Title: No Strings Attached (6)
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: Adult
Series: sequal to No Strings Attached by Dee, No Strings Attached: Past 1, No Strings Attached (2), No Strings Attached 3, No Strings Attached (4), No Strings Attached (5)
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
A/N: 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!

Present:

 

Gil stands outside Nick’s door, adrenaline spiking so high, it’s making him nauseous. And despite the fact that he took a shower less than an hour ago, he can smell himself, an acrid odor caused by fear. Ever since Nick spoke to him in the hallway, he’s been riding an emotional roller-coaster, trying to guess what Nick wants to talk about. He’s considered a number of possibilities, some so crazily optimistic he can’t bear to dwell on them more than a split second – yet that’s where his mind, his heart, go, again and again – and two that seem most realistic. Of those, he doesn’t know which he least wants to hear: that Nick has decided to leave Las Vegas - but that’s not really personal, at least not any more, is it? - or that Nick wants them to try and be friends, as a last tribute to Warrick. In his more rational moments, Gil recognizes that either alternative is probably preferable to the no-man’s land they’re currently on either side of. On the other hand, he’s learned how to live with the way things are. Not to ever see Nick again is unthinkable, awful. And to be friends seems impossible.

He can barely bring himself to knock on the door, and once he finally manages it, the sound is soft and almost furtive. Nevertheless he stands waiting for the door to open, pretending that there’s some slim chance that Nick might have actually heard him. He counts the seconds off in his head, unsuccessfully trying to regulate the beat of his heart, which kicks almost painfully in his chest every time he even thinks of knocking on the door again. Suddenly, without even being aware of how it happened, he’s bent over with his hands on his knees, dry retching.

“Griss? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

At the sound of Nick’s voice, he straightens up and wipes the cold, slick sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Yeah. Fine,” he says hastily. “Something I ate.”

“Uh huh,” Nick says, but Gil can see in his eyes that Nick doesn’t believe him. “Well, come on in. Can I get you anything?”

“No. No, thanks.”

Gil has never been to the house Nick rented after they broke up. He looks around him curiously, searching for familiar items, but most of the furniture is new. And it looks as if Nick only recently moved in; there are still boxes in the entrance and living room, and the part of the kitchen counter that he can see from the entrance is completely bare.

“How long have you lived here?”

Nick shrugs. “A while. I just haven’t quite figured out how I want things yet.”

“It’s nice,” Gil says, but he doesn’t really mean it, because it’s impersonal and lacks the settled warmth of Nick’s previous house, or of the home they’d had together.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Nick gestures vaguely towards the living room. “Why don’t we sit down? Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

Gil shakes his head. He just wants all this over and done with. He sits uncomfortably upright on the edge of an armchair that was designed for a lot more relaxed postures, and waits for Nick to say what he has to say.

And waits.

And waits.

“Well?” he asks, when it becomes obvious that Nick has no intention of speaking without being prompted to do so.

He watches Nick’s Adam’s apple bob up and down a few times. It’s oddly comforting to know that Nick doesn’t have this any more under control than he does.

“I don’t think we can go on like this. We need to talk. Clear the air.” Nick pauses. “Figure out where we’re going from here.”

Grissom nods several times while Nick speaks, as if in agreement, but he has no idea what Nick expects him to say. Where is he supposed to start? And how? You don’t just come up to a man after three years and tell him you want to clear the air. “I don’t think I want to do this,” he says in a sudden spurt of anger.

“Fine. Then just listen to me. Can you do that?”

He nods reluctantly.

“I heard Sara left again.”

“That’s none of your business,” he responds sharply. Not any more.

“No. I know. What I mean to say is, I’m wondering if she’s gonna come back. Or if you’re going to go with her this time.”

“I don’t know.” He hesitates, wanting to leave Sara out of all this, but Nick chose to start out by asking about the future, and he can’t ignore that.  “Why?” he asks finally.

Nick shrugs. “I… When she came back, you didn’t seem that happy about it.”

“It wasn’t exactly a happy occasion.”

“No. I know. I know,” Nick says hastily. He breaks eye contact and rubs his palms against his jeans, as if to dry them. “Gil, do you love her?” He asks the question quickly, nervously, his voice higher than normal.

