Title: The Curse II
Author: Dee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1984
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Characters: Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes
Warnings: V.v.v.AU. Character un-death!
Spoilers: References to the opening sequence of S11.E01 – Shock Waves
Disclaimer: In my dreams they are like, totally mine!
Unbeta-ed – so the mistakes are all mine!
A/N: This is a story of the supernatural written for Halloween and is a sequel to the original The Curse posted on 01.11.09.

Previous story in series - The Curse

Gil Grissom was giving evidence in court and was just a nanosecond too late.

---ooOoo---

The bomb exploded and the door of the truck hurtled at him and hit him causing massive head trauma.

Gil Grissom had known the consequences of the injury the moment he’d arrived at the cemetery, as the bomb fragments were still flying through the air.  The injury was immediately humanly fatal, but in less than another nanosecond, Gil Grissom gave sufficient life to the body to keep it alive to get him to the hospital and keep him breathing, for days if not weeks.  But not even his powers could replace destroyed brain tissue.

After surgery the surgeon called it a catastrophic head injury.  He would never wake up.  He was brain dead and would die when they switched off the life support system. 

Gil Grissom was as angry as he’d ever been in life or in death.  He sought out the Young Man and in a dual to the re-death, reduced him to ashes without even a graze or mark to his own cold body.

He delivered the ashes to The Elders and told them what he required.  After twelve years he was going to exercise his right to Convert his own Human to the Vamperic fold.  There was no dissent; Gil Grissom had killed one of his own kind honourably and it was his right to Convert. 

There was honour among Vampires.

---ooOoo---

There was no plan to begin with but following the death of the Young Man, Gil Grissom started to plan how he could keep his own New Young Man dead, but amongst the living.

---ooOoo---

It took three days for the entire Stokes family to assemble at the bedside of their son and brother, Nicholas Stokes.

The doctors were amazed that the machine had even managed to keep the body breathing, because of one thing they were absolutely sure.  Nick was dead.  No one survived such trauma.

As Jillian Stokes wept and held her son’s hand the switch was flicked and the machine became silent. 

But the body kept breathing and the heart kept beating and the monitor kept beeping.

The Doctors stared and looked uncomfortable.  Jillian’s tears dried up and Bill Stokes was incredulous.

The team watched through the window to the room.  Catherine, Sara and Greg crying, and Warrick grim faced, but Gil Grissom, had they taken a moment to look at him, was smirking his trademark smirk.

The first part of the plan, Step One, was completed.  Gil Grissom had ensured that Nick would live unaided until he was able to move onto the next step.

The days melted into weeks and in the end the Doctors admitted they had no idea how Nick was staying alive, but he was breathing and his heart was beating.  They were out of medical options though they were under no illusion, he would never regain consciousness, he had insufficient brain tissue to sustain life...and yet...he was still living.

He was transferred to a long term care facility in Dallas, Texas.  The Doctors believed he wouldn’t survive the journey.  But he was settled in the facility and Clark County paid the bill.

Gil Grissom visited him daily and kept him alive and decided after an interval of two weeks, when the dust was beginning to settle, that he would Convert Nick within the next few weeks.

Nick would have to learn, quickly, to mimic a heart beat and respiration but the Doctors could be fooled and Gil Grissom would be part of that process.  He could manipulate machinery and minds to see things that weren’t there and the Doctors would not be suspicious of a living man without a heart beat and respiration, and his cure would be miraculous.  Although Nick and his family would forbid any publicity about it, that was the last thing Nick and Gil Grissom would need. 

Gil Grissom took a leave of absence from the lab to do this work.  People talked behind his back; the bomb had not only shattered Nick, but him too.  He heard them and let them think it; it suited his plan. 

It was a bright moonlit night when he planned to wake up Nick, dead.  As Gil Grissom waited in the shadows as the facility locked down for the night he looked out of a window and smirked at the irony; all that was needed was a few bats and a cemetery of broken tombstones, dramatic music and Humans would interpret the scene like a Hollywood film.

He stood over Nick.  He was already pale, but warm and (intravenously) well fed, and muscled from the daily physiotherapy that he’d influenced Jillian Stokes to demand for her son.  It was the first time since his own Conversion that he’d used his powers so fully and successfully.  He knew that although he’d chosen to live as a Human, he was, in fact, an ultra successful Vampire, for that very reason.

And now, for the first time he was going to bite.  Not anyone, but the man he loved.  Who, ironically, was already dead.

Step Two of the plan was the Conversion.

If he’d been Human he’d have taken a deep breath before he did it, if he’d been Human he was sure he’d have felt remorse.  But he felt exalted and was filled with a triumphalism that was, he knew, his Vamperic heritage.  And maybe he understood, for the first time, the power he possessed.  Over life.  Over death.

The bright moonlight illuminated the room and he bent over the body of Nick Stokes.

His fangs extruded, he sank them into the soft warm skin of Nick’s wrist and sucked...

