Disclaimer: They don't even like me really, but I give them more of a life than CBS does…
Author Notes: (You should all know that I am such a good 'author' that I spelt it auhtor when I typed it just now…oh dear… back to the coffee!) And remember when I wrote about my commitment issues – blame them for the looooong delay...
This back tracks a little first, and it's now so different to the original idea I had that it might end up being a whole different fic! I keep thinking, oh I should have done this or that, or had this person instead, and writing in all three perspectives with all the 'he', 'him', arghhh! Ah well onwards with chapter three!
(For those interested, Holding Patterns chapter 6 is on the way next, the perspective is a little muddled – I'm working on it!)
Believe It!
By Rianne
Chapter Three
Nick
God, he had to shrug this off.
He could feel the coiled tension in his muscles, and the must fight adrenaline ebbing through his veins.
He had to slow.
To think clearly.
To take measured, deep breaths, the air hissing through clenched teeth. He stared out at the vast expanse of desert, feeling the faint dry wind attempt to blow some of the frustration right out of him.
Letting the quiet rush over him.
He needed a long cold drink so badly he could taste it, a powerful shower and to sleep.
And more importantly he needed space.
It was madness, but even out here in the middle of nowhere, he needed space.
To be away from present company.
To end this day once and for all.
He had the strangest feeling that he was being punished by karma, for some reason.
His heart rate was beginning to return to normal when he heard it.
Heard the roar of air and then the awkward thump.
And he was around the car in seconds.
Grissom was just standing there, slack jawed.
And he followed the trajectory of that vacant expression.
Sara was against the car, the look on her face a million times worse than the hurt look she usually tried to hide.
She wasn't moving. Stunned into silence.
And with a sickening feeling filling his stomach he knew what had just happened.
Grissom had struck her.
And you know what, he didn't care if it was unintentional, accidental, or whatever.
You didn't hit women.
End of.
He was by Sara's side in moments. Reaching out to carefully touch her, wary of her bolting like a startled doe, but needing to protect her, to hide her from his view.
But she wasn't responding, barely blinking, her body starting to shiver.
And he checked her over, all the while feeling the horrified gaze of Grissom burning into his back.
How dare he!
She was cradling her arm, but he was relieved to find her more shocked than physically hurt.
And once sure he whirled on Grissom.
The older CSI was still staring only at Sara, too cowardly to meet his eyes.
And murmuring, he was murmuring under his breath, distracted and stuttering.
And try as he might he could only make out one thing.
"I didn't… I thought…"
He kept muttering it, over and over as if he couldn't hear himself speak.
What was going on with him?
"Grissom?"
He didn't respond.
"What the hell were you thinking?"
Making no attempt to hide the disgust and disbelief, the words an unrestrained yell of anger. Trying to get a reaction from the near catatonic man.
Grissom's attention finally shot to him, eyes wide and fearful.
And in that moment he knew what had happened here.
Grissom had thought that Sara was him.
He'd confused Sara's touch, had thought that he had been dragging him around to start the fight that had been brewing.
He was afraid of him?
For the record he, Nicholas Stokes, had never in his life attacked an unsuspecting man.
That was the coward's way and he was no coward.
Why would Grissom be afraid of him?
The thought twisted his stomach, it was like falling into a weird dry haze nightmare.
This was rapidly getting out of all control.
Stress, he could only blame the stress and the heat.
They all needed space, that or a focused plan.
But the look in Grissom's eyes stuck with him, burned a guilty hole in his stomach.
The fully-grown, top of his field, PHD holding, self-assured man had gone.
He had looked like a terrified kid, the shy, quiet, smart kid who spent his days hiding on the edges, avoiding attention, only to attract the distain of the bigger, older jock kids, with his intelligence and classroom successes.
He obviously envisaged him to be, or have been a jock like that.
But to still feel that insecurity?
God the man was a mess.
He didn't like the idea of that, it was a flaw of his, this expecting perfection in those he admired and looked up too.
It was hurtful to realise that there were cracks appearing in his vision of his mentor.
This person he had grown to count upon.
So here came the evolution, and it came to all, he would have to take charge now, and so guiding Sara by the arm about her shoulder he started walking.
Moving them away into the encroaching darkness, towards the faint haze of light pollution that indicated Vegas and all its devils in the far-reaching distance.
