Title: Untitled
By: Caroline Crane
Pairing: Speed/Tyler
Rating: PG
A/N:  Occasionally I ramble a little about this idea I had for a Miami AU wherein Speed gets shot but doesn't die, and it causes him to reevaluate his entire life and then leave the CSI team.  Mostly I talk about this with Ruth, but I'm willing to ramble at anyone who will listen, so.  Anyway, this is the inaugural snippet of that world, as requested by Ruth.

A lot of things changed after he got shot.  Maybe it shouldn't have been such a big deal; it wasn't the first time he'd gotten shot, but it was the first time he came close to dying.  Maybe if he'd had a vest on this time it wouldn't have been such a big deal, but he hadn't really been expecting an ambush at a jewelry store.

Then there was the fact that the first time he got shot, there hadn't been anybody at home to worry about him.  No one to come to the hospital if he hadn't been wearing a vest, to sit next to his bed all night long because Horatio pulled some strings with the hospital staff to get Tyler in after visiting hours.  The first time there was no one to hold his hand after his surgery, and there hadn't been anyone to charm his parents into leaving him alone when they insisted on coming down to see him.

So in the end it all came down to Tyler.  He didn't ask Speed to quit his job; he wouldn't do that, but Speed was pretty sure he'd wanted to.  He didn't argue when Speed mentioned going back to school full-time, anyway.  He just sat down with a calculator and their monthly bills and figured out how they'd swing a house payment and all their other bills on Tyler's salary and a graduate assistantship.

And it's working, even now that Tyler doesn't work at the lab anymore either.  They're pretty broke these days, but Tyler loves his new job and it gives him more time to work with the kids in his dance classes.  Speed's almost used to not being on call anymore, used to normal hours and whiny undergrads and meeting Tyler after work without worrying about who's going to see them.

Maybe that's the biggest change, because after he got shot he realized how much time he was wasting trying to make sure no one found out about him and Tyler.  Not that it was easy to just…be out, but it was worth it.  Worth seeing Tyler's smile every time Speed touched him in public, worth not having to look over his shoulder all the time in case the wrong person saw them together and called the press.

And it's kind of nice, not having to worry about the press and the lab's image and causing more work for Horatio.  Now that's somebody else's problem, and from what Tyler told him when he was still working at the lab, the kid they hired to replace him is doing a great job of screwing up without Speed's help.

Now he can leave campus at the end of the day and stop thinking about it, at least until he gets home and hits the books.  But there's time for other stuff too, normal people stuff like meeting his boyfriend at the beach after work.

They've set up a stage near the boardwalk, and with the crowd already starting to gather it takes Speed awhile to track Tyler down.  Finally he finds him giving a last-minute pep talk to the kids in his dance troupe, making them all laugh to take their minds off their nerves before he sends them out onto the stage.

"Hey," Speed says when Tyler finally turns and sees him.  "Everything okay?"

"They'll be fine," Tyler answers, grinning and reaching for Speed's arm.  "Come on, I saved us a couple seats up front."

Speed lets himself be steered through the crowd to a seat in the first row, and when Tyler smiles and squeezes his hand before he lets go Speed doesn't even flinch.  And okay, maybe he's still getting used to the whole 'public display' part of their relationship, but all the other dance teachers and even some of the parents know who he is, so it gets a little easier every time he comes to one of these things.  And it makes Tyler happy, so that's really all that matters.