Title: Wide Awake
By: postnotice
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
A/N: I have a lot of unfinished writing on my computer. This was one of them. I brushed it up (the first draft and a half were... wow, bad) and, well, this is the extent of my all-nighter. It reads more like a blurb of a story, I think, but I'm not sure I could handle working in both fanfiction and original fiction with abusive characters for an extended period of time, so this is where it will stay... until/unless my head calls me back into it, in which, well. Anything could happen.
Warning: Domestic abuse.
Summary: There are many decisions Nick regrets, but he's positive he regrets this one the most.

"I don't want to go to the ER."

"Greg, you could be seriously hurt. Concussion, bone fractures—" Nick forces himself not to say God knows what else like he'd wanted to. "Have you looked at yourself in a mirror?

"Listen," Greg says, cracking his knuckles against his legs, trying to cover up his shaking. Nick's hand twitches on his thigh, but he keeps it there – this isn't the time for physical comfort, and if Greg doesn't recover from this… "I'll stay up for the next twelve hours if you want to make sure I don't have a concussion, whatever, I just… I can't—Not tonight."

The light bulb in the lamp sitting next to the bed flick-flickers, burning out, but neither one of them move to fix it. Nick's too afraid to move, scared of scaring Greg. He hates that it's this way, now, that he can't even yawn around Greg without making him jump.

So, he nods his head once – slow – and asks him, "You're sure?" Skipping around the issue is killing him, but better him to have internal guilt than Greg. He can deal with this, and Greg shouldn't have to, even if Nick knows he could. Always the big brother, Nick thinks bitterly. It's what he'll always be.

Greg clears his throat, knocking him out of his head. "I'm sure," he says in a raspy voice. "I just… It's been a long time since I've slept with both eyes closed, and..."

"Of course." Nick turns his gaze from Greg to the floor. He's not quite sure what else to say, but he doesn't really want to leave yet, either. Maybe Greg wants him away, wants to get rid of him, wants the solitude. Maybe he doesn't get it. Maybe this goes deeper than Nick thinks it does. He stands up from the bed and says, "I'll, I'll be in the next room if you need me." His voice shakes with the effort of trying to keep the emotion out. Greg doesn't seem to notice, thank God. "Yeah?"

"Sure." Nick can't help glancing at his forearms, at the red marks around his wrists and finger-shaped bruises marring his skin with black and blue and purple. His chest tightens as he grips the doorknob, anger, concern, and empathy manifesting into physical pain, and he gets the hell out of there before he breaks down. "Goodnight."

"'Night."

It's this sort of thing that keeps Nick awake. Three days, and he hasn't managed to work his way through any amount of sleep longer than twenty minutes. He's an inch short of exploding from the nightmares, and if it's affecting Nick this much, he doesn't want to know how bad Greg has it.

There's never anything on at two-thirty in the afternoon, nothing except children's TV shows and things he'll just catch in twelve hours when the networks loop their schedule over again that night. He flips through the channels, barely catching sight of faces or buildings, through and through six times before he shuts the television off.

He wants to kill him.

Nightmares or not, Greg still manages to get to sleep, if the snoring coming from the guest room means anything. Nick almost finds solace in that; Greg's okay. Maybe he's not one-hundred percent, but he's okay.

His heartbeat slows again. Thump. Thump. Thump.

It's hard to wrap his head around, this entire situation. Domestic abuse doesn't happen to people Nick knows. It happens to people on the news, to the people he works with every night… It doesn't happen to people like Greg, the bouncy, life-is-a-fairytale sort of people. The light of the world. The light of Nick's world. It's just…

He feels like he goes in circles thinking about how anyone could possibly do that to someone as bright as Greg. His mind plays like a broken record, Why would he do it, why would he do it, why would he do it. He can't get rid of it.

It's not that he expects Greg to tell him everything, because Nick wouldn't tell him everything. There are occurrences that are too humiliating, situations that happened that you never want anyone to find out about… Nick knows firsthand about keeping your mouth shut, about the emotions that pertain. It's different for every person, but he gets it. He just wishes Greg didn't

The faucet in the kitchen goes off and Nick nearly jumps out of his skin from surprise. "Greg?" he calls cautiously, turning his head towards the kitchen.

Nick hears what sounds like a glass breaking from the kitchen, and Greg says, his voice heavy with fatigue, "Yeah. Sorry, I-woke up." He shouldn't be apologizing, Nick thinks.

"It's all right. I just didn't hear you get up, you scared me." Greg's feet pitter-patter as he walks into the living room and sits next to Nick on the couch, a good foot between them, but Nick feels it in miles. He clears his throat and turns away. "…Are you sleeping all right?"

There's hesitance before Greg answers. "As good as I can be, I guess, considering." He takes a drink from the glass he has in his hands. Nick watches like the two of them are moving in slow motion, and wonders how many times his lips have been this bruised, how many times he's missed it when they worked together. He tries to count it out as Greg asks, "What about you? You sleep all right?"

No remorse, no shame as he replies, "I haven't slept yet." He leaves out the part about how he's afraid to sleep when the guy that did this to Greg is still out there. How he's afraid he'll find Greg and Nick won't know how to handle that situation like he should.

