Where You Are
Written By: Ms Maggs / Edited By: KJT
AN: This story is independent of my CSI Series featured on my website. It was written to purge a plot bunny that sprung after watching Empty Eyes, but it doesn't contain any spoilers beyond that episode. It starts off angsty because the episode was, but like most other stuff I've written, a hefty dose of humor will compliment any drama.
Summary: Working a brutal case left Greg and Sara shaken until Nick and Grissom intervened. A blend of drama and humor with character backstory and relationship details. G&S, N&G and some team stuff too. CSI w shades of When Harry Met Sally & The Odd Couple comedy. Please do NOT expect overnight character development. This is a 32 chapter story and the characters you meet in Chapter 1, will not be the same people at the end. They'll develop over time. I like to introduce a character and peel back their layers. I like to write people hiding behind bravado, jokes and brave faces, and as time goes by that's stripped away and replaced. I enjoy making a character unlikeable or misunderstood and then turning that completely around. There is always much more to my characters than what you see in the beginning)
Warnings: T rated 1-23, M rated after that. A bad word or two, but nothing you don't hear at the mall. There will be no NC-17 graphic sex or violence in this story at any time, and no character deaths.
Parings: GSR, Nick and Greg. Could there be more than friendship in one guy's mind or both? If you're on the fence about reading a slash story, please know that dozens of readers who never thought they'd enjoy a slash story or Nick and Greg as a couple, LOVED this story. They've left reviews saying as much. So, if you ever wanted to give a story where one or both of the guys had slashy feelings, this could be a great start! I've worked very hard to write a tasteful, belivable, funny, romantic progression that tugs on heartstrings. : )
Thank you for reading, we hope you enjoy.
Prologue
Greg arrived at the crime scene with knots in his stomach.
"Dammit." It was a familiar feeling, this sickness building inside him. He was beginning to think it was permanent. He was beginning to think a lot of alarming things, like maybe it was time to quit his job, leave Vegas, and walk away from the small life he had been carving for himself for nearly a decade. But where does a guy go to flee the nightmares in his head?
Realizing it wasn't a matter of logistics, he tried escaping with drugs. First the legal ones the psychiatrist had prescribed after the beating, but when those pills left him flat, he made a switch. An abuser in college, he had no difficulty acquiring or using the right stuff on the sly. It was working too, but then a departmental memo reviewing LVPD's random drug testing policy reminded him that self-medication could cost him the career he loved. So, after tacking the memo on his fridge, he quit cold turkey, just like he had one morning at Stanford a lifetime ago.
Next up was booze, but even though it was legal, and a favored choice by many of LVPD's finest, it quickly lost its appeal.
Greg had never really enjoyed drinking himself into unconsciousness. Honestly, as wimpy as it sounded, he hated the vomiting that accompanied his binge drinking. He hated vomiting so much, that even as a teen he didn't mind his mother sitting with him in the bathroom when got sick. Afterwards, he could always count on her soothing him with a steady palm to his back, a sparkling glass of Ginger Ale, and a smile. He couldn't imagine the level of harassment he would get from the guys if they ever discovered that nugget of unparalleled patheticness, not that he ever had a reputation as a tough guy…and certainly not after the ass-kicking.
Every time he went into the field, the cops took great joy in laughing at the stupid CSI who couldn't escape a beating even though he had been sitting in a drivable truck with functioning locks. There were a few exceptions, a handful of cops who had praised him for what he had done, but not many. It was official, he was village idiot and life sucked.
When asked during his last PEAP session if he had contemplated suicide since the devastating event, Greg quickly gave the right answer, 'never', but in all honesty he had not only considered it, but tried it twice. Not recently, not over the current drama in his life, and they were meager attempts, if you could even call them attempts. If pressed for an exact description, the Stanford scholar would opt for a heady explanation, something like 'they were merely flirtations with the concept of dying brought on by severe moments of personal insecurity'. In short, there were a couple of times back in college when he just wasn't sure he could cope with the insurmountable bullshit in his life. Now that he thought about it, his present state of mind was starting to remind him of those dark slices of his past.
