Fic: Cost Cutting (CSI Miami, Ryan Wolfe / Eric Delko)

Nov 17, 2010 20:57




Title: Cost Cutting
Fandom: CSI Miami
Pair: Ryan Wolfe / Eric Delko,
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, etc.

CSI Miami Main List

“Don’t say anything or I’ll start screaming.” Valera warned as she marched into the break room. “Right now I`d love to strangle that pompous little bitch.”

Eric looked up from his lunch.
“Are you fighting with BoaVista again?”
“No, I meant that other bitch and didn’t I just tell you not to talk to me?”
“You did, but we’ll all have to endure the same thing, and everyone comes back from her interviews ready to kill her.”
“Have you been there already?”
“Not yet, I got an appointment tomorrow.”
“It’s gotta be some kind of a record. She’s been here less than a week, and most of the personnel is ready to march out.” She pulled a water bottle from the fridge and downed most of it with one gulp. “Why the hell do we need a budget efficiency consultant? It’s definitely not because they pay us the big bucks.”

“I heard the lab went over budged in the last quarter.” Eric shrugged and stuffed the rest of his taco into his mouth. “Something about unsigned bills that were paid from our budged.”
“Unsigned?”
“Yeah, someone used the lab money to pay for personal expenses and they couldn’t figure out who it was, so now we all get to suffer for it.”
“And that hippo comes here a day after Horatio left for his annual leave?” Valera lifted her eyebrows. “Quite a coincidence.”
“It is…”
“And what do people always say about coincidences?”
“That they’re easy to use as an excuse.”
“I think someone tipped him off… Did you ever watch the Benny Hill Show?”
“No.” Eric couldn’t quite follow the sudden change of topic. “Why?”

“He had these really funny sketches, where he dressed up like a sixties housewife, big wig and flowery dress and pearls. He looked just like that cow.” Valera clutched her water bottle so hard it started creaking. “Did you read the new memo about lab appliances?”

“No, I just got back.”
“It says all the appliances should be unplugged when they are not being used to save electricity.”
“Doesn’t that mean-”
“That we have to re-calibrate them all when we start using them? Yeah, that’s exactly what it means. Any idea how long it takes?”
“I have a pretty good idea.”
“What’s the point of saving a little bit in power, if you loose more than that in valuable time you could be working on the evidence?”

“Hey, you’re preaching to the wrong crowd. I’m with you one hundred percent.”
“Sorry, I just needed to vent.”

Ryan walked into the break room just in time to hear her last words. His agitated expression indicated that his mood wasn’t much better than hers.
“You must be talking about the Bitch Queen of Penny-Pinching.”

“Yeah, the wicked witch of Miami.” She sighed and gave Eric a patient glance. “You haven’t met her yet, but you’ll see what we’re talking about.” Valera shoved her water bottle back into the fridge and headed out. “If you need me, I’ll be in my lab planning a mutiny.”

“Is that woman really that bad?” Eric asked once she was gone.
“Worse.” Ryan grunted. He slumped down on the couch. “She made headlines last year, when she was doing a cost cutting plan for the children’s hospital. She actually sold their swings as scrap metal.”
“That’s cruel-”
“They came to pick them up while the kids were still on them.”

“We don’t have swings, do we?”
“If we had swings, you would never get any work done.” Ryan forced himself to get up again. “Have you heard what happened to Calleigh?”
“Yeah, I heard you caught your guy.”
“We did.” Ryan poured himself a mug of lukewarm coffee from the pot. “We put him in the interrogation room and he folded like a house of cards.”
“So what does that have to do with the cost cutting?”
“When she took his confession to him to get his signature-” He held up one finger in a “wait-a-sec” gesture, and opened the cupboard under the sink. He pulled out a large cardboard box and slammed it onto the table so hard a few pens fell out of it. “Try them yourself.”

Eric picked up one and tried writing his name on the margin of a newspaper. The pen fell to pieces before he got to the C. He took another one, but it didn’t operate any better.

“Are they all like this?”
“Yes. Our very own bottomless pit of stupid ideas got a good deal on them. Twice the amount for half the price compared to the ones we normally get. Half of them don’t have any ink and the other half goes to pieces if you try to grab them. Calleigh kept getting him new pens, and they all did that. It was like in a lousy sitcom.”
“Benny Hill?”
“Who?”
“Nothing, it was just something Valera said…” Eric dumped the pieces of broken pens into the trashcan. “How long is this gonna go on?”
“I guess they want to get the budget balanced, so who knows? I heard Horatio was assigned to dig up the culprit to that billing mess before he went away on his vacation, but there wasn’t anything to go on with.”
“Makes you wonder what kinda stuff was charged from our budget.”

“Nothing exiting.”
“How do you know?”
“I may have seen a little bit of her notes when she interviewed me…” Ryan smirked into his coffee. “A load of designer sunglasses and a pricey toupee.”
“So we’re looking for someone, who loves sunglasses and wears a rug?”
“It gets better.” Ryan continued tiredly. “The hairpiece was from a line called "Rusty Orange". Who would put something like that on his head?”

“I don’t know… It sounds kinda familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it…”
“Well anyway, this was probably the first day I’ve been grateful for the lab protocol. I heard one of the higher ups shooting down her idea on how to save money on lab cars.”
“Cars?” Eric repeated. “She can’t take away our cars, that’s like taking away the kiddies swings!”
“Her idea was not approved. She suggested that field investigators would get buss-passes, but they turned it down, because a bus ride might compromise the evidence.”
“At least someone told her off.”
“Yeah, and can you imagine if someone forgot his kit on the back of a bus? Calling the lost and found and asking if anyone had seen a metallic kit and some evidence bags.”

