Title: Never Alone
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: NC-17 / Strictly Adult
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: After years of one-night stands, Nick is starting to think about settling down. Unfortunately, the only man he’d be interested in settling down with, is Gil Grissom, who is neither available nor gay.

“Oh, yeah, baby! You’re so tight. Ride me, baby, ride me.”

I wish he’d shut the hell up and let me concentrate. It’s not the sound of his voice that I mind so much. In fact, his voice is what attracted me in the first place; rough, like a guy with a two-pack-a-day habit and with an accent that made me homesick. Kind of what you’d imagine the Marlboro man sounding like, if he were from Texas. My dick was already hard before I caught my first glimpse of him. At six two or three, broad-shouldered and trim-hipped, he more than lived up to the promise of his voice.

No, it’s the calling me baby part. I fucking hate that. And the position we’re in, him sitting on the side of the bed, me in his lap with my back against his chest, there’s nothing I can do to shut him up. I drop my head back against his shoulder, rubbing my cheek against his, trying to get him to turn his head and kiss me. It’s throwing my rhythm off, but at least it’ll keep his mouth occupied. Or I could just ask him to keep it shut, but I don’t like to criticize a guy, who a: worked such wonders with that same mouth just twenty minutes ago and b: is working equivalent wonders with his dick and hands right now.

“Are you coming, baby?” he whispers in my ear, then licks my neck, and his hand moves faster on me. “God, you’re beautiful. Shoot for me, baby.”

“Just. Shut. Up.” I gasp, as my body starts to lock. I arch against him, and his arm wraps tighter around my stomach, anchoring me to him. He’s positioned us in front a mirror and the sight of us, me spread wide open, his dark head buried in my neck, his big arms and hands wrapped around me, makes me feel vulnerable. God, this is so hot. I jerk in his arms, and he murmurs something against my neck, probably calling me baby again, but I don’t care anymore. I close my eyes against the sight of me spurting, and I strain in his arms, wanting him to let me go, wanting him to hold me tighter. He falls backward onto the bed and pulls me with him, so that I’m lying on top of him, his hips start slamming against mine.

“Keep squeezing me,” he mutters. “I’m almost there.”

I roll off of him when he’s finished, and he pulls the condom off, ties it in a knot and accurately tosses it into the wastebasket about ten feet away. A guy who’s obviously had a lot of practice.

“So, Mick—”

“Nick,” I correct.

“Nick,” he grins, not looking the least embarrassed. “Nick. Sorry. So, Nick, you going to be around tomorrow night, as well?”

I consider whether I want to see him again. Pros: he’s damn good in bed, both proficient and enthusiastic, and I’ve got nothing better going on. Cons: his ass is one way only, and the calling me baby part. Oh, what the hell.

“I’m working tomorrow night. We can hook up earlier, if you want. Around eight or so.” That’ll give us a couple of hours, and I won’t have to rush to get ready for work afterwards.

He grimaces. “No can do. Big dinner, lots of speeches, conference-end drinks afterwards, there’s no way I’ll be done before midnight.” He flicks a finger lightly against my nipple and I shiver in reaction. “Any chance you can ditch work?”

I shake my head.

“Well, then, I guess we’ll have to make the most of tonight.” He rolls on top of me and rubs his chest and belly against mine, obviously not minding the bodily secretions. I smooth my palms down his long back.

“Do me one favor, will you? Stop calling me baby.”

“Sure, baby. Sure,” he smiles.

He calls me Mick again, when we say goodbye. I’d mind, if I didn’t have to look at his business card to remember his name. Jack Halloran, CPA, and an address in San Antonio. I toss the card in a trash can on my way through the hotel lobby. It’s not like I’m going to need him to help me with my taxes, at least not anytime in the near future. I’m single, on the Las Vegas city payroll, and with no property, stocks, bonds or other investments to call my own, so I don’t need to spend over five minutes on my tax return each year, and most of that time is taken up filling out my name and social security number. Life is simple.

---oOo---

I’m right behind Grissom as he turns into the parking lot. Pulling into my usual space, I check to my left and surprise, surprise, there’s Sara getting out of her car. Who do they think they’re fooling? Always arriving within a couple of minutes of each other when their shifts coincide, Grissom, like tonight, generally driving in from the opposite direction than what you’d expect if he was coming from home, they don’t even seem to be trying very hard to keep the affair secret. Or maybe it’s a Purloined Letter type of hiding in plain sight: act as if everything’s normal and most people won’t notice it isn’t.

One thing’s for sure. Nobody, and I mean nobody, has given the slightest indication that they even suspect Grissom and Sara might be in a relationship, much less with one another. And they would. Processing evidence for hours on end is neither so thrilling nor so thought-consuming, that we don’t fill the time with gossip and innuendos. Hell, sometimes it’s the only thing that makes the clock move forward. So maybe I really am the only one to have put two and two together.

Or maybe everybody considers the topic off-limits. It happens sometimes, when the protagonists are too well-liked or respected for anybody to feel like trawling for a scandal, or if the repercussions of a rumor being confirmed would be too serious. In this case, it’s more likely to be the second. If they’re having an affair, if it’s been going on as long as I think it is, if it reaches the wrong ears, then I don’t see any way that Grissom wouldn’t get fired and maybe a number of our cases reopened. It might have been years ago, but I don’t think anybody, and certainly not the Sheriff or the DA, has forgotten how close we came to losing the Haviland case, when Gerard trotted out the accusation that Sara had been caressing Grissom’s cheek as evidence that he runs slipshod investigations and an undisciplined team. I’d believed the excuse about the chalk, because we all knew that Sara had a crush on Grissom that he was apparently completely oblivious to. No stranger to unrequited crushes myself, I’d even sympathized with her. It had never occurred to me at the time that maybe Grissom hadn’t been so oblivious. Or so indifferent. Not that I think the relationship dates that far back. But let’s just say that Grissom’s refusal to fire Sara last year was probably driven by different motives than his refusal to fire Warrick.

A tap on my window startles me. Sara is standing next to the truck, obviously waiting for me, and I smile at her and climb out.

“Hey.”

“Hey, yourself. Everything alright?”

“Sure.”

She nods and turns towards the lab entrance, checking once to make sure that I’ve fallen into step next to her. I scan the parking lot, but Grissom’s nowhere in sight. He’s either still in his car, or I didn’t notice him enter the lab while I was wool-gathering.

“Did you do anything exciting?”

“Nah, not really. Same old, same old.”

She casts me a curious glance. Sara and I get along fine together, but we’ve never been what you’d call friends. People didn’t exactly warm to her when she first joined the team, although that was more Grissom’s fault, for bringing her in for the reasons he did, rather than hers. I guess I felt a little sorry for her, because I knew what it’s like being an outsider, and I tried to make her feel welcome. The truth is, though, that a lot of times she just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t like people who always need to win, and I don’t like zealots, and there’s a little too much of both in Sara. So we don’t hang together, and she has no idea what “same old” means. She’s probably envisioning laundry, the gym and lots of TV, so she’s got most of it right, anyway.

I can’t resist the question. “How ‘bout you?”

“It wasn’t my day off,” she remarks, her expression guarded, then starts talking me through a case she’s been working on for the past week. She’s never been much for small talk. I wonder whether Grissom and she have anything other than work to discuss when they’re together, or if they even care about anything else.

It comes as no surprise when Grissom pairs himself up with her again. It shouldn’t get to me, and especially not after all this time, but it does. Catherine’s eyebrows climb a bit, but she could also be reacting to the fact that Grissom seems to involve himself in a lot more field work than he did in the past. We were used to him showing up at the scene at some point to have a look for himself, and he was always underfoot if something about the case interested him or if we needed more people, but now it looks like he’s pursuing every opportunity, no matter how routine, to get out of the lab. I wouldn’t mind if he occasionally worked with someone other than Sara. Like, say, with me. But no, the rest of us don’t get much of his time, unless we ask for it. Even though Ecklie put the team back together, we still seem to be split between the graveyard and swing shifts; it’s almost like we’d never worked together before, like we were always two teams that can’t mesh together.

 A few weeks after the team had been split into two, Catherine sort of accused me of not liking her as a boss, implying that I preferred Grissom. Well, I did prefer working with Grissom, but not for the reasons Catherine might have been thinking. Yeah, maybe I did hero-worship him, and pay too much attention to his opinions and whatever else she’d criticized me of in the past. The question she’d never asked was why I was that way with Grissom, and in any case, I wouldn’t have had much of an answer before that day, before that very moment, because I hadn’t figured it out for myself. When I no longer saw Grissom on an almost daily basis, I found myself missing knowing that he’d be there in his office if I wanted to see him, that I’d run into him in the break room, that he’d be around to come and lean over me to look at something I was showing him. But I still didn’t realize.

They’re called epiphanies for a reason. The truth is there, but you just can’t see it, until something suddenly changes. It took me, what? Maybe six weeks of not working with Grissom, and the kick in the stomach when I found Catherine, rather than Grissom, out at Rainbow Canyon. I don’t even remember what the case we were working on was all about, just that it was the moment that I put it all together, and admitted to myself that I had feelings for Grissom that went way beyond me viewing him as a mentor, or even as some kind of older brother that I felt fond of, despite not always understanding him.

Obviously, I wasn’t pleased. Realizing that you have a crush on someone, whose sexual orientation precludes a happy ending, is not cause for celebration or happy daydreams. (Okay, there were a couple of wet dreams here and there, more than a couple, actually, but it’s not like I can control that.) However, just like all other disappointments in life, I figured I’d get over it. And I would have, too. Eventually.

Except that I came back from sick leave to find the team reunited under Grissom. Cultivating indifference is much easier when you’re not rubbing elbows not only with the object of your affection, but with the object of his affection, as well. And it’s no good telling myself that I can’t possibly be attracted to a bandy-legged, unethical supervisor fifteen years older than me, when there are so many more suitable prospects in Vegas; every time I manage to get myself there, there’s a voice in my head going sour grapes, and I can’t seem to shut it up or ignore it.

Especially not when Grissom looks as good as he does today, in a light gray shirt with his sleeves rolled up to right below his elbows, exposing tanned forearms, his hair a little messy. I have a sudden vision of him, not Jack, in the mirror behind me, holding me, his cock buried inside me and his face against my neck. Thanks to my jeans, my sudden erection is trapped pointing the wrong way, but I’ll take pain over embarrassment any day.

He’s looking at me, his blue eyes impatient, and for a paranoid second I think he knows, but then he asks me if there’s something else I wanted, and I realize that everybody else is gone.

“No. No, nothing,” I hastily reassure him. I try not to hobble too obviously when I walk out.

One night stands are starting not to cut it anymore. I need someone to share my life and my home with. Maybe that way I’ll stop being so fixated on Grissom. It’s not a crush; it’s just loneliness and I can do something about that. I just gotta get serious about it.

 

None of us is 100% consistent. We decide on what we’re going to do, who we’re going to be, and armed with a plan, we set forth. And then something happens, and we find ourselves in a bar, drinking whiskey and listening to country music. Sappy, cry-in-your-glass, get-shit-faced kind of country music.

Or nothing in particular happens. It’s just that the plan doesn’t make us as bullet-proof as we convinced ourselves it would, when we were lying awake in bed devising it, and we need a time out to regroup. But it’s like the army, right? To build yourself up, you need to touch rock bottom first. Just consider me a little army of one: the Nick army.

Or consider me about one shot away from totally wasted, a condition that is easily corrected. I catch the bartender’s eye and point at my glass.

“Hi, cowboy.”

The rodeo’s in town, and there are plenty of real cowboys in the bar, so at first I don’t realize he’s talking to me.

“Buy me a drink?”

I’m having a little trouble focusing, but I like what I see. Blond shaggy hair, brown eyes, rangy, with big hands and feet, a little like an overgrown puppy.

“Sure. What’ll you have?”

He swings himself onto the stool next to me.

“A beer,” he says, and I nod the bartender, who’s standing in front of us, filling my glass. She looks at me a little funny.

“You sure?” she asks me.

“Mind your own business,” the boy snaps.

“You’re of legal age, right?” I ask him, and he nods.

“I’m twenty-one.”

Even if he isn’t, he had to get by a bouncer to be in here, so his ID must be a pretty convincing fake. Besides, he’s probably safer with me than a lot of people in here.

I take out a twenty and give it to the bartender. “I’m sure,” I tell her.

“So, how long are you in town for?” he asks.

“Oh, at least another couple of years. Maybe more.”

His eyes widen.

“You’re not with the rodeo?”

“LVPD,” I tell him, which is close enough, and grab his arm as he shoots to his feet. “Sit.”

He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, and sits down, but he’s balanced on his toes, and I know he’s going to take off the moment I let him go.

“Might as well have your beer. Nothing illegal has happened here so far, right?”

He shakes his head slowly, but he’s still nervous.

“What’s your name?”

“Orion.”

“Orion. Right.”

“My dad’s name was Hunter, so…” He shrugs and licks his lips. “Listen, I think maybe I gave the wrong impression—”

“You asked me to buy you a drink and I did. That’s it.”

“What do you want?” he asks, clearly not used to anybody doing him any favors.

What do I want? Damned if I know. I certainly don’t want a skinny little rentboy, who’s probably not a day over seventeen.

“Call it my good deed for the day. Drink your beer. Then get out of here.” I let go of his arm, and for a second he lifts off the stool, then sinks down on it, his shoulders slumping.

“Just my fucking luck,” he mutters dejectedly, and I grin.

“What’s your name?” he asks me after a second.

“Nick.”

“You’re not from here, though, right?”

“Dallas. How ‘bout you?”

He shrugs.

“Anybody looking for you?”

“Not anybody I want finding me,” he responds tightly, drawing random patterns on the condensation that’s formed on the outside of his mug with one fingertip.

