Author’s Note: This chapter was inspired by an actual situation. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time it’s happened and I’m also sure it won’t be the last. But I couldn’t resist using it as one of my own E/C plot bunnies. I hope you enjoy!
~JP

An Introspective of a CSI Romance
By Jaclyn Parker

Chapter 5: We’re Only Human
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When Calleigh’s phone buzzed next to her, she almost jumped clean off of the couch. Hitting the pause button on her DVD remote, she lifted it to read the text.

It was a simple message that read “I miss you” but she still felt a warmth spread through her. She was about to reply when the display changed and the phone actually started ringing in her hand.

“Hey.” She said, opening it with a soft chuckle. Pressing her finger into the other ear, she struggled to hear the person on the other end. “What? I can’t hear you!”

“I said, I know I just texted you but I wanted to call and hear your voice.” Eric’s voice came through, the loud pump of music along with it.

“Aw, well, I’m glad. How is your night? Having fun with the boys?” Calleigh said loudly, making sure he heard her over the din.

Being a very independent girlfriend, not just a person, Calleigh had no problems when Eric mentioned going out with Ryan and some of Ryan’s friends for a guy’s night. In fact, Calleigh had relished in the act of buying a small pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, putting her favorite chick flick in the DVD player and just settle in for some quiet personal time. And since they were going to be out late clubbing, they had both agreed that Eric would just crash at Ryan’s place as to not wake her up when he traipsed in at some ungodly hour.

“Um, it’s cool. I mean, it’s okay. Not exactly what I expected, but....” Eric said, glancing around at his surroundings with an uneasy eye.

“The club not good? The music does sound kind of weird.” Calleigh asked, frowning as she tried to place the song that she heard in the background.

“No, uh, it’s not that…” Eric said, pressing his hand against his other ear as he strained to hear her. He would have moved to a quieter spot, but…well…there wasn’t one.

“Well, maybe it’s just an off night. You know how some clubs can be. We could go one Thursday or Friday after work and see if that makes a difference. Maybe invite Ryan, Natalia, and Maxine with us. You think we could get Horatio and Frank to go?” Calleigh teased.

“No! No, I don’t think you’ll like it here.” Eric hurried to say and shifted again as he turned to take in the atmosphere of the club he was currently in. He grimaced when he realized that his absence had finally been noticed by the group he was with and someone was headed in his direction to grab him back. “Hey, babe, I gotta run. But…I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Night!”

“Goodnight.” Calleigh said, but she didn’t know if he had heard her since the next thing she heard on the phone was silence.

Frowning she closed her phone and was about to put it down again when it vibrated in her hand. This time a full on grin, along with a blush, crept up on her face as she read “I love you” on the screen. She replied “I love you too” and sent it back immediately before un-pausing her movie.

Almost two hours later she had just been gearing up to fall asleep reading her latest James Rollins book, when the knock at the door summoned her from her warm and comfy bed.

Upon opening it, she found a smirking Eric leaning against the doorframe of her apartment. A loud honking noise sounded and she quickly rushed over to her living room window to watch a stretch Hummer limousine pulling away with a waving Ryan situated out of the back sunroof.

“You’re welcome!” He yelled out into the late night air as the limo turned the corner and he disappeared from sight.

Having heard the door close when she had gone to the window, she turned to see that Eric had let himself in and was now leaning back against the door. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his dark wash True Religion jeans and his ankles were crossed like he was a model in a damn GQ photo shoot. Yet, as confused as she was, Calleigh had to admit that Eric looked delicious enough to eat despite the insanely late hour. He wore a slightly form fitting black T-shirt with a faded, light-gray, screen printed tribal symbol across his broad chest that only accentuated his muscular arms and trim body. Discretely licking her lips, Calleigh knew that he could easily sway her to engage in other nightly activities besides reading.

That was until he had opened his mouth and said, “Calleigh, I promise you I had no idea.”