She stumbled in his arms and he kept her steady, wondering what it was about this night that was rendering his friends strangers to him.
He didn't like Sara like this, he liked her feisty and quick, and although he had to admit he hadn't seen it much recently, he also liked her smiling.
"Sara…?"
The voice cut through the encroaching darkness as if ethereal.
He had never heard Gil Grissom sound so uncertain.
There was something more here, something he was missing, something he felt he might never understand.
Something far beyond the fear of a man accidentally hurting a woman.
And it made his stomach ache at the possibilities; it made things he didn't like to think about occur to him.
It coaxed him to consider the way the woman by his side bristled riled at the very first hint of domestic violence in any case they looked at.
It explained far too much.
God, please don't let that be true.
It drew conclusions he did not want to hear, and instinctively tightened his grip on her.
But she was stopping, turning back to the voice, twisting her way out of the safety of his arms.
And it came to him that if anyone knew her secrets, Grissom would.
Grissom knew her better than any of them.
He watched her standing there, her hair glowing with highlights in the setting sun.
Watched her lithe frame waver, even as she tried to stand tall, her shoulders square, her arms crossed around herself.
A woman of more contradictions than answers.
He knew right then that he couldn't verify his fears either way.
He honestly didn't know enough about the woman he had spent years working with.
And he had to say that he didn't know enough about Grissom either.
There was always so much going on under the surface with the two of them.
And as he watched the two of them hovered there.
A silent conversation happening between them.
He shouldn't be watching this.
These thousands of arguments and heartbreaks and emotions passing silently through the air.
Secrets he would never decode.
His eyes bounced from the pride in Sara's stature, to the pain written more clearly than he had ever seen on Grissom's face.
And in that moment they weren't just his friends, they weren't Dr. Grissom and CSI. Sidle.
They were two people, so lost and misunderstood, even to one another.
Trying frantically to express the way that they felt.
The whole desert wasn't big enough to withstand the tension so keen it hurt his chest.
He had to look away, staring at the dust on his boots,
They hovered that way for the longest time, a private and desperate exchange.
Only shattered by Grissom's aching, "I'm sorry…"
And then the motion was back, Sara was striding away, shaking off the arms offered her, like she didn't want to be touched, the tears in her eyes barely restrained.
Her long legs cutting a fast stride across the fields of sand.
He had to break into a half run to keep up with her, his boots stirring up dust clouds with every heavy footfall.
Leaving Grissom behind, standing a few hundred yards away from the car.
Sara was the one he needed to chase right now.
Grissom could get his act together and follow them, or sit out all night sulking and baby-sit their useless car.
It was such a shame that technology had advanced so much that you couldn't just wiggle the lock with a wire coat hanger and bam you were in.
But the thump of something heavily impacting the ground emptied thoughts of technological advances from his head, and the stomach twisting sound of retching made both he and Sara whirl back towards Grissom.
And one sight of their dishevelled boss sprawled in the dust and Sara was no longer by his side. She was running, boots slamming into the shifting surface and with a grimace he raced after her, panting hard in the dry air as he fought to keep up.
000000
Grissom
As he slumped heavily to the ground, the worst of the raw heaves dying, two pangs of emotion were sharp as crystal glaring in the sunset.
Shame.
And tearing loss.
This was it.
His last chance was over.
He was here, slumped in the ashes of what could have been.
She was irreparably beyond his reach now.
He couldn't ask for any more forgiveness from her.
Mistake or no, he had done something he considered unforgivable.
He had never physically hurt anyone.
Not even as a child, taunted by bullies.
He had hurt her.
Both physically and emotionally this time.
And the way she had looked, thrown back against the car, limbs weak, and eyes broken hearted.
It replayed in his head, tangling and taunting him in co-conspiracy with shivers and sweat and sore stomach muscles of sickness.
His head ached, and his forehead stung where he had made contact with the ground, hard.
Even his body was physically disgusted with his behaviour.
It would have been humiliating if he had anything left in him to care.
He hadn't been involuntarily sick at a crime scene since he was a rookie.
And that had only been once. One terrible occasion he didn't like to think about. An occasion where the corpse had too closely resembled... He had to swallow and shut his mind down to prevent the queasy roll as his stomach protested and brought on a residual wave of dizziness.
