Title: The Epilogue
Author: Dee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2197
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Characters: Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes, but mention of other characters.
Warnings: Fluff and v.v.v.AU and OOC.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In my dreams they are like, totally mine!
Beta: jayceepat and podga for their invaluable help in the Americanisation of the fic and their insightful comments – which I may well have ignored! I thank high_striker for his wonderful icons. I am indebted to them all. Any errors are mine.
A/N: This is Part Eleven of Eleven and is a short Epilogue to bring the ‘soap’ to a close. It is the end of: Blah…blah…blah…, The Long and Winding Road, What About Sex?, Cool, The Insane Kind, Convoluted, Four Times In Twenty Four Hours, Upping the Ante, BFF and Facing Up. It will help to be familiar with these as they form part of the whole. I posted the v.first part of this on 25.02.08. I started writing it in the middle of 2007. I would like to thank everyone who followed it through and took the time to comment - my everlasting thanks to you all!

Gil really discovered a side to himself that he had no idea existed until Nick; but he was sure it was inherited from his mother. She was patient and kind and loving and Gil had never attributed those qualities to himself.

Until Nick.

Their lives were turned around by their love. It had caused Sara to try and kill Nick and his parents to finally abandon him; but for all the vagaries of life that had been thrown at them, they had endured. They were steadfast. Their love did not waver.

Nick came to understand his parent’s abandonment and grieved for what might have been. As Ed said, it was bereavement, but they still lived. Gil, despite wanting not to care, came to pity Nick’s parents for their loss. He would never quite come to terms with their abhorrent behaviour.

Nick’s ordeal at the hands of Sara Sidle caused him little further trouble. She was dead, it was over. He recovered fully, physically and mentally, though always remained pissed about his scars. Gil, after being admonished for drawing attention to the scars every time they made love, tempered his enthusiasm, but still pointed out to Nick that they reminded them both of what he had endured for their love and that their love had prevailed. Nick said it was easy for him to talk when he didn’t have fucking scars all over his chest – but, nevertheless, he still loved him!

There was so much love.

Gil couldn’t quite believe just how much love. He had never thought much about love and he put that down to the fact that he’d never loved and been loved in return. He had always loved poetry, and Shakespeare, but the emotions had all been second hand, the written word on a page. Now he actually understood, with his whole being, what poetry described…the lightheaded feeling when he hadn’t seen Nick for several hours and he came into view. The swelling of his chest when he saw him smile. The warmth he felt when Nick smiled AT him, when no one else was included. The longing to be with him when they weren’t together. The completeness of his life.

The pleasure in his body when they physically loved and the joy and laughter that it brought to them both; they were happy and fun loving lovers. Discovering that giving was easily as pleasurable as receiving and that tickling Nick made him screech; stroking him made him purr and sometimes he cried because it was just that good.

Nick’s return to work had gone without a hitch; the most interesting fact about the time he was confined to the lab was that he didn’t murder Hodges. But commonsense prevailed and Hodges remained in the land of the living.

Nick got the bonus for which he’d been nominated by Catherine. He had intended the bonus should be used to buy Gil a present; but Gil expressly forbade it, saying that Nick should put it away for something ‘special’. Eventually Gil agreed that their honeymoon would be special.

And, Ecklie turned into ‘Nick’s new friend’. He’d always liked the young man, and for the life of him he couldn’t understand what he saw in Gil Grissom. Or, if he was honest, in ‘men’. But Nick kept his preference to himself and always seemed like a regular guy, except, of course, when Gil Grissom was in close proximity.

It wasn’t that it was directed at anyone else, or even overt behaviour, but it was such that even Ecklie sensed the sexual attraction between the men; he often wondered if, in fact, they did fuck like bunnies in a secret closet at work!

They didn’t ‘marry’ as they had intended, they waited to see if Nevada would legalise same sex partnerships; ironically Judge Benton was at the forefront of the dissention and when it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen any time soon, they decided to marry in Iceland – it wouldn’t be legal in the States but they knew what it meant for ‘them’. Their honeymoon was spent in Iceland exploring the wonderful glacial landscape and then on the Greek island of Mykonos. Every penny of the bonus was spent…and then some!

Nick still intended to go to Scotland, and spent several years researching his family roots and with the help of a genealogy web site was able to trace and then contact long lost and very distant relatives. Many of them still lived in the area where his grandmother had been born - in Blair Athol, Faskally and Pitlochry.

Their vacation to meet this distant family in Scotland was fantastic. Unfortunately there were parts of it they simply didn’t remember: neither man being a big liquor drinker, the dizzying array of Scotch whiskies that passed their lips and burned their throats caused them to spend a few mornings with their heads in their hands and begging the relatives to please, please, be a little quieter….please? Of course, the relatives would swear that not once did they force their sissy American cousins to drink it against their will…...

They moved to a new home. Nick took charge of the décor and Gil didn’t complain about one solitary thing. Nick had an innate ability to know what was right, which colour was needed and where and what furniture would suit them best. Nick was always agitating Gil to take more interest in their home. But Gil was content to let Nick do everything, not because he was lazy or because he didn’t care, but because he knew he was a ‘whitewash and cream walls’ kinda guy, and Nick was a ‘burnt sienna and terracotta walls in a very tasteful manner’ kinda guy.

Nick was happy when he’d finally chosen a new couch and chairs; the first time Gil sat on the couch, he wanted to stay there for several hours because it was far too comfortable to move, unless it was to their bed. The bed was an electric water bed. Gil’s trepidation at mixing elements not known for their friendly interaction was completely assuaged after his first night’s sleep. The interactive bed could cool or warm them, or on rare occasions, heat them up. The water mattress wrapped itself around Gil, almost, but not quite, as well as Nicky.

