have to leave them here, you could just bring them with you each night. I'm actually surprised you bother to leave your toothbrush here, to be honest with you. We don't have to drive in together if that's what's bugging you, God forbid anyone see us together and get suspicious. That's what it is, isn't it?"
"No, it's nothing like that. It isn't really anything. We'd probably be late for work if I was here every morning, like I'm gonna be today. Besides, we spend plenty of mornings together when we're not working. So why is this such a problem for you?"
"Because Tim, you don't live close-by. You get up really early and end up waking me in the process. It doesn't have to be like that. I actually like seeing you in the morning, we could have breakfast together. Honestly, I just don't get what your hang up is. You still won't even acknowledge our relationship at work."
"You know why that is."
"No, not really, not anymore. Tim it's been over four months. And they're our friends. Maybe the real problem is you and the fact that you don't know what you want. And if that's the case, then why are you here every night?"
She hit the nail on the head with that point and thus ended the discussion, because he said nothing after that, nothing at all. She looked at him then, with that way she had, that way of looking straight through to the core of him. And he wondered if she saw there all that he kept from her, all that he kept from himself, because he truly believed she knew him better than he knew himself. He never did answer her question that morning and she didn't press. It had gotten late by that time, giving him barely enough time to get home and change clothes.
Giving her an answer though, that would've been easy. He knew exactly what the answer was to that particular question. He was there every possible night, because after four months of being together, it was getting harder and harder to get through a night without her. The rare times they stayed apart, he found he barely slept at all. Whatever it was that was going on between them was too strong, too deep and, for him at least, too necessary to go without. But this need he had for her caused a panic in him every time he thought about it, so he did his best not to.
And the question of what he wanted? That ought to be just as easy to answer: he wanted her, so why was he having such a hard time telling her? Probably for the same reason he couldn't bring himself to just bring his stuff and leave it at her house. He honestly didn't know.
They had fallen into this relationship so easily when they finally got together. Although getting to that point had taken some doing, once there, it became clear to him that she was everything he never knew he wanted. He had known all along that seeing her outside of work would lead to this kind of involvement, which is exactly why he avoided it for as long as he did. He didn't want the kind of complications he was certain that becoming involved with a close colleague would bring, but ultimately his feelings for her overrode his initial reservations.
From the onset, everything was blissful, surprising both with how effortlessly they blended together. She even went along with his desires to keep their work and personal lives separate, well, at least initially she agreed. He knew now that that particular detail was becoming a wedge between them.
What she hadn't realized in the beginning was that for Tim, keeping the two separate meant completely denying there even was a relationship between them, at least at work. He never admitted that to her, but it was becoming clear that she had figured it out and wasn't all too happy about it. In the beginning it had been easy, they both wanted to keep their newfound happiness to themselves. The professional manner, with which they treated each other at work, dissolved the moment they were away from it. Lately though, he noticed his 'colleagues only' manner with her was becoming an awful lot like indifference. And she'd called him on it, several times to no avail.
It seemed he'd compartmentalized his life with her to the point that it didn't exist once they were at work and unfortunately, that meant keeping it from their friends as well, another growing conflict between them. He couldn't help it, he was a private guy to start with, but this thing with Calleigh was different. His feelings for her were so strong that he needed to keep them constrained at work. He just didn't trust himself not to, especially at crime scenes. If he ever allowed himself to think that his girlfriend were in any kind of dangerous situation, he wouldn't be able to handle it. It was hard enough to think of her as just his colleague and not worry about her.
She'd been patient with him thus far, understood he needed to proceed slowly with this relationship, but maybe her patience was running thin. That's the sense he'd been getting from her when they had these early morning discussions.
This morning though, there was nothing. No discussion. No questions. No argument. And now that he thought about it, no kiss goodbye. In fact, she didn't even open her eyes when he left. He thought about going back to her, but checking his watch, he groaned. He barely had time to get home and change and would probably end up being late to work. This tension between them troubled him, but there was no time to do anything about it now, he'd have to try to fix things later. That is, if he still could. He was slowly beginning to realize that what they weren't talking about and especially what he wasn't talking about was coming between them.
Walking through the still darkened apartment to find his jacket, he tripped on the unopened boxes in the living room, yet another sign that this was shaping up to be a difficult day.
tbc