The Chicken Or The Egg
Chapter Three

Extricating himself from the fingerprint lab hadn't been easy. Standing over the tens of cards, all covered in black ink, at times could make him feel like an addict. It was a hypnotic obsession - whorls, loops, and archs beckoning him, like putting together a microscopic puzzle with tweezers as the clock ticked and the computer madly searched for a compatible print a few feet away. When it couldn't find a match it merely prompted him to return to the puzzle and try to find the missing piece, fueling the addiction. When it did, he felt the warm wave of relief crawling through his veins like a junkie finally getting his fix after a long sleepless night. It wasn't easy to walk away. Wasn't easy to admit defeat (even when defeat became aggressive and admitted him). Work could sometimes become a dangerous obsession.

Of course, there was also that other little detail, knowing that without the stress of work his mind was free to wander to other places, where the curves of whorls, loops, and archs transformed into curls of blonde and porcelain and green spheres, and the question that had been plaguing his mind for 14 hours and 45 minutes now came back with a fury. The lesser of two evils, and he took the plunge into the oblivion of the former addiction, knowing it had the power to kill him faster.

But when the loops began to sway and the archs to bend, when his vision became blurry and the missing pieces couldn't be found, he knew it was time to walk away. And so at lunch Eric walked into the break room, where Ryan and Valera were seated by the round table, eating. Before opening the refrigerator he reached for a bottle of aspirin in a cupboard to prevent the headache he knew would find him some time that day from doing so, and as he drowned it down with a little tap water their distant words floated into him like an echo. He didn't know what the hell they were talking about, nor did he care, but he thought it all sounded a tad weird as he began to make himself a sandwich.

"I'm sorry, am I a bitch for hating on Rory?" Valera said.

"Uh, no!" Ryan said.

"What's the deal with her forehead? How many airplanes could you land on it?"

"I know, she's not that pretty."

"Or charming."

"That bitch!" Ryan hissed, mock anger in his features and his fist clenched.

Valera smiled and shrugged her shoulders, reaching for one of his potato chips. "Well, she's not that bad."

"You know, I always thought she was very redeemable," Ryan quickly said. Valera chuckled, her big eyes squinting slightly, until she noticed Eric by the counter. She looked at him, quickly noting the slight arch of his back (a famous Delko telltale) and she gave Ryan a questioning look but Ryan merely shrugged his shoulders.

So Valera, sensing something strange was afoot, grabbed one last potato chip from Ryan's bag and stood up. "I better get back to work," she said, giving Ryan a silent order with her eyes along the lines of get the gossip and meet me in the lab later, to which Ryan nodded like an eager puppy. He watched her go, smiling at his lunch and shifting in his seat with a newfound little something in his demure that hadn't been there the week before.

When Eric finished fixing his sandwich he turned around and gave Ryan a look. "Gilmore Girls. Really?"

Ryan shook his head and smiled. "I don't actually watch it."

"Really? Cause you seem to know a lot about it."

"My niece has cheerleading practice on Tuesdays, I Tivo it for her," Ryan explained. "She comes over and watches it. I like her, it's nice having her around."

Eric approached the table and sat down. "So you've turned your beautiful Tuesday night rituals with your niece into some sort of disgusting pick-up tactic."

"Chicks love the Gilmores," Ryan said.

Eric shook his head (internally groaning at Ryan's choice of words) as he picked at the bread of his sandwich. "You know Valera's not like any other chick."

Ryan quickly grew mildly serious. "What is that supposed to mean."

Eric shook his head and smiled. "You're way out of your league, man."

"Am I?" Ryan said, the strength in his voice diminishing at the thought. Simultaneously, he straightened his posture to cover for it.

Eric finally took a bite off his sandwich and as he chewed he added, "You don't know Valera."

Ryan frowned at him suspiciously. "Do you?"

Eric chuckled. "No, I can honestly say I've never been there," he said. "But I've met a few of her ex-boyfriends, and you don't fit that bill very well."

Ryan's frown diminished slightly and he shifted in place, scratching the side of his forehead as he thought. "Well, maybe that's the reason why they're ex-boyfriends."

