There was no missing the anxiety in Grissom's eyes as he stared up at the television in the break room, watching the 11 o'clock news. Swirling masses of white floated close to the South-East corner of the US, close to the protrusion of land that protected the Gulf of Mexico from the ravages of the Atlantic Ocean. Tropical Storm Fay had been toying with crossing Florida for the last day and a half but had finally made her move, upping her wind speed to 70 miles an hour as she moved North-East across the state.

The only consolation Grissom had was that Miami was not in the direct path of the storm. In the phone call he had received from Horatio three days ago, his lover had reassured him that this storm would be nothing compared to some of the weather he'd seen in Florida. There was nothing to worry about.

Grissom didn't try and argue with him, what was there to say or do anyway? Nothing on this earth could have made Horatio leave his city when disaster was about to strike. As sad and worried as he was, Grissom understood this. He didn't remind Horatio that he had grown up in California; He knew all about hurricanes. It wasn't just the storm itself you had to worry about, it was the other meteorological disturbances it could cause in the area, it was the flooding.

It was with a heavy heart that Grissom stood, 2500 miles away from his lover, thinking about how their lives were like this. Separate and dangerous. His finger worried the fabric on the little velvet box in his pants pocket.

####

"Hello sir."

Grissom almost keeled over with relief, his legs going numb at the sound of Horatio's gravelly voice. He sounded in good spirits, a tone Grissom recognized from when he spoke of closing a very satisfying case.

"God it's good to hear your voice," he exhaled, letting out a weeks worth of tense uncertainty. He had known better than to try calling, the lines would be backed up and Horatio would be too busy anyway. He needed to phone on his own time. This, of course, only made it all the more excruciating. "Everything's okay down there?"

"No deaths in my jurisdiction. It was nice to spend four days tossing sandbags." He didn't say 'instead of investigating potential foul play'. He didn't have to.

"You must be sore," Grissom smiled, thinking about Horatio's lean body. He was tall but not broad; he wasn't really made for sand bag detail. Grissom imagined him out in the dark, tossing them for fourteen hour days without complaint anyway, without so much as peep.

Horatio rumbled a sound that could mean just about anything but that Grissom took to mean it wasn't worth talking about. "It's good to hear your voice, too." Each man smiled to himself, picturing the other. "I've been thinking."

"Surely not." Grissom teased, speaking tenderly.

"I'd like to point out I had a lot of time to do that...and not much else for four days." Horatio defended himself.

Grissom grinned. "I'm sure. What were you thinking about?"

"I was thinking about how I call you 'Gil'." Horatio had a habit of stating things that made Grissom want to tease him mercilessly. He could sound incredibly earnest when saying something that, for all of its obviousness, Grissom could not possibly hope to fathom.

Clearing his throat to stifle a laugh, Grissom said, "uh, as opposed to?"

"A nickname...like a pet name except I wouldn't...I don't mean to say I think of you as a pet." He would usually, of course, realise how silly he sounded eventually.

Grissom couldn't help it. He chuckled to himself.

"I should... I should have a name for you." Horatio stated this simply.

Grissom shook his head. "Like what exactly?"

"Well...I spent four days with nothing to occupy my mind and...came up with nothing." Horatio rallied. "But it should be something...like honey."

"...honey..." Grissom's facial muscles seemed unable to decide if this was a joke and, if so, whether to smile at it or not.

"It's a term of endearment." Horatio tried.

"Right." Grissom's face had decided to frown, this conversation being far from the normal realm of their dialogue.

"I just call you Gil, it seems so... unromantic"

Grissom shook his head, his frown morphing into a fond smile. "There's nothing about what we share that I would consider 'unromantic'...honey. Atypical, perhaps, but not unromantic."

Horatio felt a warmth in the pit of his stomach, he felt happy. He found he struggled with expressing his emotions sometimes and then, there Grissom would be, helping him.

"People just have names for their..." Horatio trailed of as he frowned. It suddenly occurred to him that, even when speaking of Grissom, he referred to him as 'the person he was seeing' or 'Gil'. All the time.

