Title: Ellis Island
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: Sequel to New Life.

Three weeks might seem like a long time. They aren’t. The days fly by, more and more quickly, and it doesn’t matter if you cram them full of activities or if you just spend them lazing on a couch in front of a TV. You wake up each morning, and you realize that you don’t have much longer and you tell yourself that this is the day you’ll clear everything up, this is the day you’ll finally explain everything to him. This is the day you’ll let go of the past and move forward. But you don’t. Right before falling asleep, you tell yourself that you’ll definitely do it tomorrow. And then, there’s only one day and a wake-up left.

“What do you want to do today?”

“I don’t know. Haven’t we done everything?”

“We never went to Ellis Island.”

I shrug. “Maybe next time.”

He’s been leaning against the counter, drinking a cup of coffee, but now he comes and sits across from me at the table and stares at me intently.

“Is there going to be a next time?”

I break eye contact first. I feel like crying and I’m not quite sure why. There’s only one more day. I shouldn’t be wasting it.

He reaches over and lays his hand on mine.

“Let’s go to Ellis Island, Nick.”

I take a deep breath and nod.

Nobody knows me here. I can do anything I want to. I can hold his hand while we’re walking. I can lean over and kiss him while we’re waiting in line to get on the ferry that will take us over. I can put my arm around him as we both lean on the railing, looking up at the Statue of Liberty. Some people stare, some carefully avert their eyes, and some pay us no attention, and I don’t care either way. I can pretend that I live here and that this is what it’s always like. Normal. Easy.

He smiles at me as the ferry docks at Ellis Island, his eyes sparkling. He’s like a kid when he’s about to experience something new. Not childish; just completely open, curious, excited at the prospect of learning something or solving a puzzle. I didn’t see it at first. Just like most everybody else, I took it for granted that Gil Grissom knows pretty much everything there is to know. It took me a while to understand that he didn’t put his experiments in the break room fridge just to annoy the rest of us or because he couldn’t give a damn what we thought. Little by little, he’d seemed to lose that part of himself, and I never even realized it was gone.

I find the Great Hall almost unbearably moving. I try to imagine what it must have looked like in the early 1900s, full of immigrants who had traveled for weeks to an unknown destination in pursuit of a better life. That’s what makes it most heart-breaking I think, the fact that they left everything they knew behind not to chase some big dream, but just for a better chance for themselves and their children. I know it turned out well for most of them, but here, just a couple of steps from a new life, they must have been as scared as they’d ever been.

“Even with almost two thousand people in here, it must have been quiet,” I say

Gil shakes his head. “A large portion of the immigrants through Ellis Island were Irish, Italians and Greeks. It’s hard to imagine them being quiet under any circumstances.”

I smile. “Did your relatives come through here?”

“Not that I know of. Yours?”

“Nope. We’ve all been in Texas since the 1800s. One of my great-great-great-grandfathers fought with Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto.”

For some reason he seems to find that amusing.

On the way back, I grow more and more depressed. He’s quiet as well, and we barely exchange two words. It’s already late afternoon. Just a few more hours.

The moment we’re in his apartment, I fall on him, shoving him back towards the bedroom, trying to rip off his clothes even as our mouths are glued together. We don’t spend a lot of time on foreplay or preparations, and I know I’m hurting him, but it doesn’t stop either of us. I don’t pull out after I come. I just lie on top of him, holding his hands in mine, my lips against his nape, tasting the salty skin there as I kiss him.

“Don’t go,” he mutters.

I raise my head a little to look at him. His face is half-buried in the pillow, his eyes closed. I kiss him again, but I don’t answer. We both know what he’s asking for is impossible.

He roughly shakes me awake, and for a second I panic, thinking it’s time to get up. Then I realize the bedroom is still dark.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“Now?”

“Yes. Right fucking now,” he grits out.

He turns on the bedside lamp and I squint at the sudden brightness. He’s sitting up in bed and he looks blazingly angry. I push myself upright as well and lean against the headboard.

“I need you to explain this to me.”

“Explain what?”

“This. The past three weeks. The months before that. Us.”

I gape at him. It’s not that I don’t want to answer. It’s just that I don’t know how.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I protest.

He shakes his head.

