Fic: Little Wheels 1/2 (CSI, Nick/Greg, NC17)
Title: Little Wheels
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: NC17
Summary: What if you had all the time in the world to make things right?
…time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Warrick muttered, glancing up from the dead tourist in the bed long enough to frown at Nick.
“We’re doing better than him,” Nick answered, motioning toward the body. As far as they could tell their tourist was single and in town for no real reason, and that usually spelled a pretty depressing Christmas, especially in Vegas. His wallet had been cleaned out and his suitcase thoroughly rifled through, so it wasn’t a big leap to assume he’d been rolled and then murdered by a trick.
Still, Nick was glad for the distraction. He wasn't glad someone was dead, but he was just as happy not to think about what day it was. Given the choice between spending the night at home alone and working a case, he'd much rather be working. So he didn't mind when Grissom and Sara drew Christmas Eve off, even if it meant spending the night dusting for prints in a seedy motel room. It wasn't exactly glamorous, but it beat watching reruns on TV and waiting around for his mother to call.
Not that he really felt like being back home this year, either. Spending Christmas with his family meant pretending everything was fine, that he was still happy to be alone and working the same job he'd been doing for the past eight years. Not that he was unhappy, exactly; he didn't know what he was anymore, and most of the time he tried not to think about it. So it was just as well he was working Christmas Eve, because it meant by the time their shift was over and he got some sleep, Christmas would already be behind him.
And it was funny how much things could change in a year, because last Christmas…but he wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't thinking about anything except evidence and motives, and when their shift was finally over all he was going to think about was bed. Alone, and that wasn't the way he'd been hoping this Christmas would go.
"You ready?" Warrick asked, and Nick nodded and straightened up. He swept the room one last time to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything, then packed up his kit and followed Warrick back to the truck.
"You know we're going to have to run most of this stuff ourselves," Nick said as he set the box full of evidence in the back of the truck.
"I'm sure Hodges can drag himself away from the karaoke machine long enough to do his job."
Nick grinned and climbed into the passenger seat. "He's not going to like it."
"Yeah, well, you can be persuasive." Warrick set his jaw and pulled onto the deserted street, pointing the truck back toward the lab.
Twenty minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot, and Nick swallowed a sigh. Christmas Eve at the lab was the same every year, and usually he got a kick out of it. There was a ton of junk food weighing down the table in the break room, decorations all over the place and Christmas music playing at a volume that could wake the dead. Everyone inside was a lot more interested in celebrating than they were in processing evidence, and unless there was a really tricky case on the books Grissom let them get away with it.
Most years Nick wouldn't care; he'd blown off work on more than one Christmas Eve himself, but now that he was back at the lab all he wanted to do was get his job done and go home. Because yeah, his house was empty and kind of depressing, but at least everything there didn't remind him of what he was missing.
He grabbed his kit and the evidence and followed Warrick inside, footsteps slowing the closer they got to the door. From the outside it looked like just another night at the crime lab, but the second Warrick opened the door they were hit with a wall of sound. Christmas music was blasting from somewhere nearby, voices shouting over it and someone was laughing somewhere down the hall.
Nick took a deep breath and followed Warrick inside, heading straight for the trace lab. He ducked inside and shut the door against the music; it muffled the sound a little, but not that much. He expected to find the place empty, but to his surprise Hodges was inside, and he wasn't alone. He hadn't heard Nick come in, though how anyone in the lab could hear anything tonight Nick wasn't sure. Hodges had his back to Nick, and somehow he'd managed to corner one of the girls from the darkroom in his lab.
Nick had only dealt with her a few times, but she'd seemed pretty normal then. What she was doing alone with Hodges he wasn't sure, but from the way Hodges was leaning into her, Nick was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with a case. Nick waited another couple seconds, but when Hodges leaned in for the kill he cleared his throat.
"Hey," he said when Hodges flinched and looked up. "I need you to run these."
"Now?" Hodges asked - no, he was definitely whining. "Can't it wait? It’s not like the guy’s going to come back to life overnight."
"Just do it, Hodges," Nick said. "Besides, it looks to me like you've got plenty of time."
Hodges turned in time to watch his girl slip out the back door of the lab, and Nick took the opportunity to leave out the front. He could hear Hodges swearing behind him, and he smiled to himself as he headed down the hall. The noise was even louder now, like the party had spilled out of the break room and was headed straight for him. He ducked down a hallway, but the noise just seemed to get louder, voices bearing down on him from what sounded like both directions. And he didn't want to deal with this, didn't want to explain why he wasn't in the mood to celebrate.
He ducked into the nearest room as the voices closed in on him, closing the door behind him and pressing his back to it. He waited for the voices to pass, but as soon as he shut the door they were gone. And that was weird, because the lab was a lot of things, but it definitely wasn't soundproof. Nick frowned and looked around the room for the first time, but when he saw that he wasn't alone he forgot all about the people outside.
Greg was sitting at the table in the center of the room, files spread out around him and his headphones hanging around his neck. He was frowning like Nick had interrupted something, but from the looks of it he was just doing paperwork. "What are you doing?"
"Avoiding the party," Nick answered. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to find a quiet place to catch up on these," Greg said, gesturing at the case files in front of him. "And I've still got a ways to go, so if you don't mind…"
"You're doing paperwork on Christmas Eve? Usually you're the life of the party."
"Yeah, well, things change."
Greg wasn't looking at him anymore. He'd been doing that a lot lately, avoiding eye contact and only talking to Nick when he had to. And Nick had been sort of relieved, because the last thing he wanted to do was talk about what had happened between them. Not that there was much to talk about; there hadn’t been a big argument, or even a conversation, really. Greg had asked for some space and Nick had given it to him, and when he never brought it up again, Nick just…let it go. Relationships ended all the time; that's what he told himself whenever he caught himself thinking about it, and in their line of work he was surprised they’d lasted as long as they did.
So yeah, things changed. But Greg had always loved Christmas Eve at the lab, and to find him hiding out with his head buried in a stack of paperwork…well, it was kind of weird. Except that it wasn’t, at least not lately. Lately Greg had been serious all the time, focused and efficient and Nick had been sort of proud of him. Except that he wasn’t any fun anymore, and if things weren’t so weird between them Nick might have taken him out for a beer and tried to figure out why.
That’s what he would do if it were Warrick. But with Greg a couple beers could lead places Warrick would never go, and Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to complicate things again. It was hard, dating a coworker, worrying constantly when Greg was out on a case. Or worrying about his own focus when he and Greg were assigned to a case together, waiting for the day Grissom would call him in and tell him it was his relationship or his job. It was easier not to have to worry about that stuff, even if it meant going home to an empty bed every night.
At least it would have been easier if he didn’t know what he was missing. But he did, and no matter how many times he told himself they were better off, he still caught himself wondering what he could have done differently. Not all the time, but often enough to make him wish he’d stayed out in the hall and let the party catch up to him.
“Listen, G…”
Greg let out a sigh and looked up, and the look on his face made Nick’s heart twist. “Look, I really want to get these done, okay?”
And yeah, Nick got what he was saying, but it wasn’t okay. It was anything but okay, because just a year ago they would have done anything for this much time alone in the lab, and now Greg was trying to get rid of him. He knew he should just let it go, that he should leave Greg to it and go find somewhere else to hide out until his results were ready. He even started to pull the door open, but before he was halfway out of the room he glanced back to find Greg watching him.
Just for a second, then Greg ducked his head again, but it was long enough for Nick to catch his expression. Long enough to see that Greg hadn’t forgotten, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he’d never thought of Nick as anything other than a coworker. “Look, it’s…”
“What do you want from me?” Greg interrupted, and when he looked up this time his expression was unreadable.
“I don’t know,” Nick answered, because it was the truth. He’d been about to remind Greg that it was Christmas; paperwork could wait until tomorrow, or maybe even the next day. They were always backed up on old files, and Greg didn’t have to drive himself crazy trying to impress anybody anymore. He’d proved himself, and Nick would have told him all that if he hadn’t seen the look on Greg’s face.
“Just leave me alone, Nick. Go find somebody else to rescue.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Nick asked, but Greg wasn’t listening. He was gathering up the files spread out in front of him, and a second later he was brushing past Nick into the hallway without so much as a backwards glance.
Nick wasn’t sure how long he stood there watching Greg walk away, but it wasn’t until his pager beeped that he realized he was staring down an empty hallway. The party noise had all but died away, and he let out a sigh and turned to retrace his steps back to Hodges’ lab. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but the sooner he wrapped up his case and called it a night, the better off he’d be.
~
Nick woke with a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and he still hadn’t shaken it by the time he got back to the lab. Maybe it was because his mother had never called to wish him a Merry Christmas. He told himself he should be grateful; not talking to his family meant he could avoid thinking about Christmas altogether, and by the time they remembered to call him he’d have snapped out of the weird funk he’d fallen into.
But something still felt…off, and he glanced over his shoulder more than once as he made his way into the lab. Decorations were still hanging on the reception desk and down the halls, but they usually stayed up for a long time after Christmas was over. Someone was playing Christmas music, too, but that, at least, Grissom would put an end to after tonight.
Nick dropped his stuff in his locker and put on his vest and badge, then joined Warrick in the break room. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Warrick answered, glancing up from the case file he was holding. “You’re with me tonight. Night manager found a John Doe in one of the rooms at the motor inn out by the airport.”
“Another one?”
“Just another night in Vegas,” Warrick said. “Listen, I’ll meet you out there. I’ve got a couple calls to make.”
“But we were just there last night,” Nick said, but Warrick was already gone. Nick frowned and followed him out of the break room, stopping long enough to grab his keys and his kit. And now he was sure there was something wrong, because that was the second death in the same motel in two days, and Warrick didn’t seem concerned that they could be dealing with a serial killer. Or a really sloppy killer, and Nick wasn’t sure which one was more dangerous.
