Title: The Most Important Thing
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Zeke Barnes/Ryan Wolfe
Fandom: CSI: Miami/A Gifted Man
Rating: PG-13
Table: 6, 50ficlets
Prompt: 47, Coming out
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Zeke Barnes or Ryan Wolfe, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

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Zeke leaned back in his chair at the kitchen table as he watched Ryan move around the kitchen, making the two of them breakfast. He'd offered to help, but the other man had told him to sit down, saying that he didn't need any help -- though Zeke had made them coffee.

He sipped his coffee as he watched Ryan, wondering just where he'd learned to cook so well. Ryan obviously knew his way around a kitchen, unlike most of the men Zeke had dated in the past, who seemed to think that making grilled-cheese sandwiches was a culinary feat.

"Who taught you how to cook so well?" Zeke asked, resting his elbows at the table as he gazed at Ryan. He'd never seen anyone so beautiful, he thought dreamily, his gaze roaming over the other man's muscular body. How had he gotten lucky enough to have this man in his bed?

"My mom," Ryan answered, turning to grin at Zeke before he began scrambling eggs. "She was pretty firm about me knowing how to cook before I moved out on my own. She said that she wasn't going to have me always going to out to eat fast food, that it wasn't good for me."

"Did she have a hard time with it when you came out?" Zeke inquired, wondering how Ryan had dealt with his family's feelings about him being gay. "My mom was kind of shocked at first, but she said that as long as I was happy, then she was, too. I was lucky."

Ryan nodded, shrugging as he brought the scrambled eggs to the table, then moved back to the counter to drop slices of bread into the toaster. "Yeah, you were. But my parents were cool with it. They were shocked, too, but they're pretty accepting. They came around."

"It's not easy, is it?" Zeke said with a sigh. "Coming out to my mom was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. My dad wasn't around, so that was one problem I didn't have to face. But from everything I know about him, he wouldn't have been happy."

"My dad wasn't exactly thrilled at first," Ryan told him as he placed the toast on the table and turned to take bacon out of the package and put it into the frying pan. "But after a few days of thinking about it, he told me that if I was happy, that was the most important thing."

"That's pretty much what my mom said," Zeke agreed, nodding. "But it was still the hardest thing I'd ever done to tell her that I liked guys more than I liked girls. I was only twenty at the time, and I was so sure she'd tell me that I didn't know what I wanted yet."

"I was twenty-four," Ryan told him, sounding a little strained. "So they couldn't use that excuse with me. If they hadn't been able to accept the fact that I like guys, then it would have meant that they couldn't accept me for who I am. That would have killed me."

"I'm glad they could accept you," Zeke said softly, his heart going out to Ryan. He'd obviously been terrified that his family would hate him for who he was, and Zeke knew how much that would have hurt. "I hope I can meet them someday. They sound like good people."

"They are," Ryan said with a smile. "And they'd like you. After all, you're a doctor. My mom would be really impressed by that. She'd love for me to have been a doctor, but the next best thing to that, for her, is me dating one. She'll try to talk you into marrying me."

"Somehow, I don't think that'd be too hard for her to do," Zeke said softly, his gaze focused on Ryan. The other man had his back turned, but he slowly turned around when Zeke spoke, his green eyes wide. He blinked a few times, opening his mouth to speak, and then closing it again.

"What?" Zeke asked, amused by the fact that he'd apparently rendered Ryan speechless. "It's too soon in the relationship to be talking seriously about marriage yet, but I'd like to think that twenty years from now, we'll have been married a long time."

Ryan nodded slowly, taking a deep breath before he spoke. "I would, too," he said, his voice soft and husky. "That's one thing it'd be easy for me to do, Zeke. Asking you to marry me, I mean. Coming out was hard, but this would be on the other end of the spectrum."

"And I know exactly what my answer would be," Zeke replied, his own voice thick with emotion. "I'd marry you in a heartbeat, Ryan. Even now, even though we just met and this relationship is just beginning. I know what I need, and what I want. And I want you. For the rest of my life."

"I want you, too," Zeke murmured, raising an eyebrow as he pointed to the stove. "Errr, you'd better get back to the bacon if you don't want it to get really crunchy." He chuckled softly as Ryan yelped and turned back to their food, removing the pan from the hot burner.

Zeke settled back into his chair, feeling better about the relationship he and Ryan had just started. He knew now that he would be accepted by Ryan's family, and that was one giant step on the path forward into the rest of their lives -- a path that he couldn't wait for them to walk down together...

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