She stopped short from where she had started to reach for him and tilted her head in confusion.

“What are you talking about?”

Pushing himself off the door Eric stood up straight, swayed slightly, and then finally settled firmly on his feet. “And since I was dragged along last minute through an invitation of a third party invitation I had no idea about what kind of place it was and that means it really isn’t my fault that I was there at that place in the first place.”

Calleigh was completely lost in the conversation now but noticing the oddly guilty look that he wore, she frowned and crossed her arms.

“What exactly isn’t your fault?” She said, drawing out the sentence slowly.

“About where I was.”

“And where was that?” She pressed. “Didn’t you guys go dancing at a club?”

“Oh, there was dancing alright.” Eric muttered sarcastically, swaying again but quickly steadying himself.

“Oh for the love of…” Calleigh sighed, rolling her eyes. Getting a straight answer tonight from her slight intoxicated boyfriend was like pulling teeth from a crocodile. “Eric, what happened?”

“Theguy’.” Eric said his sentence so fast that it took Calleigh a moment to recognize that he was even speaking English.

Eric’s eyes flitted to her face and he knew the exact moment that she understood what he had said. Her eyes went wide and narrowed again in an incredibly frightening glare.

“Did you just say that you ended up going to a strip club for a bachelor party?”

At the tone of her voice, all Eric could do was nod, never taking his eyes off of her.

“So that means when you called me and let me talk about going to the same club with our friends, you were actually surrounded by half-naked women in high heels gyrating on poles?” She said all of this very slowly, her accent thickening with every word. Again, Eric found his motor function consisted of nothing but a dumb looking nod.

Calleigh opened her mouth to speak again but then promptly shut it, apparently re-thinking what she had been about to say. She obviously needed a moment to process what he had just confirmed but Eric, unwisely, chose that same moment to try to defend himself.

“Look, Cal, Wolfe didn’t say it was a bachelor party until we got picked up by the limo at his place. He said he would have told me before but he knew I wouldn’t go and he needed me to go so he would know someone there.”

“What is he? Five?” Calleigh exclaimed and somehow, even in the fuzziness that was Eric’s mind at the moment, he knew that it was a rhetorical question. He waited a minute and when she gave him a look that meant he should speak again, he kept going.

“See, the other guys who went were the bride’s family and college buddies of the groom. Wolfe was invited third party-like by his friend from his gym so he didn’t really ask what kind of party it was until he had already said he would go. But even he swears that he really thought we were just going to do a VIP bottle service at a nightclub or something.”

This time an eyebrow raised and she tapped her foot impatiently. “Since when do a group of guys go to a dance club for a bachelor party, Eric?”

“I dunno! Ask Wolfe! He’s the idiot who got us into this mess. We didn’t even know what ‘Sway’ was until we got there. But you know something? It really looks like just a regular club from the outside cause I wouldn’t have gone in if I had known!”

“And when you got inside and saw it was a strip club, why didn’t you tell them you weren’t interested and get a cab ride home?”

Eric paused, his male brain thinking hard. He might have had his fair share of alcohol tonight but he was 99% positive that her question did not have a safe answer. So instead he just gave her the most sincere smile he could and shrugged.

“I don’t know. But don’t worry, Cal, it’s not like I enjoyed any of it! In fact, I even told one of the girls, when she asked me out, that I was in a very happy relationship.”

“And how did she get close enough to ask you out?” Calleigh asked and he swallowed hard.

Somewhere deep inside, “Rational and Sober” Eric knew he should probably quit while he was ahead and just plead for mercy from the court. Or the “Rational and Sober” Eric would have just told her the truth instead of searching his brain for a reasonable excuse. But unfortunately that guy wasn’t in charge of Eric’s brain at the moment.

The guy who said this was: “Oh, well, she was giving a dance to the groom who was next to me so she was pretty close.”

“Really? The groom was the only one who got special attention tonight?” Before he could answer, Calleigh’s eyes narrowed and she pointed at his cheek. “By the way, you have glitter on your face.”

