Title: The Heart Whispers
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Warning: WIP
Summary: Nick arrives in Las Vegas determined to make a new start. Unfortunately, his careful script starts to fall apart less than two hours into his first shift.
A/N: Once again, I turned to the classics to find a title. This is from The Land Before Time. Littlefoot’s mother advises him to let his heart guide him, but to listen carefully, because the heart whispers.

It took Nick exactly one hour and 42 minutes into his first shift in Las Vegas to screw up. Which had to be some sort of record, considering the first hour and twenty minutes had been spent in briefings and in driving to the scene.

“You want to try that again?”

Not particularly, Nick thought, but he gamely peered into the abandoned silver Lexus again. The coroner had already removed the body, which had been found lying supine between the front and back seats, legs folded up. Most probably the killer, or an accomplice, had backed into the car through the driver’s side, dragging the victim’s body along with him, exited on the passenger side, then gone back to the driver’s side to push the legs in, so that he could close the door. Or possibly a she, because the victim was 5’10” and medium build; it would have been a manageable weight for a woman.

Nick pressed a gloved hand into the floor mat, and again reached the same conclusion.

“The victim clearly didn’t bleed out in the car. He was murdered somewhere else and dumped here. We’re still looking for the primary scene.”

He checked his note pad to make sure of his next facts.

“His wife reported him missing this evening, when she returned from a short business trip and realized that he hadn’t returned home since yesterday, which is when she last saw him. The car was found half an hour later. Wallet still on the body, laptop and briefcase also in the car. Well over one hundred stab wounds, with a thin sharp object, perhaps an ice pick. This kind of overkill points to rage, so it’s more likely this was somebody who knew him, rather than a robbery or carjacking gone bad.”

Nick looked up at Grissom to gauge his reaction. Grissom looked bored, as if he’d heard it all before. Which he had, because Nick had repeated himself almost word for word. For about the hundredth time in less than half an hour, Nick wished he’d been assigned to work with Catherine Willows. He didn’t know if she’d have cut him any more slack than Grissom, but based on first impressions he was willing to bet that she would have just told him where he was going wrong, rather than waiting for him to figure it out by himself.

“Does the wife’s alibi check out?” he asked Grissom.

Grissom made a dismissive gesture.

“Forget the wife or her alibi. We’re still looking at the evidence. Try again. There’s more here.”

Well, hell. Nick considered asking outright what he was missing, but it was a matter of pride now. He was going to figure this out if it took him all night.

“Location? I don’t know Vegas yet. I can tell this isn’t a neighborhood you’d generally find a Lexus in, but is it anywhere near his home or office?” The killer would have probably been looking to dump the body, and the car, as soon as possible, especially if this wasn’t premeditated, so proximity to one of the victim’s usual haunts might help in finding the primary site. Unless it was premeditated and simply staged to look like something different? But then the more obvious solution would have been to lift all the valuables, including the car.

“You don’t need to know Vegas,” Grissom said. “There’s more here. Are you done with the car?”

“Well, no. We still need to dust the interior for prints, see if we get any matches to anybody.”

Grissom’s lips thinned, displaying impatience for the first time.

“What about the exterior?”

“Fingerprints on the outside of the doors,” Nick said, trying to sound like he’d been thinking of that all along, rather than relieved that he’d finally figured out what he’d missed. If it wasn’t premeditated, it’s possible the killer wouldn’t have been wearing gloves, and he would have been in a rush. He’d opened both back doors to get the body in, and the outside of the vehicle clearly hadn’t been wiped down in days, possibly weeks, so they had a good chance of lifting several usable prints. Anyway, he’d have thought of it once he had the car in the lab. Probably.

Grissom exhaled loudly through his nose and if Nick was any judge, it was not a finally! sort of sound.

“Walk around the car, Nick. What else is there?”

Nick obediently walked around the car, but he was starting to feel a bit frazzled. He waved his hand in front of his face, trying to dissipate the cloud of insects that had gathered in the strong lights set up by the uniforms, then took a deep breath in an effort to calm down and concentrate. He walked around the car a second time, more slowly this time, trying to simultaneously see the whole picture and focus on the detail. After a third, even slower, round, he came to a stop next to Grissom.

“I don’t see anything else,” he admitted, frustrated by his failure.

Grissom pointed to the back door on the driver’s side. All Nick could see was mud, which wasn’t particularly surprising on an SUV, even if it was a Lexus.

“Mud?”

