CSI FIC: The Hills are Bare (1/5)

[by_knightmusic]

Title: The Hills Are Bare (1/5)
Author: Knightmusic
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Summary: Change really is a bitch.  Sometimes you need help.
Author's Note/Warnings: Hey look, it's back!  And this time, I really WILL get it posted before the end of the holiday season (I figure as long as I get it up before New Years, we can still call it seasonal), because it's nearly complete.  I'll get parts posted as soon as I finish editing each one.  And it's different this time.  Yes, I know I'd originally said this was going to be a Gil/Greg piece but...well, I just can't seem to do it.  I love Gil/Greg, and I'd really love the chance to write it sometime soon, but as far as my epics go, I can't seem to abandon Nicky.  And this one just really wanted to be a bit of a "Grave Danger" follow-up. 
Disclaimer: These characters are so not mine, even though I asked Santa for them for Christmas.  Guess I'll just have to be twice as good next year...



1. The heart is tired

“So, Marley was dead to begin with?”

Gil Grissom leaned back in his chair, eyes wandering idly over the report Catherine had handed to him. She had begun the evening with an arson case; that it had turned into a murder investigation was merely the kind of random chance that was often part and parcel of their job.

“Dead as a doornail,” she answered. Gil dropped the report on his desk, a quirky smile playing on his lips.

“What makes a doornail particularly ‘dead,’ I wonder,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say ‘dead as a coffin nail’?” Catherine stared at him for a while, her mouth hanging open a little, and brow furrowing into that “he’s completely nuts” look she got. Gil had always liked that look.

“I don’t think it would have the same ring to it,” she said. “Can we finish this?”

“Sure,” Gil said, smiling indulgently.

“Okay,” she said, shaking her head and still eyeing him warily. “We’re ruling it a suicide. Not many people tend to get their affairs in such impeccable order unless they know they’re about to die. And murder doesn’t give advance notice.”

Edward Marley had been dead long before the fire had begun: long before it had even been conceived of in the mind of his surviving partner, Robert Jacobsen. Had it not been for the can of gasoline, the lighter and the moment of desperation, Jacobsen would have found the note that Marley had left. He would have mourned the loss of his friend and partner, certainly, but would have benefited from the terms stipulated in Marley’s newly revised will.

“Good work, Catherine,” he said. She made a face and gesture that was part shrug, part laughter and mostly dismissive. It was the look she always wore when she received a compliment from him, pleasure at receiving the sentiment, but was wary of ever needing to hear it.

Just then, a tremendous ruckus from down the hall interrupted them. As it got closer, Gil could make out two distinct voices, one laughing and one doing something that he was reluctant to call singing.

Before Catherine even had time to get up and investigate, Greg Sanders poked his head through the doorway. He was wearing some kind of ridiculous headwear - reindeer antlers, of course - and carrying a handful of candy canes.

“Yo, Grissom. Cath,” he said, sweeping around the doorframe and into the office. He was dragging Nick Stokes by the arm. “It’s quittin’ time. You two heading out?”

Nick, who had clearly been the laughing voice Gil had heard, suddenly looked uneasy, and his smile seemed a little forced.

“Just about to, yeah,” Catherine said, grinning broadly at Greg. “New hairstyle suits you.”

Greg bowed stiffly, like a poorly articulated animatronic, and, equally stiffly, stuck out an arm, offering her a candy cane. She accepted it, still smiling at him. “You two plan on making it to the party, right?” she asked.

“Count on it,” Greg said, and Nick nodded then turned to Grissom.

“What about you, Gil?” he asked.

Gil almost didn’t understand the question. He heard the words, knew what they meant, but couldn’t quite flip the switch of comprehension in his mind. That seemed to happen a lot these days, when Nick spoke to him in anything other than an official capacity. Anything he said was drowned out, ironically enough, by words that Gil had never actually heard spoken.

never meant to disappoint you - never meant to disappoint you - never meant to disappoint you

“I…uh,” Gil said, and frowned having to try and remember what they’d been talking about. “Probably not,” he said.

Catherine laid a look upon him, but Greg beat her to speaking. “What, you have better plans than hanging out with us?”