Eric ran a hand over his face and sure enough there were bright sparkling flecks of gold covering his hand when he pulled it away to look at it. His chocolate brown eyes shot to hers and he opened his mouth to speak, but never got the chance.

“Tell me, Eric. Since the only glitter those girls wear is body glitter, how did it transfer from this girl’s body to your face if the groom was the one she was giving a lap dance to?” Calleigh asked, almost too nonchalantly for Eric to feel even remotely safe in trying to avoid answering the question.

“Cal, I swear, one of the bride’s cousins waved her over before I could say no. But as soon as she started doing her thing I said I wasn’t interested. Then I pointed her in the direction of the groom and that was that. But, you know, you would probably have liked her. She was really nice and I think she sounded kind of Southern.” Eric said, his brow furrowing and looking thoughtful, his mind having done that nice little drunken leap from the topic at hand to a completely non-appropriate fact.

“Oh, of course! I mean, since she was from the South and really nice, I’m sure we’d be BFF!” Calleigh repeated, her voice rising slightly in volume and pitch.

Eric froze and consciously vowed from that moment on not to speak again until he was absolutely sure that his girlfriend’s gun was still locked away in the bedroom closet safe.

“You know what, Eric? I think you’d better go home before either of us says or does something stupid. Well…stupider.” Calleigh said, her eyes roving over him and that eyebrow rising again in a critical gesture.

Despite with her obvious displeasure with him and troubling words, Eric couldn’t help but just stare back at her. For some reason, he had just noticed that she was in what he liked to call, “bedtime Calleigh” mode.

She was dressed in a black tank top with pink lace edging and adorable black capri pajama pants with the same matching pink lace around the cuffs. He vaguely remembered Calleigh happily thanking Natalia for them this past Christmas and Eric made a mental note to thank the DNA specialist as well. With Calleigh’s hair pulled up in a high ponytail and her face freshly scrubbed for bed, Eric could see the smattering of light freckles across her nose. Even with her green eyes flashing angrily at him, all in all, he thought she looked adorable.

“You are so adorable.”

Eric heard himself saying his previous thought out loud and his body stiffened as he recognized his mistake immediately. Mentally he blamed that last tequila shooter for the complete lack of comment filtering his brain was doing tonight.

Calleigh’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped slightly. Then she frowned and glared harder, if that was at all possible.

“Go…home…Eric.” She managed to growl out.

“I, uh…I can’t, remember? I don’t have my car.” Eric said softly and Calleigh closed her eyes in exasperation.

Of course, she remembered now. The image of Ryan waving like an idiot in the limo briefly flashed through her mind.

“Besides, I really don’t think I should drive, do you?” He added then he conveniently swayed again as if to prove his point.

Calleigh guessed that she could call Eric a cab but looking at him and his lost puppy expression, she couldn’t do it. Deep down, she knew that he really was apologetic. She couldn’t see her Eric at a strip club by choice, at least not anymore.

But still, if he thought he was sharing her bed covered in some other woman’s body glitter and smelling like…that place…he had another thought coming!

Walking briskly to her hallway closet she pulled out a blanket and extra pillow. Placing them on the couch, she looked at him pointedly and sighed. Suddenly she wasn’t angry with him anymore. Oddly enough she was more disappointed than anything.

“Just do me a favor and at least shower before you go to sleep? I don’t want glitter all over my stuff.” Calleigh said and Eric blinked slowly at her. He looked like he wanted to say something but wisely just nodded instead.

She turned on her heel and headed back towards her bedroom. Just before she closed the bedroom door she heard him call out to her softly.

“Night, Cal.”

As Calleigh settled back under her covers and picked up the book that had been set aside almost an hour ago, she stared at the front cover without really seeing it. Hearing the door that connected the bathroom to the hallway open, her eyes flew to the closed door that led from her bedroom to the same bathroom. When she heard her shower start a moment later, she dropped her head back against the headboard with a loud sigh.

