CSI fic: "Human, On My Faithless Arm" Gil/Jim, part 5
It's begun to take on a life of its own. :) Thanks as always to my beta, slashmommy She's gorgeous, smart, talented, and she always finds time to read my stuff. The woman should get an award. :-)
x-posted to csi_slash and my LJ.
Behind the cut...
Human, On My Faithless Arm, part 5
by Joanne Soper-Cook
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Jim/Gil
Genre: Angst
Warnings: none
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: references to the episode "Ellie"
"Daddy?"
Jim blinked, trying desperately to anchor himself. "Ellie? Is that you,
sweetheart? What's wrong?"
"Oh, Daddy..."
He could hear her crying on the other end. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"Warrick...phoned Mom...they said you'd been shot...it was on the news."
"I was on the news?"
"Daddy, what happened?"
"Sweetie, it's nothing. I had some surgery and I'm fine. I'm doing great. Hey, how's Mom? How are you guys getting along?"
"Dad, I want to see you. I have to...I have to talk to you about something."
"Well, sweetie, you're welcome to come and see me any time you want. Do you need a plane ticket? I could order one for you on the phone. Or you could tell me when you're leaving and---"
"Dad, I'm in Vegas."
She was in Vegas. "Ellie, where are you?"
"I'm staying with a friend right now."
"Uh huh. And would this friend happen to be male?"
"Dad."
Jim chuckled. He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "You know where I am. Why don't you come on over?"
"I'll be there in about twenty minutes."
"Ellie?"
"Yeah."
He fought to hold back tears. "I love you."
"I know."
She disconnected, and Jim forced himself to put the phone down. His
hands were shaking. Dammit, where was Grissom? Why wasn't he here? He
took some deep breaths, forced himself to calm down. Ellie was here;
Ellie was in Vegas and she wanted to talk to him, maybe this could be the
reconciliation he'd been hoping for. That had to be it; there was no
other reason why his daughter would get on a plane and fly all the way to Nevada.
"Jim?" Grissom was standing in the doorway, bag in hand. "Are you okay?"
"I'm...yeah, I'm just...hey, that was Ellie on the phone. Ellie's coming to see me. She said she wanted to talk."
"Ellie." Grissom didn't seem pleased. "Did she run out of money or
something?"
"That's my daughter you're talking about."
Grissom's mouth opened and closed, opened again. "I'm sorry. That was
out of line." He came to sit on the bed, took Jim's hand in both of his
own. "You've been crying." Grissom's fingers were gentle on his face.
"Yeah, I'm turning into a regular garden sprinkler." Something inside of him
broke; he dropped his head and sobbed, ashamed of his tears, ashamed that he even felt this way.
"Jim...hey, it's alright. I'm sorry I said it. I shouldn't have said
it. Let me make you some tea." Grissom was fluttering, clearly
discomfited by the detective's tears. "It'll be alright. You'll be
alright. Tea. I'll make some."
"I don't want tea," Jim whispered miserably. "Oh God, Gil, I'm so scared."
"Come here." Grissom wrapped his arms around him and held him tight.
"You've been through so much." He tilted Jim's face up and kissed his
mouth gently. "You can do this."
"She's everything to me. You know, from the moment she was born, she's
had my heart in her fist. I used to change her diapers, get up late at
night for her feedings, everything. When I came off shift, late at night,
I'd creep into her room and check to see if she was breathing. The night
of her first school play, I was on call and I got paged: a double
homicide at a nightclub downtown. I tried to hand it off, but..." He
shook his head. "By the time I could finally clock off shift, the play
was over. She never forgave me."
"It's not your fault." The words, he knew, were hollow, meaningless. He
turned Jim's hand and kissed the palm. "You did the best you could."
"I don't think I did."
"You're a good man, Jim." Grissom leaned in and kissed him again, a
lingering caress that grew into a heated duel of lips and tongue. He
grunted as Jim's mouth traveled down his neck, licking and sucking,
leaving a trail of love bites. His cock grew hard, tenting the front of
his trousers and he reached out, pulled Jim hard against him.
