Title: What You Have
By: Evan Nicholas
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes
Rating: FRAO
Warnings: None
Summary: ((Sequel to "WHAT YOU WANT")) -- Some things are less unconditional than others.

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NOTE: Franky, love of my life - as always, a dozen roses at your feet.

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He knows it's bad news.

Jim Brass sits in his car outside of the courthouse, looking down at the pager he has and trying to talk himself out of the increasingly miserable feeling blossoming in his chest.

He used to be an evidence man, he thinks. He used to chase fingerprints and paint transfers, or at least he used to supervise the geeks that did the actual chasing. In his heart he's always been about the people, but the evidence works for him, too. It's a tidy way to draw the line that connects the perp to his crime. He likes that, likes things he can explain in less than two pages of type-written report.

So where is this gnawing ache of worry coming from? It's just a page from the DA's office, he gets those all the time. This case has been moved up, we need to go over your testimony. This guy's up for parole, we'd like it if you told the board what a bad idea that is. That prick you put away last year just got knifed in jail, there are some forms you need to fill out. He's been into the damn courthouse building too many times to count, this shouldn't be as upsetting as it is. Seems to be. Whatever.

Maybe it's the 911 tagged onto the page. No details, no remarks, not a damn thing that'll help him decide if he's going to need a change of clothes. Just "ADA Childs 911."

He called in as soon as he got the message, got tangled in a hopeless conversation with whatever dweeb in diapers was clerking in her office this time.

"She's in court until three o'clock today," the clerk said. "Can I take a message?"

"She paged me," Jim had explained, again (were the clerks actually getting dumber, or was his fuse just burning dangerously short?). "911 is usually an emergency. Did she leave a message for me, maybe?"

"What was your name, again?"

It hadn't gone anywhere, and Jim knew he was just going to have to live with the gnawing doubt until three o'clock when Robin Childs wrapped up whatever song and dance she was doing for the judge. So he spent the afternoon on the street, talking to whoever Gil Grissom said was a likely suspect in their latest body dump, going through the motions and trying not to be sick. And with Gil watching him carefully, taking mental notes and cataloging his distraction.

He knows this is going to bite him in the ass, and soon. Note to self, he thinks: don't let Gil get you drunk for at least a year.

He sees her then, Robin coming down the worn steps of the district courthouse, briefcase dangling at the end of one arm and a whackload of case files held against her chest. He gets out of his car, crosses the street and meets her at the curb.

"So what's up?" he asks.

She sighs. "Hello to you, too," she says. Her hair is short but she pushes at it absently where it curls around her ear. Jim remembers that she used to have long hair, and reminds himself to compliment her on the new look sometime.

"You paged."

"Yeah. I tried to call you at lunch but your phone was off."

He thinks. Lunch: oh yeah, in the box with suspect number three. "So what's the 911?"

She sighs, pushes her armload of folders at him. "Bad news," she says.

I knew it, Jim thinks. He swallows, tries to sound light. "You gonna tell me, Robin, or am I going to have to guess?"

"Nigel Crane," she says, and extracts a thick manila envelope from her briefcase, holds it out to him.

He looks at it, recognises it as one of the court-sealed documents he comes across once in a blue moon. Seal broken. He takes it, turns it over, looks up at her. "You gonna tell me," he says again, "or am I going to have to guess?"

"He's up on a appeal."

"He WHAT?" It's an instinctive response, that bellow of rage, and he feels a stab of guilt when Robin startles away from him. He takes a deep breath, counts to five, tries again. "He what?" he asks, a touch more rationally.

She sighs. "It's not on the evidence," she tells him, "it's nothing you or your CSIs did. It's a paperwork fuckup, and it's not a sure thing, Jim - he's not going to get anywhere near another trial, I promise you. But it's going to hit the papers, and it's going to be ugly."

"Shit," Jim says, feels the knot in his stomach solidify into a hot pellet of fear. Actual, gut-twisting fear.

"I know," Robin says, and shakes her head. "I don't know what to say but sorry."

"Jesus, Robin - it wasn't you-?"

"No." She shakes her head again, more firmly, and there's a grim set around her mouth. "It was one of the clerks, I think."

He wants to laugh at that, but there isn't anything funny about it. "Maybe you guys shouldn't hire first-year students anymore," he says.

"We don't."

"Hmph."

She snaps her briefcase shut, takes her files back from him, rearranges herself for the trip back to the office. "I'll need those back tomorrow," she says, nodding at the Crane envelope.

He looks down at it, then back up at her. "Is there anything new in here?" he asks.

"No."

He hands it back to her. "Then hang onto it," he says. "I've got my own notes to look at."

She smiles, says goodbye, heads off to her office.

"Besides," Jim mumbles to her back once she's too far away to hear anything, "it's permanently burned into my memory." He slides his hands into his pockets and ambles back to the car.

***

He wastes the rest of the afternoon doing stupid stuff like paying his bills and pretending to get some sleep, because he knows he should go and find Nick and sit down with him and share the ugly truth of the situation, but he doesn't. He wants to be a chicken today, so that's what he's going to do.

In the early evening he gives up pretending he's a coward, takes a long hot shower followed by a short cold one and drives to the precinct house. It's quick work at the station to finesse Nick's address out of the computers. Jim copies it down absently in his notebook, logs off the system, and heads back out to his car.

He doesn't want to do this. He doesn't want to have to sit down with him and explain that Nigel Crane is going to be in the news again, that people are going to be harassing him to comment on it, that he has to consider the possibility of Crane being out on the street, doesn't want to have to convince him to trust the DA's office.

He could, he thinks, leave it be. Let him find out at the same time everyone else does, but - dammit, he kinda likes the kid. Even if he is a cheating sonofabitch. Even if Gil doesn't see it that way.

He sighs, rubs his eyes as he waits at a stoplight.

He doesn't get it. The thing with Gil and Nick - he's been a detective way too long to have been unaware that they were together. Gil didn't want to talk about it, fair enough. Jim comes from a generation where that's okay, hell that's better than okay: everyone knows it happens, just so long as no one says it out loud. Gil had been happy, Nick had been happy, Jim had been happy that they had been happy.

But then - Sanders. He clenches his jaw.

Out of nowhere, suddenly Nick and Greg are an item, joined at the lip from what he's heard and the few times he's seen them together, they look like quite a couple. And Gil -

He sighs again, watches balefully as the light resolutely stays red.

Gil just doesn't make any sense at all. Sure, okay, Jim gets the whole Zen thing that the guy's got going on, gets that he accepts change as part of the universe and blah blah blah, can't hold onto a personal hate, whatever. It's all bullshit, as far as Jim can tell, but maybe that's really what floats Gil's boat. Maybe altruism really is better than sex.

It's one thing to be okay with the fact that your lover has ditched you for someone younger. He can give Gil a pat on the back for that, it's better than he was when he found out his wife had been screwing around.

So it's one thing to be okay with it, but isn't it something completely different to encourage it? To invite them over as a couple, to have them sitting in the same living room where Gil and Nick used to make out?

To Jim, that smacks of a masochism he just doesn't think Gil possesses.

So, he's missing something. And as a detective, that rankles him. He hates not knowing.

But what can he do? He can stand by Gil, no matter how much he thinks he's going too far in the benevolence department. He's Gil's friend, after all, and there's a certain unwavering support inherent in calling someone a friend.

So Gil wants to let it slide, okay. He can live with that. He doesn't have to like Nick particularly to be there for Gil.

The light changes and he eases his foot off the brake, lets the car slide forward into traffic.

Second-worse part of the job, he thinks, giving someone shit news like this. The worst, of course, is telling them that someone they love is dead. But this is a pretty close second.

He gets to Nick's house and realises as he puts his car into park that Nick is probably still in bed, or out having fun - he hasn't figured out yet how the guy runs his night shift life yet, whether he sleeps until work and then plays afterwards, or plays before work and then hits the sack come sunrise. Either way, odds are the kid's not home.

Except there are lights on, in what he assumes are the hallway and living room, so... so nothing. So he's out of excuses to not do this, to not be a grown up, to not be a professional about it. He sighs, turns the car off, gets out into the warm evening air.

He rings the doorbell, is wondering how to say what he has to say when it swings open and there's a guy standing there, looking at him.

Not Nick.

And not Greg, either.

Jim frowns. Tall guy, he catalogues without conscious thought. Caucasian, early twenties, dark hair, wearing jeans and not much else. More than a little intoxicated.

His first conscious thought is a mean one: So Nick cheats on everyone, huh?

"Who're you?" the kid demands. He smells like cheap beer.

"Jim Brass," he says, and pulls out his badge. "NVPD. I'm looking for Nick Stokes." He cranes his neck to see around him. "This is his listed residence."

The kid peers down at the ID. "Sure," he says, "it's his place. He doesn't live here, but it's his place."

Jim narrows his eyes. "Who are you?"

"Andrew Willis," the kid says. "I sublet. Nick comes by once in a while to collect his mail and stuff."

"Oh yeah?" Jim shifts from foot to foot. "Know where he calls home these days?"

Andrew shrugs. "Lives with his boyfriend, I think," he says, shakes his head.

Jim considers being an asshole with this kid on general principle, then changes his mind. "With his boyfriend, huh?"

"Whatever works for him, dude. It's a nice enough place, and it's cheap." Andrew yawns, scratches at the back of his neck. "I can get you the address," he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder into the house, "if you want it."

Jim sighs. "Sure," he says, "why don't you do that."

He watches the kid go back inside and come back in a few seconds with a post-it note. "Phone number's there, too," he says and hands it to him.

Brass takes it, sticks it inside his notebook without looking at it, and slides the leather pad back into his pocket. "Thanks," he mumbles.

Andrew shrugs. "Whatever. Hey - when you find him, tell him the back porch needs looking at again, okay? It's still wobbly."

Brass looks at him evenly. "Right," he says, and thinks what a long night it's going to be.

***

He decides he's going to be a chickenshit for another few hours. He doesn't want to drive to whatever seedy part of town Sanders no doubt lives in, doesn't want to see the den of iniquity that Nick has moved into, doesn't want to confront what's going on with them any more than he really wanted to confront what was going on with Gil and Nick.

At least, he thinks as he drives away, Gil has class. More bugs in glass cases than any sensible decorating scheme really should have, but still. Neutral colours, books on the shelves, matching sheets and pillowcases. But Sanders? Jim shudders. He can only imagine the juvenile, punked-out frat-house look the guy's got going at his place.

And frankly, he has less trouble picturing Nick wandering around in bare feet in a place like Gil's than in a place like Sanders'.

So what the hell, he decides. He'll find Nick at the lab at some point tonight, pull him aside somewhere like the break room, close the door and have a little chat about Nigel Crane. A place like that it won't get too awkward, there won't be any moments of trying really hard not to notice details like whatever trashy posters Sanders has on the walls.

Decision made, Jim feels a little better. Yes, he thinks, doing it at work is the right way to get it done. Professional, not personal.

Keep the personal out of it.

***

Except that tonight is a vicious night and they're all on the go, all the time; and the only sliver of time that Jim sees Nick not doing three things at once is when he's passing the DNA lab and he happens to see Nick and Greg talking. It looks like it's probably job-related, discussing some finer point of one the cases they're working tonight, but-

He hesitates on the brink of going in and telling Nick that he needs to see him.

They look happy, those two. They're probably playing "Name That Chemical Compound" again, to judge by the roughly hexagonal diagram on the white board. Greg is smirking and Nick is laughing and waving a folder under his nose and he can feel the easy camaraderie from here, out in the hallway.

Jim just doesn't have the heart to walk in and bring Nick's world of comfort crashing down around his ears.

He'll wait until after the shift, he thinks. When the bad news won't distract Nick from his work, when he can afford to crumple and reach out for support from Greg.

He watches them for another while, then leaves before they notice him.

***

He phones Robin Childs, gets her answering machine at home and is in the middle of leaving a quick message when she interrupts him

"Jim?" she asks, sounding breathless. "You still there?"

"Where else?" he asks. He's in his car, sitting in front of a 7-Eleven with the engine running. It's almost half past six in the morning and he's got three people to run down before he goes to bed, and he figures this is the only time he's going to get a hold of her for real.

"I was trying to get one of the cats out of the cupboard," she says, her wind coming back to her. "Sorry I missed you."

"You didn't miss me, exactly," Jim says. He can picture Robin climbing up on the counter to get some four-legged miscreant out from behind a wineglass. He smiles. "I mean, I'm still here."

"So we've established," she says. "What can I do for you? ...or is this a social call?"

"I don't usually make my social calls before lunch," he says.

"Duly noted. What can I do?"

"I'm wondering about the timeline on the Nigel Crane thing," he says.

"Well," she says, and now he can picture her sitting down at the table with the phone held against her shoulder while she paws through her overstuffed briefcase. "Let's see. It's on the docket for next week, uh... Thursday, yeah. That's the first introduction only, though, so it'll be short. After that it's up to the judge."

Next Thursday. Jim flips through the calendar in his head. So not a lot of time to stall, he thinks. "Okay," he says, "thanks."

"Hey Jim?"

He pauses, tries to identify the edge in her voice. "Yeah?"

"We should do lunch some day this week," she says. "I can fill in the details for you, you know, as the schedule firms up."

"Um, okay," Jim says. "I'll try to be out of bed by noon one of these days."

She laughs at him. "Such a hardship, I know," she says. "I'll call you?"

"Sure," Jim says.

There's a distant sound of glassware breaking and the horrified meow of a deeply innocent cat. "I've got to go," she says, and her voice is still rich with laughter. "Later?"

"I'll be here," Jim says, because he has no idea what else to say.

"Great. Bye."

After she hangs up, Jim stares at the phone for a few seconds and then puts it away. Well well, he thinks. That sounded an awful lot like a date.

Jim Brass. On a date.

He has to laugh at that, and he puts his car in gear and thinks, I've got to do something about this thing with Nick, and I've got to do it now. Some lucky star is shining on me at this moment in time, and he'd be an absolute moron not to go with it.

He pulls his notebook out of his pocket and flips through to the sticky note from earlier. He looks at the address, conjures his mental map of the city and is about three blocks away from the convenience store when it clicks: that's not Greg Sanders' address he's driving towards.

It's Gil Grissom's.

He keeps driving but lets his foot off the accelerator a bit, his brain working on the problem from any angle that seems likely to yield a solution.

Nick hasn't updated his address with his tenant, he thinks. Not a huge surprise - it's not like he's getting his mail forwarded, and he's sure it doesn't come up naturally in conversation when he's over to collect his mail and repair the porch.

So he is going to need to wrangle Sanders' address from the computer after all. Dammit.

Or...

He looks at the clock in his dashboard. It's almost seven now, and night shift should be dotting their I's and crossing their T's right about now; well most of them, except for the workaholics. Like Gil.

So he has time to go wake up a few drug dealers, rattle their chains and let them know he's watching them, and then he can head over to Gil's place and dump the problem in his hands. He's Nick's supervisor, after all. Let him the bearer of bad news.

It's still a cowardly thing to do, he thinks as he turns down a side street and heads for the rough end of town, but at least it gets something done. And takes the rest of the burden off of him, which is fine as far as he's concerned, because he's got other things to worry about.

Like a date.

With Robin Childs.

He grins and shakes his head. Lucky star indeed.

The first note that Nick Stokes finds says: "This is advance notice that we're kidnapping you this morning. Just you, not Greg. Sorry to pry you two apart, lover-boy, but we never get to see you these days. We're mad as hell, and we're not going to take it anymore! Bring your wallet." He recognises the handwriting immediately.

It's taped to his locker, and Nick reads it a second time before folding it in half and slipping it into his pocket. It's the ragged end of a long shift, and while he really wants to go and home and be coddled, he hasn't seen his friends in a while and hey, getting out once in a while is good for a guy his age.

The next note is stuck under the windshield wiper of his car, and he finds it after he spends a half-hour walking around the building looking for Warrick or anyone else who looks like they're in on whatever it is that he's planning. He tries phoning him and immediately gets his message service - phone must be turned off.

The second note says: "A good place to get kidnapped is at Fran's, especially if you happen to be in the booth at the back, by the pool tables."

He grins, slips the second note in with the first, and climbs into his truck. He looks at his wallet, decides he needs to hit a bank machine, and then thinks, Oops, I had plans today, didn't I?

He thinks for a few seconds, knows that he's promised Gil and Greg a morning in, slobbing around and eating ice cream out of the bucket with three spoons, and he wonders if he should bail on Warrick. Then he thinks that he sees Gil and Greg almost every night, and between Warrick's sudden and demented determination to excel at his job and his own increasingly insular habits, he hasn't seen the guy for weeks.

He pulls out his phone, hits the first speed dial he's got programmed, and lets the truck engine warm up while he waits. "Hey," he says when Gil picks up.

"How was your day?" Gil asks. Nick can hear the sounds of cooking happening in the background.

"Not too bad," he says. "Listen, uh - are you guys going to shoot me if I ditch you for a bit?"

There's a pause. "I won't," Gil says solemnly, and Nick can hear the gentle humour in his voice, "but I gather that Greg's been practicing at the range and God knows he likes a moving target."

"Ha ha," Nick says and rolls his eyes. "Warrick and probably Sara want me to meet them, shoot some pool, you know."

"Sounds like fun," Gil says. "Drive safely. Call a cab if you have too much to drink."

He wants to say, Right, Dad, but he knows that Gil isn't nagging him, but finding an oblique way to tell him that he loves him. "What," he says instead, "you won't drive out and pick me up when they finally kick us out at noon?"

"At noon," he hears Gil say as something sizzles wonderfully in the background and Nick can almost smell the onions, "I plan on being in bed with Greg. So no, Nick, I won't get up, get dressed, find the car keys, find out where you are, and deal with traffic, just to save you cab fare. Especially not if Warrick and Sara are waiting with you."

"Too bad," Nick says, "I kinda have this kink about your truck..."

"Have fun," Gil says, laughing, "I'm hanging up now."

Nick listens to the dial tone for a moment, then lets his phone fall onto the seat beside him. He will have fun, he realises. It's been way too long since he's done anything without his lovers being there.

He throws the truck in gear and drives out of the parking lot, whistling.

***

It's dark inside the bar, but Nick has been here often enough that he could navigate the maze of tables, chairs, random support columns and pool players with his eyes closed. He loves that in Vegas, eight in the morning is a prime time to get loaded and start a bar brawl. He eases his way through the people to the back, to the booth where he and Warrick first starting hanging out together, way back when.

Warrick and Sara are having a friendly fight over the dregs in a pitcher of beer, and Nick feels a little flush of affection pop into existence in his chest. He's missed these two, he realises, and feels a pang of regret that he's been such a bad friend lately.

Well, not anymore, he decides, puts a big smile on his face and slaps Warrick on the shoulder at a critical moment of pouring. A generous amount sloshes into Sara's glass.

"Hey!" Warrick says, turning and glaring at him.

Sara grabs her glass before Warrick tries to correct the sloppy rationing. "Hey stranger," she says, smiling up at him. "Long time."

"Yeah, well," Nick says sheepishly, knees Warrick in the hip to force him down the booth, and slides in next to him. "Sorry about that."

"It's okay," Warrick says. "You can buy us another round to make up for it."

"Really?" he asks, his eyes huge. "I can really do that? You'd let me?"

"Smartass," Warrick says, but he says it with a smile and Nick smiles back at him.

"So," Sara says, leaning forwards on the table, partly to be heard against the backdrop of bar noise, partly to safeguard her half-full glass that Warrick is eyeing uncertainly. "How're things with Greg?"

Nick grins. "They're good," he says. "Really... good."

"That's it?" Sara demands with a wicked little grin. "You disappear into domestic bliss for two months and all we get is 'really good'?"

He ducks his head. "Okay," he says, "things are great. Man, I'm sorry I haven't been hanging out with you guys much - it's just so easy to get caught up in stuff, you know?"

"Sure," Warrick says. "Well, I assume so - it's been so damn long since I've had more than one date with the same girl, the whole thing is kinda fading in my memory."

"What you need," Nick explains, "is a relationship. Not just a date - the real thing."

Warrick scoffs. "Says the guy dating two people?"

Sara's eyebrows climb. "Say what?" she asks.

Nick winces and covers with a sneeze. He'd forgotten to swear Warrick to secrecy on that one. "So Sara," he says brightly, "anything on the horizon since Hank?"

"Nuh-uh," she says and her grin slides smoothly from calculating to predatory. "Two people, Nick? Who's the second?"

"Yeah," Warrick says, "who's the second?"

He knows he's blushing. "I'm not getting into this," he says. "It's long and complicated and I'm just not going there, okay?"

There's a moment of studied looks at the table. "All right," Warrick eventually says, leans back again. He lifts up his empty glass, holds it out to Nick pointedly. "A guy could die of thirst around here, you know."

Nick sighs, grabs the pitcher and stands up. "Same again?" he asks, looking down at Sara.

"Sure," she says.

"Warrick?"

"Sounds good."

He pushes back through the people, to the bar, and plunks the pitcher down in front of the bar girl. "Another one of these," he says, "whatever it was. And another glass."

She takes the pitcher and busies herself with the tap, and Nick takes the opportunity to glance back at the booth, at Warrick and Sara leaning in and talking. Sara looks over at him once, thoughtfully, and he turns away at that. Counts to ten in his head and watches the pitcher fill under the nozzle.

He shouldn't have talked to Warrick, he thinks, shouldn't have told him anything.

But that's what friends do, right? They confide in each other. They tell each other about the stupid messes they've made of their lives and they laugh at themselves.

He wants to be angry at Warrick again, all of a sudden. The flare of anger he felt when he and Greg were first outed to everyone at the lab - the guilty way Warrick wouldn't quite meet his eye for weeks afterward - he wants to work up a good head of steam and let it out in a mad rush.

Except he can't. He understands Warrick's reaction, understands the need to share something confusing with someone else, and he really had been asking for it, hadn't he, letting himself get caught necking with Greg in the parking lot in broad daylight. Besides: he's here now to mend fences, not to take an axe to them. Anything harsh he had to say, he should have said it ages ago.

He sighs, accepts the pitcher and the glass and tries another smile on the barmaid.

The problem is, he decides, that Gil is rubbing off on him. He can't hang onto anger anymore, not like he used to. He lets it wash over him and then he keeps going. Life is too short and too miraculous to waste it on bad feelings.

He winces at the Hallmark sentiment and is smiling again when he gets back to his friends.

"What's so funny?" Sara asks, taking his burden from him and topping up her glass again before letting Warrick wrest the pitcher from her.

"Nothing," he says. "Just had a mini out-of-body experience there."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's like I was hovering above myself, seeing what a jerk I've been lately. It was humbling."

Warrick quirks a smile at him. "Not a jerk, exactly," he says. "Maybe a bit of a snob."

Nick raises his eyebrows. "Snob?" he asks. "Little ol' me?"

"Well," Sara says, "you've been hanging out with Grissom and Catherine an awful lot."

"Not to mention Brass and Doc Robbins," Warrick adds. "You too good for us mere mortals?"

"God, no," Nick says. "That just... I don't know. It just happened. Greg and I went out for breakfast and we went to Manny's and they were there, so we couldn't just leave, could we? And then I don't know, we just had fun together." He shrugs. "There's no weirdness there, when it's me and Greg together. You know? No one even blinks when I touch him. It's kind of nice."

Warrick and Sara exchange a look. "Yeah," Warrick says after an awkward pause, "sorry about that."

There had been a time, a while ago, that he had tried to work Greg into this group, tried to find some way of enjoying everyone's company simultaneously. But it hadn't worked: Greg and Sara grated on each others' nerves, Warrick had tried to overcompensate for his initial reaction by being too buddy-buddy with them, the whole thing had felt forced and strained and the one time that Nick had kissed Greg - just a quick touch of his lips to his cheek - there had been a thunderous and embarrassing silence at their table.

Nick grins at him, works his arm around his shoulders and squeezes. "It's okay, man," he says, "we're cool."

"Yeah?" Warrick asks haltingly.

"Yeah."

"I mean," Warrick continues, "we like Sanders. Honest," he reiterates at the funny look Nick gives him. "It was just... strange. I mean, you've always been this ladies' man and all..."

Nick shrugs. "Things happen," he says. "I just go with the flow."

"That's a good way to be," Sara says. "I wish I could swing that."

"What do you mean?" Warrick asks.

She sighs. "Oh, you know - the whole Grissom thing." She's blushing, but trying to pretend she isn't.

Nick watches her drain the better part of her glass of beer and says nothing. Everyone at the lab knows she follows Gil around with her tongue between her teeth, but he's never heard her admit to it before. He wonders idly how much she and Warrick had to drink before he got there.

"It wasn't that bad," Warrick says, and Sara gives him an icy look. He laughs, holds up his hands. "Okay, okay," he says, "it was pretty bad. But you got over it, right?"

