(no subject)
Title: Everything After
Setting: digital_dive / Neon City, Caritas Bar
Warnings: Slight spoilers for CSI, post Season 8
Summary: The Dive CSI crew (Greg, Nick, Cathrine, Sara and Hodges) get together for some drinks on an important day, May 15th.
Everything After
The Caritas was dim in lights but bright in atmosphere that night. Digimon and tamer alike were spending their Saturday night knocking back the drinks and attempting to find something to alleviate the boredom that usually came with the lull of the weekend, be it companionship, a game of darts, or a half-drunken croon through the karaoke microphone. At the moment it was some poor sap attempting to keep up with the all too fast pace of an up JPop song and failing miserably.
To that end, Nick was rather glad the rest of his growing extended family wasn't around. The more he watched the stumbling tamer who honestly looked far too young to be in there (but who was he to question Lorne's methods of running things?) the more he could hear what one of the Vocaloids would be saying.
"Terrible! Why do they let those amateurs up there?! It's an assault on my ears!"
That would be Rin, ever the blunt one, complaining of the noise. Nick wouldn't blame her either. The longer the song went on the worse it got, so much so that he instinctively put a hand over one ear as he leaned on the counter.
Finally some reprieve came when Lorne delivered the tray of beers to Nick on the bar, giving him a knowing smile but saying nothing. Nick nodded, put his BITS on the counter for the round, and headed back to the table where the rest of his team was sitting. Cathrine, Greg, Sara and Hodges were all gathered around a round table on the backed stools, already one round in to the night. Hodges in particular was staring at the offending singing tamer with a faint scowl over the bottle he hadn't quite finished.
"I didn't think it was possible to butcher a language I didn't understand. I stand utterly corrected."
"Kinda makes me wish the twins worked the late shift..." Greg halfheartedly agreed, trying to ignore the grating on his ear drums.
"Why? So you could see Rin kick his ass?" Nick asked with a snerk, handing the new bottles off to everyone before taking his own seat again. That earned a snort from the younger CSI.
"Okay, maybe Miku and Kaito then."
"Admit it, you just want to see a tiny android take down a full grown young adult."
"If I wanted to watch one of them be violent, I'd just call Len a shota," Greg said, shaking his head a bit in disagreement.
"Okay, I have to ask," Sara cut in, "What does that mean, 'cause I've heard Ritsu mention it."
" Shota basically means 'little boy'."
"Ah."
"Now I have to ask, Sara," Hodges piped up, finally on his second beer, "What's this I hear about you sheltering the weird little fugitive?"
"I am not 'sheltering' him!" Sara scoffed incredulously at the often obnoxious lab tech, "And he's not a fugitive either!"
"Uhuh. He is under house arrest. That's usually just for people that did something wrong. Why's he staying at your apartment instead of his then?" Hodges continued to pry, leaning a little bit closer to Sara as if an invasion of personal space might make her more apt to spill the beans. Sara, of course, leaned away from him, and Cathrine rolled her eyes with a quite scoff, resisting the urge to head-slap the man right off his stool.
"That is... absolutely none of your business, Hodges."
Nick let out a slightly annoyed huff and grabbed Hodges by the back of his neck - a move he'd often used to subdue Greg in his younger, more hyper active days - and slowly dragged him back to a proper sitting position. Greg was naturally amused that some one else was finally getting that treatment and smirked over the top of his beer bottle.
"Ritsu is having problems with his brother Sai. That's all you need to know, Davy," Nick informed him.
"You're not going to stop calling me that, are you?" Hodges halfway groaned, rubbing the back of his neck when Nick finally released him. When the last virus had run through the Digital World, aging various tamers up and down, Hodges and Nick both wound up as teenagers, retaining their adult memories. Hodges however had seen fit to talk like he really was from the 80's, including calling himself "Davy" instead of David or using his last name as so many of his colleagues did. Nick was refusing to let him live it down.
"Nope," Nick grinned in response.
"You know, it really is like old times. Except now we have Hodges to fill the asshole quota," Greg added in.
"Har har, Sanders."
"Play nice children," Cathrine finally interjected, though she was smiling in mild amusement as she said it.
"That was me being nice," Greg countered.
"You're just as much of an ass as he is sometimes, Greggo," Nick said with a quite snort.
"Whatever. Only 'cause he provokes me."
Leaving it at that (though Hodges did shoot him a 'no I don't!' glare) Greg downed the rest of his bottle and looked at curiously before standing up and grabbing the empty tray.
