A/N: So there was this idea that’s been nagging me for awhile now. This…is not it. It started out being that, but I re-wrote parts of this around 12 times, and it turned into something completely different. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad, haha. Guess I’ll find out, huh? Anyway. Implied timeline is within the general season four storyline, even though there’s just one spot in here where that’s made plain. I’m aware there’s probably a couple of places in here that my verb tenses jump around, and that really bothers me, but it sounds weird when I fix it, if that makes any sense. Probably not.

Oh. And in case anyone still has doubts, I don’t own anything. And we won’t go into detail on what would happen if I did own these characters, haha.

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It was the same, monotonous routine. One step forward, two steps back. He would finally manage to break through her outer walls, get her to open up to him, and no sooner than he had done that, she’d pull away and put up two more walls in place of the one he had broken down. They had played the same game for five years. Five years too long. Each time it got harder for them both, harder to start back at the beginning. Harder to ignore what was there. It was never-ending, this circle they continued dancing around each other. Each time, they became closer than they were before, only for one of them to pull away, dancing just outside the other’s grasp. Neither would admit it to the other, but it was breaking them both. Yet neither of them could stop it. To Calleigh, it was an addiction, the pain that it brought. It was something that she could control; something that she could make happen. To give up the ability to cause that pain would be to lose control, an action completely unfamiliar to her. Eric, on the other hand, was never completely sure what was going through Calleigh’s mind. She was an enigma to him; a complex puzzle. And if Calleigh didn’t want him to figure her out, then there was no way he was going to be able to.

Unless she looked him directly in the eye.

Calleigh was strong; there was no doubt about it. Eric had often marveled at how she’d been able to keep control through everything that had happened in the past five years. She never cried, never let herself break. Someone on the outside might go as far as to call her unfeeling; cold even. Calleigh considered it an accomplishment that she was able to keep herself composed so well; to her, to show emotion was to show weakness. But her eyes were her greatest traitor. On the rare occasion that Eric could get her to look directly at him, he could see everything. He could see just how close to losing control she really was; just how tired of this endless game she was. But before Eric could ever say anything, Calleigh would always look away and bring up something interesting about the case they were currently working on. And so the circle continued; he would try to get through to her, only to have her insist that everything was completely fine. The same, endless circle of pretending.

It was a cycle he hated, despised even, but still, he went along with it. With Calleigh, a circle was better than the alternative; all or nothing. Eric knew Calleigh; if he were to present her with that ultimatum, she would choose nothing instead of all. He knew how Calleigh’s mind worked; he knew she wasn’t going to willingly put herself in any situation where there was the slightest possibility that she would get hurt, unless of course, it was her that was causing the pain. Eric wished that just once, Calleigh would take that risk instead of playing on the safe side. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt her in any way; it’d be the equivalent of hurting himself. Because she was a part of him, whether she would acknowledge it or not; whether she wanted to be or not.

So much was she a part of him that he often found himself in his car halfway to her apartment without any idea of how he had gotten there, or why he was there. He often found himself outside the ballistics lab, wondering who that was in there and where in the world Calleigh could be. Even though she had transferred out to trace, Eric still thought of ballistics as Calleigh’s lab, no one else’s. He often found himself halfway through dialing her number on his cell phone for no reason at all, sometimes at the strangest times.

Which was how he found himself on this particular evening. Except this time, he had completely dialed the number and the line was ringing before he realized what he was doing. Slightly feeling like an idiot, he hung up before Calleigh had a chance to answer. He immersed himself in trying to identify the tire treads found at the latest crime scene; trying to get his mind off of Calleigh for the moment.

But at this stage of the circle, that proved to be an impossible task for Eric. Looking at the clock, he sighed, realizing that while Calleigh was impressed so strongly upon his mind, there was no way he was going to be able to get any work done. Silently, he packed away what he was working on and made his way out of the lab, nodding a good-bye to the few people he passed on the way. He stopped abruptly once outside, noticing a familiar figure sitting on the steps a few yards in front of him.

