Title: Bittersweet
By: Evan Nicholas
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Original Character
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Letting go is easier when you have someone else to hang on to. ((Death of a non-canon character))

NOTE:
Thanks to Laurel, who makes emotionally stunted Grissom so much fun; to Abbie for the second set of eyes; and to Franky, she of staggering good looks and wisdom.

===

Look straight at the common disaster
Realise what you've lost
You keep handing out horseshoes
Horseshoes have got to be tossed

***

Greg hears about the latest catastrophe from Sara, while they're doing their daily penance at the coffee machine. "He seems shaken up," she tells him in a quiet voice. They're alone in the break room but she's still pitching herself low, doesn't want it to get around as gossip.

"Is he okay?" Greg asks.

She shrugs. "You know Grissom," she says. "He'd never let you know if he wasn't."

He chews on his lip for a bit, watches the coffee dribble through the percolator. "How'd it happen?"

"Just one of those things," she tells him. "Guy took exception to being printed and swabbed, I guess, and took it out on the closest person."

"Grissom," he says with a sick feeling in his stomach.

"It's just a scratch," she says as the coffee pot nears the fill line. "He's just - I think he's sitting in his office with the door closed."

Oh. Greg looks down at his own mug, empty in his hand, and decides he doesn't really want anything to drink right now. Gil moping in his office - not a good sign. "I should go see if he needs anything," he says, leaves his mug on the counter with the others.

Sara watches him go. "You're not going to ingratiate yourself to him that way," she cautions.

He ignores her.

***

"Grissom?"

He looks up from the journal article he's not reading, stares at the door. He can see someone's shadow on the Venetian blinds, recognises the silhouette of Greg's hair and the hesitant scritch-scritch at the glass.

He sighs. "I'm fine, Greg," he calls out.

"I haven't even asked you a question yet," comes the deadpan response. "Can I come in?"

He wants to say no, knows he probably should. He doesn't need this, doesn't need Greg's earnest friendship on top of everything else. "If I said no," he says, "would it make any difference?"

There's a pause. "I wouldn't go away and leave you alone," Greg says, "if that's what you mean."

He rolls his eyes and closes the magazine. "Fine," he says, "come in."

The door opens just enough to let Greg slip through, then he closes it behind him and stands facing him, hands in lab coat pockets. "You okay?" he asks.

"I'm fine," Gil repeats with an empty smile. He thinks how strange it is to see Greg in a lab coat again. It used to be his daily uniform, and now it's like a kid playing dress-up. No, he thinks, not a kid.

"No, really," Greg says, "are you okay?"

"Greg," Gil says, is about to launch into a lecture about leaving him alone, then stops. Sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose. "I will be fine," he corrects bitterly.

"And right now?"

He shakes his head, drops his gaze again to the desk top, to the Journal of Forensic Anthropology that came in the mail yesterday. "I'll be fine."

He can hear Greg sigh, but doesn't look up from the skull on the glossy cover.

"Gil," Greg says, and he almost looks up at that, because he misses that voice terribly, misses the drawn-out vowel of his own name and the exasperated affection that goes with it. "This is me, remember? I can read you like a book."

Yes, he remembers, although he would probably be better off if he didn't. He knows how misleading memories can be, and he knows his own recollections of Greg are distorted towards the nostalgic.

Greg is still looking at him. He sighs. "So what is the Book of Grissom saying right now?" he asks.

"Big bold letters spelling 'fuck off Greg'," Greg says, and Gil can hear the smile. "But I try not to take it personally."

He actually closes his eyes for a moment, takes a slow shallow breath and holds it for three heartbeats, lets it out. Feels ready to open his eyes and face Greg again. "It's - nothing, Greg. Nothing you need to worry about."

"Come on, Gil," Greg says, takes a step towards the desk and stops, hands still in the pockets of his lab coat. "It can't just be this thing today, the guy with an anger management problem. You put up with shit like that all the time. So why the closed-door policy?"

He doesn't want to get into it, doesn't want to share his problems with someone else, especially not Greg. But if not Greg, he thinks, then who? "It's personal."

"Cool," Greg says seriously, "I can do personal." He shucks off the lab coat and lets it pool around his ankles. The shirt under it is black and grey, and for a moment Gil misses the electric blues and greens of the past.

"I can't," Gil says, and although it hurts him to say it out loud, he manages it with a smile.