She sighs again, pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear. "I don't know," she admits. "It's... it's not easy, you know? I mean..." She glances up at Nick apologetically. "You know what I first thought, when I found out about you and Sanders?"

He shakes his head.

"I thought, 'At least it's not Grissom'." She smiles ruefully. "How sad is that?"

Nick has no idea what to say to that, so he wisely says nothing and drinks, instead. Waits out her silence, another trick he's learned from Gil.

"I always kind of thought you had a thing for him," she continues at length.

"For Grissom?" Warrick asks. "Nick?"

"Well..." She shrugs. "Yeah. And sometimes it kind of seemed that Grissom had a thing for you, too, Nick."

"Really?" Nick says, because it's obvious he's expected to say something.

"I guess it made me, I dunno, a little jealous, maybe? That you had this thing with him and I didn't. But now-" She shakes her head. "I don't know what I was thinking. Grissom would never get involved with his subordinate, I know that now."

"Huh."

"Grissom?" Warrick asks. "And Nick? Man, Sara, you must be crazy..."

"Well," she defends, "it was easier than thinking he just wasn't interested in me. You know?" She drains her glass and pours another one.

Nick clears his throat. "You're, uh, you're not still interested in him, are you?"

"No," she says, then, "maybe," then, "I don't know. It's stupid, I know."

"Oh."

"It's just that he's a pretty amazing guy, you know?" She looks from Nick to Warrick and back again.

"If you say so," Warrick says with the way-out-of-my-depth look he gets whenever Sara and Catherine start talking about 'girl stuff'.

"Nick?" she says, turning to him. "You're into guys, you know what I mean. Right?"

"I, uh," Nick says, licks his lips, mind racing. "I honestly don't know how to answer that."

"I know, I know," she says, "he's the Boss-Man, not supposed to think of him like that."

"Um."

She swirls the beer in her glass, watches it. "So you're a better person than me," she says, "so sue me."

"Now come on, Sara," Warrick says, leaning across the table and letting his hand fall on her forearm, resting on the table next to her glass. "That's not fair to yourself, and you know it."

Nick knows he's supposed to jump in with Warrick here, say something supportive and bring Sara out of her slump. But he's stinging a little, truth be told, that Sara still thinks she has a chance in hell with Grissom, that she's still banking on some random time in the future when he comes to his senses and gets on his knees for her.

He doesn't like the spike of jealousy he feels at that, because he knows that it is never, ever, ever going to happen. He knows that, knows that whatever enigmatic persona Gil projects at work he's never been that into women, knows how awkward Gil feels when Sara crosses the unspoken line between them, knows how passionately he wants her to let go and move on.

He thinks about that flare of possessiveness he feels, and wonders why he doesn't feel the same way about Greg. He thinks, five'll get you ten that Gil and Greg are in bed right now, having all kinds of fun without me: why doesn't that piss me off?

...aside from the bit where it's too damn sexy a thought to be anything but good...

"Earth to Nick," Warrick says, and elbows him.

"What?" He blinks, looks at Warrick and then across at Sara. "Sorry," he says. "Spaced out there for a moment."

"No kidding." Warrick narrows his eyes again. "You okay?"

"Me?" Nick works his muscles into a smile. "Course I am." He picks up the nearly-empty pitcher again. "Another one?" he asks brightly.

***

When Sara gets up and weaves her way to the ladies room, Nick leans back and watches her progress. "How much has she had to drink?"

Warrick stretches to follow his gaze. "Not that much," he says with a frown.

"She had anything before you guys came here?" Nick asks.

"Don't know," Warrick says. "Why?"

Nick chews on his lower lip for a moment. "You know she got pulled over for DWI a while back, right?"

"Yeah..."

Nick looks back at Warrick, holds his gaze.

"You think that wasn't a one-time thing?" Warrick asks.

Nick shrugs. "I don't know," he says. "But she's pretty wasted."

"Maybe." Warrick drains his glass, looks at the empty pitcher. "Maybe we should call it a night."

"Can you get her home?" Nick asks.

"Sure." Warrick pulls out his wallet, and Nick stops him with a hand on his wrist.

"Kidnappers never pay the ransom, remember?" he says and takes his own wallet out. "It's on me."

Warrick grins. "I should kidnap you more often," he says.

"Yeah," Nick says, "you should." He counts out some money, leaves it on the table next to the empty nacho plate and basket of fries they shared, works the wallet back into the pocket of his jeans.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Warrick asks after a while, out of nowhere.

"Tell you what?" Nick asks, not really thinking about Warrick. He's still watching the door to the ladies room, as much as he can see of it through the people in between.

"About you and Greg, man," Warrick says, and his voice is plaintive enough that Nick turns back to the table and faces him. "Why'd I have to find out the hard way?"

Nick sighs. "It was... complicated, Warrick."

"I thought we were friends."

"We are friends," Nick says, "but this wasn't just me. I'd have been outing Greg, too, and I couldn't do that to him."

"I guess so." Warrick's not convinced.

"And I was scared," Nick admits. "Shit-scared. I still am." He takes a deep breath. "Things can go to hell so quickly, man. What about the next time I need backup, huh? Are the uniforms gonna be there? Or are they going to take one of their homo-detours, get there a little too late to be of any use? It happens, Warrick. I hate it but it's true."

"Shit."

"Yeah, well," Nick says, "that's life. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you."

Warrick gives him a half-smile. "It's all right," he says. "I get it."

Nick returns his smile.

"So," Warrick says after another pause, "you gonna tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"Greg. Is he Fling, or Serious?"

Nick thinks about it. "I'm pretty serious about him," he says as Sara emerges from the bathroom and takes a slightly wobbly look around to get her bearings.

"That's not an answer," Warrick says.

Nick stands up. "It is to me," he says, and he means it. It's not a question of Serious and Fling anymore. It's a question of Serious One and Serious Two, and really, the only distinction is a chronological one.

"You sure you can't tell me about your other - date?"

He grins down at Warrick, still slumped against the back of the booth. "Sorry, man," he says. "I have to think about Greg, remember?"

Warrick groans, rolls his eyes, pushes himself to his feet. "Sure, whatever," he says, but there's no rancor in it.

"You okay with Sara?" Nick asks.

"Golden," Warrick says. "I'll make sure she gets home okay."

"Thanks," Nick says. "I owe you one."

"I'll kidnap you again later," Warrick promises. "You can make it up to me then."

It takes Greg Sanders a while to work out what he's whistling. At first he thinks it's Bolero, then he thinks maybe it's from Carmen, and then he thinks, why the hell am I whistling opera?

He's standing on the front porch of Gil's townhouse, going through the keys on his chain. There's the keys to get into his apartment, his keys for work, to his mother's place in San Francisco, to his father's place in Modesto, to Papa Olaf's place by the beach (why he carries those around all the time is a little beyond him). And somewhere in that mess is the key to Gil's house.

The key to Gil's house. It still stops him cold, when he thinks about it.

Gil had given it to him about a month ago, just handed it to him like it was nothing, like it was a letter to mail or a piece of toast.

"You should have one," Gil had explained at the time with that enigmatic almost-smile of his. "You're part of this house now. You don't need to knock like the pizza guy."

"Besides," Nick had said, wrapping his arms around him from the other side, "this way I have someone else to let me in next time I lose my key."

"Do that a lot, do you?" he'd asked, leaning back into Nick's arms and wondering at how amazing it felt to be given a key - given permanent, unrestricted access - to this.

"You have no idea," Gil had said, watching them and smiling.

So he's had this key forever now, but he's never used it. Partly he hasn't needed it - he's always coming in with someone, and he's never the last out who has to lock the door - but mostly it hasn't seemed right. It's not that he's needed an occasion, exactly; or so he keeps telling himself. He's just been waiting for the moment to be exactly perfect.

Such as when he's whistling something maddeningly familiar with a bag of movies in one hand, his toothbrush in his pocket, and he can smell something heavenly coming from the kitchen. This moment has perfection written all over it.

He finds the right key, runs his thumb along the ridges, and feels a little shimmy of pleasure as he slides it home in the lock. Mmmmm. First times always take his breath away.

The lock has a little catch in it, he discovers, but if he pulls the door handle towards him and twists it about three degrees the wrong way, it unlocks cleanly. He makes a note of that, because it seems like something worth noting. Red-letter detail on a red-letter day, if he kept a diary, which he doesn't.

He feels the mechanical click in the heel of his hand, grins and lets the door swing open.

Man, he thinks, that smells like coming home.

Strange how quickly this place has come to feel like home. He still has his own place, obviously, but truth be told he doesn't spend a lot of time there. He goes there enough to collect the mail, to keep the plants alive and to pass a half-hearted duster over the more obvious horizontal surfaces. He actually sleeps there once or twice a week, when their schedules fail to line up in anything approaching a useful configuration. He knows that Gil and Nick catch a few quick hours together when he's not there, and it doesn't bother him anywhere near as much as he thought it would.

When it had just been him and Nick, with Nick and Gil happening in parallel and unseen, he'd been okay with it. There had been them, and there had been the other them, and never the 'twain shall meet.

Except now it isn't two couples dancing around each other. Now it's the three of them under one umbrella and it feels a little weird to think about what goes on when he's not there. So he generally doesn't think about, and when he does he reminds himself of all of the fun he's had with Nick on his own, and he feels a little better. Besides, Nick and Gil go back a lot further than Greg.

But. He won't dwell on what happens when he's not there, because he is there now.

With his own key, and a movie that he thinks is going to blow Gil's socks off. Probably not so much Nick, but that's okay. Nick will watch it anyway, stretched on the couch between the two of them, his feet distracting Gil and his head distracting Greg. He's good at that, being distracting. In the best way possible, of course.

"I'm home," he hollers, pulling his key out of the door.

"I'm in the kitchen," Gil calls back.

Home.

"Smells great," he says, his sock feet flapping across the hardwood of the living room and then into the kitchen.

"Thank you." Gil is standing at the stove, stirring a pot with a wooden spoon and he smiles over his shoulder. "Recipe my mother sent me."

Greg stifles his giggle before it escapes. It is too, too funny that Gil Grissom swaps recipes with his mother. He isn't sure why, but it is. "She must have excellent taste."

"She does." Another smile, and he turns back to the stove.

"Nick here yet?" Greg asks, sliding onto a bar stool at the elevated counter. There's a bowl of mixed nuts near the phone and he pulls it towards himself, sinks his fingers in and probes for a cashew. Gil mines for them but won't admit it. One of these days Greg is going to remember to bring him a five-pound bag of salted cashews and leave it somewhere conspicuous.

"He didn't call you?"

Greg stops, an almond almost halfway to his lips. "No..." he says guardedly.

"He won't be back until late."

"Oh?"

Gil glances up again. "Warrick and Sara took him out after work," he says. "Who knows what time they'll get tired of him."

"Oh." Greg tries to think of something to say. "I, uh, didn't check my phone." He feels around in his pocket for his cell. He can tell that he's starting to blush and he's not sure why.

Well, okay, he admits, he's probably blushing because he's never really spent an entire day alone with Gil. A few hours here and there, but he's always been kind of uneasy when it happens, and they generally end up playing chess or Clue or the insane variant of checkers that Greg invented in college that involves two dice and deck of cards and which he can tell has Gil hooked. They do platonic things together.

Only problem is, he doesn't want to be platonic right now.

"Greg?"

He looks up from the phone, which he's opened and turned on and - apparently - been staring at for a few seconds.

Gil has stopped stirring. "Are you okay?"

"Sure," he says. "Just, you know. Spaced out." He smiles.

The look on Gil's face says he isn't buying it. "What is it?" he asks. Pulls the spoon out of the pot and sets it on a saucer.

Greg thinks, If only he didn't sound like he cared so much. "It's nothing," he says, but as soon as he says it he knows it was a tactical error. Grissom and Gil may be two entirely different entities, but there's enough overlap that Gil won't let go of something that Grissom wouldn't, either.

"Greg. We've talked about this." Gil leans back against the counter next to the sink, crosses his arms on his chest. "Whatever it is, tell me."

He sighs. They have had this conversation before, about how Greg is supposed to grow a backbone (his words) and speak up for himself (Nick's words). Gil will generally take his hand and tells him gently how important he is to them, that he has to remember that he counts, too - but it all amounts to the same thing: pipe up in the bleachers.

"I had - plans," he says finally, picking his words.

"Oh?" Gil is smiling again when Greg looks up from his hands. "What kind of plans?"

He shifts on the hard seat, wishes Gil had sprung full out and gotten the padded ones. "You know," he says, "plans. Movie, maybe a little music, stuff." He shrugged.

"That sounds like a seduction," Gil says.

He knows he's blushing for real this time, hates it but can't stop it. "Maybe," he admits, amazed that he can feel his capillaries dilating all through his face. Can actually feel the skin heat up as it turns red.

"So?" Gil says and his smile increases in radiance, reaches his eyes and ignites something there. "Seduce me."

He knows that there's some snappy comeback to that, knows that somewhere in the ether there's a good line that will get him off the hook. He swallows. "Um."

"Started with a movie, right?" Gil asks. "Your plans?" He's still standing in front of the stove, still watching him with that half-smile twinkle in his eyes that never fails to make Greg feel like a new and exciting insect. In the way that delights someone like Gil.

"Yeah..."

"So?" Gil shrugs. "Let's watch a movie. This still needs to simmer for a while."

He wants to be skeptical, wants to try to keep his brain engaged but it's so hard when Gil is directing all of his considerable attention to him. So he shrugs instead, and lets Gil take his hand and bring it to his lips.

It stutters his breathing, and he knows that Gil can hear it because he feels those lips curl into a smile. "Well," Greg manages to say, although it's a little squeaky, "when you put it that way."

Gil rewards him with a touch of teeth along the line of his thumb, and a wicked sparkle in his eye.

***

They actually do watch the movie, or at least the first part of it. It's an disappointing film from Belize, something existential that Greg loses the thread of after about twenty minutes. Gil makes a vague attempt at explaining it but Greg shushes him: he likes the flicker of the pictures and the random staccato of the Spanish, and the wonderful heat of Gil's body pressed against him.

After a while he senses that even Gil has become confused - from what Greg can tell, the main character's reflection in the mirror of evil just leapt out of the glass and is stalking the love interest - and he decides, it's now or never, Sanders. Carpe that diem.

They're lying side by side on the couch, and Greg rolls over enough to sit up, and now he has Gil's undivided attention because he's not moving away, he's just sitting there, looking down at him.

Gil arches an eyebrow at him, and Greg leans down and touches his lips to the corner of his mouth. It's funny, Greg thinks as he pulls back enough to look at him, really look at how fucking beautiful he is; he's been naked with this man more times than he can count, and yet the prospect of just kissing him scares the daylights out of him. This terror wrapped around his heart is - is something. He can't think of the word for it, but he knows the feeling well. Overwhelming and utterly uncalled for and more than a little frustrating.

Gil's hand comes up and touches the back of his neck. "What is it?" he whispers, reading the expression in his eyes in less than a heartbeat.

Greg tries to smile. "I'm a little nervous," he admits.

"Why?"

"I've never done this before," Greg confesses, "not with you, not with just you." He blinks slowly, bites his lower lip. "I don't want to get it wrong."

"How on Earth could you get it wrong?" Gil asks, touching the side of his face, ghosting his fingers across his lips and back up to the edge of his eyes.

"I'm sure I could find a way."

"How?" Gil's other hand touches the base of his throat, just above his collarbone, skips across the skin there.

Greg tries for another smile. "What if I say the wrong thing?"

"What wrong thing could you say?"

He shrugs uncertainly. He hates that he needs to have this conversation at all, but loathes that he needs to have it now, when he has Gil all to himself for the first time. "What if..." He tries to think of something he can say that will derail the heavy weight of his feelings, let him escape from this utterly terrifying moment. "What if I say I - I want to tie you up?" He manages a smirk then, or most of one anyway - well, an attempt at one.

There's a moment then, a short moment by most standards but Gil isn't laughing at him, isn't even laughing with him - is just looking at him curiously. "Well," he finally says, "I have a thing about blindfolds, but I'll try anything else."

What? Greg opens his mouth and knows that it's just hanging open, but can't coordinate himself to get it closed again. "That's not-" he says when he can form words, "I didn't actually-"

Gil pulls him down softly for a kiss and then lets go of his head again. "Greg," he says, "you aren't going to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or disappoint me-"

He doesn't actually flinch, but he thinks he might as well have because Gil stops talking then, takes his face in both hands and studies him with a curious little frown.

"Shit," Greg says, pulls his face free and sits back, "what did I do, I told you I would fuck this up-"

Gil sits up smoothly - a move Greg isn't sure he could pull off even on a good day so how does Gil manage to make it look so damned effortless? - and catches his face again between his hands.

"You didn't," Gil says and leans in closer to him. "You didn't do anything wrong, Greg."

He doesn't get it, but he likes the way Gil is almost kissing him, like it's the simplest and most exquisite thing he's ever done. He kisses back as softly as he can, and lets their foreheads come together while they share each other's space, and even though he knows his face is red and hot and he's closer to tears than he wants to be, he doesn't pull away from Gil's touch.

"Greg," Gil says a moment later, picking his words carefully, "if I did this to you - if I made you doubt yourself this much - I am truly sorry."

Shit shit shit - now he's really going to cry. "You didn't," he says, willing his tear ducts - for once in his miserable fucking life - to listen to him.

"I think I did," Gil whispers, "oh Greg - oh honey, I'm so, so sorry..."

So much for conscious control of his body. He feels the prickle in his eyes and he squeezes them shut. Not now, he thinks, not now not now not now not now...

Gil is saying something and he forces himself to listen, to hear his words. "Not now what?" he's asking so softly it's barely sound.

What? That was out loud?

"Yes," Gil says, "that was out loud." He kisses him carefully, lets their lips fall away from each other. "Tell me, Greg - talk to me, tell me what's going on in your head-"

He hates to hear Gil so uncertain, hates that he's begging because of him, that it's his fault.

"It's not you," he hears himself say, and here come the tears for real, and no amount of blinking or holding his eyes shut is going to stop them now. "Gil, it's not you, it's not Nick, it's not - it's not anybody, it's just me."

"No," Gil exhales against his lips, "it's not you, Greg, I promise - if you could see yourself the way I do, Greg, the way Nick does-"

Fuck it, part of him thinks while the rest of him disappears, so much for your composure. Greg lets his head fall onto Gil's shoulder and deflates against him.

He wishes he could hold his tears back, he thinks distantly, wishes he could keep himself silent and graceful and not at all like this, not sniffles and that raw noise that must be coming from him. He feels Gil pull him down and hold him, wrap both his arms around him and his leg too, and he hears him mumble random syllables in his ear and soothe his entire body and it feels so good, Greg thinks, it feels so good to not even try to hold it in. He doesn't let himself think of the mess that's going to be waiting for him when he pulls himself together, he doesn't want to face the hole that he's sure he's just dug.

But the inevitable thoughts come anyway, because they always do when he really needs them not to.

-what were you thinking - like you could actually have a place here like you aren't going to fuck it up like you've fucked up every other goddamn thing in your life - did you honestly think they would make room for you in this little slice of paradise - grow up greg grow the fuck up because this doesn't happen in your life - you always fuck it up and you're going to fuck this up too like everything else - because they don't know and you know you know you know they'll kick your sorry ass out of here - you're not good enough and you know it and they're going to know it too and then it's over and you know what that means - you think by now you'd recognise a set fucking pattern when you meet one-

He runs out of steam eventually, exhausted and empty, and he can't remember ever feeling so vacant. His head is pounding in time to something, something that isn't his pulse, isn't inside him at all but - now that he thinks about it - is around him, is under him...

Gil is shaking. No, Greg corrects internally: Gil is - crying.

Gil. Crying. Holy fuck.

He tries to pull himself free, to untangle himself from Gil's arms and legs and get off his chest, the man must be suffocating under all that deadweight but - he won't let go. He's clinging to him like a lifeline, like he's afraid to separate himself from Greg by even an inch, like Greg is the only thing grounding him.

For a while Greg doesn't know what to do, isn't sure who Gil thinks he's holding onto but reasons it can't really be him, but there's no disentangling himself neatly so he doesn't. He shifts most of his weight off his torso, slides it into the crack between Gil and the back of the sofa, feels Gil turn with him and tighten his arms.

"It's okay," he says because his mouth insists on saying something. "Whatever it is, just - let it go..." Someone said that to him recently, he thinks, it must have been Gil. God, he thinks, what the fuck did I do now?

His heart is jackhammering when Gil slows down and his body comes to a sort of a rest, he loosens the death grip he has on Greg's body and brings shaking hands to his eyes.

Greg is astounded, watching this act of intimacy from so close. He's always known that Gil is a deeply passionate man - knew it even before it was demonstrated to him, knew it on an instinctive level, in some gut-clenching way - but he's never even considered that deeply passionate includes this, too.

He swallows hard, touches the heat of Gil's face. "You okay?" he asks, and even his whisper is shaky.

Gil shakes his head and draws his hands away from his eyes, down his cheeks to wipe away what tears were not soaked up by the fabric of Greg's tee shirt. "No," he says, forces a weak smile, and angles his head so that he is looking Greg straight in the eyes.

Greg wants to move away from his stare, from the terrifying way his eyes bore into his head and straight down into his heart. He wants to jerk away but he can't, because Gil's attention is like a magnet and he has all the strength of a pile of iron shavings.

"What?" he asks when he's sure he can make the word come out in one piece.

Gil touches his face carefully, gently, like he would a piece of priceless alabaster. "Greg," he says, and his voice is gravelly in a way that makes Greg's heart lurch. "Do you realise that when you're upset, you think out loud?"

"What?" He frowns, and there's a clunk in the back of his brain as something comes unstuck and falls into place. "Oh - shit," he says and his entire body tenses up.

"Maybe it's a good thing," Gil says gently, stroking the sides of his face, "because otherwise I would never have known how much damage I've done to you." His eyes start to tear up again and he blinks, not to dispel them but to break the meniscus and let them escape the lines of his eyes.

"Fuck..." Greg can feel a stress-tremor starting in his chest, knows if he doesn't get up away from this soon he's going to start to shake, and not just his hands. He tries to push but can't make his muscles work together.

Gil slides his hands down his shoulders and grips his forearms, urges him to come closer, to close the space between them. "I don't even know where to begin to apologise," he says, coaxing him down again to lay his body over him, to rest his head on his ribcage.

"You don't have to," Greg breathes, trying to keep himself together.

"Oh, I do," Gil counters, so softly that Greg can't find the energy to disagree with him, even though he knows to the core of his being that Gil is wrong, that he has nothing to apologise for.

Gil's hand finds the back of his head, strokes through the hair absently. "I-" He falters, stops, takes a breath to start again. "I'm not good with people," he says. "Sometimes it clicks and it's easy but most of the time - I'm too hard. I criticise too easily and forget to compliment when I should and-" He stops again, this time because his breath hitches and he pulls Greg in tighter against his chest. "-and sometimes I let people think the wrong things about themselves because I don't notice the - the warning signs."

Greg squeezes his eyes shut against the words Gil is murmuring in his ear, against the desperate ache he feels to believe.

He feels Gil take a deep, shaking breath under him and resume the wonderful rhythm of his fingers in his hair. "Greg... you're good at your job and you're going to make a hell of a CSI and you're brilliant and you're beautiful and you make me laugh and you're generous and I love you and I'm going to keep telling you this until you're able to believe me."

And yep, there come more tears, again - Greg tries to wipe at his eyes but he can't because Gil is still holding him, still talking, still saying all of the things he's wanted to hear for so long, still murmuring and soothing and making him feel good. Well, better, anyway.

And maybe that's a start.

Jim stops to pick up some whiskey - he prefers his own cheap brand to the quality merchandise Gil keeps on hand, feels less guilty about drinking more than he should when it doesn't cost forty bucks a pop - and parks on the street in front of Gil's townhouse.

He peers up through the windshield at the windows. Curtains are drawn but there's a familiar blue flicker peeking through so he must be awake. Gil keeps strange hours at best, he remembers - when he's on a tear he'll be up for forty-eight hours straight, fifty-four, whatever it takes to get the job done; and then he'll sleep away the bags under his eyes and reappear a couple days later looking like a spring chicken.

Well, a spring chicken who's pushing fifty.

He pulls the keys from the ignition and slips the bottle under his arm, and there's a good feeling in his stomach as he walks up the drive. He hasn't had a drink with Gil in a long time, not since that dinner party they had for Greg's birthday (why that ended up chez Grissom he's not sure) and that wasn't even just Jim and Gil shootin' the shit. That was Jim and Gil and Al and Cath and Nick and Greg - not really the same.

He stoops to pick up the morning paper where it landed in a huge potted geranium just under the doorbell, tucks it in with the whiskey, and leans on the doorbell.

