Title: Teach Me

Summary: Nick's back in the Crime Lab and still suffering the repercussions of his trauma. With no one else who can understand what he's going through, the only person who can help him turns out to be Greg. Post Grave Danger, Nick/Greg friendship.

A/N: Since TPTB won't drag up Greg's events of Season 3 again, and I believe that Nick's locked-in-the-coffin story is just as emotionally scarring as being blown out of your lab, here's a short fic of trying to ease my own frustration.

Thanks to Fraying for being my beta-reader.

Disclaimer: Don't own CSI and all its characters, whoever owns them, owns them. But it's not me- though I wish.

Chapter 2

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Greg swore that if he stared at another leaf or crumpled tissue paper soiled with mucus, he was going to make someone have it for a meal. He decided that the lucky someone should be Hodges, and the decision was for no apparent reason. Sara had wandered off to Grissom's office to hand him a report Mia had passed to them only five minutes ago. That girl was a walking machine, and a workaholic.

It was then that Greg pondered on Sara's crush on their supervisor. Sure, she had tried hiding it with a professional front, but no one could hide anything like that from Greg the great.

He sniggered at himself and shook his head.

The point was, his shift for the night had ended, and it was time to get his ass home to bed.

It took him a moment longer, but in the end, Greg had noticed a very stoic looking Nick sitting on the locker room benches. Couldn't say the same for Nick though. He repeatedly flipped his badge between his fingers while Greg eyed him and headed over to his own locker.

No response of acknowledgement from him yet thus forcing Greg to make a simple conclusion-

Nick was oblivious to his surroundings.

"Hey, Nick."

It was a whole handful of seconds before Nick even registered that anyone was talking, let alone realise it was Greg who was standing in the same room and breathing the same stuffy air.

"Greg…"

He had practically read it off Nick's lips since his voice was barely audible. Staring at the insides of his locker, Greg pondered humming the annoying tune that was stuck in his head, repeating itself over and over again. He fought against it and decided to retie his shoelaces, just because he felt like it.

Loop in and out, over and under. Pull.

Greg double knotted it, making sure he wouldn't have to worry about a loose lace later on. He pulled himself back up and artistically threw a MagLight into his locker. It hit him somehow that there was something odd about that moment.

It was too damn quiet. "Shift's starting soon?"

A more expected question would've probably been: How are you doing? Need any help? I'm a good listener, or want to talk?

To be honest, Greg was sick of those questions; either from his own grandparents, or from Grissom. The worst was when it came from some unknown stranger who claimed to know what he was going through- the crime lab's own counsellor, sent to talk to Greg after the big lab explosion. He felt that if he had wanted to talk to someone, he would find a person by himself and not pick out people like those in the classified ads.

He shifted some objects around in his locker, trying to look for that CD he was thinking of.

"Yeah. In about half an hour."

"Cool." Obviously, he hadn't left the CD in here. Greg hoped and feared at the same time, that the disk was at home, under his mess of laundry. In frustration, he shoved a wad of papers into one corner and mentally kicked himself for not being able to keep at least his own locker clean. It wasn't a big thing, but leave it to Greg to mess up even the smallest areas.

Finding that there wasn't anything to push around, Greg glumly slammed his locker shut with more than the necessary force. He felt guilty for doing that. More for the fact that it had startled Nick who was probably on his last few nerves than anything else. The most he could do was pick up the badge Nick had dropped. "Here…" he dusted off make-believe dirt and showed an apologetic smile.

"Thanks."

"No biggie, now if you excuse me, I'm gonna head home. Think I'll crash in front of a nicely warmed bowl of instant macaroni and cheese for breakfast."

Lightly slinging his backpack halfway over his shoulder, Greg pressed his lips together to whistle thinking th-.

"Greg?"

He whirled behind to answer Nick, "Yeah?"

"How did… you… erm, you know,"

Maybe it was his own god-awful hearing, but Greg couldn't make out a word of what Nick was trying to mumble. "Say what?"

"I need help."

Three words that could make a man sound like a baby. But in Nick's case, it was a friend who was in need, and it takes an even bigger man to say those words. Greg knew, and was at least 50 sure, what Nick was asking; and yet he was trying to figure out how he could tell him the lie that everything was going to be just fine. The fact was, nothing would ever be the same again.

By the time Greg got to the bench and sat down, he still had no idea what to say. "What's up?"

There was a pause and a short window of time where Greg eyed his friend, who was seemingly contemplating his next sentence.

"How did you get over it?"

Now it was Greg's turn to contemplate, and to decipher the question, "Over… it?"

"The lab explosion." He stated it more clearly and broke the eye contact only to return with a more steadfast stare. "Teach me."

There were scenarios and dialogues, which Greg had been running through his mind, piecing together which was the best one to present to Nick. Somehow, all of them sounded immature and redundant- even more than usual.

