DISCLAIMER: CSI and its characters are the property of Jerry Bruckheimer and CBS. No infringement intended.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is the third in a series I thought was only going to be a one off! It began with Falling, but it seems my muses weren't entirely done with me so it continued with Ascending. Now we have Colliding, and I'm not prepared to second guess my muses again and say this is it, but for now... enjoy.
ARCHIVING: Only with the permission of the author.
FEEDBACK: To mbarduk[at]yahoo.co.uk
Colliding
By Mbard
It was only a matter of time. That's what you tell yourself over and over again as you try to make sense of you and her. It was only a matter of time. You think the words will bring you understanding. The clarity of thought you find easy to come by when working a case, following the evidence, has somehow deserted you when you need it the most. The evidence before you now, the assuredness with which you think it was only a matter of time, does not bring the comforting blanket of understanding you crave so much. In its stead is confusion, a gnawing sensation in your stomach that makes it difficult to eat. A frantic beat behind your eyes because you know it's right before you, plain to see, only you can't. Or maybe you just don't want to.
Because if you really stopped to examine the evidence laid bare on the shiny metal surface of your life the way you hover over the evidence tables in the lab, you're going to realise the truth you are trying to uncover about you and her is a four letter word. The one you don't believe in, well fuck you've never had reason to. How can you believe in something you can't see, touch, take scrapings from and scrutinise at the microscopic level? You just don't have that much faith, too scientific. The truth of something comes from the physical evidence left behind, at least that's what you learnt in college, what you practice every day on the job. What you refuse to apply now to you and her, even though there is enough trace of the physical left behind it would be easy for you to decipher the truth if you wanted to.
It's there in your empty lifeless apartment when you crawl home from another graveyard shift that you feel you worked through with your eyes closed. As soon as you open the door the lingering scent hits you, and you forget everything of the previous eight hours when you recall the last time you didn't come home alone.
It washes over you like a drug, the effects similar to intoxication when you remember smooth hands riding up the back of your shirt, clasping at the needy flesh beneath. That last time when the two of you collided together in desperate hunger for one another, you didn't even make it to the bedroom before she had you sprawled naked beneath her. The look in her cobalt eyes of pure intense longing that you at first thought couldn't be meant for you, but each time crimson lips came in union with your own, you began to accept her desire for you was real. As real as the fingertips that traced the curve of your waist, followed the indentation of your hip to edge ever closer to the need that ached between your legs that very last time she was here.
You stand with your back pressed to the door of the home you barely recognise now as your own, enveloped as it is with the traces of herself she left behind and you wrestle with the evidence that is before you. What it means to remember how it felt to be pulled into her warm embrace and experience a sense of belonging you'd never encountered before. How you can glance at the coffee table sat bare in the middle of the room and remember what broke the vase that had once adorned it. Feel the insistent hands on your body as if it were that time again and neither of you were looking which direction your fevered need was taking you until the loud smashing of glass pulled your attention away from each other for the briefest moment. The shy mischievous smirk she wore when she told you she'd buy you another one, and you replied fuck it, to which that smirk grew even wider as she responded that's what she was trying to do.
Echoes of that last time together seep out of the walls and permeate every inch of your apartment until you feel as though you can't breathe without breathing her in at the same time. And the truth of the two of you, what you were, what you are to each other now becomes even harder to ignore. The evidence is before you, colliding and beginning to make sense the way it does in the lab, and you know that the evidence never lies. So you lie to yourself. Thinking that it was only a matter of time before things fell apart. It's not true. It's just an excuse you came up with when you turned her away, and now you admonish yourself every day for the understanding that does not come when you utter those words to yourself.
Because those words are false. Telling them to yourself makes you a liar. It wasn't a matter of time before things fell apart you now realise with stark certainty, as you sit in your quiet apartment ignoring the tears that are gently falling from tired eyes. It was only a matter of time before you fell in love.
The End