Fic Post - Chance
Title: Chance
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Sara
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don’t sue.
Summary: Post Bloodlines. Sequel to Luck and Courage. Vegas is a pretty crappy place to be lonely. Part three of three.
Notes: Grissom’s quote is courtesy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The statistics are from various online sources.
A/N: The next few fics will depend on time. Between moving and getting settled and the start of a new year of uni, I may be a bit busy, so don’t be surprised if I don’t post for awhile.
Grissom got her car keys from the officer who’d brought her in, then he took her home. If Sara had felt awkward with him before, it was nothing to the silent drive from the lab to her apartment. He didn’t ask to come up, just waited while she unlocked the security door, then followed her through it, onto the elevator, down the hall.
It wasn’t the alcohol that sent Sara to the bathroom, her stomach churning, and it wasn’t just nausea that kept her there for close to half an hour. She could have killed someone tonight. One bad decision. She’d heard that phrase before. Defense lawyers loved to say that one bad decision shouldn’t be the end of a person’s career, shouldn’t sentence them to years in prison. Sara hated that argument.
She knew there was no way Grissom would be gone when she finally came out of the bathroom; staying locked inside was simply putting off having to face him again. Sure enough, when Sara returned to the living room, there he was, sitting on her sofa, reading some magazine or other from the coffee table. He’d evidently been through her fridge and cupboards; a neat row of empty, rinsed bottles marched along her kitchen counter, arranged by height, tallest to shortest. All the labels faced the wall.
“How do you feel?” He asked carefully.
How the hell do you think I feel? Sara wanted to shout. “Fine,” she said.
“Good.”
She leaned one shoulder against the wall, her arms folded, her eyes firmly on the framed photo across the room. Grissom sat, waiting for her to say something. An explanation, an apology, a defense. It’s too late for that, she told him harshly, though not aloud. You’ve lost that right. It wasn’t strictly true, because he was her supervisor, and she’d screwed up royally, and he’d just saved her career, and she did owe him something, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to give it up that easily. Besides, she hated being in debt. Especially to Grissom.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. Sara’s arm started to fall asleep and she shifted to relieve the pressure on it.
“You need some time off,” Grissom said, and Sara shook her head. “Take some of the vacation time you’ve got saved.”
“I don’t want a vacation.”
“That wasn’t an offer, Sara.”
Work was probably the one thing that could keep her sane at the moment. The one place she could do something worthwhile. “Grissom, I don’t need -”
“Would you prefer to do this by the book?”
And there it was. Sara bit her tongue and swallowed hard. She’d take her vacation time. She’d do whatever he said, because the alternative would cost her even more than she’d already lost. “How long?”
“A month.” He shook his head when Sara opened her mouth to protest. “And I want you to see a PEAP counselor.”
She fought that one harder than the vacation, all but pleaded with him, in fact. She’d seen enough counselors and therapists to last three lifetimes. They’d never done anything but dig up things she preferred to leave buried, and she’d always managed to be a worse mess after seeing them than she’d been before. Only the shreds of pride remaining to her kept Sara from outright begging, not that it would have done any good. Grissom still held that trump card, after all.
He let her off with only the vacation and counseling, and probably expected her to be grateful for it. “I think,” he said when she remained silent and refused to look at him, “we should get you to bed.”
“Get out, Grissom.” Sara pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything worse. She’d be damned if she’d let him take care of her now.
“You need to rest, Sara.”
“I said leave.” She met those gentle, worried, hurt eyes and could have screamed at him not to look at her like that. “Unless you’re going to fire me if I don’t let you tuck me in?”
She turned the deadbolt behind him harder than she needed to, just so that he’d know, from halfway down the hall, that she’d locked it. Slammed the chain lock into place. Turned and faced the empty apartment and the row of empty bottles.
When, two hours later, she finally went to bed with swollen, burning eyes and a massive headache, she could still see Grissom sitting on a bench outside, his back to the building.
