A/N: I am so sorry it took me so long to update but this was very difficult chapter to write. This chapter kind of explains James' past so it took a lot of imagination to come up with. It does involve some drinking but the next chapter will involve their night on the town and some very heavy drinking. Me and my friends are going out on the weekend for a pub crawl so if anything interesting happened, I'll include it in this so you can get a proper feel of British drinking.

Danielle walked down the corridor towards the interview room. She knew how pissed off James can get when Peter was involved so she wanted to make sure it didn't blow out of proportion. She didn't know why James hated him so much but that's just how James was around Peter. As she took a few more steps towards the door, it swung open and James stormed out. His eyes were flaming with anger. He walked passed her without even a look towards her.

"James, what happened?" She asked after him. When she got no answer she turned back towards the doorway, watching Sara walk out also. "Let me take a guess," Sara tried to smile at her but it failed. "Peter pissed him off," Sara nodded towards her and Danielle shook her head. "What is it with those two? I guess they just were naturally born to hate each other," There was a shout from behind her, down the hall.

"Danielle!" James shouted just in front of the double doors leading to the reception. She turned towards him. "Make sure Sara gets back to the lab,"

"And where are you going?" She shouted back. He turned and pushed open the doors before answering.

"To get drunk!" The doors swung shut as he disappeared. Danielle turned to Sara and noticed her slight change of colour.

"Hey Sara, you alright? You look a little pale," Sara didn't respond, she just stared down the corridor. "Ok let's get you to the lab," Before she knew what was going on, Sara was sat in the Hummer coasting down the strip towards the lab. The silence was eerie inside the car with only the sounds of the road vibrating through the wheels. Danielle kept looking over at her from the driver's seat, making sure she was ok but Sara continued to look out of the passenger window at all the passing shops and bars. As they passed a car park for one of the smaller bars on the strip, she recognised James' BMW as one of the few cars occupying the spaces. She realised that James must be inside and decided that she needed to talk to him.

"Hey Danielle, I think I'll finish shift early and do some shopping," Sara looked over at Danielle who was just turning the wheel to pull up at the side of the road. "I'll make my own way home later"

"Are you sure you'll be alright?" Danielle asked. Sara quickly nodded back. "Ok, I'll see you at the restaurant tonight then," Danielle said as Sara opened the door and slid out onto the pavement. She shut the door and watched as Danielle pulled away. She waited till the car had disappeared before turning and walking back towards the bar. Sara had been in this bar before as it was one of the few bars that were open all night. She pushed open the door causing the heat and a low amount of music to escape from inside. The sun was just rising in Nevada, but inside the Bar was dark and abandoned. She looked around and the bar was empty apart from the elderly bartender and James sat at the bar on a high stool. He had taken off his armour and was dress in his normal clothes with a black leather jacket draped over the stool next to him. She watched as he brought a beer bottle up to his lips and drank some of its contents. She took a few steps closer into the bar before the bar tender realised she was there. She smiled at him before taking the stool next to James.

"Hey," She said as she placed both hands on the bar. James pulled the bottle from his lips and lowered it back onto the neatly placed coaster.

"I thought I told Danielle to take you back to the lab?" James said without looking at her.

"I saw your car in the parking lot and I wanted to make sure you were alright," The bar tender walked over using his apron to make dry his hands.

"What can I get you?" He asked. She looked up at him and then at the many stocked drinks stored in the refrigerators behind the bar.

"Just a beer thanks," Sara answered. The barman nodded and walked over to one of the fridges. He came back with a beer and threw a coaster down on the counter. He pulled the cap off the beer and placed in down on the coaster. Sara thanked him and he walked to the other side of the bar to continue cleaning the numerous tables scattered around the place. She looked back at James who was staring down at his hand. She looked at it and saw him staring at a set of silver dog tags. There was a silence between them only disturbed by the changing of the song on the jukebox. She decided to break the silence and question him. "So, Peter is your brother?" She asked. It was a few moments before James started shaking his head slowly. He turned and looked at her.

"Peter is my Half Brother," He looked back down at the dog tags in his hand. "The unfortunate produce of a relationship my father had before he met my mother," Sara watched as he twisted the metal tags between his fingers. She saw four separate tags, two had his name on them while the other two she could only see the first names. Jessica and Katy.

