Notes: Greg's mother appears in flashback form, but flashback form only, sorry. And yes - - Greg does almost trust Grissom. But the key word there is almost. And trust me when I say that things are not going to be easy for the two of them. In fact, they're going to be almost painfully hard.
**
We try to wash our hands of all of thisWe never talk of our lacking relationships
Or how we're guilt-stricken, sobbing
With our heads on the floor
We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip
-The Verve
**
Chapter Three: Back on the Horse
**
He started memorizing the semantics of things, evaluating his own life from the outside. There were special exceptions that could be made for him now, he discovered. He didn't want or welcome them, but they were there, nonetheless. He started cataloguing a list of things that he could do now that he couldn't do before, and was dismayed by how long it was. He had spent the night in bed with Sara, his cheek touching hers, tasting the bitter salt of his tears - - that wouldn't have been possible before. And he could show up at Grissom's house with no invitation and expect to be taken in - - that was something that would have seemed ridiculous once, too. He was tired of the exceptions but he felt that he somehow deserved them, that after all he'd gone through, some of the rules should have been broken for him.
It was more than he wanted, but no less than he deserved.
His work didn't falter. Results were infallibly turned in on time, triple-checked as usual. They were presented without flair, partially because he wasn't in the mood and partially because he knew Grissom wouldn't complain about it if he tried. They might even be glad, take his flippancy as some return to a positive state, and so he held off, bitterly, from doing what they wanted.
After all, it wasn't going to last. Sooner or later, Grissom would forget that Greg ever had a reason to not be okay, and some case would get under his skin, and he would say something coarsely, unintentionally harsh. Grissom would feel bad, of course, and apologize, but Greg knew that his smile and acceptance would be so perfect, and that he would take it so well that Grissom's guilt would fade until it was safe to do it again and again.
Grissom wasn't a bad guy, Greg figured. After all, he had no obligation. Greg had shown up on his doorstep and Grissom had voluntarily given him a place to stay with no boundary lines. No time limit. However long he needed it. Grissom wasn't bad, wasn't cruel, and wasn't infallible. He was human, and it was so very easy, after a while, for humans to forget and move on. Patterned behavior.
Greg was, over all other things, a scientist. He understood and trusted patterns.
Lab work was like that. Lab work was comforting. He couldn't imagine why he'd really wanted to leave it behind. He imagined, wistfully, that if he'd been content with where he was, he never would have ended up in a coma in the first place. Melissa Sharpe never would have had a reason to be jealous of a lab tech with no field experience - - it was his wanting that had driven her over the edge.
He would have been safe. He would have trusted. His father never would have come back.
Hey, look. Grissom himself.
"What have you got for me?"
Grissom had gotten into the habit lately of delivering samples personally. It was the little extra touch that showed he cared and it was also the little extra touch that was driving Greg crazy.
I'm okay! he wanted to yell. I lived! I made it! So wipe that pitying look off your face!
In his more rational moments, he knew that his very longing for that statement made it a lie. If it was really true, he would have said it by now. And the vision of him ripping the cords to the lab equipment out of the wall and screaming, at the top of his lungs, that he was absolutely fine, didn't lend much to a claim of sanity. Besides, perfectly fine people didn't live with their bosses because the sight of an apartment and a reminder of who they used to be was too much to bear. Perfectly fine people didn't live on someone else's goodwill and then ditch said benefactors when a friendly look of concern turned too personal and too intense.
Grissom was looking at him like he was something to be pinned to a board.
He said, louder, "What have you got for me?"
Grissom's head jerked to the side, as if he'd been slapped. It was the abruptness of the motion that made Greg want to laugh, but lately, his laughs had come out sounding strange - - too long and too shrill. When he laughed, Grissom looked at him like he was two steps from a breakdown. He bottled the laughter. Maybe that meant he was okay.
Yeah right.
"Kidnapping case. You know the drill - - eliminate the expected, familial DNA," here, Grissom held up a set of samples, "and search for the foreign."
Funny, last time Grissom had handled a kidnapping, he hadn't been nearly that nice. Greg seemed to remember his boss crashing his other samples into a wall, demanding that no other case be worked on. He started to say something to that effect, but reminded himself of two facts:
Grissom was a nice guy, and he was supposed to be a nice guy, too.
He definitely had been one. That was something he remembered pretty well. He hadn't even tried to pressure Melissa Sharpe on their single date. He'd been a gentleman completely, right up until the time she led him out into the alley and her boyfriend shoot him in the head - - kicked him, busted him in the face, and then shot, that abruptly severed feeling, with the warm, wet touch of blood going down his jaw.
"This goes first," he promised Grissom, smiling. It felt like he was stretching the corners of his mouth with some obscenely painful dentist tool. "I'll get to it right away."
In other words, look how normal I am! How well-adjusted! Look how good I am at climbing right back on the horse, and oh, by the way, do you know exactly how it feels like to know that you're only alive because of an accident? Do you know what it feels like to feel a bullet slide through bone and then burrow deeper? Do you know that I panicked when I started going into blackness instead of into some really awesome light tunnel?
