Chapter Text
Griffin Stagg grew up applying himself to his studies rather than friendship or relationships. Having friends or a girlfriend never came as a bother to him, he convinced himself that he enjoyed the loneliness, and would prefer to stay alone.
He carried that belief through school and even university.
Griffin took a degree in Medicine and chose to take a specialist training program in pathology.
This led him to become a Forensic Pathologist, and he is now being interviewed for a position within Boulder P.D.
"Griffin Stagg. All your training and past work experience looks good, but tell me, how can I be sure you're the correct one for the job." Griffin processes the question for a minute before nodding and taking a breath.
"Well. I would say I'm the correct one as, as you said, all my training and past work experience are all good, but I also like to do things uniquely. I like analyzing the bodies to their full potential to ensure nothing is missed. If you look back on my University documentation you can see that I passed my training with a 99.5% accuracy. I passed with such accuracy as I never once rushed, no matter the circumstance; I believe this line of work truly matters and can contribute so much, so I never rush. I can also work well under pressure." Griffin explains, his throat feeling slightly more hoarse than when he once began speaking. The Chief nods and looks down at Griffin's documents, he shuffles through them and looks back up at Griffin.
"Well, Griffin. I think you'd be great for this position. We would love to have you on the team." The Chief extends his hand, Griffin smiles widely takes his hand, and shakes it.
The Chief begins to shuffle Griffin out of his office and into the main police building, he explains the job as he walks Griffin about.
"So, over time, you will meet everyone, but I would just like to tell you." The Chief begins, Griffin looks at him with one eyebrow raised.
"While our police team is quite large, our Forensic and Detective team is not so much. Due to budgeting and everything, you will be our only Forensic Pathologist. We will assign a Detective to work alongside you; we are hoping that you and your soon-to-be partner will work along together nicely. Your partner will take you to crime scenes, and you will both need to help each other in solving any crime that you are assigned." The Chief explains, Griffin's eyes widen at this. He's not so used to having to work with someone who isn't on the same career path as him.
"So I'll examine the bodies and my partner will work on solving clues and such?" Griffin questions, the Chief smiles and nods at this.
"Yes! Exactly. Your partner will be down in the mortuary with you, so you won't be alone with all those bodies." The Chief stops in front of a door that says 'Specialist Investigator.' He knocks and slightly rocks on his feet.
"Ah! How could I forget? Call me Davis." Davis says, smiling at Griffin. Griffin nods and smiles in response.
The door finally opens and Griffin looks up to see a man.
Blonde hair like his but more wavey than curly, the man has short hair and piercing blue eyes. His nose is slightly crooked and his face looks like someone had just pissed in his cereal.
"Yes?" The man asks, his voice loud and stern. Griffin slightly cowers and looks to Davis for help.
"Hopper. I would like you to meet your new partner, Griffin Stagg." Davis widens his arms to show Griffin as though he was a show dog. Griffin weakly smiles and waves. Hopper just scoffs in response.
"I thought Wilson was getting the Forensic guy. Not me." Hopper grumbles, crossing his arms and death-staring at Griffin. Griffin begins to fiddle with his hair as though that would stop Hopper from looking at him like he was prey.
Hopper looking at him like this made him feel like he never had before.
Griffin, in the past, kept in the shadows; he never attracted bullies or shit-talkers. The most he had ever felt bullied was when people would hear his name and ask who he was.
So having this man look at him as though he was going to shove Griffin into a locker and call him names was quite a terrifying and new feeling.
"Yes well. Wilson complained so I've decided you'll be a great fit for this." Davis narrows his eyes towards Hopper and Hopper sighs in defeat.
Griffin can't help but feel like he's young once again, watching his parents have one of those silent arguments via looks and huffs.
"You two get to know each other. How about you take Griffin down to the mortuary." Davis blurts out before quickly walking away, Hopper lowly growls and diverts his eyes from where Davis once was to Griffin.
