Title: A Cold Grave
Author: rachelAbendstern
Summary: Ryan goes missing on a case...
Disclaimer: I don't know exactly who they belong to, but certainly not me!
Warnings: SLASH, people! Common policy still applies: don't like, don't read!
A/N: Don't know why I didn't submit this sooner, it's on my lj for about a week I think... Anyway, no one dies.
Beta-ed by shadowfax27.

A Cold Grave

Cold. It was so freaking cold. At the moment, that was all Ryan could feel…that, and a bottomless desperation, and the certainty that he was going to die. Really, he had no one but himself to blame. Why did he have to be so goddamn nosy? Well, to be honest, being nosy was part of his job most of the time. But this time, the old proverb seemed to prove true – curiosity really would kill the cat.

That morning, someone had reported the theft of some thousand dollars worth of jewellery.

It had all sounded so easy. Drive to the crime scene, collect what evidence there was, and report back to Horatio in the PD. There was no need for back-up; there was no reason to believe that the thief was still around.

Ryan had looked around the premises for a bit, the son of the victim accompanying him. It was purely by chance that he had stumbled over the trapdoor to an underground room about a hundred yards away from the main house. The young man with him had become increasingly nervous the closer he came to that trapdoor, and so naturally, his interest was sparked. It should have sparked his survival instincts as well. Honestly, he could not remember what happened exactly. There was a hollow thud, and then his head exploded with mind-numbing pain before darkness swept him away.

When he came to, he was already shivering with cold, and it hurt to move. His first instinct was to reach for his cell phone, but he found it missing. That was when fear first reared its head inside his mind. Without the cell, he was not able to contact anyone. He was not able to call for help.

Forcing his cold and shivering body to move, he managed to sit up and finally stand on his feet. In an attempt to bring back some warmth into his ice-cold hands, he brought them up to his mouth to breathe on them, but he could hardly feel the difference. Still, somewhere inside his sluggish mind, he knew that he had to try and keep himself warm, and so he stuck them under his armpits.

Turning around slowly, he saw crates and cartons of frozen foods piled up in shelves along the walls on one side, raw and frozen meat hanging from the ceiling on butcher hooks on the other. Ryan stared a few minutes at the sight before him before he finally understood that he had been dumped in the deep freeze of some supermarket.

He could even see the huge metal doors at the other end of the room and started to make his way towards them. The cold had already crept into his bones, and he had a hard time getting his aching muscles to move. But he made it…stumbling and swaying, but he made it. Only, he could not open the goddamn doors. Helplessly rattling at the handles for a few seconds, he finally stepped back, desperation welling up inside him.

He noticed blood smeared on the door that had not been there before and looked down at his own hands. There was a large gash in his left palm, probably from a sharp edge on the handle, but he had not even felt it when it happened. Logically, he knew it ought to hurt like hell, but he could not even feel it. That was when he knew he was going to die.

He was not able to call anyone. It was Sunday, and the owner of this market would not come by before tomorrow morning…if he were not already in on this scheme. And Horatio did not expect him back for about an hour, and by the time he became aware of his absence and started to investigate, it could very well be too late for Ryan.

"No, you are not allowed to think like that!" Trying to quell the growing panic, the young man tried to think logically.

He was no MacGyver; he could not make some miracle device out of thin air to get the door to open. All he could do was stall for time, and the only way he would be able to do that was to try and keep his body temperature from decreasing any further. One way was to keep moving, but Ryan knew he would not be able to do that for very long… not with the temperature in here being what it was.

Looking around the room, he tried to come up with an idea that would save his life. But the only thing he could think of was to cover himself up with something, anything...

666

Eric cursed when he wrenched the metal doors to the deep freeze unit of the supermarket open. Horatio had called him on his day off, telling him that Wolfe had gone missing. Upon first hearing that, the Cuban had to reign in the urge to laugh. That, however, changed quickly when the red head explained what had happened. Apparently, their boss had sent their youngest team member to investigate the scene of a B&E, which he never returned from.

The case sounded easy enough. The victims, the owner of this very supermarket chain and his wife, never even noticed anything missing until the wife wanted to wear something from her more expensive jewellery for a dinner date that evening. There was no reason to believe the scene was potentially dangerous, seeing as any thief who worked so professionally as not to leave any obvious traces behind would sell the loot as quickly as possible and then lay low for some time. Of course, no one had taken into account that the thief was the couple's own son.

