No Other One, Chapter 15
Title: No Other One, Chapter 15
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future. Fulfills
alphabetasoup prompt, N is for Nyx.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, and Chapter 14.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show. Don't sue me.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everyone else in the lab might be unaware, but Horatio was sure that Rebecca Nevins wasn’t one of those people. Her eyes were narrowed on him, darting off occasionally to glare at the teenager. They’d dated only briefly, but the redhead didn’t doubt that she was furious. That she knew the truth.
And it was bad timing on her part, but… he knew better than to let her stew. She was not a vengeful person; however, the dark-haired woman hated feeling cheated or being blind-sighted. In this case, Horatio didn’t doubt that she would feel both.
He nodded his head. “All right,” the redhead told her before turning to Kyle. “Stay where you are.” Horatio looked around the room, relieved to see other lab techs still in the immediate vicinity. Even if the boy tried to leave, he’d never get far.
Horatio followed Rebecca dolefully to the AV lab where he had hid from her earlier in the day. But this time the small room wasn’t empty, and the redhead was sure to stir up the rumor mongering as he kicked Cooper and Eric out with a nod of the head.
His rough hand had barely closed the door behind them when Rebecca spit out, “Was this part of your plan? Hmm? Do everything wrong to spare your son prison time?”
“My plan?” he asked slowly in disbelief. Shifting on his feet, the redhead said, “At the time of Kyle’s arrest, I was unaware that he was my son.”
She leaned back against the dark metal desk holding the AV equipment. “You expect me to believe that?” Her fingers tapped rhythmically against the tabletop; it was one of her habits that he’d noticed when they were dating.
“I do, Rebecca. It’s the truth.”
Her hand smacked the metal. “Bullshit.”
He sighed. “You think… that I knew he was my son and started a fight with him on purpose? Is that it?”
“Yeah, Horatio, that’s exactly it,” Rebecca said seriously. “You are… without a doubt, the most high-minded man I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” the redhead said softly, even though he thought that Kyle was all the proof anyone needed to see that that wasn’t true. Not anymore anyway.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” she bit back. “You’re preachy and judgmental.”
And Horatio thought about their break up at that moment, just as she must have. He had never regretted that decision, hadn’t even grieved the end of the relationship, because… he couldn’t be with someone who would make deals with cop killers. Maybe the redhead could forgive other flaws, but not that. Never that.
“You’ll punish anyone who doesn’t meet your expectations,” Rebecca snapped, interrupting his thoughts. “So do you really expect me to believe that you had a son you never knew about? Because… last time I checked, Horatio Caine wasn’t the kind of guy to do things like casual sex.” She stood up straight.
“You’re certainly not the kind of officer to rough someone up for the fun of it. So… I’ll ask you again, do you really expect me to believe any of this?” Rebecca closed the distance between them, her heels making her the perfect height to look him in the eye.
“It’s the truth, Rebecca,” Horatio simply replied.
“All right,” she said, sighing. But it wasn’t, the redhead thought, a sound of defeat. His ex didn’t sound convinced at all, and she certainly didn’t look like she was going to back down.
“Your son had a deal, thanks to his testimony regarding your misconduct,” she explained. “But unfortunately I cannot, in good faith, accept that agreement any longer. For the record, Horatio, I was going to give you a chance to explain this.” The dark-haired woman moved around him, her hand resting on the doorknob. “But since you would rather lie than do your job and tell me the truth… Kyle Harmon’s now facing time in prison.”
They were words the redhead dreaded. “Rebecca,” he said warningly. “This is not smart of you,” Horatio continued, his voice now rough, dangerous.
“No? Your precious son kidnapped a woman; he needs to be punished for that. Or are you only concerned with justice when it doesn’t involve your family? You’re always bailing out your sister-in-law. And then there’s your nephew,” she said disdainfully. “I guess it was only a matter of time before your own son thought he could get away with -”
“Donot do this,” he told her.
“Consider it already done.” Grabbing the door handle and wrenching it open, Rebecca stormed off.
