Nick sat down on the bench without saying a word. Alex didn't look at him or acknowledge his presence whatsoever for a very long time. They both just sat there in silence, lost in their own thoughts that were intertwined, even though they weren't voicing them at the moment. Neither one of them were looking around at the birds flying around or the other people bustling about the cemetery, everyone minding their own business. Both of the Stokes' that were sitting on the cool stone bench were staring at the tombstone in front of them that sadly read Warrick Brown.
"How did you know I was here?" Alex asked after almost an hour of them sitting there silently. The sun was just starting to set and it was going to get dark out fast.
Nick sighed. "Erik and Colin are in Texas," he replied sadly.
Alex tore his eyes away from the stone and looked at his father, who was still looking straight ahead. "How often do you come here?"
"More often than I come home I guess," Nick replied sarcastically, much to Alex's annoyance. "A couple times a week, pretty much whenever I can. Or have to."
Alex nodded slightly. "I've been here every day since it happened."
"I know."
Alex frowned. "If you know all of these things, why don't you ever say anything?"
"What am I supposed to say?" Nick asked.
Alex shook his head. "I don't know, something." He looked back at the name engraved forever on the gray stone. "I never got to say goodbye."
Nick looked over at his son, feeling his pain in his voice. "What would you have said?"
Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I would have told him how thankful I was for everything that he had done for me, all the times we hung out and he was there to talk to me. I would have told him that he was like a second father to me and without him, I don't know what I would have done. I don't know what I am going to do without him, everything feels so weird. So different."
"So empty," Nick added.
"Yeah," Alex agreed. "There's something missing in everything I do, in everything anyone does. You can tell, it's like the elephant in the room. I just can't shake it. Everything is altered because he was such a big part of everything."
"He knew," Nick replied helpfully. "He knew how you felt, how we all felt about him. It doesn't make it hurt any less, but it could have hurt more."
"How?" Alex asked.
"You could have finally gotten him to kick his drug habit, beat two murder raps, and finally got his feet back on the ground right before he was killed. You could have been sitting right next to him seconds before he was killed, but instead you hung back because he told you to get the number of the cute waitress that you weren't even interested in anyway. You could have fought with him and against him to get him back up from rock bottom, just in time to be murdered one hundred yards away from where you were sitting."
Alex swallowed the lump that had built in his throat as his dad was speaking. "I'm sorry," he said softly. "I didn't mean it like that I just meant-"
"I know," Nick said, cutting him off. "I didn't mean to make you feel bad, I was just rambling. I haven't really said any of that to anyone, other than him," he said, nodding to the grave stone slightly.
"You could have told me all of that before now," Alex said matter of factly.
"I didn't want to do that to you."
"Do what?"
"Give you more shit to deal with," Nick replied. "You've already got so much going on, you shouldn't have to worry about me."
Alex laughed slightly. "I think the same way about you. I see you all stressed out and destroyed over everything, I don't want to make anything worse."
"You wouldn't make anything worse," Nick said. "You're what keeps me sane. When I do go home, and you're there, I really can forget about everything else and relax and be happy. Being around you is normal and makes me feel normal, and I guess I'm so selfish that I didn't realize how negatively I was affecting you."
Alex shook his head. "You're not selfish at all. The most selfish thing I've ever seen you do was when you stole the last piece of pizza from Greg that night that we got kicked out of the movie theater. I get annoyed that you're so unselfish because it makes it that much harder for me to be mad at you."
"It seems it's gotten a little easier for you to do so lately," Nick said sadly. "But then I guess that just proves that it's my fault."
"It doesn't matter whose fault it is," Alex replied. "And besides, it's as much mine as it is yours. I know how stressful and demanding your job is, and I love that you're a bad ass that catches all the bad guys. But I hate that that means you could be killed at any given second."
Nick frowned. "Is that what this is all about?" he asked. "You're afraid I'm going to die?"
Alex sighed heavily. "It's a big part of it. I just hate it when you get stuck at work for days at a time because you can't stop working on some cases until you solve them and half the time I trick myself into thinking something happened to you. And I know it's selfish and stupid and childish, but I can't help it. I don't want to lose you too because then my entire life is over. I think about how much it sucks without Warrick, and then I freak out because it would be a million times worse if you died. What am I going to do if you die?"
"You'll be fine," Nick said, for lack of better words to say.
"Fine?" Alex scoffed. "How the hell am I gonna be fine if you die?"
