Catherine runs her hands through her hair and wishes that she still smoked. She could really use a cigarette right now.
It's been a hell of a night. A hell of a night, and a hell of a case. Nick's with the little boy now, waiting in Grissom's office for Child Services to show up. Through the window, she can see him hunkered down next to the kid, who's examining something slimy and dead suspended in formaldehyde with apparent delight. Nick's smiling, but the line of his shoulders is tense and angry.
He's good with kids, even without having any of his own. Must be all those nieces and nephews. The little boy was timid and frightened when they brought him out of the hotel room, but now he's laughing, tapping the glass jar with his fingers and looking up pelt Nick with questions.
Caleb Jenfry. He's ten.
Grissom tells Nick to stay with him while they do the interrogation. Catherine doesn't know if it's coincidence or one of Grissom's sporadic flashes of social acuity, but either way, she's grateful. By the time they're done with the interview she's even more grateful, because she's itching to strangle the bitch herself and she doesn't like to think what Nick might have done if he was in the room.
That bitch. That fucking bitch. His teacher. His fucking teacher, and it isn't enough. She's going to be in jail for the next fifteen years at least, and it isn't fucking enough. Catherine almost has to sit on her hands to keep from clawing the woman's eyes out, and maybe Grissom knows that, because he tells her to go see if Child Services has shown up yet.
Actually, what he tells her is to go see how Nick's doing. She's not going to ask about that, because that would mean asking how much he knows, and that would almost certainly mean giving away what she knows. Socially inept as he can be, Grissom is frighteningly good at getting people to spill their guts.
The girl at the front desk tells her that Child Services has come and gone, but she doesn't have any idea where Nick is. Catherine tries the break room, the cubicle he shares with Warrick, and then, for some reason she can't fully explain to herself, the labs.
She finds him in the locker room, sitting on one of the benches. Just sitting, hunched over, head in his hands. He isn't shaking or crying, and she thinks it might be easier, if he was, to approach him. Except for his hands, which are clenching convulsively in his own hair, he's unnaturally still. She hesitates at the end of the row, unable to walk away but equally unable to move closer, and she's still frozen there when Greg brushes past her without even looking, moving purposefully.
At first, she thinks he hasn't even seen Nick there, and she throws out a hand to stop him. Greg's not tactful even at the best of times, and Nick's as tightly wound as she's ever seen him. If Greg makes some kind of crack, she really thinks Nick might punch him.
Greg doesn't make a crack. He stops behind Nick, hesitates, sighs, and touches the back of his neck. "Hey."
Even from where she stands, she can see the tension coil out of Nick's frame. He runs his hands through his hair, then drops them, still staring at the floor between his knees. "Hey."
"I heard about the kidnapping."
A shudder runs over Nick's body, but when he speaks, he just sounds tired. "Yeah. We got that--"
"--bitch," Greg finishes. He sounds uncharacteristically venomous. "Some fucking people--"
"Yeah."
"How old is he?"
"Ten." When Nick slams his fist into the bench beside him, Catherine jumps back. Greg doesn't even flinch. He straddles the bench and reaches across to take Nick's hand, running his thumb over the knuckles.
"Keep that up and you're going to break your hand. You want to talk about it?"
"No. Man, I just--" Nick sighs. "Sometimes I just cannot believe the things people do to each other."
"I know." Greg's voice is lower. Tender. "Hey. I know." Without letting go of Nick's hand, he reaches around to pull the other man into an embrace. The angle looks awkward, but Nick sighs again and sags into Greg's arms like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
Catherine blinks. Finally gets it.
Greg presses his cheek against the top of Nick's head, then looks up to meet her eyes. She starts. Until just now, she wasn't sure he even realized she was standing there. The expression on his face is fierce; a little scared, a lot defiant.
Smiling a little, she holds up her hands, mouths, he's all yours, and has just long enough to see the startled gratitude on Greg's face before she gets the hell out of there.
Grissom corners her in the hallway later that night and asks if she talked to Nick. She can't help but smile.