"What the hell is going on?"
They sprang apart as though struck by lightning; Ellie stood in the
bedroom doorway, anger sparking in her eyes. "Mr. Grissom."
"Ellie." Grissom felt a hot spray of colour mount into his cheeks. "Good to see you again."
"Why are you in here?"
"He's here because he's my friend," Jim said. "He's been taking care
of me."
Her gaze traveled over Grissom's body, lingering on the significant
bulge in his trousers. "Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like, Dad."
"Coffee?" Grissom said. "I'd like some. Anyone else?"
Jim smiled, holding Grissom's gaze with his own. "I'd love a cup of
coffee. Thank you, Gil."
If looks could kill, Grissom thought, he'd be a smoking heap of
clothing on the bedroom floor. He excused himself and headed for the
kitchen, grateful to be out of the line of fire.
"That was rude," Jim said. "Gil is my friend. I'd like you to treat him with respect."
"Since when are you a fag?" She fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit up.
"Ellie, put that out. And come here and give your old man a hug." He crushed her in his arms, buried his face in her neck. He remembered the baby smell of her when she was little, a mixture of soap and talcum powder. He wanted to hold on to her and keep her safe forever; he wanted to scare away the
monsters, lock her in the house at night, threaten unsavoury boyfriends with his sidearm.
"How long have you been fucking him?" she asked.
"First, I'm not fucking him. Second, mind your language and third, what Gil and I do is between him and me, got it?" He stroked her long blonde hair. "How's Mom?"
"She's worried about you."
"Mm." He made a face. "Hence the profusion of concerned phone calls."
Ellie pretended not to hear him. "She's got a boyfriend."
"Does she? Who is he, the milkman or the meter reader? Let me guess: the pizza delivery guy."
"She told me." Her gaze was steady, unblinking. She was so like Janice,
she had that same directness about her. Janice, who never put up with any
bullshit from him or anybody else. He'd loved that about her.
"She told you she had a boyfriend?"
"She told me about..." She dropped her eyes. "You're not my father."
It struck him in the chest like a stone and stuck there, shedding pain
in ever-widening circles. He forced himself to breathe; his incision was hurting. "Ellie."
"She said you..." She sounded winded, breathless, like she was forcing
herself to continue. "That guy at the lab ran the DNA off your badge,
didn't he? He'd have to. I know you guys do that stuff."
Vega said he'd bring her in. 'Be careful,' Jim had said, 'She spits.' "Ellie, I think you need to understand something."
"Is it true?"
"It's true." His eyes blurred with tears. "We were having problems,
your mom and me...she left for awhile, went away. When she came home
again she was pregnant, okay? I don't know who. She never told me."
"Why didn't you tell me?" She was shaking - angry, he realised - but
when he reached for her hands, she snatched them away. "Why the hell
didn't you tell me, you bastard? All this time, I've been killing myself
inside, trying to be what you wanted, and you're not - you aren't - you
don't even matter!"
She whirled away from him, ran smack into Grissom in the doorway. "Get
the fuck out of my way."
"Hey!" Grissom held her by the upper arms, none too gently. "Do you mind?"
She struck out at him, clawing like an angry cat; Jim started up out of bed. "Gil, let her go."
The front door slammed so hard the windows rattled. Grissom looked like he'd been struck. "She had no right."
"She had every right." Jim sagged back against the pillows. "I've been
lying to her for twenty years." He felt the weight of every one of those
years, hanging on him now. "Could I...I'd like to be alone," he said.
"Sure." Grissom's face was unreadable. He turned on his heel and left.
"Greggo, if you don't quit it you're gonna go blind." Nick Stokes hung
over the younger man, watching with amusement as Greg furiously manipulated the microscope controls.
"That why you've got hair on your palms?" Greg murmured. "Ha! There." He stepped back. "Feast your eyes."
