Please be sure to read the note at the end.
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As the years go byI race the clock with you
But if you die right now
You'd know that I'd die too
- Story of the Year, Until The Day I Die
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Nick had a thing for dates. He remembered the exact day of the week and the date of when he was hired. Knew the date he graduated from elementary, middle and high school. What day he asked out hid first girlfriend and the day the broke up. When his first kiss was, when he was accepted to Rice University and when he graduated from there as well.
Then there were the dates like the first time he had sex with a girlfriend, his first boyfriend, first had sex with a boyfriend, first got drunk, and he remembered all of the dates with his and Greg's relationship.
When they first met at work, when they were officially a couple, when Greg was diagnosed with cancer - - again - - and when they came out to the team. When all of the chemo treatments were, when they bought their fish, when Greg was admitted to the hospital for the last time. When Greg died.
He was like clockwork. Every year he would miss the same nine days of work. Starting with the day Greg was admitted into the hospital for the last time to the day after the funeral. Then he would come back to work and wouldn't miss another day of work for the other 356 days of the year ("357 on a leap year," Nick would occasionally joke).
Nick would come back and look older. A few more lines by his eyes and creases across his forehead. His hair seemed grayer but just when people got around to asking him about it, he had color it black or shaved it again.
"Greg didn't like it when I shaved my hair. Or colored it. He liked me like I was meant to be."
He never let cases get to him any more but more like he accepted the deaths because it was their time to go, even if it was a brutal murder. He had started attending church shortly after Greg's death.
"I'm not going to go all spiritual on your ass," Nick said to Warrick. "I just need someone to tell me that Greg's ok without me."
Nick kept his determination towards his job the same - - it never wavered and Grissom never had to pull him aside and ask him what was up and why he was slacking off. It was never an issue with Nick. On any given day, most people couldn't tell that Nick had lost someone who meant the world to him - - his husband. Wouldn't be able to tell that Nick was a bundle of scar tissue, clutching onto reality with his ring finger, which still bore their wedding band.
At first, Hodges was trying to get a pot going on long it would take before Nick snapped. But the CSIs got word and, of all people, Ecklie suspended him for two weeks for inappropriate conduct and gambling on company time.
And luckily for Hodges, Ecklie suspended him before Warrick could find the little snitch and wring his neck.
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"Gregory Hojem Sanders was one of the best friends I've ever had, along with being the one and only husband I will have. He made our lab the second greatest in the country with his excellent skills in DNA testing and his passion for being a CSI. We, the night shift, were always aware that he was on the verge of greatness.
"He was a great friend, son, grandson, CSI, DNA tech and husband. He was loved by many and missed by all."
Catherine and Sara gave him shoulders to cry on. They visited when they could, occasionally bringing with them Lindsay and Nick soon found out, through visits, that Sara had a boyfriend and she seemed happy. As hard as he tried being happy for her, he just couldn't smile. He hadn't smiled for close to a month.
Grissom had him on paid medical leave and came over to visit once a week to talk shop, to keep Nick in touch with what was going on while he was gone. They had a plaque put up in the entryway of the crime lab so all who stepped foot in there would know, from now until the lab closed down years from now, who Greg was and that such a man had ever worked in the lab. Had made the Las Vegas Crime Lab second in the country only to the lab at the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building in Washington D.C.
Warrick came by and brought movies and played video games and watched football but most times it was awkward. He was a close guy friend in Nick's life and it was hard for Nick. Because Nick not only missed Greg's romantic relationship with him, but first and foremost his friendship with Greg. And sometimes, Nick felt like he still needed to respect Greg and his previous relationship and Warrick, to him, was invading on that.
Nick went back to work two months after Greg's death and even then, it was a struggle to get through a full workweek like he had been. Between the people gossiping and whispering and his emotional energy drained, he just couldn't do it.
But he forced himself to get back into the routine of the way things used to be. He found that he had moved on from the denial stage pretty quickly, one that most people find hard to overcome or never overcome altogether. Or maybe he was in denial about being in denial.
At least he was accepting Greg's death. Attending church had helped him stop being so angry. Nick used to be so angry with everyone, blaming them for Greg's death. Angry for taking Greg away from him. That he didn't deserve to die in that hospital and that Nick didn't deserve to have Greg taken away from him like that.
But there was nothing Nick could do to take it all back. He couldn't go and change the outcome of this all. Couldn't go back to when Greg was still a child, growing up in the hospitals. Couldn't take away the pain of it all, the pain of dying.