When he reached the motor inn he pulled into a parking spot and turned off the engine, frowning in his rearview mirror at the uniforms swarming around the crime scene. They weren’t far from the room they’d worked the night before; as a matter of fact, they were pretty much right on top of it. Nick grabbed his kit and headed toward the room in question, footsteps slowing as he reached the open door.
“The same room? What’s the killer doing, paying by the week?”
The uniform closest to him shot him a weird look, but Nick ignored it and went inside. He stopped just inside the door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the change in light, then set his kit on the carpet and opened it. As he reached for a pair of gloves he caught sight of what he assumed was the victim’s suitcase, and sure enough, when he looked up there was the same black suitcase he’d seen the night before. Granted, it wasn’t exactly uncommon; practically every businessman who came through Vegas owned one of those things. But Nick couldn’t help thinking something was really wrong, and when he stood up and crossed to the bed the hair on the back of his neck prickled.
“What the…?”
There was no way this could be happening. Someone had to be playing an elaborate and really unfunny joke, because there was no way…yet there the guy was, lying in the exact same position he’d been in the night before. The blood patterns were the same as the ones Warrick had photographed, and the same glassy eyes were staring up at nothing.
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas.”
Nick started at the sound of Warrick’s voice, but it was the words themselves that made his heart skip a beat. He watched Warrick set his own kit down and swing the camera bag off his shoulder, watched him take out the camera and attach the flash before he got his voice to work.
“Is this a joke?”
“Looks like a corpse to me.”
“I’m serious.”
And now Warrick was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but Nick was pretty sure he hadn’t gone crazy. At least he thought he hadn’t, but he couldn’t be positive. Not when he was staring at the same crime scene they’d already processed only twenty-four hours ago.
“What’s with you tonight?” Warrick asked as he crossed to the bed and started snapping pictures. It was exactly what he’d done the night before, and now that Nick thought about it, he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night, too.
“You’re telling me you don’t remember any of this.”
“What are you talking about? I just got here.”
“No,” Nick said, letting out a frustrated sigh and gesturing toward the corpse on the bed. “I mean last night. We worked this scene already, man. You were bitching about having to work Christmas Eve. Don't you remember?”
And okay, definitely the wrong thing to say, because now Warrick was looking at him like he was dangerous and crazy. “Nick, man, tonight is Christmas Eve."
“But…” Nick trailed off, mouth opening and closing a few times before he gave up. He was sure he'd been here before; sure they'd already worked this case and gone through this whole miserable night. He'd made it through Christmas Eve already, he was positive. But if this was all a joke it had gone on way too long, and Warrick wasn't that good an actor.
"Maybe you should go home, get some rest," Warrick said, and Nick could tell he was trying not to call Nick crazy to his face. But he felt crazy, and part of him wondered if maybe he should take Warrick's advice.
Instead he shook his head and turned toward his kit so he wouldn't have to see the look on Warrick's face. "Forget it. Must have been a dream."
"Hell of a dream."
"Yeah." And it must have been a dream, except that Nick knew it wasn’t. He’d already worked this case, lifted a thousand useless fingerprints from this room, collected the same evidence he was about to collect again. He remembered every detail, and he couldn’t have dreamed all that. But the only other explanation was that he’d lost his mind, and if that was true he had much bigger problems than spending Christmas alone.
They worked the rest of the scene in silence, and Nick tried to ignore the wary looks Warrick shot him every so often. Working the same scene twice made it a little easier, anyway, and he was finished collecting evidence by the time Warrick was ready to go. He was grateful they’d taken separate cars tonight, because he didn’t think he could deal with riding back to the lab and pretending he didn’t know exactly what Warrick was thinking. And Nick was thinking the same thing; he’d finally snapped, the job had finally gotten to him and he’d lost it. The problem was that he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
As soon as he got back to the lab he headed straight for trace, but when he pushed the door open he stopped short. Hodges was there, exactly where Nick had found him the night before, and he had the same girl cornered behind his workstation. He couldn't tell from where he was standing whether or not the girl needed rescuing, but for once he didn't really care. All he really cared about was making it through the night. Again.
"Hodges.”
Hodges flinched and looked up exactly the way he had the last time they did this. “What?”
“You’ve got work to do,” Nick answered, dropping the samples in his box and heading back toward the door.
“Can’t it wait? It’s not like…”
“Just do it,” Nick interrupted, not bothering to look over his shoulder to see if the girl had made her escape again. The last thing he needed was another confirmation that he was losing it; it was like walking around in a constant state of déjà vu, and the sooner he got out of the lab and went home, the sooner it would all be over.
He deliberately avoided the hall he’d gone down the night before, heading straight toward the sounds of the party instead. There was still the possibility that Warrick was wrong; maybe he was the one who’d lost a day, and the party going on in the break room was just a continuation from last night. Only that didn’t explain the fact that they’d just worked the same crime scene two nights in a row.
Nick shook his head and pushed open the break room door, cutting a wide path around the mistletoe hanging near the microwave. He reached the coffee maker without incident and poured himself a cup, breathing in the rich scent and trying not to hear the conversations going on around him. It was hard to ignore that many excited voices, though, and when he caught someone rattling off their plans for Christmas day, he knew Warrick hadn’t been the one who’d gotten his days wrong.
“You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Nick turned to find Catherine watching him, and when he moved out of the way she reached for her own cup of coffee. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
“Yeah, this case is a real bitch,” she answered. “Suicide. Just what you want to deal with on Christmas Eve.”
Nick nodded and took a sip of coffee, wincing at the bitter flavor that told him Greg wasn’t the one who’d made it. “We’ve all been there.”
“All of us except Greg. He’s having a pretty rough night,” Catherine said, glancing around the room like she expected to see Greg lurking nearby. But he wasn’t around, and Nick had a sinking feeling he knew exactly where Greg was. And now he knew what had been bothering Greg when Nick found him alone in a room doing paperwork instead of partying with the rest of the lab. It wasn’t the first suicide Greg had ever dealt with, but it was always a little harder to take during the holidays, especially when they were working instead of home with their families.
Only neither of them had family in town, and this year they didn’t have anyone at all. At least Nick assumed Greg wasn’t seeing anyone; he hadn’t mentioned anyone, but that didn’t mean much. He didn’t talk to Nick anymore, not the way he used to before, back when they were just friends. After they stopped sleeping together Nick sort of hoped they’d go back to the way it was before, but now he was pretty sure that was never going to happen.
“Earth to Nick.”
Nick started at the sound of Catherine’s voice, blushing when he realized she’d been trying to get his attention for a little while. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you’ve seen Greg. I should check on him, make sure he’s okay.”
Nick started to offer to do it himself. The words were right there on the tip of his tongue, It’s okay, I’ll find him, like it was his responsibility. Maybe it had been, once. Maybe Catherine was waiting for him to offer, he couldn’t tell. But he’d already blown it once, and if he was going to relive the same night twice he didn’t want to have to relive the look on Greg’s face when he told Nick to get lost.
“He’s in the small conference room by the trace lab. I think he’s catching up on paperwork.”
For a minute Catherine just looked at him, and Nick could tell she wanted to say something. But before he figured out what it was, she shrugged and set her coffee down. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he called after her as he watched her cross the room and head down the hall in search of Greg. And he wasn’t sorry he hadn’t gone himself; he’d already tried talking to Greg, and one day wasn’t going to make any difference.
~
Nick woke to the beeping of his alarm clock. He let out a groan and pushed one arm out from under the covers to turn it off, then flipped over onto his back. He should get up and take a shower, find some clothes and get to the lab a little early for once. What he wanted to do was close his eyes and go right back to sleep, forget about work and the weird day he’d had yesterday. He just wanted to keep sleeping until everything went back to normal, but he was starting to think it never would.
Greg hated him, and Nick had never meant for that to happen. He wasn’t even sure how it happened, because Greg was the one who’d ended things between them. And he got it; he understood why Greg wanted space. At least he’d thought at the time that he did. They just spent too much time together, and there was no way they could work together and not bring their cases home with them. So the easiest solution seemed to be to stop going home together at all, no matter how much Nick missed it.
He missed having someone to wake up with, missed arguing over the Sunday paper and trying to figure out whose cell phone was ringing in the middle of the night. He missed breakfasts after their shift was over and he missed calls in the middle of a case just so he could hear Greg’s voice. He missed Greg, only he hadn’t realized how much until it was too late.
And it was definitely too late. The look on Greg’s face last night - no, the night before last - had proved that. Nick had never been all that great at relationships, but he knew when to take a hint, and Greg didn’t have to spell it out for him to get the message. Still, he’d somehow lived through the same day twice, and the only person he really wanted to talk to about it was Greg. Greg who wouldn’t believe him anyway, but at least he’d listen. Or he would have, anyway, before everything went wrong.
Nick sighed and forced himself out of bed, stopping in the bathroom before he headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. While the coffee brewed he wandered out to the living room to turn on the television, flipping through the channels until he landed on CNN. He waited through stories about a shooting in New York, some celebrity who got another DUI, and the latest political disaster before the newscaster finally said the date, but when she did his heart sank.
December 24. But it was impossible; there was no way this was happening again, because if it was he really had gone crazy. People didn’t get caught in time loops, at least not outside the movies. Nick turned off the television and headed for his computer, turning on the monitor and holding his breath while he checked the date in the corner of the screen: December 24.
He pulled up Yahoo, then the local news station’s website, his heart sinking a little more every time he saw the date. And this couldn’t be happening, but it was, and he had no idea why. It wasn’t even like today was anything special; there was nothing going on in the lab, and his case was pretty straightforward. Unless they weren’t looking hard enough at their dead tourist, Nick didn’t get what he was missing.