Nick gazed down the scope at some greenish-blue blobs. "What am I looking at?" he asked.
"It's otherwise known as pond scum with good hair," Greg smirked.
Nick looked up from the scope. "Blue-green algae?"
"What do we have for the winner, Johnny?"
Nick was incredulous. "And this stuff was between the guy's teeth?"
"I think this places him at the scene."
"Greg, you rock, my man." Nick clapped him on the shoulder. "Good job."
He glanced up as Grissom stormed past, obviously loaded for bear. "Well if that don't beat all," he mused.
Greg had followed his gaze. "I thought he was on leave," he said, "looking after Captain Brass."
"Yeah. I'm sure Captain Brass thought so, too." He patted Greg absently on the back. "Good job, man."
He left the DNA lab and headed for the break room, but Grissom wasn't
in there. He followed the sound of shouting: Grissom was in his office
with the door closed, talking to Catherine. Nick flattened himself
against the wall, straining his ears.
"...don't understand why she showed up!"
Yeah, Griss was winding up for a good one. Nick couldn't see Catherine,
but he could imagine she was trying her best to calm Grissom down.
"Nick."
He jumped away from the wall. "Hey, Sara."
"Eavesdropping?" she asked.
"Absolutely not."
"Bad idea," she shrugged. "You never hear anything good. I just made some coffee." A pause. "Want some?"
He could hardly stand here listening with Sara looming over him; better
to cut his losses and see what he could find out on the grapevine, later on. "Coffee."
"It sounds to me like you're really upset about this," Catherine said.
She was sitting on the edge of the desk, gazing at him with an infinity of patience.
"I don't know what she said to him. I wasn't in the room. But she
stormed out of there." Grissom was sitting behind his desk, rearranging
small objects with a certain ferocious attention. "He doesn't need that
right now. Dammit, Catherine, he needs to get well. They took out his
spleen. He could have died in there."
"You really care about him, don't you." It wasn't a question; when
Grissom raised his eyes to hers, the patent misery in them slammed into
her like a freight train. //Dear God,// she thought, //he's got it bad.//
Grissom ducked his head; there was silence in the office for several
long moments. "I don't know what's happening to me, Catherine."
She came around and crouched by his chair. "Talk to me."
"How did you know you loved Eddie?"
She thought for a moment. "I don't think it was anything sudden or
dramatic." She smiled. "The sex was good. I mean, it was really good."
"We haven't..." He blushed. "Just kissing."
"Is he good at it?"
"Catherine!"
"What? I'm curious." She didn't miss a beat. "So, is he?"
"What am I going to do?"
"Gil, I know this is like pulling teeth to you, but you're going to have to talk to him. Tell him how you feel."
"I don't know how I feel...comfortable, when I'm with him, miserable
when I'm away, worried about him." He became inordinately interested in
the desktop. "We spent the other night watching t.v. He fell asleep. I
covered us both up and turned the t.v. off." He felt her kindly, amused gaze on him. "What?"
"I'm jealous," she said. "It's been awhile since I had that with
someone." She stood up, smiling wistfully. "Go back to him, Gil. He needs
you. And you need him." She waited till he stood up, then hugged him. "Go talk to him."
Gil put the spare key in the door; Jim was sitting in the living room
with a blanket around his shoulders. He didn't look up as Gil sank onto the couch beside him.
"I'm not sure how to do this," Grissom said quietly. "I've never been
in love. I've never been in a relationship before. This started as
something else. I saw you get shot. I watched you fall. And I never, ever
want to see that again." His hands were trembling; he clasped them
together in his lap.
"Thank you." Jim turned to look at him, tears shining in his eyes. "Ellie knows I'm not her father. Gil, I don't know what to do."
Grissom took his hand, laced their fingers together. "I don't know
either," he said. He slipped an arm around Jim, and the detective leaned
into his embrace. "We'll work it out," he said. "It'll be okay." He
wondered who he was trying to convince. "It'll be okay."
