Title: ::breath::
By: elfin
Email: elfin@sundrive.co.uk
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Pairing: Nick/Gil
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: massive spoilers for Grave Danger, season 5 finale episode (showing UK 12th July)
Disclaimers: characters aren't mine, if they were, I wouldn't let Tarantino anywhere near them!

***

The road to recovery was a long one, Grissom told me, with a lot of wrong turns.

He didn't have a map he could lend me.

The most difficult thing - one of the most difficult things - was waking to find Mom and Cisco sitting next to my bed in the hospital. I remembered the exact same thing happening when I was a kid, after I took a nasty fall during a football game.

In my memory they weren't crying when I opened my eyes. Mom wasn't clinging to my hand and weeping like I'd died and come back. Maybe I had. I didn't remember, not then. Later, I was glad the tape had gone up in the explosion. No one knew about it, I thought, about my cowardice, about what I was gonna do just before the lights and Warrick yellin' at me.

Didn't know about the web feed for a while. When I found out, Gil had to stop me from attempting suicide for a second time, this time with a litre of Jack Daniels and a handful of Tylenol.

The second most difficult thing - if I'm ranking them - was Warrick. I found out later that he'd been watching when I shot out the light - thought I'd shot myself. Not that time, Rick. But he was edgy when he came to the hospital, and afterwards when he visited me at home - like he was walking on eggshells and any minute he was gonna put his foot down wrongly and break a load of them.

We got into a row. I'd finally sent my parents back to Texas, having to promise to ring Mom every day to reassure her I was okay. That was a joke. But they were the only terms she'd accept.

Having Warrick lay the guilt/blame trip on me wasn't something I could cope with then - it's not something I can cope with now and this is after a couple of weeks of serious therapy.

He was guilty for not being the one to go to the trash call, guilty for not being the one in the box. He was pissed too, at me for having been, for making him go through it all. Like that was my fault. Course, he wasn't actually blaming me, but it sure felt that way and after everything I'd been through, I didn't know what to do with the accusation that somehow I'd asked for it.

So we ended up yellin' at each other across my kitchen. And a lot of it was me too, 'cause like I told him at the peak of it - as I'd lain there thinking I was gonna die, I wished to god I hadn't answered the call either. And although I wouldn't have wished that on my worst enemy - except maybe the guy who'd put me inside that box - there were dark moments when I wished I was on the other side of the investigation.

He walked out.

I remember having arguments like that with a girlfriend years ago. Only this time it was me who ended up crying on the kitchen floor, back against the fridge.

He came back, a couple of hours later, found me standing in the front yard with a hosepipe watering the parched lawn. It's something you're absolutely not supposed to do in Vegas in the summer. But hey - let them arrest me.

We had a couple of beers, watched a game - couldn't tell you who won, who was playing or even what sport it was. Whatever - it was how we'd spent countless evenings in the past but that evening was uncomfortable.

Like he was expecting me to talk and I knew it and wasn't talking. I couldn't. I had no idea what to say to the guy who'd been my best friend for longer than I can remember.

He went home and I went to bed, leaving the window open and putting my gun under my pillow. I cried myself to sleep, unable to stop the tears from coming. I dreamt I was lying in the coffin in a sticky pool of blood - my blood. I'd shot myself in the head but I was still alive, still trapped with precious little air and ants eating away at me, somehow knowing I'd still be aware when they finished with my skin and started in on my organs.

The doorbell woke me. I lay completely still, heart beating a heavy, fast rhythm against my ribcage. Then the doorbell again and I grabbed my gun and went to answer it. What the hell I looked like - hair sticking up everywhere, eyes wide and wild, dressed only in sleeping shorts, gun in one hand, door handle in the other - I had no idea. Standing there squinting in the blinding sunlight and staring at my boss - ex-boss - like he was some kinda alien come to visit.

And how did the impeccable Gil Grissom respond to me standing there looking like a crazy Desert State facility escapee? "Hi, Nicky. I bought breakfast."

I took a shower and got dressed, ashamed of the state of the place although he didn't comment on it. A week out of the hospital after a week in the hospital, I still hadn't gotten around to putting the trash out.

But by the time I padded barefoot into the kitchen, he'd cleaned up the previous night's pizza and beer remains, but a fresh bag in the swing bin, made coffee and warmed the bagels.

I felt I should ask why he was there but I didn't want to. Truth was, I was glad to see him. He didn't look guilty, didn't talk around the subject. He told me about Kelly Gordon. Later, after I'd visited her in jail, she attacked her cellmate and was confined to solitary. It made the visit worthwhile, as difficult as it was.

He told me about the ransom. Told me about Ecklie offering to sell his soul by way of the lab cuts - something which would blow me away when I could think about it. He told me about Catherine getting the million dollars from Sam Braun only for Walter Gordon to blow himself to hell, almost taking the money and Gil with him.