Two cups of coffee and a shower later, Nick headed to work early. He wasn’t sure how, but he was going to figure out what he needed to do to fix whatever was happening to him. There had to be something he was missing, and if it took him all night he was going to find it. He had to, because if he didn’t he’d be living the same night over and over until he really did go crazy.
The past two nights he’d gotten to work too late to see Greg and Catherine before they left, but tonight he was the first one in. Instead of hanging around the break room he headed for an available computer and typed the name of tonight’s DB into CODIS. And it was a little creepy, knowing the name of the victim before he saw the case file, but the past two days had been pretty creepy, so he didn’t let it bother him.
Instead he searched the guy’s DMV records and dug around for any known aliases. He ran a list of all the guy’s addresses and the dates he’d moved on, hoping to uncover some kind of pattern that would prove this guy was a serial killer or a pedophile or something to explain why Nick had to keep processing his crime scene over and over.
He ran every report he could think of, but no matter how hard he looked, all signs pointed to this guy being the most boring loser in the world. He practically didn’t exist, and Nick was pretty sure there was no one back home to mourn his passing. It was depressing, and by the time Warrick tracked him down he sort of wished he hadn’t looked in the first place.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Nick answered, minimizing the screen before Warrick got a preview of the face they were about to discover dead in a motel. “Got here a little early, so I figured I’d catch up on some old cases.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a new one,” Warrick said, holding up the case file. “At that motor inn out by the airport, you know the one.”
“Yeah, I do,” Nick answered, swallowing a sigh as he stood up to follow Warrick.
And he knew he wasn’t going to find anything new, but Nick scoured the scene carefully anyway, hunting for any clue that would tell him why he kept ending up here. He ignored the weird looks Warrick kept giving him, pretended he was being thorough because it was their job and not because he needed answers. But there was nothing new at the scene, and by the time Warrick dragged him away Nick had to admit that all signs still pointed to a trick gone bad.
So the guy was rolled and murdered by a hooker or maybe her pimp, and that was probably the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him. Nick dropped off the evidence he’d collected in Hodges’ lab, not even bothering to announce his presence this time. Hodges wasn’t going to find anything different than he’d found the past two nights, and none of that had been any help at all. So it was up to Nick to find the answer, which meant a long night scouring every resource the county had for some kind of trail on this guy.
He went back to the computer first, running phone records and credit card charges. But nothing about the guy’s personal life told him anything; even his job was boring, and Nick couldn’t call the accounting firm where he’d worked until after the holiday. There was no surveillance video to sift through, no phone messages to play back or computer files to decipher. The guy was a non-entity, and unless he turned up something huge, Nick didn’t see how this case was important enough to keep investigating over and over.
He let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hands through his hair, closing his eyes tight against the headache pounding in his temples. When a door opened he blinked and looked up, frowning at the sight of Greg standing there with an armful of files.
“Sorry. I’ll find somewhere else to work.”
“No, I’m done anyway,” Nick said, standing up and holding out the chair for Greg. The sounds of the party going on down the hall drifted in behind Greg, and Nick realized with a start that he’d barely thought about what day it was since he got to work. “Big case?”
“No,” Greg said, and just for a second his eyes clouded. Then he blinked and it was gone, but Nick knew exactly what it meant. Catherine was right; Greg was having a hard time with their case, and it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’ve got a bunch of files to input though, so…”
“Yeah, sure,” Nick answered, but he stayed where he was, leaning back against the counter to watch while Greg settled into the computer chair and opened his first file. “You want some coffee or something? I bet I could fight my way through the party.”
“That’s not coffee.” The words tumbled out of Greg’s mouth automatically, but as soon as he said them he looked like he regretted it. “Thanks anyway. I just want to get this stuff done.”
Nick nodded even though Greg wasn’t looking at him, arms folded over his chest as he watched Greg’s fingers move across the keyboard. If he closed his eyes he could picture those fingers up close, see the tiny scar on the side of an index finger where a piece of glass had caught Greg during the explosion. He could feel the pressure of them on his skin, warm and sure and Nick shivered at the memory.
“Are you just going to stand there and watch me? Because it’s kind of creepy.”
A year ago that would have been a joke, or maybe an invitation. A year ago Greg would have smirked while he said it, and Nick would have tossed his better judgment out the window and crossed the room to whisper exactly what he wanted to watch Greg do. At least that’s what he should have done, but the truth was that a year ago he was still worried about what everyone else thought - what Grissom thought - and if Greg had said that to him he probably would have blushed and gone to find something else to do.
And Greg was saying it now, but he wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t teasing or flirting or any of the things that he’d been back then, and Nick wasn’t sure he’d ever get to see that smirk directed at him again. “Sorry. It’s been a weird night.”
He wasn’t sure what he expected Greg to say. The old Greg might have made a crack about how every night was weird in Vegas, or maybe he would have offered to help Nick forget about it after their shift. But this Greg…well, he didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t even look up, and Nick got the distinct impression that Greg was just waiting for him to give up and go away.
“Listen, G,” he tried again, “there’s something weird going on around here. I know it sounds crazy…”
“Aren’t you working with Warrick tonight?” Greg asked, glancing up long enough for Nick to catch the same annoyed expression he’d seen the last time he tried to talk to Greg. “Maybe you should be telling him this.”
“It’s not about a case. I just…”
“Look, Nick, I just want to get these files done so I can go home, all right?”
And that was it. Greg was blowing him off and there was nothing Nick could do about it. He couldn’t make Greg listen, and even if he kept talking Greg would just think he was crazy. Because it was crazy, and if Nick couldn’t believe what was happening to him, he couldn’t expect anyone else to, either. Only he’d kind of hoped…but it was stupid to think Greg would listen when he was the one who’d wanted to break up in the first place.
“Yeah, sure,” Nick said, pushing himself off the counter. He hesitated for a second or two, hoping that maybe Greg would change his mind and call him back. But he didn’t, and a minute later Nick was standing alone in the hallway, wondering if he was ever going to be able to fix any of this.
~
Nick’s fourth Christmas Eve started like all the rest. He checked the news and the Internet just in case, but it was still December 24th. And there had to be a reason for it, but it wasn’t the case he was working on. He’d exhausted every avenue he could think of on that case, and he knew Warrick thought he was crazy for working so hard on something so cut and dried. Except that Warrick wouldn’t remember any of that today, and Nick was starting over with a clean slate.
And maybe that was the whole point; a clean slate meant he had the chance to do everything differently, including the case he worked on. He got to the lab and headed straight for Grissom’s office, hoping to catch Catherine before she assigned cases. Convincing her to shuffle her assignments without making her think he was crazy was a problem, and he was so caught up in figuring out what to say to her that he didn’t see Greg coming toward him until it was too late.
They collided hard enough to send Nick backwards, nearly losing his balance before he righted himself and looked up. “Sorry. You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Greg answered, and for a second he looked almost amused. Nick’s heart skipped a beat at the glimmer of a smile, but before it really appeared it was gone again, and then Greg was moving past him. “Warrick’s looking for you.”
Which meant he was too late and cases had already been assigned. But Nick wasn’t going through another repeat of the last three nights, and if he could spare Greg another night of dealing with a suicide, maybe it would be worth it. He reached out before Greg could get away, closing a hand around his arm.
“Hey, maybe you should work with Rick tonight.”
“Why?”
This was the part he hadn’t worked out; it was one thing to ask Catherine if he could work with her, but he hadn’t figured out how to explain to Greg why he wanted to trade. Not without admitting that he was going crazy, and Greg wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“I got a look at the cases earlier,” he lied. “I just thought you’d rather spend Christmas Eve processing a motel room than dealing with a dead teenager.”
“Oh, so I can’t handle my cases now.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nick said, but he knew Greg wouldn’t believe him. He had no reason to, because that was exactly how it sounded. But he couldn’t tell Greg that he knew how all this ended, or even that he was just trying to spare him a little pain. He couldn’t say how much he missed the way Greg used to be before this job started coming down on him, that he wished they could go back to the days when Greg was the one to get the party started on every holiday, and sometimes just because it was a Thursday.
He missed a lot of things, but he couldn’t make Greg understand any of it without telling him what had been happening the past four days. And he wanted to, but he knew Greg wouldn’t believe him even if he tried.
“Forget it, Nick,” Greg said, and now he just looked pissed. “I don’t need to you save me from myself. Go find somebody else to rescue.”
It was the second time Greg had said that to him in four days, and it was the second time he turned around and walked away without an explanation. “What does that even mean?” Nick called after him, but Greg didn’t even turn around.
Nick let out a frustrated sigh and turned in the other direction only to find Warrick watching him. “What?” he snapped, and when Warrick held up his hands Nick felt a stab of guilt.
“Just wondering if you’re working tonight,” Warrick said, holding up their case. And Nick was getting really sick of processing the same motel room over and over again. If he was going to be stuck reliving the same crime scene on an endless loop, at least it could have been in a casino or something.
“Sorry,” Nick muttered, but he took the file and followed Warrick down the hall. “I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.”
“Forget it,” Warrick said as they stopped to pick up their kits. “Trouble in paradise?”
“I haven’t seen paradise in a long time,” Nick answered, and when Warrick made a face Nick couldn’t help laughing. “I mean things with Greg have been over for awhile.”
“So I heard,” Warrick said in that voice that told Nick he didn’t believe it for a minute.
Nick frowned but didn’t argue with him; he knew how the lab gossip mill worked, and he knew people were going to believe whatever they wanted. Nothing he said was going to convince anyone things between him and Greg were over, especially when they’d tried so hard to keep it quiet while it was happening. “It’s just…he keeps saying that.”
“What?”
”That I should find somebody else to rescue. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
And Nick could usually count on Warrick to be as clueless about this stuff as he was, at least when it came to Greg. But instead of shaking his head and commiserating about relationships, Warrick just laughed. “Man, you still haven’t figured that out?”
