•••

The tinkling of test tubes knocking against each other reminded Speed of the way a good winter storm rattled the windowpanes back home. Harsh wind slapping against the house in Delko going through desk drawers, Calleigh's voice an echo of wood fires and woolen blankets. Smoothness overlaying shuddering groans.

Speed wondered why his life always boiled down to extreme weather. Blizzards vs. hurricanes. Mountains of lake effect snow or endless rays of harsh sunshine. Hypothermia. Heat stroke. Someday he was going to have to move somewhere with a so-called moderate climate. The very thought made him shake his head.

Thinking of the weather made Speed question his judgment. Law enforcement? He'd found his niche in the crime lab. Corpses didn't bother him, blood was just an unusually colorful bodily fluid and fingerprints reminded him of birds' feathers. Protestant work ethic struck, though, and instead of simply enjoying the easy moderation of analyzing evidence he'd gone off to finish that degree. A degree that led to the gun he now carried, and the shield that reminded him daily that he just didn't have it in him to stick with moderation.

The juxtaposition of science and justice made Speed uneasy. Science tried to be objective, and even when it wasn't, it rarely worked in an active manner to damn people. Most of the time the same could be said of his job. But there were times... times when they were so sure they'd found a culprit that all they did was seek confirmatory evidence. Speed remembered the warnings of his scientific past, in the words of some nameless psychology professor. Confirmation bias. Availability heurisitc. Representativeness heuristic. Fundamental Attribution Error.

Crime and punishment in a test tube, which made Speed's stomach turn just a bit sour. He missed the hubris and abstract comfort of academia. Med school lost its gleam, true, but he couldn't just walk away from the foundation of his chosen passion. Popper, Kant, Voltaire and Neitzche on bridge night.

Warning to possible future scientists: using Occam's Razor to shave Shrodinger's Cat can cause severe psychological trauma.

Maybe if he just stopped being a scientist.

Right.

He'd already given up enough of himself for this job. Joining the force drove one last, ten-penny nail into med school's coffin. It also promised him an interminable string of short and unsatisfactory affairs that left him wondering why he bothered. The older he got, the less he liked the company of women. They were fine for work, dandy for dinner conversation, and utterly useless in bed. At the rate he was losing interest in them, he'd be better served staying celibate.

Yeah, there were gay cops. Even here in sunny Miami. But Speed liked his privacy. Anonymity, when he'd made the mistake of being on Horatio's superhero day shift team. The local rags would just eat up the idea of a gay cop busting criminals like some sort of hawaiian shirted, twenty-first century Sherlock Holmes. Only Holmes had Watson and Speed was stuck with Delko and Calleigh--both of whom were good coworks and fine people, but they had the gonads of adolescents. If he had to stand between one more lovers' quarrel, Speed knew he'd crack and do something regrettable. Like tell Horatio about them. Not that H didn't know, but there was knowing and *knowing*, and Speed suspected that his good buddies hadn't broken the news to their boss quite yet. Then again, if Speed didn't figure out a way to diffuse their current misunderstanding and subsequent sexless state, there wouldn't be anything to tell.

That pretty much defined Speed's life. He was a closeted gay scientist masquerading as a straight beach bum, closeted relationship counseling cop.

And now Calleigh's making up some complicated story about why their current suspect might have tied up his ex-girlfriend with sisal rope and tortured her with...honey covered feather dusters. He wanted to stop her. 'Hey, Calleigh? We've got the evidence: fingerprints, semen, sisal fibers under his fingernails and in his hair. We have his lack of alibi and their messy, public breakup. We have his proclivities for bondage, although that's a shaky piece of evidence in and of itself, considering the source (a friend of a friend). The conclusion we can draw is this: he tied her up, applied honey with feather dusters, masturbated on her, and subsequently strangled her with a pair of size Q purple pantyhose. The why isn't our problem. Leave the storytelling to the lawyers; they're better at it anyway. We're scientists, Calleigh. We hypothesize *before* we have the results. Post hoc hypothesizing is bad form, and you know it. Shame on you, Calleigh Duquesne.'

Instead, Speed dusted a bottle of honey for fingerprints and kept his thoughts to himself. What did he care of Calleigh and Delko were having a heated discussion of crimes of passion and the artillery they required? Personally, Speed thought it a bit odd to use a discussion of high-powered rifles as a way to smooth over the usual argument of who loves who the most, but who was he to say?

'Arms, warfare, violence--I was winding up to produce a regular epic, with verse-form to match--hexameters, naturally. But Cupid (they say) with a snicker lopped off one foot from each alternate line.'

The force Speed exerted to ignore his companions allowed Ovid to come tripping into his mind, a barely remembered remnant of general education requirements and a classics class he actually enjoyed.

Old Ovid knew a thing or two about the way women's and men's skins felt different alone but just the same together. Speed, he preferred the way a man's skin slid against his, catching just the same way. He liked razor stubble on the jaw and not on the knee. Delko, well... Speed didn't spend much time thinking about what Delko preferred. Delko gay was something a bit too desperately hilarious. Parchment-dry nylon shirts and blue eyeliner. Yeah, Delko would be a flamer, complete with bleach blonde fag-hag. Speed's pretty sure he wouldn't be friends with a gay Delko. Some people were just born to be straight.

Now Horatio, Speed could see him playing both sides of the field. Not for keeps, but maybe when the loneliness got to be too much. Silence was a dense element. Rare earth metal waiting for water.

Maybe he really needed to get laid. If he was considering H's proclivities, he definitely needed to get out more. Or at all.

But that was for another time. Right now, Speed had evidence to process and people to piss off.