Note: It's not cannon, and it's not your typical happy GSR. It's just something I'm working on, and hoping to put into words. Inspired by the song of the same title.
He took off his glasses and wiped his face in resignation. With a small sigh, he pushed himself off the chair, switched off the lights to his office and took the long solitary walk along the corridors to his car.
It had been another difficult case in what had been a difficult year. Somehow, the overall mood in his team had been more sober and emotional than it used to be. Seeing one of your own being buried six feet under, struggling to find the will to live without knowing how long he had, was bound to take its toll, even on the most crime-hardened veterans. Faced with death every day, they all have learnt to detach themselves from the bodies they see in front of them. In the process, they and Death became strange bedfellows - He was so much a part of their professional lives, they would not even entertain Him at the doorstep of their private lives. They forget His existence, until they are face to face again at the lab, anticipating him before they walked through those doors, repeating this strange flirtation night after night. That is, until that fateful day when Death crossed the boundaries between their personal and professional selves when He chose Nick as His would-be victim.
He had learnt from a young age to keep his emotions in. Growing up with his mother, in a world devoid of sound, he learnt not to express himself in so many words. He learnt the subtlety of emotions, how to convey them, the little signs that words obscure. Words cheapen their profundity. But profound silences and longing lingering looks were not enough, without being backed up by words. And she was not one to mince them, and the words she said to him echoed loud and clear in his mind.
And when your own mortality decides to mock you through the near-death experience of a younger man, it puts the total experiences of your life into perspective. For the past twenty-five years, he has been walking down the same empty corridors to an empty car to drive alone back to an empty home. It felt like one big empty cage.
After the year was gone, he realised, he wanted it all. His career, his solitude, her.
She could not bring herself to close her eyes. At the end of a long case, all she ever would want to do was lie down in her bed, taking in its soft comfort, and close her tired eyes. A beer before she tucks herself into her covers, maybe. Always it had been her place of refuge - her bed, her apartment, her solitude. But the walls seem to silently scream at her, like a tomb that would not yield its burden. Her bed felt hard and cold, and if she closed her eyes, she felt the sensation of ants crawling all over her skin. She jumped up and went to the bathroom, turning the water on to her usual temperature. But it all felt wrong - the water was too hot, and then not warm enough. Still clad in her tshirt and shorts, she sat under the shower, washing away the dirt that had buried one of her best friends, the feeling of ants on her skin, the stain of being in love with someone who will not love her back.
God knows how long she would have stayed in the shower, if the telephone had not rung. Like Pavlov's dog, she switched to autopilot on hearing the ring of her cell. It was always death -work- requiring her to drop whatever it was she was doing for Him. Turning the shower off, she got up and walked to her bedroom, dripping water all over her floor.
"Open the door," was all he said when she picked up.