“What?” Nick asked, and now he was just getting annoyed. It was bad enough he had to keep reliving the same night - and when they pulled up in front of the motor inn for the fourth night his heart sank - but now Warrick was making fun of him.
“It’s your thing, man. Look, we all do this job for a reason, right?” Warrick said when Nick frowned at him. “For Sara it’s about the science. Gris....”
“Grissom does better with people who can’t talk back.”
“Exactly,” Warrick said. “Greg’s a frustrated rock star; he saw us in the spotlight for years, and he wanted a piece of the action. Catherine sticks with it because it’s as close to the nightlife as she can get and still look her kid in the eye. And you have a thing about saving people. Everybody knows that.”
“I’m just doing my job, man.”
“We all are,” Warrick answered as they stepped under the police tape and into the crime scene. “We’ve just got different reasons for it.”
“Yeah? So what about you?”
Warrick shrugged and glanced over at him, a wry grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “When I figure that one out, I’ll let you know.”
Nick laughed and set his kit down, digging out a pair of gloves and pulling them on. “Okay, so I like helping people out when they need it. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to rescue Greg from anything.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Warrick said, turning away to dig the camera out of its case. Nick could tell he wanted to say more…or maybe he didn’t, but he was thinking it anyway. And Nick probably didn’t want to hear it, but he opened his mouth before he could stop himself.
“What?”
Warrick snapped a picture of the corpse on the bed before he sighed and looked up at Nick. “Look, it’s none of my business, man.”
“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
Warrick rolled his eyes and lowered the camera. “I heard what you said to him before. I know you probably thought you were helping him out, but he’s a big boy. He’s proved that he can handle the job by now.”
“I know,” Nick said, but he knew Warrick had a point, and Greg probably had good reason to be angry. Nick had been trying to spare him the misery of dealing with a kid’s suicide, but he didn’t get why Greg would hold that against him. “But I didn’t do it because I thought he couldn’t handle it. I just thought he could use a break.”
Warrick shrugged and turned back to the crime scene, lifting the camera to take a few more pictures. “Like I said, none of my business.”
And it wasn’t, but Nick had a sinking feeling that Warrick understood the situation better than he did. The last few days had been way beyond weird, and the worst part was that Nick kept missing the point. If it wasn’t about the case and he couldn’t make Greg listen to him then there wasn’t much else he could do, but if he didn’t do something there was no telling how long he’d be stuck living the same day over and over.
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Warrick murmured from across the room, and Nick let out a heavy sigh.
“Yeah,” he said, and reached for his fingerprint kit. “It’s going to be a long night.”
~
On the fifth day, Nick had a plan. It was so simple that he could have kicked himself for not thinking of it before now. He told himself as he pulled into the coffee shop that it was better late than never, then he ordered the biggest cup of coffee he could get. It wasn’t as good as Greg’s - not even close - but it was caffeinated, and that was all that mattered.
He carried his giant cup into the lab and headed straight toward the break room, ignoring the Christmas decorations and the obnoxious music. This was the last night he was going to have to suffer through this; he was sure of that, because his plan had to work. When he reached the break room Greg was there, leaning into the fridge and Nick grinned at the back of his head before he cleared his throat. Greg started and straightened up, closing the fridge before he turned to look at Nick.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Greg said, eyeing Nick’s coffee. “How do you drink that stuff?”
“It’s not my first choice,” Nick answered, “but I don’t have your coffee budget. Besides, it’s never as good when you don’t make it.”
He didn’t mean to flirt with Greg; it was one of those things that just happened, but that was how Nick had gotten himself into this mess in the first place. And his life was a lot less complicated without Greg in it, but it wasn’t nearly as fun.
For a few seconds Greg just stared at him like he was trying to figure out what Nick was saying, exactly. And maybe Nick would have told him if he knew the answer, but it had been a long few days and he wasn’t sure which end was up anymore. All he knew was that if his plan worked, Greg would remember this tomorrow. And maybe it wouldn’t fix anything, but Nick was hoping it was a start. But Greg still wasn’t saying anything, and as the seconds ticked by Nick began to wonder if he could fix this.
“What are you doing?”
He wasn’t doing anything, as far as he knew, but it was obvious Greg thought he was. He was watching Nick with the same suspicious expression he used on suspects, and if Nick wasn’t so confused he might have thought it was cute. But it was exhausting, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing, and having to figure out Greg on top of that was more than he could take.
“Nothing,” he finally answered, shrugging and setting his coffee down. “I just thought…”
“Well don’t,” Greg interrupted, and now he just sounded mad. “Just…don’t.”
“Greg, wait,” Nick said, but he was already gone, the break room door swinging shut behind him. And Nick hadn’t expected a miracle, exactly, but he’d been hoping for a better reaction than that. He wasn’t even sure what that was, and if Greg kept taking off every time Nick tried to talk to him, he was never going to figure it out.
Nick sighed and followed Greg out of the room, down the hall to find Warrick and get started on their case. The thought of going through another night of chasing the same clues made him want to cry, and now he was going to spend the whole night trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong with Greg. He’d barely even said anything, and that was the part he didn’t get, because Greg had freaked out before Nick even got a chance to figure out what he was doing.
“Hey,” Warrick said when Nick caught up to him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Nick said, because he wasn’t having the same conversation with Warrick that they’d had the night before. “Let’s just get this over with.”
He processed the scene on autopilot, only half-listening to Warrick’s attempts at conversation. He’d heard the same words over and over now, and he just couldn’t work up the energy to answer anymore. All he wanted to do was get through their shift so he could go home and put his plan in motion, and then this whole miserable day would finally - finally - be over.
By the time they made it back to the lab Warrick was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but that wasn’t new either, so Nick just pretended he didn’t notice. He stopped by Hodges’ lab long enough to interrupt whatever he was trying to do with the girl from the photo lab, taking a twisted pleasure in watching her slip out the back door while Hodges argued with him.
Once Nick was sure he’d ruined Hodges’ night he finished the loose ends of his case as quickly as possible, going through the motions of running fingerprints and gathering the details about their vic’s life. There still wasn’t much to find out about him, and the more nights Nick spent running down this guy’s life, the more depressing it got. He was just so…alone, no one at home to care what happened to him in some city where no one even cared that he’d ever existed.
It was a waste; the guy had never really lived, and when he finally decided to try, he got himself killed. And Nick’s life wasn’t empty like this guy’s had been, but it wasn’t all that fulfilling either. There was only one way to fix that, though, and so far all Nick had done was make things even worse.
He tracked Greg down in the same conference room he’d found him in that first night, files spread out in front of him and a haunted expression on his face. When he looked up and found Nick standing in the doorway he looked sort of surprised for a second, then he frowned and looked down at his files. “What?”
“Rough case?”
“No,” Greg answered, but Nick knew him well enough to tell when he was lying. “The kid killed himself, no mystery there. Look, did you come in here to hear about my night? Because I’m trying to get this paperwork done.”
“No. I mean yeah…I mean…I just wanted to talk. Things have been pretty weird the past few days, G. I was hoping you could help me figure it out.”
“Weird how?”
And it wasn’t exactly enthusiasm, but it was progress, so Nick let the door close and stepped into the room. He pulled out a chair across from Greg and sat down, elbows resting on the table in front of him. “This is going to sound crazy.”
“’Abducted by aliens’ crazy or ‘I’m hearing voices’ crazy?”
Nick grinned at that, and when the corner of Greg’s mouth quirked into a half-smile his heart skipped a beat. “More like ‘call the guys in white coats’ crazy. I keep living the same day over and over.”
“So you're bothering me because you need a break from the monotony?”
“No,” Nick interrupted, and he wished it were that easy. “I mean the same day. Christmas Eve. Over and over. I’ve woken up on Christmas Eve five days in a row. I’ve worked that motel room with Rick five days in a row, and every morning I go home and wake up to the same day all over again.”
Greg didn’t say anything right away. He just sat there and looked at Nick for so long that Nick started to think maybe he wasn’t going to say anything at all, but finally he shook his head. “I saw that movie too, Nick. Did you really think I was going to fall for that?”
“I know how it sounds,” Nick said, but he could already tell Greg was never going to believe him. And for the first time since this all started he sort of hoped he’d wake up to Christmas Eve again tomorrow, because then Greg wouldn’t remember any of this. Only that meant living through it again, and he wasn’t sure which would be worse. “Look, G, I’ve got a plan. I just wanted you to know that I’m trying to fix it.”
”Trying to fix what?”
Us, he thought, but he didn't say it. He had no idea if Greg wanted to hear that, or even if it was true. What he really wanted was for this day to end once and for all, and he'd worry about what happened on Christmas day if he ever got there.
"I'll let you know when I figure it out," he said instead. "Listen, can we get together sometime? Maybe talk some more?"
As soon as he asked he knew it was the wrong thing to say, because Greg's expression shifted from curious to that guarded look he'd had every time he saw Nick recently. Then he wasn't looking at Nick at all; instead he turned his attention back to the table, gathering files and stacking them before he stood up.
"Look, I've got a lot of files to catch up on, and I want to get them done before I leave. I'll just catch you later, okay?"
"Greg," Nick began, but Greg was already headed for the door. "Can you just wait…"
The door swung shut while he was still in mid-sentence, and just like that Greg was gone. And that was starting to get really annoying, but Nick wasn't sure how to make him listen. If he could just wake up the next morning, maybe swing by Greg's place before their shift…if he could convince Greg somehow that he wasn't just screwing around…but he couldn't figure out how to do that when they kept having the same conversation over and over.
Part Two
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: NC17
Summary: What if you had all the time in the world to make things right?
…time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Warrick muttered, glancing up from the dead tourist in the bed long enough to frown at Nick.
