csi fic: mementos of the past (2/4)
SUMMARY: The world is ripe with memories but the world no longer spins on a familiar axis. In the end, what we discover is that memories of the past linger but they don’t return.
RATING: K+
DISCLAIMER: CSI is property of CBS.
SPOILERS: Grave Danger
Ever since his incident, as Nick liked to call it, Grissom had been assigning him relatively low-key cases. Cases that were normally handled by a solo CSI. Not in Nick’s case. He was constantly being assigned supervision.
Originally, Grissom had rotated the CSI or CSIs that were assigned ‘Nick-duty’ but that had ended nearly two weeks ago. These days Grissom assigned him Greg. Nick was pretty sure that Catherine had played a large part in this new reality. She had probably told Grissom that constantly assigning two level three CSIs to a robbery was a bit excessive. She had probably said a lot of other things but the end results were that Nick was usually paired with Greg for the less serious call-outs and with Sara and Greg for the more serious cases.
There weren’t many serious cases. A lot of robberies, home invasions, and other such crimes. All very low-key and, theoretically, very safe crime scenes. And, of course, even Ecklie couldn’t argue against assigning both Greg and Nick to these cases because Greg was still learning, still needed a bit of help. The justifications were endless but Nick knew the real deal. He was being let out of someone’s sight, not after what happened left time. He wasn’t sure whether to be touched or irritated. Irritation usually won out.
Being paired with Greg was both a blessing and a curse. Warrick and Catherine always wanted him to talk, not about the accident but about the mundane things of life, hoping that reminders of the good ole days would bring back the old Nicky. These were tiring, draining conversations-he couldn’t just go back and his friends just couldn’t seem to accept that. Grissom and Sara just watched him, forever watching him. What they were watching for was a mystery. Well, not a complete mystery but their eyes rarely revealed the full truth. Something was always hidden in their eyes, making Nick nervous, apprehensive. He tended to be the quietest around Grissom and Sara. Greg just tried to make jokes, as if laughter really was the key to happiness. Lame jokes usually but jokes none the less. Greg was sometimes the easiest of the whole group to deal with. He did the talking; he didn’t have penetrating eyes that wanted to see what was hiding beneath the surface.
It was draining to constantly have to supervise Greg. Greg still had a long way to go before he was a fully independent CSI. Greg may have had a genius-level IQ and a head stuffed full of facts but commonsense often seemed to escape the young CSI. Nick was constantly on the look-out for any mistakes, as any good teacher would be. But it was hard, having to be constantly on the alert, especially when Nick was consistently feeling tired and worn-out.
And, on another level, Nick couldn’t help but find it slightly ironic that he was being assigned to supervise Greg while Greg was being paired with him to watch him. It was a catch-22 situation, really. Nick wasn’t supposed to let Greg out of his sight and Greg wasn’t supposed to let Nick out of his sight, so it ended up that for most shifts the two were constantly together. Having someone always around was not fun, even if that someone wasn’t trying to get him to talk or trying to read his soul. The constant supervision of Greg and the constant supervision of Nick himself by the rest of the lab had the end result of simply draining Nick of any remaining energy reserves, as did the feelings of guilt that Greg’s training was being sacrificed so that the young man could watch Nick and report back to the team if anything went wrong. Nick knew that Greg would have disagreed but Nick couldn’t help thinking that, and blaming himself for a situation that, quite truthfully, wasn’t his fault at all. But human minds don’t always accept that.
At the end of the day, the whole situation felt wrong and Nick just didn’t like it.
“I got fingerprints, Nicky boy,” Greg called out, interrupting Nick from his musings and drawing Nick’s mind back to the crime scene at hand.
Nick shook his head to clear any remaining cobwebs from his head before quickly crossing the room. The crime scene was a small mom-and-pop store, that type that littered Las Vegas in out-of-the-way strip malls far away from the main strip. The store was dark and cluttered, two things that Nick definitely didn’t like, especially since the incident. When Greg and he had first arrived, Nick had told Greg to go ahead. The younger CSI had glanced at him but Nick had waved away Greg’s concern.
Truth be told, Nick hadn’t wanted to confess to Greg just how much dark and enclosed spaces bothered him now. Instead Nick had taken a few deep breaths, mentally reassuring himself that he was fine and that everything was just dandy. Then he had walked over to Detective Vartan, pretending like that was why he had let Greg enter ahead of him. Nick had wondered idly if this would warrant a report back to the gang as he had talked absently to the suit-clad detective.