“Did you hear anything else that I should know about?”
“Yeah, I heard something that will effect both of us.”
“How closely?”
“Very closely. They also refused her idea to try to lower the limit of overtime per month.”
“This place wouldn’t even operate if people didn’t do overtime.”
“I know, and I also know we both have a lot of it stocked up. I was thinking we could use some days off, and maybe this whole circus will be over by the time we come back.”
“I love how your mind works….” Eric laughed. “Great idea, but it takes at least a week to get the requests through.”
“Or twenty minutes if you know who to ask.” Ryan smirked and pulled out a wad of papers from his coat pocket. “We both have the next four days off, so all we have to do is survive today first.”

“How did you do that?” Eric wondered with his mouth hanging open. “Every time I put in  a request, that redhead just says it’s impossible, because too many have already requested the same days. And she doesn’t even look at the dates first!”

“You have the wrong technique.” Ryan leaned over the table to whisper in his ear. “Do what you do with everyone else.”

“What do you mean?” Eric tilted his head a bit, enjoying the body heat radiating from Ryan. “I should… do what?”

“Do what you do best: Flirt.”
“You flirted with that…” Eric couldn’t even come up with a good enough word for the woman.
“I did it for both of us and this is the part where you should be very grateful.”
“I am!”
“And you still owe me a nice dinner for that debacle I had to endure with your sisters.”
“How was I supposed to know they would snatch you like that-”
“When your sisters get it in their heads that someone needs a makeover, they’re like a hurricane with high heels.”
“I said I’m sorry-”
“You should be, you didn’t even try to save me from them.” Ryan reminded. “By the way, when you need some new flowery shirts just take the ones they made me buy. I’d rather go naked than wear those.”
“Don’t say stuff like that when we’re at work…”
“That’s why I say it, I know how your libido works…” Ryan chuckled and pulled back. “And maybe it gives you some extra kick to finish early, so we can leave.” An odd noise came from the hallway, growing louder and louder, and he turned around to look throught the window. “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah, like an elephant stampede.”

Suddenly the hallway was filled with people, all of them heading to the lobby. Valera separated herself from the stream and rushed into the break room.

“I told you it would happen!”

“What happened?” Ryan asked.
“The last straw.” She beamed like a sunlamp. “Either we leave or she leaves.”
“What exactly what the last straw?”
“She put padlocks on all the bathroom doors, and put an announcement on the notice board, saying all staff members are expected to use the bathroom at home before they come to work. Calleigh told everyone to sign whatever they were working on back to the storage. I kinda feel sorry for Calleigh, but if you wanna be the assistant supervisor, you gotta negotiate with slime.”

“She’s negotiating with the she-devil?”
“I offered to call an exorcist for back-up. She’s now trying to get someone in the county office here to solve this.”
“So what do we do?”
“Nothing. We do absolutely nothing until that woman is out of here and things are back to normal.”
“Do you think they’ll take it seriously?”
“They have to. This is the only time since I started here when everyone is on the same side, it’s kinda funny.”

The door was pulled open  again and Calleigh peeked in, cellphone held against her ear.
“Are you working on anything right now?”
“No, I ate already.” Eric joked. “And my evidence’s in storage.”
“I just filed our case report, so I got nothing in the works.” Ryan added.

“Good, because there’s lynching mentality raising in the lobby. I’m on line to talk to the moron from the county, who sent that woman here.”
“Are they really going to walk out?”
“Looks like it.” She groaned, and put down her phone. “I’m still on hold. I would like to know how this can improve work productivity, if everyone leaves because of her.”
“You think you can talk some sense to the county?”
“Probably. Even they have to realize a lab can’t operate without it’s staff.” She shifted her focus back to her phone. “Yes, I’m still here. No, I can’t wait, we have a World War Three brewing here. Don’t you dare put me on-!” She slammed the phone against the table. “-hold.”

“County officials hard at work.” Eric commented, smirking just a little bit. “They always crawl out of the woodwork when they got some bad news and then disappear when you actually wanna talk to them.”

“We’re not getting anything done today.” Calleigh sighed and walked to the door, the phone once again pressed against her ear. “Clock out and go home, everyone else is already doing that... Why did this have to happen during the three weeks when I have to handle it? There’s forty-nine other weeks in a year, when it would have been Horatio`s job.”

“Lucky bastard.” Valera nodded and followed her out of the break-room.

“Well, I’m not complaining if we get to leave early.” Eric stated. “We’ll get four days off and a half a day as a bonus.”
“True, but I feel bad for Calleigh.”
“I feel bad for her too, but she’s a big girl. I got just one thing on my mind right now.”
“You always have just one thing on your mind.”
“Not that thing. I was thinking about early dinner.”
“You just ate.”
“Yeah, but I have a plan. You wanna hear it now, or should we clock out first?”
“I still have to get my stuff from the my locker, so you might as well get it out now. I can see it on your face.”

“See what on my face?” Eric asked as innocently as he could, but didn’t sound very convincing.

“That you have some dirty little suggestion, and you just can’t wait to say it.”
“It’s not that dirty.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. What is it?”
“I was thinking we could clock out, get some early dinner and then  go to your place.”
“Is that all?”
“And then test that thing you said about those flowery shirts.”
“I knew it would be something like that.” Ryan sighed theatrically. “But I expect that dinner first.”

“How bout that Italian place by the beach?”
“That may get you into my wardrobe. Maybe even out of it.” Ryan winked at him and poured the rest of his stale coffee into the sink. “Meet you at the parking lot in ten minutes?”

“I’ll be there.” Eric assured, sending Ryan a lopsided smirk. “I’ll be there with a flowery shirt.”
“Don’t push your luck…”
“One of these days I’ll get you in one of those.”
“Not in this lifetime.”

show: csi miami, csi miami / one-off, pair: ryan wolfe / eric delko

Previous post Next post
Up
[]