Greg rolls his eyes. "Don't tell me he's actually regressing," he mumbles skywards, and drops into the chair across from him, leans forwards. "Look, I'm just on a coffee break, I don't have time to retrain you from scratch. Just.... convince me that you'll be okay, for real, and I'll leave you alone."

He wishes he knew how, wishes he knew the words to drive Greg away for good. "I'm not sure I can do that," he says instead, averts his eyes again.

He hears Greg sigh. "Can I buy you breakfast?" he asks.

He glances up. "What about Alan?"

Greg shrugs. "Forget Alan," he says. "He'll live."

"Greg, don't make trouble for yourself-"

"-on your account?" Greg grins at him, sticks out his lower lip. "On poor little old Gil's account?"

He rolls his eyes, slumps a little in his chair.

"Say you'll let me buy you breakfast," Greg bargains blithely, "and I'll leave you alone until the end of shift."

"Okay."

Greg's eyebrows lift. "Yeah?" he says.

"Yeah."

"That was easy," he says to no one in particular, then pushes himself to his feet and gives him a shrewd look. "You sure you're okay?"

"Breakfast, Greg," Gil says in his tsk tsk voice. He gets a smile for that.

"Fine, fine," Greg mumbles, and scoops his lab coat up. "Call me when you wrap up in here." He smiles goodbye from the door, then disappears into the hall.

Gil stares at the door for a while after it's closed.

***

"So?" Sara asks knowingly when he comes back into the trace lab.

"Prickly old Grissom," he reports dutifully.

"Told you."

He keeps his mouth shut.

***

Greg phones home from his car outside the lab. The machine answers. "Hey," he says after it beeps at him, "it's me. I'm going to be late back this morning- "

Someone picks up then, and a sleepy voice delivers a gravelly hello. "Where are you?"

He closes his eyes for a moment, thinks how easy everything would have been if the machine had caught the whole thing. "I'm waiting for Gil," he says.

There's a stony silence on the other end. "Gil, huh?"

"Alan... just let it go, okay? You said be honest, I'm being honest. I'm having breakfast with Gil, and then I'm coming home."

"You know," Alan says, "I bet you didn't have breakfast with him this often when you were sleeping with him."

"What?" he squawks. "This is the first time I've even seen him outside of work in months-"

"Okay, okay," Alan grumbles, "sorry. It's just..."

He sighs. "I know. But he's... something's wrong. He needs to talk to someone."

"That's not your department anymore," Alan points out.

"He doesn't have anyone else," Greg says, "and whatever this is, it's really eating at him."

There's a snuffled kind of sigh, and Greg can picture Alan rolling over in bed, wrapping the phone cord around himself and disappearing into a knot of sheets. "Fine," Alan eventually says, "just... don't be too late. Okay?"

"I promise," Greg says and smiles. He sees a familiar figure amble towards him. "Later, okay?"

"Sure." Click.

***

"Maybe we should have gone out," Gil says sheepishly, standing in front of his open refrigerator and hoping there's a suitable breakfast-in-waiting stashed behind the condiments.

He feels Greg move to stand behind him, to peer over his shoulder, and he hates the stab of longing he feels at the heat of his proximity.

"Coffee's good," Greg offers gallantly, and retreats to the breakfast bar again.

Gil sighs, closes the fridge, turns his attention to the rituals of coffee. He knows he's being assessed from behind, that Greg is taking note of all of his tells: the pallor of his skin, the unkempt creases of his clothes, the way he's favouring one side of his neck - a crick that appeared out of nowhere - the tiny, halting clumsiness of his hands. He doesn't like that someone knows him well enough to read him this way, and he especially doesn't like the treachery of his own heart. How much he craves these stolen moments with Greg.

"Gil?" Greg asks after a few seconds of listening to him grind beans and measure them into a filter. "What is it?"

At least he has his back turned for this, at least he has that much to hide behind. "My mother is in the hospital," he says, amazed that he can shape the words so tonelessly.

A pause. "What happened?"

And he can hear all the things that Greg isn't saying, the things he's too polite and quiet to say. Quiet and polite... he allows himself a humourless smile at that. Who would have thought that Greg had such tact and peace in him?

He clears his throat around the little lump that's forming there. "She, uh, it's nothing in particular. I think she's just getting old."

