"Greg, your hands are shaking."

With that simply worded observation by his boss, Greg Sanders felt the blood run cold through his veins. This was it. This was the moment where everyone found out what a scaredy cat he really was, how his body had betrayed him and how the easy-going and bright persona he had developed over many years had cracked right down the proverbial middle, exposing the dark fear inside.

So he immediately tumbled into the realm of denial.

"No, they're not." He glanced from his hands to the narrowed eyes of his boss and willed the floor to swallow him or for the confounded hands to stop their shaking.

Instead of addressing this obvious falsehood, Grissom simply reached over and took the evidence sheet from the young man's gloved hands, eyeing the still trembling fingers. "Hold your hands out."

No, no, anything but that. Wordlessly, Greg turned over his hands, palm down, hoping that would still the trembling in his fingers, but no. They continued to shake uncontrollably. Grissom studied them for a few seconds, glancing silently at Greg's frightened face, and the young man shrank under that scrutinizing gaze.

If pleading with the universe for a sudden demise didn't work - goodness, no, he had already missed his chance for that - then he would have to go the honest route.

"Uh ... they've been shaking ever since ..." His eyes fell upon a spot in the air past Grissom, then wearily pointing toward the place where his life had recently changed. Grissom's eyes followed the direction he pointed to where a team was still clearing up and rebuilding the old lab. Greg stumbled on, glancing at his hands. "I can't really make it stop."

His voice sounded as defeated as he looked, and he kept his body turned away from his boss, not daring to hope that maybe Grissom wouldn't think him weak.

"Is it affecting your work?"

Of course that would be Grissom's first question. Work first, people's emotions never. A little hurt, Greg fell back on his only other weapon. Humor.

"Well, if I was a bomb expert, maybe." Grissom did not laugh, his gaze still steadily focused on the wobbly DNA tech. Greg swallowed the attempt at a joke. "No, I ... I think I have it under control"

Grissom studied him for a moment, then said, in an unusually kind and gentle tone, "It'll stop. If you need me, I'll be around."

Greg managed to reply, "Okay."

Then the man was gone, leaving Greg alone in his makeshift lab, clenching his fingers tightly together to still their shaking, if only for a second.

Several weeks had passed since that moment. Grissom had gone off and had ear surgery with minimal prior notice to the team, and Greg thought it ironic that his comment of 'I'll be around' was immediately followed by a large period of time where he wasn't around.

The week Grissom returned to the team, with his hearing finally restored, Greg silently cheered. Finally, he could ask Grissom a very important question.

He found Grissom in his office, studying a case file. It was familiar, the room slightly shadowed, illuminated by a single lamp. Grissom sat hunched over his desk, headphones on, listening to music that Greg couldn't hear. He knocked on the doorframe, and Grissom raised his head, then tugged off his glasses.

"Greg? Got something for me?"

"Yeah," Greg replied, wobbling in the doorway. He was second guessing himself a thousand times over, still intimidated by the broad-shouldered CSI with the piercing blue eyes.

Grissom raised his eyebrows. "You gonna stand there all night or are you going to tell me what it is?"

Greg clasped his hands together. "Yes, yes, I am, that's - that's what I came to do."

After glancing over him appraisingly, with eyes that saw everything, Grissom nodded at the tech. "Hands still shaking?"

Greg glanced at his hands then hid them behind him. "Yes - no - How did you guess?"

Grissom smiled slightly. "Because you keep squeezing your palms together and then hiding them behind you. Have a seat, Greg." He pulled off his headphones, and motioned to a chair across the table.

"Sure, yeah, cause there was something I wanted to ask you." Greg sat down awkwardly, looking anywhere but at Grissom. "Had a - uh, question. Won't take but a minute, actually I should probably just go."

"Greg," Grissom interrupted gently. "Hands." He dropped his glasses onto the desk, then propped his elbows on the desk, his own hands palm up, extended toward Greg. The young man's eyebrows flew up.

"Uh, wh-what?"

Grissom's eyebrows rose and his jaw twitched. "Hands, Greg, it's easy. Give me your hands."

