Nice to have everyone back! *does the feedback dance*
**
Calling home, all alone
You can call, I won't answer
Any question in my head
Remains until you feel the same
Never telling how I felt
was all I ever cared about. . .
- Finger Eleven
**
Chapter Two: Good Enough
**
He spent the next two nights with Nick, sleeping in the big double bed because of Nick's insistence. He began to feel like a trade-off, something to hand around, a responsibility that no one wanted but that everyone had to take. He would lie in Nick's bed, going from hot to cold and back again, twisting the sheets between his hands until he was almost shredding them, hating himself for thinking like that, being so ungrateful and so hurtful when it obviously wasn't true. And it wasn't true, either, it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were glad to have him around. It showed in their eyes, as they opened their house doors and rattled on about extra pillows, standing in the doorway with looks that said they'd give him anything he wanted, if he could only ask, but all he wanted was to make it go away, and he didn't think they could give that to him. So yes, they wanted him, and that was the truth, but it was far easier to hear the lies at night, when he was scared to sleep and almost scared of the dark, wanting a nightlight or a teddy bear. Something to keep him warm.
Nick went overboard on comfort food - - served him waffles and steaming bowls of soap every day until Greg thought his metabolism was going to kick back and he was finally going to gain that weight everyone in his childhood had gleefully warned him about.
"No more," he said, in protest to Nick scooping out more mashed potatoes and gravy. "Seriously, man, I'll split open."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. It's good, though."
It was, too. Nick was shyly good at cooking - - not something you'd necessarily expect - - and he was more than willing to prepare whatever was asked for. Not a bad quality to have, in the grand scheme of things. Simple pleasures, and all that. Nick could cook, Grissom could listen, Catherine could comfort, Sara could talk, and Warrick could empathize, and if he'd needed any of that - - or all of that - - he would have been okay. Instead, he still felt empty. Didn't know what he needed, and didn't know how to go about getting it.
He struggled to find a good compliment. "My mom would have liked this," he said, pointing at his fork, which was slowly sinking into the remains of the potatoes. "She was after me when I was a kid to learn how to cook. Said that any guy who knew how to cook was going to find a good woman."
"Your mom," Nick said slowly.
"Go ahead and say it."
"I hope she was better than your dad." Nick looked angry, almost tense, and he stabbed at his roast. The meat gave way under the mauling and fell apart. He skewered a piece. "We all met him, you know. And I'm sorry if you loved him, but my basic reaction was to want him as far away from me as possible. And no one wanted him near you at all."
Greg started to wish then that he hadn't mentioned his mother. "I doubt that he was too eager to get near me anyway. We weren't - - we weren't close."
"Good," Nick said savagely. "Because he's an asshole."
"Grissom pretty much said the same thing."
"Grissom's right." Nick chuckled suddenly - - a not quite humorless explosion of breath. "You should have seen the two of them, by the way. Circling around each other like they weren't sure who should attack first. I'm not sure which one hated the other more."
"Grissom hated my dad?" It wasn't so much that he didn't understand it as that he didn't suspect it. His father was contemptible enough, but usually only towards him, and Greg had always guessed that Grissom was somewhat ambivalent towards him, so whatever disgust Nathan had directed at his son should have bounced by Grissom, unseen.
"Grissom was ready to kick your dad's ass," Nick said. His eyes were glowing with the savage joy of
some painfully good memory. "He kicked
him out of your hospital room."
"No one talks to me about that." Far from being full, he found himself suddenly ravenous again. He gulped at his water and shoveled his way through the rest of the plate. "Grissom wouldn't say anything about what happened while I was - - you know, out."
And Greg was curious. Really curious. The emptiness didn't change that. He'd been gone for a month; things had happened, and he had the right to know.
Nick shrugged, uncomfortable. "You weren't there, man."
"I was there," Greg said. "Just not in my usual state of awareness." He was trying for humor and it fell flat. He wondered what they'd thought about him during the coma - - if anyone thought he might die, if they considered what it would be like if he didn't awaken. He smiled, and the expression, usually so natural to him, felt clumsy and laborious. "Tell me something, Nick. Come on."
Nick tilted his chair back, and Greg could practically hear the linoleum creaking underneath the pressure. His eyes were half-closed, and turned upwards, as if the ceiling was a road to the past.
"All right," Nick said. "You want the little things or the big things? And some of it, or all at once?"
"Some of it. Some of, um, the little things, I guess."
"Sara brought you flowers," he said automatically. "Daisies. I think you saw those when you woke up. And she tried to hit your father when he came with us to visit you. Not without provocation, either." His face darkened, and he muttered, "Ass. Anyway - - little things. I kept your apartment clean while you were gone. Moved your CDs to your room. We kept getting in fights with the temp DNA tech, because he wasn't as good. Catherine had a serial killer case that took her a week to solve. And we missed you, but I think that's one of the bigger things, don't you?"
