Title: Crash and Burn
Disclaimer: Angst, slash, violence, sexual content, language.
POV: Nick
Chapter Two: That Empty Feeling
The wind picked up the leaves at my feet, making them swirl in a little dance as I walked along. The sky was full of soft shades of the rainbow as the sun set on a clear, cool day. Along the darker horizon a few stars were already visible. Off to my left an owl called out to the night, waking from his day of sleep. To my right came the distinct sounds of a babbling brook. I looked around and took in all the sights there were to see. The apple green grass running to the edges of the world. Trees, big and small, dotted the sometimes hilly land. The brook ran a course of many twists and turns cutting a path through the softly swaying grass. I clearly wasn't in the desert anymore.
The wind grew a little stronger, ruffling my clothes and caressing my skin. Laughter was carried to my ears from somewhere behind me. I turned to see no one. The sound shifted and came at me from the right. Every time I turned to look for the source it changed direction until it had me spinning like a top. Then it all stopped. The laughter ceased to exist. The owl stopped hooting. The brook stopped moving. Even the wind stopped its gentle breeze. All around me the world became still and quiet. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to chase off the sudden chill that overtook my body. It came to my softly, on wings of silence. My name. Someone was calling out to me, looking for me.
I took off in the general direction of the sexless voice. My feet carried me at a run over the ground. The voice drew closer and closer. My name sounded more instant and every time I heard it I felt like someone was touching me, deep in my soul. Atop a hill I stopped running as the world below came into focus. The sandy desert played out before me with cacti standing guard. The sand gave the earth a dirty look compared to the lush beauty of the grass. A Tahoe sat in the middle of the small desert valley. With careful steps I made my way toward it.
I remembered the vehicle; it was exactly identical to the ones issued by the crime lab. All the tires were flat and the car sealed up tight against the outside world. I walked slowly around it, careful not to step on a rattle snake or small cactus. The windows were deeply tinted to prevent me from looking in; it sent shivers of foreboding down my spine. I looked around me, trying to figure out who had left the disabled car here. There were no signs of another human being. There was no sign of anything. No animals. No wind. Just the silence of the night.
A rumble of thunder shattered the eerie silence making me jump. The once spotless sky was now covered in ugly black storm clouds. Lightning jumped from cloud to cloud and lit up the darkness. I tried the handle of the passenger side. The door wouldn't budge. I tried the driver's side only to find the same thing. All the doors were locked, keeping the outside from getting in, or was it the other way around? I felt the water as it started to sprinkle. A torrential downpour was only minutes away; I could feel it in my bones.
Through the rumble of thunder I heard my name again. The voice came from the back of the Tahoe. It came from the trunk. Almost against my will I walked around to the rear of the car. My hand clasped the handle of the hatch and pulled. The piece of metal moved effortlessly up, opening the car to the world. A strong bolt of lightning revealed to me what lay inside the trunk. I choked on the scream in my throat.
The interior of the car was covered in blood. The color of the upholstery was barely visible. A headless corpse sat in the backseat, blood still slowly dripping from the wound. The rain soaked me, plastering my clothes to me like a second skin. Laughter sounded all around me and my name was called in varying tones. I fell to my knees, trying not to throw up as the lightning flashed, showing me the interior again. Showing me the lifeless face that stared in my direction. Eyes long since dead to the world, eyes no longer laughing. There was no love in the face of the one who brought me happiness. I couldn't hold it in anymore and emptied my stomach on the desert floor.
Hands held me down as the coughs wracked my body. My chest hurt and my head throbbed with the beginning of a migraine. Some shouted for water while another person sat me up. A hand rubbed my back, trying to force away the coughs. I opened my eyes finally chasing away the horrible dream and its bone chilling eeriness. I was in my home, the home I shared with Greg. People moved around me but their names wouldn't come. A glass of water was brought to my lips and drank the cool liquid. The coughing fit eased and finally went away.
"Are you alright, Nick?"
I looked into the slate blue eyes of my boss, Gil Grissom. "What…" was all that I could get out.
"You called my cell phone twenty minutes ago, Nicky, don't you remember?" I shook my head in response and instantly regretted it. "When I answered the phone you didn't say anything, not a word. Warrick had been in my office when the call came through. He tried calling Greg and there wasn't any answer. I called Brass on my way over here. Good thing too, or I fear you might be dead."
"What are you talking about?" I said my voice hoarse from all the coughing. I finally realized that I was sitting on the floor outside my bedroom. "How did I get here?"
