Title: A Kiss is Just a Kiss
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: Sequel to “A Mitigated Disaster”.
A/N: Apologies for having left this hanging for so long. A family emergency didn’t leave me much time (or mood) for writing, but I’m happy to report all is OK now!

I don’t give myself time to think about it.

Actually that’s not true; thinking about it is all I’ve done from the moment he suggested the outing. I thought about the act itself and about the possible repercussions, if I’d read the signs wrong. I thought about the chances of his wanting to get involved with somebody from the lab again, even if I’d read the signs right. I thought about whether I wanted to send such an irrevocable signal. I thought of all the reasons I shouldn’t do it, and of all the reasons I should, and try as I might, I couldn’t think of one good reason why I should and of plenty of excellent reasons why I shouldn’t.

But in the end, standing in front of him, all that thinking doesn’t amount to much. My final thought is why the fuck not, so I step up to him and I kiss him. And when I step back I feel like I’ve just stepped off Insanity again. Or more likely, right onto it.

He gapes at me and half of me, the half that isn’t queasy and appalled at what I just did, wants to laugh at his expression.

“I promised myself I’d do that,” I say, as if that explains everything.

“Oh,” he responds, as if he understands, his face changing slightly, and this turns into one of those many times that I wish I could read him better. At least he doesn’t look annoyed. That’s one expression I recognize well, and he definitely doesn’t look annoyed.

I try to smile, brush it off.

“Probably a mistake, right?”

Oh, definitely a mistake. I remember hugging him when he was going on his sabbatical, assuming that it was the last time I was going to see him, and his annoyed voice telling me to stop hugging him, and the memory makes my ears burn even hotter. I press the tips of my forefingers against my thumbs, trying to conjure up a place of calm and serenity, the way my therapist had tried to teach me to do. It never worked before and it doesn’t now. The department should demand its money back.

He tilts his head a little, his eyes studying me, considering. Considering what? How to let me down easy? How to get the hell out of Dodge?

“Not in my book,” he says softly, seriously, and then he smiles at me.

Later, when I’m home alone, I wish I hadn’t kissed him, at least not the way I did. And it’s not because things were awkward between us afterwards, because, amazingly enough, they weren’t. We had a drink and talked about baseball, comparing stats on our favorite players and reminiscing about the first time we’d ever been to a game. Nothing too personal, but during a pause in the conversation, I remembered that line from City Slickers, when the character played by Daniel Stern says that when he couldn’t communicate with his dad, they could still talk about baseball, and how that was real. This is real, I thought, no less real than our conversation on the observation deck, when he told me that I’m not alone and that he’s here for me, if I need him. Maybe more real, even though it lacks drama, because lives, and relationships, are built with small moments, not sweeping gestures.

On our way to drop me off at home, we were mostly quiet. In my everyday life, this would be the time I’m driving to the lab or to a crime scene, my day. Yet I felt so comfortable, so relaxed that I almost dozed off, and I found myself wishing that I lived somewhere further away, so that he and I could be together longer, sharing the silence. But it seemed like only minutes before he rolled to a stop in front of my house.

“We’re here,” he said quietly, as if he thought I’d fallen asleep and didn’t want to startle me.

“Yeah.” And suddenly I was wide awake again, wondering what came next. He pulled the handbrake, but he didn’t turn the engine off. I slowly unfastened my seatbelt, stalling for time, for inspiration, for him to do something.

“Well, goodnight.” I wondered whether I should thank him, but that made it seem less like we were two friends hanging out, more like it was a date. “Thanks the ride,” I finally compromised.

“You’re welcome. Goodnight.” He smiled vaguely in my direction and he was already releasing the handbrake, so I got out of the car and watched him drive off, trying to decide if I felt insulted or relieved. A little of both, I guess.

And now I wonder if I shouldn’t have kissed him at all, or if I should have done a more thorough job of it, maybe given him a chance to respond. Logic dictates the former, but when I finally fall asleep it’s wishing I’d done the latter.

