Title: No Strings Attached
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: Adult
Series: No Strings Attached by Dee, No Strings Attached: Past 1, No Strings Attached (2), No Strings Attached 3, No Strings Attached (4)
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.

Dee, you have my sincere and deepest gratitude for your help and encouragement on this. You may write them fluffy, but you understand their (my) angst better than most!

“Come with me,” Sara says when she tells me that she needs to leave again, and I’m tempted. Why not? What the hell reason do I have to stay in Vegas for? This isn’t my home, it never was. There was a while when I thought I’d–.

No.

I can’t. I can’t leave. There’s no reason for me to stay, but I can’t leave. Especially not with her.

 

 

Past:

 

No matter how hard hospitals try, they never manage to create a soothing environment in the waiting room. Gil wonders idly what it would take to fix this one. Maybe if the potted benjamin tree in the corner were real, instead of a rather dusty fake? Or if the TV wasn’t bolted to the wall? He’s scraping his toe against the carpet, thinking that a deeper pile would look less institutional, when his team walk in.

“How is she?” Catherine asks, taking, as always, the lead for the rest of them.

“She came to in the helicopter. They say she’s going to be fine.”

“Good.”

She reaches out and hugs him, and he stands stiffly in her embrace, staring over her shoulder at the blood donation poster scotch-taped to the wall. That definitely needs to go.

Catherine stands back and looks at him searchingly.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Listen, I wanted to thank you all. For finding her. Good work.”

He doesn’t make eye contact with any of them, afraid that they’ll see that he’s faking it all: The gratitude, the relief, the happiness, everything he should be feeling but isn’t.

“Can we visit her?” Greg asks.

“In about an hour. They’ve admitted her and they’re just getting her cleaned up and x-raying her arm. It should be okay in about an hour.” He realizes that he’s repeating himself and he shuts up.

They hang around, talking to each other, trying to talk to him, but he’s finding it difficult to concentrate on what they’re saying. He sits in an armchair, wishing they’d go away. Eventually they do, trailing out one by one after promising to come back once they’ve cleaned up, once they’ve tied up some loose ends, once they’ve checked in with Ecklie, until he’s finally alone again.

“Do you need a lift home?”

He starts at the quiet voice, and looks up at Nick.

“I… No, I should stay here.”

“You can shower, change, and be back here before she misses you,” Nick says.

It shouldn’t be such a complicated decision, but he can’t seem to align his thoughts in any sensible way. Finally, he nods, more to save himself from further thinking than anything else.

 

It’s not the first time they’ve been alone together since Nick left him, but it feels different this time. Before they’ve always been working on a case, any differences between them temporarily resolved by their unity of purpose; now he’s aware of the vast void between them. He watches Nick’s hands on the steering wheel, strong, capable hands, and yet so careful and gentle when they used to touch Gil, when they helped lift Sara onto the stretcher and held her IV solution. The realization of everything he’s lost isn’t new, and he’s given up expecting the pain to decrease over time at every fresh reminder. He drags his eyes away to stare blindly out of the window.

“At least I thought we loved each other.”

Nick’s voice is icily calm and gives Gil no clue as to what he’s thinking or even what he’s talking about.

“What?”

“I took away the only person she ever loved and now she’s going to do the same to me,” Nick says tonelessly.

At first Gil still doesn’t understand. Then the words slowly sink in and he vaguely recognizes them as something he said about Natalie Davis, but when? It feels as if years have passed since he walked into his office and found the miniature scene, and all the events that occurred after that are jumbled in his memory. He remembers the team gathered in the layout room going over the case photos and trying to figure out the connections. Catherine had said something about this case feeling different, and that’s when he’d realized, and he explained to them that this time the motive was revenge, Natalie believing that she was getting to him the same way he’d gotten to her.

“But Nick, that’s not what–”

“You know what? Forget it. I don’t give a shit. I don’t even know why I brought it up.” 

There’s still not the slightest hint of feeling in Nick’s voice, no indication of anger or hurt or even impatience. It’s that lack of emotion, more than anything, which convinces Gil that it would be absolutely useless to try to protest or explain.

In any case, Nick left him a long time ago, so what right does he now have to any explanation or to the knowledge that Gil loves him? Fuck him. Let him think what he wants.

 

 

It didn’t occur to me until later that Nick had fought the hardest to find Sara. In weaker moments, and knowing that Nick had thought I was in love with her, I fantasize that maybe he did it for me, but I know it’s not true. He fought because he understood better than anybody what she was going through, and he fought because it was one more step away from having been a victim himself.  As much as it was for her sake, it was also about his regaining control. I have never doubted his inner strength, but I knew he had, at least until Sara’s rescue. Afterwards he was calmer, somehow more certain, and I could see that he’d recaptured his faith in himself.

