Title: Invisible Walls
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen, Ryan Wolfe
Fandom: CSI: Miami
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Spoilers for the CSI: Miami episodes "Match Made in Hell" & "Wolfe in Sheep's Clothing."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Ryan Wolfe or any of the other characters from CSI: Miami, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Ryan sat in his office, looking down at his hands shaking in his lap. He still felt a little breathless, as though he was still underwater, his head being held down until he couldn't breathe. He could feel his consciousness starting to slip, black spots in front of hs eyes.

He blinked a few times, banishing those annoying dark splotches that were dancing around the edges of his vision. He was not going to pass out. Not now, not after he'd already come back to the office after the ordeal he'd been through in that house.

He hadn't expected what had happened; being injected with some kind of drug and then dragged across the floor while he was still conscious was frightening enough, but to be nearly drowned in a fountain had been one of the worst experiences of his life.

What had gotten to him the most was that Horatio and Eric hadn't even asked him if he was all right after they had come charging to his rescue. He supposed it should be enough that they had saved his life, but somehow, it wasn't. Not by a long shot.

The same thing had happened when he had been kidnapped by the Russian mob; he'd told Horatio that they'd held him captive and tortured him for hours, but yet, the boss who claimed to care so much about everyone on the team hadn't asked him if he was okay.

Horatio had apparently just assumed that since he was back at work, and there were no visible bruises on his face, that he was fine. No, he hadn't been fine. His entire body had ached, and he'd felt as if he'd been hit by a truck. Several trucks. All of them moving very fast.

There were times when his teammates didn't seem to give a damn about what happened to him. Deep down, Ryan knew that wasn't true -- but he'd still like to feel that they cared about his well-being, and there were far too many times when he felt disposable.

He didn't want to be seen as merely a member of the team, but as someone that the people he worked with valued as a human being. Someone that they cared about as more than just a colleague at work, a person who they would be there for if he needed them.

The others all seemed to have that kind of relationship, but he didn't feel that he fit in with them. True, some of them had been working together long before he'd come into the picture, but he'd been a member of this team for quite a while himself.

And yet, he still didn't feel that he was a part of the charmed inner circle. Maybe Walter wasn't, either, but he didn't seem to mind that. It was different for him, Ryan thought wistfully. Walter had a close family life, people outside of work who he could turn to.

Ryan didn't have that. His family was far away from Miami -- and he'd rather not think of them unless he had to. Calling his family dysfunctional was only touching the very tip of the iceberg, he thought ruefully. The less he saw of them, the better.

That made his life very lonely -- and he'd looked to his colleagues to fill that hole that had been there ever since he'd come to this city and made a home and a life here. But he couldn't depend on them to do that; it was up to him to assuage that loneliness, not the people around him.

What he needed was someone special in his life. He'd told himself that so many times that it was an old refrain, but he'd never managed to meet anyone that he felt drawn to. He didn't want just a one-night stand; he wanted someone who would be there for the long run.

He wasn't like Delko. He couldn't go out trolling for women -- and anyway, he'd long since come to the conclusion that he was more interested in men. He'd tried to keep up the outward front that he was a straight man, but he knew better.

That wasn't something that he could share with his colleagues, either. Horatio might understand, but he was sure that Delko and Walter never would. And as for the women he worked with -- well, they would more than likely be annoyed that he didn't want them.

Maybe what he really needed to do was just try to resign himself to being alone. It wasn't such a bad life, was it? He might have no one who really cared about him, but he had his work, and people who he cared for, in a purely platonic way.

It had almost seemed funny that he was the one Horatio had assigned to go undercover and try to expose that matchmaking scam. He was the one man in the department who wouldn't really want to date any of those women, and yet he'd been the one seemingly romancing them.

What would Horatio -- and the others -- think if he could tell them? Would that just put up a further wall between himself and the people he worked with? Or would they understand why he'd always been so circumspect about his sexual preferences?

A part of him was sure that they would understand -- but another, larger part of him didn't think they would. They would more than likely all be angry that he'd kept such a large part of who he was from them -- and the men wouldn't be comfortable around him any more.

Even though he'd never shown the slightest bit of romantic interest in any of them -- because he wasn't interested in his co-workers -- they might feel that at some point, he would. His easy camaraderie with all of his colleagues would be destroyed for good.

Ryan wished that he could feel closer to the people he worked with, but all of the circumstances that he was caught in seemed to make that impossible. He would never be able to open up completely to them about who he was -- and they would never let him in.

He was a part of the team, a part that they acknowledged as being valuable to them. But he was always on the outside looking in, and he couldn't help feeling that he always would be. There would always be an invisible wall that existed between them.

Could those walls ever be breached? Not if he couldn't come clean about who he was with the people he should be closest to, Ryan thought with a sigh. And until then, as long as he was holding back, he had no right to expect to be accepted fully into their circle.

Those invisible walls would always exist, he told himself as he got to his feet and headed for Horatio's office to find out what their next move in the case was. It was up to him to make them crumble into dust -- and until he could do that, they were a solid barrier.

***