***

They both run out of tears, inevitably, but Gil won't let Greg get up and die of shame in the basement. He holds onto him, keeps him on the couch with him, pulls them into a sitting position and holds him tight to his chest.

"You don't have to do this," Greg mutters against his collarbone.

"I do." Gil is still speaking softly, still softening the edges of his consonants and lilting his voice into something almost hypnotic. Greg wonders if he's actually mesmerized himself, succumbed to his own brand of unconscious suggestion.

"You don't. It's not like-" He stops himself.

Gil kisses the top of his head. "Not like what?"

Greg sighs. "It's not like this is the first time I've fucked up," he says.

"Greg-"

"I mean, okay, I've never fucked up with two people at the same time, but..." He manages a shrug in the cage of arms that Gil has around him. "I'm sure it won't be the last."

"You haven't fucked up, Greg," Gil says again, patiently, a song he's been singing for what feels like an hour and which he knows he's going to go on singing for a long time (his fault, he thinks, he should have been more careful with Greg from his first appearance at the lab), "and you're not about to. I won't let you."

Jesus, Gil, Greg wants to say, but he's actually biting down on the inside of his lips so his mouth doesn't move and let his inner thoughts escape.

Gil rearranges him so that they're looking at each other and he puts as much love as he can into his smile. "Greg," he says, "I love you and I'll do whatever it takes to make you believe that. Anything."

Greg holds his eyes for about three seconds then looks away, leans his head against his shoulder again and tries to think of something to say. What he wants to say is that Gil is blowing this out of proportion, that it's his problem and his alone and he doesn't want to suddenly make it Gil's problem, too. But he can imagine what Gil would have to say to that, so he keeps it to himself.

The doorbell rings then, once, and then again, longer.

"That has to be Nick," Gil says, kissing the side of Greg's face and releasing him. "Probably lost his keys, again." He stands up as the doorbell rings again, looks down at Greg where he's sprawled on the couch. "We're not done with this," he says, reading the expression that Greg is wearing. "Not by a long shot."

Greg sighs, buries his head in a cushion.

Gil touches his shoulder once more gently and walks through to the entrance. He turns on a couple lights as he goes, kicks Greg's shoes out the way against the wall as he passes them, catches a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror and almost laughs. Been a long time since he's looked that splotchy and pathetic. He pulls the door open and-

Jim and Gil look at each other for a long moment.

"And I thought I needed a drink," Jim says dryly, looking at the state of Gil's face. "So can I come in?"

***

"Jim." Gil blinks at him, his imagination spinning out of control. He lets it go for a moment, then reins it in and thinks, what's the worst that could happen? He clears his throat. The worst that could happen is that Jim will see Greg and know exactly what's going on.

He tries not to think about that. "Sure," he says, and steps sideways to let the other man in. He wonders if there's some kind of loud noise he can make that'll send Greg into hiding upstairs without making Jim think he's on drugs.

Jim wanders exhaustedly down the hall and into the living room, casting his eyes professionally around him as he goes. Gil holds his breath and follows a second behind, hoping that he doesn't notice the extra pair of shoes - battered red sneakers that have Greg Sanders written all over them - or the extra wallet on the hall table or the thousand other tells that someone else is here, someone young and spunky and more fragile than he looks.

He swallows that train of thought, because if Jim is here to suss him out, the last thing he needs to do is start thinking of how much damage he's wrought on Greg over the years, because that'll set off the sprinklers again and while Jim might be aware that he's been crying, Jim really doesn't need to see him cry in the flesh.

"So how you holding up?" Jim asks as he steps into the living room.

Gil takes a quick look around, is relieved to see that Greg has disappeared. Maybe he heard Jim's voice and panicked, he thinks, maybe he's hiding in a closet in the bedroom trying not to make a single sound.

Except there are still two empty bowls from dinner sitting on the coffee table, and Greg wouldn't have left so obvious a clue if he'd been covering his tracks.

Hm.

"Gil?"

Jim is looking at him, cautiously, like a man about to walk out over questionable ice.

"I'm okay," Gil says absently, starts picking things up randomly. A magazine, a sweater. He hopes it looks like a casual cleanup, and he hopes that Jim's not paying too much attention to what he's actually grabbing.

"You don't look okay," Jim counters. He's standing with his back to the tv, watching Gil move around the room.

"I am," Gil assures him, and feels ridiculous as he picks up both bowls right under Jim's nose. "Really." He tries to smile at him, finds it's not as easy as he thinks it should be, and walks into the kitchen with the incriminating evidence.

Jim follows him, watches dispassionately as he stacks the dishes in the sink and leaves the magazine and the sweater on the counter next to the toaster.

"I know you said you were okay with this Greg-Nick thing," Jim says at length, choosing his words carefully, and Gil thinks he can actually hear the man's discomfort shaping the vowels.

"I am."

"...but I don't believe a word of it."

Gil sighs, standing at the sink where Jim can't see his face. Why does nobody believe him these days? he wonders. First Greg, now Jim... He fixes what he hopes is a settled expression on his face and turns around.

"Jim," he says as kindly as he can, "I appreciate that you're here. I do. I know that none of - none of what happened with me and Nick makes a lot of sense to you. And I know that you don't really like to think about it too closely - but I'm okay."

"You've been crying your eyes out, Gil," Jim says. He's resting against the door frame, as far from Gil as he can be without leaving the kitchen.

Gil studies the tense set of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, and realises how difficult it is for him to be here, doing this. He gets a warm feeling from the fact that he is here, doing this, fighting a bone-deep instinct to stay away from it.

And then he gets a cold feeling, hot on the tails of the first, because he's going to have to lie his way through this.

"If I needed help, Jim," he says, "I would ask for it."

Jim shakes his head, a tiny jerking motion. "That's bull, Gil. You know it and I know it."

"It's - complicated."

"So what isn't?"

Gil is halfway to answering that when he hears water start to run upstairs, and without thinking he turns back to the sink and turns the tap on. He knows the sounds of his own house, but he hopes to hell that Jim doesn't.

"Look, Gil," Jim continues, oblivious to the errant noises, "we both see this shit every day. You got dumped for someone younger, and it burns."

Gil grabs the bottle of soap and lets a generous dollop fall into the rising water from the tap. He just has to keep up the water noises until Greg stops making a racket in the washroom, he thinks. Then he'll need to find some other distracting noise.

"I'm not going to do anything rash, Jim," Gil says, "and I'm not going to hurt myself. I'm fine."

"Then what's going on here?"

An insane urge to tell him the truth, to tell him that Greg is upstairs blissfully unaware that the other voice he hears downstairs isn't Nick's at all, bubbles up in the back of his throat and it takes him a second or two to muzzle it.

"I'm just having a bad night," he says. "We all have bad nights."

"Yeah," Jim says, "but time was that you'd come knocking on my door when it got this bad."

"I know you're not comfortable with my lifestyle, Jim." He washes both bowls, listens for the sounds of the upstairs pipes, and wishes he had something else he could wash. Like a stack of plates and the cutlery to go with.

"So?" Jim says. "We're friends, Gil. Aren't we?"

"Of course we are. Dammit, Jim - you're one the best friends that I have. It's just - I don't really like talking about this, okay?"

He can hear Jim chuckle half-heartedly. "You and me both," he says. "Look, you got any glasses over there?"

Gil glances over his shoulder and sees Jim holding out his bottle again. "Sure," he says, and reaches a soapy hand out to the rack of dishtowels.

He's decided that Greg must be taking a shower, and there's no way he can keep making watery noises that long. So he pulls the plug on the sink and dries his hands and uses the sound of the sink draining to cover the sounds of Greg while he reaches over and flicks on the radio.

Which is tuned to the local country station.

Oops.

He turns back to see Jim shaking his head. "That's pretty sad, Gil," he says.

"What?" Not that he wants to know, but he can't help himself.

"He left, what - a couple months ago? Three? And you still haven't reset your radio."

And what is he supposed to say to that?

He takes two glasses from the cupboard and follows Jim into the living room. "Let me put some real music on," he says, and pulls the top CD off the stack by the sound system: Leonard Cohen. Not what he would have chosen under the circumstances - nothing says 'I'm miserable and suicidal' like listening to Leonard Cohen alone, he thinks - but it's better than the Nick-flavoured drone coming from the kitchen.

"Haven't heard that in a while," Jim says, taking the glasses from Gil and setting them down on the coffee table. He unscrews the cap while Gil ducks back into the kitchen and kills the radio, and is pouring two generous shots when he comes back in.

"It worked its way into the rotation," Gil says absently and takes the glass that Jim hands him.

Jim gives him a less-than-credulous look.

Gil shrugs. Greg had actually ferreted it out a couple weeks ago and wouldn't let it get far from the disc turner. He stifles a smile and looks over at the tv. It's still on, the movie still playing itself out, but Greg muted it ages ago and now it's just subtitles and awkward camera angles.

"What the hell is that?" Jim asks, following his eyes. The evil doppelganger of the main character has been split in two down the middle, and the two halves are having an argument.

"I'm not entirely sure," Gil admits, and turns it off. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Jim is shaking his head. "Gil, next time you need to space out in front a movie, let me know and I'll lend you 'Die Hard'."

Gil grins and takes a tentative sip at the drink in his hand. "I'll bear that in mind."

***

Nick is stuck in traffic when his irritation really starts to get to him. He's irritated at Sara, for still thinking she has a shot with Grissom, he's irritated at her for drinking too much and for making it their problem, he's irritated at Warrick for, well, being Warrick.

Mostly he's irritated at himself.

He knows that Gil is not going to cave in with Sara. He knows it to his core, with every cell in his body. Gil is faithful to him - well, him and Greg, but that's a totally different thing because before there was Gil and Greg, there was Nick and Greg. And just because the right pronouns don't exist for this thing doesn't mean it's not for real.

So he knows that Sara is barking up the wrong tree. Knows it, but it still stings.

Gil has infinite patience for Nick when he gets wound up, gives him the space he needs but peppers it with unforseen kisses when he least expects them. Greg is learning, too, to heed the careful parameters of tact when Sara enters into the equation. Greg is good to bitch at when he needs to, because he nods seriously and chips in his own two cents worth and it feels good to not be the only one in a snit.

He turns at the corner with the huge acacia, smiles like he always does at the memory of the lecture Gil improvised once about some random beetle and how it needed an acacia to reproduce successfully and how that tree was probably the most important tree in a ten block radius, and he turns into the driveway.

He gets out and looks around. Greg's car is parked across the street where he usually parks it, because the driveway is small and itty-bitty cars can usually get away with parking violations that SUVs can't. Nick feels good about that, that they're both home and he can tell them how much he loves them and is glad to have them in his life.

It's a trick he learned from Gil, these random declarations of joy. Gil is the king of out-of-the-blue sticky notes inside the fridge, for candles suddenly appearing at dinner, for the perfect song played at the perfect moment. A thousand and one ways to let him - to let them - know how important they are to him.

He pulls his keys out of his pocket and opens the front door. He takes a deep breath - he can smell the Indian spices Gil was cooking with earlier - and he smiles at the music, which he's starting to get tired of but which he'll listen to anyway if it makes Greg happy.

There are voices coming from the living room, talking at a low register under the music and he shakes his head. Greg likes that CD because it has slow sex written all over it, or so he claims - he can only hope that he's going to catch a glimpse of something really inappropriate when he comes around the corner and into the living room.

Maybe they're necking on the couch. Or maybe they're curled up together enjoying the post-coital bliss, Gil humouring Greg's unending need to babble when he gets relaxed. It's kind of funny, he thinks, how Greg babbles when he's nervous and when he's at his most relaxed, but how there's a universe of inexplicable difference between the two, how one is exasperating and the other is adorable.

"I'm home," he calls out as he walks down the hallway. "Hope you didn't miss me too much..."

***

The tableau in the living room is one that Nick is not going to forget for a long time.

Gil is sitting facing the archway, a glass of something strong in one hand and the most pained, awkward and miserable look on his face that Nick has ever seen him wear.

And Jim Brass, glass in one hand and bottle in the other, is sprawled on the couch with a matching look of disbelief.

Nick freezes with one foot in front of the other, halfway into the living room and the glib follow-up to his entrance line dying on his lips.

"Hi, Nick," Gil says after about three seconds of the most resounding silence in recorded history. He clears his throat and tries to sound remotely comfortable with the state of the universe.

"Hi," Nick says back, because clearly he has to say something. His eyes gravitate towards Jim of their own accord, and he swallows. That is not a good look he's getting, he thinks. He's vaguely surprised he doesn't have two smoking holes burned through his forehead. "Um."

Jim whips his head from Nick to Gil and says, "What the hell is going on?"

The good news, Nick figures, still frozen to the spot, is that Jim isn't yelling. He isn't shouting, isn't even on the edge of shouting. It's his quiet voice, the one that says 'I'm missing something obvious and you're going to explain it to me'.

Yeah Gil, Nick thinks. Explain it to him.

And then he thinks, I know I saw Greg's shoes in the hallway.

And then he thinks he hears someone moving upstairs, and he knows his eyes get huge and he manages to make eye contact with Gil, who almost-winces, and Nick clears his throat and mumbles, "Berightback," and bolts for the stairs.

***

After Nick flees the room, the ambient tension drops by about a micronewton and Jim is able to focus his considerable intimidation techniques on Gil without distraction.

"You want to fill me in?" he asks.

Gil closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Not really," he says, sounding exhausted, "no."

Jim interprets this liberally as a yes. "I thought you and Nick were finished," he says.

Gil shrugs, his eyes still pressed shut.

"Moreover," Jim continues, "I thought Nick and Greg were an item."

Gil shrugs again.

Jim drains his glass and sets in on the coffee table. "Look," he says, "I know I saw two dishes on this table when I came in. I assumed you were sliding into bachelor slobdom but I can see that you're not."

He waits for Gil to say something. After a few seconds of silence, Jim stands up. "I don't really want to know the details of this, do I?" he asks.

Gil sighs, peels his hand from his face and stands up gracelessly. "Probably not," he admits.

"Well that's too bad," Jim says, "because I'm starting to get a pretty clear picture. Where is Greg, anyway? Is he around here somewhere?"

Gil's face is a study in conflicted neutrality.

"Jesus," Jim says, shaking his head. "Forget I asked. How long has this been going on?"

"Jim-"

He holds up his hand to stop Gil in mid-plea. "Don't," he says. "Look. I can deal with you being gay, Gil. Believe it or not, I can deal with that. But this? You've got a harem, Gil."

"I don't have a harem," Gil protests.

"Fine," Jim says, "whatever the word is for a retinue of young men who live with you. I guess I'm not 'up' on that funky Roman nomenclature."

"Jim-"

"Is there anyone else I should know about? Is Warrick hiding in a closet upstairs? Hodges sprawled naked somewhere I don't want to know about?"

"Jesus Jim," Gil snaps, suddenly out of his miserable head-in-sand mode and starting to get angry. "Get a grip on yourself. What business is it of yours, anyway?"

"What business?" Jim asks with a harsh laugh. "None, I guess. I thought we were friends."

"We are friends, dammit," Gil says. He takes a deep breath. "Jim. It doesn't matter."

"The hell it-"

"How can it possibly matter who I'm sharing a bed with?"

Gil asks it so reasonably that for a moment Jim can't remember the answer, can't remember why it's so wrong. Only for a moment, then it's back in perfect clarity. "There are limits, Gil," he explains coolly. "Even for the great Gil Grissom, there are limits."

"I know there are limits," Gil says.

Jim starts walking towards the door and Gil dogs after him.

"I know there are limits," he says again, "but anything between consenting adults is still on this side of those limits."

"Keep telling yourself that, Gil," Jim says. He reaches the door and hauls it open, steps out into the rising heat of morning.

"What is the matter with this?" Gil demands, and follows him out into the sun, down the walk and out to the curb. "Just tell me that much."

Jim stops when he reaches his car, turns around and squares off with Gil in plain sight of his neighbours. "Have you completely lost your mind?" he hisses.

"Quite possibly," Gil says, toe-to-toe with him, hands on hips. "But I'm happy."

Jim rolls his eyes. "Oh, you're happy," he says. "Good to know. So what?"

"For the first time in my life, Jim," Gil says, his voice starting to seethe with something dangerous now, "for the first time in my life I have everything I want. Don't expect me to wash my hands of it because it makes you uncomfortable."

Jim shakes his head. "Have you listened to yourself lately?" he asks. "For the first time in my life, everything I want, don't expect me - what about them, huh? What about those two kids - and they are kids, Gil, you know that as well as I do-"

"They aren't kids," Gil snaps, "and for what it's worth, they're happy too."

"Again with the happy," Jim says and turns back to his car. "You know what this is? This is stupid and it's dangerous and you should know that. It's weird."

Gil stands on the grass shoulder of the road, watches Jim walk around the hood to the driver's side door. "I've always been weird," he says.

"And them?" Jim jerks his thumb up at the house.

"No one's twisting their arms," Gil says.

"You're their boss, Gil."

That stops him up, but only for a moment, because that's always been true and he's already reconciled the politics at work with his life at home. "I know that," he says. "I'm careful. We're all careful."

Jim slams his car door open and it bounces against the rubber stop. "Grow up, Gil," he instructs. "This may have been cool in college but it's not now. You're pushing fifty and they're just kids and it's sick."

The word slaps Gil across the face. "Sick?" he echoes.

"Sick," Jim spits at him, "as in not normal as in unhealthy as in-"

Gil takes a step back from the car, sets a grim look on his face. "I got it the first time, Jim," he says softly.

Jim mutters something under his breath and hauls himself into his car, slams the door and peels away from the curb.

Gil watches him go, then turns and walks back into the house.

"Think he's gone?" Greg breathes.

Nick strains to hear anything. They're in the guest bedroom with the door closed, and Nick has his ear pressed to the wall where it's thinnest and he's listening. "They're not in the house anymore," he reports, barely above a whisper, "but I haven't heard a car yet."

Greg shivers. Nick caught him coming out of the shower, threw Gil's bathrobe at him and told him not to make a sound. And he hasn't, even though he's still damp and Gil's robe isn't that warm and his feet are going numb. He's pressed against Nick's back but Nick is so tense that he's actually colder than Greg is, and all he wants is to crawl into bed and pull the comforter around him.

"Are you nuts?" Nick asks when he makes a move towards it. He catches his wrist and hauls him back.

"What?" Greg whispers. "I'm cold."

"That bed is loud, man," Nick says, and then presses his ear to the wall again.

Greg rolls his eyes but says nothing. He wants to point out that Jim saw Nick go upstairs, he's bound to be wondering what's taking him so long, but he doesn't. It sounds like Jim's gone, anyway, so it's only a matter of time before they're allowed to move again.

The door downstairs closes heavily, and Nick allows the bedroom door to open a crack.

After a long pause, Gil says, "It's all right, he's gone."

Nick lets out a rush of air and scrambles downstairs, and Greg follows him.

Gil is standing in the entranceway with his back to the door, and he looks up and tries to smile at the two of them halfway down the stairs, ready to descend on eggshells.

"It's okay," he says again, takes a deep breath. "Really."

Nick comes down slowly, gets within an arm span of Gil and stops. "What happened?" he asks carefully.

"We had it out," Gil says simply.

"And?" Nick asks.

"And do you see him in here, shaking hands and passing out the cigars?" He sounds more bitter than he probably thinks he does.

"Oh, Gil..." Nick closes the distance between them and hugs him. "I'm so sorry."

Gil holds on to him, takes a couple deep breaths, pushes him away gently. "It's all right," he says, "it was bound to happen sooner or later."

"But still-"

Gil shrugs as nonchalantly as he can. "The problem with deluding yourself," he says, "is that when you're proven wrong, you feel twice as stupid about it."

Nick touches the side of his face. "What do you need?" he asks softly.

"I don't need anything," Gil says. "I have everything I need." He kisses Nick warmly, and holds him tightly again, and looks up over Nick's shoulder at Greg, still perched halfway up the stairs.

"That includes you, Greg," he says, and holds one hand out to him.

Greg moves down the stairs slowly, approaches them and takes Gil's hand uncertainly.

Gil pulls him in and wraps an arm around his back. "Don't," he says, kissing the side of his face.

"Don't what?" Greg asks.

"Don't think that this is your fault."

Greg squeezes his eyes shut. How is it that Gil knows exactly what he's thinking? he wonders. Knows what he's thinking and what to say to stop it?

"I'm telepathic," Gil says into his hair and tightens his arm. "I told you, I love you. Both of you."

Greg decides two things then, while he's being crushed between Nick's shoulder and Gil's ribcage. One: he's going to stop making his problems Gil's problems, too, because he's already got enough to worry about.

And two: he's going to learn to think inside his head.

***

They watch the other movie that Greg brought, a brainless shoot-em-up with a few memorable moments that requires zero intellectual input. None of them are particularly absorbed in it, but they watch it through to the credits anyway, Nick on one side of Gil and Greg on the other, curled up on the couch and pressed together and trying really hard to pretend that they're paying attention to the explosions and chase scenes on the tv.

After the credits have finished, when they're staring at the repeat FBI warning about piracy, Gil takes a deep breath and Greg thinks he can tell the exact moment when Gil makes his decision to stop moping.

"It's okay," he tells them, "really it is. Jim will sulk for a few days and he'll probably give all of us a wide berth, but he'll get used to it."

"Gil," Nick says, "he's one of your best friends-"

"I know." There's a shadow of sad humour to his voice now. "We've had rough patches before, we get over it. It just takes time." He turns to Greg and touches his face. "You may have the day off tomorrow," he says, "but the rest of us don't. We should get to bed."

"Okay," Greg says, "I'll go home."

Gil catches him around the waist before he makes it to his feet. "Stay," he invites. "Please."

Greg looks at him, then at Nick, and wonders what he should do. He wants to stay, he does - he wants to be of some use to Gil, of some comfort, after all the shit he dragged up this morning. But: he also thinks that, if it were him in Gil's position, he would want to be as close to alone as he could right now, to lick his wounds and regain some measure of composure. Definitely wouldn't want Greg Sanders getting underfoot.

Gil tugs him forward, leans his head against the side of his neck and says, "Greg. I would like you to stay, really and truly. Please."

And he's saying it so softly, so gently, and his nose is touching that spot just above his shoulder that always makes him shiver, and... and a hundred thousand other reasons to capitulate.

"Okay," he tells him, and lets his eyes close when Gil pulls him in tightly in a close hug.

"Thank you," Gil whispers.

***

Nick and Gil are going through the motions of making the bed so Greg slips into the bathroom while their hands are busy. He looks at himself in the mirror, isn't particularly fond of what he sees, and thinks that a quick shower is what he needs to look less like the total wreck that he is. Except he just had a shower, and comforting though it would be to delay the inevitable of returning to the bedroom, it would only make him more miserable in the end. He hates the thought that he's this much of a coward, that he's thinking of locking himself in the bathroom and never coming out again.

So he scrubs his face and brushes his teeth and avoids looking at himself again, and when he wanders back into the room still wearing Gil's bathrobe, he encounters the concrete feeling of a conspiracy.

Nick is looking at him a little like Gil was earlier, and Greg is torn between soundless fury that he's being talked about behind his back and a painful hitch that they care this much.

"Come here," Nick says, and his voice is a little rough around the edges as he holds out his hand.

Greg takes it, lets himself be drawn into a hug, and is dimly aware of Gil disappearing into the washroom. God, he thinks as Nick's arms come around him, what a setup.

Nick kisses the side of his face and lowers them down onto the bed, wriggles so that Greg is in that happy little dip in the middle of the mattress that is usually his favourite place in the known universe but tonight feels a little like a gravity well.

"Gil told me," Nick says softly, resting face-to-face with him so their legs are tangled.

"I know." Greg tries to keep his voice even, light, but of course he can't. It catches on something in the back of his throat but he wills his eyes to stay open, to not cry again.

"Greg," Nick soothes and he's smiling, touching the side of his face again, his eyes full of tenderness and wonder, "Greg, I love you so much it hurts."

He manages to smile, even if it doesn't get past his lips. "I know," he says again. "This thing with Gil - it's blown out of proportion, okay?" He tweaks the smile a bit. "So don't worry about me. I'm fine."

Nick kisses him quickly, lets his head fall back to the mattress again. "I want to believe you, Greg," he whispers, "but I can't, not yet." He kisses him again. "Right from the start you couldn't get your head around Gil, and I think you still can't."

"Nick-"

Another quick kiss. "You will," Nick promises. "It just takes time and trust, and baby, we're not going anywhere."

Greg swallows. "Look," he says, "I appreciate - this, whatever it is - but...." He sighs. "Now isn't really the time, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"God only knows what Brass is going to be like tomorrow, and he's never liked me so it doesn't matter but what about Gil?"

Greg feels the mattress dip behind him and another set of arms wrap themselves around him. "Gil will be fine," Gil says at his shoulder, "and so will Jim. We're big boys, we'll look after it. It's Greg that I'm worried about."