"My round, right?"
"Eyup."
Thankfully by then the karaoke machine had changed hands a few times, and though the level of drunkenness really didn't change in whoever lacked enough inhibition to actually get up there and make a fool of themselves, there had been a few people with decent enough voices that it wasn't horribly grating. Currently some one was attempting an English punk rock song (Greg vaguely recognized it, but all he could recall was that the title was 'Wasteland') but they were slurring the words enough to be noticeable.
No wonder everyone considers Karaoke bad... everyone has to be plastered to get up and do it... he mused to himself, glancing back at the table of his friends after placing the next order with Lorne. Cathrine had launched in to some story that had them laughing.
Seeing it brought a faint smile to his face. The reason they were gathered like they were that night wasn't a happy one, but it was tradition. Sure they never really talked about Warrick much on that night, but they were all quietly honoring his memory while doing what they knew he would have wanted: enjoying their lives and remaining the 'family' they had always been.
Being in the Digital World didn't change that, something Greg was eternally grateful for.
"Been a year already, huh?" Lorne's voice came from the other side of the bar as he slid a tray of bottles over. Greg canted his head a bit, surprised that the green skinned in and bar owner even remembered. "Yeah, you and that Grissom fellow were in here same time last year, making small talk over a couple of beers. I figured there had to be a reason."
Greg went to say something, but Lorne put up a hand and smiled at his long time resident.
"You don't have to tell me. I figure if it involves of them... well... it's never easy to lose one of your own, is it?"
Ruefully, Greg returned the smile, putting his BITS on the counter.
"No. It's not," was all he said. Lorne gave a sympathetic sigh and reached across the counter, patting Greg on the shoulder.
"You kids enjoy yourself tonight, you hear?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we will."
Taking the tray, Greg headed back to the table and handed out the drinks, all but lost in thought now that it was at the forefront of his mind. Cathrine was finishing her story, something about a crime scene gone wrong in some comedic fashion when she was still a rookie, but having not heard the beginning of it and barely paying attention to the current part of it, he didn't laugh when the rest of them did.
Sara, however, caught his distant gaze and nudged him with her elbow after the laughter had subsided.
"So, Greg, did you get the ring yet?" she asked, shifting the topic to something a little more current.
"Hm? ... oh. It's getting sized. I'll have it before the 28th," he said, sounding just as distracted as he had looked.
"Ah wedded bliss. Some how it still amazes me that you managed to land a woman at all," Hodges interjected with his usual sardonic tone.
"Don't start," Greg warned.
"I'm just saying! We're all just as married to our jobs as we ever were!" Hodges attempted to argue, hand in the air defensively as if that might make them hear him out.
"Oh it just takes the right kind of person," Cathrine countered, "Granted I never found that, but that's not to say Nicky or Greg haven't."
"Faith's pretty cool with it. Hell, we're not even living together yet so it sort of works itself out for the moment," Nick agreed, "Won't always stay that way, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
"Well Greg does have the added advantage of being with some one from DATS," Sara pointed out, "And no rule about not being able to date within the organization."
"Sabine is a different department anyway," Greg added.
"Back to that," Cathrine said, "Besides the actual proposal, do you have anything else planned?"
"Uhhh..." Greg mumbled, sitting back a bit and scratching the back of his head, "Well Haku has her wedding planned for August if everything goes right... I was thinking December."
"Why December? Even here the weather would be shit," Nick asked.
"Sabine's birthday is on the 21st."
"Wow, Greggo's breaking out all the romantic stops, isn't he?" Sara half-giggled with her comment. A faint blush crept on to Greg's cheeks, but he tried to hide it behind taking a much too long drink from his bottle.
"You actually sound impressed by this, Sara. You used to be the one most against weddings," Nick laughed.
"No, no, I explained this last time," Sara shot back, pointing her finger at Nick accusingly, "I'm not anti-wedding, I'm anti-stupid. Greg isn't doing this just for the sake of tradition."
"So it's okay when one of us does it because we're your friends, but the rest of the world can't have elaborate wedding ceremonies because they're all just shallow and stupid. Is that it?"
Sara stared back at Nick for a second before leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Yes."
A short silence stretched between the two of them before Sara, unable to keep a straight face with the alcohol in her system pushing her to that border just beyond buzzed, cracked a faint smile and caused the rest of them to snicker and laugh immaturely at their own antics.