He didn’t, not at all. But he knew, to his very core, that going would be a very bad idea. “I’m not really the partying type,” he said.

“Okay, fine,” Greg continued. “But even people who ‘aren’t the partying type’ go to them at Christmas. Holiday spirit and all that.”

“He’s got a point, boss,” Nick said, and a soft, shy smile spread over his face. Gil took a slow breath and held it. If Nick started in on him, he was lost. What had once been a mere soft-spot for him had recently turned into a full-blown Achilles heel, and it was getting harder and harder to keep it under control.

Thankfully, Greg broke the moment.

He started up again on whatever song he had been singing in the hallway earlier. It was something about how he “just went nuts at Christmas,“ and was dramatically exaggerated, with an overdone Scandinavian lilt to the pronunciation, making “just” sound like “yust” and accompanied by expansive gestures of his arms. Nick had to move quickly to avoid getting smacked in the chest, and the antlers wriggled wildly on Greg’s head.

“Greg,” Gil said, and even though he didn’t say it loudly, Greg shut up almost instantly. Something about that particular tone of voice got his attention each and every time Gil used it. “Don’t you have something you need to be doing right now?”

“Nope,” Greg said, and his jovial tone was a little more cautious. But only a little.

“Then maybe it’s time for you to go home. We’re short on overtime this month.”

Greg blinked. “Well,” he said. “If you want to be that way.” He looked a little cowed, but maintained his composure well enough to keep from slinking out of the office. Instead, he met Grissom’s hard look with an impish grin and a raised eyebrow and dropped a candy cane into his pencil holder.

“Consider us gone,” he said, looking at Nick and jerking his head towards the door. “Seeya Catherine,” he said, then turned to Gil. “Mr. Grinch,” he said, and saluted before spinning around and marching out the door, whistling.

Nick followed almost immediately, but also turned before he left. He raised a finger at Gil. “Eight o’clock,” he said. “There’s a glass of eggnog with your name on it.”

Gil waited until they’d left and let out a heavy sigh.

“Well you’re just overflowing with the holiday spirit, aren’t you?” Catherine said. She was teasing, at least partially, and Gil suddenly felt that he didn’t have even close to enough energy to deal with it right now.

“Catherine,” he said, plaintively, “have I ever come to a Christmas party?”

“Nope,” she said, brightly. “Which is exactly why you should this year.” He groaned. “I mean it!” she said. “It’ll be good for you! We’ll have fun, you can have too much to drink and tell that awful joke about the piano tuner that you only think is funny when you’re drunk-”

“It is funny,” Gil said, indignantly. Catherine rolled her eyes and continued without missing a beat.

“-and we can work on those social skills of yours.” Now it was Gil’s turn to roll his eyes.

“You’re too kind, Catherine,” he said. She grinned.

“It’s what friends are for. And this particular friend thinks you need more pointless frivolity in your life.”

“Catherine…” Gil said, now running out of ways to politely convince her to drop the subject. The problem was that part of him did want to go, wanted to enjoy himself with friends and do all the things Catherine had suggested. But that part of him wanted a lot of things, and most of them just couldn’t happen.

“Okay,” Catherine said. She didn’t sound happy, but at least is looked like she’d said her fill. She got up and headed for the door. “Suit yourself. Merry Christmas, Gil.” She left, and Gil sat by himself without replying.

* * *

Traffic was maddening on his way home, but that was to be expected. Fortunately, his favorite café was relatively empty, and he was able to have something to eat in peace, away from the madness of holiday travel.

He left the cafe directly after finishing his dinner, returned to the Denali where he experienced a moment of utter confusion.

The rear view mirror was out of place, which was perplexing as well as absurd. He was the only one, absolutely the only one, who ever drove this vehicle, and he knew for a fact that the mirror had been where it belonged when he parked in front of the cafe. He frowned and reached up to adjust it.

Just as he knew without any hesitation or question at all that he was the only one who ever drove this vehicle, ever touched these mirrors, ever sat in this driver’s seat, he also knew that the vehicle had been locked for the entirety of his meal, and had stayed that way until he’d unlocked it himself upon his return. At no point had anyone been in his backseat.