She felt him there long before she heard his footsteps behind her. It was an innate sixth sense kind of thing. One she tried to ignore, but the more she tried, the more evident it became. She smiled slightly upon realizing that he was just standing there, not moving. “I’m not stopping you from passing,” she said quietly.

Eric blinked. “How did you know I was here?”

“I just did. It’s hard not to notice someone when they’ve been standing behind you for five minutes.”

“Oh,” Eric replied awkwardly. “I didn’t – I was – I was just wondering why you were just sitting out here. On the steps. In the middle of the night,” Eric said, struggling to string words together like he always did when he was around her.

Calleigh giggled slightly. “It’s 9:30, Eric. Hardly the middle of the night.”

Eric ran a hand through his hair. “You know what I mean.” He closed the distance between them and lowered himself to sit next to her on the steps. “What are you doing out here?”

“I was waiting for you,” she said softly, looking straight ahead into the night.

Eric’s mind went blank. It was amazing how a simple statement like that could have such a strong impact on Eric. His breath caught; his heart involuntarily sped up. And he didn’t even know why she was waiting for him. It could have been something as trivial as to run trace results by him, and yet, he’d still have reacted the same way.

However, there was something in the way she had said it that suggested that it wasn’t something like that. “You what?” Eric asked.

Calleigh shrugged and turned to look at him. “I was waiting for you. I noticed that you tried to call me earlier, and I was just wondering if everything was alright. You hung up before I could answer.”

Eric blinked, then shook his head. “Oh. Yeah. Sorry, I was trying to call somebody else,” he lied. “I hit the wrong number by mistake.”

“Oh.”

Eric looked at her sharply. He had definitely heard a note of disappointment in that one word. “Calleigh?”

“It’s late, I need to be going,” she muttered, moving as though to stand.

“Wait,” Eric said, almost desperately. He quickly reached his hand out and took hold of hers.

Calleigh froze.

“What’s going on?” Eric asked softly, feeling Calleigh tense beside him. He really didn’t like her sudden change in demeanor.

Calleigh focused her eyes on the ground. “It’s nothing. It’s stupid, really.”

Eric reached up with his other hand to tuck a stray lock of hair behind Calleigh’s ear. He was surprised when she leaned in to his touch. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

Typical Calleigh. Eric couldn’t help but grin.

A companionable silence fell over them as they sat there on the steps, letting the cool night air wash over them. Aside from an occasional glance at Calleigh, Eric was lost in his own world again. Lost within his favorite part of the circle. He closed his eyes, letting himself enjoying her company for the moment. Because circles never end; Eric knew that eventually, just like every other time, they were going to re-enter the other half of their circle and Calleigh would once again be just outside his grasp.

“Thank you,” Calleigh whispered, barely audible to Eric.

Eric blinked, having been jolted back into the present. Somehow, his arm had found its way around Calleigh, and her head had found its way onto his shoulder. His mind registered gleefully that she wasn’t pulling away. “For what?”

Calleigh smiled and lifted her head from Eric’s shoulder. “I don’t know. A lot of things. For giving me space. For always being there.” She shrugged and looked back down at the ground for a moment. She was slightly startled at the intensity of Eric’s gaze when she allowed her eyes to meet his again. “What?” she asked.

After five years of resisting that very temptation, Eric found he could no longer ignore it. He leaned in slowly and softly captured her lips with his own.

Calleigh was surprised at first, but not as surprised as she was when she found herself responding to the kiss. Even more surprised was she when she found herself disappointed when Eric pulled away. She opened her eyes and looked at him questioningly.

Eric finally allowed himself to grin when he realized that Calleigh wasn’t going to get up and walk away. The grin widened upon seeing the question in her eyes; she was not asking him why he did that, but rather, why he stopped. “Just making sure you weren’t going to kill me or something,” he said, answering her unspoken question. Calleigh didn’t reply; she simply grinned and leaned in to Eric, pressing her lips back to his. Eric responded and pulled her closer, one thought piercing his mind before he completely lost himself in her.

The circle was broken. And if Eric had his way, they would never have to go around it again.