Eric looked at him. "You're really serious about this."

"She's funny," Ryan said, shrugging his shoulders. "I like her; she's pretty... why not?"

"Because you'll ask her out and she'll say no and then we'll have to deal with you being an ass for weeks," Eric said. "Or, she'll say yes and it'll be a disaster because let's face it, it's you and Valera, and then we'll have to deal with you being an ass for weeks. Since both outcomes contain the words 'you' and 'ass' you can understand why the whole lab is reluctant about your little budding friendship."

Ryan thought about it for a moment, ignoring his cleverly disguised insults (it happened so often he barely noticed it anymore), and added, "Or... secret option number three--"

"There is no secret option number three," Eric said dully.

"I'm evoking secret option number three."

"You can't do that."

"Says who?"

"Says your famous history of ass-baggery," Eric said. "Besides, we're not playing Harry Potter, you can't say something, wave a wand in the air and make it valid."

"Whatever," Ryan scowled. Looking down at his bag of potato chips, he pushed it away, and though he told himself he didn't care what Eric or the whole lab thought of him and Valera, the words sank into him slowly and quickly he lost his appetite. But as he took a deep breath he forced it out of his mind, knowing Eric wasn't exactly a relationships expert anyway, and looked at him again. He squinted his eyes and cocked his head to his side slightly.

"You look terrible," Ryan noted, grimacing. "Did you even sleep last night? I thought—" he stopped, quickly remembering something, and gasped as he snapped his fingers, "I was right!"

Eric sighed and his shoulders instinctively hunched slightly. "Shut up."

"Emotional hangover." Ryan nodded happily and chuckled. "Yeah!"

"You know what, Ryan? Go ahead," Eric said, standing up and taking his sandwich with him. "Put on your shiniest vest and cleanest pants and send Valera a little love note, it's been a while since we had some entertainment around here," he added, grabbing a soda from the fridge.

"Fine, I will," Ryan said arrogantly and then softened up slightly. "Any advice?"

Eric thought about it for a moment, or seemingly, as he opened up his can of soda and took a drink from it. He nodded thoughtfully. "Take her to a nice restaurant, and remind her at all times that this will burn a hole in your wallet and that she should be grateful that you're spending a lot of money on her. Be an ass to the hostess if she doesn't sit you in a nice table, being you I imagine that'll be easy. Talk about yourself at all times, especially about your ex-girlfriends, all one of them. Use fancy words like thyne, ye, and olde, it's very romantic. In fact, wear a puffy shirt and smoke a pipe, girls really dig Shakespeare.

Remember to act possessive at all costs, women like it when you make all the decisions so be forceful and treat her like she is your property. Bonus points for acting aggressive towards any other males that interact with her, including the waiter. After the date don't wait long to call, in fact call her that night and tell her you're in love with her. Works every time."

Ryan looked at him and rolled his eyes, annoyed. "Like it's possible to find an authentic Shakespearean pipe in Miami."

Eric nodded thoughtfully again. "You're right. Well, in that case be yourself. What's not to love, right? I mean, you only got her fired, what was it--"

Ryan frowned. "Once."

"Oh, just once? That's not so bad, I guess," Eric said. "Alright, good luck, man. Keep me posted."

He left the break room with a smile on his face, wishing he could be there when Ryan finally took the plunge and decided to ask Valera out, and then wishing he could be at the next table, with a camera, to what was sure to be a disastrous first date for them (IF Valera said yes, which was doubtful, though when it came to Valera nothing surprised him).

Taking one more bite off his sandwich as he walked, he was on his way outside to finish his lunch break in peace when Natalia walked out of the layout room and upon seeing him, stood in the middle of the hallway waiting for him. The way she played with the file in her hands impatiently, Eric knew it was work related, and he tried to think of a way to avoid her but as he tired to duck into the bathroom she walked over and met him halfway.

"Hey, I've been looking for you."

"Lunch break," he informed her, showing her his half eaten sandwich, though the look on her face told him he was going to have to cut his lunch break short.