"I thought that you were only supposed to wear your own dog tags?" She asked while taking a sip of her beer.

"Normally you'd wear one set, both tags engraved with your name, rank and serial number,"

"So why do you have four?" Sara asked as she placed her beer back on the counter. James sighed and brought the tags closer for her to see. She looked at the two single tags.

"You know that most of us ended up in the army because we were convicted of something right?" Sara nodded. "Well when we found out we were all recruited the same way, and none of us have any direct family. If we died, the memories of the ones we did have would die with us so we made a pact. So we decided that we would wear a single tag, engraved with the name of someone close to us so that they would never be forgotten," Sara reached over and took the chain from his and examined the tags closely.

"Jessica Marie Phoenix?" Sara asked as she read the first tag. James smiled at the memories that quickly flooded his mind at the mention of her name.

"My mother," James sighed. "She died when I was fourteen,"

"How?" She asked without thinking. James eyes faded for a moment like the images were running before them. She saw the look in his eyes and instantly regretted asking the question. She leaned forward try to catch his gaze. "You don't have to answer that if you don't want to,"

"No, it's ok," James sighed again before taking another swig from the bottle before him and placing it back on the bar. "She was run over by a drunk driver on her way home from work one night. It wasn't till a few days after the funeral that my father moved Peter and his mother into the house,"

"That's a little insensitive of him,"

"You could say that. I think in the space of a year, I must have said just 10 words to him. I was really pissed off with him," James lifted his beer and drank the last mouthful in the bottom. Sara looked at the second tag in her hand.

"Katy Stanton?" She asked once again without thinking. She looked up at James and noticed his eyes were glazed over but they seemed much more intense than before. He stared into empty space for what seemed like an hour. His eyelids closed several times showing that he was tired.

"That's somebody I really don't like talking about," Sara was unhappy about him hiding his feelings. He reminded her of Grissom in some ways. He could be completely open one minute and the shut himself off the next. She watched as he yawned into his hand. She smiled at he apologised to her for being so tired.

"It looks to me like you could use a decent night's sleep," She pushed her empty beer bottle towards the bartender as he collected the empties. "I can't see sleeping in those cars is doing you any good and your gonna need some rest if your gonna be awake for your party. Why don't you come and sleep on my couch? I know its not a comfortable bed but its got to be a bit better than those damn car seats," Sara suddenly realised what she had said and blushed at the revelation of it. James seemed to think about it for a while before looking up at her and smiling.

"You got beer at your place?"

Sara opened the door and stepped into her apartment. James stood in the doorway, silently waiting for her approval to cross the threshold into her private domain. She took off her jacket and hung it on the hook by the kitchen door before placing her purse on the hook aswell. She looked back and saw James still stood in the doorway.

"You can come in you know?" Sara said as she beckoned him through the doorway. James smiled and stepped over the threshold. Sara took his jacket and hung it next to hers. Underneath the coat, James was wearing a navy blue shirt with a vertical lined pattern of lighter blues. He reached forward and once again folded his sleeves up his arms above his elbows. As he did, he glanced around the main room of the apartment.

"This is a nice place Sara," He said while she was still stood behind him. She was glad he couldn't see her face go red. There was a sudden grumble and James rested a hand on his stomach. Sara smiled and walked passed him.

"You must be hungry, come on I'll get you something to eat," She walked into the kitchen and by hearing the extra footsteps on the tiled floor, she knew James had followed her in. She opened the fridge and pulled out two beers. She pulled off the tops and handed one to James. He looked at her and smiled.

"Thanks," He said as he lifted the bottle to his mouth. She smiled back at him as he took a large swig from the bottle. Sara placed the other bottle on the table across from him and looked back towards the fridge in search of food.

"I apologise about the food before hand," She said with her head still submerged in the fridge. "I'm a vegetarian,"

"You don't need to apologise for that," James said behind her. She pulled her head out of the fridge and looked at him. "You're living your life like you want to, that's a good quality Sara," Sara began to blush again and she put her head back into the fridge hoping that the cold draft would reduce her slightly reddened cheeks. "It's ok Sara; I'm not really that hungry anyway," James sighed and looked back down at his beer.

