Title: Failing and Falling
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Category: Angst
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: :::reviews Eric Szmanda's contract::: Yeah, it says RIGHT here, right here... I can put you on a leash and... RIGHT HERE! :::points to passage:::
Notes: I even feel this is out of character, but hey, it's written so I might as well post it right? Yeah that's what I thought... Thanks to Saliaah and La Kitt for being my first CSI reviewers! :::tear!::: Oh, I sorta/kinda got this idea from 'Falling for the First Time' by my BNL boys. This isn't a song fic though.
Summary: Struggling and failing... never felt so good.
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Cold, calculating. I feel it's the best way to go through life. For instance, if I don't have any real personal attachment, I can't be hurt. More so, I can't hurt anyone else.
No one knows me. I don't care to let anyone know me, come to think of it.
That, that's what truly frightens me. As unattached as I am...
I've seen what men can be to women. I've seen what women can be to men. I'm not sure I can fit the profile of either case. I'm not certain I could allow myself to be loved so completely, to love someone else so completely that I let go of age-old insecurities. Is it worth it? Is it enough to lay my entire career on the line, a career I've spent years building, cultivating, loving.
I can't let my visions of what I want come in between myself and the aspirations I have set for myself.
I let all of my friends go, let them fade into the background, and at the time it made me happy. Having no one to answer to, no one to care about, life was simplicity. Complete simplicity. Saturdays and Sundays wasted from the boredom of studying specimens, wondering what my peers were out doing, what they were drinking.
Come to think of it, I'm already there. In a stable job, a lifestyle that I can live with and not be jarred from. So my apartment is lonely and drab. It looks like no one lives there, no one lives there... no one lives there. I don't live there, I sleep there, I eat there. I shower and change there.
I live at the lab. I live around her.
While thinking this, my stomach turns violently, my system rebounding an unknown feeling... emotion, some sort of real emotion that threatens to pour over the brim of me. But, but I cannot let it. I am the man behind the glasses, his shield firmly in place. The overpowering leader, the supervisor, the one who is never weak, the one who has earned his place here... through years of submission. I've earned my place here and I can't jeopardize that for...
I can never be the same again. It's completely impossible. That split second that I opened myself, I let her in, that I let myself out... I can't take that back. So now, now we look at each other differently. Her presence is warmer than normal. The smile that she wears is deeper, her cheeks a deeper shade of crimson when I brush against her. Every word that she says, somehow, it lives in me.
No one paid much attention; no one pays much attention now. There are fleeting moment, moments when Nick catches my eyes catching hers. One glare, one stern look is enough to throw him off the scent. Or so I thought for a brief time.
He knows, just from that one look he knows. I can't...
I grew up in seclusion, my life was my schoolwork. My schoolwork became my work. I was never socialized like the rest of them were. I never had true friends, never a real relationship. Never real. Anything.
So, like any man, like any man who wants, and who needs, I held my breath. I didn't wait for that fleeting moment, that single moment of just pleasure that everyone gets when they need contact. I waited, I waited until I found something that I couldn't ignore. And when I found it, I discovered that I hated myself for wanting it. For waiting for it. A person that was found wanting could not be found needing.
And I needed and wanted at the same time.
Alas, suffering is my holy grail and I must cling to it, to survive. To thrive.
I'm not the only one that knows. I know... I know that wanting and not having is heart wrenching but somehow, fulfilling. Fulfilling in a way that you know you have someone, a friend at best, who is there, who is with you all the time. A person who you want more than your body can express, that you think you can never have.
And in that moment, in a moment that you can reach out and touch the person, you doubt it all. Will they want you? Will you ruin everything? Will it end in tragedy, you losing everything? Is it really worth everything, like everyone says? Do you want to be part of the consensus, like everyone else?
Do you want to be a standard? A you? An everyone?
Is love as explosive as it should be? Is it worth the years you've... the years that I've put on line for my job? Could it be? And if it was, how would it feel? Would it all come in a moment of realization like the books, like on television, like in the movies? Could real love possibly live up to what you think it... what I think it should be?
While I look at her, just look, I feel like I'm dying. Like I need to be there, in whatever time she's in. In whatever hell she's in. Part of me is yearning to stay here, look down into the microscope at the slide before me, but the other part of me needs to feel her flesh and see just how warm it really is.
It hate it all but I feel... I feel... I fell.
And it feels so good, so good to finally be failing. Failing and wanting.