csi_sanders1129 | Fic: Breaking The Silence

Title: Breaking The Silence
Chapters: 6/?
Author:

csi_sanders1129
Genre: Drama. Casefile. Romance. Hurt/Comfort. Angst.
Ratings: T
Word Count: ~1,300
Pairings/Characters: Jason Morgan/Damian Spinelli.
Synopsis: In which Spinelli gets in over his head with a Jackal PI case, Jason has his hands full dealing with the fall-out, and a serial killer is on the loose.
Comments: I started this a while ago, but recently started working on it again, with major help from suerum, who is - for the record, awesome - it's not quite done yet, but it's getting there. Set a bit in the future (November 2010-ish) and assumes Maxie and Spinelli broke up and that Jason and Sam have also called it quits again. Mix between a casefile fic and a regular drama/hurt/comfort/romance kind of fic. Original characters aren't mine, even though I may not actually want them. Reviews are awesome, and enjoy!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |

Spinelli slept soundly for another forty minutes. At which point, he woke with a start, managing to tumble off the edge of the sofa in the process. Luckily, he didn't hit his head on the coffee table.

"You alright?" Jason asked, as he quickly moved to the younger's side, helping him back onto the couch. Spinelli's eyes were wide – not in the beginnings of a panic attack, but as the lingering effect of whatever had occurred in this most recent nightmare. Jason watched as Spinelli stared at the carpet for several minutes before offering a nod in response to his question.

He didn't know what to say. He had no idea what the nightmares were about – what happened, who it happened to, those were all still mysteries. "It'll get better." He settled on, finally. He'd had his share of nightmares, and eventually they did all fade away.

"You want to try to sleep again?" Jason pressed, though he knew the answer even before Spinelli shook his head in protest. "Okay. Something to eat, then?" The kid hadn't eaten since sometime yesterday morning - he'd gone missing not long after that and he doubted his heartless captor had fed him while brutally slaying two others - so he wasn't terribly surprised when this question got a nod. That decided, he helped Spinelli to his feet – rather, foot – and together they hobbled toward the kitchen.

Once he had Spinelli safely settled, he moved about the kitchen, throwing something quick together for both of them before he tried to ask Spinelli any more questions. "Just eat whatever you feel up to." He said, setting the plate of food and an orange soda before the younger man, along with a couple of Aspirin's for his foot.

Spinelli nodded and swallowed the pills dry before digging into the food. Jason sat across from him, picking at his own, as he watched the younger man intently. He had questions, important ones that needed answering, but there was no way in hell that he'd try to force Spinelli into compliance like Maxie had. No, he'd have to take a different approach if he wanted to get anywhere at all.

A pad of paper had been stuck to the door of the refrigerator. Spinelli had put it there some time ago; it was a scary shade of neon green with equally neon frogs decorating the corners. It would have to do for now. After grabbing that and a pen, he returned to the table and slid the items across to Spinelli, who had finished eating.

"I know you don't want to talk, but will you write for me instead?" Jason asked, and Spinelli seemed to consider this request for a moment before offering a nod. "Okay, good. You need anything?"

Spinelli dropped his head and scribbled out a word in his chicken scratch handwriting. 'Water?' '

Jason noted the untouched orange soda and quickly got up to trade it for a water bottle from the fridge. Spinelli denying orange soda was just plain scary. But he would worry about that later. Leaning now against the counter, he cautiously asked another question. "Will you tell me what happened?"

'No. Can't.'

Jason tensed as he read the words, felt the surge of anger at whoever had done this to Spinelli tighten around his heart once again. "No one can get to you as long as you're with me, you know that, right? I won't let anyone hurt you, so if you're afraid of-" Spinelli was writing again, cutting across Jason's assurances.

'Don't remember.'

He certainly hadn't expected that.

"What's the last thing you do remember?" He asked, hoping to get some sort of idea on where they should start looking for answers. Spinelli paused for a long moment before hastily scrawling an answer of, 'Jackal PI stakeout. Don't know what case. Then nothing but blood and screaming until you.'

Jason nodded. He could work with that. "Okay. We'll go over to the office, try to find the file for what you were working on and see if that helps you remember anything else."

Spinelli frowned and shook his head, scribbling away again. 'Don't want to go.'

Jason couldn't blame him for that. He probably wouldn't have wanted to remember what went on in that room either. But it had to be done. "You're the only one who knows what we're looking for." He pressed on, daring to push a little harder against Spinelli's mind.

But the hacker was determined. He shook his head and, in bigger letters, he wrote out 'NO.' And then amended it with, 'Please, not yet.'

Jason didn't push him further. "Okay. I'll call Sam later, get her to grab the files and bring them over, how about that? You and I can just stay here and rest." Jason bargained, hoping that staying at home would maybe lessen the terror of finding the right file.

'Okay.' Spinelli wrote, his slumped posture indicating his resignation to the plan rather than his whole hearted participation. It was clear that forgetting was the infinitely more palatable option for him at the moment. Another note followed a few minutes later, 'Can we try to sleep again? '

Jason nodded, "Yeah, we can do that." He cleared the table, leaving the dishes in the sink to deal with later. While Spinelli was still in proximity to pen and paper, he added another question of his own. "How bad are the nightmares?"

'Bad. Less so when you're around.' Spinelli scribbled out quickly, ducking his head in embarrassment.

"Guess I'll just have to be around a lot, then, won't I?" Jason countered, as he helped Spinelli back to his feet and out of the room. He was close enough not to miss the small shadow of a smile that crossed Spinelli's features at his words. The first sign of one he'd seen since finding Spinelli.

They headed upstairs, making slow but steady progress towards Spinelli's room, and then they bypassed it. At the confused look Spinelli shot him, Jason explained. "My room's darker than yours; it'll be easier to get to sleep." He said simply, though that was a very small part of his reasoning. There were at least three weapons stashed in his room, and in the event that someone was crazy enough to try something against Spinelli here, he wanted to be prepared. "And it's not pink."

He got another half-smile for his half-hearted teasing at the expense of the regrettably pink walls, and Spinelli didn't protest the change in direction. The room was darker than Spinelli's would have been. The sole window in the room was draped by a black-out curtain, which Jason pulled shut as he passed by it, cutting out nearly all of the late-morning light - it could have been midnight by the looks of the room.

Jason pulled back the covers and made sure Spinelli was settled before climbing in himself. "Wake me up if you need anything, okay?" He prompted, already letting his own eyes drift shut.

He was bordering on the edges of sleep when he felt the bed move, though, which got his attention. He was pretty sure Spinelli hadn't fallen into a nightmare quite that fast – he usually got a little bit of sleep before one hit.

"Spinelli?" He asked, one eye opened enough to see through the darkness.

The younger man just hummed lightly and stopped his restless shifting - obviously the cause of the movement – and instead he moved closer to Jason, burying his head into Jason's neck like he had done just after Jason had found him. He didn't fight against Spinelli's unexpected move, instead he let one arm curl around Spinelli's chest, settling somewhere on his side, the other came up to land on the back of Spinelli's neck, drawing random patterns there. It lulled them both to sleep in minutes.