Calleigh knew that there was no way she would be doing anything else that night, let alone reading; she had too many other thoughts jumbled up in her head.

Marking her place, she put the book on her nightstand and wiggled down under the covers. After pulling out the band that held her ponytail on top of her head, she ran her fingers through her hair to let it fall around her shoulder blades again. Dropping the band on top of the book for easy access in the morning, she reached over and flicked off the bedside lamp, dousing the room in darkness.

The moon was only a small sliver and didn’t shed much light in the night sky. But the little that did filter in through her bedroom window somehow found its way to land on the side of the bed that Eric usually lay on. To Calleigh it seemed to, almost mockingly, highlight its emptiness.

Then, completely unsolicited, her brain replayed the unpleasant conversation from her living room. She frowned anew and pounding her pillow with a fist, she flipped onto her stomach to bury her face into its softness. But as Calleigh turned her head again to stare at the wall, she instinctively began to listen to Eric’s movements in the shower. She was surprised to find that as she did, an unexplainable sense of comfort came over her and her eyes began to drift closed.

Calleigh was in that in-between state of sleeping and not quite asleep when she felt a presence beside her. She wearily blinked her eyes open and waited for them to adjust to the blanket of night surrounding her. When they did she found Eric crouching by her bedside, his face level with hers. He was close enough that Calleigh could see a few stubborn water droplets clinging to his shaved head and she could smell the sharp clean scent of the masculine body wash that now had its own special place on her shower rack.

“Hey.” He whispered, his voice deep and soft, but steady. The shower had not only washed away the physical evidence of his night but had helped clear the last remnants of the alcohol induced fuzziness from his brain.

Eric had just wanted to catch a glimpse of her when he cracked open the door leading from the bathroom to her bedroom, to make sure she was okay before he headed to his own banished sleeping area. But upon seeing her face in the moonlight he knew he had to talk to her one last time before they both went to sleep.

Leaning forward, he placed an elbow on the bed and gently reached out to brush a lock of her hair away from her face.

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I…I just wanted to say again that I’m sorry.”

When she didn’t say anything, only stared at him with her mouth turned down in a small frown, he continued.

“I should have told you were I really was tonight when I called you and you were also right in saying that I should have left when I found out what type of club it was in the first place.”

Calleigh opened her mouth but he placed a finger over her lips and shook his head.

“Not because I knew you wouldn’t like it, but because I didn’t like it. Calleigh, you know I hate those places. Maybe some guys enjoy that kind of thing and I guess, if I’m being honest, maybe once upon a time I did too. But you have to know that was before I found out some things.”

With Eric’s finger still pressed against her lips Calleigh couldn’t speak but when her brow furrowed, he answered her silent question anyway.

“It was before I found out that the only reason I agree to go to the gun range with you on our days off is because of the cute little look of happiness that you get when they show you the wall of guns for you to choose from.”

At that Calleigh rolled her eyes. She had only made him go twice…in the last month anyway. Even though Eric saw her gesture, he kept going.

“Or before I found out that if I’m missing one of my 'U of Miami' sweatshirts to check that secret spot you think you have in the back of your closet.”

When Calleigh’s eyes widened, he just smiled at her and leaned forward to kiss the tip of her nose. It was cute how she thought he didn’t know she was slowly but surely stealing pieces of his wardrobe to wear at her leisure.

“It was before I found out that walking in on you dancing around your kitchen in nothing but your bathrobe while singing along to Rick Springfield was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Calleigh felt a blush rise on her cheeks as she thought back to that day. Instead of laughing at her, he had thanked her for letting him see the real her and then he had made love to her right then and there. She had joked afterwards that she would never be able to eat at her kitchen table again without having hot flashes…and she was right.

Removing his finger from her lips, he began stroking her hair again. He looked deeply into her eyes and sighed softly.

