Title: Move On
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Greg Sanders/Ryan Wolfe
Fandom: CSI: Vegas/CSI: Miami
Rating: PG-13
Table: 5_prompts, Written in the Stars challenge
Prompt: J4, You'll have enough distance to look back with a shrug and a smile
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Greg Sanders or Ryan Wolfe, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Ryan looked down at the photo album in his hands, feeling reluctant to open it. He didn't know why he had brought this with him, taking it out of the things he'd had packed away and kept in storage. He didn't really feel the need to look at it.

His memories of the team in Miami were still sharp and clear; he didn't need pictures of them to remember what each of them looked like, sounded like, or what they had been like to work with. Those memories were still close to the surface for him.

This photo album should have been kept packed away; he didn't think that he had taken it out of the storage unit. Maybe Greg had done so; he might be interested in seeing the people who Ryan had worked with before, the team members that he'd mentioned a few times.

He hadn't really talked about the Miami team a lot since he'd been here in Vegas. Personally, even though he thought they were good CSIs, they were nothing compared to the people he'd met here. Everyone in Vegas was much more professional, and better at what they did.

There was no sense of being on the outside looking in since he had come here; there was no feeling of being the "new kid," such as he'd had when he had first joined the CSI team in Miami. A feeling that had never gone away for the entire time that he'd worked with them.

They had never wanted him to forget that he had, in theory, "replaced" someone they had been close to. They'd never let him forget that in their eyes, he was a distant second best. Even Horatio, as much as he had come to respect Ryan's work, had seemed to feel that way.

Here, he had never had that feeling, not from the first day. Everyone in the Vegas crime lab had welcomed him and made him feel at home; it had taken less than two days at work for him to feel that he was already a valued member of their team.

Everything had been so different in Miami. Even though he had usually gotten along with most of the CSIs on the team there, he had never really felt as though he belonged; they had always closed ranks and shut him out in some way, even though he'd tried to fit in.

He would never be made to feel that way here, he was sure of it. And now, he had enough distance to look back at the way he had felt during most of his time in Miami and shrug it off, to smile at how the people there had acted towards him.

He'd never really thought about it before, but now he realized that they must have been horribly insecure about their own prowess as CSIs to have treated him so shabbily when he'd been brought onto the team. They had known that his work ethic would make them look bad.

It was all in the past now, Ryan told himself with a smile. He was out of Miami and here in Vegas, where he had already proven himself to be an asset to the crime lab. He loved his job -- and he was lucky enough to be able to work with the man he loved.

If he had never made that decision to leave the Miami team, then he would never have come here and met Greg. He would still be alone, that part of his life cold and empty, filled momentarily with a person here and there who would end up disappearing after a few dates.

His relationship with Greg was so different from any other he'd ever had; Greg completed him in a way that he'd never thought anyone could. He belonged here, by Greg's side; he had never felt so strongly that he was finally where he'd always been meant to be.

It still seemed incredible to him that someone like Greg was a part of his life. How had he gotten so lucky as to have this beautiful young man fall in love with him just as deeply and quickly as he'd fallen for Greg? It seemed like a dream, a fairy tale come to life.

With Greg in his life, he could push all the bad things that had happened to him in Miami aside, ignore them and put them into the past. He could look back at them with a shrug and a smile, as though all of those events had taken place in a different life, to a different person.

He was different now that he had Greg in his life. Falling in love had made him a softer, more sympathetic person; it had changed his view of so many things in the world. Greg had made him a better man -- and he intended to stay that way.

When he looked back at the person he'd been in Miami, he liked himself less as he had been then than as he was now. He had still tried to do what was right, and to help people -- but he had to admit that there had been times when he was too brusque, too abrupt with the people around him.

He'd only been that way because he hadn't wanted to let his softer feelings come out and be seen, Ryan thought with a sigh. Maybe that had been why he'd never really quite fit in with the people he'd worked with in Miami -- they'd seen that softer side in spite of his attempts to hide it.

It had really come out after his experience with the Russian mob, he thought wryly. He'd gotten himself into that situation because of his softer side -- the others on the team would have gone straight to Horatio; they would have put a child's life in danger.

But he couldn't do that. He had felt such an obligation to keep Billy and his father safe; he had been willing to put himself into the line of fire for them. That was only one of the things that had made him realize he would never fit in with the Miami team.

He would always put others first. That was just who he was, and he couldn't change that quality in himself. Nor would he want to, Ryan told himself firmly. He didn't want to put barriers between himself and the people he worked to help. That wasn't what he was about.

That was the main reason he had never been completely accepted by the team in Miami. He was far too willing to go out on a limb, to put the victims before himself. He didn't have the overwhelming instinct for self-preservation that they did, and he never would.

It was past time to put that life behind him, to stop looking back with regrets for what could never have been and to look ahead to the rest of his life with Greg. He had found the place where he belonged, the one place that he wanted to be.

He could look at the past now with a shrug and a smile -- and even admit that some of the reasons that he hadn't been fully accepted on the Miami team were his own fault. He'd always ben too impulsive, too naive in some ways, too ready to look on the bright side.

He felt as though he'd shed a skin, one that he'd needed to leave behind him, and that he was an entirely new person now. A life with the man he loved lay ahead of him, a life that he would never have dreamed that he could have in the years that he'd been in Miami.

Ryan closed the photo album firmly, putting it back into the box it had been taken out of. There was no need for him to have this out where it could evoke memories he'd rather not look back on. From this point, he was going to move on, and leave the past behind him where it belonged.

***