He hears movement behind him, and he isn't surprised when Greg's arms find their way around his waist and settle there, so gently. A chin rests on his shoulder and Greg's breath puffs unevenly against one ear. "Oh, Gil," he whispers.

Gil squeezes his eyes shut. "I know," he hears himself say, "I know intellectually that this has to happen, but-"

"-that doesn't mean you're ready for it to happen," Greg tells him, and hugs him more tightly. "It's okay to hurt, Gil. It's okay to grieve."

"She's not - she's still alive, Greg. How do I grieve for someone who's still alive?"

"With all your heart and soul," Greg tells him. "You grieve while she's still here to hold your hand, so you can still tell her how much you love her."

He feels tears come then, and he might try to hold them in if Greg weren't there. Greg, who never found it strange, the attachment he still feels to his mother; never made a joke about it, or tried to belittle it.

And right now, he doesn't want to play the strong, silent part. Somehow feeling desperate is easier when he's not alone.

***

Greg breaks one of his cardinal rules in life - never turn your back on a cup of coffee - and turns off the machine before pulling Gil into the living room.

He drops him on the couch and makes the rounds of the room, gathering the required implements of a successful Gil-interrogation: he takes the afghan from the back of an easy chair, pours two shots of single malt from Gil's stash of quality booze, and puts the least obnoxious of his jazz CDs on the stereo.

"How long has she been ill?" he asks, settling himself in at the opposite end of the couch. Their legs are lying against each other in the middle, with the blanket spread across the distance.

"Long time," Gil says, looking into his drink.

"A week?" Greg asks, resting his arm against the back of the sofa and watching Gil divert silent tears as they appear. "A month? A year?"

He thinks. "Five months," Gil finally says.

"You've been carrying this around for five months?" Greg says, blinking.

Gil shrugs. "She's only been in the hospital a couple of weeks, but," he says quietly.

Greg sighs. "You could have talked to me, Gil," he says, nudging him in the hip with his toes. "You know I'm always here, anything you need."

He quirks a sad smile. "Greg, you've got a life. You should be devoting your energies to that, to Alan. Not to me."

"Gil," Greg says, "I know this is a concept you have difficulty with, but I didn't stop caring about you when we broke up. I still want to know what's going on, what you're up to. I want to help when I can. I'm still a part of your life."

He has to kind of grin at that, how patient Greg is - still is - with him, willing to break it down into ever simpler and simpler units until he can't pretend that he doesn't know what they're talking about. "I miss this," he says with a heavy sadness.

"I'm right here," Greg tells him. "You can have this anytime you want."

"I miss you," Gil clarifies. He leans forward just enough to catch the tips of Greg's fingers where they're resting along the sofa back.

"We've been down this road, Gil," he says softly, closing his eyes against the incredible longing that he feels coming from Gil, feels reverberating through himself, too. "We know what's around the corner, we know where it ends."

Gil moves his head in a tiny nod, lets Greg's fingers go and returns his attention to the unfathomable depths of his shot glass. "Yeah," he says. "It ends at me."

And what is Greg supposed to say to that? If it were anyone other than Gil, he would fill the silence with a politic white lie - 'no no, it's not you, it's me,' or at least the mutually-responsible 'it's us'; something to lift the terrible burden of responsibility from his shoulders. But he knows that it's true, and he knows that Gil respects nothing short of absolute truth.

Instead, he takes Gil's hand again, and says, "I know. But that's okay, Gil, because I'm still here."

He can see that Gil wants to make mention of Alan, who appeared in Greg's life a few months after they broke up. Greg is glad of his restraint, because he doesn't want to be honest with Gil about Alan. He knows that it's an ugly story, one that will paint Greg in a bad light.

Which, he supposes, he deserves.

***

There's hell to pay when he gets home, but he's too tired to take any of it personally.

He lets Alan rage at him, throwing words with as much force as he can, and he tunes it out. He knows that it's a really shitty thing to do to the guy he's living with, but there's an accompanying numbness to this quiet treachery, and he takes solace in that until he's in the shower.

He massages shampoo into his scalp and stares at a cracked tile in the shower alcove. Wonders how long until Alan leaves. Knows he's supposed to go, and will, eventually; it's a waiting game now, and Greg thinks, I'm supposed to feel bad about that.

He rinses the soap out of his eyes and thinks, Too bad I don't.