The nineteen year old had been able to divert their attention at first, stating that he had said goodbye to Ryan and saw him drive off with his own two eyes. Thinking that maybe their friend had been involved in an accident on the way to the lab, Horatio had dialled up every hospital he could think of, while Eric, in an attempt to occupy himself, had tried to retrace his colleague's actions.

Outside his parents' house, the boy had attached himself to Eric's side, trying so obviously to distract him from work that the alarms in Eric's head rung so loud he was surprised no one else heard them. Just then, his boss joined them, and maybe he did hear those same alarms because one look at his face told the Cuban that Horatio harboured the same suspicions.

They had found the trapdoor, neatly concealed by earth and leaves, and the small room underneath it. They had also found the missing jewellery belonging to the boy's mother, all spread out on a rickety table – the only furniture in the room. Still, the boy claimed to have nothing to do with either the robbery or with the disappearance of their friend.

He should have bullied the kid then and there, but the parents had quickly interfered, calling a lawyer for their son. By the time Horatio had gotten fed up and lost that famous temper of his, flat out threatening the kid with anything he was able to come up with, Ryan had been missing for about seven hours already.

And now, he was standing here in the doorway, ice-cold air hitting his face, wondering what they were hoping to find. Seven hours. Ryan had been in this fridge for seven hours! How could they even hope to find anything but a frozen body?

Shaking his head, Eric sternly forbade himself to think like that. If there was one thing about Ryan he had learned during the last year, it was that he never gave up, no matter what. He could be almost as tenacious as Horatio. If anyone survived something like this, it was Ryan.

But then, a new fear hit him. He couldn't find him. He looked around the room, and he saw shelves and crates and cartons of frozen foods and frozen meat hanging from the ceiling…and wasn't that a really bad omen? But he did not see Ryan.

"He's not in here, Horatio," he told his boss, not even caring if the older man heard the panicky note his voice had taken on. "I don't see him anywhere. That little rat must have lied again!"

But the red head shook his head and pointed to the door handle. Why had he not noticed that there was blood on it before? "He was here. We have to look more carefully."

And look they did. It was Eric who found the little Styrofoam balls on the floor next to a crate just big enough for someone to hide in and another bloody trail on its edges. Suddenly dreading what he might find, he closed the distance and slowly took the lid off. At first, he thought he had been wrong, but then he saw strands of dark hair only partially covered by the little white balls.

Quickly, he shoved them aside, almost collapsing with both fear and relief as Ryan's deathly pale face became visible. He had a piece of cloth wrapped around his nose and mouth, and it took a few seconds for Eric to realize that he did that to avoid breathing in any of the Styrofoam.

Cupping the cold face gently in his hands, he called his friend's name, "Ryan! Come on, Ryan, I know you're still alive!"

This time, he did sag in relief when dark lashes fluttered in an attempt to open their eyes. Ryan only blinked up at him for a few seconds, but it was enough for the other man to find his determination again. Calling for their boss, he gently reached inside the crate to lift the younger man's curled up, stiff, and cold body out of what had almost become his casket. The small white balls fell away like snow from the still form. It was not a welcome image.

In the distance, Eric could already hear the sirens of the ambulance they had called even before they arrived here.

666

He had been floating for a while now. The shivering gradually stopped, and with the subsequent receding of pain, Ryan knew he did not have much time left. But there was nothing he could do against it anymore. The feeling in his arms and legs had long left, and he was so very tired. Trying to keep himself awake proved to be a difficult enough feat. He did not even feel the cold anymore.

At first, Ryan was aware that he was fading in and out of consciousness for a while. Then, he was not even sure he was awake at all. He kept hearing his mother call for him, call for him to come back home, call for him to stop being a fool, call for him to do whatever the hell he wanted to, but when he opened his eyes, all he could see were whites and blacks, and all he could hear was his own sluggish heartbeat.

Time became a distant concept as his mind conjured up other pictures, other voices. He saw Eric smiling at him, laughing with him as he only ever did with Calleigh. And somewhere in his slowly fading consciousness, he wondered why he never realized how much the Cuban had come to mean to him, why he never understood the reason their constant fights hurt so much.

