Title: There’s Never A Back-Story
By: Gregisamazing
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG (honestly any higher would kill me)
Disclaimer: CSI? Not mine… The boys? Damn, I wish!
Notes: This is the accompanying piece to 'Price of Life'; written especially for sylvanelfqueen
Summary: People didn’t often see what was behind actions, they never seemed to believe there was a back-story.

He hadn’t seen Greg since the settlement; he hadn’t come home; he hadn’t gone to work… He’d all but dropped off the planet. There hadn’t been a phone call; or a hastily scribbled note pinned to the fridge with one of those giant orange magnets Greg had insisted on buying… There was just nothing; and that really was worrying.
 
That was why tonight, the breaking and entering didn’t have Nick Stokes full attention. That’s why for the past few days, nothing had really got Nick Stokes full attention. He was somewhere else, trying to figure out where his companion had vanished off to.
 
It wasn’t like Greg to just disappear without a trace; he’d always left a trail behind him (normally it was a trail of clothing, but who was Nick to complain about that?) Yet Nick couldn’t see anything that would help him find out where Greg could have got to.
 
Things had definitely been tough over the past couple of months; especially for Greg. He’d been beaten and then broken; then passed about from person to person and now he’d just been betrayed by the last people that had been on his side. Things really couldn’t get all that much worse for Greg; and Nick guessed that was why he’d just decided to vanish.
 
People didn’t really understand that Greg had done what was right in the situation. He’d tried to scare off Demetrius, and he hadn’t moved. Greg just did what any self respecting human would do; he just tried to save the innocent and in the process… He’d killed someone else. In all sense of the word- Nick knew that Greg was a hero. He could have just waited for back-up, he could have just acted like nothing had happened, but he didn’t and that showed courage beyond the call of duty.
 
How could someone possibly be punished showing that there was still good in the world?
 
As if the trial hadn’t been bad enough; as if he hadn’t received enough bad-publicity; Greg ended up right back in the firing line when the settlement came out. It made him look as though ‘justifiable’ had just been a cover-up and that Greg had been guilty all along. Greg wasn’t a murderer; he was someone just doing what should have been the right thing to do. Somehow though, what was right and wrong no longer meant a thing.
 
$2.5 million was a large amount of money to anyone, but was that the value a life had these days? Did that much green make life better? Sure, they said the grass is always greener on the other side, but Nick had never thought that in receiving money- things would be made better. So as the James family just rode of into the sunset with their new found wealth; the county waved merrily as all their problems disappeared. Couldn’t anyone see that the cheque was taking another life along with it?
 
That’s when Nick had realised that Greg wasn’t really himself anymore. How could he be when everyone had sold him down the river? How could he be when psychologists poked and probed? He’d suffered enough; and somehow putting a price on what he’d done had just been the limit.
 
That cheque wasn’t the price of Demetrius James’s life… It was the price of Greg’s too.
 
The family were in all the headlines because this victory; they were flashing their cash at anyone that was willing to look; they were spending it all. All of this was because of their ‘poor misguided’ son and the ‘vicious’ CSI. They were benefiting from their new-found wealth- spending away the last drops of Greg’s career.
He sighed; somehow money was always the object of the game. Like now, right in front of him, a case he’d seen a million times before, the same old story. A guy breaks in, steals some money and objects to raise money to clear his debts. This whole town had been built off the foundations of greed, the search for fools gold, everyone in the town had to suffer from it.
 
Even those who didn’t deserve to.
 
Greg was one of those people- he didn’t deserve any of this. They didn’t see that he was a son to someone, a friend to many, a boyfriend to Nick… They just saw someone that had killed a teenager. That’s why he got the glares, the mutterings of loathing from people, the hate mail and the harassment. There was never a back-story; just what they had did wrong.
 
He looked at the manila folder in front of him; that was exactly what he was doing now. He wasn’t looking at the back-story as to how this person had been driven to steal; he was looking at the criminal. That’s why no one could see beyond a CSI, a car and a teenager. Right from the moment Demetrius flat-lined; Greg really had been branded a murderer.
 