"Oh." Greg hesitated for a second, then held out his hands tentatively toward his boss. Grissom closed the gap between their fingers, taking them carefully in his own, experimentally running his thumbs down the back of the smaller hands. "This - this is really weird, Grissom," Greg muttered, trying to tug his fingers free. Gil tightened his grip, pausing, and frowning at Greg.

"Don't move, Greg," he chided, returning to his odd ministrations. Greg sat there, arms awkwardly suspended in midair, elbows tucked at his sides, forehead furrowed, watching his boss who was examining his hands with his fingers as if they were a bullet he had just extracted, or a hair pulled off of a bedsheet. Grissom's finger and thumb settled on each side of his palm, pressing firmly into the fleshy part of his hand, between the thumb and pointer finger. Greg winced.

"Boss, that kinda hurts," he breathed, tugging at his hands instinctively to escape the sharp pain. Grissom looked up at him again in annoyance.

"Greg, it's normal for it to hurt. I am putting the squeeze on some nerves, and your nervous system is in overdrive. Just trying to activate this pressure point to see if it helps your anxiety. Now it only works if you stop trying to pull your hand away. So give me a minute, will you?"

"Sorry, sorry," Greg muttered, looking away, his knee bouncing nervously. "It's just really awkward."

"Greg," Grissom tried again. "Please, stop. Your knee is hitting your elbow which is jarring your hands and it's distracting me."

The tech nodded once, forcing his knee to remain calm by digging his elbow into it, every nerve in his body humming with anxiety, fearing that someone in the team would any minute walk in on this unusual scene. But he could see that complaint was futile, as Grissom studied his hands with a thoughtful frown, his larger fingers exploring sensitive places along Greg's palm, fingers and wrists. Greg focused his attention on the surroundings, all of the jars and containers of random items that Grissom kept around. They were beautiful in their own way, all different colors, shapes, sizes. A tarantula crawled slowly around its habitat tank, and Greg wondered what would happen if it ever got out. A jar next to it with small crawling bugs seemed to attract the spider and it hovered in the corner of the tank, long legs trying to reach through the glass. The sounds of the busy lab outside the small office faded and Greg found himself wondering if he should have called anyone when the lab blew up. None of his family even knew he had been hurt. He could have died and they wouldn't have known. Did they even understand what he was doing at the lab? A job that should not have been dangerous, should have been easy, day to day, science stuff. Instead, a couple bad decisions culminated into a life changing event that could very easily have ruined his career, or even ended his life. He wasn't angry at Catherine. Things happened. It just wasn't something he had wanted to add to his docket of experiences. Heck, even being out in the field was more dangerous, counting the explosion. Out there, people had guns and knives and scissors and motives. Here, he just had a hot plate, microscope, and glass slides to look after.

His mind drifted back to every step he had taken up to the moment that the glass jar in the fume box had blown up, and he studied each minute detail in his head.

He had been standing right there. Just right beside it. What if he had been standing right in front of it? What if the impact had hit him head on? Would he even still be here? Would his hopes of being in the field have been completely, utterly destroyed? Left possibly with major burns and scarring, he would be trapped in potentially the lab forever, or on disability, never to realize his dream, trapped like that tarantula behind glass walls of bad luck?

"Greg?" A faint voice called his name, but he couldn't tell where it was coming from. All he could see was the tarantula, trying to climb the glass, falling backwards, desperately wanting to be free, but reality unyielding in its captivity. The room spun around him, and he could only hear his own breathing, sounding harsh and dry in his ears.

"Greg? Breathe, in, out, come on," the voice prodded him, slightly louder, and he thought that was a very good idea, except that his lungs had checked out and left town. They refused to fill with any amount of oxygen, and a simple static began to overthrow the voice, darkness tugging at the edges of his vision.

Hands reached out, touching his cheeks, a gentle brush of fingers, then wham! A stinging spread through the side of his face, crashing the wall of static around him and the air rushed into his lungs with the force of a breaking dam.