Gil wants to repeat that it’s none of Nick’s business, but Nick’s use of his name disarms him. Nick hasn’t called him Gil since their relationship ended, and the memories of Nick saying his name in laughter, in passion, even in anger, are suddenly painfully vivid. He swallows hard against the building tightness in his throat.

“No,” he says thickly. “Not like that.”

“Did you ever?” Nick whispers.

There’s no simple answer Gil can give to that question without being disloyal to either Sara or Nick. “Sara has nothing to do with what happened between us,” he says harshly. “Leave her out of it.”

He sees the flash of anger in Nick’s eyes.

“Sure she does. The two of you hooked up awfully fast once we broke up.”

“What the hell difference does that make?” Gil asks angrily. “Why, would you have come back if it hadn’t been for her?”

“Maybe. I guess we’ll never know.”

Gil stands up. “What are you doing here, Nick?” he asks in frustration. “What is this all about? Because it sure as hell isn’t clearing the air.”

Nick leapt to his feet at the same time as Gil, and now he takes a step forward, his fists curled tensely at his sides. “I need to understand. I need to understand how you could move in with her three months after we broke up. I need to understand how you could say that she’s the only one you ever loved, as if I’d meant nothing.”

“I never said that!” Gil bellows. He takes a deep breath, trying to regain control. “Jesus,” he exhales, his voice lower. “I never said that. It’s what you all assumed I said. And I couldn’t give a shit what anybody else thought, but you? How could you ever think that? What did you think I was doing with you? Playacting?”

“I don’t know. At first, no. But afterwards, after–. Yeah. Sometimes. Most of the time.”

 Nick’s last words hit him almost like a physical blow. His knees buckle and he sinks back into the armchair.

“What?” he whispers in stunned disbelief. In three years, in all the endless hours of self-questioning and post-mortems, it never occurred to him that Nick had ever doubted Gil’s love. At least not while they were together. In fact, the first time Nick had ever brought up the question of love was after they’d found Sara, when he’d driven Gil home from the hospital. And then, once again, only a few weeks before Warrick’s death, when Nick had blown up at him. Both times Gil hadn’t been able to move much past his own hurt in order to try and understand Nick’s side and insofar as he had, he’d decided it was just a case of revisionism, Nick finally finding a reason, however implausible, for what he’d done, and latching onto it.

“You kept on treating me like I was a child, like I’d lost all ability to think or act or decide for myself. No matter what I said or did, it didn’t matter. You no longer saw me.”

“Of course I did.”

“No. Because that would have been too complicated for you. You just saw what you wanted to see, a vic-”

“What I wanted to see?” Gil interrupts, the pain as sharp as it was during Nick’s long absences, when Gil would lie sleepless wondering if Nick would ever return. “What I wanted to see? Like what? You cheating on me?”

From the look in Nick’s eyes, he knows he’s scored a direct hit. “I– You knew about that?”

“Yeah. I knew about that. But I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t care. I just wanted you to be safe.”

“But, Gil, I was safe. Or as safe as any of us are. Why couldn’t you accept that?”

Gil looks down at his tightly clasped hands. He loosens his grip and stiffly flexes his fingers in an effort to release the tension that’s been building and building. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t. I know that I went about a lot of things the wrong way. I see that now. But at the time…” He shakes his head. “Why couldn’t you accept that I needed to protect you? That what happened to you affected me, as well?”

“I don’t know,” Nick says after a while. “Until Sara was abducted, I guess I never really thought about how the rest of you might have felt looking for me. How you might have felt. You were always…” Nick pauses as if he’s searching for the right words, then he shrugs. “I don’t know,” he repeats simply.

It’s hopeless, Gil thinks. They’re not resolving anything, just re-opening old wounds. Understanding how wrong they were about each other, how pointless the breakup might have been, how they might have worked their way through it if only something had happened a little differently; what does it matter now? They can go over everything again and again, but the fact is that things happened as they did and nothing they say now can change the past. Determining that there might have been a different outcome is only going to cause more pain, not less.

“This was a mistake. I need to go,” he says tiredly, pushing himself to his feet once more.

“No,” Nick says. “No.” And he blocks Gil’s path to the door.

