Re-evaluation
by Jen

 
There are times I envy Jim for having escaped the morass of paperwork that this job would become if I allowed it to.  This is one of the very few stacks of papers that I can't avoid, as it affects my CSIs.  It's time for their evaluations again.  The truth is, my team do a fine job, most of the time.  A little rushed, a little hurried in their leaps to conclusions, but they're getting there.  Most of them.

It doesn't take long to fill in the forms, giving credit where it's due and using my knowledge of what motivates them to guide my choice of grading.  I know that unless Sara's graded as 'outstanding' she'll work longer hours and become more obsessed with her work, and in so doing regress.  Catherine is outstanding almost across the board – she certainly does better than me in the political stakes.  Warrick too is good.  He'll be exceptional one day, unless he self-destructs first.  His fate is firmly in his own hands, and I mark his performance as it deserves, knowing he won't be unduly swayed by anything I write on a form.

There's one form left, and the satisfaction that my task is almost complete disappears as I realise that this really isn't as straightforward as it seemed.  Nicky.  He tries so hard, but that's the cause of his problem.  He tries too hard, and it's for all the wrong reasons: either he's competing against Warrick, or showing off to Sara because God forbid he be beaten by a mere girl, and, underneath it all, he's looking for my approval.

My pen hovers between the 'satisfactory' and 'needs improvement' boxes.  He's satisfactory, but he could - should – be so much better.  He's got it in him to be a damned good CSI instead of a competent one, but right now he's going nowhere fast.  He needs to learn how to focus, how to blot out all extraneous matters until all that's left is him and the evidence.  He needs to let it talk to him, to learn to listen to it rather than being led astray by assumptions in his rush to solve the case.

Sighing, I lean back in my chair, noticing for the first time the teeth marks on the end of the biro I've been using.  The cheap plastic casing has been squashed out of shape at the end, where it bears definite teeth imprints.  I must have picked up the pen at some point tonight in my walk round the lab – or perhaps the department are recycling them now – because I certainly don't bite my pens.  Perhaps Sanders left it in here when he gave me the DNA test results on Vicky Chapman.  He strikes me as an inveterate pen-chewer in those few minutes of the day when he's not talking.  Not that it really matters, but it's rather unsettling that I've been using this for the past twenty minutes without noticing that it isn't mine.

It's not really surprising, given that the human brain can only process seven units of information at one time, but even acknowledging that doesn't prevent the nagging feeling that I've missed something else.  My office is the same as ever.  Nothing's moved except the tarantula, who's now resting in the corner of his tank following his meal.  Listen to your intuition, I tell my CSIs.  Listen to what your sub-conscious tells you; don't let it be crowded out by your rational suppositions of what must have happened.  Your brain picks up things it hasn't consciously processed - find ways to allow them to come to the surface.  So I sit in the office with the reassuring hum of the computer running in the background and the occasional sound of doors opening and closing further down the corridor as graveyard goes about its business and stop trying to wonder what else I've missed, and what it has to do with my evaluation of my team.  Of Nick.  It'll come to me once I stop reaching for it.

Voices pass my door.  Sara and Greg on their way to the break room and having one of their non-conversations that they both enjoy, though for different reasons.  Sara used to be afraid to allow herself to be anything more than buttoned-up professional at all times, but she's relaxing now.  A little, anyway.  It's strange how much of people's behaviour is driven by fear.  And then it makes perfect sense: it's not only that Nick lacks focus sometimes.  It's that he's afraid.

He rushes to conclusions, rather than letting the evidence lead him there, and I know it's more than impulsiveness driving him to those leaps of faith which are wrong as often as not.  Sometime he's right – and his pleasure and satisfaction then are so evident that it's all part of what makes some people love him and some people hate him.  His crowing in those moments is over-compensating for the rest of the time when he's afraid he can't do it, and thinks that it's better to rush to conclusions rather than risk doing it properly and still get it wrong.  Better to have a reputation as somebody in a hurry than as somebody who can't do the job.  Better that than finding out that his father was right, and that he should never have left Texas.  He doesn't know that I know about his father, but he must wonder.  It's a small world, law enforcement, and the sheriff is a career networker.

