TITLE: Paper Snow

FANDOM: CSI: Miami

PAIRING: Speed/Eric

NOTES: Continuing my bizarre little AU (if anyone can remember it!), but can be read without prior knowledge:

Eric eased open the door and sniffed at the air. Cookies…

Shrugging off his coat and hanging it carefully – well-trained now, he thought happily – before laying down his keys and sneaking towards the oven.

"Don't even think about it."

Eric winced and turned towards the kitchen table, where Speed sat, surrounded by reams of paper and intently staring at the pair of scissors in his hand.

"Um…what's going on?" Eric asked nonchalantly, sliding closer. Speed looked up over the glasses that were balanced on the edge of his nose then returned to his task. Eric sighed as his eyes ghosted over him – he had aged so much in that past year, hair greying slightly and now the glasses. It was all Eric had been able to do to keep him eating, smiling, sane.

This wasn't even remotely sensible, of course. Someone was going to find out – Speed's bosses, or even H, but they never discussed it, never dared suggest that it end. The guys at the lab just thought Eric was a recluse and his landlord had never been one to ask questions. And if Speed vanished for weeks at a time, returning more harried and haunted than ever, Eric would only hold him calmly, never asking what woke him screaming, why it had to be this way.

"I am decorating," Speed said impatiently, as if it was obvious, and when Eric looked around, he realised tinsel had been scattered about and there appeared to be mulled wine simmering on the hob.

Another strange thing about this situation was that Speed was home a lot more often than Eric, and apparently grateful to have any house at all, he'd made it into some kind of domestic shrine. Eric's mother was always suitably impressed during her not-so-subtle inspections, and he always felt guilty for taking credit for the latest batch of Speed's baking.

"Ah, I see. And right now you would be…?"

Speed rolled his eyes and set down the scissors. He pulled off the glasses and twirled them in one hand, stealing Eric's breath in the process. He was filled with a sudden urge to dive across the table and kiss his lover senseless, but realised that Speed probably wouldn't appreciate the scattering of his project.

It had been inevitable really. Sharing the flat, being already so close coupled with the half-grief and relief drew them closer together, and if Eric's comforting caresses had turned to kisses, if Speed's grateful words became breathy moans, who could resist that? Who would want to?

"Making snowflakes."

Speed lifted up an intricately folded circle and carefully twitched the paper until it revealed the delicate web of paper snow he had spun. Eric took it off him and turned it over in his hands, mesmerised.

"You did this?"

Speed snatched it back, cheeks reddening. "I just thought it would be nice," he mumbled, before gathering up his flaked paper. Eric captured him in his arms and planted a kiss on his nose.

"They're beautiful. You're beautiful."

"Eric, I need…"

Eric swallowed the words and quelled any protest with a pacifying sweep of his tongue. Speed surrendered and let the paper fall, surrounding them in a blizzard of twirling stars.