Title: It's Not Over
By: kennedy
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post-ep for "Daddy's Little Girl". Nick lies to Grissom, but cannot do so to Greg.

***

While Warrick and Sara were discussing the latest evidence on the case all three of them were working on, Greg made the excuse of needing more coffee and left the office for where his mind had really been occupied for the past half-hour.

Something was on his mind, and for once it wasn't coffee. Or Nick Stokes. Well, in a way it was on Nick. Nick was always part of his thought processes, but instead of love and affection and desire this time it was worry and panic that was consuming him.

Unnoticed, he slipped into the observation booth adjacent to the room in which Nick sat opposite Kelly Gordon.

So that's what she looks like. Greg had seen her in photographs, mainly her scowling countenance in her mugshot, but this is the first time he has seen her in the flesh. And he feels like his blood has started running cold, despite the fact that his face feels warmed with repressed anger.

He has felt this way since Nick had come home earlier in the month. Greg could tell as soon as he walked in the door that something was up, and when Nick told him that Kelly Gordon had approached him at a crime scene Greg had immediately felt the room begin spinning around him.

"She was following you?"

"Calm down, Greg. We were surrounded by people."

"Well, you were also in public when you were abducted by her crazy-ass father!"

Nick grabbed his hands, and steered him over to the sofa but continued to hold them in his own. "I just wanted you to know, because I want you to be careful."

He would have leapt to his feet and began nervously pacing, if Nick hadn't been practically holding him down. "See, you are worried!"

"Of course I am!" Nick said desperately. "That's why I want you to keep an eye out… until this gets resolved one way or another."

"One way or another? Have you told Grissom?"

At the sound of his supervisor's name, Nick's eyes darkened in a way Greg didn't like. "All I need is one more thing to start making everybody fuss over me again."

"This is totally different, and you know it!"

Nick's grip on him tightened. "Promise me, G."

And because he loved him, even though he was worried sick, Greg agreed.

Then she had showed up at work. At work. Greg had been in the middle of processing evidence when he heard Nick being paged about a visitor waiting for him at reception. His curiosity was piqued, but he couldn't leave his post. Nick sought him out twenty minutes later anyway, slightly sweaty and his voice shaky.

Once again, he had made the promise although his apprehension was now out of the stratosphere.

And here she was, a possible suspect in a murder. Greg stared at her through the glass, taking note of Nick's defensive posture as he questioned her. At one point Nick tilted his head and looked towards the glass of the observation booth, as if he could feel Greg behind it. Greg almost ducked, feeling stupid when he realised he was well-hidden. But he wouldn't have been surprised if Nick knew he was there – after all, he was, wasn't he? It was exactly the kind of thing Nick himself would have done, had their positions been reversed.

Sensing not much headway was being made in the interview, and knowing that Sara and Warrick would probably be wondering where he was, Greg slipped back out. His heart was still heavy.

That night, Nick had his first nightmare in over a month. Greg had woken to hear him whimpering, and when he leaned over to comfort him Nick flinched at his touch while still in his dream-state and struck Greg in the face with his elbow. Although it was an accidental and not-too-savage blow, because he was at an awkward angle it threw him off balance and he fell backwards out of their bed. He cried out as he hit the floor heavily, and this made Nick wake up, panicked. The vestiges of his dream still with him, he struggled out of sleep to find himself alone in the dark, no comforting presence of Greg beside him. This only made him panic more, and he felt like he was hyperventilating.

"Nick, I'm here." Greg moaned, starting to pull himself up by clutching the bedside table.

Nick switched on the banker's lamp on his side of the bed, and paled at the sight of Greg lying on the ground. A small trickle of blood ran from one corner of his mouth.

Nick scrambled over to him. "Oh, baby, please tell me I didn't do that…"

"You did." Greg said, his half-hearted smile trying to make light of it.

"Shit, Greg…"

Greg allowed himself to be pulled up, and Nick hugged him in towards his chest. "I'm so sorry."

"It wasn't your fault, Nicky. You were asleep." He heard Nick stifle a sob, and it broke his heart. "What was it? Were you in the coffin again?"

Nick nodded. "This time I woke up as they were shovelling the dirt on top of it."

"They?"

"Walter and Kelly. She was with him."

"Well, you know that's impossible, right?" Greg smoothed some of Nick's hair out of his eyes.

"Do you think it's possible he had an accomplice?" Nick asked.

Greg looked at him sadly, not really wanting to share what he felt in his heart. He wanted this case to be wrapped up neatly, so that Nick could heal and move on. But he knew, that in his own nightmares, he felt it was far from solved. "I think there's a lot of unanswered questions about the Gordons." he replied honestly.

"Thank you." Nick breathed thickly. "For not lying to me."

"You know I never will."

"I'm going to go and get you some ice. I don't want everyone thinking I beat you up." It was a poor joke, but at least he was attempting one.

Greg listened to his feet pad away into the darkness, and felt a sting of tears at his own helplessness and inability to help him. He got out of bed, and stripped the covers that were damp with the sweat of Nick's terror and began changing the sheets. It was something he had gotten used to after Nick had been rescued, and the routine had usually passed without a word between them until they had climbed back into bed and were in each other's arms again.

