Title: Chirstmas Ficlet
By: Caroline Crane
Pairing: Speed/Tyler
Rating: PG

Speed hasn’t celebrated Christmas since he was eighteen. He puts up with office Christmas parties just so he doesn’t have to avoid awkward questions, but when it comes to putting up a tree or visiting his parents or even accepting Alexx’s yearly invitations to have dinner with her family, he just doesn’t bother.

It’s not that he has anything against Christmas; he’s just never seen the point. Even when he was a kid he didn’t really get it, because for his mother Christmas was about making sure other people’s kids didn’t feel alone, and for his father it was the busiest time of the year in the restaurant. In high school he and David exchanged presents, but then senior year happened, and after that…well, he didn’t feel much like celebrating for a long time.

So Speed doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but he’s not surprised that Tyler does. The first Christmas in their apartment almost makes up for every one Speed’s skipped over the years, between the decorations covering every available surface and the tree dropping needles all over the living room floor. Speed tries to point out how crazy it is to have a live tree in Miami, of all places, but Tyler just insists it’s tradition, hands over forty bucks to the Boy Scouts, and makes Speed help him drag it home. It’s ridiculous, but it’s kind of cute too, so Speed doesn’t argue too much.

He doesn’t even argue when Tyler makes him put in an appearance at the lab Christmas party, even though it’s the last place he wants to be. There aren't any hard feelings, really, but he's only been in the room for twenty minutes and already at least six people have asked him how he's doing with that look like they're waiting for him to fall apart. And okay, he got shot, but he didn't die. He quit his job, sure, but not for the reason everyone thinks.

Not completely, anyway. Getting shot had a lot to do with finally making the decision, but he'd been thinking about it for a while. Thinking about the long hours and the people they dealt with and the fact that whenever he was at work, he was thinking about being somewhere else. He quit because he was happy, and he knew nobody in the lab was going to get that.

They all lived for their jobs. They got stressed out, and there were days when they all thought about quitting, but most of them loved it. They lived for the adrenaline rush of a new case, the hunt for evidence and the puzzle of fitting all the clues in the right order to solve the case. And there was a time when Speed loved it too, when he welcomed the distraction that he got only from focusing on a really intense case. But then he met Tyler, and no matter how hard he fought it, his whole life changed anyway.

He's thinking about all the ways his life has changed when someone stops next to him, a shoulder bumping against his arm and Speed looks over to find Calleigh grinning at him. "Hey, stranger."

"Hey," Speed answers, and he's a little surprised to see her, because he thought she was still mad at him for getting himself shot.

"I'm surprised to see you here," she says. "I thought you always hated these parties."

Speed shrugs and scans the crowd, gaze settling on Tyler over in the corner, talking shop with a couple of the other A/V guys. "It's not so bad now that I don't spend all my time with you people."

"It does get a little intense sometimes," Calleigh says, her own gaze straying and Speed's not positive, but he thinks she might be looking at Delko. He's not getting caught in the middle of that again, though, so he pretends he doesn't notice.

"You want some punch or something?" he says, gesturing toward the refreshment table. And he doesn't really want a drink, but if it means a clean getaway he'll take it. Because he likes Calleigh, but he knows when she's gearing up for one of her lectures, and he doesn't have to listen to them anymore.

"No thanks," she says, but when he tries to move away she puts a hand on his arm to stop him. "Listen, Tim, I wanted to apologize."

"For what?" he asks, and instantly regrets it, because he doesn't want to talk about this. But it's too late, because her eyes go all sad, and when she does that he can sort of understand why Delko can't just move on.

"For being so hard on you after the shooting. I was angry at you for being careless with my kit, and then when I found out you were careless with your gun…"

"Forget it," he interrupts. "You had a right to be mad."

For a minute she doesn't answer, and Speed lets himself hope that's the end of the conversation. But it's Calleigh, so he knows better.

"I always thought you'd change your mind about leaving," she says, staring down at her shoes and he wasn't expecting this. Because he knows Calleigh, and he knows guilt when he sees it, but he doesn't get what she has to feel guilty about.

"Why?"

She looks up then and smiles that smile of hers, the one that always makes Delko's brain short circuit. Even Speed's fallen prey to that smile a time or two over the years, doing favors for her that he'd never do for anybody else. "You're a good investigator, Tim. Sure, you slipped up a few times, but it wasn’t a reason to leave. I never meant to imply…"

And he knows he shouldn't laugh, but when he realizes she's blaming herself he can't help it. "That's not why I quit."

"No?" she asks, and now he feels bad that she's been blaming herself all this time. "Then why?"

"You're right, I was distracted at the end," he says, glancing across the room again at the source of his distraction. "I let myself get caught up in other stuff and I lost my focus. After I got shot I realized that the other stuff made me happier than this job was ever going to, so if I was going to stay distracted I'd better find something to do that wouldn't get me killed."

"So you're happy," she says in a voice that tells him she's having a hard time believing it. And he expected that, because for Calleigh the job is everything. She's just like Horatio and Delko and probably the kid who took Speed's place, and that's the whole reason Speed never really fit in.

"Yeah, I'm happy."

"Well, good." She just looks at him for a long time, like she's trying to decide whether or not he's lying to her. Then her face relaxes back into a smile, and she squeezes his arm. "Don't be such a stranger, okay? Just because we don't work together doesn't mean we can't be friends."

"Sure," he says, doesn't remind her that in her line of work she doesn't have time for friends. None of them ever did, and that's one of the reasons he's not sorry he left.

He's watching her walk away when someone else stops next to him, and when he feels an arm slide around his waist he can't help smiling. "That better be you."

"You're right, it better," says Tyler. And it's still kind of weird, being open about his relationship in front of these people, but Speed doesn't really mind anymore. Because the truth is, he is happy. It took him a long time to get there, and he knows better than to give it up again.