Title: Just One Step
By: amazonqueenkate
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Character: Nick Stokes
Prompt: #19: caught in the form of limitation
Rating: PG
Summary: For Nicky, it's just one step between being a man and being a chicken.
Author's Notes: Nothing really to say about this one. It's pretty self-explanitory.

[ Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation ]

"C'mon, Nicky!" Joe yelled from the dock, his hands on his hips as he stared up into the tree. "Just do it!"

Nicky clutched the branch above him with white-knuckled hands and wished that he could be a monkey and have fingers for toes, too. The bark on the branch had worn away from weeks of boys scrambling across it and it felt slick against the blistered bottoms of his feet. He gritted his teeth and clutched harder.

Summer camp, of course, had been Dad's idea, borne of the previous summer. Nicky supposed it was kind of his fault, since he'd spent most of the twelve weeks off school popping the heads off Brenda's Barbie dolls and then putting them on the grill when Dad went in to get the steaks or another beer. Josh had been to camp when he was a boy, Dad explained after he pushed the colorful pamphlet across the table, and he'd loved it. Hiking, fishing, swimming in a lake, pitching a tent, telling ghost stories… He called it "boy stuff". Nicky had almost argued that roasting Barbie heads counted as boy stuff, but he could see Brenda looming in the doorway to the kitchen and figured Dad'd get pretty mad if he started off another summer by making her cry.

"You chicken?" Joey asked, his voice echoing into the clear blue skies, and Nicky scowled down at him. Joey was nine and in the cabin across the path from Nicky, and Joey had three big sisters around the same ages as Brenda, Tina, and Dee. He'd ended up at camp because he'd set his sister Allie's favorite teddy bear on fire, or at least, that's what he told Nicky the first day they met. And, since Nicky had ended up at camp because he'd roasted Barbie doll heads on the grill, well, it was only fair that they became friends.

Joey was actually the first one to climb the tree that arched over the lake, and the first one to leap from the high branch into the placid water. One of the counselors, who was in high school like Nicky's sister Becca, hollered at Joey the first time he did it, but by the second time, he just went back to sitting and talking to the girl counselors. A week later, every boy at camp wanted to jump from the high branch and land in the water, and not even the grown-ups could get them to stop. The grown-ups seemed to care even less than the councilors, which was fine with Joey and the other boys. The most fun could be had when the grown-ups either weren't looking or didn't care.

The lake looked cold, now, and a late August breeze kept cutting across Nicky's bare skin and making his teeth chatter. He could feel the goosebumps on his arms and legs, and would have rubbed them away if it meant he wouldn't have to let go of the branch. The few other boys who were anywhere near the lake just splashed on the banks or skipped stones from the dock. Joey was the only one who was wet, and squinting down at him from so high in the tree made him look little and cold, too. Near the dock was Nicky's counselor, laughing at something with one of the girl counselors. Nicky's counselor did a lot of that, and Nicky had to wonder why the grown-ups didn't mind.

"Chicken!" Joey chided from his spot on the dock, his hands now cupped around his mouth. He let out a chicken squawk. "Chicken!"

"I'm not chicken!" Nicky hollered down at him, but he didn't dare loosen his grip on the higher branch. "I'm just thinkin'!"

"'Bout what? Climbin' down, chicken?"

Nicky tried to spit at Joey but it fell short, landing somewhere in the grass below. He frowned and, slowly, started to inch out towards the edge of the branch. He'd watched enough of his bunk mates and the older boys jump from the tree to know he needed to be all the way out at the end if he had any hope of landing in the deep water. Kyle Jefferson, who was ten and from Cabin Eight, had jumped short and even though he hadn't broken anything or cracked his head, the nurse had very nearly roasted him like a marshmallow over the whole thing. Nicky liked the nurse, but she was scary like his mom when she got real mad, and he didn't want to end up like Kyle, stuck in the infirmary for three days and listening to the nurse scream herself all pink about how he could have died.

He wondered what it'd be like to die. Would it be cold like the lake looked? He remembered when the old lady down the street died and Mom and Dad took them all to viewing, Nicky wearing Josh's old suit and having to keep the pants rolled up. The old lady looked like she was sleeping, though she didn't wake up when Brenda poked her in the arm. Was dying like falling asleep? No, it had to be something pretty awful for Mom to have cried like she did at that viewing, or for the nurse to scream at Kyle like that.

"Nicky!" Joey yelled again, and Nicky looked down at him. "It's fun! C'mon! You can't be a man ‘till you jump!"

Nicky wasn't sure he wanted to be a man if it meant jumping into cold lakes wearing only your swim trunks, but he swallowed the pukey lump in his throat and stepped out a little further. The branch above him was getting all skinny and wobbly, and when the breeze blew, he wiggled a little. He knew if he let go of the top branch, he'd lose his balance fast and fall. And if he fell, he'd end up in the infirmary like Kyle, and Joey'd never let him live it down.

"Hey, Joey!"

"What?"

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "If I die, tell Brenda I'm sorry about her Barbies!"

And then he jumped.

[ Between un-being and being ]