Nick kisses the end of his nose and rolls away, gets up and pads out of sight.

Greg tries not to panic at the situation, isn't sure why he feels he should be panicking except that Gil is still holding him from behind, and it's clear that despite all the shit that's hit the fan the one thing he wants to fixate on is the one thing Greg doesn't want to think about.

Which is no doubt why Gil is so intent on it.

He sighs and closes his eyes. Gil's lips touch the back of his neck and he's pulled over onto his back, so he'd be staring up at the ceiling if he opened his eyes - which he thinks maybe he's never going to do again - and Greg knows to the bottom of his soul that Gil is watching him carefully, probably calculating something gently unkind.

"Greg."

"Mm."

Gil's hand is pleasantly cool against his face, and it turns his head so that he'd now be facing Gil (but he's not going to open his eyes so it doesn't matter) and Gil's lips touch his cheek so gently that Greg's not entirely sure he didn't imagine it.

"Greg." Gil kisses him again, touches his eyelids and then his lips and he feels Gil's arm settle over his chest. "We got interrupted earlier."

Greg sighs again. "I don't want to keep having this conversation," he says.

Gil chuckles. "I meant before that," he says. "You were saying something about tying me up...?"

His eyes fly open of their own accord, to find Gil watching him with a uniquely-Gil combination of love and amusement.

"I didn't actually mean-"

Gil kisses him quickly and smiles at him. "I know that," he says, "but that's where we got interrupted."

Greg swallows hard. "What about Nick-" he asks.

"Nick is fine," Gil says, captures his hand and brings it to his lips. "We need this, you and I. Don't worry about Nick."

He wants to protest that he can't not worry about Nick, but Gil insinuates himself well into Greg's personal space and pulls him close and kisses him for real this time, not a peck but an actual kiss that involves a little depth and a lot of heart, and there's only so much Greg's body can take before he starts to cave in.

"You were in the process of seducing me," Gil says at such a low register that Greg barely hears him.

"I was?" Greg asks.

Gil nods, lets a hand slide down Greg's spine to the small of his back and rubs a circle there. "You were," he says. "It was working, too."

"It was?"

"It was."

Greg licks his lips. "Oh."

Gil smiles against his mouth, moves his body some imperceptibly small increment that does something electric to Greg's brain, and he kisses him again, soundly. "You want to pick up where you left off?" Gil asks.

"Um," Greg says, because that electric something has scrambled most of his synapses, he's sure of it, and his short-term memory is not what it used to be. Come to think of it, neither is his long-term memory. His world has been reduced to the immediate present, and he's not sure what he's supposed to do about it.

Gil smiles again, makes another shivery move against Greg, and props himself up on one elbow. "Or should I pick up where you left off, instead?" he asks.

Greg looks up at Gil's face, above him but so close that spatial relations seem like a foreign concept. "Okay," he whispers, and keeps his eyes open until just before Gil kisses the skin under his right eye.

Then he thinks, I'll worry about it - whatever it was - later.

***

Gil has always loved music. Before he had submitted to surgery to save his hearing, when he was living in an expanding bubble of silence, that had been his secret fear: that he would lose the intricacies of pitch and tone and melody.

He's never played an instrument. In high school he had suffered through the clarinet, always in awe of the pianists and the timpanists and everyone who felt the innate connection to the art that he couldn't duplicate. He spent an awkward and demoralizing year in college trying to learn the piano before ultimately accepting that he would never be able to play, not even enough to amuse himself.

But he discovered a new instrument not long after he gave up on the traditional ones, and it's one that he has learned to master. The human body, he has taught himself, is an instrument of rare beauty and unparalleled complexity. Its music may not be audible but it is breathtaking nonetheless, and Gil feels the overwhelming tactile pleasure of a maestro when he lets go of everything but the music and allows himself get lost.

Each body is a thing of beauty, he thinks, each body a work of art, a symphony waiting to be written, to be heard and studied. It's a truth that trasncends age and gender and size and colour and scars, puts everyone on an equal footing, all beautiful in their own song.

He regrets that he hasn't made time for Greg in this way, he thinks; that Greg has been a part of his life for two and a half months and he hasn't made a point yet of learning his every note.

In the beginning (and he knows this is a weak excuse for an omission that in his own eyes is inexcusable) it was because he didn't want to overwhelm Greg; Greg who was scared of not fitting in, of not finding a place with him and Nick, of being dropped summarily when the whim was over. And then it was just - more expedient to enjoy the company of both Nick and Greg simultaneously, more communal and more fun, dammit - yes, more effortlessly fun - to not make a point of this. And it hurts him, it actually pains him in a visceral, physical way, to see what his own short-sightedness has cost Greg.

Yes, he knows that Greg's insecurities are rooted in far more than this, but he knows that those other causes have his fingerprints all over them, at least some of them do - and that hurts, too. A lot of what happens at the lab is out of his hands, things go wrong and he has to respond to them, has to react and to supervise. And he knows that he's competent at his job (although he'll never have the ease that Catherine has) and that Greg is professional enough to take it in stride when it lands on his shoulders.

But this... he has no excuse for this act of personal neglect, for not making the effort on Greg's behalf the way he did for Nick, the way he has done for all of his lovers.

The only prayer he can offer is the hope that late is better than never.

***

He eases Greg out of the robe he's wearing, manoeuvring him by kiss and touch and murmured indecency, and pulls the thin body against his own naked flesh.

"Do you trust me?" he asks gently.

Greg nods, the skin of his face turning pink and his breath catching somewhere in his chest.

Gil smiles, kisses him, and begins his study.

He has learned a special sort of detachment for times like this, times when his entire being is focused on someone else's body. It's a discipline that arose out of his study of Buddhism, although he can't shake the feeling that the teacher who guided him back in the day would be appalled at what he's doing with his hard-won knowledge. But it allows him to section a part of himself off to act as an observer, an observer and a cataloguer and a taker of notes, while the rest of him follows his partner into bliss.

He instinctively starts at Greg's back, curls him up on his side and begins his exploration between his shoulders. It's a spot that Gil knows well, in his own way; he had memorized the scars before the wounds stopped bleeding, even before they had wheeled Greg onto the ambulance, before the shards of glass were even removed. He had been struck dumb then, lost to his own kind of shock, unable to do more than stay at his side, listening to what they were telling him without actually hearing any of it, and watching the blood soak through Greg's clothes.

He touches these scars carefully now, noting with a heavy heart the places where nerve damage is the most, where Greg doesn't seem to register his touch at all. He transfers those areas to his inner Greg-atlas, colours them black and tries not to dwell on how they came to be.

But there are spaces between the scars where his skin seems hyper-sensitive, as if to compensate for the deadened areas: a careful tongue in the right place can elicit a full range of noises, he discovers, and takes a while to explore them. He becomes aware of Greg's movements, tiny aching motions that wordlessly and eloquently tell Gil to keep going, to keep moving, to keep mapping.

He kisses Greg's spine and works his way down his side, along his ribs and the curve of his hip, down the expanse of his thigh to his knee, where he stops again. This is the knee that blew out in a surfing accident, he thinks, and touches his lips to the pale scar he finds. He hates to think of the pain that this young body has endured to have earned all of these badges, these marks of courage.

Greg moves again, slides his skin against Gil's mouth, and Gil looks up to find that Greg has rolled over, is on his back and his knees have fallen to one side and he's staring down at Gil in a mix of terror and awe.

Gil can't breathe for a moment, trapped in the intensity of Greg's eyes; and then the remote-operated part of his brain kicks him hard and he takes a deep, shaky breath. "Greg," he murmurs, slides both hands up the insides of Greg's legs and kisses a trail up to his hip.

The muscles under his hands are quivering, excitement maybe but probably fear, Gil thinks, and he stills his fingers and forces himself to take another deep breath, a little less shaky this time.

"Greg," he says again, softly, "tell me - are you all right?"

Greg nods tightly, and Gil is unpleasantly reminded of his panic attack the first time Gil tried to seduce him. Dammit. He lets out his held breath slowly, withdraws his hands and joins Greg at the head of the bed.

"Greg," he whispers, and touches the side of his face. "It's okay, honey."

Greg's eyes are tearing up again and Gil watches them close.

Gil gathers him into his arms and holds him carefully, kisses the side of his head. "It's okay," he repeats, "don't worry about it, it's okay."

As he soothes Greg out of his misery, he thinks, He's scared of me. Then he amends, He's still scared of me.

Gil lets his own eyes close, keeps a gentle hand moving through his hair, lets the rational part of his brain come up with sensible things to say under the circumstances. It frees the rest of him up from the responsibility of being supportive, which is good because he thinks he's going to buckle under the weight of the world right about now.

He doesn't know exactly how he came to instill this level of fear in Greg. He knows that Grissom at work has something to do with it, that Gil-and-Nick has something to do with it, that the mad rush to intimacy between them as a three-faceted unit has something to do with it.

Shit. He should have listened to his own warnings, he thinks with a painful sorrow; he had told Nick to be careful, not to scare Greg, not to push him too far or too hard or too fast into something unexpected, something unforseen.

But Nick has never been the problem, he realises. Nick and Greg fit together naturally, the way Nick and Gil do. It's Gil and Greg that are the forced match, who are hemmed in by invisible lines that define their borders. He's not used to borders in a relationship, he's not used to them in his head or in his heart or in his bed. Doesn't know what to do with them.

Doesn't know where to start, even.

Greg is starting to drift now, out of panic and into something like rest, and Gil curls him on his side and holds him tight, kisses the line of his jaw just under his ear and listens to his heart start to slow into sleep.

He wants to make this right. No, he doesn't want to: he needs to. Needs to make this right because he's hurting Greg, he's poisoning him from the inside, tainting him with fear where there should be none: where he's loved, where he's cherished, where he's important.

Gil sighs against Greg's shoulder, kisses his neck again and wonders if he has the strength to let go, for the good of both of them. To let them drift apart, to return to being two pairs and not one three-of-a-kind.

Greg has gone completely slack when Gil extracts himself, withdraws his arms as carefully as he can and rolls away. He pulls the blanket over Greg's sleeping body, stares down at him with the same fierce love he's felt for Nick since the beginning, and then turns and walks away.

He can't remember ever feeling so devastated.

He stays for a while in the hallway with his back against the bedroom door, working consciously to make himself breathe against the dull ache that is constricting his chest. He can't do this, he thinks with crystalline certainty; and he can't go back in there, either.

He should go downstairs, he thinks. Downstairs where Nick is watching something on tv, probably with his feet propped up on the coffee table and a bowl of popcorn resting on his stomach, laughing at some popular inanity or another. Nick who loves him, Nick to whom he has promised honesty in all things - Nick from whom he has always demanded honesty. Nick who owns his heart.

No, he thinks: Nick to whom he gave his heart, freely.

Nick laughing, he thinks: a mantra to bring himself back to zero. Nick crying. Nick arching into his touch. Nick breathless from running. Nick covered in flour. Nick learning to juggle. Nick - Nick pulling Greg out of a chair to do the dishes. Nick changing a fuse in the basement. Nick in the glow of twilight. Nick holding Greg's hand. Nick yelling at a cactus. Nick throwing a football. Greg catching it. Nick wearing Greg's jacket. Greg in ridiculous pink socks. Greg in bare feet, in the grass. Nick buying sunglasses. Nick slouched in a chair. Greg dancing in the kitchen. Nick repotting a ficus. Greg with his eyes closed, on the edge of sleep. Greg waxing philosophical about the colour blue. Greg kicking a tree. Greg collecting morning snails from the patio planter. Greg yawning. Greg. Greg.

Gil lets his eyes open slowly, knows they are rimmed with tears but can't make himself wipe them away. They're his tears and he needs them, because they remind him that he is not the man he tries to be.

The man he tries to be would have a solution, he thinks, and lets his tears trace lines across his skin. The man he tries to be could make this right with a few words, a kind touch. He would know the secret to balancing, he could reach inside Greg with gentleness and undo whatever it is that he's done. Except he wouldn't have done it in the first place, this ideal man.

He closes his eyes again.

***

"Gil?"

It's said so softly, so tentatively - so full of concern - that he finds a smile and puts it on. He opens his eyes to find Nick standing less than a foot from him, almost touching him, almost leaning in to kiss him, to brush away his tears.

"What's wrong?" he asks. "What happened?"

He wonders how long he's been standing there, propped against the wall in the corner of the hall, mired in his own vintage of misery. It must have been a while because his legs are stiff, difficult to move.

He tries to say something but finds his voice has left him, so he pushes himself from the wall and into Nick's arms.

Nick embraces him, folds him into his arms and holds him. Gil can feel the acceleration of Nick's pulse, recognises the signs of fear. This fear doesn't wound him, doesn't shake him to his core like Greg's fear does, because he knows where this fear comes from. It's his fault, but this time it's all right.

He finds his voice again, and says softly, "Let's talk."

He can feel Nick nod against him, tighten his arms around his torso and where Gil's hands are resting on his back, he can feel the tension like electricity humming through live wires.

"It's okay," he whispers, even though it isn't. He feels a wave of love crash over him, and he kisses the skin against his mouth, and then hugs him tightly. "Let's go downstairs."

***

Nick makes tea. Gil sits at the table and watches him, smiles fondly at this ritual of kettle, leaves, strainer, pot.

It's not the high tea that Gil himself prefers - a touch of finery being the only slice of elegance he can afford in his life - but this is Nick's private affair. It's something he learned from his father: the Stokes proven method of slowing the world down when it starts to spiral out of control.

It isn't served in bone china cups, but in the chipped mugs that moved in with Nick over a year ago. Gil takes his from Nick's hands, holds it under his nose and inhales deeply; what it lacks in elegance, he thinks, it makes up for in potency.

"So?" Nick asks, settling into what Gil recognises as his ready-to-deal-with-it posture. He doesn't even need to know what it is, Gil thinks, he's ready to face it head-on. "What's going on?"

He takes a deep breath, uncertain of where to start. "Greg had another panic attack," he says.

Nick arches an eyebrow. "Oh?" he says, surprised. "I thought that was over."

"It's not," Gil says, swallows with difficulty around a dry throat. "It's me."

"You?" The corner of his mouth quirks up in the beginning of a smile. "Pretty sure about that, huh?"

"Yes," he says simply, because this is not going to go away if they make a joke about it. "I am."

Nick drops his eyes to the table for a moment. "Sorry."

He sighs, sets his mug of tea down and rubs his face. "So am I," he says, "because this is something we have to deal with." He thinks for a moment then corrects himself. "Something I have to deal with."

"You?" Nick asks. "Not us?"

"It's... complicated, Nick. I wish I knew the whole story, I wish I could tell you I had an answer - but it's me. He's... terrified of me, Nick."

Nick frowns. "Why?"

"I'm not sure." He thinks for another moment. "I'm not entirely sure. I think... I think I've been unnecessarily hard on him at work for too long. I think he still doesn't believe that he belongs here. I think he's been hurt, badly, in the past."

Nick takes his hand where it's resting on the wood of the tabletop and strokes his knuckles with his thumb. "So what do we do?" he asks. His voice is calm but tight, and Gil can hear everything he isn't saying.

He swallows. "I think maybe... we slow down," he says, because he thinks they're the best words for something that he never thought he would be saying.

Nick's thumb stills on his hand. "What does that mean?" he asks, but he knows. Gil can see it in his eyes.

He swallows again, finds it harder every time. "The way it is, Nick, is going to destroy him."

"Breaking up with him is going to destroy him," Nick counters. "Shit, Gil, whatever is going on with him it'll only be a hundred times worse if we let him fall to the side."

"It's not you," Gil hears himself say, "it's only me."

"It's not only you, Gil," Nick says, pulls his hand back and wraps it tightly around his cup of tea. Gil watches the knuckles turn white, watches the line of Nick's mouth flatten and grow tight, watches Nick's eyes drift to the black depths of his cup and stay there.

"I know it's not only me," Gil says, wishes he had the right to reach across the table and pull that intense attention back to him. Knows he doesn't, not now; maybe not anymore. Because this is breaking a promise that he made. The thought hurts but he holds it inside, because to let it out into the room would be to divert the conversation from what is important, from what matters: Greg.

"No," Nick says, shaking his head. "No. No we are not 'slowing things down', Gil."

"Nick-"

"No. You don't get to make unilateral decisions here, Gil. It's three of us, remember?"

He keeps his mouth shut.

Nick wipes at his face and examines the tears he catches on his thumb. "Dammit," he says, "we knew this wasn't going to be easy. Right? We knew that. We decided to do it anyway. Now we do what we have to do to keep it together."

"Nick," Gil says, softly.

"For better or for worse, Gil. Ring any bells?"

"Nick, this is hurting Greg. Badly." He looks down at his own cup of tea. "One of the things we do is to protect the ones we love."

"By getting rid of them?" Nick asks. "Of - of us?"

"I don't-" He hasn't got words for this. "He needs you, Nick, more than he needs me. You'll always have me, but to try to hold Greg to that, to - to this... I can't do it."

"It's not your choice," Nick tells him. "Three of us, remember?"

"Nick..."

"Jesus, Gil. What happened to all for one, one for all?"

"I love you," Gil says. "I love Greg. I am not going to stop loving you, either of you."

Nick pushes his chair back, stands suddenly. "What did Jim say to you?" he asks.

Gil looks up at him. "What?"

"Whatever it was," Nick tells him, "it's bullshit."

"Nick-"

"Listen to yourself, Gil. You're going to bail on this - on us, on this whole fucking thing that we have, all of us - and, and..." He shakes his head. "You actually believe him."

"Nick..."

He shakes his head again and leaves, and Gil listens to him move through the house, and then upstairs.

He thinks, I should have stopped him. He thinks, I should have been able to make him understand, to make him see -

I should have been able to tell him he was wrong, about Jim.

There's a bitter taste in his mouth now, and it's not the tea. He looks down at his cup, then over at the pot steeping on the counter. Thinks, so this is the world unfolding according to its own agenda. This is me not having a say in my own life anymore.

This is what it means to spiral out of control.

***

He stays downstairs for a long time, dragging one cooling pot of tea over almost two hours. He sits in the kitchen, he moves through the living room, he stands on the balcony in the early afternoon heat. He watches two kids chase a persecuted dog down the sidewalk, he watches a bird in the tree across the street, he watches someone try and fail to parallel park behind Greg's car.

When he runs out of tea, and can't talk himself into making another pot, he locks up again and leaves the tea paraphernalia in the sink, and makes his way upstairs. He tells himself he's moving slowly on the stairs because he doesn't want to wake them up; it has nothing (he insists) to do with his reluctance to be up there with them.

On the one hand, he knows that Nick is right. That they're in this together, all of them, and he has no right to make unilateral decisions about the collective them.

On the other hand, though, Gil knows that he's right, too: that the way things are is not good for Greg, and that any attempt on their part to keep it together, to keep it status quo, will only do more damage than good.

He hesitates when he reaches the top of the stairs, then takes silent footsteps towards the bedroom. The door is open and the bedside lamp is on low, and he stands for a moment in the doorway, soaking in the scene.

Nick is wrapped around Greg in the centre of the mattress. The covers have been pulled down on Gil's side of the bed, and the invitation is obvious. No, more than an invitation. An expectation.

An expectation of what, though? He looks at the exposed triangle of sheet, analyzes how his body is gravitating towards it on some base level. It's an expectation of continuation. Of sameness. An expectation that in the morning, we'll all pretend this never happened. And the next time it does happen - the next time that Gil slides his hand along the line of Greg's leg while Nick is elsewhere - Greg will grit his teeth through his terror and endure it because he'll think he has to.

There's a thought that makes Gil flinch: it's not such a long stretch from endure to coerce to rape, is it?

Gil knows precisely where the lines are that he won't cross, but he's not sure where they are from Greg's perspective. Greg, who was willing a few hours ago to submit to something that terrified him. Greg, who clearly doesn't think he has the right to say no.

Feeling nauseated with himself and with the thousand acts of cruelty he's capable of, Gil tiptoes into the room and pulls the covers up from where they're folded down. He smoothes them tight around Nick's back and around Greg's shoulders, stands for a moment looking at them in the dim light, then turns the lamp off and tiptoes back out into the hall.

The bed in the guest room feels foreign under him.

***

He sleeps poorly, and his internal clock wakes him up a few hours later. It takes him a moment to remember where he is, why there's no tangle of arms and legs around him, why the far side of the bed is so cold.

When he does remember, he sits up and looks out the window. Night has fallen, and he illuminates the bedside clock to read that it is nine-thirty.

He sighs, flops back onto the mattress and stares up at the ceiling. He could try to get another hour, but he knows it's not worth it. He resigns himself to looking exhausted for the next few days, and hauls himself to his feet.

Nobody else is awake yet, and he makes his way down to the kitchen quietly. He cleans up from earlier, from his drinks with Jim, and Nick's snack while Gil was upstairs with Greg, and the tea pot and the mugs from his fallout with Nick... He finds himself almost laughing. All that's missing, he thinks, are the two bowls I washed earlier from dinner, and every meal of catastrophe is accounted for.

He makes coffee, and sets the table for breakfast, and finds the newspaper in the living room. He doesn't want to read about the economic crisis, he doesn't want to read about the latest threat to world peace. He doesn't want to read about anything, but he's got to do something until Nick comes down, and he's run out of dishes that need washing.

So he makes himself sit down with the Arts section and a strong cup of coffee, and less than an hour later he hears signs of life from upstairs.

He feels a strange kind of tension take up residence between his shoulders, and he doesn't like it. He doesn't like to think that this house, that this family, is suddenly riddled with trip wires; but he knows that it is. He knows that there are a thousand things he can say or do that will spark an eruption, and that all of these land mines - all of them, without exception - are his fault.

So suck it up, he thinks when he hears footfalls on the stairs, because you have to deal with whatever this entails.

Nick appears in the doorway and they stare at each other for a few seconds. Gil wishes he could read the look that Nick is wearing, wishes he'd had more personal experience with less-than-happy-Nick before this because he has no idea what to expect.

"You didn't come to bed," he says eventually.

Gil folds the paper and lets it fall to the floor. "I slept in the other room," he says.

"Why?"

"I didn't think I had the right to share your bed."

Nick makes a sound in the back of his throat and goes to the coffee maker. "You're not getting away with that," he tells Gil while his back is turned.

"Getting away with what?"

"That holier-than-thou crap." Armed with caffeine, Nick turns back, keeps his back against the counter and that grim look on his face.

"It's not-" Gil starts, then takes a huff of air. "This is my fault, Nick," he says, "I made this mess and I'm the one who has to pay for it."

Nick narrows his eyes. "Very noble of you," he says coldly, "but total bullshit."

"Nick-"

"No." Nick looks down at his coffee then sets it on the counter next to him, untouched. "We made this mess, and we have to pay for it. All of us. That includes you, and you don't get to play the coward or the martyr or whatever you think you are, and hide out in the guest room until it all goes away."

"You didn't see the fear in his eyes, Nick. You don't have to live with the fact that you put it there. I do."

"So you're going to bear that cross alone?" Nick asks. "And I notice that Greg's not here to defend himself," he adds. "Shouldn't he have a say in this?"

"He's in self-preservation mode, Nick," Gil says. "He's not going to look me in the eye and tell me to leave him alone. He doesn't think he's allowed to."

"Maybe," Nick says, "maybe he's not going to do that because it's not what he wants to do. You ever think of that?"

Gil sighs, lets his eyes close for a blissful moment of darkness. "You didn't see his fear-"

"I saw it the first time," Nick reminds him flatly, "remember? On the couch in there, too much wine and all that good stuff and he almost passed out from panic?"

"Yes-"

"He pushed through it," Nick says. "Remember? We waited for him-"

"Maybe he shouldn't have pushed through at all," Gil says, "or maybe he shouldn't have pushed through so quickly. Maybe all of this is really uncomfortable for him and he's only going through with it because of us, Nick."

There's a stretch of silence.

"At some point," Nick says after a while, "we have to assume he's doing this because he wants to."

"I know he wants you, Nick," Gil says, "that's what brought him into this relationship in the first place. He went after you, he dogged you and he kept at your heels until you gave in. Remember?"

"Of course."

"That's the last thing he pursued, Nick. He's not going after anything here anymore. He's curled around himself, trying to stay sane. Trying to stay safe. We pushed too hard, and we hurt him."

Another stretch of silence, and Nick shakes his head slowly. "I think," he says, "that you're assuming too much here. You're projecting all of this crap onto Greg, and taking it as the gospel truth. I say we need to sit down, all of us, and talk about it."

Gil rubs his face. "You should talk to him first, Nicky," he says. "Just you, somewhere that he feels safe. Somewhere that he can be honest with you."

"You think he won't be honest with you?"

"I think he can't be honest with me," Gil says softly, aware that his eyes are starting to sting.

