Title: Hope Like Ash
Author: amazonqueenkate
Claim: Jacqui Franco
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: (Set 2; #3, slow suicide)
Rating: PG
Summary: Jacqui Franco sits on the roof and smokes with Greg Sanders for reasons she can't tell.
Author's Notes: A two a.m. fic, because Jacqui Franco doesn't like it when I sleep.

I think there's just that one person out there, you know? One person you meet, and wham! That’s it. You’re theirs. Meant for them. And you spend the rest of your life either being close to them, or wishing you hadn’t been stupid enough to let the chance go.

Jacqui sits on the roof of her apartment building and smokes with Greg Sanders because she has no one else to smoke with. Time spent with Bobby is time spent worrying over guns, bullets, and wild game; time spent with David is time spent watching him fiddle with a chrome do-hickey on his never-fully-refurbished 1960-something car. Time spent with Greg is time spent with naïveté and optimism; the words that poor out of his mouth are future-tense and bright. She wants to bottle his ramblings and sell them in department stores: Come one, come all, it’s the limited-edition scent, Eu de Foolish Hope.

But Greg's too young to know that he's silly and childish about such things; Greg's twenty-eight this summer and Jacqui's thirty-seven in the fall. He's young and doesn't think it's odd that they smoke cigarettes on the rooftop. In fact, he'd rather smoke pot. But random drug testing has made Mary Jane an out-of-reach lover, not that Jacqui minds; she likes nicotine because it's hard. Marijuana is soft, gentle, a post-coital cuddle on a rainy day. A cigarette is wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, a physical craving, an addiction. Something unshakable, something running through her veins, mingled with her blood.

She doesn't want to feel artificially high, floating above the clouds. She likes her feet on the ground. Or rather, the roof.

Jacqui sits on the roof of her apartment building and smokes with Greg Sanders, listening to the cars and trucks rumbling down the street below. The days have become unbearable now, the time after shift empty. She’s lonely and cold and the only way to fill the empty spaces is with the meaningless triteness of a lonely twenty-something boy. Greg still is a boy, even if he’s tamed the hair a little and bought a handful of collared shirts. He’s got that boyish spunk and perky grin, and Jacqui knows that he believes every drop of bullshit that he spouts as fact. As hope.

Which is why she looks away when he says it, so earnestly like that. I'm just waiting for that person. And when I find them, I'm going to be close. Even if it kills me. He says it like he means it. Like he’s actually going to do it. Like it can be done.

She flicks her ashes onto the street below.

Jacqui sits on the roof of her apartment building and smokes with Greg Sanders because, since Sofia Curtis transferred out of Vegas proper, the days have been unbearable, empty, and long.

She doesn't admit that, though. Not to Sofia, when she leaves a casual message to say hi. When she saves the message and plays it back seven times that night, listening to the same thirty seconds of Sorry I missed you, call me back.

She doesn't tell Greg that, because that would be admitting, and she's not admitting it to anyone. Not to Bobby and his guns, David and his car, Greg and his words, Sofia and her voice.

Not to the cigarettes, the rooftop, the sky. And least of all, not to herself.

Never to herself.