Title: What a Magnificent Bed We Lay In…
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Warning: Main character death
Rating: Adult
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
A/N: I guess I should warn people that this a lot darker than what I usually write.

It’s not so bad at first.

Just as for any other event in the cycle of life, there are recognized methods and processes in every culture for handling death, and, with no other choice, I try to follow them. But there is one insurmountable obstacle, which prevents the usual rituals of grief and mourning. We cannot find him, although in some small away it's also a consolation of sorts, because the search keeps us occupied, and we don’t have time to sit and fully comprehend what we’ve lost.

His parents don’t want a funeral. Perhaps he’s still alive, held somewhere against his will. Perhaps we’ll receive a phone call tomorrow, in a week, in a year, in ten years, telling us that he’s been found and that he’s alright. I hold no such hope. Does it mean I love him less than they do?

 Dr. Grissom, I would know if he weren’t alive. A mother knows. What can I say to her? That I lie awake, trying to somehow feel his presence, trying to sense that connection that would make us pick up the phone at the same time to call each other, or independently decide that we wanted Indian food on the same evening, and that there’s nothing? That I absolutely know, not only in my rational mind, but in my heart, in my bones, that her son will never come back to us?

 

It gets worse later.

When things quiet down, when normal life is supposed to resume. When I go home and see his things strewn around. How did this happen? We hadn’t moved in together, so why is the last book he was reading open face-down on my coffee table? Why are some of his CDs mixed in with mine, and when did those frozen burritos in my freezer get there? I even found one of his socks, which I probably picked up by accident along with my own clothes, in my dryer. What do I do with these small mementos? Sometimes I can’t bear to look at them, but I have no idea what I should do with them, especially the burritos. And it seems like, if I can’t find a solution for one thing, everything else must remain in stasis as well, the paperback open until its spine disintegrates, the sock tumbling through countless cycles.

It’s not true, what you read in books. There is no lingering smell on the pillowcase or on clothes, at least not after the first few days. When I find his gym bag shoved under the bench in my entranceway and open it, all I smell is stale sweat, not him. Not how he smelled when he walked in from an afternoon’s jog, perspiration dripping off his hair and chin and glistening on his throat and arms. Not how he smelled when he rolled against me in bed, his skin warm, and slick, and salty.

 

It would probably be more efficient if we changed the status on cases from active to inactive, but nobody does that. Not officially. We simply reprioritize every day, and the unsolved cases are pushed further and further back, their progress reviews less and less frequent. They’re not quite forgotten, but unless something happens to bring them back to the forefront, nobody discusses them either. When I first started out, I vowed I would never forget, and I kept a list of the unsolved cases, not all, but the ones that really mattered. His case is now eighteenth from the bottom; it would probably be at least a couple of places higher if I’d felt anything really mattered that first half year.

There are groups that try to solve cold cases; composed of law enforcement students, retired policemen, detectives and a large number of amateurs, they’ve actually had some success, and they eagerly picked up his case, even though here we knew what had happened, just not where. There used to be literally hundreds of messages per day in the beginning, though none had anything of value to offer (most were from young women mentioning how hot he was, and what a pity it all was). Now, three years later, there are, at best, two or three per month.

It’s funny. For a long time I felt nothing. No grief, no anger, nothing. But those messages used to enrage me. Now that there are none, I wish for them, and I don’t really know why. It’s not because they would offer proof that he’s remembered, because these girls didn’t know him to remember him. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to forget him myself, the exact shape of his mouth when he smiled, the sound of his laughter, whether that scar from when he fell off his bike when he was eight was on his right or his left elbow, and I need to feel that rage again to help me remember.

 

“Dr. Grissom?”

The voice at the end of the line is very familiar, but I can’t quite place it. “Yes?”

The man clears his voice. “I asked for Warrick Brown first, but they told me that he is …uh, deceased.”

“Yes?” I repeat. His voice; so familiar, so terribly familiar, and yet it sounds somehow wrong, as well.

“My name is Ethan Stokes. Nick was my brother.”

I sit pressing the receiver against my ear, unable to speak, to think even.

“Dr. Grissom?”

“Yes. Yes, I’m here. What can I do for you, Mr. Stokes?”

“We’ve decided to hold a memorial service for Nick. It’s time. We know that Warrick was Nick’s friend and we thought that perhaps he would have wanted to come to Dallas for the service, and to help us coordinate the attendance of any other of Nick’s friends or colleagues.”

His voice is brisk, competent, impersonal. If I hadn’t known Nick so well, and how he covered things, perhaps I wouldn’t have recognized the pain in his brother’s voice.