"Why?" Nick asks, but the fight is gone from his words. He looks exhausted, Gil thinks; he looks older than he is, older than he should be.

"We see it every day, Nick," he says plainly. "Someone takes advantage, abuses their position, crosses a line. From that point in, it's not about equals, and you're into a survival situation."

A terrible kind of understanding comes across Nick's face, and most of the colour drains out of it. "Jesus, Gil," he says, his eyes wide, his voice shaky. "You've got it all wrong, it's not like that-"

"I'm having a hard time believing you," Gil says, shrugs with one shoulder, "much though I would like to. I have to look at the evidence, Nick."

"And - this? - this is what the evidence is telling you?"

"I don't know," Gil says, "but I can't pretend that it's not a possibility. I will not become the thing I hate."

"God, Gil..."

He takes a deep breath, wipes at his face, isn't surprised that there are tears there. "Just talk to him, Nicky. Please."

Nick nods. "I will," he promises.

"Make sure he's honest."

"I will," Nick promises again, "and then you can stop this stupid bullshit and we can get back to normal. Okay?"

He allows himself a small smile. "Okay," he says, although he knows in his heart that it's not that simple. That it never is.

He pushes himself up from the table. "I've got to hit the shower," he says. "It's going to be a long night." He knows that Nick is watching him as he moves through the kitchen, out of sight and then he's sure that Nick is listening as he climbs up the stairs. He wonders idly what it's going to be like after everything falls apart.

***

When he comes out of the bathroom in a towel a few minutes later, followed by a whirl of steam and a lingering scent of shampoo, he finds Greg standing in the hallway watching him.

He makes himself smile cautiously. "Good morning," he says.

Greg angles himself away from the wall and puts his arms around Gil's neck. "Morning, yourself," he says into his damp shoulder.

Gil allows his arms to come up around him. "Sleep okay?" he asks, because he can't bring himself to push away just yet, can't bring himself to do what he knows is right. He has exactly two weaknesses, he knows; and one of them is hugging him tightly.

"One side of the bed was cold," Greg says, but he manages to inflect it without accusation.

"Yeah," Gil says, feels a hitch forming in the back of his throat. What's he supposed to say to that, to the carefully neutral way in which it was said?

He feels Greg kiss the side of his neck. "Tonight," he says, "come to bed with us. Please?"

He closes his eyes. "I love you, Greg," he says, squeezes him hard once and then lets go. He takes a step back, grabs the band of towel around his waist and tries to smile.

Greg's eyes are full of hurt and frustration.

Gil forces another smile onto his face. "You're all wet," he says.

"I've been wet before," Greg says, "I haven't melted yet."

"That's good."

They stare at each other for a bit.

"I should get-"

"Can I stay-"

They manage to grin at each other then, when their awkward words trip over each other and grind to a halt; it's a hollow grin, the grin that strangers give each other in elevators when their elbows bump in front of the buttons. It's not a grin that lovers share before they start their respective days.

Gil nods at Greg. "Go ahead," he says, hates the courtesy in his voice, knows it doesn't belong in this conversation but he can't get rid of it, either. All of a sudden this feels like acquaintances. Not family.

"Can I stay here today?" Greg asks.

Gil blinks. "Of course you can, Greg," he says. "This is your home, too."

Greg flushes. "Okay," he says, "I just wasn't sure anymore-"

Fuck. Gil pulls him in for another embrace, and kisses the side of his jaw. "This is home, Greg," he tells him. "This will always be home, as long as you want it to be."

This time, Greg pushes away, forces a smile on his lips and nods. "Okay," he says, and hooks a thumb back towards the master bedroom. "Gonna go back to bed."

Gil nods. "I've got to get dressed. Go to work. You know."

"Cool."

Gil waits a few minutes, shivering in the cool air of the hallway and the lingering wetness from the shower, before he follows Greg into the bedroom, where all of his clothes are. He glances over at the bed, where Greg has flopped onto his stomach with the blankets up around his ears, and turns back to his wardrobe.

Maybe, he thinks, it's time he moved some of his shirts into the other room. He pulls out a black button-up and looks at it, then sighs and takes down a pair of slacks to go with it.

He'll deal with it later. After work.

Tomorrow.

Greg stays in bed until Gil leaves, and then until Nick leaves, and then he gets up and moves through the house.

Days off are always strange. He feels dislocated, like the world has moved on and left him behind; and being alone in someone else's house isn't helping matters much. His last day off Nick had had free, too, and they'd spent the day playing video games and making out. And the one before that he'd had a seminar to go to, and the one before that both Gil and Nick had been free, and they'd...

He stops in the kitchen and hugs Gil's robe tighter around him. What had they done? They'd ended up in bed, eventually, but... oh, that's right. Nick had made some offhand remark about recharging his solar cells and Gil had made a day of it, for all of them: they'd driven out to the desert, lain naked in the sun and eaten fruit until Greg had been sure he was going to explode. And then they'd driven back into the city and picked up dinner and they'd ended up in a sticky pile on the living room floor. Greg had had rug burns for almost three days.

He leans against the kitchen counter, and looks at the table against the wall. He hadn't seen the conversation this morning - this evening, by external reckoning, but it's still morning as far as he's concerned - but he can guess who was where.

It's not that he was by nature an eavesdropper, it's just...

He sighs. He's never felt like this before, this amazing balance between love and lust and excitement and warmth. He doesn't want to let it go, he's ready to do whatever it takes to hang on to it, but - but but but.

But it's only been a couple of months and he's already screwed it up, hasn't he? And not in the way he was sure he would - he hasn't said or done the wrong thing this time - not yet, anyway. No, this time it's the opposite. This time it's because he's been so afraid of disappointing them - okay, of disappointing Gil - that he's done something to them.

He's not even sure why he's so terrified of Gil, really; he just can't lose that bottomless-pit feeling when it's just the two of them. Gil is so... so perfect, maybe. He and Nick are so perfect together, so exactly what Greg has always wanted out of life, that - well, that there really isn't a reason to have a Greg kicking around, is there? And maybe that's what it is, that he's so busy waiting for the other shoe to drop - so sure that it's going to happen, even when he can construct an intellectual argument to the contrary - that he can't really forget about it long enough to get laid. Sure, when Nick is there he can, but that's different. Nick is - well, Nick is not Gil, and that's something right there.

But he knows he has to get over it, and get over it fast, because Gil is so sure that the only way to make this right is to break them up. To protect him.

He laughs at that, a sad laugh but it's a laugh anyway and the thought is absurd; as if he - Greg Hojem Sanders - needs protection. From the likes of Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes, the two most amazing, most gentle and loving people he's ever met.

The two safest people.

Hell, they probably need protection from him. The things they don't know about him...

So that's where he'll start. Even if it scares the shit out of him.

***

The message from Robin just says, "How about the day after tomorrow?"

It's a punch in the head for Jim, who spent the better part of the night sulking and fuming and avoiding going to the lab at all costs. He actually traded cases with O'Reilly so he could work with Catherine instead of - instead of any of them.

But this message from Robin, the feathery little laugh she left along with her words, reminds him that he still has to decide what to do about the Nigel Crane thing. He really doesn't want to sit with Nick and talk about it, but even more than that he doesn't want to sit down with Gil and talk about it.

So Nick it is.

He looks at his watch: almost five-thirty. Odds are they're back at the ranch playing their science games, he thinks, and sighs. Might as well bite the proverbial bullet.

The first person he sees - of course - when he walks through the front doors is Gil. Gil, walking along with Sara on one side and a nervous-looking uniform on the other, carrying a jar of something creepy crawly.

They almost make it past each other without having to say hello, but Sara looks up and smiles.

"Long time no see, Brass," she says brightly.

He gives her his best fake smile, and finds himself eye-to-eye with the last person he wants to see.

"Morning," Gil says tightly.

"Still night by my clock," he says, turns his vapid smile up another notch and pushes past them.

He can hear Sara saying something behind him, something along the lines of, What's eating him? And he can hear Gil telling her, It's probably nothing, keep your mind on the case.

Still... he glances over his shoulder once, to find that Gil is likewise looking back at him.

After a moment, they look away.

He needs to find some way to put this in a box, he thinks as he makes his way through the maze of glass walls. He needs to trick himself into not being bothered by this, so he can look the guy (his best friend, some cruel part of him pipes up) in the face and work with him. He really, really needs to be able to see them - any one of them - and not think of what goes on in that townhouse of ill repute.

Catherine is in the break room when he sticks his head in. She looks up, swallows the mouthful of coffee she's got, and says, "Find the guy yet?"

It takes him a moment to remember that he's still on the clock, that he's been running a slick dealer down for her; that there's more to this night than the mess in his head.

"No," he says, "sorry. I've got a couple uniforms sniffing after him, though."

She sighs, peers down into her cup again. "Oh well," she says with the practiced patience of a seasoned professional. "He'll turn up eventually."

"We'll find him before long, Cath," he says, "there's only so many places a rat like him can hide."

"I'll drink to that," she says.

He watches her for a moment. "Hey, you seen Nick?" he asks as lightly as he can.

She shakes her head. "No," she says, "sorry. Isn't he working O'Reilly's case tonight?"

"Yeah, this is... something personal." He shrugs.

She narrows her eyes at him. "Jim," she says, picking her way carefully, "I know you don't like the Nick-Greg thing, but..."

He holds out a hand to stop her. "It's not that," he says, although right now he wishes his problems were that simple. "I just... need to talk to him."

"Check trace?" she suggests. "I heard Warrick had some paint transfer or something..."

"Thanks," he says, smiles at her, and pulls his head back into the hallway.

"Be nice!" Catherine calls after him.

Ha.

***

He stands in the hallway for a few seconds, watching Warrick scrape delicately at a chunk of highway guardrail and Nick tape-lift from what he can only guess is a swatch of car upholstery. Warrick is saying something and Nick is chuckling, and there's an easy camaraderie there that makes Jim hesitate.

He thinks, This is going to ruin the guy's night. And he's halfway to making up another excuse, putting it off another day like he has twice before now, but then Warrick looks up and grins at him.

"Hey," he says with his usual easy friendship.

He swallows. "Hey," he says, keeping his eyes locked on Warrick's because that's a lot easier than looking at Nick.

"What brings you around?" Warrick asks. "You've been like a ghost all night."

"I'm Cath's street urchin tonight," he says.

Warrick grins again. "I hear you," he says.

He swallows again, forces his eyes to Nick, and thinks, Yeah, I deserve that look he's giving me. "Hey, uh, Nick - got a minute?"

He can see the muscles in Nick's jaw clench. "I'm kinda busy right now," he says in an even voice. "Can it wait?"

Can it? He sighs. "Not really," he says. "It'll only take a few minutes."

Warrick claps him on the shoulder. "Go on, man," he says, "I've got this."

For a minute, Jim thinks Nick is going to argue with him, but instead he sets the fabric and tape-lift tabs down, and pulls his jacket from the back of a chair.

"Fine," he says, "a couple of minutes."

He makes himself smile. "Great," he says. "Let's go somewhere we can talk."

He knows Warrick is watching them shrewdly as they walk away, but he can't let himself worry about that just now. Now he's got bigger fish to fry, such as Nick who is so tense with suppressed anger that he can feel it from here.

Nick pushes open the door to an empty lab, backs himself against the worktable and faces him with his arms crossed. "Okay," he says, "spill."

Jim may not be the genius that Gil is, but he's got a trick or two under his belt when it comes to reading people. Nick wants him to bring it up, he thinks; he wants him to start in on him so he can let loose with the little speech he's been rehearsing all night.

"Look, Nick," he says, because he's too old and too tired for this. "This isn't about - your domestic arrangement, okay? So stop trying to kill me with your eyes."

The look of murder doesn't fade any, but Nick allows him a tight nod.

"It's - ah hell, Nick. Nigel Crane is up on appeal."

It's a long time before the hard look starts to crack, before the reality of Jim's words penetrate the aura of unpleasantry that Nick is projecting. Jim waits him out, knows there are going to be questions and accusations and demands, and while he might not have all of the answers, he's the one who's going to have to fill in the blanks for the kid.

And he is just a kid, Jim thinks, watching the walls come down. He's just a kid who shouldn't have to deal with this messed-up shit, he should have a job that takes him out in the sun once in a while and lets him enjoy himself a little. Jim is even willing to admit that Nick and Greg - just the two of them - were a kind of cute couple. Nick deserves more than this, more than psycho stalkers and sexual harassment from his boss.

"Wh-" Nick blinks, shakes his head. "How? What? When?"

"It comes up before the judge next week," Jim says. "It's some paperwork fuckup, the DA's office says it's not going to stick, you don't need to worry about it. You just need to know about it."

Nick gives him a strangled look. "Not worry about it?" he echoes. "Jesus, Brass - the guy pushed me out a window, he stalked me, he killed Jane Galloway - don't tell me not to worry about it. I know it was a couple years ago, but fuck, man. I still have nightmares."

Jim watches him progress from anger through tension and into panic, wishes he had something useful to say here. "Robin says it's going to blow up a storm and then disappear." He tries a parental smile, the kind that never worked a damn on Ellie. "You know she's always right."

He isn't really listening to him. He's retreating into his own private hell, and Jim knows that it's not his fault but it feels like maybe it is - like if he hadn't said something, then none of this shit would be happening.

And that's kind of true, isn't it? If Crane's lawyer wasn't a shark, if there hadn't been a paperwork fuckup, if if if - then Jim wouldn't have been knocking at Gil's door in the first place, wouldn't have been privy to something he really didn't need to know, and everyone would still be blissfully ignorant.

Yeah, he thinks, let's blame Nigel for this one. Let's pin everything on him, and ignore the rest of it. He feels a little blossom of anger, and he likes it.

"Nick," he says, dropping a hand on his shoulder, "he's not gonna get within three miles of you. I promise."

Nick startles back to the moment, and wriggles away from Jim's touch like it's electric. "Don't," he sneers, "just - don't."

It stings when Nick turns from him and leaves, but he takes that curl of pain and thinks, Nigel's fault. He grits his teeth. Just keep Nigel in sight, Jim, he tells himself, and everything will make sense later.

***

"So?"

He looks up. Catherine is leaning against the door of what used to be his office. He's sitting at his old desk, which is her desk, now. "Sorry," he says, getting to his feet. "Just feeling nostalgic."

"Hey, don't get up on my account," she says with an easy smile. "What's the deal, Jim?"

He shakes his head. "Don't ask," he says.

"Nick's throwing up in the locker room," she tells him. "What did you do?"

He's not really surprised. "Nothing," he says.

"Jim."

He shakes his head. "It's old business," he says.

"Can't be that old," she tells him, and gives him her not-buying-so-try-again look. He thinks this is probably what Lindsay feels like when she's been caught out.

"It's - a Nigel Crane thing."

She raises her eyebrows. "That can't be good," she says carefully. "What is it?"

"Paperwork fuckup and he's got a good lawyer."

It isn't often he's treated to the spectacle of Catherine ready to hit someone, so he enjoys it while he can.

"What - he's not getting out, is he?"

"DA says no," Jim tells her, and scrubs his hands down his face. "Look, just... keep an eye on him for me, okay? I can't - I mean, I don't think he'd want me-"

She smiles at him without humour. "I will," she promises.

"Good."

They sort of stare each other down for a bit, then Catherine shakes her head and pushes herself away from the door frame, and Jim looks down at the paperwork - at her paperwork. Thinks how simple his life used to be, in a sad kind of way, and eases his way around the edge of the desk.

Catherine touches his shoulder as he squeezes past. "It's not your fault," she tells him.

"I know," he says, and the hard smile he gives her is at least partly genuine. Because it's Crane's fault. All of it.

***

He takes a lungful of air once he's outside again, breathes in the baking heat of the desert air, and then pulls his phone out of his pocket. He wonders whether to call her now, or wait until he's in a better mood - but then again, nothing is going to put him in a better mood for the immediately forseeable future, so he'll take what he can get. And who knows: maybe she'll laugh that little laugh of hers, and god knows that would make a difference right about now.

Robin picks up after the seventh ring, sounds tired. "Hello?"

Belatedly, he looks down at his watch. Five-thirty. Shit. "Sorry," he says, "I, uh - I didn't know what time it was."

He can hear her moving around, maybe struggling to sit up in bed. "'s okay," she mumbles, and he's absolutely certain that she's rubbing her eyes. "It's, uh, not that - oh fuck. It is pretty early."

"Early?" he says. "I was going to say late."

She groans. "I don't know how you do it," she says. "Work these hours and still show up in court when I need you... hang on, let me turn on a light."

The phone lands on something soft, something sort of swishy - high thread count sheet, he guesses - and he listens to her bare feet walk across a hardwood floor. He closes his eyes, finds himself unprepared for the wave of nostalgia that washes over him. He doesn't have a lot of good memories of being married - he has a few, and they're cherished, but in his mind they're far between - but somehow this is one of them: middle of the night wakeups with Ellie when she was just a kid, and the slow movements of his half-awake wife as she navigated through their room in the dark...

"I'm back," Robin says, startling him.

"Hey," he says, because now that he's got her awake for no reason whatsoever, he realises he has nothing to say. "I, uh, got your message."

"Yeah?" She's definitely awake now, and the ghost of his ex-wife is chased away by the tone of Robin's voice.

"Day after tomorrow sounds great," he says.

She laughs, and it is that little laugh that he likes. He feels something like a smile start to grow on his face, on his tired face that hasn't smiled enough today. "Don't you mean tomorrow?" she says.

It takes him a moment to decipher that, and then he remembers that his day starts when hers ends, so yeah - tomorrow. "Sorry," he says, feels a sad little laugh push at his chest. "Been one of those nights, you know?"

"Yeah?" she says. "You want to tell me about it?"

"Not much to tell," he hears himself say, and another little ghost of his ex-wife comes back, her accusations about his secret life. "I just talked to Nicky - Nick Stokes, I mean. You know, the-"

"-Jane Galloway case," she says. "That must have been hard."

"Yeah, well - I didn't make it any easier, you know?"

A little pause. "You want to tell me about that?"

He wants to make a joke about lawyers not letting anything slide, but - it's just because he doesn't want to talk about this, he'd rather push it out of the way and never talk about it again. But.... "It's something personal," he says. "Between Nick and me. It's - never mind."

"Oh come on," she says teasingly, so lightly it almost hurts because now she does kind of sound like Marie did, back when they were young. He pushes the thought aside. "That sounds too juicy to just throw out there. What happened?"

"It's nothing."

"Come on, Jim - it's five-thirty in the morning, every part of me wants to be asleep right except the part that's talking to you - you've got to tell me what's going on. I'm a sucker for gossip..."

Oh ho, he thinks, then you're going to love this... But he can't do that, can he? Gil may be way out of line here, but he doesn't need it spread across the department, he doesn't need his job and his intellectual life taken away from him.

He sighs. "He's uh, dating someone," he says, skirting the issue. "It's - awkward."

"The lab guy?" Robin asks. "I heard about that."

He raises his eyebrows. "You heard about that?" he asks. "When - how'd it get down to the courthouse?"

"Oh, you know," she says, "one person tells another tells another and then he's dropping some paperwork off with my clerk, and..." She half-laughs again. "You know how it is."

"Sure," he says. "Same old, same old."

"So that's awkward?" Robin asks him, her voice still pitched lightly but he can tell that it's a test of some kind. "Nick dating a guy?"

Jim lets his eyes close. "He, uh - used to date a friend of mine. It's-"

"-awkward," she finishes for him. "Got it."

And he thinks, maybe she does. As much of it as he can tell, anyway. "So," he says, "you, uh, you wanna do dinner or something? Maybe drinks, or..."

"...or?" she asks, and laughs again.

Uhhh - he hadn't counted on having to come up with something on such short notice.

"All right," she says, letting him off the hook. "What time does your shift start?"

"Midnight," he tells her, "give or take."

"Dinner sounds great, then," she says. "I should have my end wrapped up by, say, seven?"

He swallows. "Seven sounds just about right," he says. "You like Italian?"

"Love Italian."

There's a moment, and it stretches just past casual into - into kind of flirtatious.

"Okay," he says, because he has to say something now or he's bound to say something stupid. "I'll make reservations at this place I know."

"Can't wait," she says.

He grins despite himself. "Go back to sleep," he tells her, "I'd hate that you started your day on a bad note because of me."

"This is hardly a bad note," she says, but she's swallowing a yawn, Jim can tell.

"Sweet dreams," he says, and before he thinks of anything else stupid to say, he adds, "I'll call you later."

"Mmm," she says, and that's a kind of nice sound for five-thirty in the morning. "Later," she says, and hangs up.

Jim stands holding his phone in his hand for a few minutes, wondering what he's getting himself into and if he's too old to suddenly start dating. For an instant he wants to go inside and ask Gil what he thinks, and then he remembers that he doesn't want to talk to Gil right now. Maybe not for a long time.

Crane's fault, he thinks bitterly, and lopes towards his car.

Gil really isn't looking to run into Jim again that night, but they almost knock each other over in the hall outside the morgue, and there's a shuffling moment of avoided gazes and muttered confessions of clumsiness and then they each take a step sideways and pass like ships in the night.

He turns and watches Jim disappear around a corner, feeling a little bit sorry for himself, for the friendship he's missing. He knows they'll patch it up in time, eventually - or maybe, he thinks, they won't. Jim's not good at facing things he's not comfortable with, although as long as he can pretend they don't exist, as long as he never has to confront them, he'll let anything slide. Gil wonders how much of his failed marriage was due to that willful ignorance.

"What the hell was that?"

It's not often that Gil is startled, genuinely caught off guard, but when he is - an unexpected shotgun blast, a body that moves on its own, a coroner who sneaks up on him - his reaction is generally extreme.

Al Robbins grins evilly at him while he recovers his sense of balance, while he tries to calm his heartrate out of the red zone.

"Don't do that," Gil grouses at him.

It earns him another grin. "So you going to tell me what that was about?"

"What what was about?" he asks.

Al narrows his eyes. "I've never seen you and Jim so prickly," he says flatly. "Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to find out on my own?"

Shit, Gil thinks. The last goddamn thing he needs is to have Al digging around with the best of intentions where things are best left undisturbed. "It's complicated," he says.

"Well there's a surprise," Al says brightly. "Do I get twenty questions?"

"No."

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

Gil rolls his eyes. "Look, Al," he says, "I have a case to get back to, really, it's - it's nothing."

"The day that Jim Brass and Gil Grissom can't look each other in the eye is not nothing," Al tells him, and sits in the spot that Gil had so recently vacated. He pats the seat next to him and gives Gil his best I-deal-with-dead-people-all-day look.

He glances down at his watch. "I really have to get back to work," he says, and when he looks back at Al he knows that the man is not going to be deterred. He sighs. "I'll, uh - can I buy you lunch?"

Al grins at him again, a less malicious display of teeth this time. "You can always buy me lunch, Gil," he says.

"And on the promise of lunch," he goes on in the patient tone of one used to dealing with Al's more pedantic moods, "can I safely assume that you will not launch your own investigation?"

It really does his heart good to see that crinkle of delight in Al's eyes when he knows he's been caught out.

Al holds up three fingers solemnly. "Promise," he says.

Gil allows himself a small smile. "Thank you," he says and turns to walk away. After a step, he turns back with a frown on his face. "You were a boy scout?"

"No," Al tells him cheerfully, "but I've known a few in my life."

His smile feels a little closer to real this time. "I bet you have," Gil says, and goes back to work.

***

"Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

Gil smiles pleasantly at the waiter. "I'll have the club on rye," he says, folding his menu closed and handing it back to him. The young man scribbles it down next to Al's order, and disappears in a flurry of hails from other tables.

"Animal," Al says again, still affably cheerful, "vegetable, or mineral?"

"Al," Gil says, sipping at his glass of water, "that could take all night." It's easy to forget, in the midst of his personal life and the grim work they do, how much he enjoys Al's company.

"Well," Al says, "you could make it easier on me..."

Gil shrugs, sets his glass down carefully in the ring of condensation it left. This isn't Manny's; he figures he doesn't need to have this conversation within earshot of waiters who know him by name. This is further down the strip, a place he's been a few times but seldom frequents because it's too out of the way. And now, at a shade past six in the morning, it's blissfully deserted, which suits his needs perfectly.

"Oh, come on," Al says, leaning forwards. "You and Jim are like brothers. Did you kill somebody?"

He glances up sharply at that. "No...?" he says carefully, wondering where that came from.

"So?" Al says. "Tell me what is so scandalous that Jim would let the fires of friendship burn low?"

Gil sighs, drags one finger down the sweating glass in front of him. "We had words," he says tactfully.

He can hear Al's muttered curse. "Yes," he says, "I had that figured out. About what?"

"Jim... said a few things that cut a little too close to the bone."

"What could he possibly say-"

"Apparently I'm having a mid-life crisis, and taking other people down with me."

