Title: Eyes of a Tragedy
Author: Kate, aka salvationinyou
Fandom: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Pairing: Greg/Sara
Rating: R, for SEX and language.
Disclaimer: a) Greg, Sara, and the rest of the lovely CSIs are not mine, and when I'm done I'll put them back where I found them. b)Lyrics are taken from "3 Libras", by A Perfect Circle, from the album Mer Des Noms. It's a great song. I didn't write it.
Comments: Written for girlnorth and her onebedficathon, albeit a bit late. Sorry. Also for mal_fal_77. Happy Birthday.
Summary: He's never liked silence, or the dark, or sex with longing taking the place of love. He's never liked absence, and there are so many things that will always be missing.




It's one of those nights when he doesn't want to step outside the Lab (he always capitalizes Lab in his head), not when he could be perfectly content sleeping on the couch in the break room, drowning in the smell of coffee and stale epithelials, rather than cross the parking lot to his car with a newspaper over his head. In any case, on nights like this, the rain would have shredded the newspaper like a million tiny razors by the time he made it to the Jetta.

But Greg Sanders braves the desert storm, even though he hates the rain. He steps outside and strides to his car, even though the entire nightshift has just pulled a fucking triple and the winter sky is dark and cloudy again. To what does he owe this sudden courage? Is is for love? For money? For fame, pride, or the satisfaction of going home and sleeping for nine hours, due to having the next day off? (thank God. Or Grissom. Or whoever schedules these things.)

No, it's because he has a Nintendo Wii sitting on the backseat, still in the box and calling him to go home and hook it up.

It takes him one minute and thirty-seven seconds to run to the car, press the wrong button on the keyless remote, set the alarm off, curse loudly, turn the alarm off, decide to just use the key, drop his keys, open the door, and stop hyperventalating.

Greg is soaked, but his hair still looks okay, he realises as he checks in the rearview mirror, and he considers this a personal victory against Mother Nature. He leans over to the back seat to pat the precious Wii box, and turns the key in the ignition.

The rain pounds on the windshield faster than the wipers can dispel it, and he is reminded of driving through a waterfall.
Not that he's ever driven through a waterfall, but he imagines this is what it feels like.

Greg hates winter, even in the desert. The sky is dark when he goes to work and dark when he leaves. Too many clouds, no stars, new moon. Streetlights replace sunlight and he never turns off the lamps in his apartment. (He's never liked the dark)

He feels like he's living in a perpetual night.

He takes the long way home to avoid traffic. There will be cabs tonight, and no one will be walking, trying to catch pneumonia.

He's right. He knows the city now, it's been years, but he's finally getting the hang of traffic prediction. Jackson road is mostly deserted, except for a hunched figure walking the same way as Greg is driving. He takes his dark eyes off the deserted road to glimpse at the potential psychopath, sauntering down the road as though it were an autumn afternoon. God, you'd have to be crazy to be out right now. You'd have to be completely, raving mad. You'd have to be--
Sara Sidle.
Yeah, that explained it. There she was, the dark hair blowing out from under the hood of her coat, the unmistakeable confident-but-slightly-paranoid gait as she made her way north against the wind. Sara always walked like she knew someone was following her. Greg had always wondered why.

He made a very illegal stop in the centre of the road and rolled down the passenger window. "You know, cyanide is a less painful way to committ suicide. Or even asphixia. Pneumonia tends to be long and drawn out," he yells, voice cracking a little because of the sudden cold air.

Her eyes turn to the Jetta and she smiles upon seeing him. "Are you kidding, Greggo? This is the best weather ever." She spins around modestly and reminds Greg of a fairy princess, the six year old variety with wings and a dollar store wand, pretending to cast magic spells on the family cat. If he told her so, she would undoubtedly beat him up. He grins, he can't help it. "Yeah, if you're a cactus or something. You live, like, half an hour from here, Sara. I'll give you a ride."