The pictures changed again, and he could feel the warm hands of this dream – Eric gently touching his face, calling out to him. He struggled to open his eyes because it sounded more concerned, more urgent than his mother ever did. For a few seconds, he saw concerned, relieved dark eyes. Then the world tilted, and darkness claimed him once again.

He didn't know how long he had slept when awareness slowly filtered through to his sleep-fogged thoughts. He was cold again, still cold, but it was nothing like the freezing, numbing coldness he remembered. More like what he felt when he left an overly air-conditioned room and stepped outside again into Miami's sultry air. His fingertips tingled, just short of being painful.

Slowly, he became aware of more and more details of his surroundings. There was a low but consistent beeping from somewhere to his left; a heavy duvet covered him up to his chin; when he tried to move, he noticed that he was lying on his side. And he was not able not move his hands.

Finally blinking his eyes open, patiently waiting until his sight cleared, he tried to discern what kept his hands from moving. Large dark hands came into view covering both of his bandaged ones as if attempting to bring warmth to them. It worked, too, Ryan realized as he truly became aware of his own body again. He could feel the warmth of those hands right through the cloth of the bandages.

Looking up, he saw the face of the man he had dreamt about when he thought he was going to die. They just stared at each other for a couple of moments, Ryan not sure if, maybe, he was still dreaming. But when his gaze flickered down to their hands again just to make sure, Eric seemed to come back from wherever it was his thoughts had taken him.

A self-conscious expression crossed his face, and he moved to take his hands away, but Ryan would not let him. For once blowing caution into the wind and going with his impulse, he took hold of both of Eric's hands before they were out of reach, pulling them in and clinging to them until he felt Eric relax again. Sighing, the Cuban extricated himself from Ryan's grasp only to resume the position the younger man had found him in.

"Hey," he whispered, still a bit embarrassed and confused and so very much not like the Eric he knew.

The younger man smiled slightly, the muscles in his face, in his body still complaining whenever he tried to move them.

"Hey."

They didn't say anything more for the next few minutes, Ryan still too tired to really have a conversation and Eric not entirely sure what he was supposed to say. But just when Ryan was about ready to close his eyes and slip away into sleep once more, Eric spoke again.

"So, when you get out of here, maybe we should go out some time."

A whole new feeling of warmth settled itself within Ryan's belly, and he could not help but smile, "I'd like that."

666

Thinking back, Eric realized what a sad state of affairs it had been that it took Ryan almost dying for him to acknowledge his feelings. Those four long, never-ending hours between hope and anxiety, not sure if Ryan would make it, had been the worst he had felt ever since Speed's death.

Both Horatio and Alexx, who had rushed to the hospital as soon as they had called her, looked like they had aged years in a matter of minutes. The CSI was not sure whether either of them would have been able to endure the death of another friend. Hell, he was not sure he would have.

Sitting there by Ryan's bed, watching the young man sleep, the steady beeping of the monitor more reassuring than annoying, Eric thanked all gods that would listen for not taking away yet another friend before his time. However, he still was not sure what to do about his feelings.

Had Ryan been a woman, the next step would have been obvious. But while Eric had no problems stepping out of the proverbial closet, he did not know Ryan to be anything but straight. Therefore, Ryan's actions when he had finally woken up had taken him by surprise - a nice surprise but a surprise, nonetheless. The only thing that made him feel any better about the whole mess was that Ryan had been as clueless about his own feelings as Eric had been until then.

Movement beside him brought him back to the present, and Eric smiled as he looked down at his slumbering lover from where he was propped up by an elbow. Stroking soft strands of dark hair out of Ryan's face, he watched as the younger man blinked his eyes, trying to shake off sleep. Squinting, Ryan looked up at him, a sleepy smile on his face.

"You woke me up," his lover whined playfully. "No deep thoughts allowed until morning!"

Eric only laughed at that. In a weird way, he supposed he was even grateful to the kid who had left Ryan in that deep freeze to die. Who knew if they would be where they were now without him?

As if sensing his lover drifting off into the land of might-have-beens again, Ryan snatched Eric's head and brought him down for a kiss in one swift move.

"Right," Eric thought as his arms instinctively came around his lover, deepening the kiss and settling between lean, strong thighs. "No deep thoughts until morning..."

The End