Title: Puzzle Pieces
By: Caster
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG
A/T: Eep! I haven't written much Nick/Greg lately, although I watch the reruns religiously and constantly lurk on the appropriate sites. My life is getting a bit more hectic, but I'll always live by this one philosophy: You can have my CSI boys when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers. So Real Life, back off! -strikes ninja pose- It's all about the CSI love.
Before you dive in, be warned: the format of this piece is in wandering poetry at the beginning and changes at the end. The coding of this piece is intentional, so read on and enjoy!
Disclaimer: Not yours, not mine. (Unless Mr. Bruckheimer's reading this. Then yes, it's yours.)
Summary: The wandering thoughts of a fragmented love story.

***

Puzzle

I.

This is our agreed-upon lie.

For six years, we've been dancing around the issue, as if maybe ignoring it would make is disappear.

I think our plan might be flawed. Expecting our feelings to vanish is like waiting for the stars to fall; are we expecting the impossible?

Maybe that's our problem; maybe we've been waiting for the wrong thing. We've somehow silently decided to let this affection die without ever considering that it might not.

II.

My very first night at the lab, I never saw the ghosts.

My very first night at the lab and twenty minutes later, I met you for the first time.

It was then and only then that I saw them dazedly walking the hallways, because all the ghosts seem to follow you.

You don't want me to have to deal with them because
everyone you've ever met hated their presence and
you can only assume that I'll feel the same way.

But I won't mind having lunch with the man who died on the Strip or the girl who was found in the desert if that means I can be with you.

III.

What ate these walls? A fire, my body.

Your voice that told me to hang on because I had too much to live for.

IV.

A huge ache has swallowed up the world and we're in the middle of it. The wars, the bombs, the guns, the rape, the kidnapped innocents who will never see the sun again. What bothers you the most (although you try to hide it) is the complete disregard for life that humans have developed.

You always ask What if human beings were incapable of deception and violence?

And I always say Then we would no longer be human beings.

If you can bear the anguish of seeing people on the worst day of their life then you should come here, to this lab.

Make sure to stay alive.

Just because our existence is based on
the crime of the evening
doesn't mean we're dead.

This is our continual lesson that we so often forget.

V.

You have never been scared to know the truth. On the contrary, you thirst for it.

The only truth you can't seem to acknowledge is the one where I love you.

Our agreed-upon lie is no longer agreed upon.

Our silent understanding is broken by myself.

Would you be ashamed if we changed the rules? Would you be ashamed if our lips were to meet? Would you be ashamed if our existence were to shatter to create something that's always been there?

I wouldn't.

Because
I was meant to love you
since the day I was born.

VI.

The ghosts asked where you were the night you were buried.

In a coffin, that's where, with unknown variables choking you.

And at the hospital afterwards, I finally began to breathe because I had been holding my breath from the moment you had vanished.

Three days later, Grissom told me to go home, to rest, that you would wake up soon.

But I refused.

He said I needed to go back to the lab because everyone was working again and I said just fire me already. I wouldn't leave until I saw your eyes. Even lying there, battered and scarred, you were so beautiful.

He looked at your sleeping form and asked Do you think it's possible to live for someone else?

And I said If you knew me, then you would have your answer.

So he gave me a leave of absence and said You're wasting you lives by waiting for each other.

VII.

After the hospital, it was as if you were expecting me to abandon you.

But I don't think you understand that it's never too late and I'll always be here.

All you have to do is let me in.

All you have to do is open the door.

…

My clothes are wrinkled and my hair's flat. With the dark smudges under my eyes and pale complexion, I'm sure I look like I've just rolled off the autopsy table and onto the street, searching for the human life I lost. What turned me into this? I can't remember and don't have the energy to try; the only hope I have anymore is you.

I lean against your truck and wait for you to emerge from the building, the birth of morning beginning to form in the horizon. Time doesn't wait, does it? Time's always ticking away and maybe, a long time ago, I was someone who you could have found attractive or fun. But I'm tired now, and I feel broken, like I've been caught in another explosion and was actually torn into a million pieces this time.

I don't want someone to have to put me together. All I want is a life –the life- I know I was meant to lead with you.

I finally see the glass doors open. Your clothes aren't much either; your jeans are stained with motor oil and you tore your shirt while investigating in an alley somewhere, a place where some poor girl was stabbed last night. I know all about it -the intricate details, the circumstances- because she told me this morning.