She comes over to the window and leans on the frame. "Just because you're a wuss doesn't mean I can't walk home."
"I'm not saying you can't. I'm sure you can. Just... I don't want you to walk alone at night. Something could happen to you." That wasn't what he'd meant to say, but there it was. He expected her to tease him, but all she says is "Only if you're sure. You're almost the opposite direction from me."

He shrugs, tries to revert back to his habitual nonchalance. It's not like he feels this way anymore. It was a crush, and it's over. "It's not a problem. I was going to go to 7-11 anyways." He's moved since she last knew where he lived, but he doesn't mention this.
Sara gets in and rolls up the window. She knows he knows that there's a 7-11 in the other direction, too, but doesn't quite want to mention it.
As she shuts the door, he switches on the music(He's never liked silence). APC. Mer de noms.

I threw you the obvious,
and you flew with it on your back.

He clears his throat. "So, where's your car?"
"Left it at home. You know. Go green once in a while."
"More like go blue. And die."
She raises an eyebrow. "Stop being a drama queen. I was walking home, not swimming around Lake Fryxell in a fucking bikini."
He throws up his hands for a minute. "Okay, okay. You're an environmentally friendly, responsible member of society. Happy?"
"Mhm. Are you sure you know where I live?"
"Of course I know where you live." Greg consults his mental map while trying to seem confident and non-directionally challenged. He's only been there once, after all. "Uh, two more blocks, then a right."
"Left."
Directionally challenged. "Yeah. I know. That's what I said."
She smirks, but says nothing. He looks back out to the road. Eyes on the white line. No, his palms aren't sweating, and no, he's not thinking about how, only a year ago, having Sara Sidle in his car would have made him so happy. He wasn't thinking about how, back then, he would have been envisioning her on the backseat under him, warm and wet, his toungue inside her, her hands in his hair. And he definitely wasn't thinking about it now.

Here I am, expecting just a little bit
too much from the wounded

He hates how she still makes him so nervous. He doesn't know if there's even such a thing as one-sided tension, but he's pretty sure she doesn't know she makes him feel transparent. He clears his throat. "So, is there actually a Lake Fryxell, or is it a tourist destination in Saraland?"
"Of course it's a real place. It's in Antarctica."
"I'm sure it's in all the brochures."

so I threw you the obvious
just to see what occurs behind
the eyes of a fallen angel
eyes of a tragedy


"Traffic's bad tonight," she says passively, looking out the window.
"Yeah," he says, because he can't think of anything else to say to her, (Greg, you're an idiot) but he thinks that's her building (finally/too soon). She affirms this by pointing, he rolls his eyes in a classic "I know" gesture.

He pulls into a space outside her building. She hesitates for a moment before reaching for the handle; a truck zips by past Greg's window. Sara flips the handle. "Greg? You wanna come in for some coffee or something?"
"Um, sure. Tha'd be great." And it would be. Because they're friends, right? Right. Yeah. Wait...
"Uh, Sara?" Greg scratches his head above his left ear. "I'm about to ask you something really, really geeky."
She glances back, toungue in cheek. "As opposed to something new and different?"
"Exactly. Um, if I brought in my Wii and hooked it up, would you wanna play?"
"Your what?"
"Wii. New Nintendo Console. Get out of the stone age, Sidle."
She rolls her eyes and almost smiles.
"You're a geek, Sanders."
"Proud of it." He grins and twists around to get the box off the backseat. Tucking it under his arm, he races to the shelter of the cheap red awning over the front door, Sara following closely behind. The running is a meteorological formality; they're both soaked already. He locks the doors of the Jetta with the remote and they proceed.

He's been to Sara's apartment before, once, because he had to pick her up for work. Something to do with the car being in the shop. He got there early and made Blue Hawaiian while she took a shower and got dressed. That was a couple of years ago, but as he follows her in the door he realises that it hasn't changed very much, still minimalist and uncluttered. She has a key rack, wrought iron, the kind you'd buy at a craft fair for too much money, hanging behind the door, and he thinks she might have bought a new TV. Other than that, this could easily be two years ago, smell of coffee wafting down the hall, making her yell the usual formality (mildly annoyed, but he can tell she's smiling, even through two walls) that he doesn't need to bother, knowing very well that he already has.