"Hm," she said, ignoring his tone. "So I was at the morgue, our John Doe was just identified by his parents. His name is Julian Mora, he's 23. Wanna guess where he works?"

"No," Eric a little crabbily.

"Biscayne," she said, arching one eyebrow up for dramatic purposes.

It clicked for Eric instantly and he sighed, but then his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "But if he was killed in the shootout, what was his body doing in Little Haiti?"

Natalia shrugged her shoulders. "Dump job?"

"Obviously, but why?" Eric said, feeling irritated. "If he was already dead why not leave him there?"

"Shootout wasn't so random after all?" Natalia speculated. "Or maybe he didn't die at the scene? Mule? Necrophiliacs? I don't know, you're the senior," she added, giving him the file.

Eric grabbed it, going over the new information. Of course, this was progress, because he and Natalia had been sitting on this case for a day now and they had no leads, no motive, and apparently they'd been working the wrong crime scene all along. This was good. The problem? Julian Mora died of a gunshot wound to the stomach, and yet the crew at the scene had yet to find the bullet. And if Mora really was a victim of the Biscayne shootout that only meant one thing: he had to go see Calleigh.

He frowned at this thought, feeling slightly nervous at the prospect of facing her. He looked at his sandwich with disinterest, his appetite now gone, and passed it to Natalia. "Buen provecho."

Natalia grabbed it with a grimace and tossed it into the nearest trashcan, where Cooper found it 10 minutes later and gave it a proper burial in his stomach.

Calleigh's Lair was suspiciously quiet that noon, and if he hadn't known she'd be processing bullets he would've assumed she wasn't there at all. Eric stood by the door, leaning into the frame as he watched her, and she was so engrossed in the work she didn't notice him there. It gave him a chance to examine her demeanor, and though she was immersed in work she still looked as relaxed as he'd seen her that morning.

He resented it slightly, but quickly tried to put it out of his mind.

"Hey," he said casually.

She looked up quickly, noticed him standing by the door and smiled brightly. "Hey."

Her good humor infected him and Eric found himself smiling. "You look happy."

"I have bullets," she announced playfully, grinning and showing him the infinite line of bullets she'd collected from the Biscayne Bay shootout. As soon as he heard the news over the radio, Eric knew Christmas had come early for Calleigh.

He chuckled. "When you were a kid, Calleigh, did your Barbies beat up your brothers' G.I. Joes?"

"Only when they were stingy with their machine guns," she said casually, replacing the already processed bullet with a new one. With her eyes on the new bullet the whole time, she added, "do you need anything?"

"Yeah, actually. I was looking for a bullet."

"Well, you've come to the right place," she said, leaning away from the microscope and presenting him with the wide assortment of bullets and casings. "Now, what do I have to do to get you to take a bullet home today?"

Eric smiled and walked into the room. "Well, this particular bullet was used to kill my John Doe, aka Julian Mora."

Calleigh turned serious. "What was your victim doing in my shootout?"

"What was your shootout doing killing my victim?"

"I asked first."

Eric smiled. "Well, his parents identified him just now, apparently he went to work yesterday at Biscayne and never came home. He's got a bullet wound but we can't find the bullet anywhere, so," he said. "Just putting two and two together."

Calleigh thought it over and sighed. "Well, in this case I'm telling you the answer is not four," she said and looked at him as he frowned. "I'm sorry, Eric, we've combed that scene twice now, and there's no evidence of there being a third victim. If Mora was in the shootout, either someone cleaned up or he bled out somewhere else--"

"He was shot in the stomach, it's a slow bleed," Eric said.

She looked at him reluctantly. "Through and through?"

Eric sighed. "Just humor me, okay? I'm at a dead end here."

Calleigh took a deep breath and let it out, "alright, well, I guess it doesn't hurt to look. I'll let you know if I find the bullet," she said with a smile, watching him nod slightly and though the issue had been resolved (or so it seemed) he still stood there, nodding and looking at the bullets.