"Hey Nick," I greet as you approach. You look up and smile at me, the first genuine one I've seen on you all day. You've been reading case files too long; your glasses sit crooked on your nose.

I wonder how many chances I probably missed. Chances I should have taken; would take, now that I know better. So scared that I'd ruin everything that I didn't realize I'd still end up with nothing. Would you have found me worthy when I was still normal?

"Hi," you echo. "What's up?"

I'm a million fragments of what I should be. They're yours, the fragments, if you want them. You can have them. I belong to you, but you don't know that.

"Tough case," I mutter and you nod in agreement. Tough. Tough enough to tip the scale, make me want to stop this job altogether. "You going to be okay?"

I can already see the lie forming on your lips, words rehashed a million times over. You're so used to those stale consonants and vowels, letters that create dishonest words, dishonest words carried by a fixed voice. I want to tell you that your voice is music; every time you speak, I dance and float. Let it fly. Let it wail. Let it sing. Let it amplify. Your words are the only things that keep me grounded.

Instead, you nod, and it's almost a relief. Your voice is too precious to be wasted with untruth.

Why do you lie to me? We both know we can see through each other.

Your face holds an expression of concern. Dark eyebrows furrow and you ask, "G, are you spacing out? What happened tonight?"

I look at you and, in the middle of the parking lot, I put my arms around your waist. You drop your bag, not even asking what I'm doing. You already know. Maybe the expression on my face gives me away or perhaps it's the way I'm clutching your body to mine, refusing to let go. Either way, the silent agreement that we've shared for so long is forgotten in favor of the new one, the one where we surrender to the years we've been battling.

"I love you," I whisper, because I can't pretend the feelings between us don't exist. I'm not sure where this came from, this desire for you to know how I feel, but I can't hide it.

And maybe, in the beginning, we would have gone about it differently. Maybe we would have had dinner or coffee. Perhaps, like other people, we would have dated. I press my forehead against your chest and I feel like maybe I could die.

"I love you," I repeat. "And I don't want to waste our lives anymore."

Other people would have probably gone about it another way.

But we aren't other people.

I feel your warm arms encircle my neck and my heart flutters. You rest against me, as if I'm the only thing that keeps you standing; it's no big finale, no proclamation written in the sky, no audience to cheer us on. Our love story is no big production and that's exactly how I want it.

I'm yours. I've always been yours. Surely you know this.

Do you think it's possible to live for someone else?

If you knew me, then you'd have your answer.

I see the ghosts standing at the doorway of the lab, watching us, looking pleased.

Their lives are over, but mine is slowly recreating itself. The energy I've lost, the spirit I thought had vanished returns to me; you're who I was meant for, the reason I was born, the excuse I gave when someone demanded an explanation of my life.

The sun breaks over the city and I hear the ghosts say

Go into your sanctified existence.

***

Pieces

I.

I don't remember agreeing to this understanding that we've made.

For six years, we've been dancing around the issue, as if maybe ignoring it would make it disappear.

Sometimes you look at me and I wonder what we're doing. Why are we waiting? What's stopping us?

Is it me? It must be me. And I think to myself It's always me.

II.

I saw you before you saw me.

The first day you came here, to this lab, I saw you and I felt like all the nights before that moment had been swept away from my life, as if this is where my existence really began.

You looked up and smiled at me through the glass walls; the woman that was found shot in her home two hours ago whispered He's the one. That's him. That's who you've been looking for all your life.

She was standing next to me. She spoke as if she knew for a fact that her words were true.

But I told her that she wasn't allowed to be there; I didn't want you to see her, to see the dead, to become like the rest of us.

I wanted to give you the chance to be as normal as you could for as long as time allowed.

III.

Your body. That fire. It ate those walls; shattered them and created smoke and a glittering floor.

And I saw you lying, lying where you were supposed to be standing. And I wanted to tell you to hold on because you had too much to live for.

Here. I've found your sickness, your stigma. Some call it trauma or the violent insistence of memory, but I call it never being able to return to who you were.

IV.

A huge ache has swallowed up the world and we're in the middle of it. The wars, the bombs, the guns, the rape, the kidnapped innocents who will never see the sun again. What bothers me the most (although I try to hide it) is the complete disregard for life that humans have developed.

I always ask What if human beings were incapable of deception and violence?

And you always say Then we would no longer be human beings.

I resist the urge to fade away. When I do begin to weaken, you wear a bright color to wake me back up again. You shake me. You walk down the haunted lab corridors, singing a song so I can hear your voice and you can lead me back home.