Another round down. Sara got up to buy the next one, returning just as the Karaoke stage finally quieted down, the patrons either too drunk or not drunk enough to keep it up. The regular din was still going, and Lorne had turned the regular sound system back on.
They continued to talk, night dragging on and changing subjects several times, but only one more round, Cathrine's, was grabbed before they called it quits. Most of them were barely passed buzzed, but Hodges being an obvious light weight seemed closer to three sheets to the wind. Clearly the man did not get out much.
He occupied himself with attempting to stack the empty beer bottles, though he couldn't quite seem to get the first two to even stand up properly.
Greg tapped his fingers on his own empty bottle, watching as Lorne cleaned the counter top of the bar, though his mind was obviously a million miles away.
"... I kind of wish he could be there for it, yehknow? My wedding, I mean," he suddenly said.
"... who?" Nick asked, obviously missing something in the sudden declaration. Greg canted his head, fixing Nick with an unamused expression, causing the older man to blink a few times and finally mutter, "Oh."
Silence settled on the table. Even Hodges stopped his inane task, putting the bottles properly on the table and glancing away as if it might make the uncomfortable silence fade. There was a reason they just didn't talk about Warrick, even if the night was one they set aside just to remember him.
Slowly, Sara reached across the table and took Greg's hand in hers.
"He'd be proud of you, Greggo. We all are."
"Yeah. Hell, he helped me get this far..."
They all nodded slowly, quietly in saddened agreement. Greg forced a smile, rubbing at an eye with his thumb, praying he didn't give in to the half-drunk desire to start crying. Nick gave him his own smile, patting Greg roughly on the back.
"You've come a long way, kid."
"Our geeky, hyper little lab tech grew up," Cathrine added with the same proud smile.
Another short silence, which Hodges promptly interrupted with a childish whine of, "Hey what about me?"
The uncomfortable air vanished as they degenerated in to laughter again. Greg reached over and ruffled Hodges' hair, earning a not very effective flail in response. Cathrine suggested they call it a night, but Nick held his hand up, then put his nearly empty bottle up.
"For Warrick," he said.
They followed suit, clanking their bottles together noisily.
"For Warrick."
Setting: digital_dive / Neon City, Caritas Bar
Warnings: Slight spoilers for CSI, post Season 8
Summary: The Dive CSI crew (Greg, Nick, Cathrine, Sara and Hodges) get together for some drinks on an important day, May 15th.
Everything After
The Caritas was dim in lights but bright in atmosphere that night. Digimon and tamer alike were spending their Saturday night knocking back the drinks and attempting to find something to alleviate the boredom that usually came with the lull of the weekend, be it companionship, a game of darts, or a half-drunken croon through the karaoke microphone. At the moment it was some poor sap attempting to keep up with the all too fast pace of an up JPop song and failing miserably.
To that end, Nick was rather glad the rest of his growing extended family wasn't around. The more he watched the stumbling tamer who honestly looked far too young to be in there (but who was he to question Lorne's methods of running things?) the more he could hear what one of the Vocaloids would be saying.
"Terrible! Why do they let those amateurs up there?! It's an assault on my ears!"
That would be Rin, ever the blunt one, complaining of the noise. Nick wouldn't blame her either. The longer the song went on the worse it got, so much so that he instinctively put a hand over one ear as he leaned on the counter.
Finally some reprieve came when Lorne delivered the tray of beers to Nick on the bar, giving him a knowing smile but saying nothing. Nick nodded, put his BITS on the counter for the round, and headed back to the table where the rest of his team was sitting. Cathrine, Greg, Sara and Hodges were all gathered around a round table on the backed stools, already one round in to the night. Hodges in particular was staring at the offending singing tamer with a faint scowl over the bottle he hadn't quite finished.
"I didn't think it was possible to butcher a language I didn't understand. I stand utterly corrected."
"Kinda makes me wish the twins worked the late shift..." Greg halfheartedly agreed, trying to ignore the grating on his ear drums.
"Why? So you could see Rin kick his ass?" Nick asked with a snerk, handing the new bottles off to everyone before taking his own seat again. That earned a snort from the younger CSI.
"Okay, maybe Miku and Kaito then."
"Admit it, you just want to see a tiny android take down a full grown young adult."
"If I wanted to watch one of them be violent, I'd just call Len a shota," Greg said, shaking his head a bit in disagreement.
