Need a Miracle
Four
How long has it been since he's held her like this?
Eric sighs as he looks down at Calleigh, who is sleeping against his chest. They spent almost thirty minutes trying to get as comfortable as they can on this hard, cold marble floor, and Calleigh tried to lie down on her purse, but she was shivering from the floor, even through her blazer. He saw her discomfort, and decided that no matter where they were in their relationship, he wasn't about to let Calleigh make herself miserable on this floor.
"You can lay against me," he offered, and she raised an eyebrow at him, her stubborn will emerging. She insisted that she was fine, that she would find a comfortable position, but then soon became tuckered out, her body crying out for sleep. After trying her hand at resting her head against the cold metal wall of safe deposit boxes, she finally relented, and drowsily crawled her way across the small vault to him and immediately snuggled into him just right before succumbing to exhausted sleep. Though she had her blazer on, he covered her with his jacket too, and she relaxed even more.
As for himself, he's not all that tired.
He's actually very hungry; he hasn't eaten since lunch, and it is now going on midnight.
He grins a bit, smoothing over her hair.
"Merry Christmas," he whispers.
He thinks that there has to be people looking for them by now. If his predictions are correct, Calleigh's car got dumped somewhere very quickly, and hopefully not too far from this bank. If the robbers just wanted to make a clean break, they will have just left everything in her car.
He knows deep down Calleigh is ticked about her car.
He grins a bit.
A silver mustang that she bought over the summer last year, that after selling her Porche when she decided that she did not like it. She bought the porch after finally giving up that old Jeep of hers that she drove from Louisiana to Florida and then kept another five years. Calleigh is great with guns, terrible with cars. She doesn't know a thing from cars, though she seems to favor the Hummer. He thinks it's because of the power; she's so short without heels, and she's tiny in the truck, but it must feed her ego just a little bit.
He hopes that they are found sooner rather than later.
His car is still at the lab, they haven't been answering their phones...someone has to think there is something amiss.
The silence isn't so bad now, considering that they've spend most of the evening arguing off and on about things ranging from the serious to the mundane, like Calleigh trying her hand at unscrewing the air vent grate with first an ink pen, and then the point of her heel. Eric just watched in amusement, and she turned to him, a flustered look on her face, and she finally gave up.
He's been content to just sit in here because there's no point in tiring himself out in trying to find some way out. At first, he thought Calleigh was going to be crawling the walls, but she's done pretty well with coping so far, only, the arguments they've had has probably served as an outlet for both of them. This isn't nearly as scary as it could have been; the robbers could have hurt them, and locked them in here, leaving them to die, but...they were only focused on getting the money and splitting.
He realizes now that they are fortunate.
The only thing he regrets is the fact that Calleigh dropped the popcorn.
That could have lasted them a little while.
She stirs a bit and he looks down at her. She is still asleep, and he holds her a little tighter.
He's missed this more than she will ever know.
It never ceases to amaze him how well they fit together. It's still so easy, even at this point when they've come to an impasse, to fit together just right, like this. They are both more comfortable like this than they have been in the past hours spent in here together.
Eric looks down at Calleigh again, and she looks gorgeous, angelic, and peaceful as she sleeps. That had been one of the best parts of being with her as intimately as he was; watching her sleep, waking up to her still asleep, having her nestled up against him. On mornings after they've made love the night before, she always made sure to play up her sultry waking moments, all for his benefit. She would tease him, allure him and try and convince him to stay in bed with her. Her green eyes would darken with desire, the lids still heavy from sleep, making her look so, so lusty and wanton...he misses that.
Calleigh has no idea how happy he makes him.
Even now, just being around her makes him happy, and she doesn't know it.
How can she not know it?
Perhaps he should have tried harder to let her know that.
He will try harder if he gets another chance.
Eric sighs.
He should have seen the "break" they've been taking coming. Coming like an oncoming runaway train.
Things shifted between them after the poisoning.
Rob Starling had masterminded a series of murders and then attacked the lab with a gas that ultimately contributed to the death of their colleague and friend, Jesse Cardoza. Eric remembers that he headed back to the lab, and when the elevator opened, he found his friends and coworkers on the floor, papers and files scattered everywhere; everyone just dropped where they stood, and it was possibly the most frightening scene he's ever witnessed. When the gravity of the situation hit him, he immediately set his mind on saving Calleigh. He ended up collapsing himself, and it was a good thing Horatio showed up when he did.
After that, something wasn't right about her, he could tell, but she tried her best not to let on.
They went on like normal for about a couple of months after the incident for the most part, only she had trouble sleeping. Then she stopped taking active cases and began to work in the lab more, and she began to withdraw. He doesn't really remember what he was thinking at that time...maybe he was in denial of the fact that something was wrong. He didn't want to believe that they may have been heading right into yet another sink hole. She wasn't herself, and he knew it, and now, as he thinks about it, he should have inquired earlier, before she told him that she needed a break.
Eric found her sitting on his bed, in the dark, just staring out the window, and he came in and gently put his hand on her shoulder.
"Babe..."
She started a bit, then she calmed and grinned.
"Hey."
"Why are you sitting in the dark?" He asked as he turned on the lamp before sitting next to her.
"I was thinking..."
He gently caressed his hand over her back. "About what?"
She shrugged, grinning a bit. "Just everything...us..."
"That's pretty vague," he chuckled a bit.
There was something off about his place, about his bedroom. Different.
She looked into his eyes.
"I..." She pauses, her voice trembling. "I need...a break."
He furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
She crossed her arms over her chest.
"I mean, I need...space," she explained with a slight smile. "Just for a little while. To figure things out."
He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. It was happening again, and this time, he felt completely taken by surprise.
"Figure what out?" He asked. "Whatever it is, we can figure it out together..."
She shook her head quickly, putting her hands on his, smiling tearfully. "Eric...this has nothing to do with you. It's not you, okay? This isn't because of anything you did or haven't done. I-I need to just take a step back, okay?"
He was confused, but he reluctantly agreed.
"O-okay..."
"But we're still friends," she insisted. "Let's just be friends right now..."
"Are you breaking up with me?"
"No," Calleigh said. "No, love, I'm not breaking up with you. I just think that we...need some time apart. I need some time...can you give me that?"
Eric nodded, more confused than before. "Yeah...sure. Of course, whatever you need."
Calleigh grinned, then she kissed his cheek and got up and left the room, sniffling.
He looked around, and it finally hit him.
There was nothing of hers in his room.
Maybe it was too intense, maybe he pushed too much his desire to marry her, and make a family with her. Perhaps he wasn't aware enough of what she needed, or maybe he didn't love her the way she wanted and needed to be loved.
The painful, overwhelming sensation of failure began to envelop him.
Some way, somehow, he failed her along the way.
Much as it hurts, it is the truth.
It was the subtle finality of that moment that crushed him.
But he remembers seeing something distinct in her eyes, something like pain...more accurately, sorrow.
If that is what it was, he wonders what has caused it.
Did he cause it?
That thought makes him hold her tighter.
A few hours later, Calleigh stirs and he looks down at her.
She opens her eyes slowly, then she sighs as she sits up a bit, rubbing her eyes.
"Hey," Eric says.
"Hey..." Her voice is raspy from sleep, and she clears her throat. "You're still up?"
"Yeah," he says, taking his arm from around her shoulders. "Merry Christmas."
"Huh?"
"It's three AM," he chuckles. "It's Christmas Day."
"Oh...Merry Christmas," she grins sleepily as she stays next to him, resting her head against the wall, whining.
"What?"
"I want my bed..." She pouts and he chuckles.
She hands him back his jacket.
"Thanks...for um..." She pauses. "Letting me..."
"You're welcome."
She nods, then she makes her way over to the other wall so that she is across from him again.
"Do you think people are looking for us?" She asks.
"They should be by now," he says. "They know it's not like us to not answer our phones. Plus, my car is still in the garage at PD."
Calleigh pushes her hair behind her ears.
"How do we let these things happen to us?"
He shrugs. "Well, it's not a fire, there's no bullets flying, and oh, there's no Russian mobsters after us...at least we mixed it up a little."
"So being trapped in a vault is a silver lining?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
She rolls her eyes.
"Want the iPod back on?"
"Sure."
She turns her iPod back on, and the bluesy croon of Billie Holiday floats around them.
Her stomach grumbles, and she puts a hand over it.
"I'm starving," she sighs. "I want a huge bucket of fried chicken with mashed potatoes, coleslaw, and a Diet Dr. Pepper."
"That actually sounds good," Eric says. "Minus the Diet Dr. Pepper."
"I know, you like that maple syrup crap they call Coco-Cola," she grimaces. "Yuck."
"Hey, don't put down the Coke," he chuckles. "Not only is it refreshing, but it's the only soda brand that can bring teenagers together from several different countries in a field to promote world peace through the gift of song. It's awesome."
"Eric, we weren't even thought of when that commercial aired," she giggled.
"So? It's still a classic."
"The commercial I remember seeing a lot growing up was the public service one with the Native American..."
"Oh yeah...the one about littering."
"Yeah, he's standing on top of some hill by a highway in LA and a bag of trash lands at his feet," she sighs. "And they zoom in dramatically on the single tear."
"Yeah, I remember that one," he recalls. "Remember the Blow Pop commercials?"
"Yes! I so wanted to be on those commercials!"
Eric laughs. "Why that one?"
"I don't know," she shrugs. "It just looked fun and colorful. You wouldn't understand because you don't like sweets."
"I think I do," he says. "I've seen your school pictures. You were cute."
"Yeah, with my teased hair, braces, and baby doll dresses."
"But you wore it well."
Calleigh doesn't think so.
She hated, absolutely hated the fact that she had to wear braces, and she cried over it for the longest. Her father insisted that she get them because, and she can admit this now, her teeth were crooked, and had she not gotten braces, her teeth would have been a jumbled mess. Luckily for her, she got them out junior year. Despite the braces, she did have a steady boyfriend who insisted that she didn't look as bad with braces as she felt.
"If I knew you then, I would date you," he chuckles. "Especially since you were on the dance team."
"Oh no," she blushes. "I hated those uniforms! We all looked like we belonged in a saloon!"
"Jefferson High School First Ladies, class of '93," he teases.
"I should have never shown you those," she laments. "I knew you'd tease me about it at some point."
"You've always been beautiful, Cal," he says sincerely. "Really."
"Thanks," she grins. "You were pretty handsome. But I think I like your baby pictures."
"Of course you do," he grins.
"My favorite one is the one from when you were probably around six," she laughs. "You had no front teeth, and you were, of course, being a ham."
He laughs. "That's the one with me, Mari, and Nina. I was actually supposed to be in time out."
"You were a bad little boy."
"Things were more fun that way."
"No wonder Nina can't stand you."
"We do have a love/hate relationship," he agrees. "More love than hate."
Calleigh tilts her head to the side. "Is it still hard for you guys? You know, to be together without Marisol? I mean, I've been around your family a lot, and sometimes your mom and dad look...they look like they're still trying to accept that she's gone."
Eric thinks about Marisol all the time, and recently, he visited her gravesite and lit a candle for her at his parish. He does miss her, he misses her terribly because he was close with her, he helped her when she was diagnosed with cancer, and he watched her marry his boss and friend, Horatio. He'd never seen Marisol so happy before in his life, and Horatio was more than happy. Eric at first wasn't okay with the marriage because it happened so quick, but he wanted Marisol to be happy.
She'd been sicker from the chemo than she looked. He was there every moment when she couldn't keep food down, when she was too tired to get out of bed, and he put his career on the line because he was willing to do anything, anything to take the pain away from her.
"They're better now than they were when Mari first died," he begins. "Before she was murdered, they knew that Mari was sick, and that her chances weren't that good, despite the aggressive chemo...it was hard on them, but she was taken away so abruptly...it was a shock to everyone. That entire year changed my life in ways I didn't think it would. I became a better brother and son for it."
She bites her lip then she speaks. "I remember how devastated your mom was when I came to the repass. I-I felt so...helpless being there. I know that you wanted me there because I knew your family, but...I couldn't help anyone, not even Horatio."
"You were more helpful than you think, Cal," he says. "You helped me. Knowing that you were there helped me. Above all else, you're the most amazing friend anyone could ever ask for."
"Thanks," she says softly. "I never met her, but I knew how much she meant to you."
Eric smiles. "Now Mari would have liked you if she'd met you. She always saw you walking around the lab. She called you a bumble bee."
"Why?"
"You were always busy. She said she never saw you stay in one place too long."
She laughs. "Well she had me pegged. That hasn't changed."
"I know, you're quick. She would have really liked you."
"And I would have liked her."
They lapse into silence, just listening to the music from Calleigh's iPod.
Without the iPod, Eric thinks that things would have been more tense, less bearable with her. Since they've been in here, and this surprises him, she hasn't been the easiest person to get along with, This shocks him because for too many years know, they've been close friends, and no matter what, Calleigh's always been civil, amiable. But he hasn't done much to keep her mood up either. He's deliberately provoked her which only gives him the slightest satisfaction because it is irritating how she just acts so nonchalant about things that are important to him. Drawing her ire isn't necessarily fun for him, but seeing her angry lets him know that she's still human, that she still has some passion left in her for something.
"Eric?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm sorry I've been so unbearable," she apologizes. "You're an amazing friend to me too, and...well sometimes, I forget that."
"I'm sorry too," he says. "And maybe in some way, you were right..."
"About what?"
"About me trying to change you," he admits. "I didn't realize that's how I was making you feel. I wasn't trying to change you because I love you the way you are, it's just that...I care so much about you."
"I know...it's just that you're so open about things, you can be open like that. I can't...it's very hard for me to talk about things, or to admit that something's wrong. It's...self-preservation, it's protecting myself from the fallout."
"Why are you always expecting things to go wrong?"
"Because things have gone terribly wrong," she explains. "I don't want things to go wrong, nor do I predict it, but when things do go wrong, it doesn't hurt as badly as it would if I wasn't prepared."
He nods.
He knows that her childhood has much to do with the way she is as an adult. She's only shared snippets of her family life with him over the span of years; while he thinks and talks of his family often, she just reveals snapshots of brief memories, not all of them happy. Something more happened to her as a child than she lets on. She minimizes the effect her father's drinking and her mother's absence has had on her life. Honestly, Eric thinks she has blocked it all out just so she can cope. The relationships she has been in were exact replicas of the hurt she experienced growing up, and he won't say that she does it deliberately, but there was something within her that drew her to those men.
"You know, John wasn't a bad guy," she begins.
"What?"
She bites her bottom lip.
"You asked me earlier if John ever abused me."
"Oh...um, Calleigh, you don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to."
"No, I-I want to," she says. "I need to. You'll be the first person I've talked to about it. I never even told my daddy."
Eric just listens.
"John...he..." She pauses a bit, then she begins again. "He was...trying to be a good man. He um...he just wanted so much from me. But to answer your question...he never touched me physically. It was emotional and verbal. I don't know why...I guess he was intimidated by me. I don't know why I put up with it for as long as I did..."
She sighs and pulls her knees up to her chest.
Eric notices that she's done that several times throughout the night; he thinks that is a remnant from her childhood.
"One time, we went to the grocery store because we were having some of his buddies over for dinner," she grinned. "I was happy because he was going to let me cook. It'd been so long since I cooked for other people. Anyway, he was already annoyed because of the day he'd had...we were in this really long line, and he noticed that I forgot to pick up some rolls. I laughed it off, but, he became angry. I started to say that it wasn't a big deal, but his eyes...he scared me. He cut me off and I remember, word for word, he said 'Shut your mouth. You shut your mouth. You can spend all day looking down a microscope, but you can't follow a simple list? What good is that brain of yours when you don't use it? You're wasting my time.'"
"I was so embarrassed, and I couldn't say anything," she continues. "He sent me to go get the rolls and when I got back, he ignored me. He wouldn't even let me put the rolls in the damn basket..."
"Are you together?" The cashier asked.
John shook his head. "No, separate."
Calleigh felt nauseous and consumed with heartache, and she didn't know why. She was used to it.
"John..."
He ignored her as he paid for the food in the basket while she held the rolls. She tried to put the rolls with the rest of the food, hoping that he was getting over it a bit, but he handed them back to her.
"My purse is in the car, remember?"
"Then I guess you better get in the back of the line while I get it."
Calleigh sighs. "I had to wait all over again. When we got to his place, he calmed down and he kissed me, like nothing happened, like he hadn't just made me feel like the worst person in the world...over some stupid dinner rolls. Another time, he got mad at me because I cancelled our plans so that I can see my dad for a few hours. He told me to grow up, to act like I'm a woman, to stop running to him every time. He said I was shallow, and naive...but the most hurtful thing he said 'If your daddy loves you so much, why does he drink? I he really loved you, he would've been there for you. Get that into your thick head, Calleigh. You're dad's never gonna change for you on your say so. Stop living a damn fantasy world.' That really crushed me because you know my dad means the world to me."
"Why did you stay with him for so long?"
"I don't know," she says tearfully. "I guess because I thought...things would get better, that he would see that he was hurting me with his words. But it wasn't wrong to him, and I realized that. He spoke to suspects, his friends, and the unis that way. When he became possessive and controlling, that's when I broke things off. He wanted a wife, I wanted my career. He made me choose, and...I didn't choose him. After we broke up, it was scary for a few weeks...he would call me dozens of times a week, he would sit outside my house at night and scare the shit out of me..."
Eric shakes his head. "Cal...why didn't you say anything to us? To me, to H...anybody? We could have protected you, you know that."
"Because I wanted him to get over the break up, not for you guys to break him up. You know that if I told Horatio that John would have had a 'bad back' for real. You know that."
"You could have told me," he says. "I hate that you went through that alone."
"You would have beat the crap out of him too," she says. "Eric...you and Horatio together is a good and bad combination. He's the fuel, you're the fire. You know when you both get pissed, things turn into frickin' world war three. You two really are like family because you both tend not to think rationally when you get upset."
He chuckles. "Got the job done."
"Yeah, and you left a trail of human wreckage and paperwork in the aftermath."
"That I will not deny...but Cal, I can't believe he said those things to you. I can't believe you went through that. Abuse in any form is...despicable. I'm sorry that you had to endure that, Calleigh. I really am."
She grins a bit. "You live and learn, that's all."
He raises an eyebrow at her. "You cannot tell me that it didn't affect you for a while."
"It did," she nods. "I can admit that. But I didn't let it happen ever again."
Eric nods.
She is resilient, he knows that. Still, he can't believe that Calleigh would allow herself to stay in that type of relationship. Of course physical abuse is bad, but emotional abuse leaves marks unseen. To think that she went through it hurts him deeply because if he'd known, he would have helped her, he would have helped her put a stop to it.
"Don't agonize over it Eric," she says. "You didn't know and it was years ago."
"I know, I just wish that you told someone," he says.
"I told you."
"I know," he says. "Thank you for telling me. Thank you for...being open with me. I know that was hard for you to tell me."
"I trust you."
Eric nods then he rests his head back against the wall.