Title: No Strings Attached (3)
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Series: sequal to No Strings Attached by Dee, No Strings Attached: Past 1, No Strings Attached (2)

Soon after we moved in together, Nick gave me a present, Jane Hirshfield’s “Each Happiness Ringed by Lions.” I’d read a review in the newspaper and had commented that I needed to look for the book.

 

 

Past:

 

Gil spies the small Amazon.com package on the table the moment he walks into the kitchen, and he picks it up curiously. It’s addressed to Nick.

“Did you order DVDs?”

“Nope. That’s for you,” Nick answers without looking up. He’s sitting at the table, concentrating on tacking a sheet of tracing paper onto a map of Europe.

Gil sits down next to him, the package in his hands momentarily forgotten as he gazes at Nick’s profile. “Cause I got a peaceful, easy feeling,” the Eagles are singing on the radio, and, yes, that’s it exactly, he thinks in startled realization.

“What are you up to?”

“Not much. I’m thinking of making a wooden puzzle for my nephews, but I haven’t quite figured out how I want to do it yet.” He tacks the final corner, then turns sideways on his chair to face Gil, one elbow resting on the table.

“Well?” he asks, indicating the package. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“What is it?” Gil asks, flipping the package over, extending the moment of anticipation. He was never that kid who tears into the paper, eager to get at what’s inside. Carefully unwrapping the present, taking his time while trying to guess at the content; it’s always been part of the ritual.

Nick rolls his eyes silently, then slides an exacto-knife across the table.

“I will never give you a wrapped present again,” he groans, as Gil methodically slides the blade across the edges of the flaps. “You’re not trying to preserve evidence, man!”

Once Gil opens the package, he stares fixedly at the cover of the book lying inside.

“Well? That’s it, right? The book you wanted?”

Gil clears his throat. “Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, this is it.”

He lifts the book out, gently running his fingers along the cover. “What’s the occasion?” he asks gruffly, praying he hasn’t missed some significant anniversary or relationship landmark where an exchange of gifts is customary. He doesn’t intend to give Nick the slightest room to doubt just how important their relationship is to him. How important Nick is to him.

“No occasion. You wanted it, so I got it for you.”

Money was always tight, especially after the death of Gil’s father, and he can’t recall ever having been given a gift just because. Even his birthday and Christmas gifts had often been of a practical nature, and he once joked to Nick that the sole reason he ended up pursuing science was because Santa only ever picked the educational toys out of his wish-lists. The fact that Nick gave him something simply to please him…

He takes a deep breath to steady himself, and, for the first time since opening the package, manages to meet Nick’s eyes.

“Thank you, Nick. I…” He pauses, then impulsively hands the book over.

“Will you write something?” he asks.

Nick doesn’t reach for the book immediately, merely sits there looking at Gil inquiringly, his eyes soft. Finally he nods. “Sure.”

He picks up his pen and flips open the cover. He thinks for a second, then turns to Gil, his lips twitching.

“‘There was a young fella from Dallas,/ Who sported an eighteen-inch phallus?’ Something like that?”

“Only if you can introduce him to me,” Gil gasps weakly, when he finally manages to stop laughing, and that sets them both off again.

 

“Listen to this,” Gil says later, as they’re lying in bed, Nick idly flipping through TV channels. “‘The title is ‘Each Happiness Ringed by Lions’:

       Sometimes when

I take you into my body

I can almost see them – patient, circling.

Almost glimpse the moving shadow of the tail,

almost hear the hushed pad of retracted claws.

It is the moment - of this I am certain –

when they themselves are least sure.

It is the moment they could almost let us go free.”

“I don’t get it. What are the lions supposed to be? Guards?” Nick frowns.

“No, I don’t think so. The lions feel menacing. Outside dangers? The whole big bad world?”

“So if we’re together, the lions stay away? I like that.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Gil agrees softly.

Nick yawns and turns off the TV. “Well, that’s it for me. I’ll try not to wake you when I get up,” he murmurs, leaning over to kiss Gil.

Gil only lasts about ten minutes longer before he takes off his reading glasses, sets them with his book on the bedside table and turns off his light. He closes his eyes and lies quietly, slowly relaxing. Next to him Nick shifts position, turning towards him, sighing slightly, then the room is quiet again.

“Are you asleep?” Nick whispers.

“Not yet. What is it?”

He feels fingers trail lazily across his bare collarbone and trace a path down his chest towards his stomach, and he breaks out in goose bumps.

“How ’bout I take you into my body?” Nicks asks, and Gil moans as Nick’s hand slips under the waistband of his boxers and wraps around him.

 

 

He never gave me another present, wrapped or unwrapped.

When I moved into Sara’s apartment, I didn’t unpack “Each Happiness”. Nick and the book were so inextricably linked that it seemed disloyal, almost obscene, to place it on the bookshelf next to her belongings. Later we moved into a larger apartment, and the book remained concealed among some old entomology periodicals. I knew exactly where it was, and I once thought to myself that if there was ever a fire in the apartment, it was the only thing I really cared about saving, other than Hank.

Somehow, despite everything that transpired between us, Nick and I manage to continue working alongside each other, and I don’t think anybody has ever suspected a thing: that we had once shared more, that we can now barely stand to look at each other.

A few days after Sara left, Nick invited me to breakfast. He chose his words with great care, making sure that I didn’t read anything more into the invitation than what was there: only Nick’s innate kindness, which drives him to treat a wounded animal with compassion even if it’s bitten him. I didn’t like him seeing me in that way, defeated and weak, an object of pity, and I didn’t accept his invitation.

When I returned home that morning, though, I pulled out the book from where it was still hidden, and opened it to the flyleaf. The letters are wobbly, because every time he picked up the pen to write, he’d start giggling, but the handwriting is unmistakably his: “Love always, Nick”.

I shut the book and returned it to its hiding place, but a few days later I retrieved it. I keep it on my bedside table, the same as I used to back then. It somehow anchors me to the world, even though it also makes me feel lonelier.

 

 

Present:

 

Finally home, Gil sits on the side of his bed, trying to gather the strength to undress and take a shower. Even unbuttoning his shirt takes too much energy, so he gives up and lies down on top of the rumpled covers, curling onto his side. He replays the argument with Nick, his eyes burning.

Trying to distract himself, he picks up the book of poems. It falls open to “Each Happiness Ringed by Lions” and he slowly reads it again, even though he knows it by heart. In the end, Nick and he had been too weak to keep the lions at bay.

Or maybe the lions had been within them all along, sleeping quietly, until Walter Gordon woke them.