+++
Her first session with the PEAP counselor had been no better than she’d expected. With the kind of soft sympathy that Sara hated most, the woman had suggested they “begin at the beginning,” meaning, of course, that she wanted Sara to talk about her childhood.
That was the last thing Sara wanted to do. One of the most appealing things about Vegas had been the fact that there were no old veteran cops to hear her name and remember a long-ago crime scene. She’d refused to say anything until the counselor had reminded her that she had to file a report with Sara’s supervisor, and then they’d gone through the same life story that legions of counselors had already heard, with a few more years tacked on this time around.
They’d gone through the statistics too, the same ones she’d known going in, with changes of only a few percentage points from the first year she’d heard them: Thirty-two percent of teenagers in foster care graduate from high school. Only two-point-seven percent go on to receive a bachelor’s degree, still fewer earn a master’s or a doctorate. Thirty-three percent end up living below the poverty line. Sara had beaten those odds, the counselor said. She could be proud of that.
Well, her father had always said she was smart, not that he’d meant it as a compliment. Goddamn little smart-ass. She could hear him, after all these years, as clearly as if he’d been in the room. There went any chance at sleep tonight.
Sara had long since stopped looking for anyone, least of all a man, to validate her existence; she could do that for herself. She was a damn good criminalist. She solved the cases, took the bad guys off the streets, did her part to make the world safer. It just got a little bit harder not to believe it each time someone told her she wasn’t worth his while.
Her brother, startled and quick to shake his head. What? No. No way. They’d told him he could probably become Sara’s legal guardian, rather than letting her stay in foster care. He’d been twenty-two, and the last thing he’d wanted was to be saddled with his little sister.
Andy Murray, her tenth-grade crush, all but laughing. What, with you? She’d finally gathered the nerve to ask him to dance. The nerdy freak with a crazy mother should have known better.
Ken Fuller, her fellow TA in the organic chem lab, snatching at an outrageous lie. They’re my sister’s, Sara, I swear. She hadn’t given him a chance to explain why he’d brought along his sister’s red lace underwear on a Spring Break trip to Miami.
Doctor Gil Grissom, after the last session of the seminar he’d taught at Berkeley. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. He’d told her it was Longfellow, and she’d wished he would just speak for himself, for once.
Hank Peddigrew, embarrassed and regretful. I heard you met Elaine… I’m really sorry, Sara. She wasn’t sure whether he regretted playing her for a fool, or just regretted getting caught.
Grissom again, speaking partly to himself and partly to a murderer they hadn’t been able to pin down. Because we have to risk everything we’ve worked for in order to have her. I couldn’t do it. He still didn’t know Sara had been listening.
And then Nick, making light of her congratulations, probably unaware that it still hurt, and that his teasing was a slap in the face. Wow, that’s really hard for you, isn’t it?
Damn it, Nick. She wanted him - them - out of her head. She wanted a good stiff drink, but that had to be the worst idea she’d had in hours, right up there with sitting around feeling sorry for herself, which was doing her no good at all.
She didn’t usually do this. Sara wasn’t one to mope; if she had time on her hands, she’d cover someone’s shift, or go over her case notes to prepare for an upcoming court date, or maybe pick up a good book. But now that the lab was off-limits and her cases had been handed off - You have plans to sit here with a book, Sara. Alone with a book. Shit. Nick again.
She was going to pick up the phone. Any second now, she’d stand up and walk over to the kitchen counter and start dialing. She would. On the count of three. Two. One.
Go.
+++
Nick had never seen anyone in such a good mood and so utterly miserable at the same time. No wonder Sara seemed exhausted by the effort. They kept up a steady patter about absolutely nothing, the same sort of lighthearted chat they might have had in the break room, or on the way to a scene, except that the slightest risk of having to discuss something meaningful made Sara change the subject. And always that too-ready smile and those desperately bright eyes. He hadn’t known it was so difficult to have fun.