“We’re doing better than him,” Nick answered, motioning toward the body. As far as they could tell their tourist was single and in town for no real reason, and that usually spelled a pretty depressing Christmas, especially in Vegas. His wallet had been cleaned out and his suitcase thoroughly rifled through, so it wasn’t a big leap to assume he’d been rolled and then murdered by a trick.
Still, Nick was glad for the distraction. He wasn't glad someone was dead, but he was just as happy not to think about what day it was. Given the choice between spending the night at home alone and working a case, he'd much rather be working. So he didn't mind when Grissom and Sara drew Christmas Eve off, even if it meant spending the night dusting for prints in a seedy motel room. It wasn't exactly glamorous, but it beat watching reruns on TV and waiting around for his mother to call.
Not that he really felt like being back home this year, either. Spending Christmas with his family meant pretending everything was fine, that he was still happy to be alone and working the same job he'd been doing for the past eight years. Not that he was unhappy, exactly; he didn't know what he was anymore, and most of the time he tried not to think about it. So it was just as well he was working Christmas Eve, because it meant by the time their shift was over and he got some sleep, Christmas would already be behind him.
And it was funny how much things could change in a year, because last Christmas…but he wasn't thinking about that. He wasn't thinking about anything except evidence and motives, and when their shift was finally over all he was going to think about was bed. Alone, and that wasn't the way he'd been hoping this Christmas would go.
"You ready?" Warrick asked, and Nick nodded and straightened up. He swept the room one last time to make sure they hadn't forgotten anything, then packed up his kit and followed Warrick back to the truck.
"You know we're going to have to run most of this stuff ourselves," Nick said as he set the box full of evidence in the back of the truck.
"I'm sure Hodges can drag himself away from the karaoke machine long enough to do his job."
Nick grinned and climbed into the passenger seat. "He's not going to like it."
"Yeah, well, you can be persuasive." Warrick set his jaw and pulled onto the deserted street, pointing the truck back toward the lab.
Twenty minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot, and Nick swallowed a sigh. Christmas Eve at the lab was the same every year, and usually he got a kick out of it. There was a ton of junk food weighing down the table in the break room, decorations all over the place and Christmas music playing at a volume that could wake the dead. Everyone inside was a lot more interested in celebrating than they were in processing evidence, and unless there was a really tricky case on the books Grissom let them get away with it.
Most years Nick wouldn't care; he'd blown off work on more than one Christmas Eve himself, but now that he was back at the lab all he wanted to do was get his job done and go home. Because yeah, his house was empty and kind of depressing, but at least everything there didn't remind him of what he was missing.
He grabbed his kit and the evidence and followed Warrick inside, footsteps slowing the closer they got to the door. From the outside it looked like just another night at the crime lab, but the second Warrick opened the door they were hit with a wall of sound. Christmas music was blasting from somewhere nearby, voices shouting over it and someone was laughing somewhere down the hall.
Nick took a deep breath and followed Warrick inside, heading straight for the trace lab. He ducked inside and shut the door against the music; it muffled the sound a little, but not that much. He expected to find the place empty, but to his surprise Hodges was inside, and he wasn't alone. He hadn't heard Nick come in, though how anyone in the lab could hear anything tonight Nick wasn't sure. Hodges had his back to Nick, and somehow he'd managed to corner one of the girls from the darkroom in his lab.
Nick had only dealt with her a few times, but she'd seemed pretty normal then. What she was doing alone with Hodges he wasn't sure, but from the way Hodges was leaning into her, Nick was pretty sure it didn't have anything to do with a case. Nick waited another couple seconds, but when Hodges leaned in for the kill he cleared his throat.
"Hey," he said when Hodges flinched and looked up. "I need you to run these."
"Now?" Hodges asked - no, he was definitely whining. "Can't it wait? It’s not like the guy’s going to come back to life overnight."
"Just do it, Hodges," Nick said. "Besides, it looks to me like you've got plenty of time."
Hodges turned in time to watch his girl slip out the back door of the lab, and Nick took the opportunity to leave out the front. He could hear Hodges swearing behind him, and he smiled to himself as he headed down the hall. The noise was even louder now, like the party had spilled out of the break room and was headed straight for him. He ducked down a hallway, but the noise just seemed to get louder, voices bearing down on him from what sounded like both directions. And he didn't want to deal with this, didn't want to explain why he wasn't in the mood to celebrate.
He ducked into the nearest room as the voices closed in on him, closing the door behind him and pressing his back to it. He waited for the voices to pass, but as soon as he shut the door they were gone. And that was weird, because the lab was a lot of things, but it definitely wasn't soundproof. Nick frowned and looked around the room for the first time, but when he saw that he wasn't alone he forgot all about the people outside.
Greg was sitting at the table in the center of the room, files spread out around him and his headphones hanging around his neck. He was frowning like Nick had interrupted something, but from the looks of it he was just doing paperwork. "What are you doing?"
"Avoiding the party," Nick answered. "What are you doing?"
"Trying to find a quiet place to catch up on these," Greg said, gesturing at the case files in front of him. "And I've still got a ways to go, so if you don't mind…"
"You're doing paperwork on Christmas Eve? Usually you're the life of the party."
"Yeah, well, things change."
Greg wasn't looking at him anymore. He'd been doing that a lot lately, avoiding eye contact and only talking to Nick when he had to. And Nick had been sort of relieved, because the last thing he wanted to do was talk about what had happened between them. Not that there was much to talk about; there hadn’t been a big argument, or even a conversation, really. Greg had asked for some space and Nick had given it to him, and when he never brought it up again, Nick just…let it go. Relationships ended all the time; that's what he told himself whenever he caught himself thinking about it, and in their line of work he was surprised they’d lasted as long as they did.
So yeah, things changed. But Greg had always loved Christmas Eve at the lab, and to find him hiding out with his head buried in a stack of paperwork…well, it was kind of weird. Except that it wasn’t, at least not lately. Lately Greg had been serious all the time, focused and efficient and Nick had been sort of proud of him. Except that he wasn’t any fun anymore, and if things weren’t so weird between them Nick might have taken him out for a beer and tried to figure out why.
That’s what he would do if it were Warrick. But with Greg a couple beers could lead places Warrick would never go, and Nick wasn’t sure he wanted to complicate things again. It was hard, dating a coworker, worrying constantly when Greg was out on a case. Or worrying about his own focus when he and Greg were assigned to a case together, waiting for the day Grissom would call him in and tell him it was his relationship or his job. It was easier not to have to worry about that stuff, even if it meant going home to an empty bed every night.
At least it would have been easier if he didn’t know what he was missing. But he did, and no matter how many times he told himself they were better off, he still caught himself wondering what he could have done differently. Not all the time, but often enough to make him wish he’d stayed out in the hall and let the party catch up to him.
“Listen, G…”
Greg let out a sigh and looked up, and the look on his face made Nick’s heart twist. “Look, I really want to get these done, okay?”
And yeah, Nick got what he was saying, but it wasn’t okay. It was anything but okay, because just a year ago they would have done anything for this much time alone in the lab, and now Greg was trying to get rid of him. He knew he should just let it go, that he should leave Greg to it and go find somewhere else to hide out until his results were ready. He even started to pull the door open, but before he was halfway out of the room he glanced back to find Greg watching him.
Just for a second, then Greg ducked his head again, but it was long enough for Nick to catch his expression. Long enough to see that Greg hadn’t forgotten, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he’d never thought of Nick as anything other than a coworker. “Look, it’s…”
“What do you want from me?” Greg interrupted, and when he looked up this time his expression was unreadable.
“I don’t know,” Nick answered, because it was the truth. He’d been about to remind Greg that it was Christmas; paperwork could wait until tomorrow, or maybe even the next day. They were always backed up on old files, and Greg didn’t have to drive himself crazy trying to impress anybody anymore. He’d proved himself, and Nick would have told him all that if he hadn’t seen the look on Greg’s face.
“Just leave me alone, Nick. Go find somebody else to rescue.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Nick asked, but Greg wasn’t listening. He was gathering up the files spread out in front of him, and a second later he was brushing past Nick into the hallway without so much as a backwards glance.
Nick wasn’t sure how long he stood there watching Greg walk away, but it wasn’t until his pager beeped that he realized he was staring down an empty hallway. The party noise had all but died away, and he let out a sigh and turned to retrace his steps back to Hodges’ lab. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but the sooner he wrapped up his case and called it a night, the better off he’d be.
~
Nick woke with a nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right, and he still hadn’t shaken it by the time he got back to the lab. Maybe it was because his mother had never called to wish him a Merry Christmas. He told himself he should be grateful; not talking to his family meant he could avoid thinking about Christmas altogether, and by the time they remembered to call him he’d have snapped out of the weird funk he’d fallen into.
But something still felt…off, and he glanced over his shoulder more than once as he made his way into the lab. Decorations were still hanging on the reception desk and down the halls, but they usually stayed up for a long time after Christmas was over. Someone was playing Christmas music, too, but that, at least, Grissom would put an end to after tonight.
Nick dropped his stuff in his locker and put on his vest and badge, then joined Warrick in the break room. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Warrick answered, glancing up from the case file he was holding. “You’re with me tonight. Night manager found a John Doe in one of the rooms at the motor inn out by the airport.”
“Another one?”
“Just another night in Vegas,” Warrick said. “Listen, I’ll meet you out there. I’ve got a couple calls to make.”
“But we were just there last night,” Nick said, but Warrick was already gone. Nick frowned and followed him out of the break room, stopping long enough to grab his keys and his kit. And now he was sure there was something wrong, because that was the second death in the same motel in two days, and Warrick didn’t seem concerned that they could be dealing with a serial killer. Or a really sloppy killer, and Nick wasn’t sure which one was more dangerous.