"Ooh," Al says, practically wiggling in anticipation. "Who?"

"Nick. And Greg." Gil shakes his head a little, feels his throat close up a touch. "Especially Greg."

"How?" Al asks. "Did you set them up or something?"

Gil actually laughs at that. Well, he thinks, in a manner of speaking... "I've been dating Nick for - let's see, two years now?"

Al frowns. "He left you for Greg?"

"He probably should have," Gil says. "We're... seeing each other."

"Who, you and Greg?"

"Me," Gil says, "and Greg, and Nick."

"I - oh. Ohhhh."

He looks up at that, because he needs to see how badly the rest of his shift is going to go, and he's surprised to see Al trying not to laugh. "What?" he asks, frowning. This is not going strictly according to the script in his head.

"What 'what'?" Al asks.

He really doesn't want to spell it out more than he already has. "So?"

Al picks up a spoon and balances it on a finger. "So what?" he says with a twinkle and a grin. "I mean, you seem happy enough. Or you did, anyway. What's the crisis?"

"I'm forty-eight. I'm seeing two men simultaneously, and one of them is literally young enough to be my son."

"Which one?"

He sighs. "Al..."

He's still grinning, and he sets the spoon down. "Greg's not a kid, Gil. He's old enough to know what he wants, and to go for it. What's the harm in letting him have it?"

"I wasn't exactly a shrinking violet, Al."

"So? You're fearless, Gil. So you took the first step. So what? You expect me to believe that this is anything other than consensual?"

Gil narrows his eyes at Al. He's inclined to think there's another shoe, about to drop and hit him squarely on the head, and yet... "Al, doesn't anything ever upset you?"

A shadow flickers across his eyes. "I've seen kids sodomised with firearms, Gil," he says in a quiet voice. "This thing seems pretty shiny happy to me."

Gil lets his gaze fall to the table between them. After a moment he says, "I'm not sure if your talent for perspective is a blessing or a curse, Al."

"I love you, Gil," Al says with a strange fierceness. "You and Jim and Catherine, and Nick and Greg now, too. You're my family. You're not allowed to fall apart on me. Understand?"

"Clear," Gil says with a false smile, stops just short of snapping of a sloppy salute. "Besides," he adds as lightly as he can a second or two later, "I don't think Greg would let me leave at this point. I've already made him cry."

"You what?" Al asks, his voice rising in light anger. "You made that amazing kid cry? You heartless beast, Gil."

"Amazing kid?" Gil asks with a half-frown. "Al, you're not trying to charm your way into the communal bed, are you?"

Al laughs, a real laugh that almost brings tears to his eyes. "God help me," he says, taking a deep gulp of air. "No, I'm a ladies' man. Greg just... I like the kid. The world has plenty of time to break him. Let him enjoy himself without restraint while he still can, while the universe still delights him. Don't take that away."

"You're making me feel like a heel," Gil chides him gently.

"Good. Now go home and beg and grovel and do whatever it takes to get things back on an even keel with those boys."

Gil narrows his eyes again. "Are you sure you're a ladies' man, Al?" he asks.

"Most definitely," Al says with a smile. "I've tried the alternative and it just didn't push any buttons for me."

Gil's eyebrows shoot for his hairline. "You never told me that."

"It was a long time ago," Al defends, levelling a finger at him, "and you never told me you liked 'em in multiples of two."

He feels the sides of his face turn pink. "Point taken," he says as a limp sandwich is deposited in front of him. He smiles his thanks at the waiter, who blinks blankly at him and sets an anemic-looking steak in front of Al.

"Leave Jim to me," Al says with authority, sloshing hot sauce liberally over his lunch. "You take care of your own nest."

***

Greg kills some time before he gets the ball rolling. Washes the dishes, does some laundry, drives across to his end of town and waters his plants, then lets himself back into Gil's house. He stands for a moment in front of the door, leaning against it and looking down the hall towards the living room. He wonders how long he'll still have a key, how long he'll be allowed to call this home.

Warrick picks up on the third ring. "Can you do me a favour?" Greg asks him.

"Sure..." Warrick says, a little guarded maybe but that's just Warrick. Greg doesn't take it personally. "What is it?"

"Nick," Greg says.

A little pause. "Oh?"

"Keep him busy for a couple hours after shift tonight, okay?"

A longer pause. "Uh, Greg... isn't that your job?"

"Just... just a couple hours, Warrick." Greg takes a few steps into the house, hopes he doesn't sound too desperate. "Take him out for a drink or something. I'll - I'll pay you back for it, if it's the money-"

"Man, it's not the money," Warrick says, "I just - hang on. Is this about the other guy?"

Deathly long pause. "What?" he asks when he's found most of his voice again.

"Other girl, whatever - man, I know Nick says it's all cool, but - is everything okay?"

He almost wants to laugh but he stops himself. "Everything is fine, Warrick," he says, "I just - I need to do something, and Nick'll only get in the way."

"How much are you going to pay me to keep a lid on that?" Warrick asks, but he's teasing.

Greg lets out the breath he wasn't quite holding. "So you'll do it?"

"Sure," Warrick says. "That's what friends are for. Right?"

He smiles. He likes the sound of friend rolling off Warrick's tongue like that, like it belongs there. "If you say so," he says.

"So..." Warrick says after a pause. "Can I ask you something?"

He narrows his eyes in the privacy of Gil's living room. "What?"

"Is it Jacqui?"

This time the silence is kind of sputtering. "What?" he asks, finally.

"The third party in your social scene, man. I know she kinda digs Nick, and I know you and her flirt like it's going out of style-"

He does laugh then. "No," he says, "it's not Jacqui. And don't let her hear you say that, she'll break both your kneecaps."

Warrick's rich laugh echoes down the line at him. "Thanks for the heads up, man. Don't think I'm giving up, though. ...So - two hours okay?"

He swallows. "Should be just about right," he says.

"I'll make it three," Warrick says. "Later."

"Later."

***

Gil lets himself into the house and listens to the heavy silence. He knows that Greg's car is still parked across the street, but Nick's is nowhere to be seen. He toes off his shoes and thinks, Maybe they're having that conversation that Nick promised.

He takes of his jacket and hangs it up, grabs at the back of his neck and tries to squeeze a little life into his stiff muscles. Long, boring, painful night of mostly paperwork. He helped Sara where he could, but she was mostly doing it solo; he tried to give Catherine a hand but she had worked with Jim all night, and that was an awkward and horrible thing he didn't need to deal with in public. Warrick not-so-gently told him to leave him and Nick alone, so... so nothing to keep him from his collection of backdated administrative bullshit.

Except for that oddly hallucinatory lunch with Al that he's still not sure how he feels about. On the one hand, Al is right. Gil has found that, on average, Al is usually right. On the other hand...

He sighs. Jim is usually right, too. It's exhausting in a way that he's not used to, this being pulled morally in two directions. He wants to follow his heart, but his conscience is a relentless bastard. He hopes faintly that a good night's sleep will solve all his problems.

He bypasses the kitchen, bypasses the master bedroom, goes straight into the guest room and barely manages to shuck off his slacks and drop his shirt before he falls face-first onto the mattress. Mmmmm... sleep has never seemed so seductive as it does right now.

So why, he wonders almost ten minutes later, is he still awake?

He starts a breathing cycle to count himself into unconsciousness, and he's just passing through twelve when he hears the door to his room open, and a moment later the side of the mattress dips down. He counts himself back into full consciousness as quickly as he can, and by the time he's more or less awake, someone is spooned up against him and has arm around his waist.

He looks down at that arm in a strangled kind of incomprehension. "Greg?" he asks carefully.

He feels lips press into the base of his neck. "I need to tell you something," Greg says against his skin.

"Okay," Gil says, acutely aware of the tension in Greg's arm, thrumming through his entire body. "I'm listening."

Greg takes a breath. "When I was in grade three, there was this kid at my school: Gavin. He wasn't the kid who pushed you down in the playground, but he was still a bully. He was - hell, maybe he was a sociopath, I don't know. He spent a week becoming my best friend once, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, you know? He was in grade four and he was so cool and he had the neatest toys and the best lunches and he was the king of the swingset..."

Gil feels him take another breath.

"And he got me to tell him all of my secrets. I mean, okay: when you're eight you don't have that many secrets, but I told him everything anyway. Anything he wanted to know, I told him. I thought, hey, we're friends, right? But - ah, fuck. At the end of the week he told me he'd been kidding. That he hated me and that I was stupid for thinking he'd ever want to be friends with me. He told all of my secrets to everyone, and even the sixth-graders made fun of me. It was - awful. I faked being sick for a whole week after that, actually made myself throw up so I didn't have to go to school."

Gil closes his eyes. "Oh, Greg," he breathes. He remembers the taunts, too, the jibes and the infinite cruelties of youth.

"See," Greg continues, "the next month he did it again. To me. And I let him. I was so - I don't know. I let him apologise and tell me he still wanted to be my friend, and then..." He shrugs. "Next week, bam - ha ha Greg, the joke's on you. I felt so dumb.

"But the raelly dumb part," he keeps going before Gil can say something, "is all that year, I knew if he tried it again, I'd let him. I just... it made sense somehow. Like it was my role in that playground to take whatever he gave me."

Gil wraps his hand around Greg's wrist where it's clutched against his chest, prises the fist open enough to get two fingers inside. "Greg," he says, "I wish I could have been there."

Greg kisses the side of his neck, and Gil can feel the beginnings of tears against his skin. "I know how much you like scars," Greg says, and turns his arm over in front of Gil's face. "I've never shown anyone these ones before."

It takes Gil a long time to find them, thin white lines along the inside of his arm, above his elbow. Short and shallow, he thinks, tracing his finger down the longest. Very old. "What-"

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," Greg tells him. "Just... it was a coping mechanism. When things started to get out of control, when everything got kind of fuzzy. Just a little pain made everything sharp again, made the world snap into focus so I could deal with it."

Gil looks at the scars, doesn't know what to say.

"I was twelve when I started," Greg says, "and fourteen when I stopped. No one ever knew."

Gil kisses the scar closest to his mouth, lets his lips rest against it long enough to feel the steady pulse just under the skin. "I'm so sorry," he says.

"When I was fifteen," Greg says with a brave deep breath, "I let some random old guy give me a handjob in the bathroom at the mall. It was - weird. He didn't really come on to me, I mean I guess I came on to him - anyway. It was short and scary and amazing and I'm lucky he wasn't some freak because I probably would have let him do anything. I just... I'd only ever made out with girls, and it never really felt right, like there had to be more to it than that and there I was, skipping school and killing time at the mall and there was this guy sort of not really looking at me, and, and. And it was so bad but it was the best thing that'd ever happened to me."

Gil keeps a finger moving along the nest of invisible scars because he doesn't know what to say to this latest confession. Part of him remembers being fifteen and terrified, and another part of him thinks of the dead boys he's had to process in places like that. He lets his eyes close.

Greg takes another deep breath behind him, and Gil braces himself for whatever comes next.

"I did drugs in high school," he says, his voice a little shaky around the edges. "Weed and speed mostly, but tried a little of the harder stuff. I had one really bad trip where I almost drowned in this guy's pool - I don't even know who he was. Just this guy that someone knew, giving the shit away for free and I think if I hadn't almost killed myself in such an insanely stupid way, scared myself enough to walk away from it, I would probably still be there. Guess I'm lucky I made it out in one piece. I can still remember hitting my head on the bottom of that pool and not being able to make my arms move the way they were supposed to. I only stopped having drowning nightmares a couple year ago."

Something in the way Greg is breathing, or almost not breathing at this point, makes Gil keep his mouth shut: there's more coming, he thinks. This litany of sins isn't over yet.

"I hit my girlfriend once." Gil can feel Greg tense up at his own words, waiting for some harsh reaction from Gil, and Gil has never been so glad of his reflex control as he is right then.

"I was a sophomore," Greg continues, "she was a freshman, I don't even really remember what happened. I guess we were fighting about something, but it's not like I just snapped and belted her one. We were sort of sparring, sort of swinging at each other a little, and then out of nowhere I threw a real punch. I swear I don't know how it happened. She went over backwards and I just stood there, looking at her - I don't know who was more surprised. She spent the rest of the night with a bag of frozen peas against her face, holding my hand while I threw up. I made her break up with me and I started cutting again. Only twice, and then I, I don't know. I got a grip on myself. She helped a lot. Her name was Lillian and on bad nights, I can still see the look on her face where she was sprawled on the floor."

Gil works his fingers back into the tight fist of Greg's hand, and kisses the back of his knuckles. This time he knows that Greg is finished talking, that he's laid himself as bare as he knows how to and that now he's waiting for Gil to say something.

And he doesn't know what to do with this precious gift.

He knows what he wants to say, that he loves him just as much now as he ever did; that this trust that he's shown means more to him than anything else possibly could; that he doesn't judge him for the actions of his youth; that his smile is the most beautiful thing he knows.

But he doesn't have the words to say that, and couldn't coax his vocal chords into cooperating even if he knew what to make them say.

"So," Greg says after a long time, a long time in which Gil has held his hand, touched his lips to his skin often enough to not be forgotten. His voice is hollow and raw. "There you go, the top five ways that Greg Sanders is going to disappoint you."

Gil forces himself to move, to roll onto his back and look up at Greg in the ghostly glow of the sun through the curtains. Greg is crying, but silently, and without any movement: just tears and a heavy sadness in his eyes. Not crying: weeping.

He reaches up to touch his face. "You don't disappoint me," he says, and is surprised at how rough his own voice is.

"Then it hasn't sunk in yet," Greg says, turns his head enough to kiss the tips of Gil's fingers, then leans his cheek into the touch.

"It doesn't matter," Gil tells him. "We all have things in our past we're not proud of, Greg, and there's no way that the things you did are going to disappoint me now."

Greg smiles at him sadly. "I want to believe that," he says, "I really do, but..."

Gil understands. "But Gavin," he finishes, and blinks his own incipient tears out of the way. "He's not here, Greg. And neither Nick nor I will ever jerk you around like that. We love you. I love you."

"What if that's not enough?" Greg asks, only his voice is barely a noise and Gil can see how much it costs him to put it into words.

"Greg..." He wipes his tears away with one hand, and pulls Greg down to rest against his chest. He holds him close for a few heartbeats, kisses his hair and says, "You want to hear my confession?"

Greg whispers something against his breastbone that he's not quite sure he catches, but decides it must have been an affirmative of some flavour.

"I've hurt so many people in my life," Gil says, "I can't even remember them all anymore. I'm not good at noticing when people get attached to me, I'm not good at dealing with it when it finally penetrates the fog. I have trouble remembering that the things I say and the way I say them affect people. I - I've broken people in two without realising it, I've walked away from them when they needed me because I couldn't see it. I've made my own mother cry, and all I could do was stand there like an idiot, not seeing what I'd done. I never see it until it's too late, and then I don't know how to fix it. I'm ashamed of how many people I've hurt, Greg, and I don't want to add you to that list. Help me. Help me not do this to you."

"I don't know how," he thinks Greg says.

He wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls him in tight. "Just this," he says. "This is good."

Nick is shit company, and he knows it. Warrick sticks with him anyway, starts building a little house with the cardboard coasters he scams of the tables around them, giving him all the space he needs but being there all the same.

"I'm sorry," he says out of the blue.

Warrick looks up at him. "Huh?" he asks.

"I've got to be about as much fun as a root canal," he says with what he hopes is a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry."

"Hey," Warrick says gamely, "no problem. You got shit going on in your life, I get that."

He finds enough breath to let out a huff of unhappy laughter. "You know what Brass wanted to talk to me about?"

He shakes his head, knocks over a wall of his house with his index finger.

Nick watches the whole thing collapse. "Nigel Crane."

Warrick winces, shakes his head. "That's old news," he says. "Why'd he want to talk to you about it now?"

"He, uh, it's nothing." Nick takes a long pull from his beer and flicks at the bottle's label with his thumb. He's not ready to deal with this, he's not ready to talk about it rationally. Just like he's not ready to deal with the Gil-Greg thing, either; when it rains, he thinks, it really fucking rains.

"Come on," Warrick says, nudging his shoe under the table with the toe of his boot. "What is it? Is he writing a book or something?"

Nick looks curiously at Warrick. "Writing a book?" he asks. "Where the hell did that come from?"

A stylish shrug with one shoulder. "Isn't that what psychos do these days? Write a book and as soon as they get out they tour the talk shows."

"That never even occurred to me," Nick says.

"Then what is it?"

And he thinks, Why not tell him? It's not like he can go home and cry all over Gil or Greg about this - they've both got problems enough of their own. Not that he'll keep it a secret or anything; he thinks of the cost of keeping secrets from the people you love. Just... he doesn't need to make it their problem, too. Not yet.

He looks down the neck of his bottle. "He's up on appeal," he says as neutrally as he can.

There's a long enough silence that he has to look up, and finds himself facing one of Warrick's more stunned looks.

"You okay?" Nick asks, waggling his fingers in front of Warrick's face.

He snaps out of it. "What?" he says. "Yeah. I - shit, Nick. What - that's - holy fuck."

He feels a stupid grin creep onto his face. "Yeah, well," he says, "sorry I was so useless tonight."

Warrick is shaking his head slowly, like he's trying to force something to settle in his mind. "Don't sweat it," he says, "you were a hell of a lot better than I would have been."

Nick ducks his head. "It's creepy, you know?" he says. "More than creepy. It's... man, I really do not want to deal with this again."

"No kidding," Warrick agrees. "Man. Anything I can do?"

He takes a deep breath and thinks about it. "Not really," he says. "This thing doesn't hit the court until next week, I think - and Brass says nothing's going to come of it anyway."

Warrick tilts his head to one side. "Greg know about this yet?"

"Hm?" Nick shrugs. "No. I mean, I'll tell him, but... he's got other stuff to deal with."

He can see that Warrick is trying to decide whether or not to say something. "He, uh, huh. Okay."

"What?"

"Nothing." He glances at his watch. "Hey, you want another?"

"You have somewhere to be, Warrick?" he asks.

"Nah," Warrick says, "just keeping an eye on the time. You remember Nancy?"

He thinks for a moment. "Clarinet player?" he hazards.

"No, that was Alicia. Nancy's a resident at Desert Palms."

"Oooh," Nick says, "a doctor. Moving up in the world, Warrick."

"Yeah," Warrick says with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, I told her I'd pick her up for lunch and I'd hate to be drunk when I show up."

Nick glances down at his own watch. It's only a few minutes to ten, and he does a little mental math. "We've got time for one more," he says, "and you gotta tell me all about Nancy, because you've never mentioned her before."

Warrick raises his eyebrows. "It's going to take a lot longer than one drink to tell you all about Nancy," he says.

Nick pushes himself away from the table and stands up. "This one's on me," he says, and grabs Warrick's empty.

He stands at the bar with his wallet in his hands, knowing that Warrick is watching him, assessing him. He doesn't really want to hear about Nancy, and Warrick probably doesn't really want to talk about her - but Warrick will make enough noise to keep him from thinking about Nigel Crane, and that's part of friendship. He would do the same for him, any day of the week.

He sets their beers down between them and drops back into his chair. "All right," he says with an exaggerated kind of interest, "let's hear all about Doctor Nancy."

***

The house is about as quiet as he expects when he gets home. He drinks a glass and a half of water in the kitchen, and moves restlessly through the house for a bit, trying not to think about Nigel, Greg or Gil, a feat which proves harder in the privacy of his own home than it did sitting in a dark bar with Warrick.

He knows he's going to have to tell them about Nigel, because sooner or later he's really going to freak out about him and they're going to need to know why he's suddenly taken to hiding under the bed. But between Gil's overriding sense of guilt and Greg's undeniable terror, he doesn't see that there's room in this house for his demons, too.

He walks a circuit of the house, checking all the windows and double-checking the patio doors, a habit he thought he had done away with the first time Nigel was exorcised from his life. He remembers that time, the sheer knee-buckling fear he'd felt in his own house, which didn't really go away even after he'd sold it and bought the semi in a different neighbourhood. There, too, he had been obsessive-compulsive about locks and blinds and window bars, and at least once a week he'd poked his head into the crawlspace above the ceiling, just to make sure.

It hadn't really stopped until he'd found students to live in his place, and he'd moved in here. Here, where Gil had watched him with amusement as he did his nightly rounds, until he felt kind of silly doing it.

He unlocks and relocks the front door, and thinks, Well, time to get used to this again. Time to get used to being scared again, to looking over his shoulder all of the time again. At least he's not sleeping alone this time. He'll have someone there to hang onto him when it gets too bad.

With a little luck, he'll still have two people to hang onto him. To keep him safe, one on each side.

He's surprised when he finds the master bedroom empty - he's pretty sure he saw Greg's car parked outside, and he can't imagine where else he would be. Usually there's music or the tv or something, some brand of noise permeating the house, when Greg is conscious. He listens to the brooding silence.

He stands next to the empty bed for a few seconds, waiting for his brain to kick in. When it doesn't supply him with a rational explanation, he decides to try an irrational one instead: he looks in the bathroom - which he knows is going to be dark and empty before he toes open the door - and then steps out into the hall. He stops and listens again, then checks the bathroom across from Gil's office, which is also - inevitably - empty.

Hm.

Then he sees the door to the guest room is half-open, and without much hope of success, he pushes it wide and pokes his head in.

It takes him a moment to process what he's seeing, that Gil and Greg have apparently tied themselves in a knot in their sleep; and then a stupid kind of grin works its way onto his face, because this looks promising.

He turns on the hall light and leaves the door open, letting just enough light fall on them that he can study them. Gil in his sleep is generally peaceful and child-like, and Greg tends towards a slack and brainless expression. In Nick's eyes they're both beautiful when they're out, but tonight something seems off. Both their faces are drawn, even in sleep: Gil looks exhausted and Greg looks tense, and the redness in the swelling around their eyes tells him they've been crying.

He kneels down on the floor beside them, torn between wanting to wake them and make sure they're all right, and wanting to let them sleep because he has never seen them piled like puppies before.

Watching Gil breathe, he has a worrisome thought that maybe they tried again to be alone together, and this was the result: another panic attack, another moment when all Gil could do was hold on and ride it out uselessly.

Greg makes a little noise then, a little hitch in the back of his throat and starts to roll over. Gil catches him as he moves, and follows him across the mattress, settling half-on top of Greg's back in the centre of the bed. Greg makes another noise then, a contented one, and even in his sleep, Gil's mouth twitches towards a smile.

Or maybe, Nick thinks, things are going to be all right.

He strips down to his shorts, leaving his clothes in a pile next to Gil's just inside the door, and he eases himself into the warm spot that Gil had just vacated. It's not a familiar bed, he knows; he's going to sleep like shit and be cranky as hell tomorrow, but the one thing he knows is that he wants - no, he needs to wake up with both of them tomorrow. More than anything else, he needs to trick himself into thinking that all is right with the world.

He closes his eyes and presses his face against the warmth of Gil's back.

***

He wakes up, predictably enough, with his heart hammering and a sickening feeling of not knowing where he is. Someone is shaking his shoulder carefully, and someone is saying something - his name, maybe? He forces his eyes open.

Gil is staring down at him, and just over his shoulder Nick can see Greg's face, lined with worry.

"It's okay," Gil is saying, "we're right here, you're okay."

"What happened?" he asks, although he already knows because he can still remember the last tendrils of his dream, of Nigel falling through the sky towards him.

"Nightmare," Gil says, touching his face. "Bad one."

"Oh." He lets his eyes find the white plaster of the ceiling over the bed, and he tries to banish the last vestiges of Nigel's grating voice, of his hands, of the sharp reality of his existence.

"Been a long time since that happened," Gil says, moving his hand through Nick's hair now, a rhythm of soothing that has always worked in the past. His eyes are full of love, though; no sign of impatience, of irritation at having been jerked awake by whatever flailing and screaming monster he had become.

"Sorry," he says weakly.

"Don't apologise," Gil tells him. "Just know that you're here, with us, and you're safe."

He feels his eyes fill up with tears. "Nigel," he whispers.

"I know," Gil tells him, "but it's okay. You're not alone, and Nigel Crane is locked up in a nine-by-twelve box."

He wants to tell them, he wants to have it out in the open, but something in him won't let him. For now he wants to pretend that everything really is all right, that everything is going to stay all right.

So he squeezes his eyes tight, rolls onto his side to hug his knees to his chest, and he keeps his mouth shut.

He feels Gil and Greg moving on the bed, and then feels a wall of warmth press up against him from behind, and another in front. He winches his eyes open enough to see that Greg is staring earnestly at him, looking exhausted and worn out and ready to slay dragons if that's what Nick needs.

He lets himself smile even as his eyes prickle with tears. "Hey," he says. "Sorry I woke you."

Greg returns the smile, and touches the side of his face. "Sleep is for wusses," he says. "Are you okay?"

