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nickngregTitle: you’re broken and defeated (we carry on)
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex and swearing
Summary: This is the first time Greg’s felt broken by a case.
Spoilers: Very light for “Play With Fire,” “Grave Danger” and “Fannysmackin’”.
A/N: Just a little Greg-centered fic that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while. It was inspired by My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Also, if my having Greg interrogate a witness/suspect is wrong, please tell me! I haven’t seen every episode (but I’m working on it), so I’m not sure on level ones are allowed to interrogate or not.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to its respectful owner; I am making no profit off of this whatsoever.
i'm just a man, i'm not a hero
just a boy who's meant to sing this song
just a man, i'm not a hero
- my chemical romance, welcome to the black parade
I.
It’s not supposed to happen this way.
CSI Greg Sanders enters the interrogation room and sits down, opposite a girl and it’s in this hour that he can feel himself break.
He cannot process the feeling like he processes scenes and DNA samples and evidence; instead he looks into the girl’s (woman’s? he can’t tell) face and he can feel something inside him sort of break (it might be his heart) until the calm wall of his face, façade starts to soften, then crumble.
This is the part when he realizes why Sara is so angry and bitter, why Brass is so hard, why Sofia has lines on her young face, why Grissom mastered the art of closing off his emotions, why Warrick is so worn-down, why Catherine worries and treats them all like her children.
Why Nick comes home with a broken smile and half-hearted kisses.
The girl (woman) in question is unremarkable: she’s pretty enough, he thinks, with long dark hair, a thin frame, tanned skin. She’s wearing a black T-shirt with a band logo on it (years ago, Greg would have asked what band it was, but he can’t be bothered now), ripped jeans, boots and bracelets, necklaces and rings, but it’s her eyes that really get him.
Her eyes are large and dark brown and beautiful, like a doe’s eyes and they shine with millions of unasked questions and unshed tears and Greg sees a girl forced to become a woman in one night and his heart breaks for her.
II.
He and Sara find two a dead man in the wrecked house. Sara identifies him as George Taylor, twenty-seven years old, black hair, blue eyes, 163 pounds, five feet, ten inches, all the vital statistics are there.
And Greg thinks of this as just another case (and when did he fall into that mindset? He can’t let himself think like that, he won’t…) until they find a baby in its cradle and Greg’s stomach turns when he realizes the baby’s dead, too, shot to death and when he sees Brass escorting the girl (woman) with too-wide eyes and an engagement ring to the interrogation room that he feels his stomach plummet.
He stares at her for a moment before he feels Brass nudge him. “Gonna go in there or what, Sanders?”
“Me?” Greg asks.
“Yeah. She’s your suspect,” Brass says, only Greg knows he means, Do you really think you can do this?
“Yes,” Greg snaps and Brass looks a little taken aback (and he likes that, likes that he can startle the tough-as-nails Brass) and he stammers, “I mean- yeah.”
III.
Greg clears his throat and looks at his suspect from across the table. Long dark hair, skinny body, red nail varnish, black T-shirt, black boots, ripped blue jeans, jewelry. Engagement ring and haunting eyes. “Miss Moen, I’m Greg Sanders and I’m with the crime lab,” he begins, flashing his ID. “My partner and I received a phone call from your neighbors saying there’d been a break-in and they heard gun shots. We found your fiancée’s body and… the body of your son.”
She doesn’t look at him when she says, “I know.” There are tears and they aren’t falling. (Greg wonders why she’s not crying, but he supposes her grief is too much for that.)
“Can you tell me where you were when this happened?” he asks gently.
When she looks up at him, he turns away, doesn’t want to meet her eyes. “I was at work. I was pulling a double at the Excalibur. I’m a waitress there. And I came home to the police.” Her voice breaks a little (her voice breaks, her heart breaks, Greg’s heart breaks).
“So, if I were to phone your boss, he or she would confirm that you were there?” Greg asks and, Jesus, he sounds so cold, because he has a gut feeling that this woman couldn’t have done this. What mother could kill her child?
He already has an answer to that (he had a case three months ago where a mother killed her two daughters to get revenge on her husband), but he keeps asking her questions (does her fiancée have any enemies, does she, were they happy in their relationship, how long had they been together, et cetera).
“We were happy together,” the woman tells him and he doesn’t doubt her. “We had our son, Michael, we were going to get married in July… Everything seemed so perfect.” She sniffs and Greg offers a box of tissues, like he’s done this a million times, like he’s used to crying women, crying suspects. “Thank you,” she whispers.
And Greg can’t say, You’re welcome because he’s sure this is the saddest thing he’s ever seen and this case shouldn’t break him. He should have been broken a long time; broken after everyone doubted him, broken after flying through glass, broken after seeing Nick -his Nick- buried alive with a gun in his mouth, broken after being beaten within an inch of his life by a bunch of kids.
