Title: Good & Bad Days
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Greg Sanders/Nick Stokes
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Rating: PG-13
Table: 1drabble
Prompt: 23, Defeat
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 or Nick Stokes, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

This was one of the bad days.

Nick didn't look up as the body bags were wheeled past him. He noticed that Greg didn't either; he didn't blame him. He knew that Greg hated to see things like this. Greg had said more than once that he always felt as though he could be that body.

If they hadn't found Greg after Shane had kidnapped him from the hospital, that might well be the truth, Nick thought with an inward shudder.

He hated to think about that time. Those had been the worst hours of his life, knowing that Shane had Greg, not knowing if his boyfriend was dead or alive. He had dreaded finding out just what Shane had done to him; he was only thankful that Greg had survived.

That had been a good day, when they'd found him. This day was very different.

Those teenagers shouldn't have had to die. They should have found those kids alive, maybe bruised and hurt, but still a part of this world. They shouldn't have found two bodies, gunned down by a bastard who wasn't fit to lick the soles of their shoes.

Nick wanted to scream and rage and cry, but he knew that it wouldn't do any good. He just hated to see the potential of two young lives wasted, lives that would still be here if they'd only managed to find them in time, lives that shouldn't have been extinguished.

He hated to admit defeat. He hated to know that sometimes, they didn't catch the bad guys, and the good guys took a fall because of it. That didn't seem fair. It didn't seem right. But he had been doing this long enough to know that sometimes that was what happened.

It didn't make him feel any better, but at least he knew that he wasn't alone in feeling defeat. He only had to look around him, at Grissom's grim face, and the sober expressions worn by the cops who were here, to know that they all felt the same defeat.

There were some days when this job just didn't seem worth it.

And then there were days when everything went right, when the bad guys ended up behind bars, and they could all feel that they had done a good days' work. Those were the days he lived for, the days that made him feel he did something worthwhile.

Those were the days that could push the days of defeat to the back of his mind, the days when he knew that he'd made the right decision to be a CSI.

Moving to where Greg stood, he put an arm around his boyfriend's shoulders, watching silently as the body bags were loaded into the coroner's van. He made a silent vow -- they would find the man who had done this, and they would make him pay.

Eventually, defeat would be turned into victory. They would make it happen.

***