The thought occurred to Grissom as well and it struck him as sad. They had been seeing each other just shy of a year and a half and they didn't know how to refer to one another. Both men rightfully, though separately, attributed this to the unusual circumstances of their attraction. 'Boyfriend', 'partner', everything they could think of boxed them in uncomfortably when spoken aloud.

An unusual, uncomfortable silence permeated the phone line.

"The, um, the airport should be open in a few days," Horatio attempted to ease them out of the silence, "feel like taking a trip?"

Frown returning, Grissom raised an eyebrow and tilted his head to the side. "The airport...yeah," he breathed out in an uncertain sigh.

Horatio heard the displeasure in his voice and felt he had played some role in bringing it about. How exactly, he couldn't tell. "I could come up-"

"No," Grissom said quickly, "I haven't been down in a while, I'll um, I'll come."

Their conversation ended awkwardly and both men looked at their phones for a long while afterward.

####

Three heads were leaned over the coffee table in Horatio's living room, concentration seeping from each. Starting, erasing and starting over again, Kyle's brow was furrowed in agitation. He sat on the floor, facing the couch his father and Grissom sat on. Grissom's eyes moved back and forth behind his glasses, scanning over paperwork he had brought with him because there simply wasn't time for him ignore it for a week and half while in Miami. Flipping back and forth between report sheets in similar looking brown files, Horatio rounded off the trio with his own budget requests and proficiency exams.

"Damnit!" Kyle yelled, breaking the stillness that had reigned for an hour or so.

"Kyle." Horatio's tone never truly admonished his son, merely suggested that everyone would get along better if he ceased doing whatever had precipitated the saying of his name in the first place.

"I hate this, stupid damn biology," he raged, viciously erasing pencil marks.

Before Horatio could say his son's name more forcefully, Grissom spoke. "What are you working on?" He peered curiously over his glasses at the papers in front of Kyle.

"Regulation of genes," Kyle said, unimpressed.

"Bring it over," Grissom looked to Horatio and shrugged his head to the side, "move over, pal."

Horatio did as requested and shifted his paperwork to accommodate his son in between Grissom and himself on the couch.

"You know, this stuff is actually pretty interesting," Grissom said, reading over Kyle's homework.

"Yeah? I don't think so." Kyle's face practically puckered in distaste.

"It explains why your hair is blond instead of red, like Horatio's."

Kyle sat up, wary. "Really?"

"Yeah, I mean these questions are terrible but what they're trying to teach you underneath, that's where the good stuff is." He talked in a calm, patient tone and explained each problem with real examples, hoping the boy would find it interesting.

Horatio was thoroughly distracted from his work by the sight of his lover helping his son with his homework. There was something in that moment that tugged at his heartstrings, the normalcy of it all.

"How do you know all this?" Kyle looked askance at Grissom, in a manner not unlike his father.

"I did my doctorate in biology." Grissom nodded to Horatio, "it's also worth noting that your father majored in chemistry." Grissom held up the chemistry homework from underneath the biology papers.

Kyle looked endearingly at his father.

Horatio smiled at them both and leaned over to take the homework.

####

A unanimous decision to procrastinate in favour of a walk on the beach had been made shortly after Kyle's homework was mostly sorted. Grissom, in jeans, a dark blue t-shirt and Yankees ball cap, walked hand in hand with Horatio, dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt. Both wore sunglasses. Kyle was in baggy shorts that reached past his knees and a t-shirt sporting a rap logo.

"Can you visit more, Gil?" Kyle threw the question out idly, like he was asking to borrow five bucks. They were strolling through the sand and neither man had thought Kyle was paying them much attention.

The question caused Grissom to give him a sharp look, thankfully hidden by his sunglasses. He raised an eyebrow, partly to cover his initial reaction. "I'd like to," he said in what he hoped was a casual tone.

Horatio glanced over at his lover.

"Why can't you?" Again, Kyle spoke with the simple-mindedness of a teen.

Grissom inhaled. "Uh, work."

Kyle turned to face them, walking backward. "Couldn't you get a job at the lab here?"

