Onomatopoeia
Authors Note: Ok, so being relatively new to loving CSI NY I have unfortunately only seen the first two seasons. This means that I am basing this story mostly off those seasons, and the snippets that I have picked up from the others. It is therefore likely to skew into AU. But, bear with it. Hopefully you will enjoy it.
Let me know what you think!
Summary: It started with a screech, a boom, a bang and a crunch. It ended with silence. One of the team has an accident from which they may not recover.
Pairings: Fiesta (established) + D/L
Italics thoughts.
Chapter 1- Flack
Flack blamed the traffic. And Stella for her amazing pancakes. And dispatch for informing him of a DB that was right on the edge of his territory, which meant a cross town commute in peak hour when he was already running late.
Damn that woman and her pancakes. He would have been perfectly on time, possibly early (though lets not get ahead of ourselves) if she hadn't spun into the room just as he started pulling his pants on carrying a tray of blueberry heaven and looking like an absolute domestic queen. He hadn't had a chance, immediately forgetting that there was such a thing as the New York City Police Department he had stopped getting dressed, simply leaving one sock half on his foot, and flopped back onto the bed, trying to reconcile his usual image of Stella (tough, scary, sexy-as-hell detective) with this new insight (tough, scary, sexy-as-hell Betty Crocker).
And so it wasn't until half an hour later that he finally made it into the car, buttons askew, hair undone, desperately hoping he had a jacket somewhere in the car because he had forgotten to grab one leaving the house, crossing his fingers that all the usual commuters had taken a unanimous sabbatical so he had a clear run into the station, because only a miracle was going to get him to work on time.
And then of course had come the call about the DB, because isn't that the way he wanted to start his day (he of course recognises that it is probably worse for said DB than him, and he shouldn't really whine, but he is tired and late and there is no coffee to be seen) so he has to throw a sharp U-turn and speed back the way he came, knowing that now there is even less chance of getting to where he needs to be before anyone else does.
He can picture Mac's disapproving look as though the man is sitting right next to him. A quirk of the lips, a knowing eyebrow raised, a flicker of frustration. It is a face that lets him know that if his personal life begins to affect his professional then one of them has to go. Mac is a man who sees everything in black and white, who has probably never been late for a day of work in his life. Sometimes he is so serious Flack doesn't know where he stands. Still Flack knows he should be being more careful. It is hard enough trying to keep a relationship going with another cop without complicating things by lowering job performance.
But she had been wearing an apron for goodness sake. An apron!
He thinks that if he were a prisoner on death row, those pancakes would be his last meal.
Of course, if he were to be a prisoner on death row, Stella would probably be the one who put him there, and she would therefore be unlikely to be baking him anything. Still, a man can dream.
He ponders that they could quite possibly be his last meal anyway, Mac is going to skin him alive for being late and not even Stella will be able to prove he did anything. The head of the CSI unit is the only person on earth whom Flack believes could commit the perfect kill. It is not a comforting thought.
The traffic is murder. As soon as the thought crosses his mind he realises this is a poor choice of words, seeing as he is on his way to a murder scene. Seeing as murder is the thing he deals with on a daily basis. His commute is one time he is not dealing with bodies and perps and blood and motive and means and opportunity, and yet even here he cannot escape his job. The traffic is murder.
The man on the radio is blathering away, like every breakfast show host the world over, what he has to say is inane and pointless, and yet thousands tune in simply because it is better than the alternative, sitting in an empty car with naught but engines to listen too. Flack wonders if Stella has gotten out of bed yet, her shift wasn't meant to start for another few hours, but she might have been called in to help with this scene, depending on how thinly spread the rest of them were. It happens more often than any of them would like, overtime, double shifts. They are a small group, often too small for the job that they are needed for, because there are so many crimes in the city, so many, too many. He has admired them ever since he was first assigned as a detective, since he first met Mac (the man who could potentially end his life today, for whom he still can't shake a boyish admiration) and realised that he was one of many, many cops, but these guys were in a class of their own, with barely any of the prestige.
Not for the first time Flack longs for a law that means he can pull his siren out and use it for slightly-less-than-emergency situations. He isn't saying he would use it to dash out for coffee, he knows that this is an abuse of his powers, but to get to a crime scene on time (before Mac beats him there and then eats his soul) surely this would be acceptable? He is getting increasingly tempted, until finally, finally the traffic ahead begins to shift, and it looks like he might get there in this millennium after all.
Well thank goodness for that.
He is dying for coffee (there it is again, why can he not escape death even when he is not at a crime scene? Why must it follow him everywhere he goes?) but is not going to tempt fate any further by picking some up on the way. Hopefully someone thoughtful will have a spare cup with them when he gets to the scene. Lindsey is known for this kind of forethought, and often has a thermos nearby ready to give him a fix. He really must remember to tell her what a blessing she is, he doesn't think it is something that she is told often enough. Danny, an excellent CSI and a wonderful friend, is sometimes lacking in the expressing feelings department (something Flack realises he too should probably work on) and so the job of building Lindsey up often falls to the rest of the team.
He wonders what the chances of Lindsey working this scene are, what his chances of free coffee are. When he left last night she had been pulling overtime, checking and rechecking fibres against a suspect who was guilty as sin, but clean as a whistle when it came to actually attempting to make a conviction stick. It was the worst kind of case, the kind that made you sick to the stomach, because job satisfaction was hard to maintain when the law you had sworn to enforce worked against you, helping the obvious villains. It is likely she has gone home in defeated frustration or is still sitting at a microscope, there is no way Mac would reassign her when she is in so deep.
So he will have to wait for coffee.
The road was clearing ahead of him now, which was excellent. He chances a glance at his watch and cringes, even with the traffic whoever was coming from the CSI office would already be there by now. If not Lindsey then Danny? He can picture his best friend now, standing by the side of the road, kit in hand, scanning for the detective who should already be there with enough information to kick start the investigation.
Crap, crap, crap.
Flack speeds up a bit, trying to look like someone who wasn't a cop, and who therefore was entitled to a little bit of speeding.
There will be uniforms on the scene, whoever arrived after the body was called in, and this relieves him a little, he hates to think of whoever it is (in his mind it is now confirmed as Danny, Lindsey will still be trawling for a conviction with her squeaky-clean killer, and the prospect of being this late for Mac terrifies him so much he prefers not to imagine it) arriving on a scene unprotected. At least, and this thought cheers him despite his lateness, there is no way Stella will be there. Even if she has gotten the call there is no way she can beat him there, seeing as she left after him and is coming from the same address.
Whichever uniforms they are he can't help but think that these are his friends, and he should be the one there, watching over them as they first enter the scene. He hates the idea that he hasn't checked it out first, and is feeling more and more guilty as he gets closer to the scene, his speeding cranking up inch by inch as he becomes later and later.
He is just getting to the last corner when the radio call comes through, though it is the "Flack, where the hell are you" that he was expecting (he is now almost 20 minutes later than he should be, despite breaking more than enough road rules on the way) but Danny's panicked voice shouting for back up. He catches a garbled message about a suspect returning to the scene, a uniform being down and a man being on the run in a stolen police SUV.
And then there is a screech of tires as he speeds around the corner to find himself face to face with a speeding car on the wrong side of the road.
Boom.
Bang.
Crash.
Silence.
Ok, well. That was chapter one. I have never written anything for CSI before, so I'm not sure how it turned out. But please let me know! Chapter 2, Danny, should be up fairly soon!
Please review!