Disclaimer: I own nothing regarding CSI: Miami. Contains spoilers mostly from seasons 5 through 8. If at all you are offended by the content, please let me know and I will personally apologize for your distress.

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Ryan Wolfe – Gambling

"You know what you are? You're the exact same thing he is. You are two sides of the same coin." –Eric Delko

"And you know what? We're not." –Ryan Wolfe

When Ryan sits at the tables, bets on the uncommon choice, and wins, his heart beat accelerates, his palms sweat, and he thinks he's having fun. Even ten thousand dollars in debt doesn't shake the addiction.

He's riding high, playing tables and making "friends," and then he's riding low, kicked onto the street, choking on blood from his nose. Every time he's thrown out, he promises himself that he'll stop, but every day he waits only until he shakes from the need, and then he bets on the horses. Gambling is his cocaine.

It takes being fired—being labeled one of them—to break the chains pulling him to the tables every weekend. After that he moves quickly. He enrolls in a twelve-step program with a sponsor, he works at being reinstated, and he improves his attitude towards the people he realizes are his true friends. Most of them remain distant, as if he's still the same person who paid off a suspect. It doesn't help that his sponsor is manipulated into a compromising situation that drags him into a hell of a mess.

He wakes up one morning and realizes that all his problems have something to do with gambling—even his position at the Crime Lab—and nothing to do with the people in his life. He resolves to change.

He hopes it's not too late.

He hopes the others think it's not too late.

Rick Stetler – Stealing

"No, we're not the same. We're nothing alike." –Rick Stetler

"You are more alike than you realize." –Horatio Caine

The thrill Rick gets every time he sneaks a little heroin or cocaine out of evidence is exhilarating. He thinks "This is the last time" right before he drives another car out off the impound lot. Of course, it never is. It never stops. The excitement is too great, so he sets a deadline and an amount of money—he's not stupid enough to hold onto the things he takes. But, when that first deadline comes and goes and he's still boosting cars and drugs, he knows he has a problem.

He makes several more deadlines, but he can't stop. The thrill is too strong. He needs to make a nest egg, one that can't be traced back to him. Problem is, he needs a burn account, but he can't make one.

So he steals it.

It's as easy as threatening the impound guard with a failed drug test. Wolfe doesn't know what hits him. Mostly because Rick never actually hits him; he just steals his checkbook when Wolfe is out on a case.

Of course, then Wolfe gets caught handing money to a suspect, so Rick takes great pleasure in asking him where exactly he got sixty thousand dollars. Wolfe denies that it's his. It doesn't matter though; it's only the first step in establishing a fall-guy for his crimes. He fires Wolfe mostly to save face, but also because it makes him feel very powerful.

The thrill is almost the same as when he steals from the Crime Lab. But, it's even sweeter when Wolfe is reinstated and returns to his position of being Rick's alibi.

Ryan Wolfe – Nightmares

"You keep saying that we are so alike. How do you figure that?" –Ryan Wolfe

"One: you are both OCD." –Eric Delko

Every night he feels a knife stabbed into his shoulder and his tooth ripped from his mouth. Every night he wakes up, blankets twisted tightly around his legs, breaths coming in gasps. Every night he relives the terror of being tortured.

When he walks into the Crime Lab with dark circles under his eyes, the others watch him carefully. He's not going to break, he wants to shout at them. If he was going to break, he would have done it before that man tried to torture him into obedience. If he was going to break, he wouldn't come to work every day.

One day, when Calleigh won't look at him, and when Eric doesn't speak to him, even to chide him for taking the last of the coffee, he finds himself leaning over the bowl of a toilet, wanting to cry as he throws up his lunch and the coffee. He doesn't know what's wrong, but it scares him.

Eric comes looking for him when he's been in there for half an hour. The first words out of Eric's mouth aren't "What the hell are you doing?" They're "Are you okay?" And that's all he needs to hear. It's also all it takes for him to start actually crying.

Eric sits with him, awkward and uncomfortable, but he helps Ryan up when Horatio enters the room. The day ends with Ryan in the hospital being treated for an infection in his shoulder and Eric still sitting next to him.