Suddenly it’s as if all the air has been sucked out of the room and Gil can’t breathe. He watches Nick take a step closer to him, senses more than sees Nick raise his hand until it’s hovering right next to his cheek, until he feels its heat and occasional feather light touch.

“Nick,” he whispers, don’t do this, don’t complicate things further, but then it’s he who grabs Nick’s nape and pulls him closer, it’s he who kisses Nick, moaning as he feels Nick’s body press against his, after all this time Nick’s body, its solid strength, its hardness, and God, it feels so good, so damn good.

 

“What now?” Nick asks, and Gil shakes his head. Sex solves nothing and probably complicates everything, but at least it’s simple and straightforward while it’s happening, and he doesn’t want to start thinking again.

Nick rolls over onto his side and props himself up on one elbow. “Gil?”

“I don’t know.” Can we just lie here and pretend that the last years never happened, that Walter Gordon never took you?

“I asked you something before, but I guess it wasn’t the right question.” Nick pauses, then runs his knuckles lightly along Gil’s arm, from his wrist to his shoulder, then down again.

“So what’s the right question?”

Nick’s hand stills and he wraps his fingers around Gil’s wrist. “Did you love me?”

Gil feels a faint stirring of renewed anger that Nick would doubt it.

“Yes. Very much,” he says finally.

“And now?”

It’s a simple word and it used to be so easy to say. It was their code. The trouble is that he’s never had to say it without knowing what the response will be, and, despite the fact that things couldn’t get much worse between them, he doesn’t know if he has the courage to drop his defenses one final time.

“Always,” he chokes out, looking into Nick’s eyes.

Nick doesn’t respond immediately, and Gil can feel the fingers on his wrist tightening, until the grip becomes almost painful. He concentrates on that, because at least that’s the kind of pain he knows he can handle.

“We’ve been fools,” Nick says, and it’s not the response Gil allowed himself to hope for, if even for a split second. Rather, it’s an epitaph to their relationship, to the whole sorry three years after that.

“Yeah.” He disengages his wrist from Nick’s grasp and sits up on the side of the bed, scanning the room for his clothes.

When he’s dressed he looks back at Nick, who’s sitting up with his arms wrapped around his knees.

“Well, we talked,” he says awkwardly, knowing that this is finally it, this is the goodbye they had never actually said in so many words.

A flash of bitter humor shows in Nick eyes and in the sudden tilt of his mouth.

“Yeah. We talked,” he agrees quietly.

Gil clears his throat. “I guess I’ll see you at work.”

“I guess so.”

Gil gives an awkward wave, which Nick doesn’t respond to or even appear to notice, and he walks out of the bedroom. He’s already opened the door to leave Nick’s house when it hits him. The unfairness of it all, the futility, the damn sheer waste, it all washes over him in a great wave of blinding rage. He slams the door shut and strides back into the bedroom.

Nick obviously thinks that Gil has left; he’s lying flat on his back with his forearm flung over his eyes, and he jumps at the sound of Gil’s voice.

“What about you?”

“What?” Nick’s eyes are red.

“What about you? Did you love me?”

“Yes.” Nick responds without hesitation.

What Gil should ask is “and now?” But he doesn’t, because he’s still angry, and damn it, he doesn’t care if Nick loves him right now, because he’s not going to go down without a fight this time, and if he won Nick’s love once, he can do it again.

“Will you go out with me?”

“Go out with you?”

“On a date. Movies, dinner, bowling, whatever. Will you go out with me?” He’s aware that he’s sounding ungracious, like going out with Nick is the last thing he wants to do, and he appends “Please?”

Nick slowly sits up. He stares at Gil for a couple of seconds, his mouth hanging open.

“You want us to go on a date?” he asks incredulously, but he’s starting to smile.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Nick laughs. “Okay, let’s go on a date.”

 

 

Three months later, I resigned from the lab. At some point I guess I’ll look for a more permanent position, but for the time being lectures and ad hoc consulting keep me pretty busy, busier, in fact, than I’d like to be. Nick’s been promoted to Catherine’s #2 and he enjoys the extra responsibility, even as he gripes about how immature and green the new CSIs are. “Compared to them, Greg is you,” he told me once and I laughed.

Did Nick and I live happily ever after? Well, we’re getting there.

We’re getting there.