He was never sick.
It was a weakness he fought against.
He was unaccustomed to being unable to control his own bodily functions.
But nothing had ever turned his stomach quite like the sadness in Sara's eyes.
Rolling waves of chills tightened his muscles again.
What was wrong with him?
He held his liquor like the best of them.
He hadn't been what could be considered foolish in college, or even dreamed of it in high school.
He had the immune system of an Ox.
But right now he couldn't lift his head from where it lay heavy against the drifting sand.
His fuddled mind felt the gravel of it in his hair, sticking to his skin in the way it does on a pleasurable day out at the beach when you're slathered with sun cream.
But this was far from that.
He was lying on the ground inches from his own vomit, and he couldn't even turn his face away.
It didn't bear considering.
It was what he felt he deserved.
Karmic retribution, even though as a scientist he wasn't sure he believed in that, secular Catholicism aside.
Sara and Nick were gone, so in some ways it was better.
Sara was gone.
He closed his eyes against the unexpected wave of liquid which pooled in his vision.
It was sand in his eyes.
What did it matter if he lied?
No one would know.
He could just lie here for a while, let the warm sand build up against his frame, fill in all the crinkles appearing in rapid motion as if filmed in time-lapse photography, until he was just another indistinguishable drift in an endless sea of them.
There was no one to help him up.
But there was also no one to see him at what was undoubtedly his weakest since the operation to fix his hearing.
It was funny how quickly things turned on a dime.
Just yesterday, just hours ago, he was feeling a whole new man, lighter step, smiles creeping through, a second date to look forward too.
And now the wind was literally gone from his sails, the ground no longer steady under his feet, but shifting in little dancing displays of aerated sand before his eyes.
So this was what rock bottom felt like.
This was why he didn't do this.
Everyone got hurt.
000000
Sara
She wasn't even thinking.
It was automatic action.
Her chest was tight.
Her vision was blurred, the wet streaks on her face no doubt delineated now with granules of glistening sand.
But forward motion was all she strove for.
Running in the dry desert heat was hard on her lungs, she sounded like an 80 year old smoker, but she was making ground in bigger strides than she thought possible.
It was the panic, the adrenaline ebb.
And she could hear Nick wheezing behind her.
Close on her heels.
Grissom.
Sprawled on the ground.
Heart attack?
Heat stroke?
She was too far away and as fast as she ran she didn't seem to get any closer.
It was like being in a bad dream.
Only it wasn't. However much she wished she was still in bed and no one had called her out to work today.
Here she still was. Stranded in the desert with an emergency, a heavy heart and a desperate need to hide under the covers of her bed with an excellent book and never emerge.
And then they were there, the place she had been pining to be and longing to avoid in equal measures.
She was crashing to a stop like a baseball player slides into a home run base.
The ground rising in a victorious cloud.
"That's not true, I've been a baseball fan my whole life."
"Baseball. Well that figures, all those stats."
"It's a beautiful game."
"Since when are you interested in beauty?"
"Since I met you."
No! She had to be present right now.
She had to live where it was real, not in that place where every word from his mouth was considered and analysed for hidden meaning and allegory. Where every look, every glance was weighted and gave her pleasurable tingles.
He needed her.
He had been sick, there was blood on his temple, sweat matted his curls to his head.
And he wasn't moving, he hadn't moved as she had finally reached him.
He was instead staring sluggishly at the ground as if in some kind of trance.
Barely blinking like he was forgetting to protect himself from the dust and the sand in the air.
Oh God he was bleeding.
But he was breathing.
He didn't flinch as her fingers touched him.
Didn't even blink.
And whatever was wrong with him, she needed to move him.
She needed Nick to help her.
And when she turned back to Nick he was there, eyes alert and ready to help, not needing words to understand what she needed to be done.
And together they struggled, awkward and clumsy, and still panting from their running.
Finally lifting Grissom out of the sand with a straining heave, arms under his shoulders, and together the three of them managed to stumble the hundred yards back to the shelter of the car in one staggering go.
And she worried.
Grissom's eyes never once left the ground, remaining downcast like a sullen child, chastised and afraid.
Was he putting himself through hell inside?
What was going through his mind?