He shrugs with the shoulder he's not lying on. "Been better," he admits.

Greg coaxes him to ease his legs down, away from his chest and towards the foot of the bed, at the same time that Gil's arm works its way confidently around his waist and pulls him in tight. Then Greg worms his way deep into Nick's personal space, and he kisses his eyelids.

"Try to sleep," Greg tells him. "If the monsters come back, send 'em to me."

He feels Gil's lips touch the back of his neck, and after a few seconds he's able to relax enough to nod. "Okay," he says, and knows he's still not going to sleep worth a damn but at least he'll be safe.

And that's good enough for the moment. The rest can wait until later.

***

Gil finds out about Nigel when they wake up later in the evening, while Greg is belting out some garbled showtune in the shower. He's lazing in bed with Nick, still haggard from the second nightmare that dragged them all back into daylight an hour after the first.

Gil is holding him loosely against his chest, the fingers of one hand tracing a mandala against the fuzz of Nick's stomach.

"Greg?" Nick asks quietly out of the blue, and Gil knows exactly what he's referring to.

He kisses the side of Nick's head. "I think we're going to be okay," he says, and he can feel half of the tension along Nick's spine evaporate. "It's - a mess, but it's a manageable mess. It's our mess."

He feels Nick shift against him, weigh what he has said and what he hasn't said, and he lets a smile find its way to his mouth. Maybe he and Greg will never have the easy intimacy that he shares with Nick - although he sincerely hopes they will, someday - but he thinks maybe some of the utter fear is dispelled. He thinks - hopes that they have moved past terror and into nervousness. Nervousness he can deal with, they both can. Nervousness just requires patience.

He's going to have to find some way to convince Greg that he loves him more now for his honesty than he ever thought possible; simply having told him so in the throes of misery will not be enough, he knows. But he has time enough to do that, to demonstrate his love at length.

He feels Nick take a deep breath, and lets his attention come naturally back to the body in his arms.

"Nigel Crane," Nick mutters.

Gil kisses the side of his head again. "Yes," he says. "What brought that on?"

"He's, uh - he's up on appeal." He feels Nick's flinch as he says it, and his own body's instinct to echo that flinch is powerful.

There are too many questions begging to be asked. "How?" he asks after a moment, choosing carefully among the contenders.

"Some paperwork thing, I think," Nick says, and Gil can hear the shakiness around the edges. "Jim told me about it yesterday at work. I - he says it's not going to happen, he says I don't have to worry about it, but..."

"You do anyway," Gil finishes for him. "I'm going to start worrying about it, too. So is Greg. So is everyone. Jesus, Nick... whatever happens, you're not alone in this. And I promise you that come hell or high water, Nigel Crane will not come within a mile of you."

He knows the words are nearly meaningless in context - if Crane could move into Nick's house without anyone knowing, there's not much else he can't do either. But if it comes to that, if it comes to Nick and Crane at large in the same city, he will hire someone to sit on Crane twenty-four hours a day. Hell, if it comes down to it, he'll do it himself - anything to keep Nick safe, to keep Nick knowing that he's safe. That no one will touch him again.

"Guess I'd better get used to this, huh?" Nick asks as the shower in the next room falls silent.

"To what?"

"Even if this appeal thing doesn't pan out, he's not going to stop trying, man." Nick takes a shuddering breath. "He'll try again, and then before I know it he'll be up for parole, and..."

"He will never set foot outside of prison, Nick," Gil tells him.

"Maybe not," Nick says, "but there's always going to be the possibility. I guess I have to get used to that."

Gil pulls Nick in tighter, a real hug this time, not the companionable half-hug of earlier. "I love you," he says against his hair.

"I know," Nick says. "I love you, too. I'm just... scared."

"I'm here," Gil says, because there's nothing else he can think of saying.

He has to leave early to get to a meeting with the swing shift supervisor. He has no idea what this meeting is going to be about - he found the memo in his mail yesterday, and the way it was written implied that he should already have been up to speed. He suspects this is an Ecklie doing, this random meeting - whatever. If it means Ecklie has to be at work at nine o'clock at night, then Gil can suck it up and tough it out.

He kisses Nick and pulls Greg in for a rib-crushing hug before walking out to his car. He knows that Nick is going to tell Greg about Nigel before they come to work, and that makes it easier for Gil to drive away and leave him, knowing he's not really alone with this, even for a few hours.

The meeting is, as he suspected, an Ecklie attempt to discredit him. He wears a fake grin all the way through it, refuses to be bullied by Ecklie's vague threats of administrative hell, and actually manages to come to an agreement with Jarod, the swing supervisor, about shift carryover.

"It's not that I don't want the labs working on your cases," he explains, "but I'd like them to able to work on ours, too."

Jarod is amiable in an ineffectual way, and concedes to letting the graveyard labwork take precedence over swing's between the hours of midnight and eight in the morning.

Gil is tempted to ask Ecklie if day shift would also like to be so solicitous, but the look of wrath that he's sending across the table tells Gil not to push his luck.

He's in his office by eleven o'clock, listening to the soothing skittering of his racing cockroaches and catching up on the paperwork that he's been dodging for the better part of the month. Catherine interrupts him eventually, reminds him none-too-gently about the start of shift, and he takes the stack of case calls she has waiting for him.

"I assume you've already picked one for yourself?" he asks as they walk towards the conference room.

"Maybe," she says defensively.

"Let me guess," he says, flipping through them. Robbery, double homicide, hit-and-run, suspicious circumstances. He reads through the abbreviated details of this last one. "The room with blood on the walls, locked from the inside, and empty of bodies?"

She smiles. "Well," she says and plucks the sheet from between his thumb and finger, "since you offered so nicely..."

He smiles at her. "Anything for you," he says.

"You're in a good mood," she comments, eyeing him with some suspicion. "What happened?"

"Nothing happened," he says. He can't tell her that he's feeling good about Greg, or that even though Nigel Crane scares the daylights out of him on Nick's behalf, he's got a good feeling about Nick, too.

"Yeah, right," she says. "You get laid or something?"

"I stuck it to Ecklie," he tells her.

"Ahh," she says knowingly. "Better than sex."

This is the line that ushers them into the glass-walled room, and this is the line that silences the half-conversations people are having. Nick and Warrick raise their eyebrows, and Sara's mouth falls gracelessly open.

"...but that's another story," Catherine says smoothly, sliding into the seat next to Sara. She fixes them with her least innocent of innocent smiles, and arranges herself to look professional.

Gil wants to roll his eyes at her, but his eyes find Nick's across the table instead. He looks all right, he thinks: he looks tired, and utterly exhausted, but basically all right. He can imagine Greg's reaction to the news, the dynamic outburst of rage and the enthusiastic plan-of-action improvised on the spot. Well, he hopes that's what happened anyway. He doesn't want to think that Greg-and-Gil's problems have intruded on Greg-and-Nick.

"So?" Sara says, drawing his attention back to the rest of them. "What do you have for us?"

"Sara," he says, "hit and run in the suburbs. Nick and Warrick, double at the Montecito. Catherine is heading out to Henderson, and I'll handle the B-and-E off the strip. Questions?"

They mumble no, collect their jackets and drain their coffee cups, and filter out one by one. Next to the door, Nick turns to Warrick and says, "I'll meet you out a the car, okay?"

"Sure, man," Warrick says, glancing quickly between the two of them before disappearing into the hall.

Gil waits until they're alone. "All you all right, Nick?" he asks, hoping he sounds more like a concerned supervisor than a worried lover.

Nick shrugs, folds the call-sheet in half and then in half again. "I guess so," he says, glancing up with a smile. "I, uh, I guess there's nothing to do but tough it out, right?"

He wishes he had something more encouraging, or more useful, to say to that. "I guess so," he agrees without much enthusiasm. "Nick, I paired you with Warrick on this one because it's going to be big and messy, and because - because I didn't want you working alone tonight."

Nick nods a couple times. "Right," he says.

"I mean it, Nick," Gil tells him, "it's not that I don't think you can't handle the case - I'm sure that you can. But this is going to be a trying time, and I thought it would be easier on you to have a friend at hand."

This time Nick looks at him. "Yeah," he says, "I know. I get it."

Gil considers him for a few seconds. This is what he's never been good at, separating his personal feelings from his professional ones, and he knows it's one of Nick's weaknesses, too: he reads too much into the supervisory concessions that Gil makes, and from time to time they're reduced to yet another conversation at home about drawing lines and trying not to cross them.

Then Nick sighs, and brings a hand to his face. "I know," he says, and sounds defeated but all right with it. For now, anyway. "I - thanks, Grissom. I'm sure I'll be okay, but... thanks anyway."

"You might want to tell Warrick about it," he says carefully.

"He already knows," Nick says, "so we're cool. If I freak out, he can deal."

Gil smiles. "Good," he says. He doesn't need to know how it is that Warrick already knows, when he himself has only known a few hours - he's just relieved that Warrick was able to be there when he wasn't.

He's always liked the dynamic of Nick and Warrick's friendship, even in the early days when they were betting on cases and grating on each others' nerves. Even then, knowing that Nick had a solid connection with a coworker made him feel good. Made it easier to send him out into a night filled with bad guys. It meant there was someone else to cover his back while Gil couldn't.

It still does. And it allows him to lean back and watch Nick walk out of sight, and know that he will be okay.

Now: he just has to get through the night, himself...

***

He finds him in the hallway outside of the morgue. He has no particular reason to be down there - no bodies hidden in the burgled apartment - but he's been looking for Jim Brass for almost an hour, and short of actually calling him on his cell (which is plan F, his absolute last resort, because he really doesn't want to have this conversation on the phone), he's working the building from top to bottom.

Jim is talking with Sara in the chilled hallway, and Gil hangs back until they wrap it up. Sara gives him a frustrated half-smile as she passes, and he forces himself to return the show of teeth.

Then Jim looks up and when his eyes fall on Gil, he stiffens.

"Jim," he says, approaching with hands out to the sides, as he would a wild animal. "I just need to talk to you about Nick."

"Oh?"

He licks his lips. "About Nigel Crane," he corrects.

He stops a few feet from Jim and they eye each other uncertainly. "I need to know what's going on, Jim. Whatever you feel about me, you have to let it go. This is about Nick."

Jim maintains his icy stare for a few seconds, then lets his eyes stutter shut. "Yeah," he says, sounding deflated. "I guess we do need to talk about that, huh?"

The sag in Jim's shoulders gives him a kind of hope, and he nods them towards a sofa along the wall. They sit at opposite ends, not really looking at each other, but facing in the right directions. It almost makes Gil smile, that even in the basement outside the morgue they feel compelled to present the illusion of civility.

"I hear," Gil says carefully, "that Crane is up on appeal...?"

"That's what I hear, too," Jim says. "Robin Childs - you know her? ADA?"

Gil nods.

"She let me know a couple days ago. She swears he's not going to get anywhere near an appellate judge, that it's just some lawyer trick and he's not going to get anywhere."

"Nick is pretty upset about it," Gil says.

Jim crinkles his face into a sad smile. "...by which you mean, you're pretty upset about it."

Gil ducks his head. "You got me," he admits, feels a smile quirk at his own mouth. "I just - I need to know, Jim, that nothing is going to happen."

"I can only tell you what I know," Jim says, "and that's not much."

"Can you find out?"

Jim looks at him, and Gil is pretty sure that he can see the wheels turning in his head. "I can ask her," he says. "She, uh, I think she has a file going on it."

Gil nods his gratitude. "Jim," he says after an uncomfortable few seconds, "I hate feeling that I'm supposed to apologise, but if-"

He holds up a hand to stop him before he gathers any momentum. "Don't, Gil," he says. "I just..." He shakes his head. "Let me deal with it on my own, okay?"

He purses his lips and nods. What else can he do? Friends give friends space when they need it. "I am sorry, though," he says as Jim gets up to leave. "That it's upset you, that it's put this distance between us."

He sees Jim's expression harden as he stares at a spot on the wall about a foot above his head. "We'll survive," he says stiffly, and walks away.

Gil watches him disappear around a corner, and wonders if they're going to be the same again. He lets his eyes fall closed for a moment, takes a deep breath, and pushes himself off of the hard-packed naugahide sofa.

***

The surprise that Gil feels when finding his front door locked is short-lived. It takes him all of three seconds to transition from, 'I know that's Nick's car out front' to, 'Of course he's keeping the door locked now.' He fishes out his key and lets himself in.

There's music coming from the living room, and after shedding the dregs of his working life and re-locking the door behind him, Gil follows the sound.

The living room is empty, but the tv is on and the couch is in the comfortable state of disarray of two people watching a movie and elbowing each others' feet out of the way. He smiles faintly at the vacant furniture, then moves into the kitchen.

There's a bucket of ice cream on the counter, and two spoons are sticking out of it at ridiculous angles, but Gil's gaze doesn't really stay there. Because right next to it are Nick and Greg, half-undressed and making out like teenagers. Nick has Greg pinned against the counter, their hips pressed together meaningfully and their shirts scattered on the floor. Greg's hands are moving across Nick's back with purpose, and Nick's hands - well, they're out of sight from where Gil is standing, but judging by the halting movements that Greg is making, they're not exactly idle.

He feels vaguely dirty, just standing there watching, although he knows he has nothing to apologise for. It's his house, his kitchen, and it's not like he snuck up on them... and it's not as though Nick is a little jumpy about being surveilled in secrecy these days or anything.

He clears his throat, and tries to smile meekly when they come apart and turn to face him.

"Sorry," he says, his voice thick with interest, "didn't mean to interrupt."

Greg laughs at him, the throaty laugh of arousal that Gil was so worried about never hearing again. "The hell you didn't," he says.

Nick lets him go, takes an embarrassed step to the side and grabs at the ice cream. "Forgot about this," he says, pulling the spoons out and dropping them in the sink. "Don't want it to melt."

"It's just ice cream," Gil points out, and takes an abortive step towards them. It's not that he's been suffering any great hardship the last few days, but his body has always responded quickly to sexual situations like this one, and it has been a while.

But he doesn't want to push, doesn't want to assume that they can be like this, the three of them, anytime soon. He hasn't earned that right yet.

Nick shrugs, returns the ice cream to the freezer and stands with his back to the fridge, hands in the pockets of his slacks, trying to look as calm and collected as he can given the flushed state of his skin and the half-hard protrusion below his waist.

Gil puts a smile on his face. "Really," he says, "don't stop on my account."

He begins his retreat back into the living room when a quick movement catches his peripheral attention, and he turns back. Greg has pushed himself away from the counter towards Nick, has grabbed a hold of his belt and is dragging him purposefully towards Gil.

As soon as he's within arm's reach of Gil, though, he releases Nick and reaches out for Gil.

The move takes him a bit by surprise, and the look of concentration in Greg's eyes isn't the sexiest thing he's ever encountered, but it's a long way from terrified and he supposes that it's as good a place to start as any.

He lets Greg latch onto him and he kisses him back, opening himself immediately to Greg's insistent mouth, to his questing hands and to anything that Greg wants. Everything. The kiss is skewed somehow, though, he thinks even when he feels Greg's fingers skim just under the hem of his shirt, but he can't quite pin it down. Maybe it's just too forced, too determined not to fail, that it's a letdown.

He thinks Greg feels it too, because his kiss becomes less demanding and then stops, and then Greg has pulled back enough to look him in the eye, and there's a stormy murk of emotions there that Gil is not sure how to handle.

Greg smiles at him, almost apologetically, then turns back to Nick.

"You," he says with a forced kind of bravado, "were supposed to join in."

Gil meets Nick's eyes, and he knows that they both agree: that Greg has a noble heart beating in his chest, but if it's not right, it's not right. And it's not right.

He sees Nick move his shoulders in a tiny shrug. "Sorry," he says. "I guess I missed my cue."

"Amateurs," Greg mutters, and even though he's facing away from Gil, he knows there was a theatrical roll of his eyes because he sees Nick grin.

"Flunked out of drama in high school," Nick confesses, and takes a step forward.

"You what?" Greg asks, genuinely thrown off balance by this revelation. "How do you flunk out of drama?"

"I mouthed off to the teacher," Nick says, "a lot. And I skipped, a lot. And I got caught making out with a cheerleader backstage."

Greg laughs, and although it feels a little forced there's a fair amount of genuine humour there, too, and Gil allows himself to relax somewhat. Crisis not averted, exactly; maybe diverted. But maybe that's good enough for now.

"That's - I don't believe it," Greg says. "You're making that up."

"I swear I'm not," Nick says, still smiling, and he takes another small step forward. "I've got the yearbook to prove it, somewhere."

"It made it into the yearbook?" Greg says, his voice rich with disbelief.

"Sort of."

"I was on the yearbook committee," Greg says, "okay? So I know all about last-minute deadlines full of blank pages. I know how much stuff gets made up because you have space to fill."

"It wasn't in the yearbook," Nick corrects, "but Jolene - that was the cheerleader - she wrote something about it, when she signed mine."

"And where is this alleged yearbook?" Greg asks. "Can it be produced on demand?"

"It's in a box, somewhere."

"See?" Greg says, and his hands find their way to his hips in an admonishing pose. "See? You're fabricating evidence to support a ridiculous supposition."

"I'm not fabricating evidence," Nick says, and now he's almost nose-to-nose with Greg, and if it weren't for the teasing tone of both their voices, or the sparkle he can see in Nick's eyes, then Gil might actually think they were about to start shoving each other.

"You're an evidence fabricator," Greg tells him.

"You're a chronic doubter," Nick counters.

"You're an ice cream fascist."

Nick's mouth falls open. "I - what? That was you, you revisionist. You couldn't eat the bit where the chocolate and the strawberry were touching."

"I don't like the boundary areas of Neapolitan," Greg says reasonably.

"And I'm the ice cream fascist?"

"You tried to evict my spoon."

"You were excavating the bits you like-"

Greg leans in and kisses Nick hungrily, and Nick responds enthusiastically, and Gil stands there and watches, completely unsure of what to do. He's only a few steps from the archway, he thinks, if he could get that far without drawing attention to himself-

Except then Nick starts pushing against Greg, walking him backwards until they bump into Gil, and the hand that isn't holding on tight to the back of Greg's head reaches out for Gil's shoulder. As soon as his fingers find a purchase, they close around a fist of Gil's shirt, and Gil is pulled even more tightly against Greg's back.

He hesitates a moment, waits for Greg to recognise that he's not pressed against a wall or a counter but against Gil; he doesn't want to introduce another thread of panic, of self-inflicted heroics. Doesn't want to ruin another good moment. But then Greg squirms against him, pushes back harder into him and makes another back-of-the-throat sound, and Gil lets his hands settle at Greg's waist.

Which is apparently the right thing to do, because when Nick eases his mouth to the side of Greg's neck, Greg lets his head fall back against Gil's shoulder and he whispers, "Gil - please-"

That's what he's needed to hear.

He slides his hands from the sharp angle of Greg's hipbones around to his front, to the heat of his stomach and the fuzz his fingers find there. Greg makes another sound and his breath hitches, and even as Nick turns his attention to the line of his shoulder, Greg is mewling at Gil, pushing back against him again.

Gil feels one of Nick's hands slide around his back and find access to skin, and he makes a noise of his own. He lets one hand slide up Greg's chest while the other drops a little lower, presses against the taut muscle of his abdomen to slip in under the waist of his jeans. Another half-hiccup from Greg and whatever happened to dim the thin flame of arousal inside Gil has reversed itself, because he's on fire again.

At some point Greg turns around inside the cage of Nick's arms, because Gil feels a second set of arms reach around him and worm their way under his clothes. Somebody strokes up his stomach and does obscene things to his chest, and somebody else traces lines along the length of his spine, and when he manages to force his eyes open against the electrical onslaught he sees that Nick is still focussed on Greg's neck and back, which can only mean...

...that the incredible things being done to his neck must be Greg. That must be Greg's mouth, Greg's tongue and Greg's teeth, and that hand brushing against the fly of his slacks... No, wait, that could be either of them. He takes a moment to try to account for whose hands are where, and only dimly notices when Greg pulls his lips off the skin under his chin.

"Stop thinking," Greg whispers, and ghosts another kiss across his lips.

"Sorry," Gil murmurs, and lets his eyes close. It's not always easy, turning off the intellectual part of his brain; but Nick usually succeeds and Greg is certainly doing his part.

So he concentrates for a bit on the hands sliding along his back, and then he follows one set of fingers around his side to his front, and tracks it in his mind in a circle around his navel and then it dips lower. Then he lets his mind drift a bit, let it encompass something a bit broader, and now he can feel all the hands on him at once, and with a bit more mental reckoning he can feel hands and lips and teeth and tongue and the tight area of movement that is worming against him, and he knows he's in the right space now to participate.

He inhales deeply, almost laughing at how shuddering his breath has become in this short time, and lets his hands explore. He pulls Greg in tighter, and knows that Nick is following; he finds Greg's mouth with his own and knows that Nick's lips are latched onto the nape of Greg's neck; he runs his hands up Greg's sides and feels corresponding hands trace lines on his own skin. Maybe Nick's, maybe Greg's, but in truth it doesn't matter. It feels good, and it's been too long since he's felt this kind of good.

Something warm and many-fingered works its way into the front of his slacks, and whatever is left of his intelligence evaporates. He gives in to what is being done to him, and lets his eyes fall shut. He alternates his concentration between the thrum of blood through his veins and remembering to breathe.

It won't last long, he thinks, not like this, and he's not going to let them nudge him into oblivion without taking at least one of them with him. His hands find a wonderful stretch of skin and he drags his nails across it lightly, and the groan he hears sounds like it comes from Nick. He does it again, and discovers a terrific domino effect: when he prompts that noise from Nick, Nick does something that makes Greg shimmy against him.

Feedback loop. Very - interesting.

The hand wrapped around him picks up speed and he gasps. He thinks, It's been a long time since I've actually gasped, and then he does it again because another hand comes out of nowhere and joins the first, and things start to grey out just a bit and he doesn't want it to happen yet. He thinks, when I go, I'm not going alone...

...and if I do it right, they'll all go together.

Feedback loop is a good word for it, he thinks when his ghost touches along Nick's skin produce the effect of Greg bucking against him, because that just makes his hands work faster and then those two hands on him work faster, and then Greg's rhythm changes and Nick's rhythm changes and then Gil's rhythm changes-

-and it's the most incredible feeling of focus because everything he does comes back to him filtered through the twin lenses of Nick and Greg, and that is just amazing, it's like fire refracted through a diamond and there's only so much of that kind of intensity that he can take before he shatters-

***

He knows that someone is laughing at him but it's a good kind of laugh, it's the kind of laugh that slips into the marrow of his bones and warms him from the inside.

He opens his eyes at the same time that his brain begins processing sensory input again. He's on the floor, leaning up against the wall next to the kitchen door; his clothes are a mess and he's sure that the inside of his clothes is a mess too; and he feels a boneless lassitude that aches so pleasantly that he can't quite stop the stupid smile from settling against his lips.

Greg is leaning against him, his back resting against Gil's side and he has Gil's right arm draped around him like a shawl. And next to him, mostly sprawled against the floor but with his head resting on Greg's legs and his legs nested against Gil's socked feet, Nick is looking pretty self-satisfied.

"What?" Gil asks lazily.

"You really zoned out there," Nick says, craning his neck to look up at him

"Yeah?" he says. "Guess I did. Maybe I should do it more often."

The smile Greg is wearing when he turns to Gil is endearing. It's a little nervous, a little sheepish maybe, a little tenuous around the edges but it's real, and it gives Gil another shot of heat in his bones. He thinks, maybe they're going to be okay after all.

"I can feel you laughing from here," Nick says, letting his eyes shut. "What is it?"

He's not quite laughing, but he knows his body is loose-limbed with humour anyway. "Jim accused me of having a harem," he tells them with something close to a chuckle. "I told him he was wrong."

Nick laughs out loud. "Spoke too soon, huh?" he says.

Gil shrugs. "Kinda looks that way, doesn't it?"

"I wonder," Greg muses, "if this is what it felt like after a Roman orgy."

They think about that for a moment.

"Cold?" Nick asks thoughtfully. "Muscles cramping up?"

"I think that's why they didn't have their orgies on the kitchen floor," Gil says, and he feels Greg laugh silently against him. That feels good, that little reverberation of joy against his chest, and he hugs him in tightly with the arm already around him.

Yes, he thinks even as the cold of the linoleum creeps into him, things just may turn out all right after all.

"You seem distracted," Robin says over coffee.

"Hm?"

She nudges Jim's foot under the table. "What is it?"

He sighs, sets his napkin on the table. He's wearing his good suit, his classy tie, he de-scuffed his shoes as well as he could, and he feels like a fraud. "It's... I had an awkward conversation with Gil yesterday. This morning. Whatever."