He had never before experienced such pleasure; such eroticism.  His cold body was on fire and as the blood of Nick drained into him the orgasmic feeling transported him to a never before visited ecstatic plain and every cell of his body exploded with desire and fulfilment.  He had waited all of his life for this moment and he would have walked into the sunlight and perished, happily, for having experienced this one moment of utter bliss.

He drained the blood from Nick and his body become cold beneath his lips.  Nick’s heart stopped as did his breathing.  And he lay there as Gil Grissom looked at him with adoration, knowing that he’d spend his eternity with this man...this...Vampire.   

Gil sat patiently at the bedside until Nick opened his eyes.

“Shit, Gris, there’s a bomb...”  Nick looked at his hand and arm and his forehead wrinkled into a frown at the intravenous lines attached to him.  “...I guess I didn’t escape unscathed.  Man, my head feels real weird and it’s cold in here, will you get me another blanket?  Please?”  He added with a smile. 

Gil Grissom didn’t move, savouring the moment his beloved Nick was with him again and now, they would be together...forever.

Nick looked at him quizzically.  “There’s something odd going on, isn’t there?  I know it.  Do you know I’ve always thought you were my Guardian Angel, weird, but I’ve always known that nothing bad would ever happen to me because you would take care of me.  You’re taking care of me now, aren’t you?”

Gil Grissom nodded and smiled.  He took Nick’s hand in his and looked briefly at the puncture marks on his wrist; already fading, they would be gone by daybreak.

Nick looked down at their joined hands and smiled.  “What is it?  Tell me.”

 “You didn’t escape unscathed.  Your head injury was fatal.  I wouldn’t describe me as a Guardian Angel...”  He smiled at the description, Guardian Fallen Angel was probably more apt.  “... but I have taken care of you for twelve years.  And now, like me, to survive in this world, you are in an altered state.  We are Vampire.”

Nick’s eyes were as wide as they could be as he looked at Gil Grissom. 

“Feel for your pulse.  Listen for your heart beat, your breathing.  They are no more, but I have offered you the chance to join me and to live in a different way.  Be at my side, always.  My Convert.  My...love...”

Gil Grissom remembered his own Conversion and his complete acceptance of his fate, within moments.  He now witnessed the same thing with Nick.

Nick looked down at his chest and looked back up at Gil Grissom.  “No shit?”

Gil Grissom actually laughed.  Nick sounded more like Greg Sanders than his old Human self.

“I don’t know what the response is to that question, but it’s right.  I am here to guide you through the process.  Introduce you to the ways of our life.  You will learn easily just as I did.”

“You just said, my love, and I’ll, be with you always...does that mean...together?”

“You are my Convert and it is tradition that we should remain...together.”  Remembering his own disastrous Conversion with the Young Man, Gil Grissom was hesitant but he looked at Nick and saw the grin on his face.

“You know I think I’m going to like this.  Is it like the movies...oh, God, are there real life Buffy’s out there?” 

Nick seemed serious and Gil Grissom rolled his eyes.  No doubt his work would be cut out but he was going to enjoy every moment of it.

Knowing the Young Man and other Vampires and even The Elders, he wondered if he was actually the only happy Vampire in their world.  And Nick, of course.

Epilogue

As Gil Grissom had foretold, Nick was an exemplary student Vampire and together, within days, they were a formidable force.  It was the first time Gil Grissom had realised that joined Vampires became a strong unit.  He understood, but couldn’t care less, why the Young Man had been so angry about him not joining him in a unit. 

He also realised, begrudgingly, that his dead life with Nick was so great that he should have let Amy Hendler, Nigel Crane or Walter Gordon, kill him all those years ago and instead of protecting Nick from death he should have welcomed it.  But it mattered little to the men, the Vampires, as they lived their death.

The Doctors could not, would not, believe it and wanted test after test.  Both Nick and Gil Grissom manipulated the results and after a decent period of rehabilitation, Nick returned to the graveyard shift.  A living, walking miracle.  No one mentioned the fairly substantial dent in the back of his head, although Jillian Stokes always worried about her son being too cold.

And like all the best students he surpassed his teacher in adapting his deathstyle to working amongst the living.  Nick was far more gadget savvy and worldly than Gil Grissom had ever been, even alive, and he used a spray tan at a salon to keep a healthy look and a complete sun block for work in the daylight.  He wore hi-tech clothing that shielded him from the sun and contact lenses that protected his eyes.  He found a small pulsing machine on-line that would mimic a heart beat if it was attached to his body and another gizmo that was like a thin layer of silicone that once attached to his chest wall would move his clothing up and down as if he was breathing.  Both were driven by small batteries.

He made Gil Grissom follow suit.

They learned that the pleasure of sipping each other’s cold blood transcended the most intense sexual feelings they’d ever experienced, alive.  This was no penis-centred pleasure but a whole body orgasm that could be sustained for hours.  They were addicted to the pleasure and laughed and loved at their own good fortune. The Young Man had told Gil Grissom that he could never love but that was completely untrue. 

They loved. 

And they became legends in their own death...

The End