When he reached the motor inn he pulled into a parking spot and turned off the engine, frowning in his rearview mirror at the uniforms swarming around the crime scene. They weren’t far from the room they’d worked the night before; as a matter of fact, they were pretty much right on top of it. Nick grabbed his kit and headed toward the room in question, footsteps slowing as he reached the open door.
“The same room? What’s the killer doing, paying by the week?”
The uniform closest to him shot him a weird look, but Nick ignored it and went inside. He stopped just inside the door and waited for his eyes to adjust to the change in light, then set his kit on the carpet and opened it. As he reached for a pair of gloves he caught sight of what he assumed was the victim’s suitcase, and sure enough, when he looked up there was the same black suitcase he’d seen the night before. Granted, it wasn’t exactly uncommon; practically every businessman who came through Vegas owned one of those things. But Nick couldn’t help thinking something was really wrong, and when he stood up and crossed to the bed the hair on the back of his neck prickled.
“What the…?”
There was no way this could be happening. Someone had to be playing an elaborate and really unfunny joke, because there was no way…yet there the guy was, lying in the exact same position he’d been in the night before. The blood patterns were the same as the ones Warrick had photographed, and the same glassy eyes were staring up at nothing.
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas.”
Nick started at the sound of Warrick’s voice, but it was the words themselves that made his heart skip a beat. He watched Warrick set his own kit down and swing the camera bag off his shoulder, watched him take out the camera and attach the flash before he got his voice to work.
“Is this a joke?”
“Looks like a corpse to me.”
“I’m serious.”
And now Warrick was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but Nick was pretty sure he hadn’t gone crazy. At least he thought he hadn’t, but he couldn’t be positive. Not when he was staring at the same crime scene they’d already processed only twenty-four hours ago.
“What’s with you tonight?” Warrick asked as he crossed to the bed and started snapping pictures. It was exactly what he’d done the night before, and now that Nick thought about it, he was wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night, too.
“You’re telling me you don’t remember any of this.”
“What are you talking about? I just got here.”
“No,” Nick said, letting out a frustrated sigh and gesturing toward the corpse on the bed. “I mean last night. We worked this scene already, man. You were bitching about having to work Christmas Eve. Don't you remember?”
And okay, definitely the wrong thing to say, because now Warrick was looking at him like he was dangerous and crazy. “Nick, man, tonight is Christmas Eve."
“But…” Nick trailed off, mouth opening and closing a few times before he gave up. He was sure he'd been here before; sure they'd already worked this case and gone through this whole miserable night. He'd made it through Christmas Eve already, he was positive. But if this was all a joke it had gone on way too long, and Warrick wasn't that good an actor.
"Maybe you should go home, get some rest," Warrick said, and Nick could tell he was trying not to call Nick crazy to his face. But he felt crazy, and part of him wondered if maybe he should take Warrick's advice.
Instead he shook his head and turned toward his kit so he wouldn't have to see the look on Warrick's face. "Forget it. Must have been a dream."
"Hell of a dream."
"Yeah." And it must have been a dream, except that Nick knew it wasn’t. He’d already worked this case, lifted a thousand useless fingerprints from this room, collected the same evidence he was about to collect again. He remembered every detail, and he couldn’t have dreamed all that. But the only other explanation was that he’d lost his mind, and if that was true he had much bigger problems than spending Christmas alone.
They worked the rest of the scene in silence, and Nick tried to ignore the wary looks Warrick shot him every so often. Working the same scene twice made it a little easier, anyway, and he was finished collecting evidence by the time Warrick was ready to go. He was grateful they’d taken separate cars tonight, because he didn’t think he could deal with riding back to the lab and pretending he didn’t know exactly what Warrick was thinking. And Nick was thinking the same thing; he’d finally snapped, the job had finally gotten to him and he’d lost it. The problem was that he wasn’t sure what to do about it.
As soon as he got back to the lab he headed straight for trace, but when he pushed the door open he stopped short. Hodges was there, exactly where Nick had found him the night before, and he had the same girl cornered behind his workstation. He couldn't tell from where he was standing whether or not the girl needed rescuing, but for once he didn't really care. All he really cared about was making it through the night. Again.
"Hodges.”
Hodges flinched and looked up exactly the way he had the last time they did this. “What?”
“You’ve got work to do,” Nick answered, dropping the samples in his box and heading back toward the door.
“Can’t it wait? It’s not like…”
“Just do it,” Nick interrupted, not bothering to look over his shoulder to see if the girl had made her escape again. The last thing he needed was another confirmation that he was losing it; it was like walking around in a constant state of déjà vu, and the sooner he got out of the lab and went home, the sooner it would all be over.
He deliberately avoided the hall he’d gone down the night before, heading straight toward the sounds of the party instead. There was still the possibility that Warrick was wrong; maybe he was the one who’d lost a day, and the party going on in the break room was just a continuation from last night. Only that didn’t explain the fact that they’d just worked the same crime scene two nights in a row.
Nick shook his head and pushed open the break room door, cutting a wide path around the mistletoe hanging near the microwave. He reached the coffee maker without incident and poured himself a cup, breathing in the rich scent and trying not to hear the conversations going on around him. It was hard to ignore that many excited voices, though, and when he caught someone rattling off their plans for Christmas day, he knew Warrick hadn’t been the one who’d gotten his days wrong.
“You okay? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
Nick turned to find Catherine watching him, and when he moved out of the way she reached for her own cup of coffee. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
“Yeah, this case is a real bitch,” she answered. “Suicide. Just what you want to deal with on Christmas Eve.”
Nick nodded and took a sip of coffee, wincing at the bitter flavor that told him Greg wasn’t the one who’d made it. “We’ve all been there.”
“All of us except Greg. He’s having a pretty rough night,” Catherine said, glancing around the room like she expected to see Greg lurking nearby. But he wasn’t around, and Nick had a sinking feeling he knew exactly where Greg was. And now he knew what had been bothering Greg when Nick found him alone in a room doing paperwork instead of partying with the rest of the lab. It wasn’t the first suicide Greg had ever dealt with, but it was always a little harder to take during the holidays, especially when they were working instead of home with their families.
Only neither of them had family in town, and this year they didn’t have anyone at all. At least Nick assumed Greg wasn’t seeing anyone; he hadn’t mentioned anyone, but that didn’t mean much. He didn’t talk to Nick anymore, not the way he used to before, back when they were just friends. After they stopped sleeping together Nick sort of hoped they’d go back to the way it was before, but now he was pretty sure that was never going to happen.
“Earth to Nick.”
Nick started at the sound of Catherine’s voice, blushing when he realized she’d been trying to get his attention for a little while. “Sorry, what?”
“I asked if you’ve seen Greg. I should check on him, make sure he’s okay.”
Nick started to offer to do it himself. The words were right there on the tip of his tongue, It’s okay, I’ll find him, like it was his responsibility. Maybe it had been, once. Maybe Catherine was waiting for him to offer, he couldn’t tell. But he’d already blown it once, and if he was going to relive the same night twice he didn’t want to have to relive the look on Greg’s face when he told Nick to get lost.
“He’s in the small conference room by the trace lab. I think he’s catching up on paperwork.”
For a minute Catherine just looked at him, and Nick could tell she wanted to say something. But before he figured out what it was, she shrugged and set her coffee down. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” he called after her as he watched her cross the room and head down the hall in search of Greg. And he wasn’t sorry he hadn’t gone himself; he’d already tried talking to Greg, and one day wasn’t going to make any difference.
~
Nick woke to the beeping of his alarm clock. He let out a groan and pushed one arm out from under the covers to turn it off, then flipped over onto his back. He should get up and take a shower, find some clothes and get to the lab a little early for once. What he wanted to do was close his eyes and go right back to sleep, forget about work and the weird day he’d had yesterday. He just wanted to keep sleeping until everything went back to normal, but he was starting to think it never would.
Greg hated him, and Nick had never meant for that to happen. He wasn’t even sure how it happened, because Greg was the one who’d ended things between them. And he got it; he understood why Greg wanted space. At least he’d thought at the time that he did. They just spent too much time together, and there was no way they could work together and not bring their cases home with them. So the easiest solution seemed to be to stop going home together at all, no matter how much Nick missed it.
He missed having someone to wake up with, missed arguing over the Sunday paper and trying to figure out whose cell phone was ringing in the middle of the night. He missed breakfasts after their shift was over and he missed calls in the middle of a case just so he could hear Greg’s voice. He missed Greg, only he hadn’t realized how much until it was too late.
And it was definitely too late. The look on Greg’s face last night - no, the night before last - had proved that. Nick had never been all that great at relationships, but he knew when to take a hint, and Greg didn’t have to spell it out for him to get the message. Still, he’d somehow lived through the same day twice, and the only person he really wanted to talk to about it was Greg. Greg who wouldn’t believe him anyway, but at least he’d listen. Or he would have, anyway, before everything went wrong.
Nick sighed and forced himself out of bed, stopping in the bathroom before he headed to the kitchen to make some coffee. While the coffee brewed he wandered out to the living room to turn on the television, flipping through the channels until he landed on CNN. He waited through stories about a shooting in New York, some celebrity who got another DUI, and the latest political disaster before the newscaster finally said the date, but when she did his heart sank.
December 24. But it was impossible; there was no way this was happening again, because if it was he really had gone crazy. People didn’t get caught in time loops, at least not outside the movies. Nick turned off the television and headed for his computer, turning on the monitor and holding his breath while he checked the date in the corner of the screen: December 24.
He pulled up Yahoo, then the local news station’s website, his heart sinking a little more every time he saw the date. And this couldn’t be happening, but it was, and he had no idea why. It wasn’t even like today was anything special; there was nothing going on in the lab, and his case was pretty straightforward. Unless they weren’t looking hard enough at their dead tourist, Nick didn’t get what he was missing.