In the years I’ve been working, I must have interviewed dozens of runaways. Sometimes there are happy endings; mostly not. You train yourself not to care too much, because there’s not a hell of whole lot you can do to help them, and the System is not always the best answer, either.

“Do you want another one?” I ask him, when he drains his mug. He looks undecided; he’s probably thinking he needs to work, but he can’t while I’m here.

“Can I have a burger instead?” he asks hesitantly.

I motion to the bartender and I order one beer each and a burger for him.

“Thanks,” he says.

“No problem.”

“I don’t want to get you into trouble,” he says suddenly.

“Don’t worry about it. You won’t.”

He wolfs the burger down, gripping it with both hands, as if someone is waiting to grab it from him. When he’s done, he licks his fingers and gives a little burp. “’scuse me,” he mumbles automatically, revealing that someone, at some point, drilled table manners into him.

He stands up.

“I gotta go.” He makes it sound more like a question than a statement, as if he’s still not quite sure of my intentions.

“Okay. Take care, Orion.”

He smiles, a quick, shy smile that almost reaches his eyes, and a second later he vanishes in the crowd. I catch another glimpse of him as he’s walking out of the bar.

“Better check for your wallet,” the bartender tells me. “That little piece of shit has been in here before, but nobody ever wants to press charges, so there’s not much we can do about him. Bouncer’s new, or he’d never have gotten through the door.”

“It’s fine,” I tell her, but I instinctively feel for my wallet. It’s still there.

“Can I get you anything else?”

I debate the question, but I don’t really feel like getting drunk – or more accurately, drunker – any more.

“No, I’m done.”

“Do you need a cab?” The steel in her voice indicates that it’s not really a question.

“I only live a few blocks over. I walked here.”

She narrows her eyes at me, as if trying to decide whether to believe me.

“You can search me for my car keys, if you want,” I offer and she relents.

The back of my neck prickles, as I turn the last corner onto my street. When I first left the bar, putting one foot in front of the other required most of my concentration, but after twenty minutes, my head feels clearer and I’m starting to be more aware of my surroundings. Something’s definitely a little off. I swing around, but there’s nothing there. Maybe a moving shadow, a dark area that suddenly grew darker, but nothing really. I suddenly remember Ross from Friends going “unagi” and I giggle. Still stinking drunk; no doubt about it.

I drop my keys as I’m trying to insert one into the front door lock. Swearing, I bend over to pick them up. Not a good move. A sudden spell of dizziness causes me to stumble forward and drop to my knees. I grunt, more in surprise than pain, and stagger to my feet, then realize that my keys are still lying on the stoop. Well, shit. I bend over, more carefully this time, holding onto the door handle just in case. I see him when I straighten up.

“What are you doing here?”

“I… I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine. Go home.”

As I say it, it occurs to me that maybe it’s not quite that simple.

“You have a place to crash, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” he answers, sounding indignant. “I told you, I was just worried about you.”

“Okay. Thank you, Orion.”

I’m more successful in my attempt to open the door this time, and I reach in to turn the entrance light on. I squint at the sudden brightness and it takes me a second to make out that he’s still standing there, just at the edge of the pool of light. I don’t know what he wants, but there’s no way I’m going to just invite a rentboy, and, if the bartender is to be believed, a pickpocket, into my home. Not when I’m this drunk.

“Are you okay?” I hear myself asking him.

“I wanted to say thank you. We can do it, if you want. For free.”

I shake my head.

“Go home, man,” I tell him gently. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“You said you didn’t want to get me into trouble. You’re not even eighteen yet, are you?” I’m not addressing his question, but at least I’m not taking potshots at his ego, either.

He hesitates, which is answer enough.

“Go home,” I repeat, waiting for him to turn around. I don’t want to shut the door in his face. I really don’t.

“Why were you there alone?” Orion asks suddenly, his voice angry. “Are you a drunk or something?”

I shake my head and close the door on him. After drinking a couple of glasses of water and brushing my teeth, I can’t resist the urge any longer, so I go and check.

He’s gone.

 

---oOo---

“Warrick, Nick, you’re with me. Suspicious fire,” Grissom says, sticking his head into the ballistics lab, where we’re working with Bobby on cataloguing the bullets, over eighty of them, retrieved from the scene of a gang-related drive-by shooting.

I stretch to ease the kinks in my back. I hate working fire sites. Most of the evidence is contaminated and the stench of smoke gets everywhere; after a couple of minutes you can taste it at the back of your throat, even if you’re wearing a mask. Still, we don’t get to pick the cases, and pretty much anything’s better than matching striation marks on bullets. Not that Bobby would agree.

Warrick takes off on his own, and Grissom catches a ride with me.

“Any casualties?” I ask him.

“Nothing serious. A couple of kids have light burns; they’re being treated on-site. Those we could hold onto, at least.”

“Kids?”

“Runaways. They were squatting. As far as we can tell from the neighbors, around twenty of them in total, but most were out, and they’re staying well clear now.”

Nah. It’s too much of a coincidence, I think uneasily. The day after I met Orion, I looked him up in the local and national runaway databases. Much as I expected, I didn’t find an Orion. A couple of Hunters, but the wrong age or description. At least he doesn’t seem to have a record either, not with Orion as an alias, at any rate.

We reach the site, at the edge of a row of tract houses that date back to the sixties and that are slated for demolition. There’s a small crowd standing to one side, paramedics, cops, and six or seven kids, most of them skinny and wearing baggy clothes, so that it’s hard to tell if they’re boys or girls. There’s only one blond, and it’s not Orion. Vega is with them; he’s good with kids, but I doubt that even he will manage to get anything out of them.

I step carefully, avoiding puddles, unsure as to what we’re looking for yet. In the beam of my flashlight, the ground floor is a mess: singed walls, broken windows, a still-smoking black bundle in one corner that looks like it might have been a sleeping bag or a quilt. The kitchen must have been gutted a long time ago, perhaps when the last owner moved out, and there’s no evidence of a hotplate or anything else that might indicate that the kids ever cooked anything here. No electricity, anyway.

“Upstairs is in a little better shape,” Warrick says, as he comes down again, warily testing the stair treads before putting his full weight on them. “There’s not much in terms of clothes and belongings, but some of these kids will probably have to start from scratch, unless they show their faces.”

“Could be for the best, if they come in,” I say, thinking of Orion. They’re old enough to handle tough situations, but too young and vulnerable to face what’s out there on their own.

Warrick shrugs. “It’s shit all around,” he says heavily, and he’s probably right.

I’m packing the last of the evidence bags and my kit into the back of the truck, when I spot him. He’s hovering at the edge of a crowd of curious bystanders, trying to blend in, but he’s almost dancing with nerves. In another couple of minutes one of the uniforms or Vega will notice him. I stare hard at him, as if that’ll make him turn my way, and, whether by coincidence or miracle, he does. His brow wrinkles for a second, as if he’s trying to remember me, and then he goes very still.

“Nick, give me another ten minutes,” Grissom says behind me, and I turn to acknowledge him. When I look back towards the crowd, Orion is gone.

“I saw a 7-Eleven around the corner and up a little ways. I’ll just go and grab a cup of coffee,” I tell Grissom. “Do you want one?”

“Thanks.”

The 7-Eleven sign is bright against the gray of dawn. The forecast is calling for another scorcher, but right now it looks more like rain, the humidity oppressive. I walk into the empty shop and head towards the coffee machine; about three seconds later Orion slips in.

“Do you want a cup of coffee?” I ask him and he nods.

I give him his cup to hold and stuff some sugar packs and creamers into my pocket for Grissom. He either drinks it completely black or with tons of sugar and cream, and you never really know which way he’s going to prefer it at any given moment.

“How about something to eat?”

Orion shakes his head and waits for me while I pay at the counter, then follows me of the store.

“What’s gonna happen to our stuff?” Orion asks.

“You can come and claim it,” I tell him.

“No questions asked?”

I look at him and his lips thin. “Aw, shit. Shit.” He looks away, and I can see his mouth working.

“Maybe it’s better this way,” I suggest. “Foster care has to be better than how you’re living right now.”

“Foster care?” he asks and gives a short laugh. “Try halfway house. Have you ever been to one?”

“They’re not all bad,” I say, even though the two times I’ve ever been to one is because a kid was seriously injured. By other kids. Still, it’s worse in the streets. It really is.

“No, thanks. I’d rather take my chances.”

And the hell of it is, even if I grab him right now, even if I march him to the nearest halfway house myself, he’ll be gone within hours.

“Do you need any money?” I ask him, then decide it’s a stupid question. Of course he needs money. There’s an ATM right outside the 7-Eleven, and I set the two coffee cups on top of a newspaper vending machine and pull out my wallet. I hesitate before picking the amount, and finally choose two hundred dollars. Orion doesn’t seem like he has a drug habit, but you never know. “Here,” I tell him, and he actually puts his hands behind his back. I thrust the bills at him. “Take it.”

He looks over my shoulder and takes a step backward, and at first I think he’s scared of me, which doesn’t make any sense. It’s only when he takes a second step that I become aware of a familiar-sounding engine idling behind me. I turn around as Orion sprints off; Grissom has pulled up to the curb. He obviously didn’t need ten minutes, after all.

Taking my time, I put the money away, pick up the coffees and climb into the truck. I’m not sure what I’ll do if Grissom tries to give chase, but he doesn’t. He simply sits there, looking at me, one wrist lying loosely on the steering wheel.

“I got you sugar and cream,” I say gruffly, emptying my pocket onto the armrest between us.

“You know him?” he asks me, and I nod.

“Do I want to know how?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

He doesn’t back down, just continues looking at me.

“I’m gay, Grissom, not a pedophile,” I tell him, even though I know that I don’t need to make that distinction for him, angry not at him so much as at myself, because I know that my whole behavior towards Orion, from the moment I laid eyes on him, could be questioned.

“I didn’t think you are,” Grissom says evenly, then lifts the lid off his coffee cup and empties in two creamers and three packs of sugar. I realize I’ve forgotten a stirrer, but he doesn’t seem to mind, just puts the cap back on and swishes the cup gently. “You tend to be drawn to lame ducks, though. Don’t get carried away.” He pauses. “Just… be careful.”

Oh, that’s really rich, coming from him. The only times he ever drops his guard is when he thinks he can help: a victim, a victim’s family or friends, Warrick. Sara. Still, there’s a conversation that’d be doomed before it ever left the starting gate, so I simply nod.

He sets his cup in the holder, and shifts into drive, but his foot is still on the brake.

“You’re gay?” he asks in mild interest, as if he didn’t know. I laugh, and the pressure around my chest loosens.

“Do you want to look for him? Give him the money?”

I gape at him, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

“No. I doubt we’d find him, anyway,” I say, not without regret.

He flashes me a quick sympathetic smile, and flicks on the turn signal, back towards the lab and in the opposite direction of wherever Orion was running to.

It’s not until I punch out and am on my way home, that I realize that Grissom not only didn’t reprimand me, he actually offered himself as my accomplice, even though I never explained how I knew Orion and my reaction couldn’t have left him feeling very reassured. I could wonder why, but that’s exactly the kind of question that can make me end up wallowing in country music and whiskey. So instead, I tell myself that he was simply concerned for the kid, fix some scrambled eggs, then lie in bed watching an early morning news show, until I fall asleep.

“No matches on the DNA?” Grissom asks.

“No.”

He grunts and continues reading.

It’s a slow shift, one of those strange lulls that seem to come out of nowhere, so rather than simply dropping off the file and coming back for it later, I’m waiting for him to look through it and approve our closing the case. He asks the occasional question, but he seems to be doing it more as a form of mental bookmarking than to confirm facts.

I spend the time trying not to stare at him, but between him, a terrarium housing his pet tarantula, and his little pig fetus, he’s by far the most attractive option in the room. Anyway, he’s directly in my line of sight. The room is so quiet I can hear the faint rasping sound the backs of his fingers are making against his stubble, as he absentmindedly strokes them up and down his jaw. I’m starting to get drowsy, so I push my butt against the back of the seat and sit up straighter in an effort to stave off sleep.

“Did you ever find him?” he asks abruptly, his eyes still on the report.

“Who?”

“That kid. A week ago.”

“Oh. No. No, I didn’t.”

The truth is that I didn’t look very hard. Orion knows my first name and where I live, and he must have seen my last name on my vest; I figure if he really needs or wants my help, he can find me easily enough.

“How did you meet him?”

Why are we back on this subject? It’s actually been closer to two weeks since the fire.

“Why?”

He looks up at that.

“Just curious,” he says mildly, but I’ve never known Grissom to be ‘just’ anything.

“He tried to hook me at Stueder’s,” I say, leaving out the parts where I bought him a couple of beers and he followed me home.

“You must have made quite an impression.”

“How do you mean?” I wish I didn’t sound so defensive, but I’ve never really learned to lie, or even omit, convincingly. I blame my momma, because I’m pretty sure I had a natural talent for prevarication until I was about six or so.

“Nothing. Just that he let you approach him after the fire.”

“Maybe he didn’t think I’d remember him,” I pretend to hazard a guess, and my cheeks heat under his skeptical glance. “At Stueder's, we ended up talking a little,” I finally compromise.

He makes a note in the file and closes it.

“Stueder’s, huh? That surprises me.”

“Yeah. Apparently there was a new bouncer at the door, didn’t realize the kid was under age.”

“No, I mean I’m surprised you’d go to Stueder’s.” He’s been leaning back in his chair the entire time, and, instead of reaching forward, tosses the file lightly onto the desk, so that it lands in front of me.

“I don’t know why,” I answer, aiming for a casual tone. It rings false, even to my own hopeful ears.

“I’ve always thought of you as being a little…” He hesitates, then smirks. “…straight-laced.”