===

And distance was the accomplice that saw me lose
The most that I ever knew
Everything if not the sun
In a space that could handle two... you were gone

***

Sophia says, "Grissom's not coming in tonight, so I'm in charge." She seems kind of apologetic about it, which is why it's palatable; she hands out the assignments, gives them the most abortive pep speech in the history of the lab, and heads out on her own case.

"That's a little odd," Sara says with a quirk of her eyebrows. "Bug convention we don't know about?"

He knows she's joking, but he can't bring himself to laugh along with her. "Guess so," he says vacantly, scans the case he's been given - a break-and-enter across town, nobody hurt - and leaves.

He knows what's happened, even before he pulls out his phone and verifies it. Knows, because for weeks now he's been taking Grissom out for coffee, for lunch, for breakfast, whatever; weeks that he's been dragging it out in stages, in halting sentences and in the catch at the edge of his voice.

The call goes straight to Gil's answering service. "Gil," he says, "it's me. Tell me what you need, and where you need it, and I'll be there."

And then he hangs up and puts his phone away, and drives across town to the house that was burgled.

***

Gil stays at the hospital a long time after he's finished. He wanders for a while through the halls, tries not to meet the eyes of nurses and doctors he's come to know; he doesn't want their attention, he sure as hell doesn't want their pity.

Then he goes down to the cafeteria, tries to make himself eat a muffin, and gives up after a few bites. He can't even bring himself to drink the coffee.

He winds up in the chapel, not because he feels some renewed need to pray, but because it's a safe place to sit for a time, undisturbed. It's a blessedly quiet space, and there's the sombre shuffle of people outside in the halls to distract him, and candles to stare at when he finds he can't quite cry.

Out, out brief candle, he thinks helplessly, and has never felt so impotent in his life.

***

It isn't a conscious decision on Gil's part to wait, but it's daylight when he finds himself standing in the drizzle outside the hospital, amid the smokers and the burnouts and the driftwood like himself. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, doesn't need to listen to the message to know who it is and what he said.

He dials, closes his eyes and leans against the cool brick wall. "I need you," he says, and wills himself not to cry, not until he knows someone else is there to speak for him.

"Where are you?" Greg asks without hesitation.

Gil thinks he can hear traffic in the background. "Sacred Heart," he says.

"I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

He swallows, knows he is close to being incapable of speech. "Chapel?" he manages.

"Fifteen minutes, Gil," Greg tells him, a promise. "I'll find you in the chapel."

***

Even then, when Greg slips into the silent room and drops onto the bench next to him and wraps both his arms around him, he can't quite cry. Which is odd: he would have thought he'd be in tears as soon as Greg touched him, but no. His eyes are stubbornly dry.

Greg kisses the side of his face and traces thumb-lines across his cheeks anyway. "Home?" he asks.

He nods. His throat has closed off, strangling his ability to voice his sorrow, almost strangling his ability to breathe. He hasn't felt a loss this heavy since - too long to remember: maybe never.

He isn't quite sure how he comes to be sitting in the front seat of Greg's car, but that's all right because it doesn't really matter. He watches through the windshield as Greg deals with the traffic warden who was writing out a ticket when they arrived: he half expects him to throw a fit, or to beg or plead or something - but he doesn't. He stands there with his hands in his pockets, shifting from one foot to the other, just waiting. As soon as it's written, he stuffs it into a pocket and walks around to the driver's side.

Gil watches him. He wants to thank him for coming, for dealing with all this shit, but he can't.

And the look Greg is giving him tells him that he doesn't need to. That it's understood.

***

The first of many phone calls is to Sophia, after he gets Gil undressed and into bed. He sits with him until he's asleep, and then he moves into the living room to do what he needs to do.

"I'm not coming in tonight," he says.

"Oh?" she asks.

"And neither is Gil."

There's a moment of silence, and Greg endures it by staring at a picture on Gil's book shelf: the two of them at some convention - Dallas, maybe, or Duluth? He doesn't immediately recognise it but that's not important. What is important is that Gil still has it, still keeps it in sight, in a frame.

"Everything okay?" Sophia finally asks.

"No," Greg tells her. "Look, I'm sorry to leave you understaffed like this..."

"How long?"

He isn't sure. "A few days, maybe," he says. He has never put together a funeral, has no idea what kind of time frame to consider. "However long this takes."

"Okay," she says. She doesn't sound happy about it, but she's letting it go. "You're on call if we need you, though."

"Just me," he says. "Not Grissom."