“Any word from Greg yet?” Catherine asked from the doorway, looking at him brow furrowed in concern. Nick silently shook his head, turning back to the folder wondering if somewhere there was a folder where Greg was labelled as the culprit- and whether in twenty years time people would take notice of the story that led up to it all.
 
She handed him a coffee, probably just to make him more comfortable. But it wouldn’t work- without a Greg Sanders trademark grin, some nonsense talking, and a promise of seeing him at home- coffee wasn’t all that soothing.
 
“He’ll come back when he’d good and ready.” She assured.
 
But what if he was never ready? It had taken him months to get over being buried alive (he still wasn’t fully recuperated) and so it could be months before Greg finally reappeared. Would Greg actually come and contact Nick, just to say he was safe?
 
“I know Cath, I know…”
 
But he didn’t know… He wouldn’t know until he felt the warmth back in his arms, heard the voice back in his ears, felt the skin against his and could taste him again. Until then, he wouldn’t know if he was safe, if he was ever coming back, or whether Greg even existed anymore.
 
---------
 
It was the fourth morning of shuffling into the apartment alone; without a clue where his partner was or a clue as to how he was doing. There was a stagnant quiet in the air; it stayed undisturbed as no sound had really been made here since Greg disappeared. The darkness loomed over everything; the black-out blinds working to block reality and sunlight from entering the rooms- maybe this way he could deny that Greg was ever gone at all.
 
Nick shrugged off his jacket; hanging it beside Greg’s. None of his possessions were missing; but they needn’t be. Greg had a supply of things in his trunk of his Jetta; the very same one that wasn’t on the drive anymore.
 
“I’m home.” He muttered under his breath, but he knew there wouldn’t be a response.
 
He padded through the house; shedding his work clothes as he went. He’d found a way to somehow keep normality; even though the other half of it wasn’t there anymore. Leaving clothes about; playing the obnoxious rock music- almost as if there was a Greg there… He never really knew he could miss a person that much; that really Greg was a part of his life.
 
Make that two lives that cheque had managed to steal away. 
 
He made his way into the living room; the only place he could sleep with Greg away. The bed was too big and too empty without another body nuzzling possessively into his side. So he’d found his home to have been the couch; watching Greg’s fish lazily swim around- unaware to their owners absence. The light of the tank just caught the outlines of shapes, creating an almost surreal look at the world. But today it was just the outline of a person; only a sliver of his face illuminated.
 
“Greg?” He whispered out of disbelief- resisting the urge to pinch his skin, just to make sure.
 
Slowly Greg turned; his large brown eyes settling on him stood in the doorway. His lips curved into a slight smile- but only slight. Nick could see the broken person sat in front of him; there wasn’t that spark of life within his eyes… That man had lost his faith in humanity and life.
 
“Where have you been? Are you okay?”
 
Questions, overwhelming, prying again; he reminded himself of the reporters that had managed to push Greg away in the first place. There was a nonchalant shrug from his partner; who refused to look directly into his eyes.
 
Moments passed, silence, awkward movements, he wasn’t sure what to say- what to do- to make this all better again. To tell this person that what he did was right, noble and heroic...
 
“I didn’t think that they’d settle… I didn’t think it’d be that much… I didn’t know what to do.”
 
Nick wrapped his arms around Greg; just holding him- knowing that maybe there wasn’t anything he could actually say to make it all better. Greg didn’t need to hear ‘you did what was right’, he didn’t need to hear anything. He just needed to know that he was safe, that Nick was always going to be there for him.
 
“Everyone thinks I’m guilty now… I didn’t mean to do it… I just had to get away… They look at me Nick; they all think that I’m a killer…”
 
Nick kissed Greg’s forehead chastely; and he nuzzled further into Nick’s side. That moment, settled in amongst the darkness, as Greg tried to justify everything in his mind, Nick realised that there was the living proof of the good still left in humanity; and even if no one ever read the back-story to the event… Greg was always going to be a priceless virtue.