Title: Bitter
Author: B0gw0ppit
Rating: M
Pairing: Hodges/Sanders
Disclaimer: I own nothing except my dreams, my dog and my VW camper
Summary: Some things were never meant to be. Hodges/Sanders
Now he's gone I don't know why
Until this day sometime I cry
He didn't even say goodbye
He didn't take the time to lie
Bang Bang
He shot me down
Bang Bang
I hit the ground
Bang Bang
That awful sound
Bang Bang
My baby shot me down
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Looking back on it now Hodges knows he should have known better. He's too old and too jaded to have been drawn in by false hopes and empty promises. But he had wanted to believe (and in that wanting found reasons as to why he should believe) that Greg could change, that he was worthy of Greg's love.
Oh he hadn't been a pushover. Greg had his work cut out for him to earn Hodges' trust. The older man had been too badly hurt in the past to fall so easily for the undoubted charms of CSI's golden boy. But eventually Greg had won him over, and now David is paying the price.
He sits alone now, watching as Greg lines up his latest conquest, giving him that innocent little-boy-lost look that he used to give Hodges, laughing that soft laugh, smiling that small secret smile that says they are the only two people in the world, just the way he used to look at Hodges. Should he say something? Should he warn him? He's only young, this new guy, young and trusting, and already David can see that familiar look in his eyes as he delights in the attention he's getting from the office flirt. He'll get hurt, just the way Hodges got hurt, and maybe he won't be as strong as Hodges, or as used to the pain. Maybe it will break him the way it almost broke David. He should warn him.
But he won't. He will sit here and watch as the story unfolds, and he will take some small secret satisfaction when the time comes from seeing the guy crumble. But David's not bitter, after all, it meant nothing to him either. He does not lie awake at night imagining warm arms around him, the heavy weight of a lanky frame lying half across him snoring softly. He does not look with sadness at the tin of hot dogs in the larder, hot dogs that he cannot stand the sight or smell of but which he cannot bring himself to throw away. He does not find himself singing along to heavy rock, knowing all the words the way he once would not have believed. But most of all he does not miss him, because it didn't mean a thing.
Does it amuse you to play with people's lives Greg? Is it all a game to you? Don't you realize that people are not toys, once you break them they cannot be mended, they stay broken.
And the bubble that surrounds him grows bigger, like looking at life through the wrong end of a microscope, one of the bugs Grissom is so fond of. He can see the curious stares and hear the whispered words that float around him as people walk by, but it means nothing to him. They pretend to care, offer him empty words of consolation, but those words wash over him like water off a windshield, and soon he doesn't even hear.
Sad really. Before Greg he had assumed that he was destined to be alone, unfulfilled; content, but not happy, living, but not alive. He was ok with that, really he was, because loving someone hurt, and he didn't like to hurt. But then came Greg, shaking him up like a whirlwind, taking his carefully ordered life and tearing it apart, throwing everything he believed in to the four winds. And in that tearing David had caught a glimpse of his potential, he almost saw the man he should have been, and that is the cruelest blow of all. For now that he knows what could be, what nearly had been, he can never go back to being content ever again. Greg forced him to live, and from now on merely existing will never be enough. Nothing will ever be real now, every experience will be wrapped in plastic, every achievement will be meaningless, every emotion will be false. All that is left now is an empty shell, a shadow of the life that was once awoken. He should have known better than to believe him, that for once he could have something good in his life, something real. Laughable really, to think that he deserves anything good. When has he ever had anything worthwhile, anything lasting? Nothing lasts, he should know that by now; he does know it now, but he should have known it then, before it was too late.
And so he sits, and he watches, and he looks forward to the day when that delighted smile will be wiped off the handsome, innocent face of Greg's latest conquest. Because then he will know that he is not the only one who is not worthy. He will be no longer alone.