All alone, Horatio replayed the conversation in his mind. She was serious; he couldn’t deny that. And the redhead, standing in the dark room, hoped that Kyle would let him in… if only so that the boy could stay out of jail.
The lieutenant knew his ex would strike as quickly as possible. If she hadn’t already fast tracked the trial, she would definitely be placing that call now. Which meant Horatio had no time to lose.
Hurrying out of the AV lab, the redhead rushed back to where Kyle was waiting. “Can we get this over with?” the boy snapped.
“Results are in,” Valera said, standing next to him. “But I wanted to wait -“
“It’s fine,” Horatio told her. She tried to hand him the test results, but he shook his head. “Give them to him. He’s the one who needs to see them.”
Her brown eyes looked at him unsure, but she didn’t say anything, merely handed the teenager the printed piece of paper.
Horatio watched his son carefully, waited to see what he would do. But the boy remained stoic, silent.
Finally Kyle looked up. “So… you’re my father,” he said slowly. “That’s what this says.”
“Yes,” the redhead told him, trying to put as much conviction in his voice as possible.
The teenager nodded but said nothing.
It was almost bizarre, Horatio thought. He’d anticipated anger - lots of yelling, because that would be how he would react, the redhead thought. He’d already accepted that Kyle wouldn’t jump for joy over the news. But the teenager wasn’t angry or happy, wasn’t yelling or crying or doing anything.
Which made Horatio’s next move all the more difficult to discern. The only child he’d ever spent much time with was Ray Junior, and silent had parted ways with his nephew around the time Yelina weaned him.
What was he supposed to do now?
The answer came almost immediately, thankfully.
“You screwed up my deal,” Kyle said accusingly.
“I know,” Horatio admitted. The boy looked as though he wanted to say something, but didn’t. So the redhead could only add, “And we will fix that.”
The blond scoffed. “And how are we going to do that?”
“First, you tell me everything, Kyle.” Horatio tried to direct him out of the DNA lab and back towards the elevator, but the teenager resisted.
“That’s it?” he asked, and they stopped walking. “Everything’s changed all of a sudden? And I’m supposed to tell you ‘everything’?”
The redhead sighed. “I know you may not believe this, son, but…” What could he say though? He doubted any kind of sentimentality would go over well at the moment. And to an extent, Horatio couldn’t deny that it would be lying.
So he decided to stick with the facts. It was safer to do that, to keep whatever burgeoning feelings there were close to his chest at the moment. “The way I see it, Kyle, right now you have no one else who will help you.” They began to walk again, the teenager keeping his distance. “So you either trust me -“
“I don’t,” the blond said through gritted teeth.
They got on the elevator together, eyeing one another up and down. Silent assessment, suspicion, distrust, dislike, hate even; memories played through Horatio’s mind, repeating once, tenfold, until every father-son relationship he knew of overlapped this one. They barely knew one another, and already they were doomed to replicate what they understood of fatherhood.
As the doors had closed, Horatio wanted to do something, say something to make it right, to fix it. But there was no easy way to do that, no simple words that would change the last sixteen years, and so, the redhead decided to focus on the matter at hand. At least until a lie or something came to mind.
Narrowing his eyes, in a hopefully imploring way, on the teenager, he asked him, “You’d rather go to jail than accept my help?”
Kyle turned and looked at him. “The way I see it, that’s only true if you actually plan on helping me. But if you don’t want to do that… if you’re just out to get me, then telling you everything wouldn’t exactly be smart, would it?”
The redhead had known that they would come to this, that Kyle would demand answers and deserve them, and that Horatio would have absolutely nothing. And here he was - no closer to convincing the boy to capitulate than he had been earlier in the day.
There were no wonderful answers to be given, no lies he could tell that would seem real enough to push Kyle. There was nothing, and yet Horatio knew that he could not give up. Because doing that would leave his son out in the open for Rebecca Nevins.
And she would ruin him.
