Thank you all for the lovely, lovely feedback. It was so great to come back from my trip and see the responses in my inbox. Now, I should warn you, the posts for the next two weeks will be less frequent than I'd like, because I have some family in-town that I'm going to be playing hostess for, but after the two weeks are up, we'll resume the daily posting schedule. So here it comes - - the Warrick chapter - - the one that's been the hardest for me to write. I like Warrick, but I always feel nervous writing him, because he's cool and insightful and hard for me to understand, especially in this version of the CSI universe, where all the characters are a little less adjusted than they'd like.
- -
Chapter Six: Controlled Circumstances (WARRICK)
- -
He'd made it an art form.
The world was going to hell. He sipped his coffee. Catherine turned pale and her voice rose dangerously close to a scream. He stared at the glossy tabletop. Sara dodged questions almost physically, turning her body away from the table, than towards it. He said nothing; did nothing. Motionless. Cool. It was easier to pretend that he was in control of the situation that way, except, this time, it wasn't working.
Warrick didn't feel in control at all. He felt like the last person standing on a sinking ship that was still taking him under. The cool - - the calm - - was just a way to keep breathing today, a way to stay afloat, not a way to save or be saved.
"You compromised the investigation," Catherine was saying. She looked tired; wan. Her eyeliner was smudged across her cheekbones. Whatever cool Cath had accumulated, she'd definitely lost it. "Zimmer is going to find out that you lied, and we'll never be able to keep this under wraps. They'll assume that Grissom sent you to spy on her."
"Grissom wouldn't do something like that," Sara said. If Catherine looked tired, then Sara sounded exhausted. "And I'll tell that to whoever asks."
"It's going to be very difficult to convince anyone that Grissom wouldn't do something like that now that he already has." Catherine sat down next to him. He almost wanted to scoot away from her, to hide from the cloud she was projecting. He could only keep himself afloat, after all. "Nick's gone."
In his mind, he dove into the water, and sank.
"Nick? Nick's gone?" he asked, unable to contain the small, sharp note of panic in his voice. "Where he hell did he go?"
"Boston," Catherine said. "He got a flight hours ago, when this started."
"Son of a bitch." He didn't even know if that was a general expletive or one applying to Nick. "Why did he do that?" He glared at Sara, resenting her in Nick's place. "Why do you keep thinking that you can just change everything?"
"I'm not the one in Boston," Sara said. "And I'm not the one Grissom asked to leave."
"Grissom asked him," Warrick said slowly. "Not just gave his approval, but asked? What's wrong with him? Doesn't he get how bad this is going to look when it comes out?"
"He doesn't care."
"When has he ever cared?"
"This isn't politics, Sara," he said. "This is more than his career that's on the line. This is his life. This is - - everything. He's risking that."
She seemed numb. "His decision."
"He's not allowed to make that decision," he said, and saw Catherine nodding along at his side, and he almost wanted to hit her, because she was mute in her agreement, not truly supportive, just like someone bobbing their head to music because it sounded right. Catherine didn't understand. Catherine was too tired to come up with her own ideas, so she was following his, and as soon as she'd had some sleep, she'd cut him loose in favor of her own, equally invalid theory. "No one is supposed to make these decisions by themselves. And definitely not when they make the wrong choices."
"Nick's gone, Grissom's in trouble - - where's Greg?"
He couldn't look at Catherine, so he stared at the table again. His skin was warm. Losing his cool was too costly. "I don't know. He was here a while ago." A trace of bitterness leaked into his voice. "Maybe he's off on a wild-goose chase, too. Maybe he decided that he's going to talk to Lizzie Zimmer, too. Or that Abraham Claberson lawyer she has on her side. He's probably in court right now - - do you want me to call and check?"
"You're accomplishing a lot right now, Warrick," Catherine said dryly.
He said nothing. He'd already lost his battle.
Screw it. What was he even fighting for?
Sara said, quietly, "I'll check and see if I can't turn him up." She vanished.
"You know why she's doing this, don't you?" Catherine said, staring at the door. She flicked beads of water off her cup. "She's in love with him."
