Title: Nothing Ever Goes As Planned
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Greg Sanders
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Rating: PG-13
Table: 5_prompts, Written in the Stars challenge
Prompt: L3, Few things will go right
Author's Note: Spoilers for the S3 CSI: Vegas episodes "Play With Fire" & "Inside The Box."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Greg Sanders, unfortunately, just borrowing him for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Greg slammed his hands down on the table in frustration, wishing that he was anywhere but here in the lab. Nothing was going right today; he'd been back at work after the explosion for a few days now, and it still felt like an alien place to him.

He hated that feeling. This was his DNA lab; he was the person who everybody went to, the one who should feel most at home here. But ever since the explosion, it had been like a house of horrors to him; he couldn't keep the memories out of his mind.

Ever since he'd walked through the front door of the building, he'd been avoiding looking at the place where his old lab used to be. He couldn't look at that room without shuddering, and feeling the vertigo as he was lifted off his feet by the explosion and thrown through the air.

The displacement of time and space during those few brief moments had stayed with him; he would wake up in the middle of the night, a scream lodged in his throat that couldn't quite make its way out, unable to go back to sleep for fear that the dream would come again.

He had thought that it wouldn't be hard to see the lab again, to view where the explosion had taken place. But it still gave him the creeps to look across the hallway and see his old lab, see the exact spot where he'd been when it had happened.

Greg didn't blame Catherine for causing the explosion; it hadn't been her fault. She hadn't intended for it to happen; it had been an accident, plain and simple. He just wished that it hadn't had such apparently far-reaching effects on him.

No one else seemed to have been unduly affected by the explosion. There were a few people who had cuts and bruises, but no one else had been burned; he had been the only one who was actually in the lab at the time, so there were no other serious injuries.

Sara had been one of the people cut by the flying glass, and it seemed that everyone was far more worried about her superficial cuts than the burns that now spread across Greg's upper back and shoulders. He was just glad that those burns wouldn't leave any serious scars.

Still, he couldn't help but be a little annoyed that everyone seemed to think Sara's few little surface cuts were a terrible injury, while they all acted as though he was supposed to have already recovered from some fairly severe burns. It didn't seem fair.

But then, Sara had always brown-nosed her way into everything, Greg thought with a sigh. At one time, he had actually had a crush on her, until he'd discovered that she wasn't interested in anything other than being seen as the most important person in the crime lab.

He didn't need to think about that, he told himself, pushing his annoyance to the back of his mind. He should be more focused on the things that didn't seem to be going right since he'd come back to work -- and at the moment, that was everything.

It felt as though nothing was going the way that he needed it to. The main problem was his shaky hands; he couldn't keep those tremors from going on, and the longer he was here, the worse they got. He couldn't even hold a piece of paper steady.

Gil had noticed that yesterday, and commented on it. He had told Greg that the shaking would stop, but the younger man had his doubts about that. He still couldn't help glancing across the hall, to the place where he'd been when the world had exploded around him.

It almost seemed like a dream -- except for the fact that he could still feel the tingling of the burns on his back, and the bandage on one side of his face where he'd been cut by broken glass. Greg raised a hand to his face, his fingers touching the pad of gauze.

The doctors said that cut would heal, that it wouldn't leave any kind of a mark on his skin. Be that as it may, the explosion had left a mark on his psyche, one that could never be erased. Greg wondered if he'd ever be able to look at the lab in the same way again.

Would he ever feel safe here now? For the last two days, he'd almost been afraid to step out into the hall to take DNA results to the people who'd requested them. He kept waiting for another explosion, for some other catastrophe to catch him up in its claws.

He had planned to come back to the lab and act as though nothing had happened, that he wasn't affected at all by the explosion, and that everything would be business as usual. But nothing ever goes as planned, Greg told himself with a sigh and another surreptitious look around.

Everything had seemed to go wrong for the past two days. He hadn't been able to get DNA results from two cases that had been brought to him, which wasn't his fault, but was still annoying; and then, there was the problem of his shaking hands, which people had begun to notice.

It wasn't just Gil who had seen his hands shaking. Warrick had noticed it, and had asked him if he was all right. There had been a note of real concern in the other man's voice, but Greg had only shaken his head and said that he was fine, just a little tired.

Hodges had told him that maybe he should go home and get some more rest, since he obviously wasn't dealing well with what had happened. Greg had snapped at him to mind his own business, wanting nothing more than to get his hands around the other man's throat -- and squeeze.

Maybe it would be best if he asked for some more time off, he thought, resting his head in one hand and closing his eyes. Nothing was going the way he wanted it to, anyway; he might need to get more distance from what had happened before he could feel comfortable here again.

No, he wasn't going to do that. Greg raised his head again, clenching his teeth and reaching for the DNA results that were lying on his desk. He had to get these to Nick. And this time, he wasn't going to avert his eyes as he walked past the place where his lab used to be.

He was going to get past this. He wasn't going to let anyone convince him that he needed to take more time off, or that he wasn't going to get past what had happened as quickly as he should. It was over and done with, in the past; there was no need to dwell on it.

Holding the paper up in front of him, he couldn't help but notice that his hands were still shaking. Silently, he stared at the paper, willing his hands to still, focusing on keeping that paper steady, on making the shakes go away as though they'd never existed.

It was taking a while, but it was working. He just had to concentrate enough on things other than what had happened, and he would be back to normal in no time. It wasn't going to happen overnight, or even in a few days, obviously -- but it would happen. He would see to that.

Nothing seemed to be going right today, but there was always tomorrow. And this was only the middle of the shift; he could turn the annoyances around, and walk out here smiling and satisfied. At least, that was what he hoped for, Greg thought, heading for Nick's office with the paper in his hand.

***