CSI:NY The Saints Aren't Coming

Are You With Me?

Chapter 88: Are You With Me

Fortunately for their partnership but less fortunate for the citizens of New York, the start of the next rotation was filled with active cases for the two homicide detectives. While neither of them were getting much sleep, Gus didn't have to follow Flack from bar to bar at the end of shift, as both were too exhausted to do anything but crash out.

They also didn't have much time to talk, not that either of them was willing to. Strained silence filled the car on the way to and from calls, hunting down suspects, etc. The elephant sat firmly between them, though it was often drowned out by loud classic rock blaring through the speakers.

Flack almost opened his mouth to apologize to her a thousand times, but he couldn't make himself form the words. He couldn't handle her forgiveness, that had been his issue all along. She was willing to forgive him getting with Jess, still loving a dead woman, killing Cade, being an asshole to her continually, nearly punching her in a fit of rage, drinking himself halfway to death...

Gus was somehow able to look past all of that and love him, more than he deserved. Yet he still wasn't able to forgive her for leaving him, for fracturing him last year. He couldn't help but wonder if he wouldn't be so shattered now if she hadn't started those cracks when she ran away.

Either way, it didn't matter, he didn't deserve to have her back, he had too much to atone for. Plus, judging from a few things he overheard in the locker room, Jimmy Doyle was looking to take his place in her life.

Gus kept wanting Flack to open up, to say anything. She thought about being the first to bring it up, but she worried about setting off his anger again. Yes, he punched a hole in a wall and kicked her out because she tried to help him, wanted desperately to save him but that didn't stop her from loving him.

She knew she didn't deserve for him to love her back, she had ruined that chance by rejecting him and running away. He would never forgive her for that, she just wanted him to forgive himself.

She desperately wished she could absorb his pain, it was an albatross she was willing to carry forever if only he could climb up out of that desperate pit and become Don Flack again.

"You gonna sit in the car all day? I mean it's cool, but could you at least clean it out?" Flack asked, standing by his open door, staring down at Gus who was staring out the window.

She jumped, unaware they had pulled up to the precinct. "Sorry, guess I need more coffee or something."

Flack just nodded, wanting to suggest that what she needed was to eat and sleep, both of which looked like things she had skipped on a regular basis, but once again, he didn't know how to bridge the divide. Instead he closed his door and walked into the precinct.

Gus sat for a moment, feeling like the world was spinning out of her control, and it many ways it was. Everyone else was moving along, leaving her behind. She was partly responsible, since the shooting she had separated herself from the team, and before that she had been medically separated.

Gus knew it was unreasonable to have people continue to outreach her when she was spurning them at every turn. She was so tired, not just physically but emotionally drained. She knew she couldn't stay in this state for much longer, but she also knew Flack couldn't either. Something was going to have to give, and soon.

She had just closed her car door when she saw Flack walking back out towards her. She cocked her head to the side, questioningly. "Get back in the car, they want us to check out an accident scene on the GW bridge."

"An accident scene, as in a 1099 traffic accident?" Gus wrinkled her brow, but still got back in the car.

The scene on the bridge was gruesome, car versus tractor-trailer where neither vehicle seemed the winner. "Are we here because they are worried about a homicide happening in the traffic backup?" Gus asked, stepping over hunks of broken concrete barrier.