He takes his Wii box over to the TV and takes out the cords and the console, assembling them delicately. Sara, brewing coffee in the adjoining kitchen, is reminded of a kid at Christmas. She hums a little to herself as she finds the filters, checks the fridge to see if she has any nanaimo bars left.

She periodically glances back into the living room. It's strange having Greg in a space that's usually hers. He is a coffee stain against the pristine white couch (she loves coffee, drinks it in like water), the beige carpet, the symetrically hung black-and-white photos on the wall, flowers, buildings, impersonal.

She's never noticed how neutral her living room is, all white and black and tan and faun and other shades given meaningless names to make them colors, never noticed how many of these noncolor-colors she prefered until she sees Greg sitting in the middle of her carpet, ignoring the couch. He has all of the lights on, and the room isn't looking so white anymore, not because Greg's wearing color but because Greg is color, the faintest smudge of green on the edge of a too-white canvas.

She opens the fridge again, force of habit, while she's waiting for the coffee to brew, and notices that she's still got a six-pack of Heineken in the meat keeper (what else is she going to use it for?), just to prove to herself that she can have it there.

"Greg," she calls as he plugs the yellow and red cables into the front of her dormant TV. "You want coffee, or a beer?"

He looks at her and grins. "Both, if that's okay. Don't mix 'em, I'll alternate." Sara raises her eyebrows and tosses him a bottle anyway, before carefully carrying the two mugs of coffee. She sits on the floor next to him and is reminded of being eight years old, sitting against the couch and watching Eight is Enough with her friend Amy. She asks "So, is the thingie up and running?"
"Oui, oui, cherie," he replies, and she laughs.
"I didn't know you spoke french."
He shrugs. "I don't. I can say 'Yes, dear,' and 'where the hell is the beer?' Nothing else was really pertinent." He takes a sip of his coffee and a swig of his Heineken and tosses Sara the second controller. "Now, we're going to race monster trucks. I can't say 'monster truck' in French, either, so don't ask."

Sara puts her coffee down on the end table and takes the controller. "Um, okay. What do I do?"
He glances down at her hands. "Okay, you hold this end here, and hold down this button to accelerate." He reaches over and places her thumb on the button marked A. "The other side, just hold where it feels comfortable. Turn it like a steering wheel."

Sara nods, reluctantly, and Greg starts the race. It's just as she predicted: she is horrible at this, crashing into trees and falling off cliffs. She will admit, though, that it's completely addicting. She's getting better every time. Every race Greg wins, he drinks some more. They take a break for nanaimo bars and Greg "really, really having to pee." She refills both coffees (very thankful that she has tomorrow off to sleep) and gets Greg another bottle.

An hour later, she wins a race. Finally. However, there's little joy in it, because she quickly deduces that she only won because Greg is drunk. Not loud talking, abrasive drunk, but mellow, sleepy, slowed-reflexes drunk. She smiles while he's transfixed with the screen, because she would have guessed he had a much higher alcohol tolerance than that.

Greg looks at his watch and makes a humming sound in his throat. "Holy shit! I'd better be going... thanks for the coffee and stuff, Sare." He's slurring his words just a little, which she's finding endearing, for some reason.
"No, Greg, you're not driving home."
"Well, I'm not going to walk." He doesn't feel drunk, he never does. It's only when he thinks about it that he realizes he couldn't even tell you the atomic mass of Lutetium right now, but he knows that its atomic number is 71, Sara's birth year. She's only got four years on him, he's Rhenium.
"You can stay here," she continues. "On the couch. I'll drive you in tomorrow, if you're still feeling hungover."
"Mmm. Don't work tomorrow."
She thanked a hypothetical God for small favors.
"Then it's settled. You're sleeping on the couch." She got briskly to her feet and grabbed an extra pillow and blanket from the closet. "Sleep it off, Greggo. 'Night."