Stueder’s has male dancers, but otherwise nothing much happens there. Hell, there’s not even a back room or a members-only second floor or anything. You can get a blow job in the restrooms, but the same holds true for pretty much any establishment in Vegas, as long as you’re discreet and know what to look for. He thinks I’m too straight-laced for Stueder’s? Jesus, that’s actually pretty insulting.

“It’s not that wild a place,” I say, stoutly defending my right to be a boring gay man, then lean over to pick up my file. Leave it alone, I think to myself, but I can’t, of course. “Anyway, I don’t know why you’d think I’m straight-laced.”

“Let me think for a second. The Cockpit Lounge. Forever Baby. And who can forget your commentary on the Plushies and Furries Convention, a case, by the way, you didn’t even work on.”

My face grows hotter with every case he ticks off his fingers, and his smirk grows correspondingly wider.

“That’s totally different.”

“Really?” he raises an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah.”

He laces his fingers together and sits back more comfortably, as if settling in for a long discussion. “How, exactly?”

I open my mouth, hoping something both half-way intelligent and politically correct will pop out on its own; sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised, but not this time. So I look at my watch instead.

“I’m sorry I have to cut this short, but I promised Archie I’d stop by; something he needs to show me.”

He says something as I walk out the door. It sounds suspiciously like “straight-laced.”

---oOo---

I’m not even that surprised to see Orion sitting on my front porch steps when I get home. Grissom mentions his name out of the blue, he suddenly turns up three hours later, yeah, why not?

I pull into the driveway and climb out of the truck. By the time I reach him, he’s standing up and dusting off the seat of his jeans.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

He digs his hands into his pockets, forcing the waistband down and revealing a concave belly and jutting hip bones. There’s a recent-looking scrape and bruise high on his left cheek, and, although he wasn’t actually clean the last two times I saw him, he’s considerably dirtier and a bit ripe now.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m starting a new service. House calls. 20% discount the first time,” he answers cockily.

“Do I look like I need to pay for it?” I ask him over my shoulder as I climb the steps.

“Well, no. But then, just because you can grill hamburgers don’t mean you don’t fork out for French coozine once in a while.” He’s right at my heels, and I don’t stop him from following me into the house.

“French what?”

“Coozine, man. Y’know, cooking.”

“Like snails and horse meat?”

He gapes at me. “You’re shitting me,” he says finally, then loses interest in his example. “Anyway, 20% off. Plus I’ll throw in an extra blowjob, if you want.”

“Orion, I offered you 200 bucks. The offer’s still good. You don’t have to do this.”

He reaches out and cups my cheek.

“I want to. It’s okay, I’d rather do it with you than with some of my other regulars.”

I grab his wrist. He has big bones, and if he were a normal high school kid, he’d probably weigh a good thirty pounds more, be on the football team and be dating a cheerleader. “Cut it out. I’m making myself a meal. Do you want something?”

“I could eat,” he says haughtily.

“Okay. Park it right there, then.”

He sits at the table, one leg folded underneath him, and watches my every move as I fry bacon and eggs and put English muffins in the toaster oven.

“Hey, Nick?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I take a shower? After we eat?”

“Yeah. You can wash your clothes too, if you want. I can lend you some shorts and a T-shirt.”

“Thanks,” he says gruffly.

Although I’m tired, I don’t consider falling asleep an option while Orion is still in the house. In fact, going anywhere near the bedroom is a downright bad idea. While he apparently has no problem accepting a free meal or shower, he draws the line at cash. That he seems to think he needs to earn, and he’s very particular about how he earns it, as I found out when I offered him mowing the lawn and washing my truck as alternative income opportunities.

I channel surf while he takes a shower and then stuffs his laundry into the washer. Afterwards, he comes and sits next to me on the couch, and I see that his upper arms and thighs are covered with bruises, many obvious finger marks. Some of his johns like it rough. He pulls one sleeve down, in a futile attempt to cover the worst of it, and I realize the topic is off bounds.

“Can we watch something else?” he asks, quickly bored with the local news.

“No.”

I half-expect an argument, but he just sighs heavily, and lies back against the arm of the couch. Ten minutes later he’s fast asleep.

The sound of the front door closing startles me awake, my heart hammering. It takes a few minutes to remember why I’m on the living room couch rather than in bed, and I get up to check on things. He’s cleaned up after himself in the bathroom. The towels he used and the shorts I lent him are in the hamper, but it looks like he kept the T-shirt. The ten 20-dollar bills are still on the kitchen table, where I left them hoping he’d take them if he didn’t have to acknowledge doing so. Shit.

The fact that he knows he can come here as a last resort makes me feel a little better. Still, it’s no life for a kid and I’ve seen enough not to want to even wonder why he prefers hustling and the streets to wherever his home might be.

---oOo---

Grissom’s alone in the break room, eating a sandwich and working on a crossword puzzle with a pen. I briefly consider coming back for my own break later, but it’s generally a good idea to grab your food when you can. He looks up when I walk in, does that fake smile acknowledgement thing people do, then returns to his puzzle.

I sit across from him, pop open my soda and unwrap my food. I’m about to take a bite, when I notice him examining my sandwich, a faintly perplexed expression on his face.

“Gyro,” I tell him. “The latest reincarnation of ‘Wok and Barf.’”

“You’re a braver man than me,” he remarks, and I grin.

Originally named ‘Wok and Roll’ and currently ‘Opa!!!’ the restaurant is a testament to the deep-held conviction of its owners that it’s not that their cooking sucks, it’s just that, after about five different attempts in as many years, they simply haven’t yet found the right ethnic food to appeal to the neighborhood. He can call me straight-laced all he likes, but at least I’m more adventurous than him with my food.

“This isn’t bad, actually,” I remark around a second mouthful.

“Or it could be that all that garlic has killed off what’s left of your taste buds,” he suggests.

“Could be,” I agree complacently.

He goes back to his crossword and I work my way through half the sandwich, wondering if I should broach the subject of Orion. He did ask yesterday, and I have this premonition that if I don’t say anything, something will happen that will end up making me look like I was lying to him.

“Funny you mentioned Orion yesterday,” I say, easing my way into the subject.

“Orion? When did I do that?”

“The runaway,” I explain.

He waits for me to continue, his pen still poised over the crossword puzzle.

“He showed up at my house this morning.”

Grissom’s eyebrows climb.

“How did he know where you live?”

I shrug and take another big bite of my sandwich. God dammit, I can feel the color rushing up my neck.

“You know, I asked him the same thing. He said he followed me from Stueder’s.”

“Why would he do that?”

I look at him blankly, at a loss for words. “I didn’t think to ask him that,” I say weakly.

Grissom puts the pen down, folds his arms on the table and gives me his full attention.

“Go on,” he instructs, his tone a little ominous.

“There’s not much more to say. I offered him a meal and a shower, and then he was on his way.”

“Nick… I have to tell you, I’m not sure you’re doing the right thing here. Not for him, and not for you.”

I push the rest of my sandwich aside.

“I’m not either,” I admit. “The thing is, Grissom, I’m not coming up with a better plan.”

He shrugs. “Turn him in.”

“What’s the point of that? He’ll either end up in juvie or in a halfway house he’ll run away from three seconds later. Either way, he’s worse off than he is now.”

“You can’t harbor a runaway. Or an underage male prostitute.”

“I’m not harboring him,” I protest, then a thought occurs to me, making me feel like I suddenly stepped under an ice-cold shower. With my history, he could be thinking that— “Grissom, you know I’m not doing anything with this kid, right?”

“Of course I know that,” he says brusquely. “The problem isn’t what I know, however. It’s what things can look like.”

“What things can look like,” I repeat tonelessly. “Yeah, I guess you’d know all about that.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he frowns.

“Well, Grissom, things look an awful lot like you’re having an affair with a subordinate.”

I regret the words the moment they’re out of my mouth, but I can’t tear my eyes away from him, waiting for his reaction. He doesn’t say anything for long seconds, just stares at me, his eyes blazing with fury. I find myself hoping that what I’m looking at is the righteous indignation of the unjustly accused. If he denies it, I’ll believe him. Maybe just because I want to believe him, which is pathetic, but I will.

“Worse come to worst, I get fired,” he finally says, causing my heart to sink like a stone. “Worse come to worst for you, you get fired and possibly accused of statutory rape. And that’s even assuming this kid tells the truth that you never touched him, and how much are you willing to bet on that?”

“That’s my problem,” I snap. It’s a fucking stupid and childish answer, but I don’t have a better one.

“You’re right. It is.” He crumbles his sandwich wrapper and used napkins together with quick, angry movements, and stands up. “Forgive me for giving a damn.” He tosses everything, unfinished crossword included, into the trash can, and then looks back at me. “And if you’re going to threaten me with something, go ahead and report me. Who knows, you might even be doing me a favor.”

“I’m not threatening you.” For once, I sound a lot calmer than I feel. “I wouldn’t do that.”

He must hear something in my voice, because his whole demeanor changes, his mouth loosening, his shoulders dropping a little. He takes a deep breath and stands quietly for a few seconds, his blue eyes studying me.

“I’m not…” He shakes his head. “Things aren’t always straightforward,” he says quietly.

“No,” I agree softly, my own anger spent.

He dips his head in an awkward little nod and walks out.

Grissom has a lot of faults. A lot. As I sit, finishing my soda and still a little numb from what just happened, I realize that this is maybe the first time since I’ve known him that I’m not excusing them, minimizing their significance, or conversely, emphasizing them to convince myself that he’s not worth what I feel for him. For the first time, he seems as human and confused to me as the rest of us, and I’m relieved. He’s nothing special. I can move on.

It’s only later that I realize that I didn’t erect another defense against him, I actually tore the last one down. Because it’s a hell of a lot harder being indifferent to a real human being than to an abstract composite of qualities and faults.

When something fairly momentous happens in my life, for some reason and despite all experience to the contrary, I always expect further significant, perhaps even life-altering, events to follow. I considered my argument with Grissom in the break room and my subsequent re-assessment of him as falling in the ‘fairly momentous’ category. However, as usual, absolutely nothing changed afterwards.

Grissom and I slipped back into our normal working relationship and neither of us ever referred to what was said that night again. Sometimes we joke or talk about something that isn’t work-related, but mostly we stick to discussing the cases or, if we’re at breakfast with the team, sports.

At least four or five times per month, my arrival at the lab coincides with those of Grissom and Sara. As far as I can tell, they’re still going strong. I’ve also come to the conclusion that there is no conspiracy of silence surrounding their relationship. People simply haven’t noticed. In fact, just the other day Warrick commented that Sara seems to be over her crush on Grissom, no longer anxious for his approval or always trying to prove what a good job she’s doing. I was about to disagree with him, but thinking back, I realized that Warrick’s description of her behavior was actually pretty accurate. All he got wrong was the reason for the change. She now has Grissom, she’s won him, so she no longer needs to work at it or feel insecure.

Orion drops by every couple of weeks, always without warning. I cook him a meal, he takes a shower and does his laundry, he propositions me, I refuse, and then he takes off again. Occasionally he shows up higher than a kite, and I don’t let him in the house; the first time I did that, he yelled and kicked my door for a solid five minutes, so I opened it and threatened to beat him to a pulp, and it apparently had happened to him enough that he believed me. Now he just leaves, and comes back sober after a few days, and he’s okay for the next three or four visits, as well. He’s taken to leaving some of his stuff at my place; while he still won’t take cash, he let me buy him a couple of pairs of jeans and some T-shirts, and although I’ve never looked through the backpack he’s stuck in my closet, I’m pretty sure he’s also stashing cash at my place.

I continue to frequent Stueder’s whenever I want to hook up with someone. A few months back, I ran into Robert, the DNA lab tech from days. We sort of linked up for a while, but when the logistics of double shifts and missed sleep started working against us, neither of us cared enough to try and figure something out and we drifted apart.

Same old, same old, month in, month out.

---oOo---

“What do you say we get out of here after this round?”

“Okay,” I agree, although I’m not really sure I’m in the mood. I’ve seen Tad around before, and we’ve talked, but for some reason we never really connected. It’s quiet at Stueder’s tonight, and I guess both of us are horny enough and bored enough to settle for each other.

Tad smiles at someone over my shoulder.

“How ‘bout we ask the twink to join us? He’s been making cow eyes our way for the last ten minutes.”

I twist around in my stool to look behind me, and I see Orion smiling at us suggestively. Great.

“Excuse me for a second,” I tell Tad, and hop off my seat. Despite losing his smile at my expression, Orion stands his ground until I’m about two steps away, then takes a nervous step backwards. Scram, I mouth, and he glowers at me, then flounces off towards the exit. The boy may be persistent, but he’s not dim.

I return to Tad. “I guess he must not have liked my looks,” I tell him and Tad shrugs.

About fifteen minutes later, he either recognizes or pretends to recognize somebody at the other end of the bar. “I haven’t seen him in months! You don’t mind if we do this some other time, do you?”

Nah, I don’t mind.

I find Orion waiting for me on the porch.

“Maybe one of these days you’ll give me a key.”

“Maybe. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though.”

“If you’d gone with that loser, I might have ended up waiting here for hours. What would the neighbors say?”

I’m pretty sure the neighbors have already said all there is to say, luckily none of it to my face. I sit down next to him on the porch steps.

“Not working tonight?” I ask him.

“Nah. I took the day off.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“It’s my birthday.”

It’s too dark to see his expression clearly, but he sounds like he’s telling the truth.

“Really? That’s great, man. Happy Birthday!”

He ducks his head, like he’s not sure how to respond.

I stand up and look down at him. “How ‘bout I take you for an ice cream?” I ask him heartily, trying to pretend that a birthday actually is something special and reason to celebrate. “Or maybe something to eat? Have you had dinner?”

He stands up, as well. “Ice cream’s fine,” he says. “But I thought…” He hesitates, then takes a deep breath. “I thought, maybe you’d let me stay over tonight. Seeing as I’m now of age and everything.”