The next day, he is doped up on antibiotics and other "fun" drugs when the others visit, but he swears they all say sorry to him. It makes him smile later when all that's left is a giant panda bear watching over him.

He names it Forgiveness.

Rick Stetler – Dreams

"How so?" –Rick Stetler

"You are both paranoid." –Horatio Caine

Every night, all night, Rick feels like a king. People bow to him, treat him nicely, and he has his pick of women and men. He's not really bisexual, but it intrigues him to see Lieutenant Caine asking how he can make him feel better, to see Eric Delko's lips distended around his member. To see Ryan Wolfe hanging from the ceiling, eyes glazed, flies collecting on his cold skin.

For some reason, deeper than dominating the people of the Crime Lab, Rick wants to ruin Wolfe's life. Maybe it's because Wolfe was able to break his addiction and pull himself up, back into the light of the good while Rick remains stumbling in the dark.

Maybe it's because he's the only one who still sees the selfish jerk Wolfe used to be, the one who never thought of anyone but himself. The one everyone let back in as soon as he changed his shirt.

But, his dreams, despite all their happiness, are not somewhere he wants to be, because instead of feeling Eric pleasuring him, he sees Wolfe's empty eyes staring at him. Instead of relaxing from Horatio's expert massage, he feels Wolfe's cold fingers wrapped around his legs.

Yes, he is a king, but, like a king, he has a secret in his closet that refuses to stay in the closet.

And then he dreams of poisoning Wolfe, of slipping him arsenic, of putting radiation in his coffee. He thinks he'll be free when Wolfe is dead, even though his dreams tell him he won't.

Maybe he doesn't have to kill Wolfe, he thinks moments before he wakes with no idea of what happened in his dreams except that some were pleasant and most were unpleasant.

Maybe he should retire.

Ryan Wolfe – Killing

"Two: you have issues with trusting people," –Eric Delko

"That's not exactly my fault." –Ryan Wolfe

Sometimes Ryan thinks the man hides around corners, waiting to jump out at him, eyes accusing beneath a dripping hole in his forehead. Why did he have to kill him? Why couldn't Calleigh, a much better shot, have been the one plagued by these fears?

He's not sure, though, that he wants Calleigh to have this burden. She'd already almost self-destructed when she thought she had killed Eric, not to mention how she reacted when John Hagen killed himself in her Ballistics lab.

Someone clears his throat behind him and he whips around to make sure it's not the man whose forehead now has a perfect circle in the middle of it, courtesy of his Glock. The lab tech throws up his hands and tells him to chill, man.

Oh, he'll chill all right, he'll chill when the man he killed no longer haunts him.

He wants to ask if the feeling will ever go away, but no one here acknowledges killing anyone else. He knows Horatio has blown away quite a few suspects, but not even Horatio mentions them.

What if he's the only one feeling guilty for murdering someone? Ryan is horrified. How can they be so cruel to disregard human life in such a manner, especially after all they've seen?

He refuses to eat when the others break for lunch. He expects them to tell him to get over himself and then return to their conversations, but they all share a look like they know what's bothering him.

"If you want to talk about it, we're listening." The offer hangs in the air and Ryan examines it, turning it over in his head. He draws in a deep breath, steeling himself for the flow of hatred he knows will come towards him.

"I killed someone."

Rick Stetler – Killing

"You both have addictions." –Horatio Caine

"Really? What's mine?" –Rick Stetler

The first—and it turns out last—time he kills someone, it's easier than he thinks. It's so easy to frame Wolfe—the idiot doesn't even realize that everything the CSIs uncover leads back to him. It's so much fun to set up the bomb—using tools from Wolfe's house—and to walk away, cap pulled over his eyes. The number—an ex-girlfriend who pissed him off—is so satisfying to dial. He wishes Delko had been closer—that would have been the nail in Wolfe's coffin—but Rebecca Nevins works just as well.

Wolfe's temper creates the shadow of doubt that Rick needs to crack the resolve the others have in Wolfe's innocence. Apparently, Wolfe isn't so far above his past that he gets an automatic "Get out of jail free" card. The glee, the giddiness, he feels at pointing the finger at the unsuspecting suspect is almost his undoing.