I listened like it was a case with a victim who wasn't me. I didn't want to be a victim, even though I sure felt like one, and Gil didn't treat me that way Warrick did. He told me Catherine wanted to come round but she was working doubles at the moment, being one man down. He told me I'd been transferred back to the Nightshift and didn't ask me if I was okay with that.

I asked about Greg and Sara - just if they were okay. He said they wanted to come but they were nervous and I got that. Warrick had been too and I wished he hadn't come.

Gil suggested I drop by the lab one night, when I was ready, and just say hi. It sounded so normal, so easy, that I found myself agreeing to it.

He didn't stay long after breakfast. He'd come from work and he needed some sleep. But he asked if he could come round the next morning, same time - cases permitting - and I said, sure. I told him it would be nice.

After he left I sat at the table and cried over the last bagel. But somehow the sobs didn't hurt as much and maybe, just maybe, I felt better for it.

He came round every morning for a week, bringing breakfast - bagels, pastries, fruit toast - always something different.

I cleaned the place up a bit but he didn't comment on that either.

On the Thursday evening I drove to the lab. It took me an hour to do a ten-minute journey.

The first time I stopped I pulled into the empty parking lot of a strip mall and threw up.

The last time I'd driven had been to the fake call that almost cost me my life. As far as I could work out, it had cost me everything but.

I sat behind the wheel of the Tahoe, hands gripping so tight my arms shook, and I suddenly remembered the contrived scene like someone was playing it back as a movie in my head. Not me. There's no way I'd have chosen to watch it. But I didn't have a choice. I pulled over and was sick next to the dumpsters.

I thought about turning around and going home but I knew that road and it didn't lead anywhere healthy.

So I carried on.

A mile from the lab a familiar Tahoe passed me going in the opposite direction like a bat out of hell, trying to keep up with the cop car in front of it, lit up like a cheap nightclub.

I jerked my 4x4 to the side of the road and stopped, barely hearing the honking from the guy behind me. I sat there, shaking like a cactus in an earthquake, fighting the urge to throw up again.

What did me in this time? The thought of doing my job. Plain and simple. Something I'd taken for granted for so long, something that a couple of weeks ago was second nature, like taking a leak. I enjoyed it. Now it carried a kind of black dread along with the memories of all those times I'd called 'bad times' - Amy Hendler pulling that gun on me, Nigel Crane pushing me out of a second floor window before moving into my attic only to drop through my ceiling.

Suddenly I couldn't deal. How the hell was I supposed to work when I couldn't go ten blocks without being sick? How could I process another crime scene when my hands wouldn't stop shaking and this consuming grief kept on pulling me under?

I was so close to turning right around and going home when I saw a third black Tahoe in the mirror. It was going with the flow of the traffic, in no hurry to get anywhere. As it passed I saw Catherine at the wheel.

At that moment I wanted nothing more than to hug her and be hugged. So I turned into the easy-going traffic, two cars behind hers, and pulled into the lab's parking lot a couple of minutes later.

She got out just in front of me, slamming the door and opening the back for her kit.

"Hey, Cath."

For a really horrible moment I thought she was going to burst into tears and I knew without a doubt I'd be right there with her - what a great advert we'd make for the Las Vegas crime lab, the two of us standing under the harsh lot lights clinging to one another, bawling like babies.

But instead she smiled, grinned, reached for me and hugged me just like I wanted her to. I hugged her back, just held her, because she was alive and so was I and this was what I'd wanted – needed - since my Mom and Cisco went home. I'd have asked Gil and to be honest he'd probably have obliged. But we'd never have been able to look one another in the eye ever again. We weren't ready.

"How ya doin', Nicky?"

Nicky. Almost undid me. But I swallowed the lump and blinked back the tears and took a step back, trying for a smile. Gil had said I was doing okay when it came to smiling - it was almost believable, he'd said.

But I couldn't bring myself to tell her I was fine. I'm not that good a liar and all she had to do was look at me. The bites were still visible on my hands and face; angry purple welts like bad B-movie make-up. I wasn't sleeping. My eyes were red-rimmed and as dark as the bags under them.

She didn't make me lie. "You stopped in to see us all?"

The cheer in her voice was slightly forced and I thought how much of a miracle it would be if I actually got through this without dissolving.

I knew if I stayed too long they'd see what Gil had already seen. I was jumpy. Claustrophobic inside, outside... I saw grass and soil and my treacherous mind showed me what was beneath the ground - me in a transparent plastic box screaming and clawing vainly at it in mindless panic.

I nodded, not sure of my voice right then.

Catherine grabbed her kit, locked the Tahoe and led the way. Into the glass building that housed the crime lab. It's a glass science tank inside a brick skin and the moment I got inside I felt like I'd chewed down some bad calamari. Sweat broke out all over me, my stomach churned in warning and my vision narrowed down to a sickening long, black tunnel at the end of which the brutal strip lights quickly winked out.