“No. You want something, and I don’t know what the fuck it is. So explain it to me, and then we can get on with our lives.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“What are you doing? Punishing me for Sara? For not being there for you three years ago? For being tough on you as a supervisor? What?”

“Punishing you? What are you talking about?”

His shoulders suddenly sag. He no longer seems angry, just resigned.

“When you showed up here, I thought…” He stops, then makes a dismissive gesture. “Never mind what I thought. Why did you send me away?”

“I didn’t send you away. You left.”

“It’s what you seem to have wanted.”

What he’s saying is partly true, but I shake my head, denying it.

“You wanted me to stay?”

I shake my head again. What I wanted and what I ended up doing are two entirely different things.

“Have you ever really told me the truth?”

“About what?”

I immediately regret my response, because it implies that there are things that I’ve lied about.

“About anything. About how you feel. About what you want.”

He gets up and pulls his boxers on, then stands by the side of the bed with his hands on his hips, staring down at me.

“Do you love me?” he asks suddenly.

His tone is so matter-of-fact that for a second I’m positive I haven’t heard him correctly, and I stare at him stupidly. I try to speak, but the words don’t come out at first and I have to clear my throat.

“Do you?” I finally ask.

“Yes.”

“Why haven’t you ever said so?”

“I thought you knew.”

I shake my head. “How could I?”

He smiles humorlessly. “Because we were together. Because you told me to hell with everything else, our reputation, our jobs, and I agreed. Because I changed my life for you, and I don’t mean coming to New York. Because you knew nothing of all the above came easy for me and I did it anyway.”

“I seem to recall having to chase after you quite a few times. In fact, I was never sure if you were in it for the long haul or not.”

“Is that what you want?” he asks calmly. “A commitment from me? A promise to stay with you, no matter what? Is that what it will take?”

And finally, it all becomes clear to me. That’s exactly what I want. I want to know that he’ll always be there for me regardless of whether I deserve it or not. I want to know that he’ll put up with my moods, with the times that I get so angry about what Walter Gordon did to me that I can’t stand to be with anyone but I can’t bear being alone either. I want him at my side. I want the happily-ever-after he says he doesn’t believe in. I need these things. I need them desperately, no matter how much I pretend to him and to myself that I don’t.

“Yes.”

“And will you believe me?”

“No,” I say baldly.

He sighs and sits down on the bed, facing me.

“I’ve thought about this a lot, Nick. There are no certainties in life. Things happen that we hadn’t planned on. Feelings change. People change.”

“I know,” I interrupt him, but he reaches out and takes my hand, lacing our fingers together.

“Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Taking a chance when you’re not sure of the outcome. Being afraid of the risk, but risking anyway.” He pauses for a second, then smiles. “Only two per cent got turned away at Ellis Island, you know. Most made it through in a few hours.”

But we don’t know how many never found what they were searching for, I want to tell him. I look down at our clasped hands. It would take a lot of power for someone to manage to pull them apart if we didn’t want to let go. It’s an inane thought, but it takes hold.

“Do you love me?” he asks again, and this time I nod.

The final wake-up. He drives me to JFK and walks with me to the check-in counter.

“Call me when you reach home.”

“Okay.”

He hugs me tightly and kisses me.

“I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“This every other weekend thing is going to cost us an arm and a leg,” I say and he laughs.

“Airline tickets: 500 dollars. Showering with you in the morning: priceless.”

“You’ve never showered with me.”

“There’s a whole lot of things we haven’t done together. But we will,” he says and kisses me again, then shoves me gently towards the security check. I look back at him once I’m through and he smiles and raises his right hand, his middle and ring finger folded against his palm, his other fingers and thumb extended.

“It’s me. I’m home.”

“Good flight?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Tell Catherine something for me, will you?”

“Sure.”

“Tell her I said you’re the one thing.”

“You’re the one thing?”

“No. You.”

“Huh?”

“Quote: Gil told me to tell you I’m the one thing. End quote.”

“Gil told me to tell you I’m the one thing? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“She’ll know.”

“I wish I did,” I grumble and I hear him laugh.

When I give Catherine the message, she smiles.

“Tell him that in that case I forgive him for not sending a postcard.”

“I don’t know when I’ll be talking to him next,” I warn. “It might be a while.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffs and despite myself, I grin.

Twelve days and a wake-up. And then we’ll be together again.