He could not, therefore, satisfactorily explain how he saw, when he adjusted his mirror to the proper angle, the face of his mother, clearly and distinctly, reflected in it as though she were sitting right behind him.

It was not impossible to startle Gil Grissom, even if it was an exceedingly rare occurrence, and the initial shock lasted only a moment or two. He turned immediately only to find that she was not there. He took a few breaths and decided that he must have imagined it.

Clearly no one was there, no one ever had been, and it was not unheard of for one to imagine things such as this. He put the Denali into gear and drove home, but he still felt a little unsettled.

As soon as he entered the townhouse, he turned on his stereo, an automatic gesture, and let whatever was in the changer - it sounded like Sibelius- start playing and fill the room. Only then did he let himself consider what he would do for the rest of the day, or his night off, for that matter.

He knew why they’d pushed him so hard to join them at the party, and he tried to see it as an measure of how much they cared. But that didn’t help much. What it came down to was that they thought he needed it.

Gil was well aquatinted with all the terms used by others to describe his lifestyle; sterile, isolated, impersonal and a host of others. Earlier in his life, he might have felt offended by these sentiments, and, in truth, he was not entirely immune to them now.

But what no one ever seemed to understand was that it was not isolation he craved, but security; both in his home and his mind.

His home was one of very few places he felt safe; where he could truly let his guard down. It always felt as though he was shedding several thousand pounds as he came in the door. It wasn’t that he disliked socializing, or that he didn’t feel comfortable with the members of his team. Other people exhausted him. In a bone-wearying, soul-taxing way.

So it was hardly any wonder that he protected the private spaces of his life as jealously as he did. Solitude was hard won and difficult to come by, and, to Gil Grissom, it was as necessary as oxygen.

He settled back on his couch and closed his eyes, taking in deep breaths of air and music. His blinds were open, and the sunlight coming in the window felt warm and comforting on his face. He liked natural light in his home, what with so much of his time spent in the dark or under buzzing florescent tubes. His few lamps and light fixtures remained mostly unused except for times of necessity, and at ten o’clock in the morning, they were hardly a necessity.

Which is what made it so strange to notice that they were all turned on. He sat up, puzzled. He hadn’t done that, and wouldn’t have left them on all night. The tingle of anxiety that had started when he’d seen his mother’s face in the mirror re-emerged and began to grow in his stomach.

Then the light flicked off. And then on again. Then off.

As Gil looked around, he noticed that every light in his living room was doing this in perfect tandem. He barely managed to consider some kind of strange power surge, no doubt brought on by his neighbors Christmas lights, before he realized that whatever was making the lights flicker did not seem to be affecting his stereo.

Nevertheless, he got up and went to take a look at his fuse box. A quick check confirmed his thoughts. Nothing had been tripped, nothing was overloaded. He returned to his living room…

…and what he saw there made him freeze in his tracks.

The figure turned and looked at Gil, and as it did, the bass on his stereo turned itself up to maximum and there was a loud, startling thump as his speakers tipped themselves over onto their faces. The gestures were so familiar to him, even if they belonged to a life and a time from long ago, and they seemed to scream inside his head; “She’s a ghost!”

“Gil Grissom, just what do you think you’re doing?”

The fact that she was dead, had been for many years now, and that Gil knew this as well as he knew anything at all, didn’t keep him from feeling like a child again. She was signing while she spoke, which she only rarely did, and then only when she was upset in some way. That action unsettled him far more than the appearance of the specter of his mother in his living room.

She looked at him expectantly, and Gil knew that she meant for him to answer, but could not.

“What are you?” he asked instead, breathless more with fascination and wonder than fear.

“You’re the scientist,” she said, her hands slicing through the air. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Gil considered this, now having been given permission to do an objective analysis of the sight before him. She looked equally as substantial as she did insubstantial. He could make out every detail of her face, hair and clothing, and he could also see, quite clearly, his couch behind her by looking through her.

And yet she must be solid, or certainly she would simply fall through his floor. Or perhaps float through his ceiling like a waft of smoke. Carefully, hesitantly, he reached out a hand to her.