I woke in the break room and I knew I'd fainted. I could almost hear Warrick's delighted, dulcet tones - 'Nicky, you girl!' But it was wishful thinkin'. Teasing I could have coped with. But Warrick was there, crouched down by the couch I was lyin' on, his face a mask of worry, eyes glassy with that guilt I couldn't stand seeing there.

"Oh, man." I know those were the first words out, I know I wanted to make light of it, get a joke out of someone - anyone - just so I didn't get crushed under the weight of their collective concern. Warrick next to me, Cath by the sink. Greg and Sara standing like Greek statues, her arms crossed, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets.

I couldn't breathe.

Then the door opened and a blissfully irritated voice said, "We have work to do, people!" I heard the room's intake of breath like a tornado being born, heard that same voice say my name - surprise and sympathy - and I thought for one horrible moment he was gonna leave me there with them.

But he said in that same irritated tone, "Give the guy a break, okay?"

God bless Conrad Ecklie.

They filed out like school kids caught smoking, except Catherine, the Prefect protecting me from the bully.

"Thanks for trying," I told him - hoping he'd know what I was talking about.

He nodded, self-consciously, like he was ashamed of doing it.

But not of doing it, I realised; of failing. How bad had it felt to ask and be turned down? To know the last desperate, ditched attempt had failed and all that was left was... a funeral. Not even that if they couldn't find me.

That sick feeling again, dark memories with sharp teeth hovering just out of reach, not that I was trying. I just wanted to see Gil, and it made me realise how damn needy I'd become. Catherine, Gil... people who represented safety, normality. In Gil's case - someone who'd seen me low and would eventually see me at my very worst. Someone who knew, without me having to say the things I couldn't find words for.

Occasionally I thought about putting lyrics to the screaming in my head.

You're welcome. Just… glad you're all right." Ecklie.

I was surprised – I'd never felt further from all right and I sure as hell didn't look it. But I realised, what else could he say? 'You're welcome, Nick. Maybe if we'd found you sooner you wouldn't have been forced to shoot out the bulb your colleagues were inadvertently torturing you with. Maybe you wouldn't have let in the ants that filled you so full of toxins you were sick for three days straight – an IV needle in your arm because not even water would stay down.'

I felt sick again and wondered if it would ever feel right. I looked around, the glass walls once again becoming the sides of that coffin, the whole world pitching like it had when that man – Gordon – covered my face with an ether-soaked cloth and held me as everything went red then black.

I had no idea where I was going until I was already half-way down the blue-hued corridor. I'd bolted – leaving Ecklie and Cath startled no doubt but no choice. No choice. I ran. And stopped outside Gil's office, his door open as usual although he wasn't in there.

I stepped inside, the office so familiar that a part of my unhinged brain recognised the safety of it. Something caught my eye. When I think about it, when I let myself, it must have been the colour green.

It's strange but I remember it in white and green. The blinding, choking light and the eerie glow of the sticks. It doesn't make it any less real. It's kinda like those creepy fun house places at parks and carnivals. They're not real, but the colours are so extraordinary, and the sights and found so unusual, that a kid's imagination can make them more real than the monotony of meal times or the mind-numbing boredom of school.

And lying there, going slowly insane in that box, my imagination was working double, triple shifts. I dream in green.

The photo on Grissom's desk was of me. And an ant. Both of us in that box, only one of us trapped there. It was lying next to an open reference book but right then I wasn't thinking straight enough to connect it with my rescue. Later I would. Later I'd try to accept that this new horror had saved my life.

It was a slow process, as I stood and stared at the upside-down photo – the screen print. Me. Caught in the midst of an agonised fit of thrashing. The expression on my face was misery absolute. But I didn't need a picture to tell me that. That it was me was the easy part of the solution. The Sherlockian deduction came a few seconds later – seconds I experienced in slow-mo.

Somehow Gil had a freeze-framed image of me as I lay in that coffin. Someone had been watching. Someone had sent it to him – in exchange for paying the ransom perhaps. Maybe. It kinda made sense – Grissom's a world famous entomologist. If someone had done their homework they'd know what he could do with just a picture of an ant.

Gil had told me Gordon had blown himself to hell at the drop, but maybe he'd emailed this first, hedging his bets that they wouldn't find the ants and me before my air ran out.

But I like to think I'm a good CSI – or I was before this happened. And there was something wrong with my theory. A hole Gris could have driven his Tahoe through. The ants were my fault. No way Gordon could have known they'd be in there with me.

I have a trained eye too. And a trained eye always looks for evidence.

On the desk, caught under the front cover of the bug encyclopaedia, was a scrap of paper with an IP address scribbled in Sara's distinctive chicken scratch.

My imagination was still working that unpaid overtime.