The detective had left Nick after sharing the few details that he knew. After that, Nick had walked back to the entrance of the store. He had stood in the doorway and had begun to study the crime scene that lay before his eyes. When his eyes had come across the sight of Greg patiently dusting for prints, Nick’s mind had wandered as he thought about the crime scenes he used to get assigned to and the crime scenes that he was now being regulated to. Greg’s statement had pulled him from these thoughts and he now turned his attention to Greg, hiding a yawn that threatened to erupt as he carefully navigated the cluttered floor plan to where Greg was standing.
As Nick headed to the back of the store, he saw that the desk, which Greg was currently process, spanned the length of the back wall of the small store. Near one end was the cashier register. The small grey metal box that usually held money was hanging open. The grips that normally kept the money in place were up. No green bills were present, just the black money tray. The entire register had been dusted for prints and was now covered in black print powder.
The countertop was also covered with black print powder. Mostly, what Nick saw were just smudges on the counter, but several print-lifts were laying in order across the counter. They were all neatly labelled, something that pleased Nick. Usually all Nick could feel was a dull throbbing but seeing that Greg was finally memorizing the basic rote steps of lifting prints made Nick inordinately glad. It was an odd feeling, pleasant but fleeting, one moment there and the next moment gone, leaving only the dull throbbing behind. If he could have capture that moment, as simple as it had been, Nick would have. It would have been a blessing from his normal moods.
Still, the brief moment of feeling something gave Nick enough energy to give Greg a little praise. “Nice work, Greg,” he said. Greg’s smile was large in the wake of Nick’s compliment but when all Nick could muster in response was a weak smile, Greg’s own smile faded and that cautious look returned to Greg’s eyes. It was a look that hadn’t been in Greg’s eyes when the young man had worked in the lab and Nick wondered briefly if maybe Greg wasn’t the one that should be seeking professional help. But Nick had only enough energy to work and so the thought quickly left his mind, not completely forgotten but placed somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of his mind.
Greg started to place the lifts in his kit. “I like it when the criminals do the work for us.”
The old Nick might have laughed at Greg’s statement, perhaps even have shared his own joke. Not this Nick. This Nick sighed before handing the younger CSI some critique, which served to further deflate Greg’s smile. “Now, remember, a lot of those prints on the register are going to be for the employees. And even if we do find a unique print, we’re still going to need a suspect to compare those prints to. Without those things, we really won’t have anything.”
Greg’s shoulders drooped as the he nodded once Nick had finished speaking. He finished packing up his lifts. “I’m going to go print the back door, the one that Detective Vartann said was busted.” With that, Greg disappeared through the open door behind the counter.
Nick watched him go. The door shut softly behind Greg’s retreating form. Nick sighed and wished that he could just start over. He wished that he could go back and change everything. But he couldn’t. He was stuck with life the way it was. He was stuck with friends that meant well but hadn’t a clue how to treat him anymore. He was stuck in a body that he didn’t recognize anymore, stuck in a life that he could only barely remember. He was clinging onto to his sanity by a thread.
The saddest thing was that, even with all the watching his friends and co-workers were doing, they didn’t seem to realize what was going on. Nick saw the concerned faces but everyone kept their distance now. Catherine and Warrick still made their inquires but they didn’t press it if he didn’t respond; Grissom and Sara still watched but they never commented, just looked at him with sad eyes. Greg just looked lost half of the time, trying desperately to find normality but often finding that life just wasn’t normal anymore, no matter how hard he tried. It was like their ways of treating him were their ways of assuaging their own guilt. While Nick thought it was stupid of them to feel guilt over something they had no control over, he, quite frankly, just didn’t have the energy to deal with them.
So Nick plastered on fake smiles that most everyone for some reason accepted. They would make their daily overturns but when Nick said he was fine, they let it slid. Maybe they hoped that with time everything would return to normal. Maybe they thought this was the best way to handle things. Nick had no control what the best way to handle this was. Perhaps that was he was barely getting by. Perhaps that was why he felt like he was drowning in an ocean that was just too deep for him to successfully swim.
-----
An hour later and Nick and Greg were back at the lab. As always, Greg stayed close to Nick. As usual, Greg seemed distant. He made the same lame jokes but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. At the beginning of every shift, the heart would be there, Nick knew, but then Nick would open his mouth and everything would fall apart all over again.
