title: Diminishing Returns
author: calendae
fandom: CSI, Nick gen
rating: PG
He watches syndicated reality shows now, in that that weird in-between time. It was silly, he knew, to stay up even later into the morning on his night off, but his sleep pattern is so screwed up by now that it couldn't hurt things.
He likes Cheaters the best. It's a train wreck in progress and he can't look away. It feels a little bit wrong, peeking into their lives like this, but also it's comforting to know that there are still people out there with lives more fucked up than his. For now, at least.
He's reasonably certain that his string of unfortunate incidents isn't over yet. It may be a year, it may be ten, but one of these days his parents in Texas would get the call.
This is what keeps him up nights. Not nightmares from the past. He wishes. Those can be excused. Buried alive? Sure. A few night terrors allowed there. But vague flashes of his mother opening the door to a pair of uniforms? That's not something he can go running to the phone for.
It wasn't until after Cassie that reality TV became his best friend. He'd linger in the break room as the day shift came started to trickle in and pretend to read the newspaper, waiting for someone to ask him to stay. "Oh Nick, we could use your help on this," or "did you finish that documentation yet?" But that never happened. People were still wary of buried-alive guy. Lots of nervous smiles and small talk.
On the screen, the girlfriend is confronting the philandering boyfriend, skank cowering in the corner. It's like any one of the hundreds of crime scenes he's been at. All that's missing is the blood.
That's how it always ends, isn't it? Someone crying, someone dead. He does what he can, but it never stops. There's always cases when he shows up to the lab, always someone waiting for justice.
Even Cassie. She's alive and that's great. More than great, it's amazing and a miracle. But her family is still dead and her town is torn apart and she'll never go back to her house or her life. He knows the feeling.
It's only natural to think about the end of things, but he knows it's becoming an obsession, not normal at all. He can't stop. Can't sleep without working himself to exhaustion.
The show ends and he clicks off the TV. He checks his phone, hoping in vain that he missed a call from the station, and heads to the bedroom.