Not good! a little voice cried out. You should tell someone, particularly someone who gives a rat's ass. He immediately ruled out his psychiatrist, his PEAP counselor, and Grissom. All three, while well meaning, had been useless thus far. In all fairness, Greg recognized that therapy, counseling sessions, and one-on-ones with his boss would probably be of greater value if he didn't spend the time lying to the people who were conducting them.
Duh!
Just shut up and let me do my job, he silently snapped.
Isn't it hard to do your job when you're standing frozen in the living room and the dead bodies are upstairs? Give it up, Sanders. You're done.
Ignoring the shrew's unsolicited opinion, he took a few steps across the wood floor, which unfortunately proved to be enough distance to catch the stench of death wafting down the stairs. "Dammit."
"Keep walkin', tough guy." Poised at the top of the stairs, Nick had heard a creak in the floorboards below.
It was hard to wuss out around a guy who had been buried alive with a loaded gun and lived to tell the tale. "Coming."
Nick measured the bloody footprint. "Looks like he was about a size eleven."
After three steps, Greg froze again. "You been up there yet?" He lifted his gaze, hoping a look of confidence from the invincible Texan would propel him the rest of the way.
Sensing his buddy needed a little extra prodding, Nick stopped processing and peered around the staircase's rails. He nodded, because he couldn't think of any words that were going to make it better and unlike Greg, he wasn't much of a talker in these situations.
Greg saw two choices. He could firmly plant his tail between his legs and run screaming from the house of horrors like the wimp everyone believed he was, or he could get his ass up the stairs.
"Good choice," Nick said with a dash of pride when his buddy took a step in the right direction.
"Yeah."
"Hey." Nick glanced up from the bloody print. "Head to the last bedroom on the left, it's the lesser of two evils…but not by much."
"I'll keep it together."
Nick returned to his task. "I know you will."
Greg took a steadying breath and headed down the hall, but not before telling the little voice inside his head to back off, because he wouldn't be throwing in the towel…at least not today.
The crisp night air was exactly what Sara needed.
"Dammit." It was a familiar feeling, this sickness building inside her. She was beginning to think it was permanent. She was beginning to think a lot of alarming things, like maybe it was time to quit her job, take up a hobby, and try cohabitation. But how does an independent woman who spent the majority of her life proving she didn't need anyone, admit she wanted someone to come home to every night?
She doesn't, at least not without a fight.
Grissom presented the key without romantic trappings. He simply placed it on his kitchen counter one evening in between stirs of the vegetarian tortilla soup he was making for dinner, and said 'I thought you might want to move in with me, so I made you this'. As he returned to stirring the pot, Sara stared at the life-altering object before her. "Oh." Eventually, she inarticulately declined, overtalking the issue all the way from soup to dessert. At the end of her barely coherent ramblings, he said 'The lady doth protest too much. 'You could have just said "no, thanks"'. That's when she realized he had misunderstood her two hour explanation.
While the relationship had been everything she had dreamed and more, she wasn't ready to lose her address or identity. As a girl who had been displaced from her home as a child, the proposition was a big deal. Moving into someone else's home meant giving someone power over her future. She saw it as a matter of control, he saw it as a matter of trust. Long story short, they argued, and he went on sabbatical. It was right about then that Sara began hating her apartment…her big, lonely apartment full of stuff and not Grissom.
Much to her surprise, while Grissom was away, Sara discovered that she had already given someone the power over her future. She had given it to him, even though she had never verbalized it or put it in writing. Her heart belonged to him. She didn't know when it happened, but if pressed, she'd say it was the first time Grissom held her in his arms as she cried. After decades of shedding tears on the sly, having a partner in sorrow felt unbelievably right. She missed him terribly.
Then he sent her a cocoon.
A cocoon and no note. Who sends a woman a cocoon without a note she grumbled in the empty locker room. Grissom. She planned on being mad at him when he returned two weeks later, but never mustered the strength. Instead they picked up right where they left off, and once again began stealing moments of happiness on the nights they weren't doing their emotionally draining jobs.
They were supposed to be having a relaxing night right now, but instead they were processing six dead bodies, all women killed far before their prime. One girl died holding her hand. All six had their throats slashed just like her father. To say it was a rough night was an understatement.
