"What's up with you man?" Warrick asked, trying to keep the edge out of his voice.
"I don't care." Nick responded.
"What do you mean?"
"I just don't care about anything anymore. Nothing matters. I'm sick of everything. You were right when you said that this isn't the right town for me. I wanna just disappear or something. I don't care what happens to me at all."
Warrick got even madder at that. "That doesn't give you the right to yell at Brass or the suspect or me. We were just trying to get the case solved as quickly as possible, just like you were. You got out of hand real fast Nick."
Nick sighed and sank down onto the bench. He knew Warrick was right. The case had taken a toll on the Texan. It had involved a kidnapping turned to murder with a ten-year-old boy as the helpless victim. The killer didn't think he had done anything wrong and everything added together had just made Nick snap. He was over tired and over worked, which wasn't a good combination for him at all.
"I know...I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it out on you guys." Nick apologized. Warrick sat down next to his best friend as the other man ran his hand through his hair. "I don't think I can do this anymore."
"Nick...don't." Warrick said.
Nick shook his head. "I'm serious. I can't deal with all of this anymore. I still can't even get over the fucking Walter Gordon thing. I can barely ever sleep because I keep having the same nightmare over and over again. I think it'd be best if I just got outta here."
"No, it wouldn't. Because wherever you went, you wouldn't have your friends around you to help you with whatever came up. I know it's rough man, but you can't just ran away from everything."
"No, you don't know." Nick said as he looked at Warrick. "You have no idea." He said angrily. "Everyone always says that. That they're sorry for me and know how I feel whenever something bad happens to me. But no one ever really knows how I feel. I don't even know how I feel."
"Then let us help yo-" Warrick was cut off mid-sentence.
"I don't want help. I don't want your sympathy anymore. I'm sick of having to rely on other people to help me. Look...I'm sorry I yelled at you and Brass earlier. You didn't deserve it, I just lost it. But that's how I am now."
Warrick nodded slightly in agreement. "You're not the same person you were before Nick." He said softly.
"You think I don't know that? You aren't either. You still sneak around and go gambling and pretend that everything's okay with Tina when all you really want to do is be with Catherine. But you're just as scared as I am of changing things."
Warrick wanted to argue that, but he knew Nick was right, so decided to pick another fight with him instead. "So that's your excuse? You're afraid now?"
"I've been afraid since I was a kid." Nick said harshly, referring to his horrible incident with his babysitter when he was only nine.
"I don't think that's it. I think you're just-"
Nick cut Warrick off again. "Don't tell me what to do, and don't tell me how I feel." He rose from the bench and instead of going to his locker, he went in the opposite direction and out the door of the locker room. He left behind Warrick, who was still sitting on the bench and was even more pissed at his best friend than he had ever been before.
Nick walked out of the crime lab into the heat of the morning. He ignored his headache that only got worse every second that passed and made his way to his car as quickly as possible. Once inside, he turned the AC on full blast and sat back, allowing the cold air to rush over him and slightly ease his throbbing head. He took a deep breath to try and calm his nerves, but it didn't work in the least.
He tried not to think about his latest fight with his best friend, but couldn't stop the thoughts from flowing through his mind. They had become more frequent and were gradually getting worse and worse. Ever since his kidnapping, everything seemed like it had just been going downhill. He didn't exaclty know why, although he knew it had something to do with the fact that it could have been either him or Warrick down there and that had certainly strained their friendship. But even if he knew the exact reason why, he wouldn't know how to fix it.
Nick sighed and started his car. He pulled out of the parking lot and drove back to his home, thinking the entire way about how he was slowly losing his best friend.
Warrick would have punched his locker if Catherine hadn't walked in, inturrupting his plans. Instead he just sighed and fell back against the lockers behind him.
"What's wrong?" She asked as she sat down next to him.
"Nick." Warrick said simply.
Catherine nodded in understanding. Everyone had noticed the two friends becoming less and less like their normal selves. They barely ever joked around anymore and instead all they seemed to want to do was fight with each other. It wasn't easy to see, and no one really understood what had caused the change in the two good friends.
"What's up with you two lately?"
Warrick shrugged. "I don't know. It's still weird because of the whole Walter Gordon thing. It could have just as easily been me, and we both know that. We just keep getting on each other's nerves and I don't know how to stop it. I don't even think I want to. Maybe we were never that good of friends to begin with."
"That's not true." Catherine said, shaking her head slowly. "You guys have been best friends for as long as I can remember. What's happened recently has been rough on both of you. But that's not an excuse not to be friends anymore."
"I'm gonna try to talk to him. Maybe we can straighten this whole thing out. I guess it's worth a shot."
Warrick slowly left the locker room soon after and headed off to Nick's house in hopes of making amends.
Nick didn't move from the couch when he heard the knock at the door. He didn't take his eyes away from the TV show he was watching, even though he didn't know the name of it or what was going on. All he did was take another pull from his beer and call out to the person on the other side.
"It's open." He said.
The door opened and Warrick stepped in. Nick didn't look over to see who it was because he knew who it was before there was even a knock at the door. He had known Warrick would come over half way through their case when they had gotten into yet another fight. The one during the case had been totally Nick's fault. But in the locker room had been a different story. They had pissed each other off, and things weren't looking too good for them at the moment.
"We gotta talk Nick." Warrick said as he sat down on the chair opposite Nick.
Nick turned off the TV and finally looked over at Warrick. "Fine." Was all he said.
"What's going on?"
Nick knew exactly what Warrick meant. He shrugged because he honestly didn't know the answer. "Your guess is as good as mine. It probably has something to do with the fact that I almost died two years ago and you keep blaming yourself for it."
Warrick stared at Nick for a second. "Do you blame me for it?"
"No. You didn't know what was gonna happen. No one did. It's just hard to handle and neither one of us has gotten over it yet."
Warrick looked down at the floor and shook his head slowly. "I may not know exactly how you feel, but you had no idea how watching you like that felt. The only thing I could do was try to yell at you through a computer screen not to kill yourself. I still feel like I'm doing that, just not through a screen anymore."
Nick was still looking at Warrick. "So what do you want me to do? Pretend I'm okay so we can both go back to being normal and not scared to death of every little thing that threatens us in any way? I don't know what to do, and neither do you. I don't care, and I highly doubt you do either."
Warrick looked up. "I do care. I wish there was more I could do to help you through this, but you won't let me anymore. We've both changed a great deal since it happened, but it doesn't have to be for the worst. It doesn't have to be like this."
"Then how do you propose we fix it? By all means, if you have any ideas let's hear 'em. Because I have nothing other than this is how we are now and there's nothing we can do to stop it."
"That doesn't mean we just give up. You're not making this any easier Nick."
Nick sighed. "Sorry I can't stop myself from being an ass. It's hard to control how you act when all you've been thinking about for the last two years is the fact that you should be dead."
"That's not true. We got to you. We saved you. You're here, you're okay. You didn't die, so stop acting like you did."
It was Nick's turn to look down at the floor. His brown eyes fell from Warrick's green ones and he refused to bring them back up. He no longer knew what to say or do anymore, so he just fell silent and waited for Warrick to say something else.
"Things can't get better if you don't try to fix them. Nothing will change if you give up."
Nick dragged his eyes up from the floor to Warrick's again. "I give up. I don't know what else to do. I should have given up a long, long time ago."