Archive of Our Own

Calleigh Duquesne was a Daddy's girl.

And she had no problem with that.

She adored her Daddy. Worshiped the ground he walked on and took great pride in the smiles he gave her, the silly nicknames he had just for her. She loved it when a smile eased onto his face after a long day at work when he saw her. She beamed when he'd praise a drawing she'd done, and when he decided to take it to work with him she couldn't feel any better.

Other people may have resented it, but when you're four years old and you're the apple of your Daddy's eye, people's opinions don't matter much.

She loved her Daddy and wanted to marry a man just like him when she grew up. That was her plan, anyway...because her Daddy, in her eyes, was absolutely perfect.

"He's so cute!" She went out to the front yard and scratched the dog behind the ears, not at all surprised that it looked up at her and gave her the canine equivalent of a smile. All she'd wanted for months now was a pet of her own. At this point, she'd have been happy for a rabbit or a hamster or even a rat, and her Daddy had gone out and bought her a dog.

Oh, it was an adorable dog. Definitely a mutt; she never did figure out what type of dog he was. It didn't matter, though. She named him Spence after the boy who'd given him to her father and from that moment until the dog died they were close.

Spence never judged her. He never fought at night and kept her up, never told her she should be doing her homework instead of playing with him, never made her feel any less special. He never drank and he never cursed and he never hurt her feelings or broke promises.

And he listened. She spilled her heart to him and he kept her secrets.

He was the best friend she could have asked for, and after he died, she wasn't sure she wanted a dog again because none of them would hold a candle to Spence.

She remembered the weight of it clearly. She wasn't too young, maybe ten or so, but her Daddy put it in her hand and leaned over her shoulder, his voice giving encouragement. She didn't let it distract her, though; it was just her and the gun and the target. Everything else got filtered out, like the ear protectors were keeping out everything but the mantra in her head: Point, aim, pull the trigger.

Which she did, when she was good and ready.

She recoiled from the rifle blast. Her Daddy hadn't warned her about that, or at least not well enough that it had seeped into her mind to be remembered. Now, however, she knew it was coming. She turned to her Daddy and saw the smile on his face.

She'd done good.

"Again?" she asked, sweet Southern accent highlighted by the excitement running through her veins.

"Sure thing, honey. Remember...point, aim, and pull the trigger."

She did just that, bracing herself for the recoil. When the target came to her, she was surprised to see she'd almost hit the center.

Didn't matter. She loved shooting. After one day, it was so deep in her blood that she knew she'd never love anything else quite the same.

Later in her life she'd probably regret falling for him. In fact, she would. She'd get riled up and yell at him but he'd grin at her, same grin he shot at her in the academy, and what could she do?

Oh, later she could put up some measure of defense, but when Jake smiled at her, most of the time, she wasn't prepared for it. And the snake knew it. That was how he'd beaten her to first in the class, if she wanted to be honest: he'd smiled at her, charmed her...okay, to an extent he'd courted her too. She'd give him that; he hadn't tried to be with her simply to boost his placement in their class.

Boosting his own ego, though...that was another matter.

In any respect, she'd fallen for him. He was the first guy she'd fallen for, really, in a way that wasn't 100% lust. She cared about him. Which made it hurt all the more when it, whatever "it" was between them, ended.

She just shelved it into the corner of her mind where she put all her other disappointments and left it at that for the longest time. It was safer that way, to forget a love than to let it's absence consume her. Safer, at least, for her.

She hoped.

She was never quite sure where they'd stood. That wasn't the best basis for any relationship. She knew that...logically. But logic was not supposed to be applied to relationships, at least not to the point that she applied it, so she went with her gut and forged ahead.

John...she wasn't sure what the attraction was. Oh, he was funny and charming. He respected her, knew she'd put work first and that was that. When she called him out for telling Horatio about the bruise the spear gun had given her, he'd taken it and later showed up with an ice pack. Most guys she knew, and a few she had dated, would have pitched a fit in front of everyone.

He was easygoing, and until things got rough, he was someone she could turn to if she needed him. He was comfortable. He was solid.

But when he slipped, when things got so bad for him that...

She'd let him down. She'd loved him and pushed him away when he needed her most. In the months after he committed suicide in her ballistics lab, she'd come to realize she'd loved him and it had scared her, and what hurt most was that she'd never told him. He'd died thinking he was alone in the world.

She swore up and down and sideways that she would never hurt anyone she loved the way she'd hurt John Hagen ever again.

Oh, her first meeting with him had been hell. He was the replacement, the warm body filling up the void left by Speedle. And to top it all off, he was working her Daddy's DUI. God, she really wanted to hate him. He was nothing at all like any of the other men she'd known and she didn't feel completely comfortable around him for a long time.

But constant contact breeds familiarity. And familiarity breeds ease. And with ease comes all sorts of possibilities, some which she wasn't quite sure she really wanted to explore with him.

Yeah, Ryan was a good guy. He was a co-worker, a friend. And maybe that should be all. After all, when she'd first met Delko she'd briefly pondered the idea that maybe there'd been an attraction but she'd squelched that notion rather quickly. And she'd thought she could do the same with Ryan.

But then he started hinting that he might be interested in pursuing Natalia and the green-eyed monster paid her a visit so fast she hadn't really realized what had hit her. She was still, if she was being honest, grappling with the fallout from her last relationship, and it was massive fallout. But when she got jealous she clamped a lid on it and held it tight. It wasn't her place to voice her opinion on who it was that Ryan wanted to date.

After all, she wasn't exactly making herself a viable option.

Now, though, she wondered sometimes. She knew she loved the man as a friend, that much she was absolutely sure about. She'd do things for him that she'd do for few others, maybe a little more than she'd do for anyone else on the team except Horatio. But was she happy with just being friends with him?

What, exactly, did she want from Ryan, relationship wise? Until she figured it out, she said nothing, hoping she wasn't setting herself up for another painful ending.