“I can help you to do that,” I say.

“Would you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

 

In the end, it’s only a small contingent of three that flies down to Dallas; so many people have left the lab in the past five years, and those that are still here can’t all make it. There is some half-hearted talk about holding a memorial in Las Vegas as well, but it’s more to appease their sense of guilt. They shouldn’t feel guilty though. Life goes on, and there’s work, family, even bank accounts to consider. And it all happened so long ago.

I hear Catherine’s sharp intake of breath next to me, and when I see the man waiting for us at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, I understand; this is what Nick would have looked like in about ten years from now.

The family asks me to speak at Nick’s service, but I said my own goodbye to Nick five years ago, and I don’t want to repeat it again in public, especially not speaking as his colleague. I tell them to ask Catherine, because she was his supervisor, and she had been the one to arrange for the ransom money that might have saved his life.

I sit through the service, staring at Nick’s portrait, feeling as numb as I did that first week, when the battery that had been powering the video feed ran out, and we could no longer see him, and we knew that even if he had air, he had no water. And no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find him.

 

Ethan gives us a lift back to the hotel, and we stand in a small cluster and watch him drive away.

“Well, that’s that,” Catherine says with a sigh. Her eyes are red.

Brass invites us for a drink at the hotel bar, but I decline. After they enter the hotel, I walk around the corner, where Ethan is waiting for me, and climb thankfully back into the cool interior of the car. Nick had spoken about the humidity, but I had never realized how bad it can get.

“Thank you for doing this. There’s something I needed to discuss with you,” Ethan says.

“Of course.”

He drums his fingers nervously against the steering wheel. “Would you like to go for a beer?”

I’m about to say no, when he adds, “Nick had this place he liked,” and I realize how little I know about Nick’s life in Dallas, and I agree.

 

It’s strange having this older, gray-haired version of Nick sitting across from me. I’m starting to see more differences in their looks, but then Ethan will tilt his head in a certain way, or smile briefly, and I’m transported to the past, or maybe to the future, and it really is Nick sharing a beer with me, and there’s this split-second burst of irrational joy.

“Nick spoke to me about you,” Ethan says abruptly, half-way through a story about how he found a five-year-old Nick trying to smuggle a boxful of kittens into the house, something he knew was strictly forbidden.

This is where one normally jokes and says something like Don’t believe a word of it! but the sudden change of subject catches me off guard, and I ask him what Nick said.

“That he loved you. That you were thinking of moving in together.”

“He said that?”

“He was happy. You made him happy. And I know that happiness wasn’t something simple for Nick.”

I nod stupidly. His eyes are lighter than Nick’s, more hazel than brown.

“I owe you an apology,” Ethan says. “In my parents’ eyes… well, Nick was their baby. He never came out to them, and afterwards I didn’t feel like I could say anything. And from what I understood from him, nobody in Vegas knew about the two of you either.”

He pauses, as if waiting for me to speak, but I have absolutely nothing to say. I don’t even know why he’s apologizing to me.

He takes a deep breath. “You see, I knew… I knew that Nick had run out of time, that he wasn’t going to be found, at least not alive, even if my parents and sisters didn’t want to admit it. I knew you were alone, and that if you loved Nick even half as much as he loved you, it must have been hell for you. I… well, I should have contacted you.”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” I say, carefully. “There’s nothing anybody could have done.”

“You’re family. Nick made us family. I should have acknowledged that.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

We’re silent after that, unsure of what to say to one another. Nick might have made us family, but he was our only common link, and he’s gone. He’s been gone for a long time.

“Ethan. Do you have pictures of Nick?”

He looks surprised. “Yes, of course. Don’t you?”

“No. We… well, we thought we had plenty… we never thought…” and suddenly I’m sobbing, finally I’m crying, after five years, longer apart than we were ever together, and I don’t think I’ll be able to stop. At some point I feel him kneading my shoulder, and I try to regain control of myself.

“You know what I think?” Ethan asks. “I think we should get hammered. Totally wasted. And tomorrow, I’ll look for his photos and send them to you.”

 

And so, that evening with Ethan, I was finally able to speak of Nick, and of my feelings for him, and to cry for him and for us and for what might have been.

 

 

In the Evening
It wouldn’t have lasted long anyway—
the experience of years makes that clear.
Even so, Fate did put an end to it a bit abruptly.
It was soon over, that wonderful life.
Yet how strong the scents were,
what a magnificent bed we lay in,
what pleasure we gave our bodies.
– C.P. Cavafy (translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard)