He'd called Ryan but judging by the other man's toneless reply he seriously doubted whether he would show at the bar he'd suggested a few hours previously. He'd messed up big time, with his colleagues, and more to the point, Horatio.
He had been the man who had led him on his chosen career path; before he'd met the Lieutenant he'd been nothing more than a lowly recovery truck driver. He'd seen something in the cop that he wanted to emulate, he realised that his future was in making a difference to people's lives not pulling their wrecked cars out of lakes and ditches. The work that Horatio did seemed exciting and new and he wanted in on the action.
He'd put himself through night school to get the required qualifications and had turned up at the Lab fully expecting the Lieutenant to go back on his word but was pleasantly surprised when the man not only recognised him but also offered him a place on his team. For the first year or so he simply stood back and watched as Horatio and his team of investigators taught this young Cuban immigrant the ropes. He kept his eyes wide open and his ears trained, picking up on every sliver of information he could glean from watching his more experienced colleagues go about their work.
His friendship with Horatio had been a natural progression throughout the years as they grew closer to the point where he realised that he would have done anything to help the other man. He cared about and respected him a great deal and had become used to the attention and praise that his superior would bestow upon on him. There were few times when Horatio would ever take him to one side and admonish his actions, some of which were foolhardy in the least. Horatio had cut him a great deal of slack over the years, perhaps more than he should of. Was that why he'd felt as if he were untouchable in the Lab and that he worked to a different set of rules than they did?
Ryan had told him on several occasions that he'd acted as if he were the teacher's pet and that he could get away with things that the others couldn't. How many times had Horatio put himself on the line to cover his back?
Although both of them had been angry, Ryan was right when he told him the other day that Horatio would cut him more slack than most. There had been instances when he'd got himself into stupid situations only for the Lieutenant to come riding to his rescue, and what had he done to repay the other man's faith in him?
He'd let him down, made Horatio disappointed in him, but now was not the time to sit and sulk about it, now was the time to build bridges and mend the fences that he'd left broken for far too long. He knew he would have a long way to go to make things right with the rest of the team, but he owed it to Ryan to start with him first.
He heard movement behind him as he looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Hey, I'm glad you came."
He'd lost track of time, sat in the kitchen next to his beautiful lover, his mind valiantly trying to cope with the number of issues that were swirling around like trash caught in a cyclone. When the dust finally settled, how would things lie?
"Horatio, talk to me."
Calleigh's worried voice permeated the haziness in his brain as his eyes searched hers, looking for the answers he so desperately needed. He knew what he had to do, but his reluctance to hurt her kept him from wanting to tell her what she needed to know, what he owed it to her to tell her.
"Sweetheart," he began, his chair scraped along the floor as he dragged it closer to where she was sitting. "Sweetheart, I have to do something…..something that you might not like but I don't want you to worry, ok?"
Her eyes widened in alarm, whether he realised it or not, he was beginning to sound more like the old Horatio by the hour. The way he spoke to her was the way that he talked to people when he tried to reassure them, after which he would go off on some one-man crusade to save the city. She didn't like the tone of his voice and it showed in the way she looked at him, the anxiety clear to see on her face.
Her eyes travelled to her own hands as he gently picked them up and gave them a light squeeze. "When I meet with Laura tomorrow…I might be gone for a while, you might not be able to contact me during that time. I want you to know that my heart belongs to you, no one else, ok?"
But was that really the truth, was he really that sure of his feelings for Calleigh, could anyone ever really be sure that meeting up with an old flame would not bring back the passionate feelings they once felt for them?
Would meeting up with Lori be akin to opening up Pandora's Box, would things return to the way there were before, or would he be left in a greater state of confusion than he already was?
Being unsure of himself was not a feeling he particularly enjoyed, yet he found himself once again caught between a rock and a hard place. It had been made perfectly clear to him that he would not be able to move on with his life without laying the ghosts of his past to rest, by the same token, he knew that to reopen those wounds would bring a multitude of memories and emotions flooding back with them. It was the perfect Catch-22 situation, in order to have any hope of sustaining a relationship with Calleigh he would have to risk everything they had slowly built together to assure them both that his past was just that, she would need to have faith in him like she'd never had before.
"What's this about, Delko?"
The surly way in which Ryan spoke to him, as he sat down in the corner booth that Eric was currently ensconced in, left the Cuban in no doubt that his colleague was not going to make this easy for him.
"Ryan….." he began, not really sure how to continue. "I'm glad you came…..I wanted to clear the air and set a few things straight between us."
Ryan's eyes narrowed as he looked at the other man warily. "I've already told you, I didn't say anything to IAB and I'm not planning to either." He crossed his arms over his chest as if to emphasise the point.
"I know, I know…..I actually came here to apologise, Ryan."
Years under the watchful eye of Horatio had taught Ryan not to be fooled by first impressions as he kept his guard up, suspicious as to Eric's intentions. "You have?"
Eric gave him a humourless smirk. "Yeah I have. I was out of line the other day, Ryan. I want to let you know that I'm sorry."
"Why the change of heart?"
Eric winced noticeably. "Let's just say that someone put me straight about a few things."
"Oh yeah, who?" Ryan asked as he smirked, already having a good idea as to who it might have been, having had a visit from the very same person recently.
"Someone a lot smarter and wiser than the pair of us put together."
The two men smiled at each other as they felt the anger they held towards each other slowly drain away. The last six months had been tough on everyone, all of them victims of the Malucci's and their cruel games, in one way or another. They had all suffered through Horatio's ordeal, none of them coming through it completely unscathed.
The team, as a whole, had so many good times together, Horatio had been able to bring them together as family and that was how they all saw one another. When had those familial feelings served to turn them against each other?
Sure, he and Eric had their differences in the past, often scrapping like two brothers, fighting over girls or bragging rights in the Lab. Their arguments were usually short-lived, the pair of them invariably making peace with each other by the end of the shift. There had been personality clashes and professional disagreements, but Ryan felt as if he and Eric had always rubbed along together pretty well.
The incident at the warehouse had been a shock for all those involved, no more than Horatio himself. Neither Eric nor he himself had dealt with the situation particularly well, they should have been united in their support for their superior, but had only pulled the team further apart with their fighting.
Once the shock of Horatio hesitating had ebbed away, and he'd sat at the poker table gambling away his money, did he realise that he was no better than the Lieutenant. His mind turned back to the time several years ago when he and Horatio had followed a SWAT team into an abandoned warehouse on the search for stolen cars. After wounding and apprehending one suspect, he turned his head at the sound of movement and was confronted with another of the carjackers no more than eight feet away from him, brandishing what looked like a machine gun.
Time slowed as he stared down the long barrel of the gun, he was in position and ready to fire his own weapon, yet no matter how hard he tried he was unable to squeeze the trigger. If it had not been for Horatio's stealthy presence he would surely have died, the Lieutenant took the shot and felled the gunman instantly; kicking the man's weapon away even though it was clear that he was dead.
He'd tried to explain himself to Horatio, only managing a few words before the other man spoke for him. "You didn't have a clear shot, understood?"
"H…I…." he began, before being cut off again.
"You did not have a clear shot, Mr Wolfe. Understood?"
Horatio's instructions were clear; he knew that even though he had frozen that his superior would back him to the hilt. Horatio had lied in his IAB interview about the shooting and had made it perfectly clear that it was imperative that he towed the party line too.
He felt like such an ass for not cutting Horatio the same slack that the man had for him. After everything that Horatio had done for him, he had seriously considered selling him out to Internal Affairs, convincing himself that he would have done it for the good of the team.
Perhaps Horatio's ordeal had affected him more than he realised, were the whole team so emotionally involved in what had happened to the Lieutenant that they could no longer judge things clearly when it came to him?
Eric took a swig of his beer, drying his palm off before reaching across the table and holding his hand out. "I say that we put this behind us and concentrate on what's important, deal?"
"Sounds good, Eric." Ryan smiled warmly.
Their hands clasped together tightly as they shook, the promise of a new start in their friendship after a fractious few months, a sign of forgiveness and acceptance, from one good man to another.
He'd spent the evening holding her, keeping her close as if to prove to himself that his feelings for her were real. Of course they were, he'd known for months that Calleigh was a precious gift that he'd been granted. The trouble was that he'd spent so long consumed with his own negativity that he'd failed to realise what had been staring him the face for so long.
He knew he loved her, he had for years. Time, circumstance and a sense of duty had always kept him at a distance from her. How many times had he wanted to take her in his arms after another of her relationships had ended in disaster or heartbreak?
How many times had he seen her leave the Lab with her latest boyfriend, wishing it was him with his arm around her and not them?
There had been times when the urge to confess how he really felt about her would almost become more than he could bear. He would stride along to the ballistics lab, intent on telling her that he was the only man for her, only to be stopped in his tracks by his own sense of nobility and duty.
Time had moved so quickly, and served to make him much more reluctant to reveal how he really felt about her, she would haunt his dreams, in a good way, teasing him with a life he could never have. How many times had he dreamt of having him in her arms, loving her and waking up to her beaming smile each morning?
And so he'd made do with the dreams, taking whatever small part of her he could, the fact that none of it was real was of no consequence, in his fantasies she was his, no one else's. Things had slowly started to change, had he been fooling himself when he began to suspect that she might be taking an interest in him too?
There had been a number of moments in the Lab when he would catch her looking at him, was he mistaken when he told himself that her interest in him was no longer just professional?
Their flirty banter had returned, the cajoling that they'd both enjoyed when they first met. She'd begun to slip the word 'handsome' into their conversations and he hadn't failed to notice the knowing smiles she would give him when no one else was around.
They'd been dancing around the idea of exploring their feelings for each other when everything came crashing down around them. No longer was he Horatio Caine, everything he had said and done as that man had gone, vanished from his memory and replaced with his past life in New York. With those old memories came the emotions attached to them, suddenly everything old was new again.
He'd had no idea who Calleigh was when he'd first woken up in the hospital, and had been convinced that he was still John Kelly, a detective in the NYPD. Even though he had no clue who she was, he knew instinctively that he felt something for her, she had told him that they were work colleagues and friends, yet he knew his feelings for her ran much deeper than that.
All through those first few weeks he had felt himself being drawn to her like a moth to a flame, unable to resist her. Had he fallen in love with her whilst still believing he was John Kelly?
It didn't seem to make much difference in the end, when he had woken in the hospital for the second time he felt exactly the same way about her, or at least he thought he did. The first few weeks in the hospital were nothing more than a jumbled blur of sights and sounds, hazy faces would lean over him and whisper soothing words in his ears. They might as well have been talking to him in Chinese for all that he understood of what they were saying to him.
She had once again been his constant, spending more time than was probably healthy for her at the hospital, shaking him from the nightmares that tormented him and holding him close when his despair at his lack of control over his own body ate away at him. He hadn't realised it at the time, but he'd actually looked forward to the times that she would visit him in the hospital, ducking out between shifts and call-outs to check on him.
He probably hadn't shown her how grateful he was at the time, more often than not, she'd borne the brunt of his anger as he grew increasingly bitter at his own body's frailties. He wanted her to see him as strong and virile, not some weakened old man who needed to be treated like a child.
Maybe that was why he'd been so angry at her yesterday; she'd taken it upon herself to try to fix his life for him. Lying to Sargent Craig had been one thing, but to insist that Simon accompany him to his scheduled interview with IAB had been a step too far. He didn't want or need a mother, he wanted a lover who respected him enough to allow him to stand on his own two feet and take responsibility for his own actions. When all was said and done with Lori, the next item on the agenda would be to have a full and frank discussion with Calleigh about where they both stood.
That discussion could wait for another day, he was simply too tired after the week from Hell to contemplate getting involved in such a long and wearying conversation with her. Right now, he wanted to feel her body next to his and attempt to convey the love he felt for her intimately.
He watched her as he sat on the bed, brushing her teeth by the sink in the en-suite bathroom in nothing but one of his old t-shirts, the way her right leg bent at the knee, revealing her tempting thighs, hypnotised him as he heard her humming a tune, completely oblivious to the fact that she was being watched.
Or so he thought, without turning she called out to him. "Are you going to sit there and leer at me all night?"
His cheeks flamed with embarrassment as he realised he'd been caught gawping at her. "What would you rather I do?" he asked after clearing his throat.
"I was hoping you'd help me out in here," she teased as she looked at him briefly, licking her lips.
That was all the invitation he'd needed, pulling his t-shirt and pants off he joined her in the bathroom, placing his hands on her waist and gently turning her to look at him. "Where should I start?" he asked in a low and sultry voice as she bent her head to the right to expose her neck.
"I was thinking right here."
His eyes followed the direction of her finger, bending down he placed feather-light kisses on her flesh, smiling to himself as the area pimpled in reaction to his ministrations. Her groans of pleasure told him that he was on the right track as he kissed her jaw and ear before making his way to her mouth, pushing her up against the sink as he attempted to show her just how much he wanted and needed her right now.
Her fingers raked over his bare back and she felt her desire grow when he hissed in pleasure and thrusted his hips towards her, she could feel then how much he wanted to be with her. Gone was the tentative and hesitant Horatio of before, he'd been replaced with a man who obviously knew what he was doing when it came to the giving and receiving of pleasure.
Before she lost her senses completely, she made a mental note to send Dr Jeff some kind of thank you gift, whatever the man had said to Horatio, it seemed to be working. He'd taken some huge strides forward these last few days, and it seemed as if he were slowly emerging from the carnage that his life had become and was beginning to regain some sense of normality and stability.
Her last conscious thought was that little by little, the man she loved was returning, something she would never take for granted again. He made short work of the t-shirt she was wearing and had taken her by surprise as they once again became one, her eyes closing in complete ecstasy as he showed her just how very special she was to him. His movements were firm and assured as he once again drove her wild with desire.
She was his and he was hers, no one else's.