She would put the teenager in prison until there was absolutely no hope left for the boy. Until there was no son left to speak of to save. It wasn’t an option, but there they were staring down that path.
And as the elevator doors open, Horatio knew they were taking their first steps down it when he saw Calleigh’s eyes. She stood there waiting, some patrolmen by her side. “Orders just came through Horatio,” she explained to him.
Her eyes were cool, and he wasn’t sure that she knew the truth. He had been convinced of it earlier, and if she did know, the blonde was great at hiding it.
“Kyle Harmon,” she said. “You’re under arrest.”
The teen’s brown eyes slid over to him, and they looked at one another; the challenge in his dark irises could not be ignored. Nor missed, but just in case, as the officer began to read the boy his rights, Kyle said, “You want to make this right, then do it… But don’t expect my help.”
And as they dragged his son away for booking, Horatio couldn’t help but feel relieved. For the first time that day, he didn’t feel so completely incompetent and out of touch. Because if there was one thing the redhead could do, it was follow the evidence. He hadn’t done it earlier, sure, but he hadn’t really been looking for the truth then.
Now it was all he looked for.
Nothing could stop him from finding the answers he sought. And, Horatio told himself, if the truth didn’t seek his purpose, then… there would be other ways of getting what he wanted. Rebecca had been wrong; he wasn’t all that high-minded. He had beliefs but had no problem going against them, and for his own child, he would surely do that.
Kyle Harmon would not go to jail, Horatio decided. And as he left the police station once more, the redhead could feel it in his bones. That dark part of himself that he tried so hard to stifle had awoken - and this time he relished it. No matter where it took Horatio, his son wouldn’t be going to jail. Not for this.
The price didn’t concern him. Nothing else mattered. Because as the darkness threatened to overtake him, Horatio could only, for the first time, see... his son.
Go to the next Chapter
Author: Duckie Nicks
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Yelina Salas, Horatio Caine, the whole Caine family
Author's Note: WARNING: SPOILER FOR SEASON 6.
Summary: Almost two decades ago, Horatio made a decision that would change his family forever. Will they ever forgive him? Will he ever tell Yelina how he feels? This is an alternative to the beginning of season 6. A Horatio and Kyle story; H/Y romance in the future. Fulfills
alphabetasoup prompt, N is for Nyx.
Previous Chapters: Prologue, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13, and Chapter 14.
Disclaimer: I don't own the show. Don't sue me.
“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Everyone else in the lab might be unaware, but Horatio was sure that Rebecca Nevins wasn’t one of those people. Her eyes were narrowed on him, darting off occasionally to glare at the teenager. They’d dated only briefly, but the redhead didn’t doubt that she was furious. That she knew the truth.
And it was bad timing on her part, but… he knew better than to let her stew. She was not a vengeful person; however, the dark-haired woman hated feeling cheated or being blind-sighted. In this case, Horatio didn’t doubt that she would feel both.
He nodded his head. “All right,” the redhead told her before turning to Kyle. “Stay where you are.” Horatio looked around the room, relieved to see other lab techs still in the immediate vicinity. Even if the boy tried to leave, he’d never get far.
Horatio followed Rebecca dolefully to the AV lab where he had hid from her earlier in the day. But this time the small room wasn’t empty, and the redhead was sure to stir up the rumor mongering as he kicked Cooper and Eric out with a nod of the head.
His rough hand had barely closed the door behind them when Rebecca spit out, “Was this part of your plan? Hmm? Do everything wrong to spare your son prison time?”
“My plan?” he asked slowly in disbelief. Shifting on his feet, the redhead said, “At the time of Kyle’s arrest, I was unaware that he was my son.”
She leaned back against the dark metal desk holding the AV equipment. “You expect me to believe that?” Her fingers tapped rhythmically against the tabletop; it was one of her habits that he’d noticed when they were dating.
“I do, Rebecca. It’s the truth.”
Her hand smacked the metal. “Bullshit.”
He sighed. “You think… that I knew he was my son and started a fight with him on purpose? Is that it?”