"I mean, like, financially and everything."
Alex shook his head. "What are you talking about?"
"If something happens to me, I can't do anything to help you through that, obviously, because I won't be here. That will be Greg and Catherine's jobs, who are your guardians by the way. It was Cath and Warrick..." he trailed off for a second before continuing. "I have a life insurance policy. If I die, you get everything. All the money, the house, my car. Everything is already taken care of so you don't have to worry about it."
Alex shook his head slowly. "How long have you had this set up?"
"Pretty much since you started living with me," Nick replied. "If anything happens to me, everything is yours. You're eighteen now, so it all goes directly to you instead of to Cath and Greg until you were old enough. You're the sole beneficiary. Cath and Greg's only job is to make sure you spend the money to go to a good college and to look after you."
"How much money?" Alex asked, not out of greed but out of pure curiosity and astonishment at his dad's revelation.
"One million," Nick replied in all seriousness. "Enough to go to a good college, even grad school, and to make sure you'd be set for a while until you got a good job and could handle things on your own."
Alex was in disbelief. "When were you going to tell me about this?"
"I wasn't," Nick said with a sigh. "I know how much you hate all of this stuff, thinking about it and especially talking about it. I didn't want you to worry. I should have told you, I'm sorry. There's a lot I should have told you, I just never had the heart to I guess. I hate thinking about who I am and everything that entails, never mind trying to explain it to you."
"I'm never going to hate you," Alex replied. "No matter what you've done or do, I can't hate you. You're the only reason I'm still alive, and there's nothing you can do to alter how dependent I am on you. I know we sound like an old married couple most of the time, but I really don't care."
Nick laughed. "Warrick used to tell me that all the time. He said it was like watching Abbott and Costello go at it."
"I really miss him," Alex said, smiling sadly. "If he had heard us fighting today he would have locked us in until we figured everything out."
"Yeah, well, we would have been in there for a long time. It's gonna take forever to figure half of this shit out," Nick said. "Which reminds me, you have to stop swearing too much."
"You know I get it from you, right?"
"That's my point. "You're getting far too much like me far too quickly."
"That's what Greg told me," Alex said. "He told me to take a good look at you because you're who I'm going to before I know it."
Nick shook his head slowly. "I don't want you to be like me. That's not good enough."
"What do you want me to be then?" Alex asked in annoyance.
"I want you to be you because you're smarter than me. You're a better person than I am and you're far more ambitious. You can honestly be anything that you want because you're smart enough and you'll work hard enough if you really want it. Don't be like me, you're so much better than that."
"How am I smarter than you? You're a science genius that can catch bad guys by finding evidence that half the time isn't even visible to anyone else. Your lab is the best in the country and you're basically the best at it so that makes you one of the smartest people in America. I would be lucky to-"
"Do you want to be like me?" Nick asked, cutting Alex off. "Knowing everything you do about me, do you want to be anything like me? Because from our conversation earlier, you hate who and what I am and want nothing to do with it."
"I don't hate you," Alex replied. "I didn't mean it like that, I just meant that-"
"That you hate who my job makes me be. Tired, stressed, over worked. Negligent of my only child. It's clear that most things about me piss you off, so why would you want to be anything like me?"
Alex stared at his father dead in the eye. "Because despite your crazy job, you never put yourself before me. You never intentionally do anything to hurt me, which is more than I can say for anyone else who has ever been in charge of me. My mother tries to kill me every time she sees me. Her boyfriend molested me. Multiple times. I want to be like you because you're the exact opposite of everyone else that has ever taken care of me. You care about me the way that a parent should, and I hope that if I ever have kids I can be half the father that you are. I hope that-"
"You're just a kid, you don't understand. You don't-"
"Will you let me finish a god damn sentence?" Alex said, cutting his dad off after he had done so to him for the third time. "I know I'm just a kid, I'm your kid. So I know who you really are."
"A murderer," Nick said, echoing Alex's words from before.
Alex shook his head. "I didn't mean that, you know I didn't mean that. I lashed out at you because I was mad that there was something about you that I didn't know about. I hate it when I don't know things because before I came here I didn't understand anything and I didn't have control over anything. I was a little kid and everybody around me took advantage of that, but you never did. But then I find out these things about you and it scares me that I'm losing control over the only thing I've ever had some sort of control over."
Nick leaned forward so his arms were resting on his knees, his eyes locked on the grave stone in front of him. "I don't know what you want me to do," he said softly.