"It chases after you, doesn't it?" It spewed through his lips before his brain could tell him to shut up. Then again, rationality wasn't one of Greg's strongest suits.

"What does?"

An understandable question to Greg's own. "You being in that…" He figured that saying 'coffin' would be too sensitive, and somehow 'box' was too insensitive. Greg was left to draw out the encasement with his fingers in the air and settled for a vague word to describe it. "…thing."

"Sort of."

Suddenly Greg was talking faster than his mind could comprehend the words. He wasn't sure whether those words were good enough to be spoken aloud. Still, his heart knew it was the right thing to say. "You know why I wanted out of the lab and into the field?"

A nod from Nick. "You wanted to get out."

"Not really." He felt like a man in confession. Whatever it was that Nick was thinking, Greg couldn't read it off his face. At least not now.

"No?"

The flashback was like a bad movie that had no audio and awful editing, but Greg remembered the details enough. So vivid were they that he wished he had suffered amnesia when he hit his head on the concrete floor that day. "I wanted out because I thought I was gonna go nuts being stuck in the lab everyday. I kept thinking that something would go wrong, and I was always checking on the hot plate, the gas nozzles, the solvents... I wouldn't even dare walk near the glass walls. I was becoming a compulsive, paranoid freak and it was so bad that, I think, I spent more time checking on things than actually running tests."

If there was ever a time that Greg had seen Nick looking defeated, it had to have been there and then, in the locker room. "

So you never got over it…" The end of the sentence was muffled by Nick's hands as he swept his palms over his face.

For the last few minutes, every sentence that had flowed out of Greg's consciousness had finally ceased, plunging the both of them into a desperate loss for words. He felt that Nick was disappointed, probably because Greg's accident was far less traumatic than his own. If Nick had indeed thought of it as that, then the older man was sorely mistaken and Greg had proof.

"Sometimes, it itches."

He wondered if he had been heard at all, since all there was from the other side was unspoken silence. "My back. It itches." He repeated himself a little more sternly. "Most of the scars faded and the doctors told me it's pretty much healed completely." He shook his head, "I know it's been two years, but every time I think about the fire, the smell of the plastic, the shattering glass… I can feel the burns."

Taking a deep breath, Greg did the one thing he was afraid to do. He gently sat his backpack on the floor and began to peel off his coat, placing it by his side.

Another deep breath in.

"Here." Turning his back slightly to Nick, he pulled up his shirt just enough, knowing exactly where the scars begun and just enough to reveal what was meant to be seen. Greg told himself he was going to count to ten and then turn back.

Six, seven… nine, 10.

Attempting to look light and casual, Greg smiled, but only a little, as he turned. "Good thing it's on my back and I can't see it." Tweezing the soft fabric of the jacket between his fingers, Greg continued,

"I may not be able to teach you, Nick, but I can help you learn from what I did."

"What?"

Greg smiled again when Nick finally spoke. "The truth is, I ran from my fears. Instead of staying in the lab and continuing my job, I fought to find a way to escape." As suddenly as he had voiced himself, Nick quieted down once more.

"I could've faced it and probably conquered it, but now I'll never know. It's another one of those situations; 'what if'." He smoothed his hair down and ruffled it all at once. Something he did absently when he struggled with his thoughts. "Sometimes I feel like I've lost more than just my sanity in that explosion. Still don't know what it was, but it's changed."

"I think I what you mean," Nick whispered.

That was it; Greg couldn't say or tell any more from his side. He felt like he had done his part, no matter how awful it was.

"Anyway, the moral of the story is 'don't run like Greg did.' Because I regret it now- don't get me wrong, I mean I love this, it's just that it's never going to be like it used to be."

"So I'm supposed to just go on working and it'll all work out?"

The tone had stung Greg as bad as a punch in the face. This is the thanks he gets for trying to help. "All I'm saying is that it's not going to be easy, and if you want you keep things even close to how they were, you have to fight for it." His own frustration mounted in his voice. If Nick wanted to wallow in self-pity, he could. He had asked Greg for help and now here he was biting him back.

Greg had enough and he decided to push every ounce of his anger into the next line, "That's all I know," He prepared himself to head off. "Don't think I can teach you anything... unless you want to know how not to cook instant macaroni and cheese without getting it too dry?"

Once again, Nick never bothered to answer. It was getting annoying.

"Okay… I'll head home then." Greg paused just at the doorstep. "Nice seeing you, Nick." It wasn't meant to be sarcasm. It was a heart felt wish of 'welcome back' to him. But it was up to Nick on how he wanted to interpret it. Because, at the point when Greg was leaving the building, he couldn't give a hoot about it.

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Thanks to goblzfor your lovely review. :)

Thanks to everyone else for reading.
-Cheers
Jo