Two cups of coffee and a shower later, Nick headed to work early. He wasn’t sure how, but he was going to figure out what he needed to do to fix whatever was happening to him. There had to be something he was missing, and if it took him all night he was going to find it. He had to, because if he didn’t he’d be living the same night over and over until he really did go crazy.
The past two nights he’d gotten to work too late to see Greg and Catherine before they left, but tonight he was the first one in. Instead of hanging around the break room he headed for an available computer and typed the name of tonight’s DB into CODIS. And it was a little creepy, knowing the name of the victim before he saw the case file, but the past two days had been pretty creepy, so he didn’t let it bother him.
Instead he searched the guy’s DMV records and dug around for any known aliases. He ran a list of all the guy’s addresses and the dates he’d moved on, hoping to uncover some kind of pattern that would prove this guy was a serial killer or a pedophile or something to explain why Nick had to keep processing his crime scene over and over.
He ran every report he could think of, but no matter how hard he looked, all signs pointed to this guy being the most boring loser in the world. He practically didn’t exist, and Nick was pretty sure there was no one back home to mourn his passing. It was depressing, and by the time Warrick tracked him down he sort of wished he hadn’t looked in the first place.
“Hey. What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Nick answered, minimizing the screen before Warrick got a preview of the face they were about to discover dead in a motel. “Got here a little early, so I figured I’d catch up on some old cases.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a new one,” Warrick said, holding up the case file. “At that motor inn out by the airport, you know the one.”
“Yeah, I do,” Nick answered, swallowing a sigh as he stood up to follow Warrick.
And he knew he wasn’t going to find anything new, but Nick scoured the scene carefully anyway, hunting for any clue that would tell him why he kept ending up here. He ignored the weird looks Warrick kept giving him, pretended he was being thorough because it was their job and not because he needed answers. But there was nothing new at the scene, and by the time Warrick dragged him away Nick had to admit that all signs still pointed to a trick gone bad.
So the guy was rolled and murdered by a hooker or maybe her pimp, and that was probably the most interesting thing that had ever happened to him. Nick dropped off the evidence he’d collected in Hodges’ lab, not even bothering to announce his presence this time. Hodges wasn’t going to find anything different than he’d found the past two nights, and none of that had been any help at all. So it was up to Nick to find the answer, which meant a long night scouring every resource the county had for some kind of trail on this guy.
He went back to the computer first, running phone records and credit card charges. But nothing about the guy’s personal life told him anything; even his job was boring, and Nick couldn’t call the accounting firm where he’d worked until after the holiday. There was no surveillance video to sift through, no phone messages to play back or computer files to decipher. The guy was a non-entity, and unless he turned up something huge, Nick didn’t see how this case was important enough to keep investigating over and over.
He let out a frustrated sigh and ran his hands through his hair, closing his eyes tight against the headache pounding in his temples. When a door opened he blinked and looked up, frowning at the sight of Greg standing there with an armful of files.
“Sorry. I’ll find somewhere else to work.”
“No, I’m done anyway,” Nick said, standing up and holding out the chair for Greg. The sounds of the party going on down the hall drifted in behind Greg, and Nick realized with a start that he’d barely thought about what day it was since he got to work. “Big case?”
“No,” Greg said, and just for a second his eyes clouded. Then he blinked and it was gone, but Nick knew exactly what it meant. Catherine was right; Greg was having a hard time with their case, and it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. “I’ve got a bunch of files to input though, so…”
“Yeah, sure,” Nick answered, but he stayed where he was, leaning back against the counter to watch while Greg settled into the computer chair and opened his first file. “You want some coffee or something? I bet I could fight my way through the party.”
“That’s not coffee.” The words tumbled out of Greg’s mouth automatically, but as soon as he said them he looked like he regretted it. “Thanks anyway. I just want to get this stuff done.”
Nick nodded even though Greg wasn’t looking at him, arms folded over his chest as he watched Greg’s fingers move across the keyboard. If he closed his eyes he could picture those fingers up close, see the tiny scar on the side of an index finger where a piece of glass had caught Greg during the explosion. He could feel the pressure of them on his skin, warm and sure and Nick shivered at the memory.
“Are you just going to stand there and watch me? Because it’s kind of creepy.”
A year ago that would have been a joke, or maybe an invitation. A year ago Greg would have smirked while he said it, and Nick would have tossed his better judgment out the window and crossed the room to whisper exactly what he wanted to watch Greg do. At least that’s what he should have done, but the truth was that a year ago he was still worried about what everyone else thought - what Grissom thought - and if Greg had said that to him he probably would have blushed and gone to find something else to do.
And Greg was saying it now, but he wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t teasing or flirting or any of the things that he’d been back then, and Nick wasn’t sure he’d ever get to see that smirk directed at him again. “Sorry. It’s been a weird night.”
He wasn’t sure what he expected Greg to say. The old Greg might have made a crack about how every night was weird in Vegas, or maybe he would have offered to help Nick forget about it after their shift. But this Greg…well, he didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t even look up, and Nick got the distinct impression that Greg was just waiting for him to give up and go away.
“Listen, G,” he tried again, “there’s something weird going on around here. I know it sounds crazy…”
“Aren’t you working with Warrick tonight?” Greg asked, glancing up long enough for Nick to catch the same annoyed expression he’d seen the last time he tried to talk to Greg. “Maybe you should be telling him this.”
“It’s not about a case. I just…”
“Look, Nick, I just want to get these files done so I can go home, all right?”
And that was it. Greg was blowing him off and there was nothing Nick could do about it. He couldn’t make Greg listen, and even if he kept talking Greg would just think he was crazy. Because it was crazy, and if Nick couldn’t believe what was happening to him, he couldn’t expect anyone else to, either. Only he’d kind of hoped…but it was stupid to think Greg would listen when he was the one who’d wanted to break up in the first place.
“Yeah, sure,” Nick said, pushing himself off the counter. He hesitated for a second or two, hoping that maybe Greg would change his mind and call him back. But he didn’t, and a minute later Nick was standing alone in the hallway, wondering if he was ever going to be able to fix any of this.
~
Nick’s fourth Christmas Eve started like all the rest. He checked the news and the Internet just in case, but it was still December 24th. And there had to be a reason for it, but it wasn’t the case he was working on. He’d exhausted every avenue he could think of on that case, and he knew Warrick thought he was crazy for working so hard on something so cut and dried. Except that Warrick wouldn’t remember any of that today, and Nick was starting over with a clean slate.
And maybe that was the whole point; a clean slate meant he had the chance to do everything differently, including the case he worked on. He got to the lab and headed straight for Grissom’s office, hoping to catch Catherine before she assigned cases. Convincing her to shuffle her assignments without making her think he was crazy was a problem, and he was so caught up in figuring out what to say to her that he didn’t see Greg coming toward him until it was too late.
They collided hard enough to send Nick backwards, nearly losing his balance before he righted himself and looked up. “Sorry. You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” Greg answered, and for a second he looked almost amused. Nick’s heart skipped a beat at the glimmer of a smile, but before it really appeared it was gone again, and then Greg was moving past him. “Warrick’s looking for you.”
Which meant he was too late and cases had already been assigned. But Nick wasn’t going through another repeat of the last three nights, and if he could spare Greg another night of dealing with a suicide, maybe it would be worth it. He reached out before Greg could get away, closing a hand around his arm.
“Hey, maybe you should work with Rick tonight.”
“Why?”
This was the part he hadn’t worked out; it was one thing to ask Catherine if he could work with her, but he hadn’t figured out how to explain to Greg why he wanted to trade. Not without admitting that he was going crazy, and Greg wouldn’t believe him anyway.
“I got a look at the cases earlier,” he lied. “I just thought you’d rather spend Christmas Eve processing a motel room than dealing with a dead teenager.”
“Oh, so I can’t handle my cases now.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Nick said, but he knew Greg wouldn’t believe him. He had no reason to, because that was exactly how it sounded. But he couldn’t tell Greg that he knew how all this ended, or even that he was just trying to spare him a little pain. He couldn’t say how much he missed the way Greg used to be before this job started coming down on him, that he wished they could go back to the days when Greg was the one to get the party started on every holiday, and sometimes just because it was a Thursday.
He missed a lot of things, but he couldn’t make Greg understand any of it without telling him what had been happening the past four days. And he wanted to, but he knew Greg wouldn’t believe him even if he tried.
“Forget it, Nick,” Greg said, and now he just looked pissed. “I don’t need to you save me from myself. Go find somebody else to rescue.”
It was the second time Greg had said that to him in four days, and it was the second time he turned around and walked away without an explanation. “What does that even mean?” Nick called after him, but Greg didn’t even turn around.
Nick let out a frustrated sigh and turned in the other direction only to find Warrick watching him. “What?” he snapped, and when Warrick held up his hands Nick felt a stab of guilt.
“Just wondering if you’re working tonight,” Warrick said, holding up their case. And Nick was getting really sick of processing the same motel room over and over again. If he was going to be stuck reliving the same crime scene on an endless loop, at least it could have been in a casino or something.
“Sorry,” Nick muttered, but he took the file and followed Warrick down the hall. “I shouldn’t have taken that out on you.”
“Forget it,” Warrick said as they stopped to pick up their kits. “Trouble in paradise?”
“I haven’t seen paradise in a long time,” Nick answered, and when Warrick made a face Nick couldn’t help laughing. “I mean things with Greg have been over for awhile.”
“So I heard,” Warrick said in that voice that told Nick he didn’t believe it for a minute.
Nick frowned but didn’t argue with him; he knew how the lab gossip mill worked, and he knew people were going to believe whatever they wanted. Nothing he said was going to convince anyone things between him and Greg were over, especially when they’d tried so hard to keep it quiet while it was happening. “It’s just…he keeps saying that.”
“What?”