Alex shook his head and stood up. "I don't want you to do anything," he responded. "Since clearly you don't want to have to do anything." Alex turned to walk away, but was stopped when Nick stood up and grabbed his arm, keeping him in place. "What are you gonna do, hit me?" he asked accusingly.
Nick released Alex's arm. "Yeah, I'm gonna hit you. Everything you know about me would lead you to believe that I would do something to intentionally hurt you. You act so tough that I didn't realize I was hurting you. So yeah, punching you right now is clearly my best course of action."
"Maybe if you weren't so sarcastic to me all the time I wouldn't be such a smart ass," Alex shot back. "Maybe if you talked to me like I was your son and not a murder suspect we would be able to have a mature conversation."
Nick shook his head. "We can't have a mature conversation because neither one of us is mature enough to just flat out say how we feel and what we want and need. You may get that from me, but you use it a hell of a lot better than I do."
"So this is my fault?" Alex asked, collapsing back down onto the cold stone bench.
Nick sat down next to his son, closer than before. "Of course it's not. That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I mean that you need to know that you can come to me and tell me anything. You can tell me how pissed you are at me for being too busy with work and not watching bad movies with you at three in the morning or attempting to cook dinner with you when we both know we're just going to set the fire alarm off. You can tell me that you're afraid I'm going to die and that you don't feel like you used to feel because I understand all of that. Unfortunately, we've both been through very similar ordeals and it sucks, but there's nothing we can do to change it."
"It's changed me," Alex said. "All this shit that's happened, it changed me. You changed me, and now I feel like you're changing and I don't want you to because I don't want anything else to change anymore."
"It's normal to be changed by what happens to you," Nick explained. "The trick is to be changed, but not ruined by it. The things that you've been through in the short amount of time that you've been alive is more than most people will ever have to handle. And you've gotten through all of it. There's nothing you can't handle as long as you keep reminding yourself how strong you really are."
"How much stronger am I gonna have to be?" Alex asked softly.
Nick sighed sadly. "I can't answer that. I wish I could. I wish there was something I could say to erase everything, but there isn't. My job isn't to erase the past, but help you get through it so you can be ready for the future. You have such a bright future Alex, you can't let yourself get scared away from it."
"I know," Alex said as he let out a long breath. "But I don't want to be a bitchy needy little kid. I don't want you to have to look after me all the time and fix everything that is going to go wrong in my life. I'm scared to lose you because I'm scared of how much I need you."
"Hey," Nick said gently, putting his hand on Alex's knee. "You may not want it, but I'm always going to look out for you. There's nothing you can do to stop that because you can't stop me from loving you, and it's my job to protect you. I'll fix anything that you want me to fix and let you handle whatever you want to handle alone. But you need to know that you never, ever have to go through anything alone. Whether it's failing a test or something bigger, I'm here. Even when you don't want me to be."
Alex looked at his dad through the tears in his eyes. "I want you to be here. I get mad at you, but that's because I miss you. I miss you, and you're right here, but you're not. I wish I was a little kid again and you were letting me stay up late to watch Red Sox games and pulling me out of school to go fishing and there was no one threatening to ruin any of that. But I grew up, and we both went through so much that we're not the same people we were before."
"That doesn't necessarily mean we're worse off," Nick offered. "We've been through a lot, but despite how you feel right now it made us closer. Tragedies have a funny way of doing that. With everything I see I appreciate and love you more and more because I am constantly reminded of how lucky I am that you're my son. When you showed up at the lab that day, my life was irreparably changed, and I couldn't' be happier about it because it made my life better than anything else ever could."
Alex swallowed hard so he was able to speak. "I don't know what to do," he said weakly.
Nick smiled. "Go home. Eat something, take a shower, and go to bed. I'll be right behind you, and we can figure everything else out when we wake up."
"Okay," Alex said with a slight nod.
He turned and walked down the hill to his car, started it, but didn't drive away. Nick continued to sit on the bench, staring at Warrick's name. He was aware that Alex had not yet driven away, and was about to turn around and see what was wrong when he felt his cell phone vibrate. He took it out of his pocket and frowned when he saw that it was a text from Alex. Nick smiled as he read the words I love you too dad and was about to stand up when he heard Alex's car finally pull away and head off towards their home. Nick turned around and watched as it disappeared around the corner before heading back to his car to follow suit, his cell phone still open in his hand displaying the message his son had just sent to him.