This frail, twenty-four-year-old waitress with her doe eyes and red nails shouldn’t break him, because Greg’s been in the dark, seen the blackness, wears scars, teetered on the edge and then returned to the light and he almost hates her for this because he’s seen worse than this.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Miss Moen,” Greg murmurs.
She wipes her nose. “You can call me Jude,” she offers. She sniffs again. “Will you find out who did it? Will you find who killed my fiancée and baby?”
I can’t make any promises, Greg doesn’t say. Instead: “Yeah. Yeah, we will, Miss M- Jude.”
IV.
Greg lets this case consume him and he can’t explain why. Soon, it’s all he can think about, all he does. He goes over evidence, returns to the house more times than he can count, questions all the neighbors and doesn’t talk to Nick.
And Nick doesn’t press him to talk, lets Greg pour over possible suspects and DNA samples.
The whole thing comes to a head four days later when he yells at Catherine. He doesn’t mean it, it’s just that he hasn’t gotten much sleep (too busy tossing and turning and dreaming about dead children) and this case is driving him insane and Catherine understands (of course she does, she’s been in this position before), but that doesn’t stop her from sending him home. “Get some sleep, Greg,” she tells him calmly, gently. “Go home, get some rest. Warrick and I just closed our case; we’ll help Sara.”
When Greg arrives home, he finds Nick in bed, lying on his stomach with one arm draped over the edge of the mattress and Nick smiles that oh, go ahead, touch me, kiss me, fuck me, do whatever you want with me half-smile in his sleep and Greg leans over him and kisses Nick’s bare shoulder.
“Hey, you,” Nick murmurs, rolling over a little, but Greg pins him down and kisses him hard, biting Nick’s lower lip, almost trying to draw blood (washing blood with blood); he squeezes Nick’s biceps hard enough to bruise and he tastes the copper tang of blood and the salty tears on his lips and he keeps kissing Nick frantically, trying to erase visions of hollow eyes and blood-spattered infants and engagement rings. “G, what’s going on?” Nick asks, and he pushes Greg away a little, trying to focus. “What’s wrong?” He puts his hands at Greg’s temples and Greg pushes his hands away.
“Later,” Greg mumbles, the lust and need filling his belly. He unbuttons his shirt and casts it aside and Nick listens (how many times has he done this to Greg?) and helps the smaller man slide of his jeans and boxers, grabs the bottle from the bedside table and hands it to Greg. He waits as Greg adds a generous amount of lube to himself, swabs some around Nick’s entrance before pushing in, not taking his time.
Usually, Greg is gentle, caring (“I don’t want to hurt you, Nick, I can’t”) but now he’s all instinct and emotions, thrusting in and out, grunting. He sucks on Nick’s shoulder, tasting his lover’s sweat, wanting to break the skin, digs his nails into Nick’s back. He draws blood and neither seem to care. “Fuck, Nicky, fuck,” Greg pants, his breathing ragged. “Fuck, Nicky, I need you, I need you, I love you, I love you. (IneedyouIloveyouIwantyouIwoulddieforyouIwilldieforyouIamdyingrightnow.)”
Nick comes first, squeezing his dark eyes shut before groaning and falling back on the bed and that’s all it takes for Greg to come, crying out something indecipherable before collapsing next to Nick. He’s still crying and he presses his face into the pillows. He doesn’t move until he feels a hand on his back. Nick draws patterns on his skin, covered in battle scars, tracing the wounds with gentle fingers. “Are you ready to talk now?” Nick asks quietly.
“Yeah,” Greg mumbles, rolling over. Boneless, he lets Nick gather him up. “It’s my case. It’s… it’s weird, you know. I’ve been through worse shit than this. I’ve been blown through a window, got the shit kicked out of me, saw you… But I feel so helpless. I don’t know- I don’t know if I can help this woman.”
Pressing a kiss to Greg’s hair, Nick murmurs, “Of course you can, Greggo. You just need to believe in yourself. You can do it.”
Greg shakes his head. “No, I can’t. I’m just me. I’m not a hero. I’m a kid from California. I’m- I’m not a hero. I can’t do this.” He starts crying again, body wracking with sobs. “And I promised this woman I’d find out who killed her fiancée and her baby and I thought, ‘what if that were me? What if I came home and I found Nick dead?’ And I can’t do this anymore.” He laughs a little, humorlessly. “It’s funny, the shit that ends up breaking you.”
And Nick’s arms tighten around him. “I believe in you,” he whispers. “I might not be able to fix you, but I can tell you that this shit’s just going to keep happening. And I know you can fix yourself.” He kisses a scar on Greg’s shoulder, one from the mugging. “You’re a hero, Greggo, and you’ve got the scars to prove it.”
fin
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex and swearing
Summary: This is the first time Greg’s felt broken by a case.