Sometimes those things we imagine are real actually are.

I coulda killed someone on my way home and not have noticed. I didn't, apparently; sheer luck on the part of the innocent bystander. Adrenaline-drunk, stressed out and - by the time I skewed the Tahoe into the driveway – sobbing like a broken boiler, I stumbled into my home.

It's a bit of a blur to be truthful.

I know I tore the holster getting my gun out, and I know I stuck the barrel against my chin, pressing it up into the soft, still sore skin behind my jaw. But the memory of the last time came flooding back and the grief was overwhelming.

I dropped the weapon and made a grab for the unopened bottle of Jack Daniels from the top of the cabinet. I'd bought it before everything….

Before I'd been kidnapped and buried alive. Before my familiar – if not safe – little world was shattered by a man I hated so much it gave me purpose. It took me into the bathroom and opened the cabinet for me.

It took the pills from the narrow glass shelf and struggled with the childproof lid until the white tablets leapt and spilled out onto the floor. Then it leaned down, scooped up a handful and held them out for me to see as time stopped and all I could hear was my heart beating so fast I couldn't keep up.

There were other sounds too. The deep roar of a straining engine. The crack of wood giving into anger. Or terror. A pounding footfall across a thin carpet barely disguising hard floorboards. And a strangled cry, somewhere between a shout and a scream.

The pills leapt again and skidded across the floor in all directions. I know I dropped the bottle of liquor too because later I could smell it in the cracks of the bathroom tiles. But I don't remember.

All I remember from that moment to the next is Gil. His hands. His voice. Sitting on the cold floor next to him, thinking I should be the one who was crying.

He told me everything as we sat there, both of us too exhausted, too wrung out to move. He seemed barely able to keep it together whereas conversely I felt better – like I'd tried to die and failed. Leaving me with only one option. To live. And that meant dealing.

I still had no idea how. But the why… he was sitting next to me.

The web feed, the light, the fan, the ants. Those bugs, the ones I have a paranoid hatred for, saved my life.

Curiously, once I'd had a chance to negotiate terms with the things Gordon had done to me it was the others watching that was left to bother me. With Gil… it kinda felt okay. He wasn't watching me – he was watching over me. My guardian. My saviour. But thoughts like that I knew would lead somewhere weird, somewhere I had no intention of going. So I let it go. I had to let it go.

Because I was thinking along completely different lines.

::breathe::

I went back to work.

Gil promised me there was nothing else, nothing hidden from me. I had all the information there was to be had. I wanted to go back to work.

I wasn't sleeping. Not surprisingly. When I was in the coffin, just before they found me, I had a… waking nightmare, a flash or something. My own autopsy. Only it wasn't right. Doc Robbins and David were laughing. And Cisco was there. They handed him my heart.

In the dreams I have now, it ends with Gil kneeling on the coffin callin' me 'Pancho' and holding out my heart to me. Giving it back to me. Those are the good dreams.

I'd been tellin' him all this stuff over breakfasts. I made him promise he wouldn't make me go see a shrink until I was ready. He made me promise I'd talk to him, wouldn't keep anything about this from him, no matter how bad or weird it got. I promised. So did he.

I figured with the webcam he'd seen the worst of it anyway. He'd heard – in a way - my weak attempt at a suicide note, heard me apologise for disappointing him, letting him down. He assured me I never had. He kept telling me he was proud of me. And except for that night in the bathroom, he's been my strength when I've honestly believed I had none.

I went back to work.

I knew they wouldn't let me out into the field again for a while, and honestly the lab itself was the first hurdle anyway. Too much glass, people can see everything and naturally they were looking.

I'd come to terms with Gil watching, in fact I'd used it. He already knew things so I didn't have to tell him - about the light, about the screaming, about the mindless acts of self-inflicted violence. I was covered in bruises for days after only they weren't visible under the ant bites.

But Sara, Warrick, Cath, Greg.... They knew things I didn't want them to know. They'd seen things I didn't want them to see. Would I have gone nuts in there, would I have dictated that note, would I have... sung away to myself, had I known?

I like to think not, I like to think that I'd have given them a running commentary - colour of the soil, wildlife, plant roots, anything to help them find me. They had found me. Thanks to the webcam signal. Thanks to the ants.

They'd all seen a shrink, Gil told me, including him. Ecklie had made them go. He wanted to make me go but Gil had promised and Ecklie - for whatever reason - wasn't picking fights with Gil at the moment.

I went back to work.

I processed evidence and tried to deal with the complex expressions of a myriad emotions from my colleagues - my friends. They looked at me like I was some sorta miracle, risen from the dead. Guess they thought they'd never see me alive again. They'd see me dead. They would have seen that. Because I knew absolutely that Gil would never stopped looking for me. He always says you find new shoots next to grave sites. He'd have dug to the root of every new shoot. He'd have stared at the ground each time he was out in the desert or in one of the parks. He'd have driven himself insane wondering if I was under there.