“Yeah, Horatio, that’s exactly it,” Rebecca said seriously. “You are… without a doubt, the most high-minded man I’ve ever met.”
“Thank you,” the redhead said softly, even though he thought that Kyle was all the proof anyone needed to see that that wasn’t true. Not anymore anyway.
“It wasn’t a compliment,” she bit back. “You’re preachy and judgmental.”
And Horatio thought about their break up at that moment, just as she must have. He had never regretted that decision, hadn’t even grieved the end of the relationship, because… he couldn’t be with someone who would make deals with cop killers. Maybe the redhead could forgive other flaws, but not that. Never that.
“You’ll punish anyone who doesn’t meet your expectations,” Rebecca snapped, interrupting his thoughts. “So do you really expect me to believe that you had a son you never knew about? Because… last time I checked, Horatio Caine wasn’t the kind of guy to do things like casual sex.” She stood up straight.
“You’re certainly not the kind of officer to rough someone up for the fun of it. So… I’ll ask you again, do you really expect me to believe any of this?” Rebecca closed the distance between them, her heels making her the perfect height to look him in the eye.
“It’s the truth, Rebecca,” Horatio simply replied.
“All right,” she said, sighing. But it wasn’t, the redhead thought, a sound of defeat. His ex didn’t sound convinced at all, and she certainly didn’t look like she was going to back down.
“Your son had a deal, thanks to his testimony regarding your misconduct,” she explained. “But unfortunately I cannot, in good faith, accept that agreement any longer. For the record, Horatio, I was going to give you a chance to explain this.” The dark-haired woman moved around him, her hand resting on the doorknob. “But since you would rather lie than do your job and tell me the truth… Kyle Harmon’s now facing time in prison.”
They were words the redhead dreaded. “Rebecca,” he said warningly. “This is not smart of you,” Horatio continued, his voice now rough, dangerous.
“No? Your precious son kidnapped a woman; he needs to be punished for that. Or are you only concerned with justice when it doesn’t involve your family? You’re always bailing out your sister-in-law. And then there’s your nephew,” she said disdainfully. “I guess it was only a matter of time before your own son thought he could get away with -”
“Donot do this,” he told her.
“Consider it already done.” Grabbing the door handle and wrenching it open, Rebecca stormed off.
All alone, Horatio replayed the conversation in his mind. She was serious; he couldn’t deny that. And the redhead, standing in the dark room, hoped that Kyle would let him in… if only so that the boy could stay out of jail.
The lieutenant knew his ex would strike as quickly as possible. If she hadn’t already fast tracked the trial, she would definitely be placing that call now. Which meant Horatio had no time to lose.
Hurrying out of the AV lab, the redhead rushed back to where Kyle was waiting. “Can we get this over with?” the boy snapped.
“Results are in,” Valera said, standing next to him. “But I wanted to wait -“
“It’s fine,” Horatio told her. She tried to hand him the test results, but he shook his head. “Give them to him. He’s the one who needs to see them.”
Her brown eyes looked at him unsure, but she didn’t say anything, merely handed the teenager the printed piece of paper.
Horatio watched his son carefully, waited to see what he would do. But the boy remained stoic, silent.
Finally Kyle looked up. “So… you’re my father,” he said slowly. “That’s what this says.”
“Yes,” the redhead told him, trying to put as much conviction in his voice as possible.
The teenager nodded but said nothing.
It was almost bizarre, Horatio thought. He’d anticipated anger - lots of yelling, because that would be how he would react, the redhead thought. He’d already accepted that Kyle wouldn’t jump for joy over the news. But the teenager wasn’t angry or happy, wasn’t yelling or crying or doing anything.
Which made Horatio’s next move all the more difficult to discern. The only child he’d ever spent much time with was Ray Junior, and silent had parted ways with his nephew around the time Yelina weaned him.
What was he supposed to do now?
The answer came almost immediately, thankfully.
“You screwed up my deal,” Kyle said accusingly.