“Orion, listen—”

He interrupts me by stepping against me and kissing me. He’s an inch taller than me, and he wraps his arms around my shoulders.

“Please, Nick. Please,” he breathes against my lips, then licks them.

My hands instinctively find his hips, and clench on them. I guess I start out by trying to push him away, but he resists, and suddenly I’m sliding my hands under his waistband, his skin warm against my palms, and I’m kissing him back. He moans, a small sound full of want that sends the blood rushing to my groin. He reaches down between us and cups my hard-on and that brings me to my senses. I pull my hands out from under his jeans and push him away.

“Orion, stop it. Christ!”

He doesn’t argue or protest. In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, He just steps up to me again, slides his arms under my jacket and presses himself against me, burying his face into my neck, nibbling and mouthing at the tendon there. I tangle my fingers in his hair and yank his head backwards, until I can see his face. His eyes are half-closed, and he licks his lips in a way that I’ve always found ridiculous when watching porn, but which now makes my stomach coil with heat, and I kiss him again. His mouth opens under mine, and he lets my tongue in. He pushes his leg between mine, and I rub myself against his thigh.

I have one more chance to stop things, when some small, still sane part of me realizes that I can’t very well bend him over the porch railing and take him there.

“Inside,” I gasp, tearing away from him and stumbling to the front door. My hand’s shaking so badly, I can barely insert the key into the lock. I hit the light switch the moment I’m through the door, trying to break the mood.

He pushes in behind me, shoving the door closed and leaning back against it. We stare at each other; his cheeks are warm with color, his lips swollen, and, his brown eyes still glued to mine, he slowly and deliberately unbuttons the fly of his jeans and pushes them half-way down his thighs. He’s not wearing underwear, and his uncut cock is absolutely beautiful as it stands against his belly.

“Are you gonna say no to me?” he whispers.

“No,” I answer hoarsely, and he laughs, sounding happy and triumphant at the same time.

“Are you mad at me?” Orion asks me in the morning.

He’s lying on his stomach, his arms folded underneath him and his face turned towards me. I push his hair off his neck and then follow the groove of his spine down to the small of his back with my fingertips, feathering over the fine blond hairs there, and he squirms a little at the sensation, his ass flexing.

“Yes,” I tell him, and I half-mean it. The little shit took advantage of my weakness, actually seduced me, and I don’t care how Victorian that sounds. “Are you really eighteen?”

“Yeah,” he answers without hesitation. “I know I can’t prove it, but I really am.”

I roll over onto my back and stare up at the ceiling. It’s like I can’t take a deep enough breath, like I’m slowly choking. I wish it made me feel better that he’s of legal age, but yesterday he was just a kid and off bounds, and right now all I want to do is lift his legs to my shoulders and sink myself back into him, and what the hell does that say about me, that I can make that kind of a transition so easily?

His palm is warm on my chest.

“Nick.”

I turn to look at him.

“It’s not like I was a virgin, dude. I’ve probably fucked more than you have.”

“What’s your real name?”

He frowns at me. “What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know. None, I guess.”

“Hunter. Hunter Thomas Sewald, Jr.” He says it lightly, emphasizing the first syllables in a sing-song voice, almost like he’s making fun of it. “My mom used to call me Orion, on account of my dad’s name also being Hunter. She was sort of a hippy.”

“I looked for a Hunter in the missing kids’ database. Back when we met. I didn’t find anybody matching your age or description.”

“I guess I got lucky and nobody reported me missing when I left home, then,” he says matter-of-factly.

“Where’s home?”

He pushes himself up and swings one leg over me, so that he’s sitting astride my stomach.

“Who cares?” he asks, then braces his hands on my shoulders and bends down to kiss me. “Can I fuck you?”

“Orion…”

“What? Are you just a top?”

“No, but—”

“You’re my friend, Nick. When I’m with you…” He looks away, then gestures in resignation. “I don’t know. I just want it to be normal with someone. I want someone to know it’s me, to do it for me.”

There are faint shadows of bruises on his thighs and ribs, and I trace them lightly.

“Let me help you,” I tell him impulsively. “Stay here, get your GED. Stop turning tricks.”

He gapes at me for a second, then bursts out laughing. “Aw, fuck off, you old softie,” he says almost angrily, and starts to lift himself off of me. I trap his hips against me, then sit up, so that I can reach his mouth.

“Promise me you’ll be gentle?” I falsetto.

“Whatever,” he mumbles against my lips, his cock suddenly hard and hot between our bellies.

My phone ringing wakes me up just as Orion reaches for it and I have to swat his hand away.

“Stokes.”

He wraps himself around me, reaching for my cock, and I have to swat his hand away from that, too.

“Nick. You need to come in.”

“Catherine? What’s wrong?”

“Sara’s been abducted.”

I’m half-way out of bed before she even finishes her sentence.

“Okay. I’ll be there right away.”

I take a quick shower, and then struggle to pull my jeans on over my still damp legs. Orion is sitting up in bed, watching me.

“Do you want me to leave?” he asks, as I’m trying to simultaneously buckle my belt and find a pair of clean socks.

I pause for a second to look at him. He seems to take that as a yes, because he scoots to the side of the bed and swings his feet to the floor.

“No, it’s okay. Stay as long as you like.”

After that argument with Grissom, and what he’d said about things not always being straightforward, I sometimes wondered if he actually loved Sara, or if he was with her for some other reason. Not that it made much difference one way or another. I guess I have my answer now. Funny how it can hurt to have something you know anyway confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt.

I watch the helicopter lift into the air, then turn back towards the car, rubbing at my eyes. Sofia is leaning against the hood, waiting for me, and I put my sunglasses on.

“We felt pretty much the same way when we found you,” she says tactfully once we’re both in the car, mistaking my outburst for relief. And perhaps she’s partly right, maybe it is knowing that we found Sara, the two of us, that’s making me so emotional. Sofia doesn’t look at me, and pretends not to hear me, and after a while I’m okay again.

---oOo---

The “Wok and Barf” is being renovated. The interior is gutted and a sign on the door brightly proclaims that it’s under new management. Just like everybody else in the lab, I’ve laughed at the previous owners, been caustic about their repeated efforts to make a success of their store, and complained endlessly about the food. Nevertheless, the realization that they finally gave up really depresses me.

I arrive home in a funk, and don’t notice Orion until I pull into the driveway. Like always, he’s sitting on the porch steps. He started smoking a couple of months back, and it looks like he just lit up, so I sit next to him, crossing my arms on my knees.

“I got a job,” he says suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“Some dude, wants to do this film about straight college guys going queer. He says I have the right look. A guy I know who’s worked with him say he’s legit. He pays extra for bare-backing, but I told him no way, and he’s cool with that.”

“Oh, Orion,” I say heavily, every bit of my disappointment evident in my voice.

“What? It’s good money, and at least I’ll be taking it up the butt from someone my own age for a change.”

“Thanks.”

He bumps me with his shoulder.

“Ah, stop bitching. You know I meant the johns, not you.”

He might not have meant me, but I’m eighteen years older than him, double his age, and I’m feeling every one of those years right now.

“I really wish you wouldn’t do it.”

He stands up and flicks his cigarette into the street.

“It’s not like I have many options. I’m getting older. Might as well get a few more jobs in before I end up wearing a paper hat at Burger King.”

I look up at him. He’s still underweight, but he’s finally grown into his hands and feet and he’s half a head taller than me now. I don’t know how many times I’ve offered for him to stay with me and get his GED since that first time, over half a year ago. He always refuses, and he’s never given me a good reason why.

“You look depressed,” he tells me.

I think about explaining about the “Wok and Barf”, but he probably won’t understand.

“Nah. Just tired.”

He bends down, braces his hands on my knees and kisses me.

“Let’s go to bed, then,” he says.

By the time I wake up, he’s gone, but I know he’ll be back again in ten days or so.

Same old, same old.

Even though I’ve been working the graveyard shift in Las Vegas for almost nine years, I’ve kept my Sundays as close to how I used to spend them in Dallas  as I can. We were never big church-goers, and Sundays were meant to be lazy; a late brunch, hanging out with the family, watching the football game together, that sort of thing. These days I can only call my family rather than be with them, and sometimes I’m working the whole weekend, so my “Sunday” time is pretty short, but I stick with it. And once he discovered that, more often than not, brunch means IHOP or, when I’m pretending to pay attention to my diet, the Mesa Grill, Orion became a regular visitor. He shows up Saturday night if I’m not working, or he’ll be waiting for me on the porch Sunday mornings.

I was off last night, but Orion only showed up at four in the morning (because, as he informed me, “Self-employed businessmen can’t always choose their working hours”). We generally go out by ten, early enough so that we avoid the crowds of hung-over tourists and yelling kids, but we never made it out of bed until almost eleven, and decided to stay home. Now, Orion’s slumped over a mug of coffee, his head propped on one hand, and every so often he nods off for a few seconds. I’m making something that started out as an omelet, and is now looking more like scrambled eggs.

“Was that the doorbell?” he asks suddenly, and jumps up in an almost stunning display of energy, given his state just three seconds ago. He returns a couple of minutes later.

“Some old dude is asking for ya.”

“Who?” I ask him and he shrugs.

“Some old dude,” he repeats. “I didn’t let him in, so he’s waiting for you on the porch.”

I take the pan off the heat, because it’ll probably take a little while to convince the old dude that I don’t particularly care to be saved. I open the front door and find Grissom, looking a little rumpled and waiting patiently, his hands in his pockets.

“Grissom? What are you doing here?”

He doesn’t answer, just stares at me, squinting a little. I can feel Orion hovering behind me.

“Griss?” I try again.

“Man, he’s fucked,” Orion informs me in a loud stage whisper, and as Grissom slowly focuses on him, I realize that Orion’s right. Grissom is monumentally drunk.

I notice the Mercedes parked at a crazy angle against the curb, the driver’s side door still open.

“Jesus, you didn’t actually drive here, did you?”

He slowly turns around to look at his car, then back at me.

“It’s too far to walk,” he explains, and Orion giggles.

I sigh.

“Watch him,” I tell Orion, as if Grissom were capable of suddenly charging off somewhere, and I jog to the car. The key’s still in the ignition, so I park the car in the driveway next to my truck, and lock up. I return to the porch to find that Orion has followed my instructions to the letter: he’s watching Grissom with a highly amused expression on his face.

“Come on in,” I tell Grissom. “We’re in the kitchen.”

Grissom follows me, and Orion shuts the door.

“Would you like something to drink?” I ask Grissom once he’s sitting down.

“Do you have bourbon?” he asks politely, and Orion giggles again.

“Yes, I do,” I answer, making no attempt to retrieve it. This seems to puzzle Grissom and he frowns, like he’s trying to work out what he should do next.

“How about some coffee?” I offer, because otherwise it could take all day for him to come up with an alternative.

“Okay,” he says agreeably.

Orion sets a mug in front of him, and I pour him some coffee.

“Is this your boyfriend?” Grissom asks me.

I hesitate and glance at Orion and he gives me a slightly twisted smile, like he knows what I’m going to say before I say it. I answer no, my eyes still on Orion, and I see that I haven’t disappointed in disappointing him.

“I think I’ll be off,” Orion tells me and he walks out of the kitchen. I follow him.

“You don’t have to go,” I tell him, and he pauses in the act of pulling a sweatshirt over his head, holding the hem up so that he can see me.

“You want me to stay?” he asks. When I don’t immediately answer, he finishes pulling on the sweatshirt, then briskly pushes the cuffs up to his elbows. “This is the guy, right?”

Even though I’ve never told Orion about Grissom, I know what he’s asking me.

“No.”

He cocks his head at me, suddenly looking wise beyond his years. “Okay,” he says, and kisses me lightly on the lips. “See ya.”

“Orion…”

He ignores me, and a second later he’s gone.

Grissom is still just where I left him, and I sit down across the table from him.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him again.

“You and I, we used to be friends, right?”

“Okay,” I say dubiously, wondering where he’s going with this.

“And now we aren’t.”

“Uh huh.” I can’t disagree with him there.

“So I was trying to figure out what changed between us.”

In some corner of my mind I admire how clearly he’s enunciating. If what he was saying made any sense and if it weren’t for the alcohol fumes, you’d think he was sober.

He abruptly changes the subject on me.

“I’ve seen your boyfriend before, haven’t I?”

“Could be.”

“Where did he go?”

He looks around the kitchen, as if only just noticing Orion’s absence.

“He had to leave,” I say impatiently. “Grissom, what the hell are you doing here?”

He purses his lips. “You’re not a very good host,” he says reprovingly.

“I’m sorry. Entertaining my boss when he turns up drunk at my door on a Sunday morning doesn’t occur too often, so I’m a little out of practice.”

He needs a little time to work that out.

“I should have called first,” he says finally, making me laugh, and he smiles blearily at me.

“Does Sara know where you are?”

“I doubt it,” he answers.

“D’you wanna call her?”

“Not particularly.” He stumbles over the words, and repeats them more slowly. “Not. Particularly.”

For the life of me, I can’t figure out what he’s doing here, but he’s already ignored my direct question three times, and I doubt I’ll have more success the fourth time around.

“Have you ever been with a woman?”

“Say what?”

“Sexually. Have you ever been with a woman.”

He seems to have forgotten that there is evidence and testimony on file proving that I've been with at least one woman, and I figure that now isn’t the time to reminisce about Kristy Swanson.

“Yes.”

“How was it?”

“What?”

“For you, I mean.”

“Jesus, Grissom, what the hell kind of a question is that?”

He shrugs. “I just wondered. What it’s like, being with somebody that doesn’t fit one’s normal…” He pauses, concentrating on his coffee. “…proclivity,” he concludes. “You’re the only one I know well enough to ask.”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

What the hell. He’s never gonna remember any of his academic research tomorrow, anyway.