He has to take several moments when Wolfe runs into his own house to keep from laughing at the expressions on all the faces, to keep from smiling at the pain he sees in Wolfe's eyes.

The feeling is almost comparable to when Nevins collapsed, pieces of the bomb sticking from her torso. It's almost as sweet as the adrenaline that filled his veins when he pushed send and heard the car burst apart.

Wolfe must sense something is off because just before he is led away, he locks eyes with Rick and refuses to look away. The stare is unnerving, but Rick regains his composure as the others launch into a conversation involving Wolfe's guilt versus his innocence. Rick knows he's on the way to winning.

This time he really will retire.

Ryan Wolfe - Handcuffs

"Three: you're an ass." –Eric Delko

"You can be an ass too." –Ryan Wolfe

Everyone stares at him as he is marched through the halls, hands held behind his back by a pair of cold handcuffs. It doesn't matter that they look like they're in shock. Shock doesn't help him. Shock will be the death of him.

Shock almost killed him when he had a nail in his eye. Shock could have killed him after he was tortured by the Russian mobster. Shock will kill him if it stops his colleagues from trying to find the truth.

He lets out a small breath of relief as he is dumped into an interrogation room. And then he sees who steps in to question him. He could deal with it if it's Eric or Horatio but Rick Stetler? Forget about it. The man hates his guts. He's not even sure what he did to make the IAB agent dislike him so much, but he's almost certain Stetler's sneer means he's the one who framed him.

Stetler starts accusing him of setting the bomb off, and all Ryan sees is red. Why the hell does everyone think he did it? How can they not see that it's Stetler?

He doesn't realize he's in Stetler's face until the shock and fear of Stetler's expression trigger a feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach. He wants to back down, but he knows he can't—Stetler will take it as a victory in framing him. And then Horatio orders him to sit down.

Ryan knows it's asking a lot, but he wants Horatio to save him, so he obeys. "I didn't do anything," he whispers but Horatio and Stetler are already arguing over how best to proceed with his interrogation.

He isn't a murderer.

Why won't they believe him?

Rick Stetler – Handcuffs

"Well? What am I addicted to?" –Rick Stetler

"Power." –Horatio Caine

The way the handcuffs feel, the way they squeeze his wrists, it's not something he likes. He understands why he's in them, and he understands why he should wear them, but it doesn't make it any easier to swallow. He got too greedy, wanted too much. And then he tried to blame someone else for his handiwork.

That someone else has no qualms about marching him around in front of the rest of the lab—much like what he'd done to him earlier. Wolfe has every right to be mad, to be furious and pissed off. But he hopes Wolfe understands why he chose him.

It was the damn conversation with Horatio about how he and Wolfe were so alike. He hadn't realized Horatio was right, as usual, and that it was their similarity that led him to frame Wolfe.

It was also his extreme hatred of the man, but that's another point. That developed after he decided to frame Wolfe.

Rick groans inwardly as Wolfe pushes him towards the door, steering him backwards, adding to the humiliation of being a dirty cop. What the hell happened to subtlety?

Maybe it died with chivalry, he thinks. His mind is a sinister place full of potholes of insanity with a wandering traveler scarred from years of abuse. At first the person looks like Wolfe, blue ball cap pulled low over empty sockets. And then it morphs into him. He has effectively trapped the only good part of him within a machine that is designed to steal and hurt.

What has he done? Can he fix it?

Wolfe shoves him into the elevator where a couple of uniforms are waiting for him. His last glimpse of his old life is Wolfe turning his back on him, dismissing him.

He is truly powerless now.

"You'll be sorry." –Rick Stetler

"Is that a threat?" –Horatio Caine

"No. It's just an observation." –Rick Stetler

"It sounds distinctly like a threat to me." –Horatio Caine

"I'm sorry." –Eric Delko

"Why are you apologizing?" –Ryan Wolfe

"Because you're not really the same as him." –Eric Delko

"Oh. In that case, I'm sorry too." –Ryan Wolfe