Title: Pulse
By: geekwriter
Summary: Greg's never actually attempted suicide.
A/N: a crappy little drabble-y fic because I'm in a bad mood.
Rating: R (for language and situation)
Category: angst, character study
Spoilers: none
Categories: CSI
Characters: Nick Stokes/Greg Sanders
Genres: Slash
Warnings: Angst, Dark Themes

He's never actually attempted suicide. He's thought about it, sure, sat with the razor against his wrist thinking, "Do it you fucking pussy, just do it!" but it's not like he ever actually broke the skin. He's catalogued everything in the lab in his own little personal mental file, knows that a single drop of liquid nicotine would stop his heart, knows that just a sip of pure ethyl alcohol would do it, knows he could easily coat a rag with ether and lie down for an eternal nap. He thinks he's lucky. Not everyone has access to the world's deadliest chemicals, things that could kill you under a minute with a minimum of pain.

But he worries that if he did it that way, it might be seen as an accident, and it doesn't want anyone to think it was an accident. It's not just that he's good in the lab and an accident of that magnitude would be an insult; he doesn't want to do it in a way that could be seen as an accident because he wants them to know that he meant it. He wants Nick to know that he meant it.

Jumping's popular in Vegas. It doesn't take any special tools, any of death's accessories, so anyone who's just been cleaned out at the casinos can do it. All you need is a roof or a window and the balls to jump.

Guns are quick and though he doesn't carry, he does own one. He'll have to pass weapons proficiency if he wants to become a CSI so he's been going to the shooting range for the past two years. He's good. He'd never even held a gun before he started practicing for weapons proficiency and now he can empty an entire clip into the heart area of a moving target. He wonders if it will surprise everyone at work to find out how good he is with a gun. He wonders if anyone cares. He wonders if he'll make it that long.

Then, of course, there are sleeping pills, but he'd rather take his chances with the stuff in the lab. And hanging is out. He's seen what that does to your face and while the idea of Nick's horror at finding him that way��”his tongue purple and extended, his eyes rolled back to an impossible degree, his face bloated with blood��”is nice, he's pretty sure he doesn't want to go out that way.

No, he knows if he does it, when he does it, he'll slit his wrists. He likes the thought of the blade slicing through skin, the thick red blood first pooling in the incision then spilling over. The human body holds a lot of blood and he likes the idea of it running out of his veins and taking his life with it.

On bad days he walks through the lab imagining his wrists are dripping thick black-red drops across the floor. He knows that a blood drop is spherical, not tear shaped. He knows that blood's terminal velocity is approximately 25 feet per second and that it takes a little over 20 feet to achieve. Not that his blood will fall from a height of 20 feet or more.

He imagines that his wrists are dripping and sometimes he wonders what it would be like to raise his arm and pull it quickly through the air, spraying blood out in an arc. He wonders if Catherine will analyze its directionality and points of convergence. He wonders what will happen if he slits both wrists, holds his arms out and spins like a little kid on the playground until he's too dizzy or too near death to spin anymore. He wonders if they'll be able to pinpoint the point of origin, then.

He thinks about splashing the blood in Nick's face. Thinks about his blood dripping down Nick's perfect, fucking, beautiful face. He won't smile then, will he? He won't look at Greg with those oh-so understanding eyes, won't whisper bullshit phrases like, "I'm so sorry, G, I never meant it to turn out this way," or, "At least we gave it our best try."

No, if Greg lets his blood spatter across Nick's perfect features then Nick won't be able to hide his disgust, and that's all Greg's ever asked for. He'll be disgusted and horrified and he'll recoil and that's the reaction Greg's been looking for all along, because he knows it's the reaction Nick's been hiding.

Because no matter how many times Nick denied it, Greg's disgusting. He knows it, knows it down to his core, knows it like he knows the mutation rate of a tetranucleotide. And Nick's seen it, seen it all, seen into his soul and the only possible response to the blackness inside him is disgust. Hell, Greg's disgusted and it's his own soul.

Grissom says that suicide is the ultimate act of cowardice, but Grissom doesn't know. Grissom's never sat on his bathroom floor, sobbing, willing himself to just do it, just do it, just fucking do it and get it over with. No, suicide takes courage, courage Greg hasn't got.

He won't do it. He knows he won't do it. He doesn't have the guts. He's as much a failure at death as he is at life. He won't ever do it, but that doesn't stop him from comforting himself with images of his blood staining the floors of the lab, dripping slow and steady across the floor. Sometimes he imagines it so fiercely that he starts to believe it, and he's surprised that no one else can see the trail of blood that marks his passage down the hall.


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