Kelly fucking Gordon.

Greg sighed, and wondered if their lives would ever seem normal again. He couldn't bring it up with Nick at the moment – he didn't need the added pressure. But it just seemed as if whenever they seemed to be sliding into a nice, comfortable standard of existence something always came along to turn it upside down.

As he patted down the pillows again, Nick came to his side. He pressed an icepack against Greg's mouth, and rested his other hand against the small of his back. His breath was warm against his neck.

"I'm sorry."

"Stop apologising." Greg growled. He suddenly took the icepack out of Nick's hands, and threw it upon the bed. Before Nick could say anything, he drew him in for a long, searing kiss.

Although slightly dumbfounded, Nick responded eagerly and when Greg pulled away breathlessly he asked, "What was that for?"

"Do I need a reason?" Greg responded.

"I guess not." Nick shrugged, even though he knew there was. He had seen the look in Greg's eyes, the desperate need to remind himself that Nick was still there, that he had survived. He knew because he had done it to Greg at other times in order to remind himself as well.

As they waited for sleep to overcome them again, Greg couldn't help but wish that Kelly Gordon would leave their lives once and for all.

His wish was granted two days later, when Nick came home and told him how Kelly had died in his arms only hours before. Nick's expression pained him, it was one of pure grief.

"I don't want to sound like an asshole, Nicky," Greg had said hesitantly, "but why are you letting this affect you so badly?"

"Because she made the wrong choice." Nick threw himself onto their sofa and exhaustedly covered his face with his hands. "She had the opportunity to move past it all, and she just threw herself into vengeance."

"Well, you didn't make that decision for her. Jesus, Nick, you tried to help her! You, who had the biggest reason to avoid her!"

"She wasn't her father, G."

"I think she proved that the apple doesn't fall from the tree in the long run." Greg said harshly.

Nick looked up at him, surprise evident on his features. "That's harsh."

"Can you blame me?" Greg sank to his knees in front of his partner. "Her father almost killed you! And Nicky, we still have no idea what it was she was truly up to! You yourself said that you couldn't tell whether she was agreeing with you or threatening you… can you blame me for being glad that it's you coming home telling me she's dead rather than hearing at work that another Gordon got you?" His breath was hitching as he struggled to control himself.

At those words, Nick softened. He reached down to Greg and pulled him into a hug that was awkward because of the way they were seated. "Of course I can't. I just don't want you to fall into that vengeance trap either, Greg, that you're happy that someone's dead."

"I'm not happy, Nick. Shit!"

"I know." Nick sighed, then frowned as he remembered he hadn't let him in on his other discovery. "Grissom had stuff in my file he had never told me."

Greg pulled back so he could look at him. "What?"

"A voice recording that revealed Gordon's lawyer was in on the planning of the abduction." Nick's eyes were clouded with anger again. "He was investigating my case again, and he never said a word to me! Did you know?"

"Do you think if I had known, I wouldn't have told you?" Greg asked, slightly hurt.

Nick let out a relieved sigh, not even aware he had been holding it in. "No, I know." But his eyes remained dark as he continued. "Grissom just looked at me and said, ‘It's over'. As if that was the end of it, and we could just wash our hands of it. As if I could just walk away now and everything is going to be fine from here on in. What the hell does he know, G?"

Disturbed by how Nick appeared, consumed by hurt, Greg tried to appease him. "It's probably just him hoping it's over. He thinks Kelly Gordon's death is the bow on the package."

"Well, it might be easy for him to think that." Nick sank further into the couch. "It's over," he mimicked Grissom bitterly. "He was so dismissive, so fucking casual about it all." It had been at that moment that Nick had remembered Greg's promise never to lie to him, and he realised that Grissom was now doing so.

Although Greg's heart was burning to see Nick in this way, he knew Grissom well enough to believe that although Grissom may have seemed casual he probably wasn't. That he had his faults, just as his team did, and that he cared about every single one of them. That he probably suffered residual guilt over Nick's abduction, and he probably wanted to forget about it just as much as Nick and Greg did.

But this was not the time to defend Grissom. This was the time to sit on the sofa and hold the man he loved as he cried his shock away. As Nick's tears dampened his shirt, Greg once again offered gratitude to whomever or whatever was listening that Nick was still there to do so; and that although their life was difficult at the moment it wouldn't always be that way. And that Nick had to start believing that again.

"It's not over." Nick whispered into Greg's chest. "It's not over." The loss of his trust of Grissom, and its ties to his abduction meant that for the foreseeable future it wasn't over. He couldn't articulate to that Greg right now, it was all he could do to take comfort in Greg's warmth and remind himself of the one good thing he had in the world.

Greg wasn't sure if he knew what was coming up ahead of them. He didn't know if there were more revelations about the Gordons that would be revealed. All he knew was that he and Nick would face them together.

The shadows lengthened around them as the sun disappeared into the night, but he continued holding Nick in the darkness.

***