Spoilers: Very light for “Play With Fire,” “Grave Danger” and “Fannysmackin’”.
A/N: Just a little Greg-centered fic that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while. It was inspired by My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Also, if my having Greg interrogate a witness/suspect is wrong, please tell me! I haven’t seen every episode (but I’m working on it), so I’m not sure on level ones are allowed to interrogate or not.
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to its respectful owner; I am making no profit off of this whatsoever.
just a boy who's meant to sing this song
just a man, i'm not a hero
- my chemical romance, welcome to the black parade
I.
It’s not supposed to happen this way.
CSI Greg Sanders enters the interrogation room and sits down, opposite a girl and it’s in this hour that he can feel himself break.
He cannot process the feeling like he processes scenes and DNA samples and evidence; instead he looks into the girl’s (woman’s? he can’t tell) face and he can feel something inside him sort of break (it might be his heart) until the calm wall of his face, façade starts to soften, then crumble.
This is the part when he realizes why Sara is so angry and bitter, why Brass is so hard, why Sofia has lines on her young face, why Grissom mastered the art of closing off his emotions, why Warrick is so worn-down, why Catherine worries and treats them all like her children.
Why Nick comes home with a broken smile and half-hearted kisses.
The girl (woman) in question is unremarkable: she’s pretty enough, he thinks, with long dark hair, a thin frame, tanned skin. She’s wearing a black T-shirt with a band logo on it (years ago, Greg would have asked what band it was, but he can’t be bothered now), ripped jeans, boots and bracelets, necklaces and rings, but it’s her eyes that really get him.
Her eyes are large and dark brown and beautiful, like a doe’s eyes and they shine with millions of unasked questions and unshed tears and Greg sees a girl forced to become a woman in one night and his heart breaks for her.
II.
He and Sara find two a dead man in the wrecked house. Sara identifies him as George Taylor, twenty-seven years old, black hair, blue eyes, 163 pounds, five feet, ten inches, all the vital statistics are there.
And Greg thinks of this as just another case (and when did he fall into that mindset? He can’t let himself think like that, he won’t…) until they find a baby in its cradle and Greg’s stomach turns when he realizes the baby’s dead, too, shot to death and when he sees Brass escorting the girl (woman) with too-wide eyes and an engagement ring to the interrogation room that he feels his stomach plummet.
He stares at her for a moment before he feels Brass nudge him. “Gonna go in there or what, Sanders?”
“Me?” Greg asks.
“Yeah. She’s your suspect,” Brass says, only Greg knows he means, Do you really think you can do this?
“Yes,” Greg snaps and Brass looks a little taken aback (and he likes that, likes that he can startle the tough-as-nails Brass) and he stammers, “I mean- yeah.”
III.
Greg clears his throat and looks at his suspect from across the table. Long dark hair, skinny body, red nail varnish, black T-shirt, black boots, ripped blue jeans, jewelry. Engagement ring and haunting eyes. “Miss Moen, I’m Greg Sanders and I’m with the crime lab,” he begins, flashing his ID. “My partner and I received a phone call from your neighbors saying there’d been a break-in and they heard gun shots. We found your fiancée’s body and… the body of your son.”
She doesn’t look at him when she says, “I know.” There are tears and they aren’t falling. (Greg wonders why she’s not crying, but he supposes her grief is too much for that.)
“Can you tell me where you were when this happened?” he asks gently.
When she looks up at him, he turns away, doesn’t want to meet her eyes. “I was at work. I was pulling a double at the Excalibur. I’m a waitress there. And I came home to the police.” Her voice breaks a little (her voice breaks, her heart breaks, Greg’s heart breaks).
“So, if I were to phone your boss, he or she would confirm that you were there?” Greg asks and, Jesus, he sounds so cold, because he has a gut feeling that this woman couldn’t have done this. What mother could kill her child?
He already has an answer to that (he had a case three months ago where a mother killed her two daughters to get revenge on her husband), but he keeps asking her questions (does her fiancée have any enemies, does she, were they happy in their relationship, how long had they been together, et cetera).
“We were happy together,” the woman tells him and he doesn’t doubt her. “We had our son, Michael, we were going to get married in July… Everything seemed so perfect.” She sniffs and Greg offers a box of tissues, like he’s done this a million times, like he’s used to crying women, crying suspects. “Thank you,” she whispers.
And Greg can’t say, You’re welcome because he’s sure this is the saddest thing he’s ever seen and this case shouldn’t break him. He should have been broken a long time; broken after everyone doubted him, broken after flying through glass, broken after seeing Nick -his Nick- buried alive with a gun in his mouth, broken after being beaten within an inch of his life by a bunch of kids.
This frail, twenty-four-year-old waitress with her doe eyes and red nails shouldn’t break him, because Greg’s been in the dark, seen the blackness, wears scars, teetered on the edge and then returned to the light and he almost hates her for this because he’s seen worse than this.