Calleigh knew him well, and it became increasingly obvious from the way he grew distracted that thoughts of the case were replaced with something else. His right knee began to bend and unbend rapidly, something he subconsciously did when there was something important on his mind, and though Calleigh knew precisely what it was (the worry lines were a dead give away) she was reluctant to egg him on, fearing he would feel like she was trying to pressure him, and the conversation they had the night before made him stressful enough, she knew.

"Unless you wanna help?" she added, knowing that if she gave him time and space, eventually he'd come through.

So they worked in silence, Calleigh processing the bullets, Eric checking them for blood or fingerprints, and after a while she purposely began to lag, hoping that as he waited for her to finish processing the new bullet, the silence would prompt him to talk. After fifteen minutes of silence, she finally saw him shift his weight nervously from one leg to the other and she took a deep breath to brace herself.

"I've been thinking about what you said."

She straightened up and looked at him, and his hesitation made her forget her own and she smiled. "Eric, take your time, okay? I don't want you to make this decision in—" she looked at her watch, "17 hours!"

He looked down and smiled slightly. "I just have a couple of questions."

The announcement worried her slightly and she began to feel a little cornered, but under the circumstances she figured she owed him as many answers as she could give him for putting him in this difficult situation. "Okay."

He hesitated for a moment, wondering how to approach the subject. He knew what he wanted to say, ask, but he didn't want to come off like a condescending jackass, and where he was concerned, Calleigh tended to take offense easily.

He frowned and tried to sound gentle, leaving the rest to God. "How are you gonna do this? I mean, we work 18 hours a day."

Calleigh smiled, glad that he started off with an easy one. "Eric, we work 18 hours a day because we want to," she said, passing him the bullet and retrieving a new one. "Most of the things we do here I could do from home: paperwork, filing. When I'm here I can get a babysitter or find a daycare center, in a few years there'll be pre-school and school..." She looked at him and smiled. "We'll be fine."

He smiled. Being around Calleigh, sometimes he felt like he could reach the stars at the end of the universe if he merely tried. "Sounds easy."

"Well, of course it's not," she admitted. "Won't be easy, but it won't be impossible, either."

Eric nodded, looking down once more. The new bullet lay there, ignored, and he tried to put all the questions that flooded his mind in order and perspective, but there were so many of them and he had such a hard time trying to understand why she was doing this that they all mixed up with each other and he didn't know how to continue.

Scratching his head he sighed, trying to get his confusion and frustration under control, but the words came out in a rush. "This is crazy, Calleigh. You could have any guy you wanted, I would—"

"Eric," Calleigh stopped him, her words gentle. "There's penthouse fantasies, and then there's reality. Guys love guns, and they love girls with guns, until a girl with a gun comes along, and then they get scared or intimidated," she said, and though he looked confused she'd been there enough times to truly know what it was like for a woman like her in the world.

"Sometimes I go out and I have to lie and say I'm a school teacher or a nurse, because as soon as I mention I'm a cop they get that look on their faces and take off. It's not easy," she finished.

He frowned and nearly laughed at the thought. "That's... ridiculous."

"No, that's men," she said, trying to make it sound more humorous than it was. "And the good ones... honestly, I don't even know where to look anymore."

He looked at her, knowing she might shoot him for his next statement but he needed to know her intentions were rational. "I don't accept that."

Her eyes widened momentarily and she gave him a daring look. "Do you think I'm single on purpose?"

He looked at her, knowing she wouldn't lie about something like this, but it all sounded so ridiculous he wondered if she was exaggerating. Calleigh Duquesne, not being able to score a date because of her work. He wanted to laugh. For seven years he'd known her, and her work, her passion for guns, her intelligence, strength, and assertiveness were few of the many things about her he found so attractive. That there were men out there that rejected these very same qualities... he knew men were stupid, but this went beyond sheer male stupidity.

When he didn't offer an answer she shook her head. "Eric, I wouldn't do this if..." she stammered suddenly, knowing that it was always harder to say the words than to think them, "it's not a decision I made overnight, okay? I've been thinking about it for a really long time. I've tried to meet someone, I really have. It's just not that easy for me as it is for you."