“It was before I found out that, when said by the right person, the words ‘I love you’ can make a grown man cry from happiness.”

Her eyes closed and she felt a tear slide down her cheek at the sincerity and awe in his voice that accompanied his words. She took a moment to compose herself and when she opened her eyes again there were no more tears but they still shined brightly, even in the dim shadows.

Despite knowing that Eric loved her, the revolting mind-set of jealously and doubt had grabbed hold of Calleigh tonight when she had found out where he had been. Going to the club because he didn’t know was one thing, but going and staying to participate was another. As ridiculous as it might seem on the outside for a beautiful and normally confident woman like Calleigh to have those feelings, in the end she was still a woman in love. And because of that, for a brief moment, Calleigh had wondered if Eric hadn’t told her where he was tonight because what he had seen at that club had been preferable to coming back home to her.

“Eric, why didn’t you just tell me? When you called me earlier? I might not have liked it but it was better than what ended up happening because you didn’t tell me.” She finally whispered and he shrugged, frowning.

“I don’t know why, honestly. Male pride, maybe? Too much alcohol? Fear that you’d shoot me?”

Eric said the last one with a teasing smile and despite the situation, her lips twitched in a return smile. His slipped back into a frown and he became serious again.

“Maybe it was shame. Shame that I was even looking at those women when I could have been here with you, holding perfection in my arms.”

Calleigh sighed and lightly shook her head on her pillow. She knew that he meant every single thing he had just said to her and with those words he had eradicated the ugly feelings she had churning inside since this whole ordeal had started.

“You’re so corny sometimes, you know that?” She asked softly. At her words Calleigh watched Eric’s shoulders drop and she feel the tension that had been radiating from him finally leave his body.

“Yeah, but you love it.” He said and this time she did chuckle when she felt it bubble up inside of her. Eric looked up and caught sight of the clock sitting on the other nightstand; the one on “his side” of her bed. “It’s really late. You should get some sleep.”

He leaned forward and kissed her lips lightly before standing and moving to go back through the bathroom to the living room couch. As he opened the door, the light from the one lamp he had left on in the living room showed her that he was clad only in his boxer briefs, the towel from his shower still clutched in his one hand.

“Where are you going?” Calleigh asked, her voice still soft. She watched as he paused and turned to stare at her in the bed.

“I was going to go sleep on the couch.” Eric said, frowning. A painfully hopeful look crossed his face and his eyes flickered towards the empty side of the bed. “Unless…you want me to sleep in here?”

Calleigh squinted up at him as the light from the living room harshly fell directly on her face while she thought. Sure she could make him suffer by spending the night on the couch, regardless of the fact that she had forgiven him. In fact, she knew many women probably would have. But it boiled down to the fact that she simply didn’t care what “other” women would have done. Truth was she loved him and wanted his arms around her as she fell asleep and that was that.

She didn’t say anything, but instead turned her head and reached out to pull back the covers on his side of the bed. Before Calleigh could even count to thirty, the light in the living room had been turned off, the towel had been discarded, and he was climbing in the bed with her. She immediately turned onto her right side and felt his one arm slide under her head as a pillow while the other one wrapped around her waist to tug her back towards him. Their bodies molded together front to back as naturally as two puzzle pieces interlocking in place and Calleigh placed her left arm over top of the one that Eric had around her stomach.

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the back of her head, nuzzling his nose in her long hair and sighing in contentment. She rolled her eyes but it was a meaningless gesture because she knew exactly how he felt. Calleigh closed her eyes and just as the fogginess of sleep began wash over her, she nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Eric?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“Mmm, good because I love you too.”

Silence settled over them before she nudged him again and he groaned, burying his face deeper into the crevice between her hair and his pillow.

“Eric?”

“Yeah, Cal?”

“Just to let you know…”

“Hmm?”

"...that even though I love you..."

"Mmm-hmm?"

“...if I even find one speck of glitter on my sheets tomorrow, I still might shoot you.”