I don't think he'd have survived it and that was one hell of a humbling thought. The great Gil Grissom losing himself. Over me.

Over the past few weeks, he'd become human to me. All I'd wanted since coming to Vegas was to know him. Seems it took something like this for him to want to know me. It should have made me angry or upset, but it didn't. Too angry and upset with a dead man to have those feelings towards Gil. Because once you've sobbed into someone's shoulder, once you've drenched them in tears and covered them in snot - they come down off whatever pedestal you've had them on. Gil had to. So I could reach him.

For a couple of days I pulled trace from a vic's clothing, processed a blanket found under a particularly imaginative murder weapon, lifted fingerprints from some bizarre objects after some lunatic went berserk in a sex shop.

I fought every urge to run screaming from the glass labyrinth, I tried not to think about rats in a maze or ants in a farm. I formed an odd friendship with Gil's tarantula, Tonto, because Gil's office was the only place I felt normal and I'd retreat there whenever it got too much. I was doin' okay, taking it a day at a time. Gettin' there under Gil's extraordinary patience and my own limited resources.

Then Hodges came back in from a couple of days' break, saw me, and started mouthing off about being the one to find the evidence of explosives under the prototype coffin.

One of my most vivid memories of the rescue is of seeing my friends, my colleagues walk away without letting me out. I thought I was day-dreaming, another waking nightmare. Or maybe I was dead and that was hell.

Gil was the only one to hold me there for those last agonising minutes.

Without him I'd have blown myself and everyone around me straight to hell. I'd have smashed through the lid, I'd have clawed my way out and maybe, maybe I'd have got a couple of inches to freedom before being tore to pieces by the blast.

I hated Hodges for taking them away from me, as irrational as it sounded, as crazy as it seemed. I loved Gil for staying and hated Hodges for sending them away.

What prototype coffin?

It's tough to put thoughts and actions back into the order they happened. They all got messed up.

Hodges told me it was in the garage.

The rumours afterwards went something along the lines of Grissom finding Hodges and having to be prevented, by Brass, from putting the lab rat's head in the centrifuge. No one believes it, but everyone was talking about it for weeks.

Hodges told me it was in the garage. When I saw it on the workbench my first thought was that Gil had lied to me. But it was displaced by so many other thoughts and they had great big teeth that shredded what little control I'd managed to claw back.

My vision tunnelled until all I could see was that brutal, hideous device at the end of it where the light should have been.

And then there was a light. Harsh, hard, cuttingly bright, and it ripped the air from my lungs until I couldn't breathe.

The fire axe was always present – and someone must have been experimenting 'cause it was leaning against the far wall of the garage.

Somewhere it shouldn't be. I don't remember picking it up. But I lay into that box like destroying it would stop the nightmares and the panic attacks, would heal the pockmarks left all over me, would take away the fucking awful memories, memories I didn't want, memories I wish I could tear out of my head.

I revelled in the tortured surrender of the plexi-glass, sought my own healing in the demolition of the only thing left for me to exact my revenge from.

The sharp cracks as the structure succumbed to the heavy blade, the parting of shards as the hard material relented in the path of the axe. Those cathartic sounds were all I could hear.

Tiny flecks of plexi-glass dug into my unprotected hands, arms and face, but I didn't feel them. They left little red rivulets of blood but I ignored them. I wanted to ruin the box the same way it had ruined me. Completely. Utterly. With devastating impact.

Me. It. Just the two of us, locked together.

Then a word, a name. And I was back, lying in the coffin surrounded by earth, banging uselessly, weakly on the lid, begging them to let me out. Please. Let me out. Please. The ants crawlin' all over me, sinking into me. Please… let me out.

Pancho!"

I swung round, axe raised. And god knows what I looked like but Gil didn't flinch, didn't back away. He stood there, hand up, palm out, fingers slightly apart.

Put your hand on mine."

I couldn't have disobeyed even if I'd wanted to. I wasn't really there – I was back, way back, struggling to breathe, sobbing so hard my whole body was shaking. There was glass against my sweating palm as I met his hand. I heard the axe crash to the floor but it was far away, half-imagined, like the rough feel of his skin.

The scratching of the soil and ants crushed beneath me became solid, brick wall. The cold, inhuman embrace of the coffin became a warm, real cradle of arms as I slid to the floor.

Tears blended with blood and flecks of plastic, the mix soaking Gil's shirt as I clung to him, bawling – a wild, desperate eruption.

When I came back to myself I was sitting curled into him, his arms around me, his face on my head, his shirt almost torn by my clawed hands. All I could hear was the rumble of his voice telling me he'd got me, telling me I was safe. That same voice I remember from that night, feeling that same relief – that overwhelming relief.

Never saying it was okay because it wasn't. And we both knew it.