"Come on then." The taller man nods his head down the hall and starts quickly walking; Griffin jumps slightly at how fast Hopper is being and slightly jogs to catch up to the man.
"You can call me Vance. Don't care for that last name bullshit." Vance spits, his voice filled with venom.
What is this guy's problem? Griffin thinks to himself, shaking his head slightly in annoyance.
Vance looks at him from the corner of his eye and huffs.
"Look. Let's just mind our own business. You inspect the bodies and I'll figure out what happened and all that fun stuff. Yeah? No need to be all buddy-buddy." Vance suggests Griffin thinks for a minute but ultimately decides it's a good idea as he's never been one to have a friend, so he could care less about making a friend at work.
"Yep. Sounds good." Griffin says, his voice all over the place with voice cracks due to not speaking for a while but also due to being slightly scared of Vance. Vance snickers at the voice cracks, and Griffin can't help but roll his eyes in both embarrassment and annoyance.
They both stop in front of a Hermetic door with the sign 'Mortuary' in the middle. Vance sighs and punches in a code, the number lock dings and Vance opens the door.
They both begin walking down the stairs behind the door, and the door closes with a loud bang. Vance jumps a little but coughs to compose himself. Griffin slightly smiles at seeing Vance jump at what was just a door closing.
"The code for the door is 1978 by the way." Vance mumbles, Griffin just nods and keeps walking down. Griffin knows he will have to write that down because he can be quick to forget certain details that don't fully center around his work.
They both soon reach the bottom of the stairs and find themselves in a room that has many bright white lights, yet to Griffin it still feels quite dim in there.
There are two stainless steel tables for autopsies, a wall of 9 refrigerators, and many cupboards and shelves filled with equipment such as embalming fluid and things like scalpels and body bags.
The walls are white but are still dark like a sheet was covering them. The room was cold, Griffin's breath was appearing in front of his face like a vapor of smoke. Any footsteps in the room echoed, and any movement could be heard, so Griffin couldn't do much sneaking around. Not like he would anyway.
Griffin smiles to himself, he can't help but feel a little at home, as morbid as it seems. He has spent years working in many different Mortuaries, and each time, he feels giddy, getting to feel at home in a new one.
Griffin immediately begins walking over to the refrigerators and opening them to check out the inside. Each one he would open would hit his face with a big gust of coldness, the doors would creak in a way of greeting Griffin.
As Griffin inspects the refrigerators, he hears movement behind him. He closes the door of the 4th refrigerator and looks behind him; he sees Vance already sitting, feet up on a desk beside one of the steel tables.
Griffin's face goes sour at Vance's ignorance of the need to keep the room clean.
"Can you get your feet away from the steel table?" Griffin demands; Vance looks at Griffin, anger filling his eyes. He takes his feet down but at the same time purposely stomps them causing the room to fill with that echoing noise.
Griffin rolls his eyes and makes his way to one of the shelves. On the shelf are scrubs and gloves.
"So, do you have to wear the protective jumpsuits?" Griffin questions, moving onto another shelf and looking at all the scalpels.
"Probably but I won't either way." Vance retorts, Griffin spins around and gives him another judging look.
Vance is wearing a black button-up shirt paired with a red tie and a pair of black pants. He wears a police duty belt with a gun on his right side. As expected.
"No blazer?" Griffin questions, considering they were in such a cold room. Vance just pulls an expressionless face and shrugs.
It was obvious to Griffin that Vance was very taken off guard by his showing up, as any sane person would wear an overlayer for such a cold room.
Griffin looks down at his blue tie that sat on his white button-up that he always paired with his black pants. He did have a blazer which was protecting him from the cold quite a bit.
"You look happy," Vance says, pulling Griffin out of his thoughts. Griffin looks over at the man sitting at the desk and shrugs.
"Just feels good to be back doing all this," Griffin says, Vance nods and looks down at his hands.
"How come you decided to work here?" Vance questions; Griffin thinks back to his old job; his final assignment there was to do an autopsy on 5 boys who had been kidnapped and murdered; he still felt weird thinking about it.