His eyes were too kind. They were understanding eyes, knowing eyes, and Greg remembered suddenly that Nick had been hurt, too - - after all, there had been the stalker, and he wanted to say something about that, except it looked like Nick had buried that past and didn't want to study it. And it seemed rude, almost cruel, to surface memories that long undisturbed.
"Sure," Greg said. His voice was hoarse. "I think I would have missed you, too, if I'd had a clue what was going on."
"Are you going to be okay, Greggo?"
He wiped at his eyes. Shit. He hated crying in front of people.
"Probably."
"I'll be here, you know, if you're not."
It was that last straw - - that last bit of kindness that made him run from Nick, and he found Sara instead, and stayed with her a whole week, because Sara hated opening up to people and so it was easy to stay closed around her. Like a box, he thought sometimes as he settled onto her sofa and into the claustrophobic smells of dust and old cotton. Like shutting himself into a box, but it fit so nicely and so well around him that maybe he wouldn't have to leave, even if it was itchy. Uncomfortable. He'd never been very good at similes.
Sara didn't believe in comfort food, either, so he ate cornflakes and drank bottled water while he was there, and for a while, it was good.
But what finally cinched his decision to leave again was that, for all the superficial differences, she wasn't any different from Nick or Grissom after all. She still had that same half-evaluating, half-sad look around him, as if she was gauging his mental state and mourning the fact that poor Greg was so screwed up. She was glad to have him, yes. He was glad to be there, yes.
He just wasn't glad enough to stay.
When he knew he wouldn't spend another night in her apartment, he crawled into her bed at night, and it sounded sick and felt awkward at first. She woke with a start and almost shouted before she realized it was him, and that he was crying. She was wearing cotton pajamas, and he was in long striped pants, and they didn't make love, but just curled around each other, his head resting between her shoulders, making the cloth damp with his tears. He didn't kiss her, even though a few months ago, he would have dreamed of this - - because crushes were sweet, and the more unattainable, the sweeter. He would have loved the thought of lying next to Sara, who was good and nice and beautiful, sex or no, but now it was just like hugging a pillow, only she soothed him a little. He could feel her pulse, and he knew that she could feel his, and they lay there in the darkness until the tears dried on his face.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be."
"I shouldn't have come in here."
"It's fine, Greg." Her hand found his, and she rubbed at it, comforting little circles. "Really. I get it."
"I'm pitiful," he said. He didn't know whether or not he meant that, and decided he did. "I just didn't want to be alone. I'll get out." He tried to move, but her hand was tight on his wrist.
"Stay," Sara said. "We aren't doing anything wrong, and you're not doing anything to be ashamed of." Her voice was firm, and he was desperately lonely, so he stayed the rest of the night, but he hightailed it out of there in the morning, and left Sara behind with a single hug, her dark eyes saying nothing except that she couldn't understand.
He hit up Warrick next, because he was reluctant to go to Catherine's. After all, she had a family.
Warrick gave him a guest room with no questions and no shy look of pity. Greg made his own bed in the mornings. They ate scrambled eggs and rode in Warrick's car to work. He chipped in for gas and groceries, and managed to elude the drifting, horrible feeling of loneliness for two weeks, that time, a record high. Once, he was almost happy. Warrick cared about him, but didn't ask anything of him, not even that he get better. And that was easy.
Of course, not even Warrick was perfect. There wasn't any late-night conversation in bed, any suffocating offer of understanding, and not even Grissom's refusal to let him sleep alone - - it was far more subtle, but just as unwelcome.
They were at work, for a change, not at the apartment, and Warrick had just dropped off a load of samples with an apology for the number and the amount of work they would require, and, since he was going off-shift in a few hours and Greg was working overtime, he said, casually:
"See you back at home."
It was the implication that he might belong somewhere that made Greg grab his bags again and take off that very night. He made some vague excuse about wanting to give everyone a chance, uttered a shrill laugh, and went to Catherine's, phoning ahead to make sure it was okay. He thought that maybe, with a kid and a job, Cath would be too busy to care too much, but he was wrong, and he failed his record high at Warrick's with a record low - - he only spent one night there. Lindsay cuddled up next to him to watch a Disney movie, and she smelled clean, like orange juice and cotton candy perfume, and the hand that he used to stroke her hair was shaking.
Too much of it, he decided. Too much innocence in Lindsay and too much sympathy in the glance Catherine threw him across the room.
He even went to his own apartment. It didn't smell like Pledge anymore, just dust - - and he stood there in the blackness, unwilling or unable to reach for the light switch, and ran out so fast he must have burned the rubber off his sneakers. Funny, how he lasted the shortest bit of time in a place where he was overwhelmed just by himself.
Or his old self, anyway. He chided himself about lines drawn in the dust and headed out to the gas station. He filled his car up and sat behind the wheel for almost ten minutes before he drove away. He almost was smiling, since no one was asking him what was wrong.
Gotta get out of here, he thought, and why not? He had a full tank of gas. And all he would leave behind was a horde of understanding people who would probably only nod and say that they should have seen it coming. And they were masochists, so they'd blame themselves, and he didn't want that on his head, and Greg told himself that that was the real reason he wasn't taking off - - not because he didn't want to go.