“Well, with a guy I don’t have to feel anything for him to find him hot or to get it up. With a woman, there has to be something else.”

“Affection?”

“Not necessarily. Just a connection of some sort. Could be anything. Liking the same baseball team. Once you get over any squeamishness or hang-ups about different body parts, sex is pretty much sex.”

“So it doesn’t make much difference who you’re with. As long as there’s a connection.”

“I guess.” I’m not really satisfied with my answer, and I think about it for a couple of seconds. “I take that back. It doesn’t make much difference for a one-night stand. For the long haul, there’s gotta be more.”

“Affection?” he asks again.

“Desire. Longing. I can’t see myself feeling that way for any woman. I never have.”

My stomach suddenly rumbles and I remember the eggs. I get up to check on them, but they’re a cold, congealed mess, so I empty the pan in the trash and prepare myself a large bowl of cereal. He watches me the same way Orion does, when he’s hungry.

“Would you like some, as well?”

“Please.”

He gulps down the first few spoonfuls, then continues more deliberately, and I wonder if this isn’t some belated attempt to coat his stomach or sober up. I know that he was off last night. When did he start drinking?

“Are you sure you don’t want to call Sara?”

“Positive.”

There’s a code between guys. If one behaves in a way that would get him in trouble with his other half, our obligation is to provide a safe haven and to help conceal any evidence of said behavior. So it’s hard to insist that Grissom do what’s right, even though Sara’s probably worried about him if he just up and disappeared. Unless…

“Did you guys have an argument or something?”

He pushes his empty bowl to the side and wraps his hands around his mug.

“She left me,” he says casually, and I stare at him, my mouth hanging open, certain I must have misunderstood him.

“She left you?”

He doesn’t bother to confirm it, just leans back in his chair and looks at me with a half-smile on his face, looking pleased at my surprise.

“When?”

“Last Tuesday.”

I shake my head, still sure I’m missing something. There’s been a persistent rumor floating around that they’re either engaged or already married. I know that last Tuesday she handed in her resignation with immediate effect, but scuttlebutt says it was due to pregnancy complications. She left him?

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I don’t want to talk about her any more.”

I pour us both some more coffee, and we sit in silence for a while.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?”

Here we go again.

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“But what’s his name?”

“Hunter.”

“No, that’s not it,” he mutters. “I’m sure I’ve seen him before.”

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. He’s not going to let it go.

“You have,” I admit finally. “Almost two years back.”

“The runaway,” he says, and he must be sobering up if he can remember that, when he couldn’t remember about Kristy. His brow wrinkles, then clears as he makes the connection. “Hunter. Orion.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s grown up.”

“Yeah.”

“We probably should have either said more to each other that night, or left well enough alone,” he muses. “That’s when things changed, isn’t it?”

I smooth out my napkin on the table, then fold it into half, then half again.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him a fourth time, concentrating all the while on the napkin. Why is he stirring up things that are best left alone? I’m no longer the only person who knows that he was with Sara, and like he said, we’re not friends; why doesn’t he go cry on Brass’ or Catherine’s shoulder?

“I don’t know,” he answers simply. “I just don’t know.”

He asks for the restroom and I direct him, then start to tidy up the kitchen.

I used to fantasize about sharing Sunday mornings with Grissom. Now that he’s here, I find myself missing Orion and his uncomplicated presence. Not that anything is simple with Orion, either, but at least we both know what we want on Sunday mornings, and it’s not fruitless trips down memory lane or exploring what-might-have-beens.

Grissom returns, his face and throat still damp, wet curls sticking to his forehead. He leans a hip against the counter.

“I called a cab,” he says. “If I can hitch a ride with you tomorrow after shift, I can pick up my car then.”

“I can swing by and pick you up before work, if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary. Thank you, though.”

We make awkward conversation until the cabbie tootles his horn outside and then the rest of my ruined Sunday stretches out endlessly ahead of me.

I’m dozing in front of the TV, when my doorbell rings. Twice in one day. How lucky am I? I open the door to find Orion standing outside, swaying a little.

“Are you high?”

“Fuck you,” he responds thickly. “Double standard, much?”

I open the door wider and stand back. He limps inside and throws himself on the couch, scowling.

“It’s just weed,” he mutters after a few moments.

“Why are you limping?”

He squints up at me. “Huh? Oh. I got a blister from walking too far.” He toes off his sneaker and holds up his bare foot. There’s a blister forming right at the ball.

“That’s what happens when you don’t wear socks,” I tell him unsympathetically.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stop nagging. Is the old dude still around? I saw his car outside.”

“He called a cab.”

“So what’s his story?”

I don’t want to talk about Grissom.

“Have you had dinner?”

“Yeah. I gave one of the kids at Mickey Dee’s a blow job and he slipped me a super-size Big Mac combo, and a couple of apple pies. I’m not normally so cheap, but I had the munchies.”

He doesn’t usually provide me with full details, only when he’s trying to needle me. I’ve learned that the best way to deal with it is to breeze by it.

“Good,” I say, and sit in the armchair.

“I wouldn’t mind a beer, though.”

“Help yourself.”

He extends his bare foot my way, and when I don’t react, he gets up and walks slowly to the kitchen, the fact that he’s still wearing the one shoe exaggerating his limp. My little drama queen.

“Do you want one too?” he calls out.

“No, thanks.”

He comes back and sits on the floor in front of me, leaning his back against my legs.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says after a while.

“About?”

“Even if I get my GED, I’ll only qualify for shit jobs afterwards.”

“As opposed to now, when your career prospects are so brilliant.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. That without even the GED, they’ll be worse. So maybe I should go for it. I mean I wasn’t the best student when I was in school, but I’m not stupid either.”

“No, you’re not.” He’s in a weird mood, so I’m carefully neutral, in case he changes his mind again, just to piss me off.

“You know, I was reading about these business women, they hire educated guys to escort ‘em to functions and stuff, and to have sex afterwards. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.”

I roll my eyes.

“I think they generally prefer ‘em a little older than you. And a lot better looking.”

He lays his head back on my knees and smiles up at me.

“You think I’m good-looking though, right?”

“Not really, no.”

“Ah, screw you,” he says without heat. “Anyway, what do you say?”

“To what?”

“Getting my GED, you jerk.”

I cup his face in my hands, and lean over him to look into his eyes. His hair smells of the weed he was smoking earlier. “Are you saying you’ll take me up on my offer?”

“If it’s still open,” he says a little shyly.

“Are you going to stop turning tricks?”

He hesitates. “I might be needing some pocket money, once in a while.”

It’s not a hundred percent of what I’d like for him, but even if I force a promise from him now, he’ll most likely break it. And I suddenly remember how Kristy, whom I hadn’t thought of in a long time until this morning, was never once honest with me.

“Orion?”

“Yeah?”

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

“If you don’t wanna help me any more, just say so,” he bristles, and I brush my thumb lightly against his lips.

“The offer’s still good. I just want to understand. You were really adamant about not wanting any of all this before.”

He raises his head so that I can’t see his face anymore, and my hands drop to his nape, kneading at the sudden tension there.

“What? You can tell me,” I urge him gently.

“I want to better myself,” he says, hooking his fingers in the air to simulate quotation marks. I must have been channeling a heavy dose of Cisco during one my attempts to convince him.

“Why didn’t you want to better yourself last week?”

“I don’t know, man,” he says impatiently, shrugging my hands away. “I just changed my mind. What’s with the fifth degree?” He stands up and nervously rubs his palms against his thighs. “Are you working tonight?”

“Yep.”

“Can I stay here while you’re out?”

I never thought it through.

All those offers I made, I’m thinking, get him off the streets, get him to where he has half a chance in life, and I never considered that I haven’t even given him a key to my house, that the second bedroom is full of junk and doesn’t even have a pull-out sofa, much less a bed, that from his perspective I’ve been telling him to place all his trust in me and to depend on me for everything, when the only times he sleeps here is after we’ve fucked. And sure, part of that was him, but most of it was me.

My keys are lying in their usual place on a shelf in the entrance. I go get them, and I thread the front door key off the ring.

“Here.”

He extends his hand slowly, and I drop the key into his palm. He wraps his fingers tightly around it.

“What about you?”

“I have a spare at the lab. I can have a copy made.”

He shoves the key deep into his pocket. After a few seconds, he pats the outside of his pocket with his fingertips, as if to make sure the key’s still there.

“Don’t lose it,” I warn him, and he shakes his head.

“Next weekend we can set up the second bedroom for you.”

He nods, his eyes suddenly filling with tears, and he makes a little inarticulate sound, then almost runs to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind him. I hear the water running, but when I finally bang on the door, because I need to get ready for work, he comes out fully clothed, and he doesn’t let me see his face.

“There’s no fucking way I’m going to learn all this,” Orion moans, running his fingers through his hair and making it stand on end. “Who the hell even cares what the functional unit of the kidney is known as?”

“The nephron?” I volunteer, because I know it pisses him off when I do that.

He glares at me, flips to the back of his book, where the answer key is, then turns back to the original page.

“Well?” I ask, and then, when he pointedly ignores me: “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“Oh, fuck off,” he mutters, then painstakingly highlights a line of text, gnawing at his lower lip in concentration.

“Okay, I will.” I pick up my keys. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Play safe!” he yells, as I shut the door behind me.

Stueder’s is hopping tonight. I haven’t been in a couple of months, and they’ve changed the décor. I guess we’re supposed to be reminded of an airport lounge. Real subtle subliminal message there, what happens in Vegas and so on. Classy.

“Hey,” the bartender says, putting a beer in front of me. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” She shoots off again, not waiting for a response.

I take a sip and survey the crowd. Mostly businessmen from out of town, and a number of locals who also pretend to be from someplace else. Stueder’s is not the place to come to if you’re looking for anything more than a couple-of-nights’ stand. Which suits me just fine.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

I turn around to see a guy with a comb-over and a very determined look on his face. His left hand is in his pocket, and I’ll bet anything he’s wearing a wedding ring. I hold up my beer to show him that I don’t need another drink, and start to turn away, when he sticks out his right hand.

“I’m Tom.”

In an automatic reflex I shake it. “Nick.”

Actually that was a pretty good move. Maybe the hair caused me to underestimate him.

He leans an elbow on the bar, standing a little too close.

“I noticed you the moment you walked in,” he says in a deep voice, staring into my eyes.

“I’m actually waiting for someone,” I tell him. His face falls, and he reaches up to smooth his hair down. I was right about the wedding ring.

“You might want to take the ring off,” I suggest.

He starts to pull it off, then ends up twisting it nervously around his finger.

“I’ve never done this before,” he confesses. “You seemed like a nice guy, so I—”

“I’m not,” I interrupt him, not wanting to hear it. “And I’m waiting for somebody.”

He gets the message and moves off and I take another swig of beer.

They’ve changed the music too, from classic rock to some type of synthesizer pop stuff. Shit. I used to enjoy coming to Stueder’s, it was laid-back and you could relax. Now it’s turned desperate, just like most other places in town, and next thing you know, they’ll be putting in a back room. I resolve to finish my beer and go home.

Grissom walks through the door just as I’m motioning to the bartender in order to pay.

“No fucking way,” I mutter.

“What was that?” the bartender asks.

“Uh, nothing. Bring me another beer?”

“Sure.”

I sink down on my bar stool and watch him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Grissom ill at ease in new surroundings, and he’s looking pretty relaxed now, as well, his eyes sharp with interest, a small smile tilting his mouth. He’s also looking pretty damn good, in a dark-colored, short-sleeved shirt that’s open at the neck. I like Grissom’s neck. And his chin. I also like his arms. And his ass. I especially like his ass. Which I actually can’t see right now, because he’s heading my way.

“Hi, Nick,” he says when he reaches me, for all the world as if he expected to find me here.

“Grissom.”

He perches on the stool next to mine.

“This place has changed since I was last here.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Uh huh.” He motions to the bartender and when she comes over, he orders a club soda.

“You left your cell phone at home,” he informs me.

I pat my pocket, where I normally keep it, and realize he’s right.

“So how did you know where to find me?” Even as I’m asking, I know the answer. I’m going to fucking kill that boy. He knows my cell phone is off limits.

“You might want to tell him that if he’s going to pick up your phone, he shouldn’t use your name. We were talking for a good two or three minutes before I realized it wasn’t you.”

And after I kill him, I’m going to beat the crap out of him.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

Grissom grins. “He actually does a pretty fair imitation of you. He slipped up when he called me ‘dude’, though.”

Oh, he’s in for a world of hurt.

“Why were you looking for me?”

“Warrick and Greg both called in sick. So has everybody else in the lab, who had the tuna fish melt at Melvin’s this morning. I was checking to see if you can come help out.”

“Yeah, sure. No problem.”

“Oh, I know it’s no problem. You’ve already agreed to come in, so long as somebody could give you a ride in. So here I am. Dude.”

The crime lab truck is parked right outside the door. The bouncer seems relieved to see us.

“You said a minute. You’re scaring away the customers,” he growls at Grissom.

“Sorry,” Grissom apologizes perfunctorily, then climbs in on the passenger side. Apparently Orion didn’t negotiate that someone actually drive me.

Half-way through the shift, we get called out to a scene near Lake Mead, and it’s almost noon before we’re done. It’s one of those times when I wish one really could click one’s heels and be home. I’m hungry, I’m sticky with sweat, and I’m so tired I could fall asleep right here and now. A couple of guys from days showed up an hour ago to take over the evidence, so as soon as Grissom returns from wherever the hell’s he’s disappeared to, we’re set for home. I sit on the tailgate of the truck waiting for him and trying to resist the urge to lie down and take a nap.

He finally appears, and I climb slowly to my feet.

“All set?”

He looks at me appraisingly.