"'Night," he murmurs, but once she's in her bedroom she notices that he's turned the lamp back on, after she'd just turned it off. She shrugs and leaves her door open. The light doesn't bother her, there's always a dull glow through her window anyway. She drifts off to a light sleep, but her circadian rhythms are off and she wakes up intermittently.

She's staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling when suddenly, the world goes dark. She sits up.
Shit. The power's out.

She feels her way over to the window. Damn, this whole grid is out. She can see some very, very faint lights in the distance, but the storm and the mist make them almost impossible to see. The sky is dark and starless. She might as well be blindfolded with a black silk scarf.

She sighs and sinks back onto her bed, intending to fall asleep again, until she hears a faint "Sara? You awake?" coming from the living room.
"Yeah, Greg. The power's out. What's up?"
She can hear the hesitation in his voice. "If I tell you something kinda weird, will you promise not to tell anyone?"
"Of course, Greg."
"No, honestly, you will have trouble keeping it to yourself."
"I will. What, already?"
"Um... I'm..." he mumbled something that sounded like a groggy war chant.
"What, Greg?" she called down the hallway, getting a little impatient.
"Afraid of the Dark. I am, that is. And currently, I can't see anything, and it's really freaking me out."
"Honestly?"
"Yes."
"You're afraid of the dark."
"I think we've been over this." He sighs, fiddles with the lamp switch, as if hoping that it will magically turn on. "It's not a big deal, but if you had a flashlight or a candle or something?"

Sara racks her brain as she slowly makes her way through the short passage to the living room. As she gets closer, she can hear his breathing, ragged and fast. "Actually, Greg, I don't. Flashlight's at the Lab, and I don't do candles."

He exhales. "Fuck." His breathing speeds again, and she can tell he's trying to hide it from her.

She bites her lip. "Greg, come with me. We'll sit up until the sun comes up again." She reaches her hand tentatively out until she grasps his. His palms are sweaty. Her hands are like ice.
She leads him carefully back to her room, trying not to lead him into a wall. She guides him down to the left side of the bed and she can hear him adjusting to the space, leaning back against the headboard. She settles on the other side of the bed, and wondering if his silence is because he's ashamed.
He's wondering the same thing.
He clears his throat. He's never liked silence. "I guess you're wondering why I work nights if I'm afraid of the dark."
She didn't even think about it, but she knows he won't think about it as much if he's talking. "A little."
"It's 'cause we're in Vegas. It's the fricking city of light."
"Technically, I think that's Paris."
"Whatever. My point is, there's always some light. The last time I was in complete darkness was back in California."
"Do you know how you became afraid of the dark?"
"You don't believe in instinctual human fear?"
"Not really. I think we learn it."

"Fair enough. I'm going to tell you a story, okay?" He kept speaking without waiting for an answer. "Hypothetically, there's this guy, who we'll call Greg. When Greg was a kid-- okay, not a kid, more like fourteen, he used to have this gripping fear that one day, the sun would go out. He knew it was irrational, because the sun wasn't supposed to go out for five billion more years. But the thought was always there in the back of his mind, that if the sun went out, everything would die.

"Now, Greg had a very protective mother, but his mom worked a lot. She couldn't bear to leave him with a teenage babysitter when he was little, so she called in her sister Lily from Napa Valley. Lily agreed to stay with her Greg's family for a year, while little Greg was young, but a year turned into two, then a decade, and before anyone noticed, Greg was a teenager, and Lily still lived with them. He secretly liked her better than either of his parents. She was the cool aunt, she turned him on to heavy metal, bought him J.D. for his eighteenth birthday, on the condition that he only drank in the house and didn't tell his mom. She was the only one Greg had told about this fear, besides his parents. His mom told him he was silly, his dad told him he was a morbid child, but Lily admitted to having the same fear when she was younger.
"So whenever the power went out, and Greg was scared, Lily would always be there with a flashlight and some Oreos and they'd sit up and play shadow puppets on his bedroom wall until the power came back on. So Greg never had to sit through a blackout, and even if the flashlight went out, Lily was still there to talk him through it." Greg took a breath. "My aunt Lily died right before I came out to Vegas. That was one of the reasons I decided to leave California, one of the deciding factors. And now, the dark makes me miss her."
He exhaled. "Sorry, I didn't mean to unload that on you."