Horatio felt Grissom stiffen.

"I'm just saying, it's nice having you here." Kyle shrugged, turned and continued walking.

Grissom and Horatio gradually came to a stand still and turned to one another. Grissom reached up and slipped off Horatio's sunglasses as he took off his own shades. Both men parted their lips and for a second, did not breathe.

The moment was shattered by Kyle's shouts for his father. His voice had a panicked quality that sent Horatio sprinting without a second thought.

He and Grissom came upon Kyle and the sight that caused his cries. Spinning him, Horatio gripped his son tightly to him, directing his face away. Grissom slowed and walked to the body, his curiosity and experience kicking in instantly.

"She's gone, Horatio. We should call it in."

####

Within 20 minutes, the deserted section of South Pointe Park they had been walking was swarming with uniforms and CSI's. Horatio had Kyle sit in the back of a cruiser while he and Grissom looked over the body. Eric and Wolfe scanned the surrounding area.

"Call me crazy but this looks like another one Horatio," Tripp said with a sigh.

"Yes Frank, it does. Left on Miami Beach..." Sunglasses retrieved from Grissom, he stood with his hands on hips and looked the body over.

The woman had been in her thirties, pretty with auburn hair down to her shoulders. She was naked, tied up to a support of the pedestrian bridge that led out to South Pointe spit.

Crouched down to look about her feet, ball cap on backwards, Grissom looked up at Horatio. "Is this a serial?"

"She's the third victim we've found in similar circumstances...but never somewhere as public as this." Horatio rumbled, his mind clicking facts like abacus beads.

"He's getting more brazen," Grissom murmured, tilting his head to the side to better see the ligature marks on the victims neck.

"Um, who the hell are you?" Tripp asked, eyeing the Yankees ball cap.

"Gil Grissom. I'm with the Vegas crime lab," Grissom replied, standing up and carrying on with his examination.

Tripp eyed him and looked to Horatio who gave him a look that said nothing much, at least indicating that it was all right for the foreign CSI to be there.

"Look at the way she's bound...almost...artfully?" Grissom ventured, noting the intricate knots that held the body. Horatio watched his lover's eyes roam the ground. Grissom stepped back from the body and moved towards the water, his mind lost to the problem before them.

"H, I'm sorry your day got interrupted," Eric said as he and Wolfe walked up to their supervisor.

"Not to worry Eric. Have you gentlemen found anything?" Horatio replied, cutting to the chase.

"Who's that?" Wolfe asked, attention drawn to Grissom's back as he crouched by the water.

"Mister Wolfe, have you found anything?" Horatio repeated.

Eric spoke, in lieu of his co-worker. "Not yet H, but...with this guy we never seem to. I think we should grid the area and dig down three feet, see if we get lucky."

"Good idea, Eric. Get a start on that immediately please." Horatio's tone was brusque. He was agitated that this killer was still out there.

"You got it." Before Eric could pull Wolfe away with him, Grissom walked up with a jar in his gloved hand. It wasn't that big, fitting easily into his palm.

"What is that?" Horatio asked, peering through his sunglasses at the contents.

"lampyridae luciolanae luciola." Grissom replied, holding up the jar to his face.

"Bugs?" Eric asked uncertainly.

"A species of firefly, I can't narrow it down any further without my entomology references," he looked to Horatio, "...but that's enough to tell me these bugs shouldn't be here."

"Because..." Ryan looked at this bizarre intruder with even greater curiosity.

"They belong in Asia," Grissom said simply.

Horatio couldn't help but let a smile creep into the corner of his mouth. "Ryan Wolfe, this is Gil Grissom from the Las Vegas crime lab." They shook one another's latex-gloved hand. "Mister Wolfe, please enter that into evidence."

As the two younger CSI's moved away from them, Horatio turned to Grissom. "We...have a bad habit." He had meant the comment in jest but could tell, even with his eyes covered, that Grissom didn't think it was funny.

"We do, actually." He looked at Horatio a moment longer before turning toward the body. "Care to get me a knife?"