"Okay, I have to ask," Sara cut in, "What does that mean, 'cause I've heard Ritsu mention it."
" Shota basically means 'little boy'."
"Ah."
"Now I have to ask, Sara," Hodges piped up, finally on his second beer, "What's this I hear about you sheltering the weird little fugitive?"
"I am not 'sheltering' him!" Sara scoffed incredulously at the often obnoxious lab tech, "And he's not a fugitive either!"
"Uhuh. He is under house arrest. That's usually just for people that did something wrong. Why's he staying at your apartment instead of his then?" Hodges continued to pry, leaning a little bit closer to Sara as if an invasion of personal space might make her more apt to spill the beans. Sara, of course, leaned away from him, and Cathrine rolled her eyes with a quite scoff, resisting the urge to head-slap the man right off his stool.
"That is... absolutely none of your business, Hodges."
Nick let out a slightly annoyed huff and grabbed Hodges by the back of his neck - a move he'd often used to subdue Greg in his younger, more hyper active days - and slowly dragged him back to a proper sitting position. Greg was naturally amused that some one else was finally getting that treatment and smirked over the top of his beer bottle.
"Ritsu is having problems with his brother Sai. That's all you need to know, Davy," Nick informed him.
"You're not going to stop calling me that, are you?" Hodges halfway groaned, rubbing the back of his neck when Nick finally released him. When the last virus had run through the Digital World, aging various tamers up and down, Hodges and Nick both wound up as teenagers, retaining their adult memories. Hodges however had seen fit to talk like he really was from the 80's, including calling himself "Davy" instead of David or using his last name as so many of his colleagues did. Nick was refusing to let him live it down.
"Nope," Nick grinned in response.
"You know, it really is like old times. Except now we have Hodges to fill the asshole quota," Greg added in.
"Har har, Sanders."
"Play nice children," Cathrine finally interjected, though she was smiling in mild amusement as she said it.
"That was me being nice," Greg countered.
"You're just as much of an ass as he is sometimes, Greggo," Nick said with a quite snort.
"Whatever. Only 'cause he provokes me."
Leaving it at that (though Hodges did shoot him a 'no I don't!' glare) Greg downed the rest of his bottle and looked at curiously before standing up and grabbing the empty tray.
"My round, right?"
"Eyup."
Thankfully by then the karaoke machine had changed hands a few times, and though the level of drunkenness really didn't change in whoever lacked enough inhibition to actually get up there and make a fool of themselves, there had been a few people with decent enough voices that it wasn't horribly grating. Currently some one was attempting an English punk rock song (Greg vaguely recognized it, but all he could recall was that the title was 'Wasteland') but they were slurring the words enough to be noticeable.
No wonder everyone considers Karaoke bad... everyone has to be plastered to get up and do it... he mused to himself, glancing back at the table of his friends after placing the next order with Lorne. Cathrine had launched in to some story that had them laughing.
Seeing it brought a faint smile to his face. The reason they were gathered like they were that night wasn't a happy one, but it was tradition. Sure they never really talked about Warrick much on that night, but they were all quietly honoring his memory while doing what they knew he would have wanted: enjoying their lives and remaining the 'family' they had always been.
Being in the Digital World didn't change that, something Greg was eternally grateful for.
"Been a year already, huh?" Lorne's voice came from the other side of the bar as he slid a tray of bottles over. Greg canted his head a bit, surprised that the green skinned in and bar owner even remembered. "Yeah, you and that Grissom fellow were in here same time last year, making small talk over a couple of beers. I figured there had to be a reason."
Greg went to say something, but Lorne put up a hand and smiled at his long time resident.
"You don't have to tell me. I figure if it involves of them... well... it's never easy to lose one of your own, is it?"
Ruefully, Greg returned the smile, putting his BITS on the counter.
"No. It's not," was all he said. Lorne gave a sympathetic sigh and reached across the counter, patting Greg on the shoulder.
"You kids enjoy yourself tonight, you hear?"
"Yeah. Yeah, we will."
Taking the tray, Greg headed back to the table and handed out the drinks, all but lost in thought now that it was at the forefront of his mind. Cathrine was finishing her story, something about a crime scene gone wrong in some comedic fashion when she was still a rookie, but having not heard the beginning of it and barely paying attention to the current part of it, he didn't laugh when the rest of them did.
Sara, however, caught his distant gaze and nudged him with her elbow after the laughter had subsided.