To be continued...
x-posted to csi_slash and my LJ.
Behind the cut...
Human, On My Faithless Arm, part 5
by Joanne Soper-Cook
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Jim/Gil
Genre: Angst
Warnings: none
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: references to the episode "Ellie"
"Daddy?"
Jim blinked, trying desperately to anchor himself. "Ellie? Is that you,
sweetheart? What's wrong?"
"Oh, Daddy..."
He could hear her crying on the other end. "Baby, what's wrong?"
"Warrick...phoned Mom...they said you'd been shot...it was on the news."
"I was on the news?"
"Daddy, what happened?"
"Sweetie, it's nothing. I had some surgery and I'm fine. I'm doing great. Hey, how's Mom? How are you guys getting along?"
"Dad, I want to see you. I have to...I have to talk to you about something."
"Well, sweetie, you're welcome to come and see me any time you want. Do you need a plane ticket? I could order one for you on the phone. Or you could tell me when you're leaving and---"
"Dad, I'm in Vegas."
She was in Vegas. "Ellie, where are you?"
"I'm staying with a friend right now."
"Uh huh. And would this friend happen to be male?"
"Dad."
Jim chuckled. He could almost hear her rolling her eyes. "You know where I am. Why don't you come on over?"
"I'll be there in about twenty minutes."
"Ellie?"
"Yeah."
He fought to hold back tears. "I love you."
"I know."
She disconnected, and Jim forced himself to put the phone down. His
hands were shaking. Dammit, where was Grissom? Why wasn't he here? He
took some deep breaths, forced himself to calm down. Ellie was here;
Ellie was in Vegas and she wanted to talk to him, maybe this could be the
reconciliation he'd been hoping for. That had to be it; there was no
other reason why his daughter would get on a plane and fly all the way to Nevada.
"Jim?" Grissom was standing in the doorway, bag in hand. "Are you okay?"
"I'm...yeah, I'm just...hey, that was Ellie on the phone. Ellie's coming to see me. She said she wanted to talk."
"Ellie." Grissom didn't seem pleased. "Did she run out of money or
something?"
"That's my daughter you're talking about."
Grissom's mouth opened and closed, opened again. "I'm sorry. That was
out of line." He came to sit on the bed, took Jim's hand in both of his
own. "You've been crying." Grissom's fingers were gentle on his face.
"Yeah, I'm turning into a regular garden sprinkler." Something inside of him
broke; he dropped his head and sobbed, ashamed of his tears, ashamed that he even felt this way.
"Jim...hey, it's alright. I'm sorry I said it. I shouldn't have said
it. Let me make you some tea." Grissom was fluttering, clearly
discomfited by the detective's tears. "It'll be alright. You'll be
alright. Tea. I'll make some."
"I don't want tea," Jim whispered miserably. "Oh God, Gil, I'm so scared."
"Come here." Grissom wrapped his arms around him and held him tight.
"You've been through so much." He tilted Jim's face up and kissed his
mouth gently. "You can do this."
"She's everything to me. You know, from the moment she was born, she's
had my heart in her fist. I used to change her diapers, get up late at
night for her feedings, everything. When I came off shift, late at night,
I'd creep into her room and check to see if she was breathing. The night
of her first school play, I was on call and I got paged: a double
homicide at a nightclub downtown. I tried to hand it off, but..." He
shook his head. "By the time I could finally clock off shift, the play
was over. She never forgave me."
"It's not your fault." The words, he knew, were hollow, meaningless. He
turned Jim's hand and kissed the palm. "You did the best you could."
"I don't think I did."
"You're a good man, Jim." Grissom leaned in and kissed him again, a
lingering caress that grew into a heated duel of lips and tongue. He
grunted as Jim's mouth traveled down his neck, licking and sucking,
leaving a trail of love bites. His cock grew hard, tenting the front of
his trousers and he reached out, pulled Jim hard against him.