I calmed down, very slowly. I had to force myself to let go of his shirt. Still he held me.

And finally I lifted my head and saw the state of the garage. The shattered plexi-glass box. The wrecked workbench underneath the remains. I tried to run and Gil stopped me. I heard a sound like a wounded animal and realised it was me.

Nicky."

Not Pancho.

Sorry."

Why?"

The mess. The destruction. The fact I'd just gone loopy in the lab garage with an axe. How about sitting in my boss' arms on said garage floor looking like one of the vics Robbins examines…?

Bad move.

At least I managed to twist away from Gil before I threw up. It wasn't one thing – one memory, one image, one thought. It was everything. Ether, adrenaline, terror, panic, green, earth, burial, shock, light, suffocation, pain, horror, poison, panic, desperation, suicide… a relief so incredible, so miraculous…. Yet even that was laced with dread.

I reached out blindly and again Gil was there, his hands soothing as I dug my nails into his arm.

I was such a fucking mess. Blood from the tiny cuts, eyes swollen from crying, snot running from my nose, puke around my mouth.

When I turned back, wiping my mouth with my hand, Gil was looking at me so intensely… like I was the only thing in the world. Like I was incredibly precious to him.

I think I said I needed to clean up. He told me to wait. I didn't understand until I looked up towards the window that made up most of the opposite wall. They were fucking watching! Again!

After that, I don't remember anything for a while.

::breathe::

Everything was cool. The white sheets, the fresh breeze that was air conditioning. Even the hand holding mine.

Gil was sitting close to the bed. When I opened my eyes, he leaned forward. I knew where I was by the look on his face.

Back in the hospital.

Nothing really hurt so I guessed I hadn't damaged anything too vital too badly. I just hoped I hadn't tried to take anyone down with me on my way to hell. All I could actually remember was seeing that damn box right where fucking Hodges said it would be.

The first words out of my mouth were along the lines of 'You said there was nothing else.' Accusation. Didn't remember how much destruction I'd wrought yet. There was no hint of it in Gil's face. He just promised me he hadn't deliberately not told me about the prototype. With everything else that had been going on, he'd forgotten about it. I felt like an asshole. Everything Gil had done for me and I was still taking from him. No giving from me.

Sorry didn't seem adequate, and from him it was redundant.

But I still had no idea how much I had to apologise for.

Waking brought with it awareness. My right shoulder was throbbing. Wrists and ankles stinging. It took a moment to process, but I knew what it meant and lifting the hand that wasn't tucked under Gil's, I confirmed what I knew. A ring of red skin just below my hand, wrist rubbed raw. I'd been restrained.

I felt sick again – dread sitting in my stomach like a bad burrito. Gil must have seen it because he squeezed my hand and told me straight what had happened. He kindly described it as a 'panic attack', bet everyone else was describing it as a 'psychotic episode'.

I'd gone for the window where my colleagues – friends, I kept reminding myself – were standing. First with my body and when that hadn't worked, I'd grabbed up the fire axe from where I'd dropped it. I was lucky. Everyone was lucky. After the explosion the previous year they'd installed safety glass in all the windows in the facility. When the blade hit, it didn't shatter into shards, it cracked, it webbed.

I didn't hurt anyone, thank god. Except Gil. He'd tried to make a grab for me and I'd turned and punched him, hard by the look of the bruise coming out on his jaw.

I lay there and cried as he told me I'd been restrained by a couple of cops, under Jim's close and sympathetic supervision. Someone had called an ambulance but I wasn't about to go quietly. Thus the cuffs.

I had Gil to thank for the fact I hadn't come round still fastened to the bed. Had him to thank too that I could think straight. He'd gone with me in the ambulance, he'd stayed with me, stopped them from drugging me passed that first shot.

You scared Greg," he told me. I didn't believe him. But I'd scared them all a little bit. Except Catherine, who came to visit me at home later, hugged me and still looked at me with nothing but love and this intense gratefulness.

And Gil, of course. He promised to take me home as soon as the doctors cleared me. Without Gil I might have been put on suicide watch. Without Gil I might have been sectioned. Without him I might have gone home and made another grab for the JD bottle.

But he was there. Sitting next to me up front in the Tahoe, driving me away from the hospital, not in the least bit changed towards me. In his shoes, I might have been a little wary of an axe-wielding lunatic.

I sat back and looked out of the window, watched Vegas pass by, the neon lights against the velvet darkness, with its twinkling sequins, that seemed to embrace us.

Can we go outta town?"

I don't know where it came from. Suddenly I just wanted to be somewhere else, and the desert lets you believe you're anywhere. It's the only forgiveness it offers.

I looked round at him when I asked and I saw a flit of uncertainty across his face but he didn't deny me. I didn't know if there was anything he would have denied me except an end to it. He nodded, and as we headed out of the city I started – for once in weeks – to think about someone else. To think about him.