"So, Greg, did you get the ring yet?" she asked, shifting the topic to something a little more current.
"Hm? ... oh. It's getting sized. I'll have it before the 28th," he said, sounding just as distracted as he had looked.
"Ah wedded bliss. Some how it still amazes me that you managed to land a woman at all," Hodges interjected with his usual sardonic tone.
"Don't start," Greg warned.
"I'm just saying! We're all just as married to our jobs as we ever were!" Hodges attempted to argue, hand in the air defensively as if that might make them hear him out.
"Oh it just takes the right kind of person," Cathrine countered, "Granted I never found that, but that's not to say Nicky or Greg haven't."
"Faith's pretty cool with it. Hell, we're not even living together yet so it sort of works itself out for the moment," Nick agreed, "Won't always stay that way, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
"Well Greg does have the added advantage of being with some one from DATS," Sara pointed out, "And no rule about not being able to date within the organization."
"Sabine is a different department anyway," Greg added.
"Back to that," Cathrine said, "Besides the actual proposal, do you have anything else planned?"
"Uhhh..." Greg mumbled, sitting back a bit and scratching the back of his head, "Well Haku has her wedding planned for August if everything goes right... I was thinking December."
"Why December? Even here the weather would be shit," Nick asked.
"Sabine's birthday is on the 21st."
"Wow, Greggo's breaking out all the romantic stops, isn't he?" Sara half-giggled with her comment. A faint blush crept on to Greg's cheeks, but he tried to hide it behind taking a much too long drink from his bottle.
"You actually sound impressed by this, Sara. You used to be the one most against weddings," Nick laughed.
"No, no, I explained this last time," Sara shot back, pointing her finger at Nick accusingly, "I'm not anti-wedding, I'm anti-stupid. Greg isn't doing this just for the sake of tradition."
"So it's okay when one of us does it because we're your friends, but the rest of the world can't have elaborate wedding ceremonies because they're all just shallow and stupid. Is that it?"
Sara stared back at Nick for a second before leaning back and crossing her arms over her chest.
"Yes."
A short silence stretched between the two of them before Sara, unable to keep a straight face with the alcohol in her system pushing her to that border just beyond buzzed, cracked a faint smile and caused the rest of them to snicker and laugh immaturely at their own antics.
Another round down. Sara got up to buy the next one, returning just as the Karaoke stage finally quieted down, the patrons either too drunk or not drunk enough to keep it up. The regular din was still going, and Lorne had turned the regular sound system back on.
They continued to talk, night dragging on and changing subjects several times, but only one more round, Cathrine's, was grabbed before they called it quits. Most of them were barely passed buzzed, but Hodges being an obvious light weight seemed closer to three sheets to the wind. Clearly the man did not get out much.
He occupied himself with attempting to stack the empty beer bottles, though he couldn't quite seem to get the first two to even stand up properly.
Greg tapped his fingers on his own empty bottle, watching as Lorne cleaned the counter top of the bar, though his mind was obviously a million miles away.
"... I kind of wish he could be there for it, yehknow? My wedding, I mean," he suddenly said.
"... who?" Nick asked, obviously missing something in the sudden declaration. Greg canted his head, fixing Nick with an unamused expression, causing the older man to blink a few times and finally mutter, "Oh."
Silence settled on the table. Even Hodges stopped his inane task, putting the bottles properly on the table and glancing away as if it might make the uncomfortable silence fade. There was a reason they just didn't talk about Warrick, even if the night was one they set aside just to remember him.
Slowly, Sara reached across the table and took Greg's hand in hers.
"He'd be proud of you, Greggo. We all are."
"Yeah. Hell, he helped me get this far..."
They all nodded slowly, quietly in saddened agreement. Greg forced a smile, rubbing at an eye with his thumb, praying he didn't give in to the half-drunk desire to start crying. Nick gave him his own smile, patting Greg roughly on the back.
"You've come a long way, kid."
"Our geeky, hyper little lab tech grew up," Cathrine added with the same proud smile.
Another short silence, which Hodges promptly interrupted with a childish whine of, "Hey what about me?"
The uncomfortable air vanished as they degenerated in to laughter again. Greg reached over and ruffled Hodges' hair, earning a not very effective flail in response. Cathrine suggested they call it a night, but Nick held his hand up, then put his nearly empty bottle up.
"For Warrick," he said.
They followed suit, clanking their bottles together noisily.
"For Warrick."