Title: The strangest thing
By: Demon Faith
Pairing: Speed/Eric
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI: Miami belongs to other people. Speed is usually claimed by Neen, but her model isn't chasing Eric. Guess this one's mine then.
Note: Especially for lasairfhiona. The corruption continues. :)
Summary: writers_choice: breakfast, Speed POV.

***

Speed doesn't eat breakfast.

He sleeps the extra twenty minutes away and grabs coffee as he enters the lab. Food is something to be shoved between work, play and rest, and he's never really had the time for it.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day."

Speed remembers well - Eric wearing a faintly disapproving look, meeting his eyes squarely as he did his best impression of Speed's mother.

"What?"

Eric hadn't deigned that with a response, just settled back to work as if nothing had been said. Speed had been puzzled all day - how had he known? He didn't throw his personal life around, didn't want people delving too deeply. What, was Eric psychic now?

The next day brought a bagel, tauntingly placed beside a fresh cup of coffee. There was a note scrawled on the napkin - 'Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.' Speed had ignored the bagel for all of ten minutes, before he had given way to his nose and taken a bite. He was on the last mouthful as Eric entered, smiling, and never saying a word.

It had continued for weeks, and Speed had eaten every one, his hunger overtaking his better sense. Because suddenly it occurred to him that maybe he was building a debt here, maybe he owed Eric something for all these bagels. And perhaps, there was a slight chance that he wanted to pay up.

"You free this evening?"

"I'm always free."

"I"¦want to buy you dinner."

No mistake in those words, and Eric looked up, slightly shocked, definitely interested. Speed likes to think his first mistake was eating that first bagel, but he knows he was staring into those deep brown eyes months, *years* before that.

Dinner was pleasant, the work banter flowing seamlessly into family and the past. Speed found himself telling things he'd never told anyone, and Eric had nodded seriously, understanding every word. The personal attention scared him, but he should've known, he should've backed away then.

He should have said no to Eric's offer of coffee, displayed at least a mote of resistance to the kiss gifted by his best friend, fled like the wind instead of stumbling into Eric's room with something close to ecstasy.

From then it was a downward spiral. The bagels turned into toasted sandwiches, and he could no longer deny that he was not a breakfast person. Here he was, eating breakfast food at breakfast time and doing so without objection. His mother would be proud.

One morning, it was different. Nothing but a napkin, another scrawled note - 'I like the roof.' Curious as a very-dead cat, Speed ventured up, only to find a spread of food on a picnic blanket, complete with a grinning Eric Delko.

"Move in with me."

It didn't seem like a question, so Speed simply sat down and took a bite from the bagel. The smile he was met with was blinding.

Which leads him to here, and the smell of bacon and egg wafting out of the kitchen. He lies in their bed and listens to Eric's off-key singing, wondering how he could have possibly become a breakfast man.

It's the strangest thing.

***