Of course, learning to fuck on it was a whole new ball game…although they spent many happy times trying to co-ordinate their moving bodies...made even more difficult by their laughter. More than one lovemaking session had to be abandoned, temporarily, after erections were lost while they cried…laughing. There was one memorable occasion that Nick was forbidden to talk about, when Gil actually rolled off the bed.

Catherine spent weeks trying to find out how Gil had come by his bruises. He remained at his most enigmatic when he said they were attributable to a household accident. It would have worked too, if Nick had not been there, trying, desperately, not to laugh and thereby making his snorting noises worse.

Occasionally, Gil would remember all those years ago in Nick’s living room, when he first hugged a distraught Nick. He could never have envisaged his life turning out as it did. He was pretty sure he would have remained a bachelor. But Nicky Stokes had happened.

There was so much happiness. They had a few ups and downs, a few arguments here and there but then, when they’d mastered the water bed, some spectacular make up sex.

When Nick was forty four he was promoted to Assistant Director of the lab. He succeeded Ecklie. He’d been promoted to supervisor some years before and Gil had become the official training officer for the lab. What had most impressed the bosses about Nick was his easy but authoritative manner, coupled with his astute political knowhow. He could out politick them all; he was a natural. The irony was not lost on Gil.

With Nick’s major promotion Gil decided to retire from the lab; he took on consultancy work, which often led him back to the lab. Of course, Nick never requested the esteemed Dr Grissom to come in to assist his staff, but neither did he veto their choice of independent consultant. It worked well.

A couple of months after his promotion his brother, Daniel, sent him a short and curt note informing him that Jillian Louisa Stokes had died after a long and brave battle with Alzheimer’s disease. William Stokes was disabled following a series of strokes after the death of his beloved wife.

Nick was upset and Gil held him close as they talked well into the night - they worked during the day now. What had upset Nick most was that his parents had been referred to as Jillian and William Stokes. He’d never seen or heard from them again after that day in the hospital room. It looked like Daniel was a chip off the old block. His mother’s funeral had been held before Nick was notified of her death. He probably wouldn’t have gone, but…..

And then, eleven years after their Icelandic marriage, Nevada actually allowed same sex civil partnerships, they ‘married’ and threw the biggest and best party that their friends could remember.

Nick achieved what Ecklie had only ever dreamed about. When he was forty nine he was appointed a Director of LVPD. It was only a matter of weeks later, that his youngest sister called the lab saying that their Daddy had died, aged ninety-three, and asking if he would like to come to the funeral. He said no; it would make him a hypocrite and he couldn’t do that.

But Caroline invited him to visit her home later and see his sisters again, she thought Daniel wouldn’t bother him; he didn’t bother with much nowadays, except a bottle of liquor.

Nick said he would only visit with Gil at his side. Caroline had said, ‘of course, I wouldn’t expect anything else’.

When Nick landed in his beloved Texas after so many years absence, he cried. He cried with his sisters and Gil was amazed that they all cried back; it wasn’t a ‘Nick trait’, as he’d assumed (breaking his own code), it was obviously a family trait. Nick had nieces and nephews and grandnieces and even a gay grandnephew, Rory. For Rory to find out that he had a gay Great Uncle Nick made him the happiest young man in town. He wanted to show off his ‘GGUN’ to all his friends. Nick and Gil were silently aghast; they were not flamboyant in their ‘gay’ lifestyle and appeared to be a very staid old married couple to all the assorted family.

This started a new chapter in their lives; they became a veritable hotel for visiting family. Always cheerful and eager, the visitors would insist on guided tours of Las Vegas and the surrounding area to such an extent that Gil made up tours for the visitors, incorporating little known facts with major tourist attractions. He was a huge hit.

Nick retired early, when he was fifty five, because Gil was seventy and Nick wanted to spend more time with the man he loved, the man he loved more than he could ever say with mere words.

They stayed in Vegas but spent time travelling to places they’d talked about but never got around to visiting. From Antarctica and the Northern Territories to equatorial Africa and the Amazon.

They spent time in Texas with Nick’s family.

They spent time in California visiting the places of Gil's youth and Nick had to physically restrain him when he saw a dead…whatever…on a beach. Old habits die hard.

What of the others, their friends and colleagues?

Even if infrequently, they all kept in touch. And it was no secret to anyone that Nick was the major force in Nick and Gil’s marriage, although they ALL let Gil assume it was actually him; it worked out very well for all concerned.

Catherine and Warrick eventually married and were happy. Nick didn’t think they were as happy as he was with Gil…but he thought that of every couple.

Greg died in a road accident on vacation in Norway visiting long lost relatives. He was forty three and unmarried.

Brass and Sofia became on and off and on again lovers, but remained unmarried; they were always Gil and Nick’s closest friends.

Hodges finally wore Wendy down and they married and had four children in three years…okay, two were a set of twins…and Hodges…well, he was still Hodges.

The lab rats shuffled around and left or retired; Archie set up his own sound system business and became a bit of tycoon. Wendy and Archie had an affair that is still talked about, but she never left Hodges and if Hodges knew, he never said.

Oh, one last thing; Gil did get used to taking a dump when Nick was in the bathroom, but he always rued the missed quiet time with a new forensic journal. He got used to it – but he never really liked it - it was the only thing that he could really complain about, but he didn’t…much.

In fact, it is true to say that Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes lived happily ever after…….

The. Very. End.


A/Final/N: I am really v.v.grateful to all of you who read and (especially) commented on this 'soapy saga'! I will be posting more, new, Gil/Nick fics in a week or so, so hang on in there whilst I go off on a little holiday! CU soon! Dee x