"No?"

"No." There's something in the way he says it - even he can hear it, the absolute finality of it - that he knows she's not going to argue.

"All right."

"Thank you, Sophia."

"I'll call you."

He hangs up, goes in to check on Gil, stands for a while in the doorway watching him sleep, then goes back into the living room. He keeps a tiny address book in his wallet; just a list, really, of people he never wants to be out of touch with. He unfolds it, finds the number he's looking for, and dials.

"Olaf Hojem's room, please," he says to the pleasant man who answers.

"Mister Hojem is napping right now," the pleasant man tells him pleasantly.

He grinds his teeth. "Wake him up," he says. "Please."

"Is this an emergency?"

"I really, really need to speak with him."

"Just one moment."

It isn't that simple. First he gets the pleasant man's supervisor, and then the floor manager, and finally a nurse; and by then he's nearly in tears and pulling at his hair, and he's almost ready to give up when he remembers, There may not be another chance.

So he bullies his way through Nurse Ratched and he actually is in tears at this point, and he spends the two minutes he's left on hold trying to pull himself together.

"Ja?"

"Papa Olaf?" he says. "It's Greg."

"Greg?"

He switches into Norwegian, into the broken language of his family, knows he mangles most of his conjugations and probably gets a preposition or two wrong, but Olaf can hear him, and can understand him clearly, when he tells him how much he loves him.

***

At around two in the afternoon, Gil wakes up and thinks, These are the tears I couldn't cry earlier.

There's no moment of disorientation, no dizzy feeling of displacement, no fuzziness about where he is or what his life is like right now. He goes from dream state to bawling misery in less than five seconds, and when he rolls onto his side to comfort himself, he hits someone.

It doesn't matter who it is, he thinks, and clings to the warm body next to his. So long as they're there, and not going anywhere.

Arms wrap around him and pull him in, and a quiet voice is whispering in his ear and he feels himself being rocked, gently; and for the first time, all of the pain of the past three months is able to find its way into the light.

***

Greg gets up at six-thirty and makes some soup, brings a cup of it back to Gil and sits with him while he eats it. "Anything else you need?" he asks.

Gil shakes his head, wipes uselessly at his face and drags his spoon through the noodle-filled depths of the mug.

He rubs circles on his back and stays with him. He hates the weight of this silence, hates the dark shadows that have caused it, but he's glad that he's able to be here. Able to be useful in some small way.

When Gil is finished, he takes the cup and pulls Gil to his feet, ushers him into the washroom and runs the bath. "You'll feel a thousand times better," he says, peeling the tee shirt from Gil's compliant body, stripping him of the sweats he's wearing.

Gil submits to it, mute and lost, and lets himself be moved into the hot water, settled back against the edge of the tub and kissed on the top of his head.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," Greg tells him, trying not to choke on his own feelings of helplessness. "Holler if you need me, though, okay?"

Gil nods, and his eyes slide out of focus again.

Greg leaves the door open.

***

Greg made Gil do much of it a month ago, so all Greg has to do is get the ball rolling. He finds the forms he filled out, along with the number and the reference code, and it takes him all of ten minutes on the phone to arrange the funeral.

The voice on the other end is understanding and endlessly patient when Greg screws up the number for the third time, and when he has to change his mind twice about the date and the time.

When he hangs up the phone he thinks, Hey, I've found a more depressing line of work than my own.

He has a belt of scotch and opens his phone again. Alan still has a key, he thinks, and a sad part of him admits that this is why he never demanded it back.

"It's me," he says when Alan answers it.

"That's nice. What do you want?"

"I need you to feed my fish and water the plants."

"Why?"

"Gil's mother just passed away," he says, and it's the first time he's had to put it into words. It chokes him.

"God," he hears Alan say, all pissiness gone from his voice. "That's - I'm so sorry."

He makes himself swallow. "Can you look after my place for me?"

"Sure."

"Thanks, Alan. I mean that. I'm - I'm sorry things were shit."

"My fault," Alan says, "I should've known better than to fall for a guy who's in love with his ex. Are you going to be okay?"

"I will be."

***

Gil is dried off and back in bed when Greg comes back into the bedroom. He looks up at Greg with what he knows are pleading eyes, and he hates the surge of guilty joy he feels when Greg slides in next to him.

"Day after tomorrow," Greg says, laying on his side to face him. "The funeral director will let people know, everyone on the list. All you need to do is make it until then. Okay?"