"What the hell is going on?"
They sprang apart as though struck by lightning; Ellie stood in the
bedroom doorway, anger sparking in her eyes. "Mr. Grissom."
"Ellie." Grissom felt a hot spray of colour mount into his cheeks. "Good to see you again."
"Why are you in here?"
"He's here because he's my friend," Jim said. "He's been taking care
of me."
Her gaze traveled over Grissom's body, lingering on the significant
bulge in his trousers. "Yeah, that's exactly what it looked like, Dad."
"Coffee?" Grissom said. "I'd like some. Anyone else?"
Jim smiled, holding Grissom's gaze with his own. "I'd love a cup of
coffee. Thank you, Gil."
If looks could kill, Grissom thought, he'd be a smoking heap of
clothing on the bedroom floor. He excused himself and headed for the
kitchen, grateful to be out of the line of fire.
"That was rude," Jim said. "Gil is my friend. I'd like you to treat him with respect."
"Since when are you a fag?" She fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit up.
"Ellie, put that out. And come here and give your old man a hug." He crushed her in his arms, buried his face in her neck. He remembered the baby smell of her when she was little, a mixture of soap and talcum powder. He wanted to hold on to her and keep her safe forever; he wanted to scare away the
monsters, lock her in the house at night, threaten unsavoury boyfriends with his sidearm.
"How long have you been fucking him?" she asked.
"First, I'm not fucking him. Second, mind your language and third, what Gil and I do is between him and me, got it?" He stroked her long blonde hair. "How's Mom?"
"She's worried about you."
"Mm." He made a face. "Hence the profusion of concerned phone calls."
Ellie pretended not to hear him. "She's got a boyfriend."
"Does she? Who is he, the milkman or the meter reader? Let me guess: the pizza delivery guy."
"She told me." Her gaze was steady, unblinking. She was so like Janice,
she had that same directness about her. Janice, who never put up with any
bullshit from him or anybody else. He'd loved that about her.
"She told you she had a boyfriend?"
"She told me about..." She dropped her eyes. "You're not my father."
It struck him in the chest like a stone and stuck there, shedding pain
in ever-widening circles. He forced himself to breathe; his incision was hurting. "Ellie."
"She said you..." She sounded winded, breathless, like she was forcing
herself to continue. "That guy at the lab ran the DNA off your badge,
didn't he? He'd have to. I know you guys do that stuff."
Vega said he'd bring her in. 'Be careful,' Jim had said, 'She spits.' "Ellie, I think you need to understand something."
"Is it true?"
"It's true." His eyes blurred with tears. "We were having problems,
your mom and me...she left for awhile, went away. When she came home
again she was pregnant, okay? I don't know who. She never told me."
"Why didn't you tell me?" She was shaking - angry, he realised - but
when he reached for her hands, she snatched them away. "Why the hell
didn't you tell me, you bastard? All this time, I've been killing myself
inside, trying to be what you wanted, and you're not - you aren't - you
don't even matter!"
She whirled away from him, ran smack into Grissom in the doorway. "Get
the fuck out of my way."
"Hey!" Grissom held her by the upper arms, none too gently. "Do you mind?"
She struck out at him, clawing like an angry cat; Jim started up out of bed. "Gil, let her go."
The front door slammed so hard the windows rattled. Grissom looked like he'd been struck. "She had no right."
"She had every right." Jim sagged back against the pillows. "I've been
lying to her for twenty years." He felt the weight of every one of those
years, hanging on him now. "Could I...I'd like to be alone," he said.
"Sure." Grissom's face was unreadable. He turned on his heel and left.
"Greggo, if you don't quit it you're gonna go blind." Nick Stokes hung
over the younger man, watching with amusement as Greg furiously manipulated the microscope controls.
"That why you've got hair on your palms?" Greg murmured. "Ha! There." He stepped back. "Feast your eyes."