"So…," Sara said as she sat down in front of her beer across from him. "Anything you wanna talk about?" She was pleading for him to talk about what was bothering him but James just seemed to stare into his beer. They both just sat in silence. She sighed and took a drink from her bottle. "When I was a kid, my father abused my mother. The constant beatings, the hospital visits and the stupid excuse of walking into a door was always in our house. When he was done with her but still had some energy left he would turn on me or my brother. Then one night, my mother had had enough and she stabbed him with a knife from the kitchen," James looked up from his beer and into her eyes. Sara was a little startled by the intensity of his eyes on hers and she could feel her face turning red again "She was sent to prison and from then on I was put into foster home after foster home, constantly being moved around and separated from my brother which is why I get upset during certain cases. Something that happened a long time ago still effects the way I act and the way feel these days," It was Sara's turn to look down at her beer to try and hide her sadness. James didn't say a word and returned to staring at his beer bottle. There was a brief silence in the room again.

"Remember when I said I hadn't spoken to my Dad for a year before he died?" James said without lifting his vision from his beer bottle. Despite that fact he couldn't see her answer; she nodded and placed her bottle back on the small table. "I only really spoke to one person that year. She was a girl in my science class who I had to do a project with. She was a smart girl and very pretty. The brightest blonde hair and boldest hazel eyes I'd have ever seen. I went over to her house a few times for the project and then her wanting to know what she was missing; she invited herself to my house," Sara continued to listen as James took a another swig from his bottle before he went on. "Things just seemed to click with us, before we knew it we were friends and then best friends. We hung out all the time either at her house or mine. It wasn't long before I realised I loved her but it was months before I worked up the courage to actually tell her. When I did, she had the biggest smile on her face," James laughed a little. "I thought she was just gonna laugh at me and tell me to get lost,"

"What did she say?" Sara asked urging him to carry on with the story.

"She didn't say anything. She just ran over and kissed me," James laughed again and drank another sip from his bottle.

"So what happened to her?" Sara asked. James face lost all emotion and he closed his eyes. A few moments later, Sara saw a small tear travel down the side of his nose. It rolled to the tip and then dripped to the table. She reached over and placed her hand on top of his. It was a few minutes before he started talking again.

"Every Friday night we would go out to the pubs with her other friends. We were too young to be drinking but nobody really cared back then. She would always sit across from me and play footsie with me under the table. She was everything to me, my whole life. Then one Friday night she didn't look well at all but she still came out. I went to the bathroom and when I came back she was gone. I asked her friends where she was and they said she'd gone out side for some air. But when I went outside, I couldn't find her. So I thought she might have had to rush home for some reason of another so I began walking back to her house to make sure she was alright. On my way there, I passed an alley which led to the back of a small post office. As I passed it, I heard a muffled yell and then a slap. So I went to look and there she was. Katy was being raped by three guys,"

"Katy? The girl on your dog tags?" Sara asked. James slowly nodded and pulled the dog tags from round his neck before spinning the chain around his index finger.