I love the desert at night. Out here the old Vegas dealt out its justice. There are so many bodies buried out there, so many ghosts. Could have been me.

Where was I… buried?"

Direct thought-to-mouth connection, no need for me to step in.

A nursery east of Vegas."

I'd like to go there."

Gil pulled over to the side of the road and I thought about gagging myself. I had no idea what stupid suggestion was comin' next. Getting outta the Tahoe I went around to the front and leaned against the grille. Looking up I could see every star, every constellation in perfect detail. Gil's heat arrived next to me.

I'll never forget the gist of what he said. It went something a lot like – 'That night was the worst night of my life. Attending Gordon's contrived crime scene, collecting evidence that I thought was going to convict your killer…. And then seeing you on that camera, knowing what you'd be going through, knowing and not being able to do a thing about it. Catherine accused me of not doing anything and she was right. I couldn't think straight. Then she handed me the money from Braun, and as mad as I was I was desperate. I wanted to cry. It galvanised me. Finally there was something solid, a ransom drop-off. Something real I could do to get you back. Gordon asked me if you were my guy, if we were close. If the money was rigged or fake. I just wanted you back – just wanted to rip into him to get him to tell me where you were so I could get you out of that hell. It was such a long night for us but all I could think was how long it must be feeling to you. And when he blew himself up – when I saw the explosives – I felt more helpless than I've ever felt."

I might have got some of the words wrong, but that was the gist of it.

He was losing it like he had done in my bathroom after he'd stopped me from chasing down pills with Jack Daniels. I could see the tension in his body, his fists balled like he wanted to strike someone.

I don't know what made me reach out, made me wrap my palm around his white-knuckled fingers.

Believe me, Nick, I wanted to open the lid of that damned box and just pull you out. Every second we had to leave you in there I was dying inside. And I know – I know – that's nothing compared to how you felt."

I was the one that turned. I pulled him into the embrace. So much between us right then. I needed to hold him as much as I thought he needed to feel me alive against him. There was nothing more than that, nothing romantic, nothing sexual.

So I don't know why I kissed him. And I don't know why he kissed me back.

His mouth moved restlessly, exquisitely over mine, his tongue hesitantly stretching to taste me.

Nothing melted into everything. Suddenly he was the only thing that existed for me. When he pulled back I refused to let him go.

This isn't what you need right now, Nick."

It's exactly what I need, Gil. So what about you?"

He hesitated but admitted, I need you." Those words, so simple, took away the neediness and the pathetic feeling of cowardice. I could be there for him – just for that night – rather than him being there for me.

He stood, his hands awkward on my waist, and I thought he was going to fly apart in front of me.

When you reached out of the box and grabbed my arm… I didn't know how I'd ever be able to let go."

Stunned, I tried to reassure him, and the words, You don't have to," slipped out of their own accord.

Nick… I don't mean to lay all this on you. You've enough to deal with…."

Don't do this. Don't treat me with pity like the others are doing, I can't deal, Gil, not you. Please."

The relief when he tightened his arms and gathered me against him was overwhelming. He held me, then I lifted my head and he kissed me.

The journey to his place was strange. A tension I'd hoped for between us strangely since the incident on my bathroom floor. We were both worried. We were both walking a fine line between emotional and insane.

Therapy was probably what I needed most right then and we both knew the therapy we had in mind wasn't departmentally approved.

But once he closed the door to his townhouse behind us, once his hands were on me, his mouth finding mine, everything else became nothing and for a time there was just he and I.

I never thought I'd be letting any barriers down in front of Gil Grissom. Up until then the one who knew me best was Catherine. She was the one I'd 'fessed up to about the babysitter – that woman was a long time ago but it still hurt. Never thought I'd break down in front of Gris. Never thought he'd break down in front of me.

Never thought I'd wake with my head against his shoulder, one bare leg hooked possessively over his. Never thought I'd know the sound of his voice raised in his reach for climax or the heat of his mouth on my cock. Jeez… he'd wiped me out before but after I woke to find him watching me, he wrapped his hand lazily around me and spent an hour drawing out the most incredible orgasm I've ever experienced.

I slept again. And this time I dreamt. I dreamt of green ants eating me alive and when they crawled into my mouth I choked out a scream, opening my eyes to stare straight into his. I was lying on my side and he was facing me, his hand stroking my hair, his thumb brushing the shell of my ear.

He asked me if I had a lot of nightmares, I didn't bother answering, just asked him right back. Every night, he said. He didn't sleep much any more. So I crawled over him, wrapped myself around him, and we both finally settled. It was a long time before we dropped off to sleep, just as the neighbourhood was waking, but by the time we woke it was gone noon.

::breathe::

He cut the Tahoe's engine and we sat in silence, in the dark. I tried to imagine it - a convoy of SUVs and police cars speeding along the lonely road we'd just driven, my friends and colleagues racing time and the odds to find me.

