Title: Choosing Life
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: R – Adult only.
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
A/N: According to the file properties, I wrote this over a year ago. I discovered it today while clearing some old folders I’d backed up from my work laptop, which means I must have written it while on a business trip.
I have no idea why I didn’t post it at the time; all it needed was formatting.

I don’t know at what point I chose life over death.

Put like that, it sounds dramatic. It wasn’t really. In fact it was only afterwards that I realized that checking out had been something I’d been considering.

Not at first, at least I don’t think so. At first, I simply existed, not thinking much one way or another. Physical discomfort will do that to you. My skin itched long after it should have stopped. I changed soap, laundry detergent, even used more moisturizer than a man should ever have to, but I’d still have to physically stop myself from scratching.

A little later though, after I went to see Kelly Gordon in prison... Yeah, it probably started around then. Visiting her was supposed to be a cathartic act, but in retrospect it was one of the stupidest things I did. Somehow I left feeling that I needed her forgiveness, and that she had denied me. I look back now, and I don’t know how I could have thought that way; at the time I guess it was all about my not being a victim. Maybe if somebody needed to forgive me, it meant that I was ultimately in control.

I started needing reasons to get out of bed. Work alone wasn’t enough. It had to be about the specific case, the specific victim. The worst times were when the cases I’d gotten more involved in were closed, and all that was left for the next shift were the petty crimes, the break-ins, the criminals killing each other off. I needed to know that I was working on something that made a difference, even as I dreaded facing another destroyed life, another victim’s family.

Afterwards, even that wasn’t enough. So I made myself a schedule, a routine I could adhere to without thinking, even on my days off. Wake up, jog to the gym, work out for an hour, jog back, shower, dress. Tuesday was laundry day. Saturdays I vacuumed. I even got to eating the same things and wearing the same clothes on the same days. On the first Sunday of the month I’d get a haircut. Once I removed all the decisions from my life, it was mostly OK, even if completely barren.

Even now, I don’t know if the others ever noticed anything. In the beginning Ecklie and Grissom both nagged me about seeing the PD counselor; it was rare to see them in such absolute agreement about something. I told them I already had a psychiatrist, an old family friend, and that she was helping me. I guess I played the part pretty well, because eventually they stopped talking to me about it. The rest were careful around me at first; afterwards they kinda forgot. I’d sometimes throw a temper tantrum, but they mostly figured it was just the normal stress of the job. I mostly figured the same. Day-to-day does that to you. It’s suddenly a year later and you have no idea where the time went.

Four or five months after being buried, I had sex with Grissom for the first time. I knew he was having an affair with Sara. I also knew he was probably having the occasional session with Lady Heather. I didn’t give a damn. He could have been fucking half of Vegas for all I cared.

I know what you’re thinking: that he somehow lied to me or took advantage of me. In fact the opposite is true. I seduced him. It’s not hard to push Grissom’s buttons when you know how. He responds to people needing him; he always has and he probably always will. The trick is not to let him think that you actually depend on him, or that you want him to need you back. That way he maintains his precious independence.

I didn’t depend on him and I certainly didn’t want him needing me. It wasn’t even him I needed so much, as a willing male partner. Sometimes I didn’t want to be the strong one during sex. I wanted to be controlled. That’s when I went with men. My brother suggested I try bondage instead, but that doesn’t do it for me. I’ll jerk off to BDSM porn, but the two times I tried living the fantasy, I just felt ridiculous. Having someone fuck me though, I can lose myself in that.

Grissom excels when he applies himself to something. And he certainly applied himself to this. Sometimes I wish I could remember the details of our first time, but it’s probably better I don’t. All I know is that he avoided me for a couple of weeks afterwards. Until I told him I wanted a repeat. Pretty soon, we were getting together every two or three days. I don’t know how he explained his frequent absences to Sara, and I never asked.

It was never romantic. We never kissed or cuddled or spent the night together. It was just sex: hard, fierce, sometimes almost violent. I never gave anything. All I did was take. If I’d ever thought about it, I’d have wondered why he kept on showing up for more, but I didn’t. Sex, especially sex with him, wasn’t about thinking. For the brief hour or so that we’d spend together, it was about forgetting, and feeling only what I wanted to feel.