Grissom's eyebrows knitted together. "You don't remember what you were doing?"
"No, I do but…when I called you I was on the couch and that's all I remember," I explained.
"Nick, Brass found you lying on the floor not breathing. I'm worried about all the blood in this house, Nicky. Where's Greg?" He asks quietly, the worry clearly showing on his face.
I shrugged and began recounting the night. Brass was standing behind Grissom so I only had to say it once. I told them about leaving Greg watching TV. I told them how I yelled at him in the middle of the night and cried when I once again wished that I had actually gotten out of bed. Then I told them about the nightmare that woke me and how I found the blood. Brass wrote it all down, not missing a word. By the time I was done telling my tale Sarah, Warrick, and Catherine had shown up. Grissom expressed to me how he wanted to get me to the hospital, to have me checked out. I think he was silently hoping to find a foreign substance in my system. Anything that could explain my lack of memory.
The others did their best not to look at me with sympathy as Grissom led me to his car. The glare of the sun was too much and I shielded my eyes with my hand. Once in the car Grissom handed me a pair of sunglasses. There were more questions he wanted to ask, I could feel, but he didn't think the timing to be appropriate. So I spoke first.
"I….I think I may have harmed Greg, thinking he was the attacker in my dream," my voice a mere whisper.
"From what I saw of the bedroom the evidence says otherwise," Grissom replied backing out of the driveway and heading for the hospital. He kept the siren off. He was a good boss, a good man, and he could tell when someone was in pain. Even if he wasn't the greatest with people.
"I wish I could believe you…"
Grissom let the silence stretch for five minutes before the CSI in him took over. "I don't want this to come off rude, Nicky, but I have to ask, you know that. Where you and Greg arguing last night? Had there been any disagreement whatsoever?"
"No, none, Greg was in a happy mood. He actually cooked dinner instead of calling some delivery service," I replied. "We discussed the cases we worked, watched the evening news, and then I went to bed. I told this to you already."
"I'm aware of that but I thought you might be holding back since Brass was standing there," he stated.
I tried hard to think back over the days. I know that we had not fought that night; it had been a peaceful night. "Last week we argued about cars. Greg wanted to know why we always took my car to work. Aside from that I can't think of anything else."
"Don't strain yourself, Nick," Grissom warned. "You probably took a great knock the noggin when you passed out from whatever."
"I didn't take anything," I remarked.
"Maybe you didn't take it voluntarily. Perhaps whoever hurt Greg slipped you something," he replied.
We spent the rest of the ride in silence. Had someone really slipped me something? And if they did, when would they have done it? It would have had to been close to the time I got up. I don't remember being stuck with a needle and no one could have forced a pill down my throat. Maybe a liquid would have worked. Grissom helped me from the car, my head hurt more now than it did when I woke up. The world spun around like a CD in player and I nearly fell over. Grissom placed my right arm over his shoulders and half carried me-half held me up.
My body hurt now more than it did before. The lower right side of my shirt, above my hip was wet and sticking to my skin. I must have said something to Grissom because he pulled on my shirt. He muttered something that sounded like "shit". He forced me to sit on a bench, taking off without me toward the entrance of the hospital. My side was numb, my head throbbed and my body ached. When I had awakened that morning I had been fine. No aches, no pains, not even a bit of fatigue. Maybe I blocked out any pain. The trauma of waking up next to all that blood was enough to force my focus on something else.
Sitting outside in the already hot day made me drowsy. I felt my body sweating to ease the temperature of my body. Where had Grissom gone off to in such a hurry? A combination of my nightmares, the adrenaline of this morning and the sun was making me nod off. I didn't feel steady on my own two feet. Would Grissom mind if I napped while he was gone? I lay on my right side, stretching out on the bench. My momma warned me about never sleeping in the sun, you risked severe sunburn. I wouldn't sleep for too long, Grissom had to come back at some point. I was the reason we'd come to the hospital in the first place.
"Nicky, wake up buddy," I heard Grissom's voice as I closed my eyes. "Don't give in, Nick, come on."
I opened my eyes as he pulled on my arm. He had an attendant with him and a stretcher. "Something wrong, Griss?"
"The headache, the blacking out, the drowsiness; Nick, I think your nightmare was a little more real than we originally thought." As he said this he pulled up the side of my shirt. It had not been sticky with sweat, no; there was blood along my side, seeping from an open wound. After that I checked out of consciousness.