"That's—" he reacted too quickly and sighed to stop himself and looked at her seriously. "I meet a lot of people, Cal, a lot of girls. Meeting someone special—that hasn't happened in a while. In years. But if I give up—"

"I'm not giving up, Eric," she interrupted him tersely.

He looked at her. "It feels like you are."

"I'm just... I'm trying something different," she said, choosing her words carefully and trying to sound assertive, knowing she would have to repeat the same speech to dozens of people in the upcoming months. "Conventional hasn't gotten me anywhere yet. I don't know if you've met a crop of my ex-boyfriends, but they don't exactly make a merry bunch, I'm not even sure the word bunch applies."

Eric sighed. "Having a kid is not gonna make things easier, Calleigh. If anything, it makes it harder."

"Well, honestly, Eric, if a guy can't love me because I have a child, then I don't know that he's worth my time," she said cantankerously.

He smiled. She had a point there and he should've known he wouldn't be able to win this, because when Calleigh made up her mind about something, there was no backing down. And he didn't want to, in a way. He trusted her enough to know she wouldn't make any foolish decisions in the blink of an eye. But a part of him needed the answers, needed to get in her head and figure her out before he made a choice, because he knew he was more emotional than she was, less objective, and if she wasn't doing this for the right reasons, if she wasn't 100 percent certain that she was doing the right thing, he knew he might ultimately end up making the wrong decision and possibly ruining her life.

Their lives.

So he thought for a moment, scratching his forehead. "It's just that," he continued, looking down at the bullet she'd passed on to him, it remained untouched on the counter, "I think I know you better than anyone else, and then you drop this bomb on me.

She half smiled, shrugging her shoulders slightly. "I'm sorry?"

Eric chuckled slightly and finally looked at her. "Where did this come from?"

She looked down and breathed out, biting the inside of her cheek and wondering how she could explain it to him. Part of her knew all the answers, while the other part, at times, felt as confused as Eric was feeling. She'd gone through it all a million times in the last few months, enough to pin-point part of its origin, and she offered him one of the reasons she knew he'd understand better.

"Remember that little girl from the Rivera case, Emma?" she asked him.

Eric thought about it for a while and nodded. "Yeah, she saw her father get killed."

"I knew then," she confessed, remembering the day with a smile. "I was sitting on the floor with her and that's when I realized. I don't know why, I just knew. I still visit her sometimes. She's amazing, Eric. She's so smart and strong. The way her eyes lighten up when I walk in the door... I want that."

She sighed, feeling frustrated and though it was mostly Eric who had, at times, been allowed into her mind, she'd always hated opening that door altogether. "I know it's hard to understand--"

"I think I understand more than you think," he said gently.

She smiled then, his confession making her feel lighter, less crazy. As much as she appreciated Alexx's love and support, she needed to know it wasn't just her, who went home alone night after night, wondering if there was something more out there, wondering if she was as deserving as the rest of the world. She needed to feel like there would be someone there with her, helping her along not out of loyalty or love, but out of sympathy and understanding. She needed someone to feel as she felt every night when the minutes tickled slowly and the empty side of her bed looked infinite. Hearing him confirm that he did understand, that he lived it, made her feel less lonely.

"Why me?"

She looked at him quickly, and though she knew the question would be coming, sooner or later, she couldn't stop it from shaking her defenses and she looked at her bullet again. She had all her speeches prepared, all the reasons neatly typed up in a long piece of paper in her mind, had all the answers... but this one, this one still kept her up most nights.

"Why not Horatio or Ryan, or... Cooper?" he continued.

She took her time, and he gave it to her. The bullet screamed for her attention, but she ignored it as she chose her words carefully, but still feeling like she was taking an important test without knowing the material well. He'd always been much better at this than her.

"I've known Ryan for two years, Eric," she said. "And I know him as a CSI. I don't know him as a person, and I'm not sure... I don't trust him, not yet, he's—"

"An ass?" he said bitterly.

She gave him a stern look. "He doesn't always think before he speaks," she said. "And he's Jewish. There are numerous Mandelian disorders that are carried by Jewish genes that can cause problems. I know that sounds awful, but genetically I don't wanna take any risks."