Having stopped in the break room to grab a cup of coffee and escape momentarily from Greg, Nick let out a long sigh as his pager went off. The page was from Greg. It told him to report back to the layout room. Nick gulped down his coffee before pouring himself another cup. He only filled the cup three-quarters of the way full, hoping to convince Greg that this was the first cup of mid-shift coffee and not the second cup.
Nick entered the layout room to find Greg laying out the crime scene photos. Obviously the young man had busy. The photos were a mixture of up-close and personal shots as well as the more general landscape photos that had been taken at the crime scene. They had been laid out in no particular order. The overall effect was of chaos. Nick considered reminding Greg that the photos should be laid out in chronological order but ultimately decided not to. He was tired and, besides, at some point Greg would have to learn to remember what Nick had already told him. Nick had mentioned the need for order to the new CSI too many times already. Earlier it had appeared that Greg was getting the hang of things but now Nick wasn’t sure. They were back at the beginning and Nick hated it. He had no desire to mollycoddle Greg-that would have taken more energy that Nick had to spare.
Nick walked over to the layout table and set his cup of coffee down. He leaned against the table, letting the heavy metal support his weight. His body was sluggish. He waited for Greg to lay out the final three photos, taking a sip of the dark sludge passing as coffee as he waited. “So, what do we know?” Nick asked.
Greg sighed and threw up his hands. The look of frustration on Greg’s face told Nick all he needed to know. Still, Greg needed to voice his frustration and he did so. “All the prints on the cashier register came from either the store owner or his wife. But their alibi was confirmed by Vartann so…” Greg said, trailing off.
Nick finished for him. “Either the perp wore gloves or it was an inside job, neither of which is easy to prove.”
“Yeah.” Greg sounded horribly resigned and Nick had a brief urge to offer some words of wisdom that would lift Greg’s spirits out of the hole they had descended into. The only problem was that he had no words, no pearls of wisdom to offer. Sometimes the reality of their jobs hit hard and there was no one to avoid that. Not every case could be solved.
“Anyways,” Greg said, interrupting Nick from his thoughts, “I thought that maybe we could go over these photos, reassess the situation, maybe find something concrete if it was perhaps an inside job.”
Sadly, all Nick could do was shake his head. “With nothing to go, we need to pack up this case. Vartann just called me on my way over here to let me know that we have a new case. B and E at a home in Henderson. I checked with Grissom and he said if we had no leads in this case then to shelve it and head out.”
Greg’s mouth opened and closed a few times as he processed what Nick said. He didn’t look happy. The frustration had been replaced with annoyance. Annoyance directed at a world where there were always more crimes than answers. For the vast majority of cases, there were no arrests, and even fewer convictions. One of the hardest learning curve in becoming a CSI was accepting this harsh, cruel reality, especially if you were an optimist. Nick had once been an optimist, just like Greg was. But that was then and this is now and Nick no longer felt that optimism that had once characterized his being. All he felt was a deep-seated pessimism.
“Pack up this stuff and put it away it the evidence locker,” Nick instructed. He kept his tone gentle, his one concession to Greg’s newness at being a CSI. It was the only concession Nick’s weary body allowed. “Met me at the truck in ten, all right?”
It was a rhetorical all right and Greg knew it. His eyes gave him away. He huffed a bit but did as Nick told him. Nick stayed leaning against the layout table, pretending to watch Greg pack up but really just willing his body to move again. That little concession had cost him precious energy and it took a minute before Nick felt that the ability to walk had returned. Once it did, he gulped the rest of his coffee down, heading back to the break room to have one more quick cup before meeting Greg in the parking lot.
The rest of shift was spent much like this. The overwhelmingly tiredness made Nick prone to snappish remarks and biting comments. As the night progressed, everything became more pronounced. Greg became quieter and quieter while Nick felt worse and worse. But he couldn’t escape the quicksand that his life had become. So shift ended like it had started, with Greg disheartened and Nick even more drained. The never-ending cycle that was slowly killing Nick, bit by bit, piece by piece.
A part of him wanted his friends to say something but they never did. He was tittering at the edge of a steep cliff, barely clinging on, his fingers slipping. If he fell, would they notice?
A part of him wasn’t sure.
TBC
A/N: I have a request completely unrelated to my story. I'm doing a research paper on online fandoms and fanfic writers and I was wondering if anyone would be interested being interviewed on their experiences. If anyone is interesting, could you either leave me a message or send me an email to melissa_3002@hotmail.com and I can give you some more information.