"Shit!" Bending over, Sara vomited next to a bush. Normally she would have run off property, but the place was huge and the spasm too powerful to delay. By the third round she was certain every ounce of the Black Bean Burrito she had shoved down her throat earlier was purged and she breathed in a fresh batch of air.
"They had Sprite in the fridge." Grissom popped the tab. "I'll replace the can," he said out of habit. It was department policy, but he really doubted the family members of the six dead girls would hassle the County over a missing can of Sprite.
"Thanks." She took the soda and wondered how he had known where to find her and how to help. He just knew. He was Grissom. "I want the key," she whispered with all the vulnerability that she had taken such care to mask when he had offered it. "That is…if you still want me to have it." She sipped the Sprite to avoid the usual overtalking.
Without a word, Grissom reached into his pocket to retrieve the key, took Sara's hand, and pressed the life-altering object into her palm. "David's waiting, I have to get back inside. We'll work out the logistics later."
Sara wrapped her hand around the key to her future and watched Grissom slip inside the house. "Okay." Lost in thought, the hoot of a barn owl startled her, and when she tracked it, she saw Greg standing in one of the bedroom windows. Had he seen? Did he know? Was he jealous?
Waving to her friend, she spoke as if he could hear her. "I'll be right there."
Chapter 1
"Griss!" Nick hustled out of the building to catch his boss.
"I have an appointment." The movers were scheduled to arrive at Sara's apartment in twenty. "I can give you two minutes."
"It's about Greg." Nick lowered his voice when he saw a group of officers congregating two cars away. "He's called out sick every day since you told him about the settlement. I talked to him last night. I know he's not sick, he's hiding."
"I can't force him to work."
"I was thinkin' if you went and saw him, gave him some encouragement... It would mean a lot comin' from you if you actually went…."
"I already told him that politics are a part of the job and advised him to let it go. Beyond that…" Grissom shrugged, "I can't help him get over it, Nicky. Only he can. You know that from personal experience, don't you?"
"I just think if you made the effort to…"
"I'm sorry, I really have to go."
"Yeah, okay." Nick rolled his eyes as Grissom unlocked his car. "Have a good day off, man." Walking away he muttered, "Sofia threatens to quit and you wine and dine her 'til she agrees to stay. Lady Heather gets in trouble with the law and you run all over town tryin' to help her. Sara gets suspended and you run to her apartment, she sheds a few tears in the breakroom and you give her a ride home. And people say I'm a ladies man. Pfft."
Fishing out his keys, he headed for his truck.
Watching for the moving truck from the window of her soon-to-be ex-apartment, Sara felt a steady blend of excitement and anxiety. It had only been three days since she accepted Grissom's key, but it felt like she had been planning and packing for months.
Glancing around the room, she couldn't believe she got the whole place boxed in such a short amount of time. It helped that she hadn't been sleeping. Still haunted by the memories of holding Cami's and the killer's hands, Sara's attempts at peaceful slumber kept morphing into nightmares. It didn't help that she already had a plethora of long-existing nightmares to cope with when the new ones arrived that week. She hoped having someone consistently sleeping next to her would alleviate the problem, but common sense told her it would be a little more complicated than that.
But what if it doesn't work out? The question came just as Grissom's car pulled into the parking lot. It was a good question, and staring at the sea of boxes, she panicked. For the first time in her life, she was jumping without a parachute. What the hell was I thinking?!
Grissom's knock at the door sent her heart racing, but not in a gushy romantic way, in more of a 'full-blown panic-attack, does anyone have a brown paper bag that I can use so I don't hyperventilate' way.
It was a defining moment. Clearly, she was about to make either the best or the worst move of her life.
"Sara!" Grissom knocked harder the second time. "Open up, I have food."
"Hey." Standing in the open doorway, she hoped she didn't look panicked.
"Honey, are you okay? You look like you're going to vomit."
"Greggo!" Nick knocked harder the second time. "Open up, I have food."
"Hey." Standing in the doorway in boxers and a rumpled t-shirt, Greg coughed into his fist and sniffled twice, hoping he looked sick enough.
"When I hated fourth grade, I came up with this great cough and sniffle combo, much better than that bullshit you just laid on me. Mom fell for it every time. You don't have nearly enough phlegm to make yours believable." He dangled the bag of breakfast burritos. "I sure hope you don't have a fake tummy ache too, because I bought your favorite breakfast." He pushed his buddy aside and entered the apartment he had only visited a half dozen times over the years.