They had dinner, then dessert. Just a few weeks ago, Sara had dismissed restaurant desserts as overpriced and never as good as they looked. Tonight, they lingered over mediocre crème brûlée. Then coffee. Then more coffee.
When the meal simply couldn’t be drawn out any longer, Sara finally let the conversation lapse, and she didn’t speak as they walked back to the parking lot. After four years, Nick was pretty well used to her moody silences, but this - this was unusual.
“Hey, Sara?”
She looked up, the slightest gleam of panic quickly leaving her eyes. “Hmm?”
“If I were to ask you what’s wrong, is there any chance you’d tell me?”
“No.”
He hadn’t expected there would be. They had nearly reached Nick’s truck before he tried again. “Sara.”
She spun around, arms crossed, jaw set, and snapped, “What?”
He wasn’t sure what he’d intended to say. We miss you at work, you know. It had probably been a bad idea, whatever it was. “You know, Vegas is a pretty crappy place to be lonely, Sara.”
That had probably been a bad idea, too. Now that he’d said it, he really couldn’t think of a good place to be lonely. Sara just shook her head, giving him an unreadable look, and turned to open the passenger’s door.
Nick parked at the curb and walked her to the door, more because he was supposed to than because he thought she wanted him to. He had a feeling this was it. Whatever it was they’d started in those two short weeks after Greg’s birthday, when that security door closed between them, it would be over. “So,” he said when they reached the building, then found he didn’t have anything to add to it.
“So.” Sara was leaning against the wall beside the door, keys already in her hand. Nick stood at the other side of the entryway. Folded his arms.
“When are you coming back to work?”
She looked down. The meaning of that was clear. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, and wondered whether she was coming back at all. “Okay.”
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
Sara hesitated. Nick watched her steel herself. “Do you want to come in?”
“We just had coffee.” For a split second, he regretted it, but then Sara laughed, the first true smile he’d seen all evening. “Sure,” he said.
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Sara
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don’t sue.
Summary: Post Bloodlines. Sequel to Luck and Courage. Vegas is a pretty crappy place to be lonely. Part three of three.
Notes: Grissom’s quote is courtesy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The statistics are from various online sources.
A/N: The next few fics will depend on time. Between moving and getting settled and the start of a new year of uni, I may be a bit busy, so don’t be surprised if I don’t post for awhile.
Grissom got her car keys from the officer who’d brought her in, then he took her home. If Sara had felt awkward with him before, it was nothing to the silent drive from the lab to her apartment. He didn’t ask to come up, just waited while she unlocked the security door, then followed her through it, onto the elevator, down the hall.
It wasn’t the alcohol that sent Sara to the bathroom, her stomach churning, and it wasn’t just nausea that kept her there for close to half an hour. She could have killed someone tonight. One bad decision. She’d heard that phrase before. Defense lawyers loved to say that one bad decision shouldn’t be the end of a person’s career, shouldn’t sentence them to years in prison. Sara hated that argument.
She knew there was no way Grissom would be gone when she finally came out of the bathroom; staying locked inside was simply putting off having to face him again. Sure enough, when Sara returned to the living room, there he was, sitting on her sofa, reading some magazine or other from the coffee table. He’d evidently been through her fridge and cupboards; a neat row of empty, rinsed bottles marched along her kitchen counter, arranged by height, tallest to shortest. All the labels faced the wall.
“How do you feel?” He asked carefully.
How the hell do you think I feel? Sara wanted to shout. “Fine,” she said.
“Good.”
She leaned one shoulder against the wall, her arms folded, her eyes firmly on the framed photo across the room. Grissom sat, waiting for her to say something. An explanation, an apology, a defense. It’s too late for that, she told him harshly, though not aloud. You’ve lost that right. It wasn’t strictly true, because he was her supervisor, and she’d screwed up royally, and he’d just saved her career, and she did owe him something, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to give it up that easily. Besides, she hated being in debt. Especially to Grissom.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty. Sara’s arm started to fall asleep and she shifted to relieve the pressure on it.