“Why don’t I drive?” he suggests, and I immediately hand the key over.

“Thanks. I wasn’t expecting to work, so I didn’t really get much sleep yesterday.”

“I appreciate your coming in at such short notice,” he says once we’re in the truck.

“No big deal,” I shrug. “It’s not like I had something better to do.” Or someone better to do, I add mentally. Comb-over Guy had been staring at me with a frown from across the bar, looking more and more determined as the minutes ticked by, and I’m pretty sure Grissom saved me from being cussed at for being a liar.

Grissom turns north on US 93 and I narrow my eyes against the shimmering glare of the pavement, wishing I had my sunglasses with me.

“Orion, right?” he asks suddenly.

“Yeah.”

“He’s living with you?”

I consider telling him it’s none of his business or asking him why he’s asking. In the end it simpler to just answer, make it all seem normal, unexeptional.

“Yes.”

He drives on in silence. Despite the AC, the sun shining through the windshield is warming the cabin and I start to get that woozy feeling, when I know I’m on the verge of nodding off.

“Are you and he… together?” Grissom asks, and I’m too sleepy to prevaricate.

“No. Not really.”

“What does ‘not really’ mean?”

I shrug. “I’m not sure we ever made a conscious decision about it. We just sort of drifted together. Tomorrow or the day after, he’ll meet someone else, someone his own age, and I doubt he’ll look back.”

“What about you?”

I turn my head to look at him. He’s wearing sunglasses and his nose looks a little sunburned.

“What about me?”

“You’re making it sound like it’s only his choice to move on.”

I’ve never really thought about it. I’m a temporary stop for Orion, I know that, and it’s fine with me. I can bide my time. In any case, it’s not like I have anybody to move on to. And I’m thankful Orion is around; Sara might have left him, but Grissom is as unavailable as ever, and it’s really screwing with my head these days.

He pulls off into a rest area with a mobile canteen parked at the entrance.

“I need a drink,” he mutters. “Do you want anything?”

“A Coke, please.”

He nods and climbs out of the truck. He returns after a few minutes and hands me an ice cold can, then drives the car to the far end of the rest area, parks, pops open his own soda and drinks thirstily, emptying the can and placing it in his cupholder.

“I did that with Sara,” he says quietly. “Let everything be her choice. I was convinced she needed me, that nobody else could offer her what I could. Does that sound arrogant?”

I shake my head.

“I wasn’t in love with her. I was fond of her, I cared for her, but I wasn’t in love with her. And yet, I couldn’t walk away from her. I didn’t think I could do that to her, that it would be devastating to her if I did, and maybe it would have been. At some point she’d move on herself, when she realized that I was no longer the answer to her needs, and all I needed to do was wait for that to happen. But I wouldn’t desert her.”

“It’s not the same,” I protest. “Orion doesn’t think he’s in a relationship with me.”

“Doesn’t he?”

“No. I mean we sleep together, but it’s not a regular thing, and he knows I see other guys, as well. He didn’t think I was going to Stueder’s for a beer tonight, and he was fine with that. He doesn’t care.”

“So you’d bring another man home with you?”

“Sure.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think you would. Maybe a one-night stand, but nobody you were even half-way serious about.”

“How do you know that? I don’t even know that,” I protest.

“I hear it in your voice, when you talk about him. You wouldn’t hurt him for the world, even if it means hurting yourself.”

“You make it sound like I’m in love with him. I’m not.”

“No, I know. And that’s what makes it hell. Because once he moves on, you won’t even be able to tell yourself that at least you were in love, that you were trying to make something you really believed in, work. All you’ll see is how you wasted precious time, when you could have been looking for someone else, someone right for you. Let me tell you, Nick, the fact that you were noble and self-sacrificing, because that’s what it’s going to feel like then, even if doesn’t now, will be fucking cold comfort.”

Something spills over my hand, and I look down to realize that I’ve crushed the Coke can in my fist without even realizing it. I put the can in the cup holder and wipe my hand on my jeans.

“What if the person, who I think is right for me, isn’t available?” I ask him. “Because he isn’t. And I can’t seem to get interested in anybody else.”

“How do you know he isn’t?”

“He’s not gay. And he was married.” Well, near enough.

“So you’ve just assumed. You haven’t told him.”

“Some things are better left unsaid.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t believe that any more. I think important things should be said. They should be said more than once. You said he was married. So if he’s available now, tell him.”

“You’re not listening. He’s not gay.”

“You yourself said it doesn’t matter. That Sunday. So long as there’s a connection, you said.”

“That’s not exactly what I said.”

He takes off his sunglasses, places them on the dashboard, and rubs the bridge of his nose with a tired sigh. “No. I know.” He stretches, arching his back and pulling his shoulders back, and I know he’s getting ready to start on the return drive to Vegas again.

“It’s you,” I say, and I think I’ve said it out loud, but the blood is suddenly roaring in my ears so loudly that I can’t hear anything else. And he doesn’t react, so I’m starting to wonder if I should try again or leave well enough alone, when he turns his head towards me, his blue eyes brilliant and hot, and I know he’s heard me.

He looks surprised, but not embarrassed, or impatient or angry, or any of all the other emotions I can imagine somebody feeling at an unsolicited confession. I clear my throat, to tell him that it’s okay, that nothing between us changes, when, all of a sudden, he twists in his seat, leans over the arm rest so that he can reach me and kisses me. For a second the kiss feels rushed, his lips hard, like he had to psych himself into it with a running jump or something, but then his mouth softens, moving over mine slowly, and Christ, he’s a good kisser once he settles into it. His fingers trace along my cheek, then move to the back of my neck, grabbing me and pulling me closer to him.

I whisper his name against his mouth, and he moans, so I repeat it and then I lick his lips and thrust my tongue into his mouth, half-expecting him to withdraw, but he only moans again, and pushes his own tongue against mine, his fingers clenching harder on my nape, until he’s almost hurting me.

Suddenly he pulls away, but not too far, and he runs his index finger down the length of my nose, then across my lips, and he smiles.

“That Sunday I drove over to kiss you.”

“You what?”

“Drove over to kiss you,” he confirms and laughs. “And then that fucking kid opened the door, and you were all pissed off and bossy and condescending, and I lost my nerve.”

“You got drunk in order to kiss me?”

“Well, no. I decided on that after I got drunk. It seemed like a damn good plan at the time.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t get arrested or involved in an accident, driving drunk like that.”

“Pissed off, bossy and condescending,” he repeats. “I don’t know what I see in you.”

That pulls me up short.

“What do you see in me?”

He grows serious. “You,” he answers. “Your kind and brave heart. Your fighting spirit. Your smile.” He shrugs, color rising to his cheeks, and he makes a helpless gesture. “You.”

I swallow hard and I look out the window, at the small canteen, with its cheerful awning, at the dusty tarmac of the rest area, at the low prickly cholla growing at its edges, and it’s such an ordinary little place, a place where you stop and rest for fifteen or twenty minutes before driving on. Not the kind of place, where somebody suddenly holds out the promise of happiness.

And I think of Orion at home, tall and lean and healthy now, studying for his GED, hating every minute of it and still persevering, and of how he smiles at me when we’re making love… And I’ve never called it that before, but I realize now that that’s what we’re doing, that’s what we’ve been doing all along.

I look back at Grissom, and something twists deep in my breast, because I realize that he’s right. Because the hell of it is that I know that I’m not in love with Orion, but I also know that we’ve come too far together, and for too long, for me to simply walk away from him or to even ask him to let me go. Just like Grissom with Sara, I can’t desert Orion.

After an almost silent drive, Grissom drops me off at home. He sensed my withdrawal in the rest area and didn’t insist on an explanation. He understood; after all, he’d been the one to draw the picture for me. I trudge up the walkway. All I can think of is that beyond the door is my bed, and that for a few blessed hours I won’t have to think or worry about anything.

The house is quiet and cool, and it feels like I’ve been away for months, rather than just a little over half a day. I walk to my bedroom, pulling off my shirt and unbuckling my belt as I go. Music is coming from Orion’s room, but I don’t feel like talking to him right now. I kick off my shoes and drag my jeans, shorts and socks off in one big tangle, letting them drop on the floor. A cool shower, then sleep and that’s as far ahead as I’m planning.

He’s waiting for me when I come out of the bathroom.

“Long shift,” he says a little nervously, ducking his head and trying to make eye contact with me.

“Yeah.”

I walk past him and he follows me.

“Your phone rang and I saw it was from work, and I thought maybe something had happened and that you’d want me to answer,” he explains in a rush, leaving out the part where he pretended to be me.

I collapse face down on the bed. “You knew where I was headed. Next time just contact me there, and I’ll call in for messages.”

I close my eyes, but I can still sense him hovering anxiously.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally.

“Forget about it,” I mutter. “Now, get out of here, okay? I’m beat.”

He closes the door quietly behind him and a second later I’m dead to the world.

When I wake up, he’s warm and solid in my arms, and I’m spooned behind him. I raise my head a little to look at the luminous dial of the bedside clock. Nine thirty. I still have about an hour before I need to get up for work.

I lay my head on the pillow again and press my lips against the back of his neck. He mumbles my name, and squirms back against me, so that my cock nests in his crack, but I’m not sure he’s actually awake. Despite the fact that I grow a little harder, I’m not really in the mood for sex.

“Sshh,” I murmur, and he relaxes. I close my eyes again, and I inhale deeply. He smells of shampoo and soap and, faintly, of cigarettes. He doesn’t smoke a lot, and I’ve asked him not to do so in the house. I pretend not to know that he sometimes smokes in his room, and he pretends he doesn’t know I’m pretending. It works for us, and I wonder how many other little conscious and unconscious rules we’ve created in our time together.

His breathing changes its rhythm, and I realize he’s waking up. He rolls his hips back towards me.

“I want you inside me,” he whispers. He reaches back and places his palm on my haunch, pulling me against him. I kiss his neck again, wrap my arm tighter around him, and caress his chest. He sometimes uses sex to get his way or when he’s worried that I’m upset with him about something, and he’s probably doing so right now, but his heart beating wildly under my hand is evidence that he’s enjoying it, as well. I find his cock already hard, and I jack it, running my thumb over the tip every time I pull his foreskin back. He arches back against me.

“Oh, yeah,” he says in a shivery little whisper. “Oh.”

I kiss his shoulder and bite it gently, licking the flesh trapped between my teeth, and he moans.

“Fuck me,” he urges, and he moves his hips again, trying to align himself so he can push himself back on me.

“Wait. Wait.”

I prop myself on my elbow in order to reach over him for the condoms I keep in the drawer of my bedside table, but my searching fingers don’t find what I’m looking for, and I curse.

“What?” he asks, rubbing against me. “Hurry up, will you?”

“I’m out of condoms,” I tell him. “Do you have any?”

He’s out of bed in a flash and returns a minute later. He pushes me flat on my back and straddles my chest, then bends down and takes me in his mouth, in one smooth, long movement, until I feel his lips around the base of my cock.

“Ah, fuck,” I gasp, trying to keep my hips still. Orion rarely goes down on me, and even more rarely deep throats me, but tonight he wraps his arms around my upper thighs, pulling me up toward him, his mouth warm and wet on me.

“Jesus, Orion, you keep that up much longer, we won’t need the condom,” I warn him.

He raises his head for a second. “Yeah, we will,” he says, then goes back to what he was doing and he presses two fingers into me, and I realize he’s changed his mind about who’s going to get fucked.

“You’re still mad at me.”

I run my fingers through his damp hair, pushing it off his forehead.

“No,” I tell him. “I wasn’t mad in the first place.” I stroke his hair again, and he nuzzles into my shoulder. “Orion, you don’t have to worry, you know that, right?”

“I’m not,” he says gruffly. “What would I be worried about?”

“This is your home now. You don’t have to earn it. At least not this way.”

He pulls away from me and sits up. “What are you talking about?” he asks angrily, but doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “Fuck you, Nick! Is that what you think this is about? That I’m still on the job, only I traded up for a sugar daddy?”

I shake my head, but he can’t see it in the dark.

“Fuck you,” he repeats, and he sounds bitter, defeated.

“What’s it about then? Tell me.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he mumbles.

He fucking breaks my heart, how he’s prepared to take on the world, when he has nothing but his pride and his guts. I remember the first night I met him, how he followed me home, claiming he wanted to make sure I was safe.

I sit up, as well, and put my arm around his shoulders. He usually melts into me, even when he’s upset, but now he holds himself stiffly apart.

“Tell me,” I urge him again.

“I want you to respect me,” he says finally. “If you ever introduce me to your friends, I don’t want them wondering what you’re doing, hanging around with somebody like me.”

“They’re more likely to wonder what you’re doing, hanging around with me,” I joke, but he doesn’t respond. “Orion, they’re always gonna wonder. I’m nearly twenty years older than you.”

“It’s not such a big difference.”

“Yeah, it is. Especially when you’re not even twenty yet. It’s huge. Believe me.” I give him a slight shake. “You should be hanging out with people your own age. You should be going out on dates, and to parties, and doing all the crazy, stupid stuff kids your age get to do. You should be figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life.”

“I know what I want to do.”

“What’s that?”

He takes a deep breath. “Social services,” he says shyly. “If I manage to get my GED, I could work and go to college part-time, and get a degree. I think I could be good at it. I know the deal.”

“Yeah,” I agree, unable to say anything further around the lump in my throat.

He sighs and relaxes against me.

 

---oOo---

“If I invited you to my place after breakfast, would you come?”

Warrick’s just gone to the restroom, ordering the bill on his way, and I gape at Grissom, unsure that I’ve understood him correctly.

“What, now?”

He nods.

“Your house?”

He smiles faintly. “Would you come?”

“I… Why?”

“I’d like to spend some time with you.”