RATING: K+
DISCLAIMER: CSI is property of CBS.
SPOILERS: Grave Danger
Ever since his incident, as Nick liked to call it, Grissom had been assigning him relatively low-key cases. Cases that were normally handled by a solo CSI. Not in Nick’s case. He was constantly being assigned supervision.
Originally, Grissom had rotated the CSI or CSIs that were assigned ‘Nick-duty’ but that had ended nearly two weeks ago. These days Grissom assigned him Greg. Nick was pretty sure that Catherine had played a large part in this new reality. She had probably told Grissom that constantly assigning two level three CSIs to a robbery was a bit excessive. She had probably said a lot of other things but the end results were that Nick was usually paired with Greg for the less serious call-outs and with Sara and Greg for the more serious cases.
There weren’t many serious cases. A lot of robberies, home invasions, and other such crimes. All very low-key and, theoretically, very safe crime scenes. And, of course, even Ecklie couldn’t argue against assigning both Greg and Nick to these cases because Greg was still learning, still needed a bit of help. The justifications were endless but Nick knew the real deal. He was being let out of someone’s sight, not after what happened left time. He wasn’t sure whether to be touched or irritated. Irritation usually won out.
Being paired with Greg was both a blessing and a curse. Warrick and Catherine always wanted him to talk, not about the accident but about the mundane things of life, hoping that reminders of the good ole days would bring back the old Nicky. These were tiring, draining conversations-he couldn’t just go back and his friends just couldn’t seem to accept that. Grissom and Sara just watched him, forever watching him. What they were watching for was a mystery. Well, not a complete mystery but their eyes rarely revealed the full truth. Something was always hidden in their eyes, making Nick nervous, apprehensive. He tended to be the quietest around Grissom and Sara. Greg just tried to make jokes, as if laughter really was the key to happiness. Lame jokes usually but jokes none the less. Greg was sometimes the easiest of the whole group to deal with. He did the talking; he didn’t have penetrating eyes that wanted to see what was hiding beneath the surface.
It was draining to constantly have to supervise Greg. Greg still had a long way to go before he was a fully independent CSI. Greg may have had a genius-level IQ and a head stuffed full of facts but commonsense often seemed to escape the young CSI. Nick was constantly on the look-out for any mistakes, as any good teacher would be. But it was hard, having to be constantly on the alert, especially when Nick was consistently feeling tired and worn-out.
And, on another level, Nick couldn’t help but find it slightly ironic that he was being assigned to supervise Greg while Greg was being paired with him to watch him. It was a catch-22 situation, really. Nick wasn’t supposed to let Greg out of his sight and Greg wasn’t supposed to let Nick out of his sight, so it ended up that for most shifts the two were constantly together. Having someone always around was not fun, even if that someone wasn’t trying to get him to talk or trying to read his soul. The constant supervision of Greg and the constant supervision of Nick himself by the rest of the lab had the end result of simply draining Nick of any remaining energy reserves, as did the feelings of guilt that Greg’s training was being sacrificed so that the young man could watch Nick and report back to the team if anything went wrong. Nick knew that Greg would have disagreed but Nick couldn’t help thinking that, and blaming himself for a situation that, quite truthfully, wasn’t his fault at all. But human minds don’t always accept that.
At the end of the day, the whole situation felt wrong and Nick just didn’t like it.
“I got fingerprints, Nicky boy,” Greg called out, interrupting Nick from his musings and drawing Nick’s mind back to the crime scene at hand.
Nick shook his head to clear any remaining cobwebs from his head before quickly crossing the room. The crime scene was a small mom-and-pop store, that type that littered Las Vegas in out-of-the-way strip malls far away from the main strip. The store was dark and cluttered, two things that Nick definitely didn’t like, especially since the incident. When Greg and he had first arrived, Nick had told Greg to go ahead. The younger CSI had glanced at him but Nick had waved away Greg’s concern.
Truth be told, Nick hadn’t wanted to confess to Greg just how much dark and enclosed spaces bothered him now. Instead Nick had taken a few deep breaths, mentally reassuring himself that he was fine and that everything was just dandy. Then he had walked over to Detective Vartan, pretending like that was why he had let Greg enter ahead of him. Nick had wondered idly if this would warrant a report back to the gang as he had talked absently to the suit-clad detective.