“You need some time off,” Grissom said, and Sara shook her head. “Take some of the vacation time you’ve got saved.”
“I don’t want a vacation.”
“That wasn’t an offer, Sara.”
Work was probably the one thing that could keep her sane at the moment. The one place she could do something worthwhile. “Grissom, I don’t need -”
“Would you prefer to do this by the book?”
And there it was. Sara bit her tongue and swallowed hard. She’d take her vacation time. She’d do whatever he said, because the alternative would cost her even more than she’d already lost. “How long?”
“A month.” He shook his head when Sara opened her mouth to protest. “And I want you to see a PEAP counselor.”
She fought that one harder than the vacation, all but pleaded with him, in fact. She’d seen enough counselors and therapists to last three lifetimes. They’d never done anything but dig up things she preferred to leave buried, and she’d always managed to be a worse mess after seeing them than she’d been before. Only the shreds of pride remaining to her kept Sara from outright begging, not that it would have done any good. Grissom still held that trump card, after all.
He let her off with only the vacation and counseling, and probably expected her to be grateful for it. “I think,” he said when she remained silent and refused to look at him, “we should get you to bed.”
“Get out, Grissom.” Sara pressed her lips together to keep from saying anything worse. She’d be damned if she’d let him take care of her now.
“You need to rest, Sara.”
“I said leave.” She met those gentle, worried, hurt eyes and could have screamed at him not to look at her like that. “Unless you’re going to fire me if I don’t let you tuck me in?”
She turned the deadbolt behind him harder than she needed to, just so that he’d know, from halfway down the hall, that she’d locked it. Slammed the chain lock into place. Turned and faced the empty apartment and the row of empty bottles.
When, two hours later, she finally went to bed with swollen, burning eyes and a massive headache, she could still see Grissom sitting on a bench outside, his back to the building.
+++
Her first session with the PEAP counselor had been no better than she’d expected. With the kind of soft sympathy that Sara hated most, the woman had suggested they “begin at the beginning,” meaning, of course, that she wanted Sara to talk about her childhood.
That was the last thing Sara wanted to do. One of the most appealing things about Vegas had been the fact that there were no old veteran cops to hear her name and remember a long-ago crime scene. She’d refused to say anything until the counselor had reminded her that she had to file a report with Sara’s supervisor, and then they’d gone through the same life story that legions of counselors had already heard, with a few more years tacked on this time around.
They’d gone through the statistics too, the same ones she’d known going in, with changes of only a few percentage points from the first year she’d heard them: Thirty-two percent of teenagers in foster care graduate from high school. Only two-point-seven percent go on to receive a bachelor’s degree, still fewer earn a master’s or a doctorate. Thirty-three percent end up living below the poverty line. Sara had beaten those odds, the counselor said. She could be proud of that.
Well, her father had always said she was smart, not that he’d meant it as a compliment. Goddamn little smart-ass. She could hear him, after all these years, as clearly as if he’d been in the room. There went any chance at sleep tonight.
Sara had long since stopped looking for anyone, least of all a man, to validate her existence; she could do that for herself. She was a damn good criminalist. She solved the cases, took the bad guys off the streets, did her part to make the world safer. It just got a little bit harder not to believe it each time someone told her she wasn’t worth his while.
Her brother, startled and quick to shake his head. What? No. No way. They’d told him he could probably become Sara’s legal guardian, rather than letting her stay in foster care. He’d been twenty-two, and the last thing he’d wanted was to be saddled with his little sister.
Andy Murray, her tenth-grade crush, all but laughing. What, with you? She’d finally gathered the nerve to ask him to dance. The nerdy freak with a crazy mother should have known better.
Ken Fuller, her fellow TA in the organic chem lab, snatching at an outrageous lie. They’re my sister’s, Sara, I swear. She hadn’t given him a chance to explain why he’d brought along his sister’s red lace underwear on a Spring Break trip to Miami.