I’d like that, too, but, once again, he’s caught me completely by surprise. When I made my confession yesterday, I expected him to reject me; I certainly didn’t expect him to turn around and kiss me. I also thought that since he understood the deal between Orion and me, he’d back off, so either he doesn’t understand or he doesn’t intend to back off, unless I give him a clear signal to do so.

I see Warrick returning, and I’m out of time to debate the rights and wrongs of accepting Grissom’s invitation. Besides, there’s only one thing I want to do.

“Okay,” I agree, and his smiles widens.

He moved after taking up with Sara, and I’ve never seen his new place, so I wander around. It’s messier than I remember his old place being, although come to think of it, given his office, this seems more like him. There’s a photo of Sara and him on the fridge, but it’s the only overt sign of her I see.

“Can I get you a drink? Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Ill at ease, I make another circuit of his living room. Ordinarily, when a guy invites me to his place, it’s either to have sex, or if he figures he’d like to get to know me after we’ve had sex and in anticipation that more sex might follow. Or if he has a big screen TV and I’m the only Dallas fan he can find in Vegas, but then there’s generally beer and nachos involved, as well. I don’t even know if Grissom has ever had sex with a guy. Maybe if I was as drunk as he was the morning he visited me, I’d ask him.

He effectively blocks me starting a third circuit by stepping in front of me.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Relax. I’m not about to jump your bones.”

“Would you even know how to?”

He smiles. “Probably not. I’m sure I could improvise, though.”

“So, you’ve never...”

“No.”

“This is weird.”

“How so?”

“If you haven’t had sex with a guy until you’re fifty, there are only two explanations: either you’re just not interested, or you are, but you’ve repressed it so deeply that you’re never gonna act on it.”

“I like to think that at fifty I’m not exactly at death’s door, and that it’s not too late to consider trying something new,” he says mildly. “Especially if it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for over thirty of those years.”

“So why not before now?”

He shrugs.

“Timing, more than anything. At school I was already the outsider, hanging out at the morgue, then working my way through college. I wasn’t having much sex in the first place, let alone of a kind that might make me an even bigger outcast. Then, when I was about ready to not care about what others might be thinking of me, the ‘gay disease’ hit. Nobody knew what caused AIDS, or how it was transmitted, and suddenly I wasn’t so sure that I needed to explore that side of me. By the time we knew more, I was in a relationship and the moment had passed. And as the years went by, I started to want more from sex.”

He reaches out and caresses my cheek.

“What was it you said? Desire and longing? It’s what I feel for you, and more, have done for years.”

“You certainly didn’t act like it.”

“Didn’t I? That’s something, I guess. I always thought I couldn’t have been more obvious if I’d tried. I’d go over some of our conversations and interactions at work, and I’d think that you must think I’m the most unreasonable son of a bitch you’ve ever met, and wonder why you put up with me. And then, there was Sara.”

He says it with a kind of finality, as if all the obstacles are behind us now.

“And now, there’s Orion,” I remind him.

“Is there? You said he didn’t expect you to be faithful, that it isn’t that kind of a relationship. I won’t ask you to leave him.”

“And you’d be satisfied with that?”

His hesitation says it all.

“I wouldn’t either. Be satisfied, I mean. I care too much for both of you. I can’t be jumping from one bed to another and back again.”

“You do do it though. It’s what you went to Stueder’s for the other night, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t mean anything with the others. It’s just sex.” I can see he doesn’t understand, and I’m not sure how to explain it. “Orion and I never discussed or expected exclusivity. How could we? And when I invited him to stay with me, I invited him to share my house, not my bed. If anything, in the beginning I went out even more often, so that he wouldn’t think I was expecting some sort of quid pro quo. But we do have sex, and when we do, it’s more than simply scratching an itch.” I think of Orion’s genuine anger last night, when I much as accused him of using sex. “For both of us. He wouldn’t be okay with me pursuing a serious relationship behind his back. I wouldn’t either.”

“Why are you here then?” he asks impatiently.

Instead of answering, I kiss him, and he immediately responds, his mouth opening under mine. I catch his hand and press it against my erection, and we both moan. He rubs the heel of his palm against the fly of my jeans, and for a guy who’s never done it before, he seems to know exactly how much pressure to use to drive me crazy.

“Because of this,” I tell him. “Because I finally have a shot at you, after all these years, and I don’t think I can pass on it.” I step away from him. “Doesn’t mean I like what that makes me.”

He looks at me, his blue eyes intense. “It makes you human. Choices are never that clear cut.” He adjusts himself and I can see that our brief contact excited him as much as it did me. “Ask him.”

“Wh-what?”

“Ask him. If he’d object.”

I stare at him, knowing that what he’s suggesting is reasonable – after all, I was the one who told him how I feel about him, and I’m here now – but also resisting his meddling in my relationship with Orion. He has no right, I think with a sudden spark of anger.

“Unless you don’t want to change your relationship with him,” he says perceptively.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” I mumble, suddenly sick of trying to figure out a solution that will satisfy everybody, myself included, and wishing I’d never met either Grissom or Orion. A split second later I feel like an asshole for even thinking that way, because it’s neither of their faults I can’t make up my mind between them, that I want both what I have with Orion and what I could have with Grissom. All they’ve done is take me up on my offers.

“Okay.” He puts his hands in his pockets and frowns at the floor. “I know I don’t have any rights where you’re concerned,” he says slowly, not looking up at me. “I just want you to know that I’m willing to wait, until you let me know one way or another. No pressure.”

I know he’s trying to be fair. I know. But what he says only fuels my anger and frustration, and I wish that he would pressure me, that he’d fight for me – even though I never fought for him – so that any decisions could be somebody else’s responsibility and not mine.

“Hey, Nick, guess what?”

Orion’s voice is happy and excited. Young.

“I can’t talk to you right now. I’ll call you later.”

“But—”

“Later,” I snap, and hang up on him.

Although I kept my voice down, Grissom suddenly looks my way, as if he heard me. He’s barely moved in the last hour or so; he just sits there, his shirt and hands still covered in blood. He needs to pull himself together. He has to, otherwise we’re going to be relegated to the role of witnesses, and Ecklie will assign the case to the days team. Come on, Griss, I mutter under my breath, and he frowns, and I suddenly remember that he can read lips. We need to work this. Don’t let Ecklie give it to someone else. He nods almost imperceptibly, his face hardening with resolve, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

I pour everything I have into finding Warrick’s killer. Everything. Because if I sit and think, I’ll have to come to terms with the fact that I had my head stuck so far up my own ass that I can’t even remember when I stopped being there for Warrick. I didn’t do much for him while he was alive, but there’s one last thing I can do for him now, and that’s to make sure that justice is done.

Every case is different. Sometimes all you can do is test hypothesis after hypothesis, hoping you’ll eventually come up with something that makes sense and isn’t contradicted by the evidence. In Warrick’s case, the pieces fall into place one after the other with almost amazing speed; no false leads, no detours. It’s too late for Warrick though. Too late for him and his wife to somehow patch things up, too late for his baby son to grow up with a father. God damn it. God damn it all to hell.

When was I last home? I can’t even remember. I pull into the driveway and sit in my truck, staring at the house. Orion must be out; even though it’s already dark, all the lights are out.

I take a warm shower and then lie in bed, but despite being exhausted, I’m too wired to sleep. After half an hour I give up and go into the kitchen to get myself a drink. When Orion returns, he finds me in the living room, watching a documentary and working my way through my fourth beer.

“Hey,” he says, standing at the doorway and eyeing the lined up beer bottles a little uneasily.

“Hey.”

He shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“I didn’t know when to expect you, so I went out.”

I shrug. It’s not like we consult each other on our schedules.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I answer.

“The CSI who was killed; is that what you were working on these past couple of days?”

“Warrick. Yeah, it was.”

He comes and perches on the coffee table.

“They haven’t released his name on the news and you stopped answering my calls. I was worried it might be you, until I realized that we must have spoken after the shooting.”

He says it matter-of-factly, without a hint of recrimination.

“I meant to call you back,” I tell him, even though I’m not really sure I’m telling the truth. “I’m sorry. It was just…” I gesture vaguely, unable to continue.

He leans over and lays his hand on the back of mine.

“Are you okay?” he asks again, and I stare at the TV, my vision going a little blurry for a couple of seconds.

“Why did you call me?” I ask when I think my voice will sound normal.

“Oh, that. It was nothing.”

I focus on him.

“You never call me at work. It must have been something.”

He shakes his head, but there’s a smile tugging at his lips, and I turn my hand over so that our palms touch.

“Tell me.”

“I’m a graduate,” he says proudly. “The results came in the mail.”

“Orion, that’s terrific. Congratulations!”

He beams at me, and I don’t ever remember him looking as happy as he is at this moment.

“And I found a job.” He mentions one of the larger insurance companies. “Customer service; there’s a two-week training program and then I start, but they pay me during training, as well.”

“Wow.”

His smile fades a little.

“I know it’s not much, but it’s—”

“What are you talking about? It’s great. I mean it.”

“Yeah?”

“Definitely,” I say as firmly as I can.

I should be happy for him. I am happy for him. It’s just that I’m finding it hard to switch gears so suddenly. The fact that things are looking up for Orion should console me; it proves that there’s always room for hope and that good can eventually triumph. But evil does win sometimes. In fact, it wins all too often, tearing into lives, causing irreversible harm.

“And I’ve been looking at the requirements for a degree in social work. There are evening courses I can take right here at UNLV, starting next quarter.”

“That’s good,” I say. “Really, that’s great.”

My tone rings false in my ears, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He just sits there, smiling happily, his eyes full of dreams.

And tomorrow morning, I have a funeral to go to.
 

---oOo---

“Let’s go for a drink.”

“I— Don’t you need to get home?”

“Why would I need to do that?” Grissom asks evenly.

Well, if he doesn’t seem to think so, I’m sure as hell not going to find a reason for him.

“Okay. Where did you have in mind?”

“El Cortez?”

“Fine.”

We lose each other in traffic, and pick different entrances, so it takes us a while to link up in the hotel. By the time I locate the bar he’s in, he’s already sitting at a table and has ordered us our first round. We’re the only ones there.

“What’s this?” I ask suspiciously.

“Old-fashioned.”

I taste it and it’s nasty.

“No?” he asks, reading my face, and I shake my head. He takes the glass from my hand and places it in front of him, then motions the waitress over.

“I’ll have a beer. Anything you’ve got on draft is fine.”

Even though we work together nearly every day, I rarely have the opportunity to just look at him without being worried that somebody will catch me at it. Now I can sit and stare at him to my heart’s content. He smiles a little self-consciously and looks away.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” he says after a while.

“Thank you for inviting me,” I answer, mimicking his formal tone, and he grins.

“Don’t make fun. You’re the one who told me to back off.”

I shrug. He’s right, I did. Until I figured things out, I told him. I’m still working on that.

“Sara left,” he tells me.

“That’s none of my business.” Even though I’m glad to hear it.

“Isn’t it?”

“Grissom, we never—”

“Why do you never call me Gil?” he interrupts me.

“What? I don’t know. Why?”

“Because it’s my name. Even Ecklie calls me Gil. I just wondered why you never do.”

“Gil,” I say, trying it out, and he smiles. “Gil, we never made any commitments. You’re a free agent. If you invite Sara up, it really isn’t my business.”

“I didn’t invite her. And I did make a commitment to you.”

“What, that you’d wait for me to make up my mind? Ah, come on. You know I wouldn’t hold you to that.”

He frowns.

“Why not?”

“Well, because.”

“Because…”

“Because it wouldn’t be fair to you. Obviously.”

“So I can retract?”

No! “Yes. Of course.”

“Good. Then I retract,” he says firmly, and my stomach drops into my shoes. “Because I don’t want to wait any more. I can’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, what?”

“You don’t want to wait any more. You’re done. I understand.” What the hell else does he want me to say?

He suddenly leans in and kisses me. “You don’t understand shit,” he tells me, then kisses me again. “I admire your morals and your sense of responsibility. I even love you for them. But I don’t care if and how much this boy needs you. He’ll simply have to make do with a little less of you once in a while. He’s going to have to learn to share. Just like I will.”

“Grissom—”

“And you’re going to have to learn to compromise,” he plows on.

“No.”

He frowns at me.

“What’s going on here, Griss? What, did you all of a sudden realize that life can be short? Do you think that gives us the right to do whatever the hell we want to?”

“Of course not.”

“I’m not the only one with responsibilities here. What are you gonna tell Catherine and Greg tomorrow? That you decided to have another affair with a subordinate and for them not to worry, because you’ll be fair?”

“I am fair.”

“That’s bullshit. That’s bullshit and you know it.” I realize the waitress is gawping at us from across the room, and I lower my voice. “I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t jealous when you were with Sara. But it was the closest you ever came to losing my respect. In fact, you did lose it for a long while. If that’s important to you.”

He doesn’t respond; he doesn’t even meet my eyes, and I feel my anger evaporating away as quickly as it erupted. After all, isn’t this what I’ve been hoping for? Him to make a decisive move, to convince me that I can have my cake and eat it too?

“Nicky, what do you want?” he asks finally.

“I don’t know,” I say heavily.

“In a perfect world.”

I laugh. “There’s no such thing.”

“Nevertheless.”

“In a perfect world? You wouldn’t be my supervisor. We wouldn’t be surrounded by death every day. Orion would be going to college full time, and he’d be falling in love with somebody his own age. I would never have slept with him.”

It’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud and I fall silent. I should never have done it, no matter how tempted I was, no matter what I convinced myself Orion meant to me. It was wrong and nothing can change that any more.

Grissom touches my elbow. “Forget regretting the past. That’s not the question.”

“We’d have time to get to know one another. We could make love, and it wouldn’t affect anybody else but us.” I pause, gathering my courage for the next bit. “In a perfect world, maybe we’d decide to grow old together, and maybe we wouldn’t, but it would be what we wanted, not what we settled for or what we were forced into.”

