FICS: Dead Like Me & CSI
Title: Chinese Whispers
Fandom: CSI
Summary: 100fandoms prompt #19 'crack'. Grissom tells Brass, Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her. Sara, after 7.23.
*
Grissom tells Brass, Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her. That's the way it works. For seven years, she hasn't questioned why there's a gap between herself and Grissom; why, even after they've started sharing a bed, the break remains. He tells Brass, and Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her that Grissom spent the night with Heather. Catherine tells her many things, and she listens, and says nothing. When Grissom sees her, later, he does not attempt an explanation, or apology, or justification; no, he does, but she knows enough to cut him off. Heather was in a hospital bed the last - the only - time she saw her, and Grissom watching them both…
She's sure she's read this case file before.
Grissom once told her a tale about the first settlers: the Puritans that came to the eastern shores, and worked the land, and built the colonies. They lived as husband and wife, he said, working alongside one another, eating together, kissing and holding hands. When nighttime came, they would retire to their bedchamber, and draw back the bedlinen, and crawl into bed, one alongside the other, and in between the husband and wife sometimes a knife would be placed. He'd told her this because of a case they'd been working on - of course, of course, everything is always related to a case they're working on - where a husband killed his wife, stabbing her to death in the marital bed. To the Puritans, he said, the knife was a symbol of chastity, maybe, or of restraint.
When Sara goes to bed, she feels the sharp edge of the knife - his silence - lie between her flesh and Grissom's, driving the cracks between them ever wider.
*
fin
***
Title: Censure
Fandom: Dead Like Me
Summary: 100fandoms prompt #52 'quell'. George feels like she can talk. That's nonsense, of course.
A/N: "When you're dead you can't talk / Yet you feel like you could." Gregory Corso.
*
When you're dead you can't talk, but you feel like you can. Reapers most of all, I guess - we can talk to our loved ones but not as ourselves, you know? Drives you crazy after a while. So, eventually, I got this crazy idea that I knew I shouldn't even think about. I thought - I'd already visited my house. I'd already me - re-met - my mother, or whatever. And I'd done Reggie's maths homework. And nothing had exploded; nothing had faded away. Maybe, I thought, maybe it's only talking to your family that's banned. But writing notes - that's not talking, right?
And I had this plan worked out, where I could write Reggie letters, telling her all about my day, and telling her what had really happened, and saying not to worry and all the rest of it. And maybe telling her to stop with the weirdy toilet tree, because that was starting to creep me out a little. And I could send mom a Mother's Day card, which I'd never bothered with before - not since I was, like, ten - and ask my dad what he thought about people's dying words and things. It'd be like White Noise, only without the skeezy acting or the radio, obviously.
The horrible thing is, it'd totally work, too. I tried it with a bit of junk mail, and it got through, and Reggie read it and chucked it and it stayed exactly the same in the trash as when I wrote it. Rube wouldn't have to know, 'cause if the powers in charge don't notice, then no one will tell him. And no one will wonder why I'm mailing letters, 'cause I'm a Happy Time employee, and what are Happy Time employees for if not mailing stupid amounts of junk mail?
I stole some envelopes. That's as far as I got. You know how easy it is to steal stationary from work? If I could live on pencils and highlighters I'd have no problems! So, a few extra plain envelopes were easy enough, and maybe I would have gone ahead with it too. Except -
See, Rube doesn't want to think of himself as a teacher. I think it creeps him out, or something, which says all kinds of things that I don't even want to think about. But, anyway, he doesn't like me calling him sensei, or master, or anything even creepier, and not just because it sounds like After School Porn. I think he doesn't want to be responsible for me taking his advice. How weird is that in a group leader? I mean, he hands out the assignments, he hands out the punishments, he calls me Peanut, fer crissakes, but he doesn't like being blamed if things go wrong on account of one of us listening to him.
I suppose he'd be angry with me if he knew why I didn't send those letters. But he doesn't know: that's sorta the point. Like, if I did this, I'd be doing it without a safety net, because he'd never know. And, okay, I've never seen anyone from any other group, and they could turn out to be, like, child molesters or three-headed monsters or tax collectors or something, so if they have one of them hand out a punishment, I might just pee in my pants. (Which I did once, sorta, following a freak decapitation - me, not the dead guy, who just got hit by a car, by the way - and if that wasn't the weirdest thing in my life, I don't know what was. The decapitation, not the car.)
So maybe the Powers do know when we want to start talking. Or maybe they have a ban on letters too; only it’s a lot smaller and more subtle than the big, crying family reunion most Reapers want. You get home, and you have this stack of white envelopes, and you're gonna write to your sister about how you're not really dead - or dead dead - and there's a Rube-voice telling you that that's a selfish thing to do. That you wouldn't be doing it for your sister at all, and what would she do if she started getting letters from dead people?
And you throw the envelopes away. And go back to work. Because that's what Reapers do. That's what I do. I sit on my bed, and remember that the dead can’t talk.
They just feel like they could.