The detective had left Nick after sharing the few details that he knew. After that, Nick had walked back to the entrance of the store. He had stood in the doorway and had begun to study the crime scene that lay before his eyes. When his eyes had come across the sight of Greg patiently dusting for prints, Nick’s mind had wandered as he thought about the crime scenes he used to get assigned to and the crime scenes that he was now being regulated to. Greg’s statement had pulled him from these thoughts and he now turned his attention to Greg, hiding a yawn that threatened to erupt as he carefully navigated the cluttered floor plan to where Greg was standing.
As Nick headed to the back of the store, he saw that the desk, which Greg was currently process, spanned the length of the back wall of the small store. Near one end was the cashier register. The small grey metal box that usually held money was hanging open. The grips that normally kept the money in place were up. No green bills were present, just the black money tray. The entire register had been dusted for prints and was now covered in black print powder.
The countertop was also covered with black print powder. Mostly, what Nick saw were just smudges on the counter, but several print-lifts were laying in order across the counter. They were all neatly labelled, something that pleased Nick. Usually all Nick could feel was a dull throbbing but seeing that Greg was finally memorizing the basic rote steps of lifting prints made Nick inordinately glad. It was an odd feeling, pleasant but fleeting, one moment there and the next moment gone, leaving only the dull throbbing behind. If he could have capture that moment, as simple as it had been, Nick would have. It would have been a blessing from his normal moods.
Still, the brief moment of feeling something gave Nick enough energy to give Greg a little praise. “Nice work, Greg,” he said. Greg’s smile was large in the wake of Nick’s compliment but when all Nick could muster in response was a weak smile, Greg’s own smile faded and that cautious look returned to Greg’s eyes. It was a look that hadn’t been in Greg’s eyes when the young man had worked in the lab and Nick wondered briefly if maybe Greg wasn’t the one that should be seeking professional help. But Nick had only enough energy to work and so the thought quickly left his mind, not completely forgotten but placed somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of his mind.
Greg started to place the lifts in his kit. “I like it when the criminals do the work for us.”
The old Nick might have laughed at Greg’s statement, perhaps even have shared his own joke. Not this Nick. This Nick sighed before handing the younger CSI some critique, which served to further deflate Greg’s smile. “Now, remember, a lot of those prints on the register are going to be for the employees. And even if we do find a unique print, we’re still going to need a suspect to compare those prints to. Without those things, we really won’t have anything.”
Greg’s shoulders drooped as the he nodded once Nick had finished speaking. He finished packing up his lifts. “I’m going to go print the back door, the one that Detective Vartann said was busted.” With that, Greg disappeared through the open door behind the counter.
Nick watched him go. The door shut softly behind Greg’s retreating form. Nick sighed and wished that he could just start over. He wished that he could go back and change everything. But he couldn’t. He was stuck with life the way it was. He was stuck with friends that meant well but hadn’t a clue how to treat him anymore. He was stuck in a body that he didn’t recognize anymore, stuck in a life that he could only barely remember. He was clinging onto to his sanity by a thread.
The saddest thing was that, even with all the watching his friends and co-workers were doing, they didn’t seem to realize what was going on. Nick saw the concerned faces but everyone kept their distance now. Catherine and Warrick still made their inquires but they didn’t press it if he didn’t respond; Grissom and Sara still watched but they never commented, just looked at him with sad eyes. Greg just looked lost half of the time, trying desperately to find normality but often finding that life just wasn’t normal anymore, no matter how hard he tried. It was like their ways of treating him were their ways of assuaging their own guilt. While Nick thought it was stupid of them to feel guilt over something they had no control over, he, quite frankly, just didn’t have the energy to deal with them.
So Nick plastered on fake smiles that most everyone for some reason accepted. They would make their daily overturns but when Nick said he was fine, they let it slid. Maybe they hoped that with time everything would return to normal. Maybe they thought this was the best way to handle things. Nick had no control what the best way to handle this was. Perhaps that was he was barely getting by. Perhaps that was why he felt like he was drowning in an ocean that was just too deep for him to successfully swim.
-----
An hour later and Nick and Greg were back at the lab. As always, Greg stayed close to Nick. As usual, Greg seemed distant. He made the same lame jokes but his heart wasn’t in it anymore. At the beginning of every shift, the heart would be there, Nick knew, but then Nick would open his mouth and everything would fall apart all over again.
