Title: Dead Babies
By: Weegie
Pairing: pre-slash Nick/Greg
Summary: There's a method to his madness.
Disclaimer: me no own.
Notes: This story came from my realization that Coheed and Cambria sing a lot of songs involving dying/dead children...Oh, and I know physics isn't really Greg's thing, but chemistry isn't MINE.

***

"So many...dead babies..."

Though deeply sleeping, Greg is vaguely aware of movement-his lips, his voice and rattling breath diffusing throughout the room. More acutely notable is the shift of his partner; he feels them sitting up, throwing rough legs over the side of their bed. He whimpers, the dark lakes of slumber disturbed by silver ripples.

Greg knows what comes next. His body turns over, pulled toward an invisible aura. The gravity existing between their bodies is growing, and he feels the shift easily, and dreads it.

It's an internal earthquake, where no doorway or heavy-duty furniture could protect him. Yet, his instincts tell him to move, to get under something. His hands move of their own accord, brushing cool flesh covered with a brail of goose bumps. He rolls toward his frightened lover, seeking what he knows cannot be found.

"Come back," he whispers, keeping the horrible distress from his soft voice, wanting to eradicate the terror of dreams and their effect on the person beside him. But the shift has begun, and when they flinch-pulling away from him-he falls back with a sigh, unsurprised, only hurt.

"You're leaving then." Not a question, guess, or implication. Greg does not need to ask, does not need to hear the excuses.

There is the rasping, certain sound of cloth on skin. "Look Greg, this just isn't working out. You're cute, you're a great guy, but I can't deal with your schedule and with someone who talks about dead babies when he should be whispering sweet nothings in my ear." The bitterness is new, and it sets him on edge. What do they have to be bitter about? He's the one who's being dumped for a bad dream.

For being human.

"Fuck you," Greg mutters sullenly, and he turns his back on them, waiting completely still and tense, for the door to close with the familiar finality. The shift completes, he feels himself sinking into the chasm, resisting the crush of tectonic plates.

----------

He tries to wait it out, this time. Tries to go back to sleep, avoiding the faded warmth on the other side of the bed. Hours pass at breakneck speed, and he cracks the blackout curtains to watch the sun sink lower and lower toward the horizon.

Four hours later, he reaches for the phone. Greg has outdone himself, for once. He dials the number easily, the buttons glowing beneath his fingers.

There is a click after the second ring. "Stokes." Greg frowns, but is unable to berate Nick for his lackluster salutations.

"Two months," he sighs. "He did good."

Greg can almost see Nick's face softening, crinkling in sympathy and distress. "What was it this time?" Nick says quietly.

"Eh...the usual-bad hours, no time...dead babies..."

There is a pause.

"Nick, I'm sorry, I tried to wait it out but I just got lonely-"

"I'll be right over," Nick mutters, firm but distracted.

"Don't go anywhere," he adds, before the line dies.

----------

Greg is waiting, clean and dressed, when Nick arrives. The door slams shut, and Nick pulls him into an embrace that he never asks for, and doesn't need, but is happy to return. At this point in the cycle, Greg has moved beyond anger and loneliness to a sly and lucid joy.

Because that's the difference between Nick and other people. When Greg starts talking about dead babies and loneliness, they might turn away in disgust, but Nick Stokes will call of work and come running.

And when Nick leaves the next day, Greg will call in sick and spend the night bar-hopping, drinking until all the slurring resembles that Texan drawl, and he'll pick up some burly, dark-haired man to start it all again.

"You okay?" Nick whispers into his hair.

"Yes. Now that you're here."

Greg hopes his next relationship ends quickly.

***