Limbo
We take your car, although I don't take you to your place, but rather to mine.
It's not that I don't know the way, even though I have only been there three times before.
I guess I just feel that if I take you to my apartment I can keep a better eye on you.
But you barely notice, even after I slip my hand under your elbow to help steady the both of us as we tackle the stairs; the two of stumbling slightly as if we are both invalids or horribly drunk.
There are sometimes when I must admit that being sober feels way too overrated.
After we get inside, I take your coat and drape it along with mine over the back of my desk chair.
You simply stand there, just barely in the doorway, your eyes seemingly fixed on your hands, although I know your mind is somewhere else entirely.
Now that we are alone, away from prying eyes and ears, I slip both hands around your face and caress your cheeks lightly with my thumbs.
At this, you seem to revive slightly.
At least now there is a glimmer of recognition in your eyes when you look at me.
That look is still there, too.
I blink back the tears I have been holding back for most of the day.
All I really want to do is have you hold me close and let me sob into your shoulder.
But I can't.
Because right now you need me to be the strong one. You need me to take care of you.
You need me.
This fact still surprises me.
Whatever this thing is between us is still so novel and tentative. I don't think either of us have dared to name it yet.
Has it only been a week since you were last here?
Do you know how I always know when its you at the door?
You're the only person I know who knocks instead of using the bell.
I have to admit it, that when I looked up to see you standing there, lingering as you always do in the space between the door and the end of my kitchen counter as if you are waiting for me to say its okay to cross that invisible line into my personal space, I honestly thought I had forgotten how to breathe.
I'm pretty sure your vanity doesn't extend to your appearance, despite the fact that you always show up, no matter what the hour, ready for work neatly groomed and carefully composed.
You have no idea how handsome you are.
Your age suits you, and no, I don't think you are old (though you keep maintaining you are -- for a rational man, you can be irrational about some things). The years have added, rather than subtracted from your appeal.
Although the attraction is beyond merely the physical.
There is just something about you. Something irrepressibly arresting.
Perhaps the word for it is presence -- you have this inexplicable presence.
Right now, however, it seems as if the light has gone from your eyes.
They are yet that blue I know so well, but they are more clouded than clear, darker than bright, two unlit voids set into a still mask.
I have never been good at reading your face.
It always seems as though you conceal so much, or perhaps I have too long been afraid to really look at you, that I have hazarded too few long looks.
Though I do not need to know all your smiles and frowns, all your joys and sorrows to know that the face you have currently on display conceals little.
You look so terribly lost.
Will you help me find you? I wonder.
You haven't spoken since you turned to Ecklie and told him in a hollow sounding voice I barely registered as yours, that you wanted Nick and Warrick back.
We stood there, you and me and poor Greg, waiting until nearly everyone had left, until the night and the quiet had returned.
Tomorrow or I suppose it is rather later today, Day Shift will roll out and begin to process everything -- although I'm fairly certain there is precious little to find after the explosion.
Besides, the perpetrator is dead. There is no one to prosecute for the crime.
I wonder if many victims' families feel as cheated out of justice as I do right now.
For Nick is family.
They are all, for better or worse, family.
Really, the only family I've had.
True, I had twelve years with my parents and brothers, but we weren't a family, not a real family -- just a group of people who happened through the blind machinations of genetics to be linked together.
But the Lab, its people (even Hodges, but don't you ever tell him I said so) and especially you, are my true family.
Maybe that is why it hurt so much to almost loose Nick.
To almost loose you.
You don't know how much I wanted to walk up to you and start yelling after I found out that Walter Gordon almost took you with him.
You know what they say about hell hath no fury...
All right, maybe I wasn't that pissed.
Relieved.
Yes, that would be a better word for it. Achingly relieved.
If Nicky hadn't still been missing, I would have liked nothing better than at the first moment I caught sight of you, to hold you until I knew I wasn't just dreaming -- the team and Ecklie and Catherine and the rest of them be damned.
But Nick needed us.
And we found him, Grissom. We found him.
And he's going to be all right.
And we're going to be all right.
I hope.
What I wouldn't give to hear your voice, for you to tell me it's all going to be okay.
You're surprisingly good at that -- being reassuring.
I am not.
At this moment, I just don't know the right words.
You're the one good with words, not me. Remember?
I only wish it was as easy to wash the weariness from your face as it was the blood.
Or that smell of earth.
I never thought of the smell of freshly turned soil as being fetid, but it is.
Or perhaps it is merely the lingering scent of fear.
I don't know. I do know that it reeks worse than decomp.
You seem to register the loss of my hands on your face as I reach for the fingers that hang limply at your sides in way that is almost as if they aren't a part of you, as if they are in some ways foreign.
They seems as such to me.
They are still grimy and your fingernails are caked with silt.
Your hands are never dirty.
For the first time, I notice your clothes are grubby, too.
Maybe if I could just wash the detritus away, if I could just peel that paralyzing layer away from you, you'd be the man I know.
The man I love.
God, you could have died and I would never have told you.
Hints and teasing don't count.
I never said the actual words.
I never said, "I love you."
I can't seem to say them now either. I can't seem to say anything.
Neither can you.
I choke on your name as I try to rub warmth back into your cold fingers, feeling anxious for any signs of life.
I think I now know how you must have felt that day you came to me after Adam Trent...
Well, we don't talk about that, do we?
You looked even more lost then than you do now. You needed that afternoon what I need now.
Evidence.
Proof of life.
To feel the warmth of your skin. To hear the rhythm of in- and expiration. To breathe in deep that reassuring comfort of you. To see you. To pull you close and not let go.
So I do.
After a few moments, your arms fasten around me and I can feel the tickle of your breath against my neck.
At long last, I begin to breathe again.
I'm not sure which of us begins to cry first. I only know that sometime later we both could be found on the floor, clinging to each other.
You kissed me then, very faintly on the cheek and even more softly on the lips. I could taste the saltiness and couldn't tell if they were my tears or yours.
It doesn't matter.
When you hoarsely whispered my name and smoothed my hair, I felt all the tension, all the worry and concern melt away.
There was just you and me.
Just us.
Brought back to life again.