Having stopped in the break room to grab a cup of coffee and escape momentarily from Greg, Nick let out a long sigh as his pager went off. The page was from Greg. It told him to report back to the layout room. Nick gulped down his coffee before pouring himself another cup. He only filled the cup three-quarters of the way full, hoping to convince Greg that this was the first cup of mid-shift coffee and not the second cup.
Nick entered the layout room to find Greg laying out the crime scene photos. Obviously the young man had busy. The photos were a mixture of up-close and personal shots as well as the more general landscape photos that had been taken at the crime scene. They had been laid out in no particular order. The overall effect was of chaos. Nick considered reminding Greg that the photos should be laid out in chronological order but ultimately decided not to. He was tired and, besides, at some point Greg would have to learn to remember what Nick had already told him. Nick had mentioned the need for order to the new CSI too many times already. Earlier it had appeared that Greg was getting the hang of things but now Nick wasn’t sure. They were back at the beginning and Nick hated it. He had no desire to mollycoddle Greg-that would have taken more energy that Nick had to spare.
Nick walked over to the layout table and set his cup of coffee down. He leaned against the table, letting the heavy metal support his weight. His body was sluggish. He waited for Greg to lay out the final three photos, taking a sip of the dark sludge passing as coffee as he waited. “So, what do we know?” Nick asked.
Greg sighed and threw up his hands. The look of frustration on Greg’s face told Nick all he needed to know. Still, Greg needed to voice his frustration and he did so. “All the prints on the cashier register came from either the store owner or his wife. But their alibi was confirmed by Vartann so…” Greg said, trailing off.
Nick finished for him. “Either the perp wore gloves or it was an inside job, neither of which is easy to prove.”
“Yeah.” Greg sounded horribly resigned and Nick had a brief urge to offer some words of wisdom that would lift Greg’s spirits out of the hole they had descended into. The only problem was that he had no words, no pearls of wisdom to offer. Sometimes the reality of their jobs hit hard and there was no one to avoid that. Not every case could be solved.
“Anyways,” Greg said, interrupting Nick from his thoughts, “I thought that maybe we could go over these photos, reassess the situation, maybe find something concrete if it was perhaps an inside job.”
Sadly, all Nick could do was shake his head. “With nothing to go, we need to pack up this case. Vartann just called me on my way over here to let me know that we have a new case. B and E at a home in Henderson. I checked with Grissom and he said if we had no leads in this case then to shelve it and head out.”
Greg’s mouth opened and closed a few times as he processed what Nick said. He didn’t look happy. The frustration had been replaced with annoyance. Annoyance directed at a world where there were always more crimes than answers. For the vast majority of cases, there were no arrests, and even fewer convictions. One of the hardest learning curve in becoming a CSI was accepting this harsh, cruel reality, especially if you were an optimist. Nick had once been an optimist, just like Greg was. But that was then and this is now and Nick no longer felt that optimism that had once characterized his being. All he felt was a deep-seated pessimism.
“Pack up this stuff and put it away it the evidence locker,” Nick instructed. He kept his tone gentle, his one concession to Greg’s newness at being a CSI. It was the only concession Nick’s weary body allowed. “Met me at the truck in ten, all right?”
It was a rhetorical all right and Greg knew it. His eyes gave him away. He huffed a bit but did as Nick told him. Nick stayed leaning against the layout table, pretending to watch Greg pack up but really just willing his body to move again. That little concession had cost him precious energy and it took a minute before Nick felt that the ability to walk had returned. Once it did, he gulped the rest of his coffee down, heading back to the break room to have one more quick cup before meeting Greg in the parking lot.
The rest of shift was spent much like this. The overwhelmingly tiredness made Nick prone to snappish remarks and biting comments. As the night progressed, everything became more pronounced. Greg became quieter and quieter while Nick felt worse and worse. But he couldn’t escape the quicksand that his life had become. So shift ended like it had started, with Greg disheartened and Nick even more drained. The never-ending cycle that was slowly killing Nick, bit by bit, piece by piece.
A part of him wanted his friends to say something but they never did. He was tittering at the edge of a steep cliff, barely clinging on, his fingers slipping. If he fell, would they notice?
A part of him wasn’t sure.
TBC
A/N: I have a request completely unrelated to my story. I'm doing a research paper on online fandoms and fanfic writers and I was wondering if anyone would be interested being interviewed on their experiences. If anyone is interesting, could you either leave me a message or send me an email to melissa_3002@hotmail.com and I can give you some more information.