Greg chuckles humorlessly. "Why am I not surprised?" He takes another drink, and then sets it on the coffee table in front of them, his hands shaking. The remaining water in the glass sloshes up the side and over the rim, onto the table. He sighs. "I have a question."

"…Okay."

"No, it's—don't think I'm not grateful, because I am. God, I'm really grateful you decided to check on me. But… Why you? Why not Sara or Catherine or Grissom?"

Nick clenches and unclenches his fingers, turns his gaze away from Greg's hands, and stares at the table, trying to keep a level head. He can't freak out, not now. "They believed you."

"Believed me?"

"You called in sick for two days, so they went with that. I'm…" Nick sighs, presses his hands hard into his thighs when he starts to feel them shake with anger. Why couldn't he-"I should have gone Monday, like I told myself to. Maybe then I could have…" He doesn't want to say it. Saved you makes Greg out to be the victim.

Out of the corner of his eye, Nick can see Greg shake his head. "You didn't know. You couldn't know. Don't blame yourself. I didn't want anyone to know."

Nick nods, a slow, almost painful movement that, in retrospect, he really wishes he wouldn't have made – the tendons in his neck make a sickening crunch noise as they move. "I get that, I really do, but… What about your friends, man? Or your family? The people who care about you?" Nick forces himself to look at Greg and force his neck back into place. Greg's eyes are downcast, locked on the table. Nick wants him to look up, but his hand stays in place, his mouth stays closed. Greg could break at any moment, even the smallest touch, the wrong words… He doesn't want to endure another half hour breakdown and not know what to do to comfort him without breaching his personal bubble.

"I don't want to be treated like I'm a victim. People look at you with pity, apologize all the time, but since they can't make the ache go away, it's all pointless." Greg finally looks up, meeting his gaze, and licks his lips. "I…"

Victim. God, he hopes he hasn't treated Greg like that. That's not – Greg isn't a case, he's not part of this job. He never has been, and Nick really hopes that just because of a bad relationship, he's going to start treating Greg like he is. When he speaks, he speaks slow, searching for the right words and still coming up short. "If I treat you like a victim…"

But Greg shakes his head and the tension in Nick's stomach dissipates just a little. "You don't. You haven't ever apologized just because you felt like it, and they're not empty words. Not from you. And…" His fingers twitch towards Nick, and Nick lets himself grab, taking Greg's hands in his. "You're safe." And he lets go; he'd held on just long enough to prove his point.

Nick laughs dryly, humorlessly. Greg doesn't know how wrong he is about that. "Safe?" He can't imagine it. "I attract bad luck, Greg. Sometimes I wonder if somebody has a voodoo doll of me somewhere. I'm anything but—"

"No," Greg says, shaking his head emphatically. "Nick, you're safe because… You like people. They screw you over, give you nightmares, and make you wish you were alone, but you still see the good there." He chuckles, a real one, then says, "Well, when you're level-headed, at least."

Nick watches him quietly, uncertain. He's not sure if Greg joking means good news or not. It's a defense mechanism and it always has been; he feels like he's getting too personal, so he jokes through it. God, it makes Nick's chest hurt.

And Greg says in a soft voice, pulling Nick from his thoughts again, "Please don't kick me out. Not tonight."

"Why would I?" Nick asks in a tone that's no higher than Greg's. "You haven't given me any reason to kick you out."

Greg smiles and says, "This... This is what I mean. I can think of five things I've said tonight that would've made me throw someone out on the street if said in my home." He looks down at Nick's hand and intertwines their fingers again, if a bit hesitantly. Nick squeezes, grounded once again by the concrete knowledge that Greg's okay and here, with him. Maybe it's that; with him. Greg's with him. Breaking the silence, Greg almost whispers, "This is what I'm talking about." Greg blinks, then closes his eyes, lightly squeezing Nick's fingers. "Just this makes me feel safer than I ever have." Again, he pulls away. "I don't know why—"

"Hey." Nick takes his hand back smoothly, transitioning from far away to close like there was never distance between them. Greg looks down at their hands with wide eyes, and Nick softly tells him, "If you feel better, no harm done." Because there isn't any harm done. Nick can want more from Greg, but this isn't about what Nick wants, it's about what Greg is comfortable with, and until he gives the green light for anything else, Nick is going to respect those boundaries.

He feels terrible just thinking about it, and offers a barely-there smile, and deadened with sadness or not, Greg nods like he gets it, and Nick feels so much more relieved that he actually finds his muscles relaxing and his body sinking into the couch.

"You need to get some sleep," Greg says after a few moments of silence. They're not touching anymore – Greg's sitting on his hands, gaze directed at the spilled water on the coffee table. Nick reads his body language so well sometimes, though, that the touching, they eye contact, none of it matters.

He just says, "I'll hold up," and sends Greg this look, trying to convey exactly what he's thinking: and so will you. There's nothing in Greg's responding almost half-smile that makes Nick feel like he gets it, but there doesn't need to be, not really. Not right now, because it'll be a long road, but Greg's going to get through it.