Doctor Gil Grissom, after the last session of the seminar he’d taught at Berkeley. Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing; Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. He’d told her it was Longfellow, and she’d wished he would just speak for himself, for once.
Hank Peddigrew, embarrassed and regretful. I heard you met Elaine… I’m really sorry, Sara. She wasn’t sure whether he regretted playing her for a fool, or just regretted getting caught.
Grissom again, speaking partly to himself and partly to a murderer they hadn’t been able to pin down. Because we have to risk everything we’ve worked for in order to have her. I couldn’t do it. He still didn’t know Sara had been listening.
And then Nick, making light of her congratulations, probably unaware that it still hurt, and that his teasing was a slap in the face. Wow, that’s really hard for you, isn’t it?
Damn it, Nick. She wanted him - them - out of her head. She wanted a good stiff drink, but that had to be the worst idea she’d had in hours, right up there with sitting around feeling sorry for herself, which was doing her no good at all.
She didn’t usually do this. Sara wasn’t one to mope; if she had time on her hands, she’d cover someone’s shift, or go over her case notes to prepare for an upcoming court date, or maybe pick up a good book. But now that the lab was off-limits and her cases had been handed off - You have plans to sit here with a book, Sara. Alone with a book. Shit. Nick again.
She was going to pick up the phone. Any second now, she’d stand up and walk over to the kitchen counter and start dialing. She would. On the count of three. Two. One.
Go.
+++
Nick had never seen anyone in such a good mood and so utterly miserable at the same time. No wonder Sara seemed exhausted by the effort. They kept up a steady patter about absolutely nothing, the same sort of lighthearted chat they might have had in the break room, or on the way to a scene, except that the slightest risk of having to discuss something meaningful made Sara change the subject. And always that too-ready smile and those desperately bright eyes. He hadn’t known it was so difficult to have fun.
They had dinner, then dessert. Just a few weeks ago, Sara had dismissed restaurant desserts as overpriced and never as good as they looked. Tonight, they lingered over mediocre crème brûlée. Then coffee. Then more coffee.
When the meal simply couldn’t be drawn out any longer, Sara finally let the conversation lapse, and she didn’t speak as they walked back to the parking lot. After four years, Nick was pretty well used to her moody silences, but this - this was unusual.
“Hey, Sara?”
She looked up, the slightest gleam of panic quickly leaving her eyes. “Hmm?”
“If I were to ask you what’s wrong, is there any chance you’d tell me?”
“No.”
He hadn’t expected there would be. They had nearly reached Nick’s truck before he tried again. “Sara.”
She spun around, arms crossed, jaw set, and snapped, “What?”
He wasn’t sure what he’d intended to say. We miss you at work, you know. It had probably been a bad idea, whatever it was. “You know, Vegas is a pretty crappy place to be lonely, Sara.”
That had probably been a bad idea, too. Now that he’d said it, he really couldn’t think of a good place to be lonely. Sara just shook her head, giving him an unreadable look, and turned to open the passenger’s door.
Nick parked at the curb and walked her to the door, more because he was supposed to than because he thought she wanted him to. He had a feeling this was it. Whatever it was they’d started in those two short weeks after Greg’s birthday, when that security door closed between them, it would be over. “So,” he said when they reached the building, then found he didn’t have anything to add to it.
“So.” Sara was leaning against the wall beside the door, keys already in her hand. Nick stood at the other side of the entryway. Folded his arms.
“When are you coming back to work?”
She looked down. The meaning of that was clear. “I don’t know.”
He nodded, and wondered whether she was coming back at all. “Okay.”
“Nick?”
“Yeah?”
Sara hesitated. Nick watched her steel herself. “Do you want to come in?”
“We just had coffee.” For a split second, he regretted it, but then Sara laughed, the first true smile he’d seen all evening. “Sure,” he said.