V.

Our narrative is one that wasn't. Our love story was meant to be told, but we've been interrupted by the world.

So we continue to try and correct the things that disrupt our train of thoughts, our string of words, our dwindling confidence for the future.

You look me in the eye and I see
the world and
your vigilance and
myself at war with myself.

But this isn't a love story told in the stars.

VI.

In the coffin, I was haunted by unknowns. Would I see you again or would I see the sun or is this how it'll end?

Not even the ghosts could help me down there.

I felt the heat of Hell against my back.

At the hospital afterwards, your presence was my oxygen and health. I heard bits and pieces of conversations. The flitting of my consciousness.

You were there. Constantly. You wouldn't move, even when Grissom told you to return to your job. I had seen you. Dirty, tired, beautiful, saying being here is my job.

I saw your colors; through the haunted corridors of my mind, you were singing a song and leading me back home.

VII.

After the hospital, I kept waiting for you to grow tired of our affections that, according to our past, don't exist.

But there you stand, patient. You ignore the ticking of clocks, the passing of seasons, the changing of years.

All you're doing is waiting for me to let you in, whispering

All you have to do is open the door.

…

You're wearing a baby blue button up and the sleeves are rolled up to your elbows. It's untucked, your jeans are worn, and your hair is flat. You're tired and pained but you look at me and smile while the sky's glow makes you appear like a man not meant for this world, but the next. I want to ask what you're doing at my truck, what you're waiting for. Time doesn't wait, time's always ticking away and maybe, a long time ago, I was someone you could have found attractive or fun. But I'm tired now, and I feel broken, like someone's taken another gun and actually pulled the trigger this time.

I don't want someone to have to put me together. I'm not worth that much anymore.

"Hey Nick," you say, smiling for the first time since the beginning of shift. Your smile is infectious and I feel the corners of my lips lift.

I wonder how many chances I probably missed. Chances I should have taken; would take, now that I know better. So scared that I'd ruin everything that I didn't realize I'd still end up with nothing in the end.

"Hi," I echo. This case has killed me. All I want is a plane ticket out of here. With you, preferably, but I'm a dreamer.

"Tough case," you mutter and I nod in agreement. Tough. Tough enough to tip the scale, make me want to stop this job altogether. "You going to be okay?"

No. No, I won't be okay, but too many people have asked me this question. My intended answer –my lie- is stale.

You quietly look at me and I know what you're thinking. Our ability to understand each other's thoughts is frightening sometimes, uncanny and strange in a way that has me running scared. Not from you, but from myself. I hate not understanding things, and you're still such a beautiful mystery to me. You make me wonder why I bother lying to you. You'll always know the truth.

I just nod instead.

I feel nervous pinned beneath your muddy eyes. It's as though you recognize that I'm a million fragments of what I should be. They're yours, the fragments, if you want them. You can have them. I belong to you, but you don't know that.

And in the middle of the parking lot, you place your arms around my waist. I drop my bag, too tired fight you anymore; ever since I saw you, I've been walking uphill against the wind. You offered so much while I kept denying anything existed between us. You always surprise me, always keep me going, and even though you say we're fated, I know we can't keep disregarding what connects you and me. My natural tendency to shy away from your touch seems silly now, although there are probably uniforms watching or a lawyer gawking, I don't care, and neither do you. People search for what we have all their lives, and we're actually trying to overlook it.

"I love you," you whisper.

And maybe, in the beginning, we would have gone about it differently. Maybe we would have had dinner or coffee. Perhaps, like other people, we would have dated. Your forehead is pressed against my chest and I feel like maybe I could die.

"I love you," you repeat, "And I don't want to waste our lives anymore."

Other people would have probably gone about it another way, but they aren't us and the world we try to solve doesn't understand anyway.

My arms find their way around your neck and I settle against you; you, the only one who can save me now.

No big finale. No proclamations of love. No audience to cheer us on. Our love story is no big production and that's exactly how I want it.

I'm yours. I've always been yours. Surely you know this.

The wind carries the voices of the ghosts and they say

We're glad you've finally found your truth.

***

Fit

I.

We know you.

In our circle, we speak your names with a reverent tongue. We who haunt this city know all of those who work in your lab, but it's you two whom we honor the most. It's you who saved us, you who found our wandering souls and solved the puzzling instance of our death.

Your name is Nick, and the other is Greg, and we know only to follow you.

II.

