Title: Bad Situation
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen, Ryan Wolfe
Fandom: CSI: Miami
Rating: PG-13
Table: 5_prompts, Written in the Stars challenge
Prompt: G8, Use humor as a coping mechanism
Author's Note: Spoilers for the CSI: Miami S10 episode "Blown Away."
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Ryan Wolfe, unfortunately, just borrowing him for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Ryan winced as he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror; there were cuts and bruises on his face, but nothing so serious as to make him feel that he had to see a doctor. Besides, he'd already been checked out, and had been told that he wasn't seriously injured.

He'd been lucky, he thought to himself as he straightened up and turned off the water in the sink. If he hadn't managed to anchor himself with that string of Christmas tree lights that Walter had thrown at him, then he could easily have been killed.

Poor Walter, he had felt so guilty in thinking that letting go of those lights had been the wrong thing to do. But if he hadn't let go, then Ryan wouldn't have had anything around him to tie himself to so that he wouldn't be blown away. So Walter had saved his life.

It had been a harrowing situation, but Ryan was sure that he'd been through worse ones. Being kidnapped by the Russian mob had probably been the worst experience he'd ever been through; there were still nights when he woke up in a cold sweat with a scream on his lips.

Would nearly being killed by a tornado give him as many nightmares as that kidnapping had? His lips twisted wryly in the semblance of a smile. He didn't think so, but it certainly came close. He was piling up a nice little cache of bad experiences as a CSI.

He shook his head, looking down into the sink and closing his eyes for a moment. He didn't need to think like that. He had to look at the bright side of all this -- he was still here, still alive, and none the worse for wear. Once again, he'd made it through one of those bad experiences.

He'd tried to make something of a joke out of it when he was in the locker room with Walter earlier today; he hadn't wanted the other man to feel guilty in any way. Besides, what he'd said was the truth. If Walter hadn't let go of those lights, Ryan might have been dead.

There was no telling what would have happened. But he didn't want his friend to feel as though he hadn't done everything that he could to protect the both of them when they'd been caught in the middle of the tornado. None of it had been Walter's fault.

Of course, that didn't change the fact that it had been a harrowing experience for both of them. Ryan knew that this was probably going to give him more nightmares, bad dreams that would join the ones he already had about being kidnapped by the Russian mob.

He couldn't suppress a shudder at the memory of those hours. If he closed his eyes, he could still hear that rough accent ringing in his ears, still feel the pain of the blows that had been inflicted on him -- and of having a tooth yanked out of his mouth.

He hadn't been able to use any kind of humor to cope with that situation, as he had been able to joke with Walter about putting in his name for a commendation after the tornado. That had been far too dangerous -- and too painful -- to joke about for any reason.

Ryan could still remember the helpless feeling that had seemed to overwhelm him when he had been dumped out of a van on the side of the road near his apartment building after a night of being tortured and beaten. That was nothing to joke about, either.

If he stood here with his head down and his eyes closed, that helpless feeling came surging back again, and he didn't want it to. He wanted to push it away, to tell himself that nothing like that would ever happen to him again. He wouldn't let it.

But he couldn't make that kind of promise to himself, not in the line of work he was in. And he knew that he couldn't do anything else with his life, not if he wanted to be happy. He was a cop. He was born to be a cop. He didn't want to do anything else.

At least he could look at the bright side of things, Ryan told himself firmly, lifting his head to stare at himself in the mirror over the sink. He was still here, alive and well. He could have easily died during that tornado. It had been a stroke of luck that he hadn't.

He had to keep looking on that bright side. He had survived a lot of situations that others might not have, and he had always been able to look back on them and chalk them up to experience. At least he had his own coping mechanisms, no matter how odd they might seem to others.

This time, he could smile and be flippant about what he and Walter had been through. He could use humor as a way of warding off the more serious emotions, a way of deflecting the fear that he'd felt at the time. It was better than falling apart.

It was hard to look for the humorous side, to make any kind of a joke about what they'd passed through. But maybe he'd be able to do that more readily as time went by. Right now, the experience was still too close, too fresh. And he still had the physical marks from it.

Ryan raised a hand to touch a bruise on his cheek, wincing as he did so. This wasn't nearly as bad as the bruises he'd gotten when he had been kidnapped, he reminded himself, shaking his head. But those had been on his body, underneath his clothes, where no one could see them.

What he'd so recently been through was out there front and center, for all of the world to see. He was just glad that he hadn't been roughed up any more than he had; he could so easily have been caught up in those tornadic winds if he hadn't anchored himself with that string of lights.

They had cut into his waist, leaving abrasions on his skin through his shirt, but at the time, they had been all that was keeping him from being sucked into a tornado, so he didn't care. Those battle scars were worth it to have come through such an experience alive.

Taking a deep breath, Ryan stood up and turned towards the bathroom door. He needed to sit down and try to relax, to unwind after the rough day he'd had. He still felt bruised and battered, but he was alive. That was all that really mattered, in the end.

Maybe one day he would be able to look back on the situation and use humor as a way to cope with what had happened, but at the moment, he couldn't. Still, the fear and horror of what could have so easily happened to him would fade, with time.

It would fade in a way that the experience with the Russian mob never could. He would be able to crack a joke here and there about tornadoes and Christmas tree lights -- but he would never be able to come up with anything humorous about being kidnapped and tortured for hours.

Would he ever be able to reach for his usual humor as a coping mechanism for that? Ryan shook his head, allowing himself a wry smile. That was too much to hope for. He would have to find some other way of coping, even though it had happened long ago.

Okay, well, maybe not so long, he told himself as he made his way to the living room and sank down on the couch. Only a couple of years. Somehow, it seemed longer. Maybe that was because he had been plagued by the memories and the nightmares for so long.

He got himself into a lot of bad situations in his line of work. He just had to look at the incident with the mob as one of them, and be glad that he had come through it as well as he had. No one had been harmed permanently; he had to remember that.

Ryan closed his eyes, reaching for the television remote and pushing all thoughts of what had happened out of his mind. With any luck, the tornado wouldn't be adding to his nightmares. He had come out of yet another bad situation intact, and that was what really mattered.

***