“I know,” Horatio admitted. The boy looked as though he wanted to say something, but didn’t. So the redhead could only add, “And we will fix that.”
The blond scoffed. “And how are we going to do that?”
“First, you tell me everything, Kyle.” Horatio tried to direct him out of the DNA lab and back towards the elevator, but the teenager resisted.
“That’s it?” he asked, and they stopped walking. “Everything’s changed all of a sudden? And I’m supposed to tell you ‘everything’?”
The redhead sighed. “I know you may not believe this, son, but…” What could he say though? He doubted any kind of sentimentality would go over well at the moment. And to an extent, Horatio couldn’t deny that it would be lying.
So he decided to stick with the facts. It was safer to do that, to keep whatever burgeoning feelings there were close to his chest at the moment. “The way I see it, Kyle, right now you have no one else who will help you.” They began to walk again, the teenager keeping his distance. “So you either trust me -“
“I don’t,” the blond said through gritted teeth.
They got on the elevator together, eyeing one another up and down. Silent assessment, suspicion, distrust, dislike, hate even; memories played through Horatio’s mind, repeating once, tenfold, until every father-son relationship he knew of overlapped this one. They barely knew one another, and already they were doomed to replicate what they understood of fatherhood.
As the doors had closed, Horatio wanted to do something, say something to make it right, to fix it. But there was no easy way to do that, no simple words that would change the last sixteen years, and so, the redhead decided to focus on the matter at hand. At least until a lie or something came to mind.
Narrowing his eyes, in a hopefully imploring way, on the teenager, he asked him, “You’d rather go to jail than accept my help?”
Kyle turned and looked at him. “The way I see it, that’s only true if you actually plan on helping me. But if you don’t want to do that… if you’re just out to get me, then telling you everything wouldn’t exactly be smart, would it?”
The redhead had known that they would come to this, that Kyle would demand answers and deserve them, and that Horatio would have absolutely nothing. And here he was - no closer to convincing the boy to capitulate than he had been earlier in the day.
There were no wonderful answers to be given, no lies he could tell that would seem real enough to push Kyle. There was nothing, and yet Horatio knew that he could not give up. Because doing that would leave his son out in the open for Rebecca Nevins.
And she would ruin him.
She would put the teenager in prison until there was absolutely no hope left for the boy. Until there was no son left to speak of to save. It wasn’t an option, but there they were staring down that path.
And as the elevator doors open, Horatio knew they were taking their first steps down it when he saw Calleigh’s eyes. She stood there waiting, some patrolmen by her side. “Orders just came through Horatio,” she explained to him.
Her eyes were cool, and he wasn’t sure that she knew the truth. He had been convinced of it earlier, and if she did know, the blonde was great at hiding it.
“Kyle Harmon,” she said. “You’re under arrest.”
The teen’s brown eyes slid over to him, and they looked at one another; the challenge in his dark irises could not be ignored. Nor missed, but just in case, as the officer began to read the boy his rights, Kyle said, “You want to make this right, then do it… But don’t expect my help.”
And as they dragged his son away for booking, Horatio couldn’t help but feel relieved. For the first time that day, he didn’t feel so completely incompetent and out of touch. Because if there was one thing the redhead could do, it was follow the evidence. He hadn’t done it earlier, sure, but he hadn’t really been looking for the truth then.
Now it was all he looked for.
Nothing could stop him from finding the answers he sought. And, Horatio told himself, if the truth didn’t seek his purpose, then… there would be other ways of getting what he wanted. Rebecca had been wrong; he wasn’t all that high-minded. He had beliefs but had no problem going against them, and for his own child, he would surely do that.
Kyle Harmon would not go to jail, Horatio decided. And as he left the police station once more, the redhead could feel it in his bones. That dark part of himself that he tried so hard to stifle had awoken - and this time he relished it. No matter where it took Horatio, his son wouldn’t be going to jail. Not for this.
The price didn’t concern him. Nothing else mattered. Because as the darkness threatened to overtake him, Horatio could only, for the first time, see... his son.
Go to the next Chapter