His hand met her shoulder and was stopped by it. She was not cold to his touch, neither was she warm, but the smile that she turned on him melted all his apprehension. She lifted her hand to his face.

“Gil,” she said softly, stroking his cheek. “What are you doing?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“With your life,” she said, and looked suddenly sad.

It was such a simple question. And the simple answer would be that he was doing exactly what he wanted to be doing; that he was doing something that made a difference. And the fact that it was often interesting and cool didn’t hurt matters either. But she wasn’t asking about his job, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get away with pretending that he thought she was.

“I like my life,” he said, finally.

“Everything?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. He was caught and he knew it.

“No one likes everything about their life,” he said, and her smile changed to a grin of dry humor.

“Nice try,” she said. “You’re not getting away that easily.” Gil tried for an innocent expression.

“Getting away with what?” he asked.

“Why aren’t you going to that party tonight?” she asked.

Gil winced. He supposed being dead might have given her some sort of clairvoyant powers, but even if she’d still been alive the comment wouldn’t have surprised him. She’d always been the only person in the world who could read him like a book. Which meant that he had no wiggle room to answer her question. He sighed.

“It would be…uncomfortable if I were there,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because…” Gil frowned. It just would be. If it were just Catherine, or even Catherine and Warrick, he could handle it. But with Nick and Sara and Greg there as well… He got tired just thinking about it.

“Not everything is what you think it is,” his mother said. “Take it from someone who’s got a rather clear perspective on life,” she added with a wry grin.

“You were very social. It worked for you. That’s not who I am.”

“We’re not talking about being social. That’s a preference.”

“How is it different?” Arguments with his mother quite often came down to semantics. They almost never got resolved, as neither one was likely to back down from their respective positions.

She just shook her head at him. “I want to show you something,” she said, and turned and walked over to one of his windows. It opened as she reached it, and she turned and beckoned him over.

It wasn’t much of a view from his townhouse, but he could see several blocks of suburban housing and the skyline of Las Vegas itself in the distance.

“Do you see them?” she asked as he looked out.

“See whom?”

“All of them,” she said.

He blinked, stunned. He could. Although it wasn’t quite accurate to say he was seeing them, not in the same way that he could see the houses and street signs, but more like he was acutely aware of the presence of every one of his neighbors in their homes, and beyond that, of all the people - the locals, the tourists - in the city.

“Yes,” he said, wondering how what he was saying could possibly be true. “I do.”

She moved to stand behind him and touched her hands to his ears. “Now,” she said, pulling them away. “Do you hear them?”

Gil almost collapsed to the floor as the most terrible sound assaulted him. He’d never heard such a sound in his life. He’d heard screams of fear and pain before, far more often than he would ever want to, but even the worst of those were nothing like this. The sound tore at all parts of him; his ears and heart alike until he was sure he must be bleeding in sympathy for what he was hearing.

It was the cry of loss, suffering, death and loneliness from a thousand voices, a thousand souls.

“Yes,” he said, his voice breaking as he said it. “I hear them.” His mother touched his ears again and the sound mercifully stopped.

“That is the sound of loneliness. It hurts you to hear it, doesn’t it?” Gil nodded.

His mother stood very still then, and Gil was moved with the need to make whatever caused the look of sadness on her face vanish. And more than that, to make it as though it had never been.

“I’m deaf, Gil,” she signed. “And I could hear them.” She put her hand on his chest, over heart. “Do you know how much louder your cry is than all of that?”

Gil put his own hand over hers, wishing he could say something, could offer some comfort, even as he wondered which one of them needed it more. She started to back away, but held onto his hand as she did so. He didn’t want her to go; not after what had just happened.

“Don’t be afraid, Gil. I’ve arranged some other guests. They’ll be here to help you, so stay awake.” She finally let go of his hand, and Gil perceived that she was starting to become less distinct; losing the definition of her outline against the walls of his house, and fading into the light of dawn flooding through his window.

“Remember what I said, Gil. And remember that I love you.”

She was gone. And only then, could Gil say what had been stuck in his throat to say from the moment he had seen her face that evening,

“I love you, too.”