I started to understand what they were going through. Started to see passed my own pain enough to understand that they were hurting too.

Gil didn't ask me if I was sure I wanted to do it. He got out, opened up the back and took two powerful torches, switching them on and handing one to me.

"I'm here," is all he said. Then he led the way forward along a wide, winding path, deep into the nursery. It was a couple of minutes before we came out into a clearing.

I knew they'd have come running into the clearing that night - someone spotting a clue, a piece of evidence. Maybe the transmitter for the web cam. Shouting, digging, first with bare hands then with shovels.

Only when I was back there did I start to appreciate the enormity of what they'd done and the true horror of what had been done to me. So remote, so hidden. It could have been anywhere and still they'd found me, still they rescued me before my air ran out or I blasted my brains all over the box and it really did become my coffin.

But not my grave. It was never meant to be my grave. Not unmarked, Gil had promised me a couple of nights before, as we lay together in the dark, touching, talking. He'd vowed to find me, however long it took, whatever the cost. He told me how little a million dollars meant when it was compared to the worth of my life.

I would never go un-remarked. I would never be forgotten. And now, I would never be unloved. It was an incredibly powerful feeling - one that even now is keeping me afloat.

Gil pointed out the site, but I already knew.

I knelt by the filled-in hole, the dirt still loose, and pressed my hand flat to the ground. My tears fell to the soil.

He stayed with me, ever present, waiting, watching. Or maybe not. Maybe he was lost in his own memories of the place – memories more shocking in their intensity than mine. Because for me it was my imagination linking me to the freshly dug earth. It was my conscious mind burying the box there, with me trapped inside. I wouldn't have recognised the place if Gil hadn't taken me there.

But he knew it – for him it was etched like a dark landscape into his mind, the backdrop for his thoughts, the setting for his nightmares. It was a place of too many horrors. In the end, it was just soil.

Soil loaded with ants.

I stared as the one then another then another marched across my fingers like the scouting party of a military force.

I stared. At that moment I couldn't move or scream or breathe.

But as the first fire ant inflicted its fiery sting I found I could do all three.

Even I was impressed. From a suitably safe and detached distance, I kinda watched myself drop back on my ass, brandishing my hand like a dangerous weapon, shaking it like I was tryin' to shake it right off. If Gil had offered me a sharp enough blade I'd have probably hacked my hand off at the wrist. A tiny part of my mind logged that idea as a potential best-selling plot for a real audience-pleaser of a nightmare.

I hate my subconscious.

I couldn't help but wander if Gil would get tired of saving my skin. He took my forearm and held it firm and steady. He brushed the one remaining ant from my skin, inspecting the fresh bite under the strong beam of the torch.

You'll be okay, grasshopper," he assured me, the one and only time he'd told me that since I was taken. And there was something in the way he said it – an easy tone like he'd used in the past. It reminded me of when Greg found radioactive paint on the gnome that had been used to bash a guy's head in. No fuss, no unnecessary comforting. A bit of unnecessary hand-holding perhaps, but I wasn't complaining. Nobody's perfect, right?

He drove us outta there. 'Nothing to see here.' There wasn't. Just a ton of disturbed earth and one very disturbed guy. I didn't know if I'd ever get over it, if I'd ever be able to commit it to the past. It's possible, I guess. Anything's possible.

I looked over at Gil. And I knew he was thinking the exact same thing.

::breathe::

When I stepped out of the cool darkness of the prison and into the brilliant sunshine, I slipped my shades on and looked over to the black Tahoe in the heat haze of the parking lot. Despite my tears, I smiled.

Gil was leaning back against the hot SUV, ankles and arms crossed, expression clear despite the sunglasses obscuring his eyes.

He was pissed. But all the same he'd had someone drive him out here. Whoever he'd talked into it was long gone.

Thought you weren't going to do this alone?" he called out as soon as he knew I'd hear.

I waited till I was a few feet away. I had to, man. I'm sorry." But whatever bravado was in the words, me sniffing a moment later wiped it clean away.

Still want to do it alone?"

Pathetically I shook my head, but there was nothing demeaning in the way he reached for me.

Nothin' I said is gonna make the slightest difference," I muttered into his shoulder.

It is, Nick. Just let her think on it for a while." I stepped back and he let me. What about you?"

I didn't know. I didn't even know really why I'd needed to go, to see her. A link, I suppose, the only link to the man who'd taken me, terrorised me. Almost killed me. For his daughter.

I needed to see her, to make it real. He was too powerful as a thought, as a shadowy memory. I needed him to be human because humans were fallible. Humans could be defeated.

Gil inclined his head, smiling that odd smile of his. Home?"

Yeah." Home. With Gil. No one's saying something good came out of this. No one's that crazy, except perhaps me. But it's something.

It's something great.