Sara moved so that her arm was around Greg's shoulders, and he leaned his head in to rest against her chest. Unconsciously, she stroked his hair, as someone faceless had done to her when she was young.

She's not sure how much time passes, but Greg's breathing has slowed and she thinks he's asleep. She glances down, and she can see the outline of his face in the faint light just starting to penetrate the window: the long, dark lashes, the slightly open full mouth, the constant bedhead. He looks so... peaceful. Beautiful.
Without thinking, she leans down and brushes her lips against his, soft and sweet. He smells like Chai Tea.

Greg's eyes flutter open, the lashes brushing Sara's face. She's not sure what he's thinking until he leans up and kisses her back. Her lips open and he explores the inside; she moans into his mouth as his tongue brushes the sharp edges of her teeth. She tastes like raspberry, organic and sweet and pure. His mouth moves to nip at the soft skin of her neck. The pace speeds up, both of them fervently trying to keep up to the clicks of an unheard metronome; her fingers are trying to undo his belt, he still has his jeans on and she can't pull them down and off fast enough, his jeans and then his boxers, soft and cotton, are discarded and she can feel his arousal against her thigh, their bodies are pressed so close. As he rolls her over onto her back and straddles her, his hands move down and to his surprise she's so wet, already, that there's no traction there, none at all, and he slips a finger up inside her and she's arching against him, moaning almost incoherently. "Greg, please, I'm ready, just... inside me. Please," and it's like someone else has taken over her body because she's never begged before, and there's a part of her that's watching from the outside, looking in.

They don't mean for it to go this far, they don't mean it at all but neither of them are thinking, there isn't a future and there isn't a past, there's only now, and want, and need, and touching and kissing and some kind of affirmation for them both, and she comes, growing silent and her breathing slows; he goes over the edge shortly after and as he comes, he calls her name over and over SaraSaraSaraSara, like breathing, only much more vital.

And now she's asleep, but he's awake, staring at the shadows just starting to re-appear on the ceiling, and all he can think is how conflicted he's feeling right now.
He's never liked silence, or the dark, or sex with longing taking the place of love. He's never liked absence, and there are so many things that will always be missing.

And he hates himself for this, hates himself because he thinks he can save her.
He knows he can't.

***

She wakes up and the night is gone; the day is gray and lacking the warm desert tones. She can hear Greg moving around in the kitchen.

And she hates herself for this, hates herself because she thinks she can make it right. She knows she can't. She wraps herself in her bathrobe and wanders into the kitchen, arms crossed. Greg is making pancakes. He looks up as she comes in, bare feet making a slight slap on the tile floor. He smiles, almost sadly. "Good Morning, sleepyhead."
"Um, hey. You didn't have to make breakfast."
He shrugs. "I did. Pannekaken."
"What?"
"Norwegian pancakes. They're more like crêpes than american pancakes. And you can eat them with sugar and call it traditional."
"I didn't know you could cook."
He raises an eyebrow. "I'm a man of many talents."
He turns back to the pannekaken, flipping them onto a plate and handing them to her. The sugar and butter are already on her table, she wonders how long it took Greg to find the ingredients in her unorganized cupboards.
He serves himself and she's thankful for the food because it masks the uncomfortable silence that's fallen between them.
Greg clears his throat, after a minute, and says "I'm sorry, Sara."
She blinks and sets down her fork. "There's nothing to be sorry about."
Greg rests his forehead on his hands. "Yeah, there is, I just--"
She reaches across the table and puts her hand on his cheek. "It's okay, Greg. It was me, too."
He nods, and he raises his head to face her.

Dark eyes meet dark, and as he thinks eyes of a fallen angel she's thinking eyes of a tragedy, and though they'll never know it, the same song is playing in both of their heads.


It will be for a long time.