He reaches out as if in slow motion and touches the side of Greg's face. "Will you stay with me?" he asks, surprised at how raw his voice is.

Greg manages a smile. "I'm not going anywhere, Gil," he says.

***

It starts at seven in the evening, and Greg looks at the turnout and thinks, No crimes getting solved tonight. All of night shift is there, and most of swing shift, too - they're not here for Helena Grissom, they're here for her son, and Greg is grateful to each and every one of them.

Catherine has Lindsay with her, and the thirteen-year-old looks terrified. Greg can sympathise: it's a punch in the stomach when someone you know is touched by death. He wonders if anything will change between mother and daughter because of this.

The sermon is short, but the eulogies and the little speeches from relatives that Greg has never heard of drag on for almost an hour. Greg sits beside Gil throughout, takes his hand when he needs it, folds his hands in his lap when Gil needs to withdraw.

He misses most of what people say. The only part he really pays attention to is when a frail woman around Helena's age gets up and stands beside the podium, too short to be seen behind it, and says something with her hands. The entire room is silent, and no one translates what she's saying, but Gil's entire body is focused on this woman and his eyes tear up anew.

They endure the reception afterwards, and Greg keeps an eye on Gil, sees him track this old woman down and speak with her for ten minutes, all hands and eyes and quiescent touches.

"Do you know her?" Greg asks, when Gil tells him he needs to leave.

"No," Gil says, mired in the complexities of his coat. "She knew my mother a lifetime ago."

Greg helps him out with the sleeves, shrugs his own dark coat on over his jacket. "Do you need anything before we go?"

"Just... take me home."

===

Truth faced leaves a strange taste
When joy and sadness meet
A country rain on a city street
This life is bittersweet

***

"I never invited you into my home."

They're sitting in the living room, in the dark, when he says it, and Greg wonders what he's supposed to say.

He can see Gil duck his head. "I'm sorry for that."

"I understand, Gil," he says when he finds his voice. "I always did."

"This place never seemed empty, you know that? It always felt... right. Exactly like it should."

"A man's home is his castle," he says.

"But now..." He hears Gil shift on the couch. "This is going to sound stupid," he says, and his words are laced with a sad humour.

"Try me," Greg says.

"Now that my mother is - no longer with us, I don't want to be alone."

In the dark, Greg's lips twitch towards a smile. "Do I get to make the Mama's Boy joke now?" he asks. "Or should I wait until later?"

A soft chuff of laughter from the shadows that does more to warm Greg's heart than any inarticulate sound should have the power to. "I want to try again," Gil says, "I want to try for real. I want you to share my home with me."

He licks his lips carefully, choosing his words, choosing his timing. "Gil," he says, "this epiphany doesn't change everything. You're still going to be territorial, I'm still going to be demanding - that wall we ran into, it's still there."

There's a stretch of silence, and Gil takes a deep breath. "I love you too much, Greg, to not do whatever it takes. I want to make a commitment that doesn't give me a lot of wiggle room. I want to be stuck with you, and I want to know that I'm stuck with you, so that I'll have to deal with whatever comes up."

He closes his eyes. Those are the words he's always wanted Gil to say to him, the ones he gave up hope of hearing a long time ago. "I can be a real bitch sometimes, Gil," he says.

Another soft laugh. "So can I," Gil says. "We're going to butt heads a hell of a lot, but... I want to. I want to knock myself out against you, because I want you to be there when I come to."

Greg laughs, wipes at his eyes. "I listen to music," he says, "all the time."

"We can take turns," Gil says. "Black Flag, and then Carmen."

"I can't cook worth a damn, but I keep trying anyway."

"I'll buy lots of antacid."

"I leave clothes all over the floor."

A short pause. "...I'll train you not to?"

He laughs again, and so does Gil.

Even though they're still in their suits from the funeral, even though Greg is still wearing his overcoat and his dress shoes are pinching his toes, and even though this is the day that they put Helena Elisabeth Grissom, nee Bainbridge into the ground, Greg wants to make love. Right here, he thinks, right now.

And that is the most wonderful feeling of soaring that he can imagine.

===
===

All lyrics by Moxy Fruvous, songs as follow:
1. Horseshoes (from the album "Wood")
2. Misplaced (from the album "Wood")
3. Bittersweet (from the album "Bargainville")