“Blood spatter,” Grissom corrected.

Nick stooped closer and examined the side of the Lexus, sweeping the beam of his maglite along the surface. Some of the drops were a slightly darker shade of brown than the rest. Still, in this light how had Grissom even seen the difference in color, let alone deduced it was blood? He reached for a swab, carefully scraped one of the darker spots, then watched the swab turn blue-green after he doused it with TMB.

“Blood,” he confirmed and Grissom nodded. “How could you tell?”

“Drop directionality,” Grissom said. He pointed out three separate arcs. “Do you see it now?”

“Yeah,” Nick said, the spatter perfectly obvious now that he knew what he was looking for. “And there,” he pointed to a couple of more trails on the front hub cap, and on the front door. He walked around to the passenger side and found more spatter there. Had the victim's efforts to escape enraged the killer even more?

“Which means?”

“Victim had to have been right outside his car when he was attacked. We need to check further, but it looks like he either had just gotten out of the car and had closed the door, or he was just getting to his car. That many stab wounds, it had to have taken some time, so they were either in a deserted spot or in an enclosed space. From the lack of voids, it looks like he was down, crawling. Trying to hide maybe, or maybe he couldn’t get up.”

“And?”

Nick thought about it for a couple of seconds. “The vehicle was at the primary crime scene, so we need to check it out for more possible evidence that might lead us there.”

“Good. Let’s have them tow it into the lab, and we’ll see what else we find.”

Grissom turned on heel, leaving Nick off-balance and slightly breathless at the abruptness, and wondering if he’d only imagined the momentary warmth in Grissom’s eyes.



By the end of his shift, all Nick wanted to do was to go home. Back to Dallas. Not that things had been easy there either, especially not in the last year or so, which is why he’d left, but at least most people there seemed to think he was a pretty good CSI. As opposed to Grissom, who was probably wondering if he’d even taken an introductory course in forensics, let alone been certified as a Level Two Investigator. And Nick couldn’t really blame him, because he’d piled on mistake on mistake, oversight on oversight. If it hadn’t been for Grissom, he’d have missed the strands of hair on the back bumper of the Lexus, and the victim’s fingerprints on the front door step on the passenger side, pointed in such a way as if the victim was on his back and trying to pull himself out from under the car. The poor guy must have even tried crawling under the car to somehow save himself, but the SUV stood too high off the ground to offer any real protection.

The more determined Nick grew to somehow impress Grissom, the more idiotic his screw ups. What the hell was the matter with him? Even in an unfamiliar place, working with people he didn’t know, he wasn’t that incompetent. Hell, things had been tougher for him on a personal level in Dallas, and he’d still been capable of stringing two intelligent thoughts together.

He sat on a bench in the locker room, brooding and trying to put together the necessary energy to go house hunting. Although maybe he should wait before signing a lease, because at this rate, he was going to get booted out before the week was over. And he wasn’t sure he’d mind, because at this moment he hated Las Vegas and everything associated with it, including the lab and his new colleagues.

He looked up at the sound of the door opening.

“Nick,” Grissom greeted him quietly, then stepped around him to open his locker.

“Griss,” Nick muttered. He especially hated Grissom.

Grissom momentarily froze in the action of reaching for his jacket and threw Nick a sharp glance, and Nick realized that, even though they were technically colleagues, shortening Grissom’s name without Grissom’s permission was probably yet another blunder. He wondered whether he should apologize, but he already had ample proof that his particular brand of charm didn’t work on Grissom, so he concentrated on tying his shoelaces instead. That, at least, he could do.

Grissom shrugged on his jacket, closed his locker and put his hands in his pockets, but made no move to leave. Nick could feel him staring down at him, and he stalled, jerking the laces tighter and tying double knots.

“After shift, we all generally meet up at Frank’s Diner for breakfast. Why don’t you join us? It’s three blocks south of here; just turn left out of the parking lot, you can’t miss it.”

Nick straightened slowly and looked up at Grissom. His amazement at the invitation must have been evident, because Grissom’s mouth quirked.

“Don’t worry, Nick. Things will improve.”

“Yeah? How?” Nick asked dubiously, then cursed himself for sounding so insecure.

“You’re just suffering from performance anxiety. You’ll figure out pretty soon that we’re not worth your trying so hard to impress us.”

Nick gaped at the door as it swung shut behind Grissom. This time he definitely hadn’t only imagined the warmth in Grissom’s eyes. His heart suddenly lighter, he stood up and shut his locker. Maybe the team could give him a couple of ideas on where to house hunt.

***

“Approximately 158 stab wounds,” the coroner intoned.

“Approximately?” Grissom asked dryly, and Dr. Klausbach smirked.

“Hard to tell. Could be double that. Judging by the wounds, he must have been dead or deeply unconscious by around the hundredth blow or so. See this pattern here?”

Dr. Klausbach indicated the chest area, which bore a closer resemblance to raw hamburger meat than anything human. Nick wasn’t normally squeamish, but he had to swallow hard against the bile rising in his throat.

“Not as bloody as you’d expect, and despite the sternum and ribs, straight in and out wounds, no tears. As opposed to these wounds,” Dr. Klausbach indicated the legs and rolling the body over slightly, the back, “where the victim was definitely moving.”

“What about the fatal blow?” Nick asked. Both Dr. Klausbach and Grissom turned to look at him in a condescending manner. He took comfort in the fact that the effort to control his blush made him forget the nausea.

“Take your pick, sonny. One lung collapsed, pericardium punctured, perforated large and small intestine, perforated kidney, sliced femoral artery.”

“Time of death?” Grissom asked brusquely.

“The organs suffered heavy damage due to exsanguination, and being left in a hot car didn’t help matters, so it’s hard to be precise. I would say no earlier than noon Thursday – and by the way, stomach contents show that he had lunch, a BLT and coffee to be precise – and no later than six, maybe seven the same evening.”

Grissom nodded, then looked at Nick. “Anything you want to ask?”

“Can you tell which one was the first blow?” Nick asked, steeling himself not to punch Dr. Klausbach in the face if he patronized him again. His momma raised him better than to deck octogenarians.

Grissom’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline, then his lips tilted in a smile and he turned to stare questioningly at the coroner. Nick would have felt a bit better if Grissom hadn’t been so obviously surprised by Nick's ability to ask an intelligent question.

Dr. Klausbach rubbed his chin. “Hard to tell. If I had to guess, I’d say this one, right below the left clavicle. Or at least, among the first. Then there are a number of defense wounds on his arms.”

“So not the back?”

“Definitely not the back. He was already down by that point, either crawling or completely prone. Judging from the wounds, he was standing up for these first blows around the shoulders.”


Nick hadn’t expected the Las Vegas crime lab to be so informal and noisy. It was supposed to be one of the best in the country, and Nick found it hard to reconcile that reputation with the lack of order and discipline so evident in every department. In Dallas the investigators were all former police officers; in Las Vegas he was working with an entomologist, which he supposed wasn’t such a stretch if only Grissom hadn’t turned out to have some mighty weird habits, like hitting him up for a pint of blood, a former exotic dancer and, judging from the number of surreptitious calls Warrick both received and made, a bookie. And to top it all off, the team was run by a cop, who had no forensic training whatsoever, and which left Grissom as the de facto leader. Maybe it was just graveyard that was out of control, Nick thought, wondering just how soon he could ask for a transfer.

Sighing, he walked down the hallway, looking for the DNA lab. Just follow the shitty music, Warrick had instructed him.

The lab technician was bending over a centrifuge, his back to the door, and he didn’t react to Nick’s attempts to draw his attention. Finally Nick reached over and turned off the CD player. “Hey!”

The technician swung around, his eyebrows drawing together in a frown. Great. A coroner who was about a hundred, and a now teen-aged DNA technician.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah. My name’s Nick Stokes and I’m—”

“Not allowed to mess with Greg’s music,” the tech interrupted him, starting the CD player again.

Shaking his head in exasperation, Nick reached over to turn it off again, only to have Greg swat his hand away and then raise a warning finger. Maintaining eye contact, Greg reached behind him for a piece of paper just coming out of the printer, and handed it over to Nick.

“Here you go.”

Nick glanced down at it, and then handed it back to Greg with a scowl. “Can you maybe walk me through this?”

Greg huffed a breath and turned the sound volume down to where it only hurt Nick’s eardrums rather than made them bleed. He rapidly scanned the report. “ DNA results on the hair found on the bumper of the SUV. Your victim’s.”

“Thank you,” Nick said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and Greg suddenly grinned, his brown eyes dancing.

“Anytime.”

Nick found himself smiling back. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Greg said. “That’s what I’m here for, to share my vast wealth of scientific knowledge with you.”

“Just how much hair product do you go through in a week?”

