| CSI > slash | |
Soul Consitution by ShoSen [Reviews - 16269] 
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The blanket hit the floor, slipping from Nick’s grasp when he only meant to pull it out of the way. He left it where it fell, collapsing onto the mattress, rolling over onto his back, bare skin cold in the darkened room. Clothes would have kept him warm, but clothes would have taken more energy than he’d had after coming home. It had been hard enough to strip out of the layers of dirt and death that had covered him since they started on the crime scene… that day? The day before? He wasn’t even sure anymore. Time stretched out, measure not in seconds but in bodies uncovered, tiny little skeletons in tiny little graves.
But there were so many of them.
He opened eyes that had closed on their own and stared at the ceiling. It didn’t help. If anything, it was worse. The shadows cast by the moonlight outside became half-uncovered bodies, grinning skulls, and accusing fingers of nothing but bone. The images that had been conjured underneath his eyelids were preferable to the ones flickering across the stucco, but now he couldn’t look away. Couldn’t stop thinking.
Couldn’t figure out what he’d say to Greg.
There had to be something, he had to say something, because this had been Greg’s first time on a case like this and so far no one had thought of single thing to tell him.
And Nick remembered the bus crash and the way he’d shrugged off the question about how you learned to handle it, and he knew it wouldn’t work this time. He knew because as cliché as “you just do” had sounded, it was still less so than “no one can handle the kids.”
Even if it was true, because no one could, and the trite phrase played over and over in his head until the shadows on the ceiling we dancing in step to the uncomforting words.
On nights like this, he felt it all. Every case, every victim, every perp weighed upon him. All the sordid details pressing down against him, forcing him deeper into the mattress and coating his still-exposed skin.
And he wanted another shower more than just about anything else. But Greg would be home soon and it wouldn’t be right to use up the water. Because he knew that Greg would want it, need it, the illusion of washing away visions that would never truly be gone.
The shadows on the ceiling vanished in the quick, stark glare of passing headlights and he knew that Greg was home. He waited as he heard the engine die, he waited as he heard the door open, and he waited as he heard the shower start. He waited.
Because he still didn’t know what to say.