Fic. Yes. Um.
15minuteficlets challenge. Picture can be found here.
A Formal Feeling
CSI, Greg/Nick.
Warnings: Deathfic.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
(Emily Dickinson)
He had wondered what it was like, being dead. To slip away, semi-conscious; his blood hot on asphalt, or cold hands around his throat, feeling breathless and panicked before slipping into a slow, final sleep. Skin dusky and cooling as he lay on a table in Robbins’ laboratory, pale and silent, and would he feel it somewhere, deep in the recesses of his shorted-out brain, as the autopsy knife slowly slit open his chest, making him still more vulnerable and degraded than he already was.
There was a body against him, still warm even in the cool desert night, and there was glass between them, small sharp shards that felt like sand on sunburn. The windscreen had shattered when the car flipped, imploding inwards, and Greg had thrown up his arms to protect his face. Too late, too slow, and there was still glass in his eyes, making the world itch and twinkle, full of stardust and glitter and tears. Greg held up an arm that fought against the dizzying gravity of the world, of the car that was not quite the right way up against the hill, noting idly the way his fingers bent and flopped without solid bones to hold them up. He pushed his hand against the body -
- against Nick -
- against the body that lay silent and still over his side, and he’d never thought, never realised, how much noise, movement, a body made when it was alive. How much it never made when it was dead. Greg wanted to call out, make some noise to prove that he, at least, was alive, but all that came out was a faint, keening sound that was lost as soon as it escaped his throat, caught away and murdered on the wind. No one around to hear anyway, the crime scene they were headed for still miles away, and too long before they would be missed. Too long for him to hold on, and things seemed to be getting so, so far away. The large, dead tree that the car had spun against lay above him, naked and shifting like hands beckoning, and Greg rolled to his side, feeling an awful lack, an emptiness of pain. He reached out blindly with his broken fingers, stardust blinded, and found Nick’s arm, slid his grasp along to touch a cold hand, slick with mingled blood, and he pressed a kiss to the flesh against his face, against temple and neck and cheek. A whispered declaration of love, devotion, of something that never was and should have been, and then his breath was frost on the air, crystallised blood, and later, as he lies naked and bloody on a table in the morgue, he never feels as thing as the knife slowly, tenderly bites at what is no longer there.
Might fiddle with it later for clarity, but that's my fifteen minutes up.
A Formal Feeling
CSI, Greg/Nick.
Warnings: Deathfic.
After great pain, a formal feeling comes--
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs--
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
(Emily Dickinson)
He had wondered what it was like, being dead. To slip away, semi-conscious; his blood hot on asphalt, or cold hands around his throat, feeling breathless and panicked before slipping into a slow, final sleep. Skin dusky and cooling as he lay on a table in Robbins’ laboratory, pale and silent, and would he feel it somewhere, deep in the recesses of his shorted-out brain, as the autopsy knife slowly slit open his chest, making him still more vulnerable and degraded than he already was.
There was a body against him, still warm even in the cool desert night, and there was glass between them, small sharp shards that felt like sand on sunburn. The windscreen had shattered when the car flipped, imploding inwards, and Greg had thrown up his arms to protect his face. Too late, too slow, and there was still glass in his eyes, making the world itch and twinkle, full of stardust and glitter and tears. Greg held up an arm that fought against the dizzying gravity of the world, of the car that was not quite the right way up against the hill, noting idly the way his fingers bent and flopped without solid bones to hold them up. He pushed his hand against the body -
- against Nick -
- against the body that lay silent and still over his side, and he’d never thought, never realised, how much noise, movement, a body made when it was alive. How much it never made when it was dead. Greg wanted to call out, make some noise to prove that he, at least, was alive, but all that came out was a faint, keening sound that was lost as soon as it escaped his throat, caught away and murdered on the wind. No one around to hear anyway, the crime scene they were headed for still miles away, and too long before they would be missed. Too long for him to hold on, and things seemed to be getting so, so far away. The large, dead tree that the car had spun against lay above him, naked and shifting like hands beckoning, and Greg rolled to his side, feeling an awful lack, an emptiness of pain. He reached out blindly with his broken fingers, stardust blinded, and found Nick’s arm, slid his grasp along to touch a cold hand, slick with mingled blood, and he pressed a kiss to the flesh against his face, against temple and neck and cheek. A whispered declaration of love, devotion, of something that never was and should have been, and then his breath was frost on the air, crystallised blood, and later, as he lies naked and bloody on a table in the morgue, he never feels as thing as the knife slowly, tenderly bites at what is no longer there.
Might fiddle with it later for clarity, but that's my fifteen minutes up.