"I really…" Greg lowered his head as Nick breezed into the apartment. "Sure, come on in, I'd love some company."
"What the hell, man?" Nick walked through the rows of boxes shaking his head. "You weren't gonna say anything?"
"Yeah, I was going to say something. I planned on stopping by and telling everyone in person tomorrow. I need to clear out my locker and stuff too." Figuring his uninvited guest wouldn't be leaving any time soon, he shut the door.
"So that's it." Nick tossed the brown bag on the kitchen counter. "You're just gonna give up. All because some talking heads were too lazy to go to trial and decided to write a check?"
"A 2.5 million dollar check to the family of a guy who was beating an innocent man to death. They didn't support me. After all the blood, sweat and tears I've given the County, they threw me under the bus. After I risked my life to save an innocent bystander. Do you have any idea how insulting that is?"
"Yeah, I'd say it's right up there with the County not payin' a dime in ransom money to save my ass when I got abducted on the job." Nick flashed a cocky smile. "But I didn't come home from the hospital and pack any boxes now did I?"
"No, you didn't, Mr. Incredible, but you didn't kill a guy either, now did you? And you didn't have a dead guy's mother screaming in your face and going on every TV station calling you a murderer!" Greg flashed to rage, "And you didn't have a certain portion of the community calling for your fucking head on a platter! See, it's not quite apples to oranges, so how about stopping the bullshit comparisons!" Shaking, he opened the door. "Take your burritos and your superhero bravado and get the hell out of my apartment! Now, please!"
"I'm sorry. You're right." Sincerity flooded Nick's voice, "You're absolutely right. There's a world of difference."
"Thank you!" Greg pointed to the open door. "Buh bye."
Instead of leaving, Nick took a seat at the kitchen counter. "Hey, it's a good thing I brought burritos instead of omelets, huh, 'cause you probably packed your forks."
After releasing a guttural scream, Greg gave up and shut the front door.
"You got any Cholula in your fridge by any chance? This place never makes 'em spicy enough for me."
"Let me check." Greg huffed over to the fridge and whipped open the door. "Will Tabasco do?"
"Sure, if that's all you got." When his reluctant host slammed the bottle on the counter he laughed. "I really liked how you remembered to say 'please' when you were throwin' my ass out. I'm not used to gettin' kicked out with manners. The chicks I piss off cuss like sailors and throw shoes at my head."
"I find that incredibly easy to believe." Greg relented to his hunger and grabbed a burrito from the bag. "If you can't evict him, join him." He dropped onto the unoccupied bar stool across from Nick.
"Hey, for givin' you shit, I'll help you unpack your boxes."
"No need." Greg peeled back the foil to reveal the burrito. "I'm still moving."
"You're seriously gonna walk away from eight years at the lab and all that work you did to get into the field, just because you're feelin' some heat at the moment? As soon as the next scandal breaks in this town, you'll be yesterday's news. We just need another supersized diaper-wearin' millionaire freak to take a nose dive off a balcony or some shit like that and everyone will be goin' 'Greg Sanders who?' Think about it, look how everyone was wrapped up in Mickey Dunn's reappearance or Sam Braun's death. Scandals come and go, but careers don't." When he heard nothing, he pushed, "Come on, Greg…you have somethin' good goin' on here, are you sure you want to walk away from it?"
After staring at Nick for a moment, he quietly replied, "I don't want to leave."
"Good." Nick dove into the paper sack for a second burrito. "I knew I was right."
"I said I don't want to, but I still am. I gave up the place, the landlord already rented it, and…" Greg set down his burrito. "I'm gonna get serious here for a second, so don't razz me, okay?"
"Okay." Nick gave a reassuring nod. "I won't."
"I'm not doing well. I'm not sleeping. Before this breakfast, I don't remember the last thing I ate. I've been drinking too." He decided to omit confessions of drug use and clinical depression. "I don't want to leave. I want to suck it up and show up for work like you did, covered in ant bites and saying it was no big deal, but I'm not you. I'm not…" He dropped his gaze to the floor. "I'm having nightmares, I'm hearing noises and imagining thugs are following me. I'm messed up. I don't know how you shook off your drama. I give you credit I can't."