”That I should find somebody else to rescue. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
And Nick could usually count on Warrick to be as clueless about this stuff as he was, at least when it came to Greg. But instead of shaking his head and commiserating about relationships, Warrick just laughed. “Man, you still haven’t figured that out?”
“What?” Nick asked, and now he was just getting annoyed. It was bad enough he had to keep reliving the same night - and when they pulled up in front of the motor inn for the fourth night his heart sank - but now Warrick was making fun of him.
“It’s your thing, man. Look, we all do this job for a reason, right?” Warrick said when Nick frowned at him. “For Sara it’s about the science. Gris....”
“Grissom does better with people who can’t talk back.”
“Exactly,” Warrick said. “Greg’s a frustrated rock star; he saw us in the spotlight for years, and he wanted a piece of the action. Catherine sticks with it because it’s as close to the nightlife as she can get and still look her kid in the eye. And you have a thing about saving people. Everybody knows that.”
“I’m just doing my job, man.”
“We all are,” Warrick answered as they stepped under the police tape and into the crime scene. “We’ve just got different reasons for it.”
“Yeah? So what about you?”
Warrick shrugged and glanced over at him, a wry grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “When I figure that one out, I’ll let you know.”
Nick laughed and set his kit down, digging out a pair of gloves and pulling them on. “Okay, so I like helping people out when they need it. That doesn’t mean I’m trying to rescue Greg from anything.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Okay,” Warrick said, turning away to dig the camera out of its case. Nick could tell he wanted to say more…or maybe he didn’t, but he was thinking it anyway. And Nick probably didn’t want to hear it, but he opened his mouth before he could stop himself.
“What?”
Warrick snapped a picture of the corpse on the bed before he sighed and looked up at Nick. “Look, it’s none of my business, man.”
“If you’ve got something to say, say it.”
Warrick rolled his eyes and lowered the camera. “I heard what you said to him before. I know you probably thought you were helping him out, but he’s a big boy. He’s proved that he can handle the job by now.”
“I know,” Nick said, but he knew Warrick had a point, and Greg probably had good reason to be angry. Nick had been trying to spare him the misery of dealing with a kid’s suicide, but he didn’t get why Greg would hold that against him. “But I didn’t do it because I thought he couldn’t handle it. I just thought he could use a break.”
Warrick shrugged and turned back to the crime scene, lifting the camera to take a few more pictures. “Like I said, none of my business.”
And it wasn’t, but Nick had a sinking feeling that Warrick understood the situation better than he did. The last few days had been way beyond weird, and the worst part was that Nick kept missing the point. If it wasn’t about the case and he couldn’t make Greg listen to him then there wasn’t much else he could do, but if he didn’t do something there was no telling how long he’d be stuck living the same day over and over.
“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Warrick murmured from across the room, and Nick let out a heavy sigh.
“Yeah,” he said, and reached for his fingerprint kit. “It’s going to be a long night.”
~
On the fifth day, Nick had a plan. It was so simple that he could have kicked himself for not thinking of it before now. He told himself as he pulled into the coffee shop that it was better late than never, then he ordered the biggest cup of coffee he could get. It wasn’t as good as Greg’s - not even close - but it was caffeinated, and that was all that mattered.
He carried his giant cup into the lab and headed straight toward the break room, ignoring the Christmas decorations and the obnoxious music. This was the last night he was going to have to suffer through this; he was sure of that, because his plan had to work. When he reached the break room Greg was there, leaning into the fridge and Nick grinned at the back of his head before he cleared his throat. Greg started and straightened up, closing the fridge before he turned to look at Nick.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” Greg said, eyeing Nick’s coffee. “How do you drink that stuff?”
“It’s not my first choice,” Nick answered, “but I don’t have your coffee budget. Besides, it’s never as good when you don’t make it.”
He didn’t mean to flirt with Greg; it was one of those things that just happened, but that was how Nick had gotten himself into this mess in the first place. And his life was a lot less complicated without Greg in it, but it wasn’t nearly as fun.
For a few seconds Greg just stared at him like he was trying to figure out what Nick was saying, exactly. And maybe Nick would have told him if he knew the answer, but it had been a long few days and he wasn’t sure which end was up anymore. All he knew was that if his plan worked, Greg would remember this tomorrow. And maybe it wouldn’t fix anything, but Nick was hoping it was a start. But Greg still wasn’t saying anything, and as the seconds ticked by Nick began to wonder if he could fix this.
“What are you doing?”
He wasn’t doing anything, as far as he knew, but it was obvious Greg thought he was. He was watching Nick with the same suspicious expression he used on suspects, and if Nick wasn’t so confused he might have thought it was cute. But it was exhausting, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be doing, and having to figure out Greg on top of that was more than he could take.
“Nothing,” he finally answered, shrugging and setting his coffee down. “I just thought…”
“Well don’t,” Greg interrupted, and now he just sounded mad. “Just…don’t.”
“Greg, wait,” Nick said, but he was already gone, the break room door swinging shut behind him. And Nick hadn’t expected a miracle, exactly, but he’d been hoping for a better reaction than that. He wasn’t even sure what that was, and if Greg kept taking off every time Nick tried to talk to him, he was never going to figure it out.
Nick sighed and followed Greg out of the room, down the hall to find Warrick and get started on their case. The thought of going through another night of chasing the same clues made him want to cry, and now he was going to spend the whole night trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong with Greg. He’d barely even said anything, and that was the part he didn’t get, because Greg had freaked out before Nick even got a chance to figure out what he was doing.
“Hey,” Warrick said when Nick caught up to him. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” Nick said, because he wasn’t having the same conversation with Warrick that they’d had the night before. “Let’s just get this over with.”
He processed the scene on autopilot, only half-listening to Warrick’s attempts at conversation. He’d heard the same words over and over now, and he just couldn’t work up the energy to answer anymore. All he wanted to do was get through their shift so he could go home and put his plan in motion, and then this whole miserable day would finally - finally - be over.
By the time they made it back to the lab Warrick was looking at him like he’d lost his mind, but that wasn’t new either, so Nick just pretended he didn’t notice. He stopped by Hodges’ lab long enough to interrupt whatever he was trying to do with the girl from the photo lab, taking a twisted pleasure in watching her slip out the back door while Hodges argued with him.
Once Nick was sure he’d ruined Hodges’ night he finished the loose ends of his case as quickly as possible, going through the motions of running fingerprints and gathering the details about their vic’s life. There still wasn’t much to find out about him, and the more nights Nick spent running down this guy’s life, the more depressing it got. He was just so…alone, no one at home to care what happened to him in some city where no one even cared that he’d ever existed.
It was a waste; the guy had never really lived, and when he finally decided to try, he got himself killed. And Nick’s life wasn’t empty like this guy’s had been, but it wasn’t all that fulfilling either. There was only one way to fix that, though, and so far all Nick had done was make things even worse.
He tracked Greg down in the same conference room he’d found him in that first night, files spread out in front of him and a haunted expression on his face. When he looked up and found Nick standing in the doorway he looked sort of surprised for a second, then he frowned and looked down at his files. “What?”
“Rough case?”
“No,” Greg answered, but Nick knew him well enough to tell when he was lying. “The kid killed himself, no mystery there. Look, did you come in here to hear about my night? Because I’m trying to get this paperwork done.”
“No. I mean yeah…I mean…I just wanted to talk. Things have been pretty weird the past few days, G. I was hoping you could help me figure it out.”
“Weird how?”
And it wasn’t exactly enthusiasm, but it was progress, so Nick let the door close and stepped into the room. He pulled out a chair across from Greg and sat down, elbows resting on the table in front of him. “This is going to sound crazy.”
“’Abducted by aliens’ crazy or ‘I’m hearing voices’ crazy?”
Nick grinned at that, and when the corner of Greg’s mouth quirked into a half-smile his heart skipped a beat. “More like ‘call the guys in white coats’ crazy. I keep living the same day over and over.”
“So you're bothering me because you need a break from the monotony?”
“No,” Nick interrupted, and he wished it were that easy. “I mean the same day. Christmas Eve. Over and over. I’ve woken up on Christmas Eve five days in a row. I’ve worked that motel room with Rick five days in a row, and every morning I go home and wake up to the same day all over again.”
Greg didn’t say anything right away. He just sat there and looked at Nick for so long that Nick started to think maybe he wasn’t going to say anything at all, but finally he shook his head. “I saw that movie too, Nick. Did you really think I was going to fall for that?”
“I know how it sounds,” Nick said, but he could already tell Greg was never going to believe him. And for the first time since this all started he sort of hoped he’d wake up to Christmas Eve again tomorrow, because then Greg wouldn’t remember any of this. Only that meant living through it again, and he wasn’t sure which would be worse. “Look, G, I’ve got a plan. I just wanted you to know that I’m trying to fix it.”
”Trying to fix what?”
Us, he thought, but he didn't say it. He had no idea if Greg wanted to hear that, or even if it was true. What he really wanted was for this day to end once and for all, and he'd worry about what happened on Christmas day if he ever got there.
"I'll let you know when I figure it out," he said instead. "Listen, can we get together sometime? Maybe talk some more?"
As soon as he asked he knew it was the wrong thing to say, because Greg's expression shifted from curious to that guarded look he'd had every time he saw Nick recently. Then he wasn't looking at Nick at all; instead he turned his attention back to the table, gathering files and stacking them before he stood up.
"Look, I've got a lot of files to catch up on, and I want to get them done before I leave. I'll just catch you later, okay?"
"Greg," Nick began, but Greg was already headed for the door. "Can you just wait…"
The door swung shut while he was still in mid-sentence, and just like that Greg was gone. And that was starting to get really annoying, but Nick wasn't sure how to make him listen. If he could just wake up the next morning, maybe swing by Greg's place before their shift…if he could convince Greg somehow that he wasn't just screwing around…but he couldn't figure out how to do that when they kept having the same conversation over and over.
Part Two