Nick gazed down the scope at some greenish-blue blobs. "What am I looking at?" he asked.
"It's otherwise known as pond scum with good hair," Greg smirked.
Nick looked up from the scope. "Blue-green algae?"
"What do we have for the winner, Johnny?"
Nick was incredulous. "And this stuff was between the guy's teeth?"
"I think this places him at the scene."
"Greg, you rock, my man." Nick clapped him on the shoulder. "Good job."
He glanced up as Grissom stormed past, obviously loaded for bear. "Well if that don't beat all," he mused.
Greg had followed his gaze. "I thought he was on leave," he said, "looking after Captain Brass."
"Yeah. I'm sure Captain Brass thought so, too." He patted Greg absently on the back. "Good job, man."
He left the DNA lab and headed for the break room, but Grissom wasn't
in there. He followed the sound of shouting: Grissom was in his office
with the door closed, talking to Catherine. Nick flattened himself
against the wall, straining his ears.
"...don't understand why she showed up!"
Yeah, Griss was winding up for a good one. Nick couldn't see Catherine,
but he could imagine she was trying her best to calm Grissom down.
"Nick."
He jumped away from the wall. "Hey, Sara."
"Eavesdropping?" she asked.
"Absolutely not."
"Bad idea," she shrugged. "You never hear anything good. I just made some coffee." A pause. "Want some?"
He could hardly stand here listening with Sara looming over him; better
to cut his losses and see what he could find out on the grapevine, later on. "Coffee."
"It sounds to me like you're really upset about this," Catherine said.
She was sitting on the edge of the desk, gazing at him with an infinity of patience.
"I don't know what she said to him. I wasn't in the room. But she
stormed out of there." Grissom was sitting behind his desk, rearranging
small objects with a certain ferocious attention. "He doesn't need that
right now. Dammit, Catherine, he needs to get well. They took out his
spleen. He could have died in there."
"You really care about him, don't you." It wasn't a question; when
Grissom raised his eyes to hers, the patent misery in them slammed into
her like a freight train. //Dear God,// she thought, //he's got it bad.//
Grissom ducked his head; there was silence in the office for several
long moments. "I don't know what's happening to me, Catherine."
She came around and crouched by his chair. "Talk to me."
"How did you know you loved Eddie?"
She thought for a moment. "I don't think it was anything sudden or
dramatic." She smiled. "The sex was good. I mean, it was really good."
"We haven't..." He blushed. "Just kissing."
"Is he good at it?"
"Catherine!"
"What? I'm curious." She didn't miss a beat. "So, is he?"
"What am I going to do?"
"Gil, I know this is like pulling teeth to you, but you're going to have to talk to him. Tell him how you feel."
"I don't know how I feel...comfortable, when I'm with him, miserable
when I'm away, worried about him." He became inordinately interested in
the desktop. "We spent the other night watching t.v. He fell asleep. I
covered us both up and turned the t.v. off." He felt her kindly, amused gaze on him. "What?"
"I'm jealous," she said. "It's been awhile since I had that with
someone." She stood up, smiling wistfully. "Go back to him, Gil. He needs
you. And you need him." She waited till he stood up, then hugged him. "Go talk to him."
Gil put the spare key in the door; Jim was sitting in the living room
with a blanket around his shoulders. He didn't look up as Gil sank onto the couch beside him.
"I'm not sure how to do this," Grissom said quietly. "I've never been
in love. I've never been in a relationship before. This started as
something else. I saw you get shot. I watched you fall. And I never, ever
want to see that again." His hands were trembling; he clasped them
together in his lap.
"Thank you." Jim turned to look at him, tears shining in his eyes. "Ellie knows I'm not her father. Gil, I don't know what to do."
Grissom took his hand, laced their fingers together. "I don't know
either," he said. He slipped an arm around Jim, and the detective leaned
into his embrace. "We'll work it out," he said. "It'll be okay." He
wondered who he was trying to convince. "It'll be okay."
To be continued...