Except he had to go somewhere.
He drove and didn't pay any attention to where he was going. He surfaced once from his own thoughts as he pulled to a screeching stop at a red light, and thought that it was amazing that he hadn't killed anybody yet. No way was he driving at his full capacity. He would have paid more attention to his surroundings in his sleep - - and hey, funny thing about that, sleep, and how it felt so much like a coma. And did every single little thing have to come back to that?
He ended up at Grissom's. He'd been away from there long enough, at least, to hope that Grissom had maybe forgotten pity. Besides, Grissom was . . . safe. Greg still didn't trust him, didn't trust (and couldn't trust) anyone, but Grissom prevented him from some channels. He wasn't going to end up crawling in bed with Grissom, he thought, his mouth twisting. He caught a glimpse of the expression in the rearview mirror and almost recoiled in shock from the sight. He didn't look like himself.
Greg tapped at the door. It was oak, and his fist thudded against it, echoing through the townhouse.
It opened almost immediately, as if Grissom had been waiting just beside it. "Greg. Catherine called to tell me that you left her house. I hoped that you might stop by."
His battered suitcase was heavy. All he really wanted to do was put it down.
"I don't know if I can stay long," he said, and they both knew that he didn't mean he might leave because of some pressing engagement. He just didn't know how long it would be before he had to get away again. Just a runaway. He'd told Grissom that he ran away from his family, and Grissom had told him that the night shift was harder to run away from. They could track him down.
It had been comforting then. Sounded too much like a threat, now.
"Do you trust me yet, Greg?" Grissom's eyes were unreadable behind his glasses. He was still the only one inside the room, Greg was still in the hot sunlight outside.
His smile felt broken and fragile on his mouth.
"Almost, boss."
Grissom finally nodded. "It's good enough," he said, and took Greg's suitcase in his hand. He stepped from the door and let Greg inside.
The air around him was cool, air-conditioned. It felt good after the desert heat around the gas station, and he suddenly realized that he had never cooled his car down. He'd been driving in Vegas temperatures for hours. He breathed it all in, and looked around - - Grissom really had been expecting him. Two plates were set up on the table, glass- and flatware. He could smell something cooking.
Grissom must have noticed him sniffing, because he said, "It's Friday. Fish. Tuna noodle casserole."
"You're Catholic?"
"I lapsed. But the fish stayed with me. It's tradition, now." Grissom was shuffling his things around, unpacking Greg's suitcase and moving the spare items around. In a few minutes, he had effortlessly blended in Radiohead CDs with forensic magazines. The DNA periodicals from Greg's things mixed in well with Grissom's entomology textbooks. Greg watched the strange meeting of minds from across the room with a queasy feeling in his stomach. Was it going to be too much this time, too? Too welcome, too fast?
"The spare room's all yours," Grissom said, without looking up. He zippered up the suitcase and handed it back, meeting Greg's eyes that time. The pity was absent, the evaluation present. That was fine. He could deal with evaluation. "Go ahead and unpack, and I'll serve."
"I like tuna."
Grissom nodded, and the faintest flicker of what might have been a smile appeared. "That's good. I wasn't sure. I was afraid you might be a vegetarian."
Then, the smile was his. "You got on Sara's bad side sometime, huh?"
"Just the once. I've remembered since then. She made it hard to forget."
Still smiling, he went to his room (the spare room, his mind snapped at him), and unpacked. Socks in the drawer, boxers with them, clothes in the closet, wondering how long it would be until he'd have to load them up into the suitcase again. He tried to be happy. Maybe it would be a good run, like with Warrick. Maybe Grissom wouldn't have to care too much right away.
He came back in and found Grissom puzzling over the fridge.
"Beer? Water?"
"You're a two-beverage guy?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Beer. Sure." He hadn't ever been a heavy drinker, even in college, but sometimes there was a charm to a beer and even to being drunk - - though he only planned on taking advantage of the former. It would be too maudlin and too screwy to get drunk in Grissom's townhouse. He could only imagine the looks he'd get in the morning - - the cold, stainless steel reaction; apologizing to Grissom was like talking to a wall. Nothing got through.
Grissom handed him a cold brown bottle, condensation running down the side.
"Food's on the table."
"I saw. Thanks."
He sat down, making sure to place the beer on the proffered coaster. The tuna casserole was coated with cheese and swimming with noodles. It didn't have the charm of Nick's endless plates of spaghetti, but it was good enough.
Good enough.
"Were you really hoping for something more from me?" he asked. His fork tines clinked against the plate.
"Yes. But I'll take what I can get." Grissom was starting on his salad, crunching lettuce leaves together with an oddly inept look on his face. Greg reasoned it out and decided that it wasn't every day that Grissom sat down with a meal. His usual schedule probably involved a handful of bugs in the morning and maybe a granola bar at night.
"It's good enough?" Greg said.
"Yeah. Good enough."
Greg put his elbows on either side of the plate, folded his hands under his head, and laughed until he cried.