Title: Cover Up...
Author: Dee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1321
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Characters: Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes Warnings: AU and fluff!
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In my dreams they are like, totally mine!
Unbeta-ed: All mistakes will be mine.
A/N 1: Just a little bit of background information I made up!

This was their fourth date and the third time they’d ended up in bed.

The smell of their sweat and their sex filled the air and there was the hint of a smirk on Gil’s face.  The smell in, and of, itself was erotic and he was still hard enough to go again, given a little encouragement.  He looked down at Nick lying on his side against him, held in place by his arm around his muscled shoulders.  Nick’s left arm was resting across Gil’s chest and Gil was running his fingertips over the back of the hand.   Nick looked as if he was asleep, his face relaxed and his breathing calm and regular...now.

“Are you staring at me?”

“Yes.”

“Stop it and go to sleep.”

“Okay.  Nick?”

“You asleep yet?”

“No.  You?”

“No.  Too noisy in here.”

“I’ll let you sleep if you answer one question.”

“If it’s to explain the theory of e equalling mc squared, your luck’s out.”

“That’s tomorrow’s question.”

“There’s going to be a tomorrow then?”  Gil could see Nick’s smile after he’d asked the question, though his eyes remained closed.

“I’d like that.  You?”

“Yeah.  So?”

“So what?”

“Your question, what was your question; your brain must be short of blood.”

“It is; when you’re as big as me it takes a lot of blood...”

Nick was laughing and his breath was tickling Gil’s side. Gil hugged him a little tighter.

“You take all your clothes off and your watch but you leave this...this strap around you wrist, why...”  As Gil asked the question, he sensed Nick tense up and his eyes opened.

“I’ve been wearing it since I came to Vegas and you’re the first person to ask about it. It’s not a secret, but...”

“...I’m not going to say anything.”

“...you’re my boss.”

Gil was aware that he tensed up himself as Nick said that.  They’d spent years flirting, mildly, publicly and in private.  But it had only been two weeks since Nick had made a pass at him and they’d kissed.  But Nick was right, he remained his boss.

“I know.  But this can’t count as work, aren’t we equals here?”

“You think?”

“Yes.  Yes, I do.”

Nick was silent.  Gil looked down at him.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to ruin everything.”

“You didn’t.  It’s no big deal.”  He rolled away from Gil onto his back.  But he looked back at Gil and took his hand and linked their fingers.  “It’s a long story.”

“You don’t have to...”

“...we shouldn’t start off having secrets.”

He undid the strap and let it fall away and Gil’s breath hitched as he saw what had been hidden.  Scars.  Four scars, three small and one long, across the path of the radial artery.

Suicide.  The classic scarring of an attempt to commit suicide by slitting the wrist.  The several attempts and then the successful cut...

“So.  I was sixteen, just few weeks short of seventeen and I had this friend, Brad. He was a few months older than me.  We’d been best friends for years at school.  Took the same classes and everything.  By the time we were fifteen we were more than friends...there were benefits.  It kind of just happened and it was good, but of course we kept it secret.  As far as we knew no one knew and it was going to stay that way.

“But we got sloppy this one night.  Brad had to baby-sit his sister, Angie, and I went over to his house.  We did this quite often and we usually did our homework, but this night and I can’t remember why, but we started to fool around and in no time at all, we had our hands in each other’s pants and were rolling around on his bed, when Angie, who was eleven, just comes waltzing in the room.

“She probably didn’t know what we doing, per se, but she certainly knew that we shouldn’t be doing it and she screamed; God did she scream.  I can still hear her now.  Brad was very good; he was calm and trying to calm Angie down and I was running around like the proverbial headless...I was panic stricken.  I was shit scared.  I put my clothes back on haphazardly and hightailed it out of there.  Left my homework...just ran and by the time I got home I was worked up into such a state...I can’t tell you.”

“Oh God, Nick.”  Gil took Nick’s hand and held onto it with both of his.

“I didn’t know what to do, I bypassed the family and went straight up to my room and sat on my bed, shaking and snivelling.  I was going to run away from home.  I started to put some things in a little duffel bag when the phone rang...and I just knew it would be Brad’s Dad and that was it.

“The first thing that came into my mind was that I’d have to kill myself and I ran to the bathroom and found Dad’s razor and cut my wrist.”

Nick looked at the scars.  “It hurt like hell.  But the last cut did bleed, I can tell you, but probably not enough to have killed me for a long time, if at all...and it never occurred to me to do my right wrist.  Right handed you see.

“Anyway I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom when my Mom came in and all hell let loose.  Dad called our family doctor who came and said it wasn’t bad enough to go to the hospital, so he stitched it up and that avoided any publicity.  And a pysch evaluation.”

“What happened?”  Gil felt anxious listening to the horror story,

“I’m getting there.”  Nick smiled at him quite obviously not in the least traumatised by his story.

“Brad’s Mom and Dad had suspected for some time that Brad was gay.  They hadn’t guessed that I was and that we were...it was his Mom on the phone and she spoke to my Mom ‘cause Brad had said that I was upset.  And that was it.”

“That’s it?  What about the repercussions?  How did your parents take it?”

“They were more upset about the slit wrist.  Mom was okay straightaway, Dad took a few days to come to terms with it and of course I had to go to therapy again and have all the individual sessions and the family stuff.  I was fine once I knew they were okay about it.  It was never the same with Brad, though.  I couldn’t stand being around Angie.  And, well Brad got gayer, like camp gay and that wasn’t really my scene, you know?”

“You said you had to go to therapy, again?  Why, again?”

“I had to go after the assault...but...”

“...assault?  What assault?”

“Not now…”  Nick actually whined.  “…you don’t need to know right now.  I want to go to sleep.  Please let me go to sleep, I’ve been fucking.”  Nick yawned.

In truth. Gil thought Nick did sound drowsy, but there was a great deal more he wanted to know about Nick Stokes.

But Nick wasn’t concerned in the least about his confession.  He moved back onto his side against Gil and slung a leg over Gil’s legs and his arm, without the strap, around Gil’s stomach and wriggled to make himself comfortable and closed his eyes.

“It’s no big deal.  Go to sleep, babe.”

Gil lifted Nick’s hand up from his stomach, turned it over and kissed the scars and then lay it down again.

“Night, Nick.”

Gil didn’t sleep immediately, he ruminated on the information that Nick had just shared.  He’d known him for years and yet he obviously didn’t know him at all.  Just how much more was there to Nick?  He guessed he’d have to stick around and find out.  He hugged him to him just a little tighter and Nick sighed, contentedly, as he slept.

The End