FIC: Finality [CSI: Miami; Speed/Calleigh]
TITLE: Finality
FANDOM: CSI: Miami
PAIRING: Tim "Speed" Speedle/Calleigh Duquesne
WORD COUNT: 569
NOTE: Set after 3.01 "Lost Son," so mentioned character death. Written for kiss_bingo, prompt: "time - last."
When she thinks of Tim in the future, she’ll think of him as she last saw him: alive, oh-so-very alive, not a single bullet wound marring his skin. For now, he’s dressed in a suit and cleaned up nicely and laying in a coffin that he would have scoffed at - “seriously?” he’d say, not skipping a beat, “you’re taming me after I can’t defend my right to scruffiness anymore?”
She’d never admit it out loud, never within earshot of him at least, but she prefers the tousled look on him, not the almost eerie composure before her. “Preferred,” some inner part of her amends, and she refuses to acknowledge it.
Other people are milling around the room; other people, she saw Horatio earlier, and Eric said he’d swing by after work, but the majority of them are friends and family she’s never met before. She wonders for a moment if it’d be too awkward to introduce herself to his mother, to his brother - he always did say that she’d get along with his mother, after all, this would be the only chance she’d get to prove his theory.
She opts against it; she doesn’t know if he ever told her about their relationship, and a viewing is the last place she’d want to drop the bombshell that they’d been dating for over a year.
She slinks back against a nearby wall, watches the room circulate, watches people say their final goodbyes. The crowd thins out, soon, only a few patches of people chattering away in small groups are left.
Walking back to his casket, her eyes fill up with tears. She presses a hand to his cheek; cold to the touch, unlike the warmth that shone through when he was alive. Impulsively, she leans over, her hair brushing at the bristly fabric of his suit jacket, and presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips.
“I miss you already,” she says, whispering softly and daring the tears dancing along the corners of her eyes not to fall, not to fall, and when they do fall, unbidden and noisy and everything she wasn’t wanting out of this viewing, they scatter across the silk of his tie, staining it with her tears.
She could spend forever in this room, never leaving, never letting him out of her sight ever again because if she did then she’d be forced to acknowledge the reality of it all: something she’s been trying her hardest to avoid.
“He was a good guy,” one of his friends, a tall redheaded man - Calleigh didn’t know how they knew each other - says, clasping a hand on her shoulder and offering a comforting smile of sorts.
It takes her a moment to realize that someone is saying something to her, and she navigates through the fog in her mind to choke out a response, “the best,” she replies, and she fights, successfully this time, the urge to cry even more.
Before she leaves, before she walks out the door and closes it behind her forever, she walks up to the casket one more time. “I love you,” she whispers, sliding a small silver ring he had given her for her birthday into one of his pockets and ruffling his hair slightly beneath her fingers, “see you later.”
-fini-
FANDOM: CSI: Miami
PAIRING: Tim "Speed" Speedle/Calleigh Duquesne
WORD COUNT: 569
NOTE: Set after 3.01 "Lost Son," so mentioned character death. Written for kiss_bingo, prompt: "time - last."
When she thinks of Tim in the future, she’ll think of him as she last saw him: alive, oh-so-very alive, not a single bullet wound marring his skin. For now, he’s dressed in a suit and cleaned up nicely and laying in a coffin that he would have scoffed at - “seriously?” he’d say, not skipping a beat, “you’re taming me after I can’t defend my right to scruffiness anymore?”
She’d never admit it out loud, never within earshot of him at least, but she prefers the tousled look on him, not the almost eerie composure before her. “Preferred,” some inner part of her amends, and she refuses to acknowledge it.
Other people are milling around the room; other people, she saw Horatio earlier, and Eric said he’d swing by after work, but the majority of them are friends and family she’s never met before. She wonders for a moment if it’d be too awkward to introduce herself to his mother, to his brother - he always did say that she’d get along with his mother, after all, this would be the only chance she’d get to prove his theory.
She opts against it; she doesn’t know if he ever told her about their relationship, and a viewing is the last place she’d want to drop the bombshell that they’d been dating for over a year.
She slinks back against a nearby wall, watches the room circulate, watches people say their final goodbyes. The crowd thins out, soon, only a few patches of people chattering away in small groups are left.
Walking back to his casket, her eyes fill up with tears. She presses a hand to his cheek; cold to the touch, unlike the warmth that shone through when he was alive. Impulsively, she leans over, her hair brushing at the bristly fabric of his suit jacket, and presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his lips.
“I miss you already,” she says, whispering softly and daring the tears dancing along the corners of her eyes not to fall, not to fall, and when they do fall, unbidden and noisy and everything she wasn’t wanting out of this viewing, they scatter across the silk of his tie, staining it with her tears.
She could spend forever in this room, never leaving, never letting him out of her sight ever again because if she did then she’d be forced to acknowledge the reality of it all: something she’s been trying her hardest to avoid.
“He was a good guy,” one of his friends, a tall redheaded man - Calleigh didn’t know how they knew each other - says, clasping a hand on her shoulder and offering a comforting smile of sorts.
It takes her a moment to realize that someone is saying something to her, and she navigates through the fog in her mind to choke out a response, “the best,” she replies, and she fights, successfully this time, the urge to cry even more.
Before she leaves, before she walks out the door and closes it behind her forever, she walks up to the casket one more time. “I love you,” she whispers, sliding a small silver ring he had given her for her birthday into one of his pockets and ruffling his hair slightly beneath her fingers, “see you later.”
-fini-