I could mark Nick as satisfactory.  I should mark him as entirely satisfactory if I were being fair about his performance to date.  The reason I don't want to do that is that I want him to be better, and giving him my unmitigated approval now won't do that.  But I've tried it before, giving him my qualified approval to reassure him while challenging him to do better, and nothing changed. Last time these evaluations were due I tried putting him down and making him work to prove me wrong.  That worked, but it got him so fired up that it did so more from luck than because of Nick's judgement.  I had underestimated the depths of his need for my approval and the strength of his reaction when I withheld it.

I've tried everything.  The office seems to shift in front of my eyes for an instant as my breath escapes with a strange sound and my fingers tighten around the angular plastic they're holding as I realise that, actually, I haven't tried everything.

I've tried giving him confidence.  I've tried encouraging him to have confidence in himself without needing others' approval.  But I haven't tried taking him outside himself, taking him so far away from his sense of self that he's no longer limited by his ego, by fear of his limitations and failures.  Let him lose himself in something bigger, something higher, and when he comes back to himself, nothing will ever be quite the same for him again.

Nick.  What is it about him that makes me want him to strive to be what he could be, instead of accepting him as he is?  Perhaps it's because he looks to me for so much.  Perhaps because this is a lesson that only I can teach him.

I force my fingers to loosen their grip, and put the pen down carefully on the paper in front of me, moving it until it's precisely aligned with the top edge of the form.  He'd be shocked to the core of his being, but his need for my approval would win through.  He'd do anything I wanted.  He'd submit to me absolutely.  And in doing so, he'd find himself, and the next time he'd submit for himself.  In losing himself, he'd find himself.

His body is ready for the lessons that his mind rejects.  He's so open to sensation; I remember driving past him and Kristy, seeing the way his body was reacting to her even while his mouth was saying something else.  All he needs is somebody to teach him how to subsume one to the other, to surrender all his preconceptions about who he is and what he is, and in so doing become the person he could be.

I can see now how he'd look, spread on my bed.  I wouldn't restrain him the first time; he couldn't be allowed to pretend to himself afterwards that it wasn't his choice.  He'd lie there, his hands above his head, his legs spread, and he'd stay like that whatever I did.  He'd be so shocked at first, fear fighting with arousal to find voice in his shaking accent: "What are you doing?"  I'd quiet him, gently firm.  No gag.  Nicky's what's commonly mislabelled as repressed.  He needs to learn to express himself – but first he needs to learn to give himself, to trust absolutely and in so doing to trust himself.

I can see the way he'd tremble with the strain of holding his thighs obediently wide, and his trembling would set off the little brass bells on the nipple clamps.  Perhaps later, if he's a very good boy, I'll give him a set of those bells to hang in his bedroom.  I can see them hanging by his open window, clinking gently as they twist in the breath of air that stirs the hot night, and I see Nicky twisting in his sheets as his body remembers the sounds of submission.  He arches into the sheet that clings to closely to his damp body, desperate for the brush of cotton against his nipples and his hot dick, craving release but knowing that he's only allowed it at my command.

He'd learn discipline and focus at my hands.  Focus would be his first lesson.  I'd have to blindfold him at first, cutting out everything except my voice.  Later, I'd want him to see what he can look like.  I'd like him to see the beauty of his hard dick wrapped in black until only the glistening head shows.  I'd like to slide my finger across the dampness and then give it to him to suck.  And I want to see the shock in his eyes because this is dirty and wrong and he's so damned hard with the thrill of it.  I want to see the look in his eyes when I slide a plug deep inside him and he lies still as death except for the tremors running through him because I won't let him move and all he wants to do is fuck himself on it until the world holds nothing else for him except the hardness thrust deep inside him and his need to move, to fuck, to come.  And then I want to see the look in his eyes as he realises that taboos aren't real, that he can break all the rules he thinks exist because they're only in his mind, put there by other people, and what it means to be Nick, free from the guilt and the fear and the need.

I can show him the way to be the CSI – the person – I know he can be.  Or I can mark him as satisfactory and let him continue as he is.

Picking up the pen, I hesitate for an instant.  Then, pressing the ballpoint firmly against the printed form, I draw a definite black cross in the chosen box.
 
 

End