He'd thought he was going to hell, there in that alleyway.
Hell was waking up to realize that he was supposed to be the same.
Grissom balanced the samples on his desk. That look again, like Grissom wanted to dip him in formaldehyde and pin him to a board, and okay, that sounded worse than he'd meant it.
"I'm ordering pizza for tonight," Grissom said cautiously, as if Greg was going to start tearing his hair out at any moment. "What kind do you like?"
"I don't care."
"Bullshit," Grissom said in a low, nearly pleasant tone. "You used to care."
That plastic smile was getting harder and harder to maintain. "Things change, Grissom." He grabbed the samples and carted them over to another empty space. Had to wait for the current tests to finish before he could start these ones, and the waiting was the worst. He drummed his pen against the tabletop and hoped that Grissom would just leave. But he'd been staying with Grissom for a week now, and he knew that it was unlikely. He also knew that he was unlikely to leave again himself.
Good sign? Bad sign? He couldn't read himself and didn't understand his own symbols.
"I'm trying to help you, Greg."
They all said his name more now, like they were reminding themselves of who they were talking to. Like he didn't act like Greg anymore, and they needed to stick a label on him to remember that he was.
"Great. But that's not your job."
"What do you consider to be my job?"
"Read the description of a criminalist, Grissom. 'Analyzing your lab tech's every action' isn't likely to be listed anywhere in there. But I think 'solving crimes' is, so you should probably get out there, and, you know, do that."
"We're going to talk about this when we get home." Grissom shook his head as he left, like he was disappointed by something.
Guess I'm pretty disappointing. Dad always thought so, anyway, and don't they say that your boss becomes your father figure?
His hands were suffocating in the latex, and he pressed them to his face, rubbing a hard line down his skin. Grissom had called his townhouse "home" for both of them, just like Warrick, after two weeks, had conveniently forgotten that Greg didn't usually sleep on his couch. It had been enough to make him run then - - he wished it was enough to make him run now.
Maybe if he did run - - if he headed not to any of the others but out of Vegas entirely - -
But he'd considered and rejected that idea before. He did love them, and he didn't want so badly to leave them behind that he'd be willing to hurt them like that.
I'm a good guy, he thought desperately. I swear I am. I don't say things just to hurt other people - - except he had before and he would again. His sarcasm had turned sour.
I still belong here, right?
**
Grissom got double-cheese, double-pepperoni. Greg stopped at the grocery store on the way "home" and picked up two liters of Pepsi as a peace offering. They ate on the sofa, plates on their knees, awkwardly positioned as far from each other as possible. Greg looked at DNA textbooks while he ate. It seemed a good a way as any to avoid conversation with Grissom, who had been giving him searching looks all night, as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab Greg by the hair and send him into therapy.
Finally, Grissom snatched the textbook away from him. It fell to the floor and nearly rolled, thudding against the coffee table, cracking the spine, open to in-depth drawings of the double helix.
"I was reading that," he said before he could stop himself.
Grissom's gaze was intense and cold. "You can read when we're done talking."
"When you're done lecturing, you mean." He flinched as he heard himself. When did he start talking like that to anyone, let alone Grissom? Thoughts were fine, thoughts were caged behind him and no one had to hear him think, but saying it was something different.
Grissom had a tiny smear of tomato sauce across the back of his thumbnail. Greg stared at that.
"You don't sleep. You run away from everyone that offers you anything."
Damn. He didn't think that they would have, but they must have all gotten together, pooled their resources, and figured out, each time, what made him leave. He stayed silent. The tomato sauce stayed on Grissom's thumb.
"You don't care about anything. You work because it's a distraction."
"And what do you care about?" Greg didn't look up. He spoke downwards, to Grissom's hand. No point in looking upwards - - no point in - - trying . . .
"Right now, you."
"That's mostly the point, Grissom." He drove his eyes upwards until his gaze was pinned against Grissom's. The heat coming from the normally iceberg blue eyes was baking his face. He wished he'd kept his head down, but it was too late for that. "Everybody cares about me right now, but eventually you'll stop, you know that. I'm not safe. I'm not going to be safe again. When you trust that someone's not going to hurt you - - when you trust in good intentions - - you're asking for trouble."
"We wouldn't let anyone hurt you."
"Too late," Greg said. "Somebody already did."
"Greg, is this even about Melissa Sharpe?"
It was a psychologist's question, and he resented it. He'd expected it to come up sooner or later - - Nick had danced around the subject during their short roommate term - - but he had never expected it to come from Grissom, who always seemed disdainful of human emotions. If Greg had a chemical imbalance, he would have talked to Grissom.
He said, harshly, "Are you saying that it's about my dad?"
"Is it?"
"How the fuck should I know? You're the one who's doing such a great job of analyzing me, why don't you give it a shot?"
Grissom didn't appear unnerved by the curse. His expression neither relaxed nor intensified. "Fine. I will. I met you, and I met your father. I think I can put a few of the pieces together."