As for me? I was about to spin completely out of control, or maybe I already had and simply didn’t realize it at the time.

 

 

Past:

 

When Gil visits her after work the next morning, Sara greets him with a wide smile.

“Hey, you!” she says, sounding almost giddy.

A bit disconcerted by her mood and trying to hide it, he bends down to kiss her on the cheek. “Hey.”

“Greg was just here.”

“Was he?”

“Yes. And he told me what you said.”

After the conversation with Nick, he should have expected this. At the very least, he should have prepared for the eventuality that somebody else would think the same thing Nick had and tell Sara, but he hasn’t, and he can only stall, while he tries to find a way to tell her that it’s all a misunderstanding. “What I said?”

“It would have been nice if you’d told me first, Gilbert.”

“I didn’t mean for it to come out like that,” he says slowly, ironically aware of the fact that, once again, his words are open to a variety of interpretations.

Her smile shifts slightly, becoming less relaxed, more determined. “Oh, you!” she says in a flirtatious tone he’s never heard her use before.

“How are you feeling?” he asks in an attempt to change the subject.

“Good. Ready to come home.”

“Tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah.” She seems to be deflating in front of his eyes.

“You’re still tired,” he says and smoothes her hair back. “I should let you get some rest.”

“Gil. You meant it, right?”

When it comes to the moment, he can’t bring himself to tell her the truth. “Yes. Of course I did,” he says, hating himself because he knows he’s only making it worse for her when he finally does tell her.

“It’s the same for me,” she whispers, reaching out with her good hand, lacing her fingers with his. “You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”

“Sara, I–”

He wants to tell her that he lied to her just a second ago, that he’d meant something completely different than what everybody had figured and that even as he was saying it he was thanking God that Natalie hadn’t known the truth, that whatever Sara feels for him, he surely doesn’t deserve it. In a way, it’s lucky that he wants to say so much, because in the time it takes him to organize his thoughts, he recognizes the look on her face: it’s that of a child that knows through bitter experience not to hope for a caress rather than the usual blow, yet still stands its ground bravely, just in case this one time the hope comes true.

And at the end of the day, what does it matter? It’s not as if he doesn’t have feelings for her. If it makes her happy to think that they run deeper that they actually do, why disillusion her?

He leans over again and kisses her on the temple. “I’m so relieved that you’re okay, honey. I don’t think I could have–”

He wonders if he’s laying it on a bit too thick, but she doesn’t seem to notice anything out of place. He feels a sharp stab of guilt at deceiving her, and he decides there and then that he’ll make it up to her. Finally it’s acts that count in life, not intentions or wishes or feelings.

 

 

The need for white lies; Nick and I spent an entire evening discussing the subject, one of those lazy, rambling arguments, where you don’t mean half of what you say but you keep on and on, because talking nonsense with someone you love is just about the most pleasurable way you can think of to spend your time. We both agreed they’re necessary, though Nick had a stricter code than me about when they should be used.

Perhaps if my ethical guidelines hadn’t been so flexible, I wouldn’t have found myself committed to a white lie for life. But then, I didn’t really care about what happened to me. And being with Sara was a hell of a lot better than being alone. Or that’s what I thought at the time.

And perhaps the white lie might have eventually turned into some sort of truth, and Sara and I could have been happy together, if I hadn’t found myself keeping a mental ledger, a catalogue of things I’d done for her and of things she’d done for me. I wasn’t consciously expecting a strict quid pro quo basis to our relationship, but the ledger always seemed too much out of balance, sometimes in my favor (“How can she ask more of me, when I’ve already done this and this and given up that?”) but mostly in hers (“How can I make up for the fact that I don’t love her enough?”).

One of the overarching themes in poetry is love, and though poets say it a lot more elegantly than I ever will, it all boils down to this: Love balances the ledger. In its purest form, love throws the ledger away without a second thought.

It was only obstinacy, a determination to finally do the right thing for at least one person in my life, that kept me from recognizing that, despite our best intentions, Sara and I had no hope of offering each other what we really wanted or needed. Even though she had a lot more vested in our relationship than I did, or maybe because of it, Sara either came to that realization first or had more courage to act on it and walk away. Not only once, but twice.

 

 

Present:

 

“Grissom. Hang on a sec.”

Gil is on his way back to his office and he slows down and looks back at the sound of Nick’s voice. “What?”

Nick widens his stride to catch up with him. “I think… I think it’s time we talked.”

“Okay,” Gil says cautiously. “My office?”

“No. No, this is personal. After work. My place?”

Gil slows to a standstill. “Okay.”

Nick waits as if expecting Gil to say something more, then he nods. “Okay. See you then.”

“Okay,” Gil repeats mechanically.

He watches Nick walk away, and takes a deep breath in an effort to loosen the tight band that suddenly seems to have wrapped itself around his chest.