He soon moved house as he decided it was best to leave his hometown.
"Moved house and found this place. I saw that it was a little smaller than other Police Departments so I decided here would be good." Griffin explains and Vance just nods and puckers his lips in thought. His eyebrows soon furrowed.
"You went for the smaller one?" Vance questions, and Griffin nods in response.
"Yeah. Don't like places full of people." Griffin explains, and Vance chuckles; Griffin raises an eyebrow in confusion.
"School must have sucked for you." Vance proclaims, smiling with a shit-eating look on his face.
"I'm going to guess 14 was your peak age," Griffin mumbled though the mumbling seemed to be of no help as Vance sat up with an angry look.
"Fuck that mean?" Vance questions, and Griffin just shrugs. Vance grumbles and slams his hands down slightly.
"It just means, I bet that at 14, you were an egotistical annoying shithead that thought you were all that and needed all the attention." Griffin scowls; Vance just narrows his eyes and rests back in his chair. Silence fills the room once again and Griffin goes back to looking at all the equipment. Excited to use it.
"It's going to suck working down here," Vance whispers. Griffin's ears perk up to the whisper. However, he chooses to ignore it and continue looking through everything.
In his head, he agrees. It'll suck working down there with Vance. As he looks around at the sinks, he feels a pair of eyes stabbing into his back.
"You think we can get music down here?" Vance asks, tapping a pen on the desk. Griffin spins around and gives him an unimpressed look.
"Not very professional?" Griffin says in a sarky tone, Vance just shrugs and rolls his eyes.
"If I'm going to be stuck down here, with you, I want some entertainment and I feel it would be a little more rude to watch shows whilst there's a dead body." Vance continues, Griffin gives him a scathing look.
"If you playing music means I won't be disrupted whilst I do autopsies then fine. You can play music." Griffin reasons, Vance silently celebrates making Griffin chuckle.
Silence floods the room once again. No need to say much. As Vance said it wasn't like these two needed to be friends and Griffin agreed to that, so no need for small talk.
Vance fiddled with the pens on his desk, he didn't want to start transferring his stuff to the mortuary just yet. He might soon though as the awkwardness from being stuck with a strange guy was slowly eating at him.
He decided to watch Griffin set his stuff up at another desk, this desk sat near one of the shelves with multiple pieces of equipment. He watched Griffin put out normal things on his desk. Things such as a laptop, and notepads. Nothing crazy.
Vance's attention is soon peaked as Griffin puts a photo frame on his desk.
"You got kids or something?" Vance queries, Griffin gives him a confused look and turns his head to the side as a way to ask what Vance means.
"The picture? You have kids?" Vance adds to his question, and Griffin's face of confusion quickly turns into a smile.
"No. It's a picture of me and my mom." Griffin explains and Vance nods. Griffin looks down at the picture of him and his mom sitting with one another.
He smiles, remembering that day like it was yesterday. His mom was his only real friend when he was younger. It hurt to be left with none.
The phone on Vance's desk begins to ring, taking them both by surprise. Vance picks up and begins to speak to someone unknown. Griffin fiddles with his fingers whilst waiting for Vance to come off of the call.
"We've got to go. There's been a murder." Vance sighs, Griffin walks over to one of the shelves and grabs a protective jumpsuit, gloves, and a mask.
He quickly puts it all on and walks over to Vance, who's stood by the stairs.
"Any details?" Griffin questions. Vance just shakes his head.
As they both walk up the stairs, Griffin can't help but feel slightly excited. And guilty.
The job will forever interest and excite him but at the same time, he will always feel guilty for having such excitement about a lost life.
Once they reach the top of the stairs, Vance punches the code in '1978', the number lock dings and Vance opens the door.
"Ah. Good to see you are all prepared. Vance if you wouldn't mind taking Griffin." Davis says before rushing down the hall towards the garage full of the many police cars.
"Come on then," Vance says, directing Griffin towards the garage.
Griffin couldn't wait.