TITLE: Relatively Speaking
AUTHOR: Amber
RATING: T
FANDOM: CSI
SUMMARY: Cowardice and acceptance are relative concepts.
DISCLAIMER: This is a fannish work. That means I'm taking someone else's hard work and tweaking it in completely unintended ways. However, I do so in a not-for-profit manner. Yay, legal.
NOTES: For eleanorlavish, whose open-ended suggestion sparked something in my mind, apparently. Nick/Greg.
Greg knew that it was petty, but he showed up early and hung around the lab during the tail end of Nick's shift, purely for the purpose of ignoring the other man. He played an old board game with Hodges once the boredom of high school politics overtook him, and when Hodges insulted him, he wasn't completely able to take it in stride. He responded, an unnecessary jab that left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth, more so when he saw that Nick had heard him. Nick was paused in the doorway, unseen by Hodges, and Greg steadfastly avoided looking at Nick while he told Hodges that he had never been one to take the path of least resistance.
Nick walked away.
A few hours later, Greg was standing back from the others, silent, as they peered at a computer monitor. He could not bring himself to look at Nick now, either, but for entirely different reasons. The anger had been pushed away by something bigger, something somehow more oppressive even than the fear he felt: guilt.
The fear he could handle, because he knew that it was shared and thus diffused. The guilt, though, was his alone, and no one knew. The last thing he had done to Nick had been to call him a coward. Twice, in fact: once over coffee in Greg's kitchen, just that morning, and again in front of Hodges that evening. Nick was fighting for his life, calmly and bravely, but if he was thinking about Greg at all, it was with the memory that Greg thought him a coward.
And he had, just hours before. Greg had thought Nick was a coward because Nick had refused to use the four-day overlap in their June vacations as an opportunity to finally take Greg to Texas, to introduce him to his parents and to show him around the ranch, to share where he came from. Greg had sipped his coffee, called Nick a coward, then stalked off down the hall and slammed his bedroom door. After the apartment door, too, had slammed, Greg had fallen asleep.
Now he wondered whether he would ever have another good night's sleep; he had already decided, in a morbid but calm moment, that he would sleep alone every night for the rest of his life if Nick did not make it home. His coffee tasted bitter as he drank it in front of the computer, taking his turn with the mouse. Every two minutes. Every two minutes, he would click the light on, and Nick would flinch.
Nick had flinched that morning, too. He had flinched, then his square jaw had clenched, and Greg had needed to retreat to his bedroom before he commented on Nick's good ol' southern boy charm outweighing his common decency. Maybe common decency meant understanding that Nick saw no way to take Greg home, maybe common decency was having a little more understanding for the man he claimed to love, but Greg Sanders was all about one-line responses to wounded pride. "You're a coward, Nick Stokes" was certainly not his most creative, but his mind had been more than a little muddled by a twelve-hour shift and the ruins of his idealistic visions of their future.
The irony, he thought, as he was relieved and wandered into the corridor, was that Nick's parents were right in the building now. More, he was actually expected to go to them and to introduce himself. Lacking any other specific assignment, he decided he had to do so, and minutes later found himself standing across from two very exhausted but undoubtedly sophisticated older individuals who had risen to greet him.
"Judge Stokes, Mrs. Stokes, my name is Greg Sanders." He held out his hand, and Nick's father shook it firmly.
Nick's mother, however, ignored his hand and stared at him dazedly. "Greg Sanders? Nick's mentioned you."
"Oh?" Greg was unsure what else to say. He knew that words of sympathy and reassurance were called for here, but they refused to come.
"Yes." She turned to her husband and said, "You remember, don't you, with the promotion?"
Her husband nodded, though Greg thought he saw on his face, in his diverted eyes, that Nick's father thought this particular exchange to be inappropriate. "I remember."
Greg shook his head, the frustration of the past day threatening to overwhelm the calm demeanor he had assumed when he woke that afternoon and cemented when the call came in that Nick was missing. He took a breath, nodded at Nick's parents, and retreated from the room.
The calm was absolutely necessary, had been since the kitchen that morning, because either anger or desperation had threatened to overwhelm him every moment since. Warrick's outburst in the warehouse almost undid his reserve, and as soon as he could slip away, he knelt outside, hands on the light dirt, and hyperventilated; he had never been able to cry easily, even when it may have done him good. He knelt there, begging no particular force for a Hollywood movie revelation, for some miraculous piece of evidence to catch his eye the next time he looked up. But nothing appeared, nothing save a seemingly endless expanse of dirt. And somewhere out there was Nick.
Months before, Greg had been watching Nick sleep and was surprised by an amusing thought, that Nick may simply have sprung from the Texas soil, thirty-years-old and with a working knowledge of Latin. Greg knew as well as anyone how miserable much of Nick's life had been, but he had seemed so content then that it was easy to forget, easy to imagine that nothing bad had come before. Greg had chuckled there beside him, and Nick had turned over and pressed his lips to Greg's. "Jokes this evening. Sleep now." And they had slept.