We hear you when you ask yourselves whether or not this life was the one you were meant to live. It's so bleak and raw that you sometimes feel that you've made a wrong choice, a wrong turn and that you should circle around and follow the bread crumbs back to where you lost your intended lives.

But when you question whether you would have changed anything, one single moment in all the years you've existed, you decide…

No.

No. This is the life that you were both meant to lead and you recognize this fact with a startling clarity. You are aware that if anything had been different, one moment or one choice, then you wouldn't be here with each other.

You could never sacrifice that, no matter how perfect your life might have been.

III.

We follow you. We have always followed you.

Many of your friends don't see us and we are ignored. They're blind to our presence as we silently walk through the glass walls of your lab, through the crime scenes that we cannot touch, through the closed morgue doors where our soulless bodies are cut up.

There are those who see us but don't care for us, for our need to be avenged, for the pain we suffered before our death. But the both of you have a heart larger than even this gaudy city that we haunt and for that, you have our eternal gratitude.

You understand that we only want to be at peace.

IV.

At first, we couldn't comprehend the situation.

How could you see us when no one else could? Feel us? Decipher our wandering thoughts?

You both have been through so much. Greg felt fire and you have known so many possible deaths. You have seen the world of both the living and the dead, have walked the edge only to return to the Earth still breathing.

And although we have always protected you, it is because of these experiences that you can see us.

Despite the attempts of many mortals throughout the past, we are the reason you have never died.

V.

We can only watch as you step onto a murder scene, when you must collect evidence to solve the mystery. Our relationship with you is understood and it is comforting to know that you aren't afraid of us, aren't wary or disconcerted.

We never speak to you, only observe. You two always look up from your dusting, from your flashlights, and see us gazing from the corner of the scene, waiting for you to uncover the dark truth.

You never mind us. We don't bother you. You accept us, because you know we cannot rest until we are finished living our life, despite the fact that our lives are gone.

We never follow you into your home. Your privacy is deserved. That is our code.

We sleep at your doorstep until sunset.

VI.

What you have done for us isn't easily expressed, so let us put it this way:

Once upon a time, on the worst day of our life, we met our violent end. Even after we died, we still rose from our bodies but there was no one to lead us onward. We are every man's case that you have ever solved. We are every woman's soul with whom you've given peace. We are every child you have shed tears for and although we are no longer truly alive, we remember how to make a promise, a vow, and we remember how not to break it.

There will be a day –perhaps faraway, but it will still come- that you and he will look out into Las Vegas see a war approaching, a battle you cannot fight on your own.

We will be here.

Waiting.

When the war comes, you will only need to utter one word and we will hear you.

Charge.

And charge we will into the night. We are your army, your protection, and those who think they can win against us are simply fools.

God help anyone who gets in your way.

***

Together

I.

Gil Grissom thinks that maybe –maybe- not everything is science.

He comes to this realization when he sees Nick and Greg together, especially at a scene.

Those two are the most non-conforming scientists he's ever met; they don't mean to be, don't mean to attract a parade of ghosts, don't mean to live an existence that crosses lines from the living to the dead and back again. They just do. Not only that, but it doesn't bother them in the least. They understand the secret of life, and if the whole of civilization knew what they knew, then it would be far more peaceful.

It's the secret Gil never realized until he met them.

The secret the ghosts undoubtedly shared.

What befalls one will befall his brothers.

If only the world understood this.

II.

There are times where he believes he caught a glimpse of the ghosts. He thinks he saw a woman standing next to Nick two nights ago, and when he blinked again she was gone. In the eyes of his two investigators, he can sometimes see the reflections of those who've died, a hint of what Nick and Greg witness every single moment, what they'll always see until they themselves leave this world and enter the next.

Sometimes he's jealous.

Jealous that they know the truth.

But this feeling never lasts long, because he knows that along with the discovery comes the weight of carrying it. He and his team can leave the lab when morning comes, can go home and try to forget their cases. Nick and Greg, on the other hand, aren't so lucky. The ghosts follow them, a constant reminder that their jobs aren't finished.

You will never be finished.

Not until-

III.

Sometimes when they're in the desert, the ghosts shimmer beneath an unforgiving sun, a glimmer that Gil can only see from the corner of his eye.

Sometimes at night, in a lost alleyway, they can be seen in reflections of broken windows and glass shards. But Gil knows they will only be there if Nick and Greg are there, too. He's adjusted to this unspoken agreement.