I don’t know when things began to change for me. Maybe life is just too strong, and if you can hang on long enough, it reels you back in. All I know is that one day I woke up and instead of mechanically going for a jog, I sat out on the steps of my back porch with a cup of coffee and watched the sky turn colors as the sun set. And then, a couple of months later, I decided to go to a movie, which I knew was stupid and which I knew I’d nevertheless enjoy. Just little disconnected things occurring here and there, first rarely, then more and more often, until finally life took a solid presence for me again. I don’t know how to explain it better than that.

One day, I walked into the locker room and found Grissom changing shirts, and I realized it had been almost three weeks since we’d last had sex. Looking at him, I felt that same twisting hunger in my gut that I’d felt whenever he was on top of me and about to penetrate me.

“Do you want to get together later?” I asked, even though I knew I didn’t have to phrase it as a question. In all those months, Grissom had never refused me, and he didn’t this time either. He simply nodded and said he’d be at my place in a couple of hours.

It was different that day. It started out the same, but somehow it changed. He was gentler with me, maybe because I was fighting him less. After we came, instead of moving away from him, I pushed myself harder against him so that he couldn’t pull out. He rested his weight against me, his chest to my back, his cheek resting between my shoulder blades. At regular intervals I could feel his eyelashes flutter against my skin, tickling me a little, and I knew his eyes were open.

“Are we done?” he asked quietly after a while.

“I think so,” I said and we both knew that I didn’t mean just for that day. Before he got up, he kissed me for the first time, and I kissed him back. It felt like goodbye, but not a sad one. More like when you know for sure that somebody will return, and that things will be different, maybe even better.

“You’re not paying attention,” he grumbles.

“I am,” I protest, even though I’m really not. Anyway, it’s his fault. How am I supposed to paint a straight line when he’s standing so close behind me that I can feel his warm breath against my nape, when all I want is to feel his lips there?

“I wish you’d let me do it.”

“Gil, it’s a garden shed door frame. It doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. Nobody’s going to be taking a picture for Architectural Digest.”

“Not the way you’re painting it, they won’t.”

“Go away.”

I turn around and flick my paintbrush at him. The blue spots on his shirt and face don’t quite match the blue in his eyes, but then nobody’s going to be photographing him for GQ either. He looks down at this shirt, then wipes his cheek and looks at his hand.

“I can’t believe you just did that.”

I grin.

After Sara left, we connected again, started to get to know each other better. We never referred to what had happened between us before; I suppose neither of us really understood it or wanted to go there again, but it was always in the background, binding us together instead of pushing us apart as it normally should have.

From the length of time it took us to have sex again, and the hesitation with which we approached the whole issue, you’d think it was our first time with anybody, let alone with each other. I found out that Gil loves being touched and kissed and stroked, and that he prefers it slow and gentle, although he’s always up for the occasional rough bout as well; he found out that I don’t only like to bottom, and that I like falling asleep with him afterwards.

It wasn’t only about the sex though. It was about the things we found we had in common, and the things that were so different, you couldn’t see how they’d fit together, yet somehow they did. Maybe for the first time in as long as we’d known each other, things felt natural and unforced between us. I don’t know why exactly, but I think it was because we both finally figured out that it’s okay not to control everything, that sometimes you just have to let things happen as they will, and trust that they’ll turn out for the best.

He gives me a baleful glare as he steps out of the shower. Most of the paint came off pretty well, but if you look close enough, you can still see pale blue spots on his face, neck and forearms. It looks like he’s just come through some weird disease.

I lend him one of my T-shirts, then I kiss him. He smells of my shampoo and my soap, yet it’s still his own scent underneath, and I put my arms around him and bury my nose in his neck. He rubs my back.

“Are you trying to soften me up after that disgraceful display?” he asks.

“Is it working?”

“Not really. In fact, it’s having the opposite effect,” he says, and he bumps his hips against mine.

I don’t love him and I don’t think he loves me. At least not yet. But I know that’s where we’re headed. And I can’t imagine how it will feel better than where we are right now.