Greg blinked and stood, brushing dust from his knees. Bittersweet, mostly bitter, and everyone had lied: nothing felt more special now than it had before he lost everything. Occasional anger aside, he had known just what he had, and now it seemed to be lost to him forever. He brushed the dust from his knees, looked around one last time, and thought that he would like to sink into the ground with Nick.
But Nick had come back, risen from the grave, while Greg stood silently by. Greg was the cowardly one now, the one who took no step toward the ambulance, the one who hung back at the hospital the next day, lurking in the gift shop and avoiding the floral arrangements.
He made a point of visiting Nick when he thought he would be asleep, just so that Nick's parents could say that Mr. Sanders had been there. It was avoidance based in fear. Greg recognized the irony, and that was why he stayed away.
Three days later, Greg's cell phone rang five minutes after his shift ended. He was halfway to his car when he managed to pull the phone out of his bag and flip it open. "Sanders."
"Hey, Greg," a voice answered quietly.
"Hey, you," Greg replied, voice just above a whisper. He cleared his throat, suddenly tight, and tried again. "Good morning, Nick."
"It's really not," Nick answered in the same quiet voice.
"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry." Greg fumbled to close his bag and continued to his car. When he reached it, he leaned against the door, already hot, and closed his eyes. "Seriously, Nick."
"I know."
"I am so sorry."
"I know."
Greg knew that he was shaking, and he found himself gasping for breath. After a moment's confusion he realized that he was actually, finally crying, and he took the phone away from his mouth long enough to allow a couple muffled sobs to escape.
"Hey," Nick was saying when Greg pressed the phone to his ear again.
"Hey," Greg repeated.
"The morning would be better if you were here."
Greg sank to the ground, unsure that his legs would hold him. The phone was cradled against his ear. "Yeah?"
"Yeah, Greggo. Come home."
"I just thought," Greg half-lied, "with your mother still in town--"
"She doesn't care," Nick said in the same quiet voice. "If she ever would have, she won't right now. Come home."
"Okay." Greg stood and shakily climbed into the car. "Okay. If you really want me to come. I'm starting the car now. So I'll see you soon."
"Don't hang up."
"Nick. I have to drive."
"Everyone drives on their cells. Please." Nick coughed, the sound harsh in Greg's ear. "It's just-- I haven't heard your voice in days."
"You're supposed to be resting your throat, Nick, I'm almost sure of it."
"I am." Nick's voice was getting hoarser, from the stress of speaking and, Greg somehow knew, from emotion. "Fine. You talk."
Greg sighed as he pulled the car out of the parking lot and onto the street. "I really do love you."
"I never mind hearing that, and right now--."
"Quiet, Nick, remember."
"I love you, too."
"Nick."
"Hmm."
Silence rang over the line, then Greg began to speak, uncustomary honesty delivered in the lightest voice he could manage. "I had a dream last night, very Freudian. It was about you. We were at your parents' house, and we were riding horses. Along a beach, which I imagine they don't have there. And there was a storm, huge lightning out over the water, so we turned around. Gray skies, strong winds, and I look up, and your father is watching from behind this old wooden fence. I dropped the reins, or the wind took them, and I couldn't get the horse to listen. He was heading out for the water suddenly, and you were going toward the house, and I yelled but you didn't-- Nick?"
Greg paused, straining to hear over the noise of traffic. Then he heard it, a sound he had heard just days before but hoped never to hear again, no matter how much he knew to expect it. Nick was crying. It was soft, likely quieted by the back of his hand, but the sound was unmistakable.
"God, Nick, don't. I love you, I'm sorry. It's okay."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Nick, I'm going to be there in a few minutes, and we're going to sit and be quiet, because I'm awful at this serious talking, but I'm going to hold you and it's going to be okay."
"My mom's here," Nick whispered miserably.
Greg was just turning onto Nick's street, and he felt angry in spite of himself. "Do you want me not to come?"
"No," Nick muttered. "Doesn't matter. She'll find out eventually."
"Yeah," Greg answered, pulling into the driveway, unsure what else to say.
"And I wouldn't run away from you," Nick said, his voice strained but his words still clear. "Because everything hurts and this is so hard, but I wouldn't leave you."
Greg tried not to remember the slamming door. He whispered, "Freudian storm or no?"
"God, no." There was a pause, then Nick's voice again. "So you'll be here soon?"
"Yeah." Greg closed the car door softly and climbed onto the porch. He rang the doorbell, and Nick's mother answered. Greg's eyes adjusted to the dim light, and he saw that Nick was sitting on the sofa, his phone clutched in his hand and a crumpled tissue on the table in front of him. Greg crossed tentatively to the sofa, but when he reached it, Nick stood and embraced him without hesitation.
"It's okay," Greg murmured.
"We're okay," Nick responded, and Greg realized that he had misunderstood what kind of reassurance Nick was seeking.
"Yeah, we're okay," he agreed immediately, and the hand not still holding his phone reached up to brush over Nick's hair. Greg opened his eyes and peered over Nick's shoulder at his mother, who was watching the two men with unclouded eyes. She simply nodded at Greg, who rested his head on Nick's shoulder. It may take time, but he knew he was being honest when he closed his eyes and whispered, "We're going to be fine."