Greg laughed and slid Nick a knowing look, which Nick almost responded to, before remembering that this was exactly the kind of situation he had resolved never to be in again.

“Anyway, thanks for this,” he said abruptly, snatching the printout from Greg’s hand and beating a hasty retreat.


“What the fuck, Nick? Are you crazy? What the fuck?” Ryan was almost screaming at Nick, his normally handsome face twisted and ugly with rage.

“I’m sorry, Ry. It just slipped out.”

“It just slipped out? You stupid fucking asshole. You outing us just slipped out?”

Nick took a deep breath and tried to hold onto his temper.

“I didn’t out us. I outed me.”

He didn’t see the punch coming, didn’t even realize that Ryan had hit him until he found himself lying on the floor.

“Jesus, Ryan,” he said after he sat up, more in surprise than anything, and Ryan took a step back, shoving his hands in his pockets and panting for breath, as if he’d just finished wind sprints.

“Everybody knows we’re best friends and roommates. We’re already the butt of every fag joke. You didn’t think your admission would affect me? Damn it, Nick, you knew I didn’t want this. You knew it. Those were the terms.”

“Yeah, but… Look, ideally this wouldn’t have happened.” Nick paused. “No, ideally we wouldn’t have to hide in the first place. But it’s out there now, so we can live our lives. It’ll be okay.”

Ryan shook his head. “We’re policemen and nobody will have our back any more. We’ll be lucky if we live until next month, let alone long enough to fulfill whatever girly fantasies you have about us.”

“It’ll be tough for a while, sure, but—”

“Tough for a while?” Ryan interrupted him, his voice rising again. “Just how fucking naïve are you, Nick? For you, maybe. After all you’re the son of a Supreme Court Judge and daddy will protect you. Not for me. You’ve ruined everything.” Ryan paused, then rubbed his forehead. “Well, you’re not taking me down with you,” he said rather cryptically, then turned on his heel and left, leaving Nick still sitting on their kitchen floor.


The next day Nick had found out what Ryan had meant about not being taken down with him. When Miller had asked Nick in a loud obnoxious voice if the bruise on his cheekbone was a hickey, Ryan had responded for him, explaining that the bruise was the result of his outrage at finding out that he’d been sharing digs with a fag and ogled at by that fag all this time. It was such a transparent lie, Nick didn’t see how the others believed Ryan, but they did, closing ranks around him and turning Nick into the sole target of their taunts and harassment.

Still, in a way Nick had been relieved that his sexual orientation was finally out in the open. All through the Police Academy and afterwards, he’d followed a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy, but he’d never denied what he was if asked, and he’d never allowed behavior he found offensive to go unchecked. Until Ryan. He’d compromised his principles and his identity for a relationship with Ryan, but no more. He’d been prepared for some flack, some insults, but he’d felt sure that they’d soon lose interest in him, if he avoided conflict.

It had taken them eight months to break him. Eight months of wondering if they’d cover him in a dangerous situation, if one day he’d find himself accidentally in the way of ‘friendly’ fire. It was never overt and it wasn’t everybody, so to stand up to them was like boxing at shadows, both exhausting and ineffective. There was no visible enemy to vanquish or win over, only a constant sniping that ground him down. The final blow had come when his partner had practically begged him to apply for a transfer, because she was being targeted along with him, and she had enough of a hard time being accepted as it was.

He’d always been good at science and he’d already considered applying to become a CSI, and Carol’s pleas had finalized his decision. He’d found himself enjoying the work and had been promoted quicker than most, but despite his hopes that the situation would somehow improve, despite his digging into every last reserve of strength for an entire year after his transfer, the war against him had only seemed to grow worse. Nick had never experienced such hatred in his life, couldn’t begin to fathom it, but he could no longer fight it.

And so, Las Vegas, and a new start. If he’d once been stupid enough or idealistic enough to believe that he could overcome prejudice, well, now he knew better, and he wasn’t taking any further chances. Lots of people did perfectly all right on their own, and his family was already almost too large. So he wasn’t about to confirm to Greg or anybody what they might or might not suspect. He was going to get his Level Three certification, he was going to move to Days or Swing as soon as he could, he was going to concentrate on his career, and he was going to keep his private life way the hell private. Let others raise the gay rights banner, if they wanted to. He was done. If being straight was what it took to be allowed to simply lead one's life, as far as everybody was concerned he was going to be the straightest boy to ever come out of Texas. 

***