Title: The One Confused
By: cassie_jamie
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Double damn.
Rating: PG-13/R
Pairing: Horatio/Eric
Author's Note: This is a dark piece from my demented, recovering mind. This is the happy ending. There's a depressing one where he dies in the end.Inspired by the *Linkin Park* songs, Breaking The Habit, of the new CD 'Meteora'.

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He sits in his office on the couch, lights off and door shut. There's almost no one left in the lab, except for Adele and Eric, and he's glad for that.

People often ask him why he wears long-sleeved shirts in the Miami heat. Usually the reply is a gentle reminder that he grew up in the Southern Florida city, though the true answer is much more...intricate than the obvious.

Nearing middle age, but the addiction is overpowering. He wonders if there was ever a time when he didn't go off to a hidden space and let the blood seep. Let it be the vessel for all his pains and pent-in guilt. And he cannot name any days, weeks, months.

It hadn't always been his painkiller. Back before his mother was killed, he would happily talk to her and divulge all his hidden secrets.

Then she went away; he and Ray had gone to live with his father on the other side of town. Where he cried himself to sleep until a year had passed in the blink of an eye.

Francisco Caine, known to his friends as Frankie, had been a loving man, but the teenager had not seen that. No, he'd seen a strict, authoritarian. He'd seen a police officer in place of a parent, and it would be a great many years until that vision changed.

Somewhere in the frenzy of divorces, little brothers, and death, he'd learned that pain is a great ally.

"Horatio." Adele knocks on his door, peeks in, "It's ten after nine."

He nods, manages to eek out a tiny, comforting smile, "Just taking a breather before I head home. My daughter's probably hopped up on sugar right now. I figure I'll let Marnie tire the tyke out."

"Evil. Make the babysitter chase the baby." She jokes, "How old is Elise now?"

"She'll be three in two months."

The woman whistles and leaves, and it's silent again when she walks away. Dark silence of dangerous minds.

Light glints as he pulls the blade from behind his back, where he'd hidden it a half hour ago. Calleigh had come in to ask him something. He can't remember what is was now, just recalls watching her enter and exit.

Softly, he scratches across the thin skin of his wrist. Tiny, millimeter droplets appear and he runs his fingertip across it. The crimson smears and he thinks how ironic it was that his life had come to this. This pinnacle of insane coping mechanisms.

He's been sloppy lately. Had to blame the cat a few times, an accident in the kitchen while trying to balance cooking and the baby. And he doesn't like that. He does not like lying.

A shadow crawls across the stairs and with Adele gone there's only one person it could be.

Eric crests, pushes open the door without warning or preamble, and stares as the boss slips something beneath his thigh, "What's that?" He asks with a laugh.

"Nothing." Immediate subject change, "What do you want me to sign?"

He mumbles something under his breath, and the redhead is unable to decipher it. The younger continues, "Nothing. Sevilla just wanted me to come check on you. She doesn't think you should drive."

The hazy memory of watching Tim go flying forward from the heat, the raw power of the blast when the barn blew runs through his mind. He doesn't love Speedle. No, Horatio's heart belongs to someone much different and the CSI supervisor is quite aware of the attraction brewing between the southern belle and the once-New Yorker.

"H?"

"Yes?"

He looks at his friend, his mentor, his boyfriend, and wonders, "What lie are you going to throw me tonight? Ellie's sick, too tired, or will you actually admit the truth?" He asks, "I know why you don't want me to touch you, and I've helped you so far, but I can't stop this for you and it needs to end."

"I don't need..."

"What are you going to tell your daughter when she gets older? What are you going to tell her when she asks why you go to the beach in long-sleeved shirts?"

He sits back, pulls the razor forward to caress it with the utmost care and puts thought into that. And he can't come up with one legitimate excuse for when the inevitable time comes. Reluctantly, he places the sharp metal between his index and middle fingers to hand it to his lover.

H stares at a picture on his desk while he does so. He jokes oft times with the team that it's a family portrait, taken during the warmth of Easter Sunday in the backyard of the CSI supervisor's beach front home.

Elise, an angelic red-brown-haired girl, sits in her daddy's lap, holds Speed's hand and pulls Eric's hair. Calleigh laughs, Yelena hugs her own child to herself, though Ray Jr. isn't quite pleased by that.

"I think it's time for you and I..."

"No." He puts his foot down, physically and verbally.

"Listen to me. I love you with all my heart and so does Ellie." The man kneels down, hands on the knees of the suit-pants, "I know you hate clichés, and this is one, but have you thought about how much it would hurt us if we lost you? Or how `bout how we've made, what, *twelve* trips to the ER in a month?"

He sees the fruitlessness in trying to fight with Delko, and knows he should relent to a certain point, "I'll go back to Caren."

"Thank you." He balances forward on his boss's knees, stands, and lets lips brush quickly. He winks, "I think Marnie is probably about to kill Elise. I'll go home so she can get a break." Then he goes, the implement in his back pocket.

And the darkness refills the room, fills his soul and eats away at him. Reminds him that he cannot let Eric weasel his way in the shattered heart, though he's quite sure the younger has already done so. The pieces are being mended again, painstakingly and at a snail's pace. He worries that it's a terrible thing.

Still, his act and cover is disintegrating in front of his eyes. He's let someone in to his corrupted mind, someone who's getting through the walls that surround his soul.

It feels good and he hopes that his other worries are for naught.

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