Out of Place Chapter 22

[galadriel1010]

Grissom met Catherine by the door and they walked out to his car in silence. Catherine was clearly waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t know how to broach the topic, so he didn’t. Jasmine was leaning on her car and staring up at the stars, sucking on a lollipop and twitching one foot in time with the music coming from the car’s sound system. He apologised to Catherine and made his way across to the young lady, “Jasmine?”

“Yuh-huh?” She smiled at him, “I’m waiting for Greg and Nick, Nicky’s scene is on the way to ours.”

“I know. Look, I want you to take the house invasion and Nick and Greg to take the homicide. They’ve found a second victim out there and I want two of my team on it.”

“Yes Sir.” She looked down at the floor, “It’s not good then.”

He looked at her closely, “What makes you say that?”

“You’re sending me to a scene on my own. If you wanted two of your team out there you’d have switched me and Catherine.”

“Ecklie asked me to choose which of them I wanted to keep, I told him I couldn’t make that decision at such short notice. I have them both until the end of the week, then I have to choose which I need most or I’ll lose them both.” He patted her shoulder uncomfortably, “They’ve been split up like this before, they’ll make it work.”

She sighed, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

“I know. By the way, notice accepted.” He nodded and turned back to Catherine, who was waiting with her door open.

“What was that about?” She asked as the slid into the car and he started it up

“Shifting people around.” He strapped himself in

“We’re losing one of them.” She stated sadly, “Which one?”

“I have to make that choice.”

She was horrified, “Ecklie can’t make you choose between them!”

He shrugged, “Apparently he can. One or both of them will be taken off the team. If I don’t state that I want to keep one of them, they’ll both go, one to swing and one to days.”

“So what’s the choice?”

“Days need a DNA tech, I don’t want to take the chance on pushing Greg back into the lab. But on the other hand, swing have an opening for a CSI at the moment as well. If I cooperate, I can probably get him on there rather than in the lab. But on the other hand, Nick could only go to swing, so maybe I should let him go instead. Whatever happens, I dare say we’ll lose them both in the end.”

“To where?”

“To a team that will allow them to be together, maybe even in the UK. Jasmine is leaving and returning there, maybe they’ll go with her.”

Catherine sagged back into the seat as her own recollections and regrets flooded through her, “Good for them.”

---

Greg flipped the boot on the car and put his and Nick’s kits in there with Jasmine’s. The girl was still leaning on the side of the car, gazing at the stars dreamily, but she was completely with it as she swung into the driver’s seat and smiled at them in the rear view mirror. “You know that you two are working the same case now, right?”

“What?” It was the first thing any of them had said since the two men got out there, their expressions had said it all, no matter how hard they were trying to hide it

She pulled out of the parking lot and nodded, “They’ve found a second victim on the strip, so Grissom wants you two out there rather than have a novice on it. I’ll run you out to the house and pick up my bike, then you two can have the car.”

“Good plan.” Greg murmured, glancing briefly at her before gazing back at his lover, “We owe Grissom one.”

“I think he considers this equalling the balance out.” She tapped the steering wheel absentmindedly and swore at a ‘nurk in a Merc’; displacement activity, but it worked to relax her co-workers.

Greg reached out and took Nick’s hand, stroking the back of it with his thumb, “We’ve got one week on the same team, then we don’t know where we’ll be.”

“It’ll all work out in the end.” She sighed and swore again as a bike cut her up, “He’ll be under a bus in a week, everything works itself out somehow.”

“Cheerful thought.” Nick chuckled sadly

“I thought so.”

---

One Week Later

Nick signed off on his report and passed it across to Greg to countersign. They’d done their best over the last week to ignore the impending end, ignore the fact that each case together could be their last – even though Grissom put them together as often as he could. Of course, they had been largely unsuccessful, but it didn’t stop them trying. Greg hesitated a moment before he too signed it, closing a large part of their lives for good. “Case closed.”

This would have been the perfect moment for a long, silent, heated gaze, followed by a slow lean into their one and only kiss in the lab. Of course, that only happens in fiction, so Catherine and Jasmine arrived, Jasmine tripped over the table and Greg let out a laugh that was half sob, half resigned amusement. “Good morning sweet Jasmine.” He swallowed back the choking in his throat and helped her up, pulling her down to sit on the sofa before she fell over anything else, “How did it go?”

“It was the girlfriend.” She paused, “The second girlfriend, which maybe explains things.”

“Sounds like a story.” Nick leant forwards

“Gage had two girlfriends happening, didn’t know about each other. Number two walked in on him and number one and killed him in a fit of rage. Number one kept it secret because she was as mad as number two and because the two of them got together over their ex’s cooling body.”

“Kinky.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, “And I thought my usual work was weird.”

“They hot though?”

”The girlfriends? Hell yeah.” She sighed and sat back, just catching Catherine’s disapproving frown, “What?”

“You’re hopelessly innocently filthy at times.” Jazz just grinned, far too comfortable with that assessment.

The whole team were invited around to the safe house for breakfast that day, for a combined leaving party for Jasmine and Nick, but mostly Nick. He was moving to the Swing Shift, and officially moving in with Greg. The couple relaxed noticeably as soon as they got through the door of the house that was rapidly becoming their home, moving in synch with each other as they put away their kits and coats. John appeared from somewhere with food and drinks and wrapped his arm around Jasmine’s waist, “Good day?”

”Extremely interesting.” She smiled and leaned into him, fading into the background as the CSI team gathered together around their friends, “Is this my fault?”

“No.” He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her hard, “These things happen, you had no influence on it. Fate intervened.”

Catherine was looking around the house with interest, “I thought you both had apartments?” She asked with a quizzical smile

Nick looked in Jasmine’s direction and smiled when she nodded her consent, “We’ve been staying here whilst we’ve been working with Jasmine, and it’s bigger than either of our places, so we thought we’d use it again for the party.”

Jazz fished in her pockets and pulled out a set of keys, tossing them over to him with a grin, “The place is yours for as long as you want it. I reckon we owe you that at least.”

“You’re serious?”

“Absolutely, it deserves to be lived in.” She grinned up at John, “Just expect visitors every so often.”

“I think we can probably cope with that.” Greg answered with a sad smile, “How long are you two going to be around?”

“We’re going back to the UK the day after tomorrow.” John checked the date on his watch, “Yeah, day after tomorrow.”

“What do you do in the UK?” Bobby asked, “You’re a specialist of some sort?”

She sighed and nodded, “Special ops, I can’t say much.”

“What, like MI-1?”

She frowned, “What part of ‘I can’t say much’ didn’t you get? Higher than MI-5, seriously top secret. So top secret I don’t really exist.”

“Have we ceased to exist?” Greg asked in confusion

“No, you’re real. You existed to start with.” She shrugged, “My parents forgot to tell anyone I’d been born, so I officially don’t exist. It’s kinda cool.”

“Nice.”

”Yeah. Anyway.” She perched on the arm of a chair as John returned to the kitchen, “You’re real.”

“I’m a real boy.” Greg did the Pinocchio dance and laughed, putting on some music in slight embarrassment, “It’s weird how things have changed since we met you.”

Catherine looked up at him when she saw Jasmine look away guiltily, “Do you regret it?”

“Not at all.” He grinned across at Jazz, “As for outing us, that was entirely my fault, but the rest is cool. And to be honest, I’m glad we can live openly together now.”

Nick wove his was across the room and hugged him, “Me too.”

“Awwww, camera moment!” Catherine grabbed her phone and took a photo of the two of them, “We’ll miss having you on the team Nick.”

“Yeah, me too, but as long as I have Greg, it’s worth it.”