For now, loving was all he could do.
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Five years after Greg's death, Vegas had changed.
Grissom's eardrum burst right after year four due to an explosion at a scene. It hadn't ever fully healed, as the CSIs came to find out, since the surgery right after the lab explosion. Grissom retired and now worked at a school for the deaf, where he had worked a case so many years ago. He came by once a week and, with the use of a hearing aid, was somewhat able to communicate with his former team, which now has Warrick Brown as its boss.
And every single week, he would pull aside Nick and ask him how he was doing. Because every time he saw Nick, the Texan looked a few months older instead of just a couple weeks older. Every time, Nick would nod his head and try to smile but Grissom knew it was eating away at him.
Catherine had changed to day shift after year three and later moved to California with her new boyfriend and love of her life, James Romero. Lindsay had approved, as the nightshift, and they moved and later got married. Everyone had been invited and it was just weeks later that Grissom was forced to retire from the job that had become his life.
She had seen how painful it was for Nick to sit through the wedding ceremony and reception. Because this wasn't something he could do with his husband when they wed. They couldn't go on a honeymoon. Instead, Greg was readmitted to the hospital two days after their wedding ceremony. They wouldn't be able to cut their cake together, couldn't go on a honeymoon or celebrate the true ups and downs of being married.
Sara had tried dating Grissom around year two, after her boyfriend of a year and a half was moved to Italy for his job as a photographer for National Geographic to take pictures of the Civil War taking place. The two decided to break up because they realized it would be hard to keep in touch overseas. With Grissom, it was awkward at first, but both of them realized that Greg was a perfect example of life is too short and they might as well give it a shot. It lasted until Grissom's accident. He became distant and pushed away everyone for a while, including Sara. By the time he emerged from his shell, Sara had moved to swing shift and onto another boyfriend.
She noticed that Nick seemed to be pained by the fact that everyone was pairing up while he had yet to date anyone or even look at another guy since Greg's death. Saw the pain in his eyes when everyone was talking about dates and Valentine's gifts and anniversary dinners. Listen to the single girls at work gossip about one-night stands and free-for-alls at the club the previous day, where guys were staring at their asses and Nick would wonder when the last time anyone stared at his ass.
Warrick had become head of nightshift within twelve hours of the accident. The doctors weren't even sure what kind of damage had been done before Grissom declared that Warrick Brown, CSI Level 3, was to take over nightshift at the Las Vegas Crime Lab. Although it was hard for the first couple of months, he had Grissom who came in weekly to help organize his office which they could both do in comfortable silence as well as get paperwork done and talk shop and "gossip" and reminisce about Old Vegas.
The hardest thing Warrick ever had to do, as head of nightshift, was give Nick those same nine days off year after year. Nick always came in two weeks in advance, on the very same 7th of January like always. Warrick hated seeing the look of growing despair in Nick's eyes. Of yearning to be with the man he loved and knew for so many years.
No one knew what Nick did on those days off. Didn't know if he just sat at home, or went to visit Greg's grave - - he did that once a week anyway - - or if he left town all together. Grissom, during one of his visits right before the nine-day vacation, said to Nick:
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Though it wasn't his own quote - - Harriet Beecher Stowe originally said it - - Nick understood what it meant. He couldn't regret all the things not said and not done. He had to live with how things ended because that was all he was going to have for the rest of eternity - - memories. He shouldn't live with more regrets.
And even though, years after Greg's death, Nick still took those nine days off, coming back older and worn and eventually totally gray hair because he stopped dying it, he never regretted any of it. When someone asked if he could change anything about the ways things happened, he smiled and shook his head.
"I like what I've got. I don't want to change anything."
Hodges, though the bet was nonexistent at that point, would have lost. Nick never broke down; never lost it, never quit his job, yet never moved on.
But for him, moving on meant standing perfectly still. And he would, until the day he passed, joining Greg's soul, wherever it may have gone.
No matter what had become of their decayed fantasies and dreams and goals, that one would always be there.
Together forever and beyond.
Years and decades later, when Nick passed away from his own fatal meeting with cancer, everyone knew who was the first to greet him at the Golden Gates of the Hereafter.
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Author's Note:
So I am considering a companion piece for this story one-shot or even a couple of chapters about Nick and what he does during his nine-day vacation and maybe a little about what happened in the years after, like his own death from cancer. Would anyone be interested in reading that? Please let me hear your feedback in your reviews.