"Greg, breathe, damn it!" Grissom's unusually worried voice slashed through his racing thoughts, and he refocused on the room, his wide eyes meeting the look of concern on Grissom's face, too close, too loud, too caring. Had he died?

"Sorry," he breathed, having finally being allowed to reclaim his hands, twisting them into his lap. He glanced around the room, brow furrowed as he tried to understand what time it was, where he was, and how on earth he had managed to end up on the floor of Grissom's office. Grissom was kneeling in front of him, head ducked slightly to look into the CSI's unfocused eyes.

"Greg, you okay?" Grissom reached to lift Greg's chin with the knuckle of his pointer finger. "Are you back with us?"

"I think," Greg whispered, taking a few deep breaths.

"You know where you are, now?"

"The floor?" Greg offered faintly, blinking away the last bit of oxygen starved blurriness from his eyes.

Grissom nodded once, unsatisfied. "Try again."

Greg glanced around for the tarantula. He couldn't see it from the floor in front of the desk, but he could see a jar with snails in it and his lip curled. "The floor in your office?"

Grissom grunted a response to himself, then pushed himself to his feet, turning away to pull his jacket off its hook on the wall.

Greg lifted a hand and gingerly touched the side of his face. "You hit me."

"Slapped you," Grissom corrected. "And only because you were severely hyperventilating and going into a panic attack. I didn't think you wanted to stay in that world of lies and confusion. And I didn't think you would want me to call the paramedics."

"Thanks," Greg muttered, hunching his shoulders. "This was a bad idea," he muttered softly.

"What?" Grissom asked, putting on his jacket. "Bad idea to come to me, or bad idea to stop breathing?"

"Both," Greg groaned, rubbing his face tiredly in his hands. "Made it so much worse."

"Well, maybe from your perspective," Grissom replied, raising his eyebrows. "But from your body's perspective, it needs to release those emotions before they bury you. Come on, get your jacket."

Greg frowned in confusion, rising on wobbly legs, flailing wildly as he got to his feet, prompting Grissom to grab his arm to steady him. "Where -where are we going?"

Grissom smiled slightly, tilting his head. "Do you like breaking things, Greg?"

"A rage room?" Greg stepped out of Grissom's car and tilted his head back to look at the bright sign on the building they had arrived outside of. Grissom exited the car and came to Greg's side, shoving his hands deep into his pockets.

"Yep. The fear you have is trying to control you, and if you want to control it back, then you need to give in to the anger you have at what could have happened, so you can move on to what has happened and how you can learn from it and move on."

"I'm - not angry at Catherine," Greg stammered, looking at Grissom with a desperate plea. "I'm not, Grissom, I promise."

Grissom smiled. "I know, Greg. You aren't mad at Catherine, but you can be. She messed up, nearly got you severely injured. It's okay to be angry without wishing harm on anyone else. You can be angry that you got hurt, that your lab got blown up, that you may have some scars from this."

"I'm really not mad about the scars," Greg interrupted, his countenance brightening. "Chicks dig those."

Grissom narrowed his eyes, a touch of humor quirking his lips, but he didn't say anything.

Greg finally looked away, studying the building contemplatively. "You think this will work?"

"Yep."

"Okay. Grissom?"

"Thanks."

Grissom nodded. "Of course. Hey Greg, you said you had a question for me."

"I did?" The false sense of confusion did not fool Grissom.

"Yes, you did."

"Oh," Greg took a breath, kicking at the ground. "I - I was going to ask how long."

"How long?"

"Before the shaking stops."

Grissom patted Greg's shoulder in a rare display of affection. "Don't rush it, Greg. It will happen."

"Okay. Well here I go," Greg breathed, taking a few steps toward the Wreck Room. He paused when Grissom didn't move. "You coming?"

Grissom smiled, a genuine smile. "No thanks, Greg, this is all for you. Go have fun."

"Oh," Greg whispered, then nodded. "Can we do something you like next?"

His puppy dog eyes were so sincere, and Grissom could sense his need to pay the older man back somehow.

Grissom shrugged. "How are you with roller coasters?"