"You fake it 'til you make it, buddy. That's the trick. I wasn't okay, not by a long shot. You see thugs, I saw bugs, bugs everywhere, man." He shuddered thinking about it. "I felt them crawlin' on my skin. If I saw one for real, I jumped. I kept thinkin' people were watchin' me, sneakin' up behind me. And let's not even talk about confined spaces or goin' underground. You know that day we were processin' that cult mass suicide? I just about peed my pants going down in that tunnel. It's all part of the deal, the PTSD. I'm not better than you, Greg, I'm just better at fakin' it. Like the cough/sneeze thing. You suck at it, I'm good." He demonstrated his fake flu symptoms. "See what I mean?"
Breaking into a smile, Greg said, "That was really convincing actually."
"I told ya. Between growin' up in my hyper-perfectionist family, the abuse thing when I was a kid, playin' football, bein' a cop, and surviving in this town, I started fakin' shit and coverin' my thoughts at the ripe age of two and kept on goin'." He grabbed his burrito. "I've got mad skills. Sometimes I don't even know when I'm fakin'."
"Yeah, okay, but how does faking it in public prevent you from having a nervous breakdown when you get home?"
"Who says I don't have a nervous breakdown when I get home?" Nick laughed. "That's where booze, babes, and basketball come in. I release some aggression, let it build, then release it again. Your problem is you don't play sports or date."
"I date. Just not often. It's the genius thing, it intimidates women."
"Is that it? Here I was thinkin' it was your fucked up hair."
"Well, not everyone can get away with a porn stache phase."
"Oh yeah! Greg's back!" Happy to see his buddy laughing again, Nick headed for the fridge. "What kind of beer do you have?"
"It's nine am."
"I work nights! This is my happy hour, yours too." The disappointed guest grabbed a Corona Light. "Queer beer it is." He grabbed two.
"I think there's a lime left."
Nick returned to his stool rolling his eyes. "Tough guy lesson number one…real men don't put a lime in their queer beer."
"Too bad I packed my pens, now I can't write down that gem."
"I have an idea." Nick wiped his mouth before grabbing his beer. "I'm light on funds and you're in need of a place to live. My townhouse has two master suites. You can rent the empty one from me and I'll use the cash to pay my mortgage. I had a top notch security system installed after the kidnapping, I have video surveillance, the works. That should help you feel safer too, doncha think?"
"For real?"
Nick dove into his pocket for his keys. "Here." He pulled a spare off the ring. "Eight hundred a month, split the utilities, sound fair?"
"More than fair," Greg replied, as his smile filled the room.
"Okay then." Nick slapped the key in Greg's palm. "There's a U-Haul place just around the corner, I'll go see if they have a truck for rent."
"Rent?" Grissom stared blankly.
"Right, you own the place. What's your mortgage payment?" Sara asked ask her new roommate as they sat in the townhouse waiting for the movers. "We'll calculate half."
"I don't have a mortgage payment either, I own it free and clear."
"Wow." Glancing around she joked, "Are you taking payouts or something? Because the last time I checked the County payscale, a supervisor's salary wasn't that good."
"With age comes wisdom," he boasted. "I've made a few good investments over the years."
"Ah." Taking a seat on the couch where Grissom had made his first bold move months earlier, she said, "We'll split the utilities and the groceries."
He laughed without thinking, "I'm not your college dorm mate, Sara. I'm…"
"Yeah, that brings up a good point. What are you…exactly?"
"I'm your…" Come to think of it, they never had labeled it. "I'm your significant other, right? Assuming you feel a certain level of significance between us."
"I did between the sheets last night." She would never get tired of the way her sex jokes ruffled him. "Significant other, huh?"
"Think you can deal with that?"
"It sounds a little dependent to me, but yeah, I think I can hang with it."
A knock on the door startled them both.
Grissom saw the truck from the window. "Movers are here."
"Great."Sara pushed off the couch sporting an anxious smile.
Sure, they didn't know if it would work out, but sometimes you just have to take the story of your life one chapter at time, and not dwell on the promise of a happy ending.