*
fin
Fandom: CSI
Summary: 100fandoms prompt #19 'crack'. Grissom tells Brass, Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her. Sara, after 7.23.
*
Grissom tells Brass, Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her. That's the way it works. For seven years, she hasn't questioned why there's a gap between herself and Grissom; why, even after they've started sharing a bed, the break remains. He tells Brass, and Brass tells Catherine, and Catherine tells her that Grissom spent the night with Heather. Catherine tells her many things, and she listens, and says nothing. When Grissom sees her, later, he does not attempt an explanation, or apology, or justification; no, he does, but she knows enough to cut him off. Heather was in a hospital bed the last - the only - time she saw her, and Grissom watching them both…
She's sure she's read this case file before.
Grissom once told her a tale about the first settlers: the Puritans that came to the eastern shores, and worked the land, and built the colonies. They lived as husband and wife, he said, working alongside one another, eating together, kissing and holding hands. When nighttime came, they would retire to their bedchamber, and draw back the bedlinen, and crawl into bed, one alongside the other, and in between the husband and wife sometimes a knife would be placed. He'd told her this because of a case they'd been working on - of course, of course, everything is always related to a case they're working on - where a husband killed his wife, stabbing her to death in the marital bed. To the Puritans, he said, the knife was a symbol of chastity, maybe, or of restraint.
When Sara goes to bed, she feels the sharp edge of the knife - his silence - lie between her flesh and Grissom's, driving the cracks between them ever wider.
*
fin
***
Title: Censure
Fandom: Dead Like Me
Summary: 100fandoms prompt #52 'quell'. George feels like she can talk. That's nonsense, of course.
A/N: "When you're dead you can't talk / Yet you feel like you could." Gregory Corso.
*
When you're dead you can't talk, but you feel like you can. Reapers most of all, I guess - we can talk to our loved ones but not as ourselves, you know? Drives you crazy after a while. So, eventually, I got this crazy idea that I knew I shouldn't even think about. I thought - I'd already visited my house. I'd already me - re-met - my mother, or whatever. And I'd done Reggie's maths homework. And nothing had exploded; nothing had faded away. Maybe, I thought, maybe it's only talking to your family that's banned. But writing notes - that's not talking, right?
And I had this plan worked out, where I could write Reggie letters, telling her all about my day, and telling her what had really happened, and saying not to worry and all the rest of it. And maybe telling her to stop with the weirdy toilet tree, because that was starting to creep me out a little. And I could send mom a Mother's Day card, which I'd never bothered with before - not since I was, like, ten - and ask my dad what he thought about people's dying words and things. It'd be like White Noise, only without the skeezy acting or the radio, obviously.
The horrible thing is, it'd totally work, too. I tried it with a bit of junk mail, and it got through, and Reggie read it and chucked it and it stayed exactly the same in the trash as when I wrote it. Rube wouldn't have to know, 'cause if the powers in charge don't notice, then no one will tell him. And no one will wonder why I'm mailing letters, 'cause I'm a Happy Time employee, and what are Happy Time employees for if not mailing stupid amounts of junk mail?
I stole some envelopes. That's as far as I got. You know how easy it is to steal stationary from work? If I could live on pencils and highlighters I'd have no problems! So, a few extra plain envelopes were easy enough, and maybe I would have gone ahead with it too. Except -
See, Rube doesn't want to think of himself as a teacher. I think it creeps him out, or something, which says all kinds of things that I don't even want to think about. But, anyway, he doesn't like me calling him sensei, or master, or anything even creepier, and not just because it sounds like After School Porn. I think he doesn't want to be responsible for me taking his advice. How weird is that in a group leader? I mean, he hands out the assignments, he hands out the punishments, he calls me Peanut, fer crissakes, but he doesn't like being blamed if things go wrong on account of one of us listening to him.
I suppose he'd be angry with me if he knew why I didn't send those letters. But he doesn't know: that's sorta the point. Like, if I did this, I'd be doing it without a safety net, because he'd never know. And, okay, I've never seen anyone from any other group, and they could turn out to be, like, child molesters or three-headed monsters or tax collectors or something, so if they have one of them hand out a punishment, I might just pee in my pants. (Which I did once, sorta, following a freak decapitation - me, not the dead guy, who just got hit by a car, by the way - and if that wasn't the weirdest thing in my life, I don't know what was. The decapitation, not the car.)
So maybe the Powers do know when we want to start talking. Or maybe they have a ban on letters too; only it’s a lot smaller and more subtle than the big, crying family reunion most Reapers want. You get home, and you have this stack of white envelopes, and you're gonna write to your sister about how you're not really dead - or dead dead - and there's a Rube-voice telling you that that's a selfish thing to do. That you wouldn't be doing it for your sister at all, and what would she do if she started getting letters from dead people?
And you throw the envelopes away. And go back to work. Because that's what Reapers do. That's what I do. I sit on my bed, and remember that the dead can’t talk.
They just feel like they could.
*
fin