Eric nodded. "Well, Horatio—"

"Well, Horatio's my boss. I can't walk into my boss's office and ask for a pay increase and a vial of sperm, it's not very polite," she explained with a smile. "Besides, I don't have that trust with him. And Cooper... I don't know Cooper, Eric. I know you. I know your family, I know your medical history. There was a 1986 analysis by Japanese scientists of biracial children and on average they tended to score higher in mental ability tests than their monoracial peers."

Eric chuckled, shaking his head. "Leave it to you to make a purely subjective decision based on science."

"It's not just science," she admitted, looking down and feeling frustrated at her inability to get her point across, to put her feelings into words. Purposely, she avoided eye contact. "I don't feel comfortable with anyone else. And I don't know who these men are, in these sperm banks. They look good on paper, but I don't know anything about them, what they do or who they are. Personality traits are inherited and if I could design a child, I think..." she sighed, looking away and finally mustering the strength to look at him. "You're smart, talented, and you have a good heart. I want my baby to have those qualities, too."

Eric couldn't help smiling at her words, feeling his heart swell at her confession, and seeing her so nervous, so out of her element and raw and honest, he felt an immense urge to hold her and help her scare those fears away.

Instead he nodded, knowing she would most likely not appreciate that right now. "So you just want my genes."

She smiled widely. "I want your genes."

He chuckled. "I feel so cheap."

Calleigh laughed. "Don't, this is gonna cost a fortune."

His smile waned and he looked at her in the eyes as he asked one last time, "You really wanna do this."

"I do," Calleigh said honestly, nodding.

She smiled and there was no mistaking the twinkle in her eyes, the little wrinkles around her mouth that told him she was serious about this, that she was happy about the idea of giving this a chance. As much as he hated to admit it, it was the happiest Eric had seen her in a long time.

"Okay," he said with a sigh, knowing that was the final nail in the coffin.

She nodded. "Take your time. A month."

"A month?"

"Even if you decide before that, just take a month. Think about it."

Eric nodded, and as she returned her attention to the bullet he wondered how he would go on about this. He had a month, possibly more time if he asked, and though he felt a little better, was breathing easier, he knew that for the next thirty days this question would never leave his mind.

"You were right."

He looked at her and straightened up.

"I got some blood here," she whispered, and Eric's attention was back in the case. She pulled back and thought for a moment before she turned to him. "What if your victim caused my shootout?"

Eric frowned. "How do you figure?"

"Well, it was the only body taken from the scene," she said, looking ahead, the wheels in her head turning. "Misdirection, Eric. It's why a magician waves at his audience with one hand while he's secretly doing something with the other."

"So use a shootout to cover up a murder."

"Guy in his early twenties, working in in Biscayne Bay, body's dumped in Little Haiti..."

"Somebody wanted him to disappear."

Calleigh nodded with a smile. "Go see where he lives, talk to his family his friends... lots of gangs in Little Haiti, he may have pissed the wrong people off."

"Okay. Thanks, Cal," Eric said.

"No problem." She gave him the bullet in a little plastic bag and he walked away, hoping the blood in it did in fact belong to Julian Mora and that they were on to something.

But as he reached the door he stopped, the case took a backseat again and his thumb tapped on the frame a few times before he turned around, hesitantly asking,

"Why should I do it?"

She looked up, realizing quickly he wasn't talking about the case anymore. She thought about the question for a while, and though she came up with a few shallow answers, none of them seemed true or satisfactory. Ultimately she looked him in the eyes, feeling their intensity in her chest.

"I don't know."

Eric smiled. "That doesn't help."

"I know," she confessed.

He nodded, looking down at the bullet. "Okay."

Walking away from the room, he took a deep breath and let it out quickly, putting the whole issue out of his mind, for now, and trying to concentrate on the case. He felt a little more relaxed, a new sense of direction and a path opening up in front of him, a wave of confidence. An hour ago he'd been at a loss, not knowing the victim's name, missing a murder weapon and a crime scene, missing all the answers and going crazy, and all that time everything he'd been looking for he'd found with Calleigh.

The metaphoric implications remained unnoticed.

To be continued.