“I’m very sorry for your loss, Miss Moen,” Greg murmurs.
She wipes her nose. “You can call me Jude,” she offers. She sniffs again. “Will you find out who did it? Will you find who killed my fiancée and baby?”
I can’t make any promises, Greg doesn’t say. Instead: “Yeah. Yeah, we will, Miss M- Jude.”
IV.
Greg lets this case consume him and he can’t explain why. Soon, it’s all he can think about, all he does. He goes over evidence, returns to the house more times than he can count, questions all the neighbors and doesn’t talk to Nick.
And Nick doesn’t press him to talk, lets Greg pour over possible suspects and DNA samples.
The whole thing comes to a head four days later when he yells at Catherine. He doesn’t mean it, it’s just that he hasn’t gotten much sleep (too busy tossing and turning and dreaming about dead children) and this case is driving him insane and Catherine understands (of course she does, she’s been in this position before), but that doesn’t stop her from sending him home. “Get some sleep, Greg,” she tells him calmly, gently. “Go home, get some rest. Warrick and I just closed our case; we’ll help Sara.”
When Greg arrives home, he finds Nick in bed, lying on his stomach with one arm draped over the edge of the mattress and Nick smiles that oh, go ahead, touch me, kiss me, fuck me, do whatever you want with me half-smile in his sleep and Greg leans over him and kisses Nick’s bare shoulder.
“Hey, you,” Nick murmurs, rolling over a little, but Greg pins him down and kisses him hard, biting Nick’s lower lip, almost trying to draw blood (washing blood with blood); he squeezes Nick’s biceps hard enough to bruise and he tastes the copper tang of blood and the salty tears on his lips and he keeps kissing Nick frantically, trying to erase visions of hollow eyes and blood-spattered infants and engagement rings. “G, what’s going on?” Nick asks, and he pushes Greg away a little, trying to focus. “What’s wrong?” He puts his hands at Greg’s temples and Greg pushes his hands away.
“Later,” Greg mumbles, the lust and need filling his belly. He unbuttons his shirt and casts it aside and Nick listens (how many times has he done this to Greg?) and helps the smaller man slide of his jeans and boxers, grabs the bottle from the bedside table and hands it to Greg. He waits as Greg adds a generous amount of lube to himself, swabs some around Nick’s entrance before pushing in, not taking his time.
Usually, Greg is gentle, caring (“I don’t want to hurt you, Nick, I can’t”) but now he’s all instinct and emotions, thrusting in and out, grunting. He sucks on Nick’s shoulder, tasting his lover’s sweat, wanting to break the skin, digs his nails into Nick’s back. He draws blood and neither seem to care. “Fuck, Nicky, fuck,” Greg pants, his breathing ragged. “Fuck, Nicky, I need you, I need you, I love you, I love you. (IneedyouIloveyouIwantyouIwoulddieforyouIwilldieforyouIamdyingrightnow.)”
Nick comes first, squeezing his dark eyes shut before groaning and falling back on the bed and that’s all it takes for Greg to come, crying out something indecipherable before collapsing next to Nick. He’s still crying and he presses his face into the pillows. He doesn’t move until he feels a hand on his back. Nick draws patterns on his skin, covered in battle scars, tracing the wounds with gentle fingers. “Are you ready to talk now?” Nick asks quietly.
“Yeah,” Greg mumbles, rolling over. Boneless, he lets Nick gather him up. “It’s my case. It’s… it’s weird, you know. I’ve been through worse shit than this. I’ve been blown through a window, got the shit kicked out of me, saw you… But I feel so helpless. I don’t know- I don’t know if I can help this woman.”
Pressing a kiss to Greg’s hair, Nick murmurs, “Of course you can, Greggo. You just need to believe in yourself. You can do it.”
Greg shakes his head. “No, I can’t. I’m just me. I’m not a hero. I’m a kid from California. I’m- I’m not a hero. I can’t do this.” He starts crying again, body wracking with sobs. “And I promised this woman I’d find out who killed her fiancée and her baby and I thought, ‘what if that were me? What if I came home and I found Nick dead?’ And I can’t do this anymore.” He laughs a little, humorlessly. “It’s funny, the shit that ends up breaking you.”
And Nick’s arms tighten around him. “I believe in you,” he whispers. “I might not be able to fix you, but I can tell you that this shit’s just going to keep happening. And I know you can fix yourself.” He kisses a scar on Greg’s shoulder, one from the mugging. “You’re a hero, Greggo, and you’ve got the scars to prove it.”
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 09:13 am (UTC)Sad but feels real :)
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Date: 2008-06-29 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 06:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-29 08:57 pm (UTC)intense fic
Date: 2008-06-30 11:19 pm (UTC)Meisaal
Re: intense fic
Date: 2008-07-01 08:03 pm (UTC)