Summary: "I wish I was like you, Grissom. I wish I didn't feel anything."
Notes: I know this has been done before, but I decided to write it anyway. :)
Rating: PG
Category: angst
Spoilers: 'Too Tough to Die' and 'Still Life'
--I Can Feel--
"I wish I was like you, Grissom. I wish I didn't feel anything."
The words rang in Gil Grissom's ears again and again. If only it were true. If only he felt nothing; void of all human emotions and feelings.
But it wasn't the truth; wasn't anywhere near it, in fact.
He felt emotions the same as any other human being. Pain, pleasure. Excitement, dissapointment. Happiness, depression. Intrigue, satisfaction.
He felt all of those. All and more. Sure, he may not show them as much as the average person, but that was just the way he was. He had worn that mask for years; there wasn't a time he remembered it coming off.
But there was one exception. One person could make that mask fall off any time she desired. One bat of the eyelashes or snap of the fingers and it fell. And she knew it. He couldn't keep secrets from her. Well, he could for a little while, but as soon as she really wanted to know, it would come spilling forth like water gushing through a broken dam.
Catherine. He sighed. Just the thought of her name reminded him of another emotion he understood all too well.
Love.
He felt love. If it could be called that. The feelings he had for her were so strong, it was almost impossible to think that they could be encompassed in that one short word. The feeling that made him so jealous when she was with someone else. How he would give his life to protect her; blow a ridiculous amount of money on a present for no reason other than to see her smile.
He understood love. And more than that, understood and felt the pain that came from loving someone who didn't love you back; someone who didn't even know that you loved them as more than a friend. And even more than that. Someone who was married. Seperated and about to be divorced, yes, but married nonetheless.
"I wish I didn't feel anything." The words played over and over in his mind, reverberating through his head like a broken record.
God help him, he did too. He wished he didn't feel anything. And that was a wish that had been uttered only once before in his life. That day when he was nine, when he learned why his father hadn't fallen asleep next to him on the couch, but died. Died not two feet away from him, and he hadn't known it.
It may have been a slightly different form of pain, but it didn't matter. All pain hurt. That's why it was pain.
Subconsciously, Gil knew that he didn't really mean it. If you couldn't feel anything at all, that would mean that you could't feel all the good, happy things in life.
But right now, he wasn't thinking about the good things. He was wishing foolishly that he couldn't feel.
"But I can." He whispered brokenly to himself.
And the quick flash of a strawberry-blonde head walking past his office, and the sharp ache deep in his heart that accompanied the site was an all too real reminder of the fact.
FIN