Warrick frowned. "Like you never were."
"I wasn't."
"No one believes you, Cath," he said. On that, or on anything else. He made himself swallow instead of speak, and continued with, "Grissom's never had a woman around that didn't fall for him at least once, and he's never had one that he fell for back." She didn't say anything. He rotated his cup on the table but didn't drink. "He's closer to her, though. I used to even think that he was in love with her, too."
"He isn't."
"Jealous?"
"You're jealous of Nick," she said.
"It's not the same thing." And besides, he wasn't. Just because Grissom had chosen Nick to do this digging, just because, for all the much-touted favoritism that he'd heard so much about, Warrick wasn't the one Grissom had asked - - it didn't mean anything.
"We aren't having this conversation," she said, and crushed the paper cup in her hand. Water dripped from a crack in the bottom, and he watched it fall like rain and dampen her palm. She held it awkwardly, and waited for some kind of rebuke.
"Relax, Cath," he said. "You don't love him anymore, and he never loved you."
Catherine stared at him. He knew he was telling the truth - - knew, though he'd never seen, that at one time, Catherine had wanted Grissom, and he knew, just as certainly, that he hadn't wanted her back. She must have never pursued him, though, or they never would have been so close. Grissom backed away from things that loved him; he didn't embrace them. He watched her eyes grow stormy, and then calm.
"What are we fighting about?" she asked.
He smiled. "It's a good day for fighting, I guess. I'm sorry."
"There was never anything between me and Grissom," she said.
And he nodded, because there never was. Insight. Play and counter-play. He evaluated the odds before he continued.
"I'm sorry," he repeated.
"You didn't do anything. That was all me, I think." She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he could smell a light, almost honeyed scent. Perfume? She must not have planned on coming back to work, or she wouldn't have worn it. He wondered if this was what he got for saying that she must, at some point, have been in love with Grissom. He wondered if she was trying to convince him that she loved him.
"It was all of us," he said.
"Not you, Warrick. You never lose control."
He closed his eyes and smiled. "Nope. Never."
"I wish I was more like you. I wish I could keep things under control."
Just for revenge, and for pettiness, he told her that it always seemed like she had everything under control, and she pulled away from him, disgusted at his lack of insight after the revelation only moments before. He tried to convince himself that he didn't care. He didn't need Cath to offer herself up for understanding when she couldn't even see how close he was to breaking down. Calm, he was not. Cool, he was not. He was barely in the same stratosphere as those things.
Which was apparently why he wasn't the one that got to take the field trip.
Sara came back in. He was tempted to ask if she'd had any catharsis while she was gone.
"I found him. Well, I know where he is."
Warrick quietly waited for some major bombshell to drop.
"He's out eating lunch with Hodges," she said, wrinkling her nose.
It wasn't the bombshell that he'd expected. "Doesn't Greg hate Hodges, and doesn't Hodges hate Greg? Don't tell me this is one of those love-hate relationships. We have enough going on today without one of them coming out of the closet."
"As far as I know," Sara said dryly, "both are still straight. Bobby says that Greg asked Hodges to go to lunch since Nick did his disappearing act. And Grissom's sitting in the break room, trying to crumble walls with laser-vision."
He must have said something to her, because she seemed happier. Almost bright.
Never was a woman that didn't fall for Grissom. They always wanted him first, and whatever came afterwards, whoever else they took up with, they'd just be substitutes. Which was why he was not going to sleep with Catherine, even if he wanted to, and even if she just laid the invitation flat on the table.
He didn't like the idea of being someone's last resort.
"You want to talk to him?" Catherine asked.
"Me?" he said. "No. He's not the kind of guy that does consolations."
She shook her head, smiling, and then the smile faded. She patted the chair next to her so Sara could sit down, but Sara, still mistrustful of Catherine's intentions after the blowout before, clung to the doorframe. "What are we going to do?"
"We're going to wait for something to happen," he said.
He wished he had a cigarette. He wished he had anything at all.
He was not on top of this situation.
There weren't enough coping mechanisms in the world.