"Oh?" She tilts her head to one side, settles her elbows on the table and rests her chin on her hands. "I thought you and Gil were close."

"Yeah, well." He shifts. "It's, uh... he's Nick's supervisor, he's worried about the Nigel Crane thing..."

"O-kay..." She narrows her eyes. "You do remember that I'm a lawyer, right?" she asks with a half smile.

"Yesss..."

"So what was awkward about it?"

He sighs. "Just... it's nothing, Robin. It's just a Gil thing."

She gives him a smile that eloquently tells him she's not buying it, but that in the interest of being civil in a restaurant, she's not going to call him on it.

He swallows and reaches for his coffee - Irish Cream, and he's never been so glad of a liquor-laced cup of espresso in his life. He licks the foam off his upper lip and tries to smile becomingly, or what he vaguely remembers as becoming from his younger days.

He can't believe how long it's been since he's been on a date.

"I really like your hair like that," he tells her. "Short, and the curls - it looks good."

She clearly isn't buying that, either, but she smiles back anyway. "Thanks," she says. "Natural curls, totally fake colour."

"It suits you though."

"What, the colour, or the curls?"

"Both." He tries another smile.

After a moment, she laughs at him, but it's a good kind of laugh, and Jim feels himself relax a little. So it's not a stellar date, he thinks and takes another mouthful of coffee; it's not the worst he's ever been on, either.

"Is it really the Crane thing?" she asks after a while.

He sighs. "Partly," he says, because that's easier than the truth. Well, easier than the whole truth anyway. Good thing she's a lawyer, he thinks, and not a judge.

"What?"

"He - Gil, I mean, not Nick - he wants to know everything about the case. He's, uh... he's real protective of his boys. His team. He's real protective of his - of all of them. He's a good supervisor that way."

She's examining him curiously now, and he's heartbroken to see that his coffee is empty. He'd order another one, but the waiter is already off with his credit card. He tries to meet her interrogatory gaze evenly, like he would a suspect, but... it's not the same.

"Okay," she says eventually. "I have the Crane file in my car, you know."

He blinks. "You do?"

"Yes," she says. "I thought you'd probably want to see it sometime, so I ran off another copy of everything that isn't confidential. I've been carrying it around with me."

He's not sure what to say to that. "Um, thanks," he says. "You've been carrying it around-"

She shrugs. "I always try to think a couple steps ahead of the game," she tells him.

He smiles. "You must be a hell of a lawyer," he says with a grudging trace of respect.

"You have no idea," she says, and she's smiling.

***

He has a moment of near-panic when he's dropping her off, because he doesn't know if he's supposed to get out with her, if he's supposed to walk her to her door and kiss her goodnight, or if - is she supposed to invite him in for coffee? And all that entails? It's only a first date, and it's not that she's not everything he's been looking for, but...

Dammit, it's been years since he's been on a date, since he dropped a girl off after dinner. He doesn't know what the rules are to this game, and whether there's a separate set of rules for the plus-fifty crowd, or.... He feels like an idiot sitting there, paralyzed by doubt. He turns uncertainly towards her and relaxes when he registers the amused warmth with which she's regarding him. Amusement he can deal with. He tries on a little smile.

"Thanks, Jim," she says, smiling at him. "I had a lot of fun."

"Me too," he says.

She lets her head fall to one side a bit, coy's big sister. "Next time, you want to try Japanese?"

He knows he gets a slightly panicked look on his face. "I'm not so good with chopsticks," he says after a moment.

She laughs at him, in the good way again, and leans across the front seat of his car to kiss him. It's a chaste kiss, a quick touch of her lips to his; a promise of something more, maybe, but not tonight. She licks her lips when she sits back again, and that amazing smile is back.

"Let me get that file for you," she says, and opens the passenger door.

Jim is standing in her driveway before he actually makes the decision to follow her out into the night air. "Thanks," he says, "I mean, you know - for the file, for dinner, for the - just thanks."

She laughs at him again while she unlocks her car, and her upper body disappears into the back seat.

Jim tries not to stare at her lower body, but it's a losing battle. It's been a damned long time since someone has done that for him, doubled over at the waist on his behalf; and that must be what she's doing, he thinks, because the files are over on the far side of the seat and if she'd been going for comfort, she'd have tried the other door.

He knows he's wearing a bit of a blush when she straightens up again and turns to face him, but he's beyond caring. She seems a little flushed, too, and she hands him the file.

"Thanks," he says, feeling a little sheepish again.

She leans in enough to brush her lips against his again, and this time he catches her shoulder and keeps her there long enough to actually kiss her back.

Yep, he thinks when they move apart, we're both definitely wearing a little pink now.

"What are you up to on Friday?" she asks.

He shrugs as coolly as he can, and he knows he's failing miserably at impressing her. "Up until work starts," he says, "probably staring at my fish tank."

"I like fish tanks," she says and winks. "Maybe we could have dinner and watch your, uh, fish together?"

He quirks a smile. "Sushi?"

She laughs. "Okay," she says, "we can do Japanese the next time."

"I like Chinese," he offers hopefully.

"What a coincidence," she tells him, "so do I. I'll call you?"

"That sounds great," he says.

She smiles at him again, and pushes a short end of hair behind one ear, then hurries up the walk to her house.

Jim stays where he is, in the middle of her driveway, between his car and hers, until she's inside. She turns on the hall light and pulls the sheer curtain aside just inside the door to wave at him. He waves back, and then climbs back into his car.

He tosses the Crane file into the passenger seat, and thinks, So that's what a date is like. He could get used to this.

***

He's still enjoying the happy feeling of having someone else's lips on his, so he doesn't see the ambush coming. His feet take him down to the labs to catch up with Warrick about that double from yesterday, only David Phillips tells him that Warrick is back at the Montecito with Nick. He thanks him, and he's practically whistling when he turns a corner and barrels into Al Robbins.

Al, who has look that Jim associates with his proctologist. That look that says, Neither of us is going to enjoy this, but we'll both be better for it.

"What?" he asks with a frown. He can't think of anything he's done to Al - well, not since the last time they got drunk together, and he doesn't see Al holding that little fiasco against him. Certainly not this far down the road.

"Had lunch with Gil last night," Al says, clipping his words.

He's about to ask what that has to do with him, and then it clicks. This is Al, he reminds himself. Al doesn't believe in personal boundaries, not between friends.

The lingering memory of Robin's perfume evaporates and Jim thinks he feels a mother of a headache coming on.

"Oh yeah?" he tries valiantly. "How's he doing?"

"Interesting that you should ask," Al says, and Jim wants to kick himself for having asked. It's almost as though he can hear his doc's rubber glove snapping as it's pulled on; next thing he knows it's going to be, Turn around and touch your toes.

"Al," Jim says, "this is not the time or the place-"

"Good," Al says, "because that means I'll have your undivided attention."

He closes his eyes. "Fine," he says through clenched teeth.

"First of all," Al says in his less-than-kindest voice, "you've known Gil long enough to know who he is, what he's capable of. What he's not capable of. Right?" He doesn't give Jim the chance to defend himself before plowing on.

"Secondly, do you think for one instant that either of them would do anything they didn't want to?"

"Should we really be having this conversation in the hall?" Jim asks when Al takes a breath.

"Don't change the subject," Al snaps. "Thirdly - and this is the big one, Jim - so what?"

Jim rolls his eyes. "I'm an old-fashioned guy," he says, "so sue me."

"Oh, grow up, Jim."

He raises his eyebrows. "Excuse me?"

"What's the worst thing you've seen?" Al asks him.

"What - I haven't been pressing my nose against Gil's windows, Al-"

Al barks a laugh at him. "Aha," he says, "I think we've found the root problem. Is that what bothers you? The - the geometry of it?"

Jim stiffens. "I am not having this conversation," he says.

"What's the worst thing you've ever seen?" Al asks again. "As a cop, as a detective, whatever. What's the worst act of depravity you've witnessed?"

Jim clenches his jaw. "Not something I want to talk about," he says.

"I don't blame you," Al tells him, "but think of it this way. There's a spectrum of good and evil, right? Put the worst thing you've ever seen on one end, and put Nirvana at the other. Now, somewhere in the middle-"

Jim knows where this is going, and he doesn't want to go there. "That's an overly simplistic way to look at things, Al-"

"It's a perfectly fine way to look at it," Al counters, "because it makes sense. I mean, Jesus, Jim - you of all people-"

"Me of all people?" Jim demands. "What the hell does that mean?"

"You deal with the worst that humanity has to offer," Al reminds him, not particularly gently, "and this - this? - is what turns you against your best friend?"

"Al-"

There's a loud cough immediately beside them, and they both turn to see Gil Grissom standing not two feet from them, one eyebrow arched pointedly. "Not interrupting anything, am I, gentlemen?" he asks icily.

Jim winces. He doesn't mean to, but it happens anyway and there's no way he can stop it. "Shit," he mumbles.

Gil looks from Al to Jim and back again. "Can I assume," he says, his voice rich with sarcasm, "that this conversation has reached its natural conclusion? I mean, before it carries through the entire building..."

"I don't know," Al says, locking his eyes evenly with Jim's, "you tell me."

Jim knows Gil is watching him now, too, and he decides then and there that he really hates getting it from both barrels. "I'm going to leave now," Jim tells them.

"That's pretty cowardly," Al says.

He doesn't even have the energy to get upset at that. "Whatever," he says, "I've got work to do." He pushes between them and lets his feet take him away from them.

"Jim-" Al calls after him.

He hears Gil shhhh at him. "Let him go," he hears him say. "Let him come around on his own time. That was mean, Al."

"Yeah, well," Al says, "sometimes you just gotta rip the bandaid off all at once."

He hears Gil chuckle at that, and then he's in the elevator and the door is closed and it's not his problem anymore.

***

He parks in the back of the Montecito, and then sits with the engine off for a bit. He knows that Warrick and Nick are inside with something hot to tell him, but... He sighs, slumps back against the headrest and watches a young couple make out against the hood of an SUV.

How is that Gil is so sure that he's going to come around? That one day he's going to wake up and not be freaked out by this? Not get that sick feeling when he thinks of what they get up to-

He gets a horrible image then, rising unbidden in his mind, of some acrobatically improbable three-man manoeuvre with Gil in the middle, and he has to rub his eyes at that. He does not want that idea in his head, not while he's at work, not when he has to face Nick's earnest grin for the next couple of hours.

Not, in fact, when he's at home, either. Not while he's trying to get to sleep, not while he's taking Robin out for dinner again, not while he still has breath in his body.

He just - he doesn't need, he doesn't want to know about that.

He sits in the car for a while longer, waiting for his blood pressure to drop back to normal. He can't walk in there looking like he's going to have a heart attack, because Nick will make him sit down, take his vitals and stay with him while Warrick calls a bus - god. He doesn't need that, either. Doesn't really need Nick around him at all.

But that's the problem, isn't it? Because he can't get away from them, from any of them, not without leaving Las Vegas and there's no way he's going to do that. This is where his home has been for a long time now, and he's feeling too old and too tired to pack up and start again.

Besides, that really would be cowardly, wouldn't it?

Anyway: Robin lives in Vegas, and no way he's walking away from that. Sure, he'll probably fuck it up somewhere down the line, but until he does, he's going to try optimism.

Since it seems to work so well for Gil and Al.

***

Maybe it's against his better judgement, but he finds himself sitting in his car across from Gil's townhouse a couple hours after sunrise. He's got the Crane file lying next to him, he's got the nagging memory of Al's lecture in his mind, and he's got a burning desire to tell someone about Robin.

It used to be Gil that he would go to when he had something to talk about, when something excited him for no good reason and he wanted to share it. That's what Gil used to do, too - they would share a drink in Jim's office when they were both off the clock and just -talk. About anything. Gil would trip over his own words when he'd learn something neat about some bug in South America that no one's ever heard of. Jim would let his frustrations about Ellie and Marie find a voice. Gil would have one more ridiculous story about a rollercoaster that was exactly like all his other stories about rollercoasters, but he'd be smiling like a six-year-old when he told it, and Jim had liked to see that.

Then had come the Nick Period, as Jim liked to think of it, when he knew Gil was seeing someone, but he hadn't mentioned it. It had taken him all of a month and a half to put it together, and another three and a half months to screw up the courage to let Gil know that he knew and that it was okay... ha. He remembers that after-work drink because it was one of the few times he'd seen Gil get drunk - well and truly shellacked - without Al being around.

Al, he thinks. Right.

He sighs, hauls himself out of his car, and walks up the path to Gil's door. He counted the cars when he first showed up, so he knows that everyone is home. And maybe this would be easier if they weren't all there - if maybe Nick and Greg were somewhere else so he could at least salvage some of his dignity - but he's not going to wait. Not going to wait because they deserve the background on Crane's insane legal game, and Gil-

Gil deserves some kind of apology.

***

He leans on the doorbell for a couple of seconds then takes a step back, moves the folder from under one arm to under the other. God, he thinks as the seconds stretch by without an answering patter of feet on the other side of the door, what if they're - what if they're busy, he thinks. What if he's interrupting something and Gil's going to show up at the door half-naked and reeking of sex-

The door opens.

Jim and Greg eye each other carefully.

Greg is fully clothed but for his bare feet, and the state of his hair would be telling if it were anyone other than Greg.

Jim tries a smile on for size. "Hey," he says, shifting from foot to foot. "This a bad time?"

"No," Greg says guardedly. "You, uh, you want to come in?"

They eye each other again and Greg takes a step back, leaving the doorway wide and unobstructed. Jim steps in and they keep a respectable distance between them.

Wow, Jim thinks, when did Greg learn to give the hairy eyeball so well?

There's a synthetic drone of music coming from the living room, and then he hears Nick holler, "Greg man, if you don't get your ass back in here in fifteen seconds, you forfeit the game."

Greg rolls his eyes at Jim, and calls out, "Fine, I forfeit."

"You what?" The music stops, and about three seconds later Nick appears in the archway into the living room. His mouth opens in silence for a moment before he realises it and pulls it closed again, and leans against the wall with his arms crossed on his chest.

Jim tries his smile out on him, too. "Is, uh, is Gil around?" he asks.

"He's upstairs," Nick says. "I'll get him."

"No no," Greg says suddenly, and launches himself at the stairs, "I'll go."

Jim watches him thunder up out of sight, and feels a pang of regret that he's not that young anymore. Then he turns his attention back to Nick, whose jaw is so tightly clenched it's a wonder he hasn't burst a molar.

He holds out the folder. "This is for you," he says.

Nick narrows his eyes but takes the file from his outstretched hand. "What is it?" he asks.

"The Crane case file," Jim says, "at least, as much of it as Robin could give me, legally." He shrugs. "I don't really know what's in it, but I thought you'd want to see it-"

"Yeah," Nick says, and his voice is suddenly a lot more raw than it was a few seconds ago. He swallows. "Thanks. Uh, you want a drink or something?"

"Sure," Jim says, and follows him into the living room.

Nick pushes the PlayStation under the coffee table with his foot as he passes it, and Jim takes a look around the room. He hasn't had much occasion to be in here lately, and the last time he had - heh. He's not going to think about that right now.

There are small touches, here and there, that he knows he should have picked up on immediately. Things that are definitely un-Gil Grissom: there's a trophy of some kind on a bookshelf between a row of paperbacks and a display case of moths. There are two squash rackets leaning against the wall behind an easy chair. There's a guitar on the couch.

He stops next to the couch - because where else is he going to sit? - and picks the guitar up by its neck. "Who plays?" he asks, because he knows he should be making some kind of polite conversation.

Nick turns towards him from the liquor cabinet with a bottle of something amber in one hand. "Huh?" he asks, and looks at the instrument. "Oh. Greg. Well, he tries to play anyway - he swears he's getting better."

"I am getting better," Greg says behind Jim, and he whirls around to see Greg leaning against one support of the archway, and Gil leaning against the other.

Gil is smiling warily. "Didn't hear you come in, Jim," he says by way of hello. "Sorry. Guess I had the music on too loud."

"It's okay," Gil says. "I, uh - just got here."

"I see."

Jim hears someone moving behind him and he turns to see Nick standing next to him, holding a glass out to him. Jesus. When did Nick get so stealth? "Thanks," he says, looking around for a place to put the guitar and hoping to hell that whatever it is in that glass, it's strong.

Nick takes the guitar. "No problem," he says, laying it on the coffee table and dropping into the easy chair across from the couch.

"What brings you around?" Gil asks, and Jim is ready to get defensive but he recognises Gil trying to be sociable in an awkward situation and failing.

"Brought that file over for Nick," Jim says, lowering himself into the couch and trying to look comfortable. "Thought I'd, you know, shoot the breeze for a bit."

Gil smiles at him, a real smile this time, and comes into the room. He takes the other end of the sofa, and Jim watches Greg scurry to the liquor cabinet. Nick has the file open on his knees, flipping listlessly through what Jim can only assume are really boring legal briefs.

Jim looks around again, and decides this is not as bad as he thought it was going to be. "I, uh... hell Gil, I'm - I'm old-fashioned, you know?"

There's nothing but kindness in Gil's eyes. "I know," he says, and he says it in such a way that Jim knows he doesn't need to finish the rest of it. "I understand. And I'm - sorry that I shocked you."

"Shocked me?" Jim asks, trying for brazen and probably missing the mark by a wide margin. "I don't shock all that easily, you know. Been around the block a couple times."

More kindness in Gil's eyes, and a thin wedge of amusement, too. "I'll have to try harder next time," he says gently. "How are you, Jim?"

"I'm good," he says, and this is familiar ground even though Nick and Greg are listening in, because this is how they always start out when they sit down to have a drink and catch up. He licks his lips. "I, uh, I had a date the other night."

Gil's eyebrows raise slightly. "Oh yeah?" he says. "Anyone I know?"

Jim nods at the file that Nick is halfway through already. "Robin," he says, "actually."

"Ah," Gil says with a knowing smile, "the venerable Ms Childs."

"Yeah," Jim says, looks down at his drink.

"How'd that go?"

"I took her out for dinner," he says. "It was nice. Civilised, you know? Like there's more to life than the latest dead body."

"That's a good sentiment to keep in mind," Gil says. "I'm glad that you had fun. You going to take her out again?"

"Yeah," Jim says, "Friday. Dinner again. I really don't want to fuck this up."

"You won't," Gil says with calm certainty. "I know you, Jim. I doubt you could seriously fuck it up if you tried."

"Nice of you to say so," Jim says, "but I don't know. It's just... it's been so long since I've done this, you know? I'm making it up as I go along. I can't remember the rules."

"There are no rules," Gil tells him. "Do whatever feels right. I'm sure she'll let you know if she hates it."

"But-" Jim shifts in his seat, brings one foot up to cross over his knee, balances his glass against his thigh. "I honestly mean I can't remember it, Gil. I mean, other than dinner and sex, what is there?"

Gil is giving him an incredulous look.

He rolls his eyes. "Let me rephrase that," he says with good-natured grump. "What do we do to fill the time between dinner and sex? What do you on a date?"

"Go to a movie," Gil suggests, "take in a show - go to a museum. Or an art gallery - what's that exhibition downtown, Nick?"

It's a sudden intrusion on Jim's thought processes to be reminded that it's not just Jim and Gil talking here. That they're not alone.

"The photography one?" Nick asks, letting the file fall shut. "Or the sculptures?"

"The photography," Gil says.

"That's pretty racy stuff, Gil," Nick says solemnly in a mock-serious voice.

Gil laughs. "I'm willing to bet," he says, "that neither Jim nor Robin will be shocked by the female form."

"You could always go dancing," Greg says, still playing the wallflower next to the liquor cabinet with a glass in one hand and a brave face.

Nick laughs. "Yeah, right," he says, "I can just see Jim shaking it up at one of those leather clubs you like-"

"I didn't say 'clubbing'," Greg counters, "I said 'dancing'. There are nice places you can go in Vegas. A little waltzing, a little samba, maybe a tango or two..."

Jim thinks about it for a second, then realises that he's contemplating taking dating advice from Greg Sanders. Greg who buys tee-shirts because of their slogans. Greg who chooses his music by the parental advisory stickers on the cd cases. Greg who-

Hang on, he thinks. Greg who's dating Gil, so he can't be all punk.

"Dancing, huh?" he asks.

"Yeah," Greg says. "I've got a friend who teaches ballroom dancing, I can ask her where's a good place to go. If anyone'll know, she will."

Nick is looking at Greg strangely. "You know how to dance?" he asks.

"Yeah," Greg says with a shrug. "Laurie taught me. It's not hard."

"You," Nick reiterates, "dance? As in, not flailing your arms around and jumping up and down. You actually - dance?"

Greg sticks his tongue out at Nick. "See if I ever dance with you," he snipes, and drains his glass.

"You could always bring her over here," Gil says.

Jim turns to him and blinks. "Say what?"

"I meant," Gil says, "we could have another dinner. Like we did for Al's birthday, like we did for Greg's: Catherine, Al, you, me, Nick and Greg, and Robin."

"That was fun," Greg says from across the room.

"You were shit-faced," Nick reminds him.

"It was my birthday," Greg points out, "and a certain coroner who shall remain nameless kept pushing drinks into my hands. I think I had fun, anyway."

"You did," Gil assures him with a smile, and turns back to Jim. "So? What do you say?"

"What," Jim asks, "this Friday?"

Gil shrugs. "Why not? Late enough that Robin is done for the night, early enough that we haven't started yet. And we won't have to worry about Al breaking into opera again, because he'll have to be sober enough to work at midnight." He grins. "It'll be fun," he says.

Jim looks at Gil, and then at Greg and at Nick, and he thinks, Yeah, that would be kind of fun. "I'll ask her," he says carefully.

Greg does an excited little half-dance. "Sweet," he says with a wicked grin.

Gil frowns at him. "You all right, Greg?" he asks.

Greg softens his grin a bit. "I just like dinner parties," he says. "So sue me."

"You're a strange guy," Nick observes.

Greg sighs. "I grew up with dinner parties, okay?" he says. "My parents were crazy about them, so every other weekend we had a dozen people over and it was fun."

"They let you sit at the grown-up table?" Nick asks.

"When I turned fourteen," Greg tells him, "yes. And when I turned sixteen, I got to invite a couple of my friends, too."

"That must have made you super-cool at school, dude," Nick says with a poorly-suppressed snigger.

"Cool is for losers," Greg says with long-suffering disdain. "Geek is chic."

Nick actually laughs, and so does Gil, and Jim finds himself half-chuckling, too. He finishes his drink and stands up.

"I should get going," he says.

Gil rises with him. "I'll walk you out to your car."

"Drive safe," Greg says, at the same time that Nick says, "Later."

He smiles at them. "Night."

***

It's vaguely reminiscent of the last time they stood next to Jim's car at the bottom of the driveway, but Jim pushes the thought from his mind. "Are we going to be okay?" he asks, leaning against the frame of his open door.

Gil smiles at him again, that smile that makes Jim believe that the world is maybe a better place than he knows it is. "Of course," he says.

"Good," Jim says. "I know it was only a couple days, but... I missed this."

"So did I," Gil says. "I'm sorry - It's been too long since we've really sat down together, Jim. That's mostly my fault, and I apologise. I got - caught up in things here. It won't happen again."

"Yeah," Jim says, "about that..."

Gil watches him calmly, hands in his pockets and that endlessly patient look on his face.

Jim clears his throat. "Look, I'm still an old-fashioned guy. I can - deal with this thing in the abstract, you know? I just - I don't want to have to deal with it in the real, okay?"

Gil smiles at him. "We're not particularly big on public displays of affection, Jim," he promises, "and I can guarantee you that neither Greg nor Nick has any desire to be caught in a compromising situation by you."

"Good," Jim says firmly. "I mean, I'm happy for you - I guess - but just... I don't want to see it. You know?"

"I know," Gil says, "and I understand."

"Okay, then," Jim says.

Gil nods, then hesitates.

"What?" Jim asks.

"I, uh - I can't promise that Al's going to be particularly discreet in your company," he says carefully.

Jim rolls his eyes. "I can deal with Al," he says, because he can. He and Al go way back, and although Al may spend a lot of his spare time trying to rattle Jim's nerves, Jim has a few tricks up his sleeve, too.

"Good," Gil says. "See you tonight?"

"You know it," Jim says, and slides in behind the wheel.

Gil leans into the passenger window, and Jim powers it down as soon as the key is in the ignition. "I'm really happy for you, Jim," he says, "for you and Robin, both. I think you'll be good for each other."

"We'll see," Jim says, "if she's still talking to me after dinner on Friday."

Gil laughs again. "Drive carefully," he says, and steps back from the door.

Jim waves goodbye to him, and pulls out into traffic. He's not really worried about dinner at Gil's on Friday, because they're a good group, the four of them - well, the six of them now, he thinks, and then, No, seven. Robin gets to be counted now, too.

And that's not a bad feeling to have when he's headed home to bed.

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