"The guys were in our year from school so I knew who they were. Two of them were holding her down and covering her mouth while the other was inside of her. I'll never forget the look on her face. I've never seen anyone look more frightened. She saw me and screamed through the hand over her mouth. Luckily they were slightly drunk so I fought them off quite quickly before they ran off. I immediately tried to call the cops but she stopped me saying that she didn't want anyone to find out. I took her home to try and talk some sense into her and tell the police but she just kept crying. She was that desprete to hide it from her parents that she begged me to have sex with her. I refused and continued to berate her about to the cops. After hours of talking, she changed her mind and decided to tell her parents what had happened. The cops did very little, they pulled the guys in who had raped her and both I and Katy identified them. They were set free due to a lack of physical evidence. Our school did a little more than the cops. Me and Katy were given our lessons on our own in a small science room on the outskirts of the building. On a Wednesday afternoon, the teacher got a message that there was a phone call for him in the office. So he left to answer it, telling us to keep studying. Just a few minutes after he had gone, the three guys ran into the room and one of them smacked me on the back of my head with a brick. I was down for the count on the floor. I came too but couldn't move my body from the neck down. I saw them punch Katy across the face and then kick her in the ribs. When they finally let her fall to the floor, she looked over at me, giving me the same look she gave me that night we went out. I tried to move to help her but couldn't. One of them grabbed a blow torch from the counter. I watched as the flame turned blue and then to white as it got hotter. They ripped off her school blazer and her bra. One held her face down to the floor by her hands while another used his body weight to hold her legs. Then the third walked over and scored the word 'Grass' into her back with the blow torch," Sara hand shot up and covered her mouth at the shock of torture inflicted on that poor girl. "She never fought back; she simply stared at me trying her best to not cry out from the pain. She was biting her lower lip so hard that it was bleeding. When they were done with her they moved onto me but I had regained some control over my body by then and I fought back. They were still able to burned the skin on my back. Eventually they stop trying to mark me with a word and just torched my entire back. Something spooked them and they ran off. The teacher came back about ten minutes later and found us. Katy was in the hospital for about a week but the hit to my head and the tenderness of the skin on my back meant I was in for about a month. She never came to see me, no letter and no phone call. When I got out, all I wanted to do was see her and I went round to her house to find it empty and up for sale. She'd left me an envelope stuck to the door with my name on it. Her parents had moved her away once they knew what had happened," A few more tears splashed to the table as James continued to stare down at the little droplets covering the table surface.

"What did the letter say James?" Sara asked. James sucked in a deep breath.

"I've never read it, I just couldn't bring myself to do it," He rubbed the dog tags in his palm with his thumb. "I was hurt physically and mentally. All I could think about was her and what those three guys had done to her. Then my Dad died of cancer and I snapped. I went to school for the first time in three months and I wasn't really thinking straight. I watched as the three guys went into a classroom with a bunch of other students. I left a massage for the teacher and he soon left the classroom. I walked in and nobody really noticed me, till I smacked one of them with a hammer. He went down and then everyone ran out but I managed to corner another of the guys. He managed to hit me with one of the chairs and then I punched him in the stomach before hitting him right on the temple with the hammer. Then the third grabbed me from behind and I dropped the hammer to the floor. He whispered to me 'She was the best fuck we'd ever had but then again she always was a slag'. Well that really made it worst. I got this sudden burst of energy from nowhere and managed to throw him over my shoulder. He hit his head on the floor and was dazed. So I dragged him over to the teacher's desk and grabbed a soldering iron. I used it to mark her name into his back and then did the same to his friends. The police came and arrested me and then I chose to serve in the Army. I saw Katy a few years ago. She's a Physiatrist now. But I couldn't build up the courage to apologise to her," Sara gave him a questioning look.

"Why did you need to apologise to her?" She asked.

"Because it was my fault. If I hadn't forced her to go to police none of that would have happened and I wouldn't have lost her," James stared back down at the beer bottle in front of him. Sara placed her hand back over James's hand and reassuringly squeezed it.

"It wasn't your fault James; you did what was right,"

Sara shot out of her sleep, awoken by the nightmare of her father's murder. Her skin glistened with sweat and it showed on her grey tank top and light blue pants that she slept in. She sat up and calmed her breathing before looking to the clock on her bedside. It was four pm and the bright lights of Vegas were glinting through the bedroom curtains. She wiped the sweat from her forehead before standing up from the bed. She stepped out into the hall and quickly used the bathroom. When she came out, she could hear the faintest of snoring coming from the living room. She slowly wondered in and yawned. She looked over and saw that James was still asleep, stretched out across the sofa. James had fallen asleep as soon he'd laid down there but it had taken Sara a few hours to fall asleep in her bed. Suddenly, James rolled onto his side causing the thin quilt to fall to the floor. He was still wearing his clothes but his shirt had ridden up revealing the muscles on his stomach. Sara could also see the hints of a tattoo on his left arm. She walked over to him and picked up the quilt. As she went to cover James with it, she stared down at the empty space on the sofa next to him. She really didn't want to go back to her bed after that nightmare. She felt safe with him and didn't want to be alone. She quietly laid down next to him and placed the quilt over herself before covering James with the remainder. She snuggled close to him with her back to him so she could feel his warm breath on the back of her neck as he continued to sleep. It wasn't long before she fell back to sleep and to a better dream.

Please tell me what you think.