"I'm going to enjoy this."
"No," Grissom said softly. "You're not. But you're going to stay here until I finish. Then, if you want to run away again, go ahead."
I probably SHOULD run away. I'm good at that.
"You think about your father every day," Grissom began. "You don't want to, but you do. You tell yourself that you got away from him, so you're okay, and that you aren't him, so you're okay there, too, and you're right. You did get away, and you are nothing like him. But that doesn't mean that you're okay. Maybe you were - - you weren't who you would have been if you hadn't had him as a father, but you were okay - - but not now. Not anymore. How am I doing?"
"Okay." His lips felt numb. He wanted another beer. He poured himself a glass of Pepsi instead.
"Good." Grissom pushed his plate onto the table. The china squeaked against the glass. "You should have been able to trust your father to take care of you, but you couldn't, and he didn't. And you should have been able to trust the woman you were taking out for drinks, and you did, but she didn't deserve it. She betrayed you. Doesn't matter how long you knew her or how much you liked her, doesn't matter even if you hated her - - you didn't see any danger in taking her out and now you see danger all the time, in everyone. Still good?"
"Yeah. I guess."
"I'm detecting some uncertainty, Greg. Would you like me to stop?"
"It's incredulity," Greg said honestly. "I don't know how you figure these things out. And yeah, I'd like you to stop, but you're not going to, are you?"
"No."
"Not even if I asked."
"No."
"So then why should I trust you?"
"Why doesn't matter, Greg. You don't and that's all there is to it." Grissom finally noticed the stain of tomato on his thumb and rubbed it off with a quick circular swipe. "So now you know the truth - - that anyone could hurt you, at any time, if they wanted it badly enough and had a good enough plan. It makes you nervous. That's understandable. It keeps you awake. That's understandable, too."
"You're not piecing this together with my father yet." He heard the bitter note of triumph in his voice.
"I'm getting there. Here - - you thought you got away from him, but he came back. You thought you were safe, but you weren't. The last few months have been your expectations failing over and over again. Nothing you thought was true really was. He came back, while you were lying there, and you don't know what he said or what he did. You don't know - - " Grissom's voice caught, as if he was stuck in memories of his own. "You don't know what it was like for us."
"Hate to be selfish, but not really thinking about you."
"Of course you're not. It all comes back to you, Greg. You can't help wondering what he told us, or what we realized. Now you know some of it, but you were gone and you can't know all of it - - it's too late."
"You're saying I'm ignorant?"
"I'm saying that you're scared and that you remember too much for your own good. And you won't let anyone help you." Grissom's voice lowered. "We watched you, you know. You didn't wake up for so long that everyone started saying it was hopeless."
"Gee, thanks. What a way to make me feel better."
Grissom's fingers tore into him, grabbing him by the shoulders with a touch that was not gentle in the slightest. Their looks met again, and Greg felt his uncomfortable defiance squirming away from him, left adrift, faced with Grissom's seriousness.
"I thought about how it could turn out."
It was almost a whisper.
It was a confession. Grissom used to be Catholic.
"I had to prepare myself, I thought. No matter how you ended up, I had to know
how I would react. And I did. I thought I rehearsed for everything, but I
never thought that it would end like this."
"We've already ended?"
"Parts of us. Greg, you're not listening, and I don't know how to make you."
It was the desperation that made him pay attention. Maybe Grissom had his own problems, after all. In any case, this was, for the moment, about Grissom himself, not about Greg, and Greg was only too delighted to turn the spotlight over. He said, quietly, "I'm listening."
"We were afraid. I was afraid. I didn't know how things would turn out. I didn't know if you'd even live, Greg. We talked like we knew you were going to wake up, but we didn't. And then some miracle wakes you up. Do you realize how lucky you've been, really? In medical terms alone? A flexible bullet and your own wake-up call? Do you know the things I thought of? Do you know what could have happened to you? What things could have been like?"
He wanted to tear himself away from that desperation, wanted to say, God, Grissom, what did you dream of? What were you thinking about? What were your possibilities? He did nothing. He was frozen to the seat. His plate fell with a clatter to the floor and broke neatly into four pieces. Grissom didn't notice it. His eyes were frenetic.
What do you want, Grissom? I can't give you absolution.
It complicated things. He thought he was the only one who needed any help.
"I'm sorry," he said, wanting to get out of there.
"For what?"
"Everything."
Grissom let him go. Greg's shoulders felt bruised, almost bloody.
"Then you really don't understand," Grissom said. He sounded almost regretful. "Pick that plate up off the floor, Greg, but wear some gloves. I don't want you cutting your hands." He rose and crossed the room to go to his bed, and stopped in the doorway. "If you're gone when I wake up, I'll understand. But I won't like it. I don't have to like that."
"Are you asking me to stay?"
"Yes," Grissom said, finally. "I just want to help you."
He wasn't Grissom's penance, but he nodded anyway, picked up the pieces of shattered china, went to bed, and was still there the next day.