And his scientific curiosity eats at him, makes him want to know, but the look in Nick and Greg's eyes forbid him from asking. So he keeps his queries to himself and ruminates over it instead.

He asks his questions in solitude with hopes they might reply.

Do you really exist? Are you figments of imaginations? Walking in dimensions unseen? Acts of God?

And the ghosts answer with

We are-

IV.

Religion has always struck a bad chord in Gil. He views it as a cult –a nationally recognized, state funded, business marketed cult- led by bigots and millionaires with nice suits and big, white smiles. They know the Bible by heart and, after telling you so, will offer to give you one for free if only you join their church. Likewise, joining a church feels like buying something: there's advertising and payment and sometimes even a contract to sign. Greg once divulged that he could never shake the feeling that joining a church felt an awful lot like signing your soul to the devil. I will give you this if you will give me that. God's forgiveness comes with a price tag, often in the form of a gold offering plate. Similarly, God's love is only available through your local pastor and if you don't get it there, you won't get it anywhere.

Faith, on the other hand, is a different story.

Believe in yourself.

Those are the words that float through the lab, unwhispered by the living and uttered by the dead.

Believe in yourself. We know you'll save us.

So that's exactly what Nick and Greg set out to do.

V.

He's going deaf.

But sometimes he hears them.

Hears the ghosts.

Only when he's with Nick or Greg, of course, but it's enough for him to become chilled. Their voices are just echoes of a whisper and he always turns around to see who's speaking to him, hoping that he might catch a peek of a face.

The empty hallway greets him instead.

The voices ask

Are you ready for what's coming?

VI.

Sometimes Gil must tell himself to keep his mouth shut, especially around people who question Nick and Greg's relationship.

People ask Are you really sure? Some even have the nerve to say You only think it's love, implying that their emotions and feelings are merely the result of delusion. They say that they're just confused, that there must be some traumatic experience from their past that makes them want men.

But it isn't men that either CSI wants.

It's each other.

And it becomes obvious to Gil that humanity's biggest enemy is humanity itself. No one is willing to compromise. No one is prepared to agree. One must always be completely right while everyone else is wrong; the world wants to be black and white when it actually moves in shades of gray. So when they question his two CSIs, Gil must force himself not to grow angry. How can another person belittle a bond like that? How can they sum it up to confusion? How can they claim it's viewed with disgust by a god that's yet to be proven?

Some say It's not really love.

But they don't know his two investigators and they haven't seen the sacrifices they make. What they especially don't understand is that Nick and Greg have the winning hand in the game. The two men smile and let people whisper whatever ugly rumor they want, but in the end, they'll come out on top. Outsiders don't realize that every decision Nick has made and every option Greg has chosen throughout their lives led them past Texas, past California, and to Las Vegas; they made their way through a winding world and found each other anyway.

You can't say that doesn't mean anything. You can't say it's only coincidence.

There's no such thing.

VII.

There's this one moment branded into Gil's memory, a mental photograph of some sort. He's not sure when he picked it up –during a normal shift, probably- but it still plays through his mind from time to time, springing up unbidden. It's during the night, and he remembers seeing those two taking a break on the second story of the lab. It's less busy up there and offers opportunities for a private conversation.

They had been occupying an empty room and the window was open while sounds of traffic and laughter floated up to meet them. It was bitterly cold and wind from the desert blew Greg's bangs around as they gazed at their bright and flashy city, filled with all the people who doubted them. Gil had watched for a moment –they were so quiet but still so together- and then opened his mouth to get their attention. But before he could make a sound or form a single syllable, something else spoke for him.

The voices of the ghosts –all those voices- echoed and stirred throughout the city; they floated through glass walls and bounced off the sky like a wind.

The voices asked

Are you ready?

while the Devil promised everything for the small price of their souls.

Considering their souls are shared with each other (Nick has half of Greg's, and Greg has half of Nick's; it's been that way ever since they were born) the Devil cannot take them.

VIII.

It's put into perspective for Gil when he sees a suspect being led through to an interrogation room, and maybe it's because Nick and Greg are standing so close together that he hassles them. Nick barely gets defensive in return, and Greg doesn't respond at all; they simply continue with their jobs, uncaring of how the small-minded view them.

Because the small-minded don't understand that what they have is rare.

Their relationship takes courage

and devotion

and liberty

and resolve

and no, we aren't confused.

IX.

The question still shakes him.

Are you ready for what's coming?

FIN.

We are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying.

The Dry Salvages, T.S. Eliot