I don’t see him again until the end of the next shift. I’m in the locker room changing shirts, when he walks in briskly, his head down, and he doesn’t see me at first.

“Hey, Griss,” I say, pleased at the casual tone of my voice.

He stops in his tracks and looks at me, then quickly scans the empty room before turning his attention to me again.

“Nick.”

Under his eyes, buttoning my shirt suddenly requires my full concentration. I wish he’d say something, but he just stands there, his hands in his pockets, staring at me.

“Long shift,” I say.

He shrugs. I guess we’re back to normal again. I finally manage the last button and pull my jacket out.

“See you tonight.”

“Have breakfast with me,” he says abruptly. It sounds like an order rather than an invitation, and he must realize it, because he adds “please” almost as an afterthought. It seems like he’s been doing some thinking as well, and I’m pretty sure I’m not gonna like where this is going.

“Uh, can I take a raincheck? I’m pretty beat.”

I see his fists ball in his pockets.

“Please,” he repeats, and it sounds less like an order this time, so I give in.

“Frank’s?” I ask and he nods.

“I’ll meet you there.”

When he sits in front of me, I realize that he looks tired, as if he hasn’t been getting much sleep. It fact, he looks about like how I feel. The waitress comes over with a pot of coffee and takes our orders and when she leaves, I keep myself occupied with adding sugar and milk to my coffee. I hear him clear his throat, as if he’s about to speak, and I glance up quickly, but he looking down into his own coffee cup and seems lost in thought. I relax a little and take a sip of my coffee. Too soon.

“What’s going on between us?” he suddenly asks, and I almost choke.

“What do you mean?”

He looks up at me and smiles wryly.

“You want me to go first?”

I nod uncertainly.

“Fair enough. I don’t have the foggiest notion. And I think you don’t either.”

As the man said, fair enough. At least it’s some consolation to hear that he’s as uncertain as I am. Which gets us both precisely nowhere.

“The question is—,” he starts, only to be interrupted by the waitress plonking our plates in front of us. He smiles up at her and assures her that we’re set and don’t need something else for the moment.

“The question is,” he continues, “what do you want to be going on between us?”

“I thought you were going first.”

“Ah. Well, this gets harder.”

He rearranges the food in his plate, lining up the rashers of bacon in as parallel lines as something wavy can get in.

“I don’t know what I want,” he says finally.

Even though I was expecting to hear worse, it still hurts, a sharp, unexpected stab.

“Actually, that’s not true. I know what I want. It’s just that what I want is irrelevant.”

“Why?”

He raises his eyebrows, looking surprised at the question. Or maybe at the fact that I asked it.

“Why is it irrelevant?” I repeat.

“Because you report to me,” he says.

I understand what he’s saying to me, and all that he’s leaving unsaid. Given his history, I could call him a hypocrite, but he’s not. He’s just a decent guy who’s not going to make the same mistake twice.

“I want us to be friends,” I say deliberately. “I want you to be here for me, when I need you.” I know that I’m partly reacting out of jealousy that he won’t compromise himself for me, when he did for Sara and that, if he hadn’t set that precedent, I would have been more understanding. I know that I’m behaving like a child who suddenly and obstinately wants to play with the one toy he’s told he can’t have. I even know I’m being unfair, reminding him of his words to me as if they were a promise of something more, only I don’t give a damn.

He takes a deep breath and expels it slowly, annoyed that things are going as smoothly as he’d planned.

“I want to be there for you, when you need me,” I finish quietly and when I see his eyes, I realize that it’s not irritation I see in them, but pain, and I immediately feel guilty that I’m laying this shit on him, and I want to apologize, but I don’t know how. Not this soon.

“Just friends?” he asks after a long silence.

I close my eyes and think back to a few weeks ago, when a beginning was all I’d wanted, what I thought would make me happy. If I reject his friendship in an ultimatum for something more, I reject everything, I close doors that may never open again.

“Yes,” I say firmly. “Friends.”

He smiles, and the way his smile makes me feel convinces me that I’ve made the right choice. At least for the time being.