“Yes,” he says softly. “Yes.”

“What about you? In a perfect world.”

“When I heard the APB, I thought it was you.” He pauses, then shrugs. “You’re here, having a drink with me. I might want more, but really, this is enough.”

He’s barely touched the second drink, and now he pushes it aside. He reaches into his pocket for his wallet, takes out a couple of bills and lays them on the table, getting ready to leave. It’ll never lead us anywhere, but I wish he’d stay a little longer.

“Okay, let’s do it” he says suddenly.

“Do what?”

“Let’s make your perfect world.”

“What?”

“Orion in college and me not your supervisor? I don’t know about the rest, but those two don’t seem too hard, right?”

“Orion’s already looking into college. Part-time, but he is.”

“There, you see? We’re half-way there already.”

His smile is infectious, and I smile back.

“So what are you going to do? Get me transferred to swing again?”

“No. You can stay in graveyard as long as you like.”

“What, you’re going to transfer yourself?”

“I’m going to quit.”

“No, come on. Seriously.”

“Seriously.”

“For me?” I almost squeak. My cheeks flame, and he watches in amusement.

“Do I get extra points if I say yes?”

I think I’m turning puce.

“For me, as well,” he says, growing serious. “I’ve been doing this for too many years. I need to stop and a sabbatical here and there is no longer enough. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.”

I can’t argue with the need to stop. I was surprised when he came back from his sabbatical.

“What will you do instead?”

He shrugs.

“Take a vacation and go ride a couple of roller coasters I’ve been meaning to check out. Then come back to Vegas and court you.”

“You’re nuts.”

“No. I think this is the sanest I’ve been in years.”

“Griss, what if it doesn’t work out?”

“It will,” he says with conviction, and I want to believe him.
 

---oOo---

It’s mid-morning by the time I get home. I let myself into the house just as Orion walks out of his room, yawning widely.

“Hey, Nick.”

“Hey. I thought you were supposed to be at work.”

He shrugs.

“I got cut.”

“What? How come?”

He avoids my eyes and walks into the kitchen.

“It was a stupid job anyway. Sitting around all day, talking on the phone and telling people what they need to do to change their address or the beneficiary to their policy. Boring.”

“Most jobs are,” I tell him. “And this one paid better than stocking shelves at the local A&P.”

“Yeah, well I’d rather stock shelves,” he says moodily, measuring coffee into the machine. “Do you want some coffee too?”

“No, I’m good. So what are you going to do now?”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t know. Nothing. This was all your fucking idea anyway.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Get my GED and a respectable job. I was fine where I was,” he says thickly.

I put my hands on his shoulders and turn him to face me. He tries to jerk away, and I tighten my grip.

“Ouch,” he says, but he’s just acting, and after a couple of second he finally stops struggling and stands quietly, looking over my shoulder.

“Orion. Come on. What happened?”

“Nothing. I told you. I got cut.”

“You said it yourself, this was easy for you. So why did you get cut?”

“The instructor, he— he—”

“He what?”

Orion looks at me then, his brown eyes shiny with unshed tears, and I start to realize.

“He propositioned you?” I ask in disbelief.

“No. No. Fuck, I could have dealt with that,” he says contemptuously. “He was a john. I don’t think he even remembered me at first. But I… well, it was only a matter of time. He was already starting to look at me funny. I didn’t want to deal with that, with him knowing, maybe telling other people or getting me fired.”

“So you quit?”

He nods.

“Do you want me to go beat him up for you?”

His head jerks up at that.

“You’re not angry?”

“Not at you, I’m not. And you’re going to go look for another job, right?”

He tenses.

“It’s not gonna happen again, Orion. That was just bad luck. And anyway, most of us only see what we expect to see; even if you come across another old client of yours, out of context, he won’t be able to remember where he saw you.”

“I don’t know about that,” he says, his sudden cocky smile telling me the storm is over. “I was extremely good. Very memorable.”

I groan in disgust and let him go.

“One of these days, I’m really gonna beat the crap out of you,” I warn him, but he just laughs.

I’m still smiling when I fall asleep.

When Grissom announced to the team that he was going to leave, only a week after our discussion at El Cortez, even I was surprised. I hadn’t really expected him to do it, at least not without further discussion, but apparently he’d made up his mind. And as he’d said, he wasn’t just doing it for me.

“Are you sure?” I asked him later, when I cornered him alone in the office.

“Positive,” he smiled, then changed the subject.

So I should be happy, right? Well, maybe I should, but I’m not.

I can’t imagine the lab without Grissom; whatever his or my faults, whatever the state of our relationship over the years, his presence almost always brought out the best in me and made the job more tolerable, even enjoyable at times. And I’m worried that once we don’t share work, we’ll find that we don’t share much of anything else, either.

In a way, I’m jealous of him. Sometimes burning bridges can be a relief; whatever else, at least it removes the option of retreat, so you can devote your energy to moving forward. I haven’t reached that point yet. Maybe mentally and emotionally, but with the reality of Orion standing in front of me, I forget the words to my rehearsed speeches, and I’m left with the stark reality that of the three of us, he’s the most vulnerable, and that I’m going to hurt him, probably badly. And I just can’t bring myself to do that.

I still have over a month’s time. Grissom will be around for two more weeks, and then he’s going on his roller coaster trip. But even though he hasn’t said so, I know that he’s expecting the situation to be clear one way or another by the time he returns to Vegas. A month’s a long time, a lot can happen. Somehow though, it doesn’t seem nearly long enough.

---oOo---

“Wanna watch some porn and make out?”

Orion always reminds me of a cat when he’s relaxed; he shares the same ability to look boneless and to make seemingly impossible positions look comfortable. Right now he’s lying on the couch, his legs draped over its back and he has to hang his head upside down over the edge of the seat in order to make eye contact. The stubble on his cheeks glows gold in the lamplight. At moments like these he seems so beautiful to me, that I can barely breathe.

I shake my head, smiling a little, and he frowns, then swings around so that he’s sitting upright on the couch.

“We haven’t done it in weeks. What’s the matter, are you tired of me?”

And just like that, the moment I’ve been dreading can no longer be postponed, and I feel completely unprepared.

“No,” I say, and when a smile starts to curve his lips, “I mean, it’s not that. I just think we should cool it.” Jesus, I sound like I’m his age.

“What are you talking about?” he asks aggressively.

“I really think you should be seeing people your own age.”

“I see lots of people my own age. What’s that got to do with us?”

I take a deep breath.

“Orion, I should have never had sex with you. It was, it is inappropriate and wrong, and I’m sorry.”

His face changes, going slack and lifeless.

“What are you talking about?” he repeats, whispering this time.

Oh, Jesus.

“I took advantage of you. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even think of it that way, but I realize now—”

“I thought you liked what we did,” he interrupts. “I know you did.”

“Orion, it’s not about that. It’s just… Well, it’s just that…” I run out of words, not that I’ve said so many.

“It’s just that what?” He gets up and kneels down next to me, sitting back on his heels, crossing his arms on my thighs and looking up at me. It’s not an overtly sexual move, but I know Orion is very conscious of the effect that he can have on me, and that he’s reminding me of that. To lean forward and cup his neck is an almost instinctive move, and I have to curl my hands around the armrests of my chair to stop myself from doing so.

“I’m so much older than you,” I say, and I don’t need his “So what?” to know how irrelevant and inadequate that sounds to him.

“Love… Feelings aren’t straightforward sometimes. You can get confused or express them in the wrong way. Especially in the beginning.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks, I think more in frustration than in anger.

“We’re friends. We’re more than friends. That won’t change.”

He suddenly stands up.

“Okay. Fine.”

He grabs the TV remote control, flops back down on the couch, and switches to a music channel. He turns the volume up and sits watching, his jaw set. I don’t want to leave things like they are right now, but I don’t know how to fix them, either. I could explain about Grissom and my feelings for him, but that would just confuse matters further; Orion would think I’m simply throwing him over for Grissom, and it’s not like that.

He doesn’t even flick a glance my way when I get up and leave the room.

When I return from work the next morning, he’s gone; all he’s taken with him are his clothes and his ipod. He’s even left his laptop behind, I guess because I lent him the money for that, and he’s only repaid about a quarter of it.

I was wrong about burnt bridges. There’s no relief. None whatsoever.

---oOo---

I’m sleepily watching the coffee machine make coffee, when the doorbell rings. I haven’t felt much like keeping up my Sunday rituals since Orion left. Going to IHOP on my own is just pathetic; strange how I never thought so before. The only trouble with being at home as opposed to, say, church, is that you’re a sitting duck for every person bent on saving your soul. Not that I intend to open the door. They’ll go away eventually.

My cell phone rings next, and I have to go to the bedroom to retrieve it. I see Grissom’s name on the screen, and I smile. Last time we spoke he was in Ohio and headed for New Jersey, in search of America’s fastest, or maybe it was loopiest, roller coaster. Better him than me.

“Hey!” I greet him, feeling a lot happier than I was three minutes ago.

“Hey, yourself. Are you home?”

“Uh huh. Why?”

“Because you’re not answering your door.”

It takes me a couple of seconds to work that one out, then I rush to the door and fling it open.

“You’re not drunk again, are you?” I ask and he smiles broadly. “What are you doing here?” I laugh. “Tired of throwing up on roller coasters already?”

“Is the kid here?” he asks me.

I never told him that Orion left. At first I kept on thinking he’d return, and then Grissom left as well.

“No, he—” I start to answer, but Grissom doesn’t give me a chance to explain. He wraps his arms around me and covers my mouth with his, then, still kissing me, walks me backward, so that we’re both in the house.

“I missed you,” he whispers, lifting his head. “I woke up yesterday, and I couldn’t figure out why I was clear on the other side of the US, when you’re here.”

I thread my fingers through his curls, marveling at how silky his hair feels, and that I suddenly have the right to this.

“I couldn’t either,” I admit.

With a groan he kisses me again, opening his mouth over mine, nibbling and licking at my lips. He pulls me closer to him, sliding his hands under the waistband of my sweats and murmuring something when he finds bare flesh. His fingers dig into my ass and he almost lifts me against him.

“It feels like you want to go for a different sort of ride,” I tell him, and he chokes out a laugh.

“What about you?” he asks.

“Oh, yeah,” I answer, pushing his jacket off his shoulders and pulling him towards my bedroom.

Once we’re there, he freezes up.

“What’s wrong?” I ask him. I grab his shirt and pull it out of his waistband, then start to unbutton it. He catches my hands and traps them against his chest. “What?”

He smiles a little uncertainly. Oh.

“Don’t worry, I’ve deflowered thousands of virgins and they’ve all begged me for more,” I leer, though I can’t remember having ever been with even one.

He laughs and lets go of my hands.

“Well, I hope I’m your last one, then” he says, trying to pull off my T-shirt. I help him, and he tosses it to the side, then reaches out and traces my collarbone, his fingers trembling a little. “Maybe I’d better let you lead.”

I’ll say this for him: he’s an extremely quick learner and always open to trying something new.

“So where’s Orion?” he asks me later, as I’m rushing to get ready for work.

“He left.”

“Where to?”

I shrug. “He didn’t say. I came back from work twenty days ago, and he was gone.”

“Just like that?”

“No.”

I sit on the bed to tie my shoelaces, my back to him.

“And you haven’t spoken since?” he asks after it becomes obvious that I’m not going to elaborate.

I shake my head.

He brushes the back of his fingers against my cheek.

“This is my fault. I’m sorry.”

“No. No, it’s not.” I twist around to look at him. “In the end, it didn’t have much to do with you at all.”

“But you worry about him.”

I get up and put on my watch.

“He’ll be okay. He was okay before, and it’ll be easier for him now. There’s nothing to worry about.”

I’m not convincing myself, so I sure as hell hope I’m convincing Grissom. I bend down and kiss him.

“I have to go. What are you going to do?”

“I think I’ll go home. Why don’t you come by after work?”

“Okay.”

I kiss him again, then make it as far as the door, before returning to brush my lips against his a third time.

“You’ll be late,” he tells me.

“Yeah, and my new boss is a real stickler. Not like the old one.”

---oOo---

“Gil! Hurry up, will you?” I charge into our bedroom, and I catch him sitting on the bed, reading a book. Christ, he’s not even fully dressed yet. “What are you doing? We’ll be late!”

He stands up unhurriedly and goes to the closet to pick out a tie, then stands at the mirror, putting it on.

“No, we won’t. Calm down.”

I glare at him through the mirror.

“This is important to me.”

“I know, sweetheart. It’s important to me, as well. We’ve got plenty of time.”

I shake my head at him and go downstairs to pace in the entrance. At times like these, my dad used to go out and “warm up the car”. Like he said, it never made my mom move any faster, but at least he felt he was doing something productive to get them on their way. The problem is that my truck’s in the shop, so we’re taking Gil’s car, and I’m not quite brave enough to sit in the Mercedes and start gunning the motor. Falling in love, moving in together, sharing our lives and our interests, even our bank accounts, all that turned out to be so easy and natural, that I sometimes can’t help being angry at us for having wasted so much fucking time, but his stupid antique car is strictly off bounds to me.

“Hurry up!” I yell and I hear Gil muttering something between his teeth as he trots down the stairs.

“There you see? Plenty of time,” he calmly says, as he pulls into the parking lot, and I briefly contemplate strangling him with his tie.

“I want to see him before the ceremony. I’ll catch up with you at our seats,” I tell Gil breathlessly, and I jump out of the car before he’s come to a full stop.

It was Gil who finally found Orion for me five year ago. In the end, even though I had known Orion and he hadn’t, Gil turned out to have more faith in him and looked for him in the most obvious place: at UNLV.

Neither ever told me what happened between them, or how Gil convinced Orion to come see me. All I know is that at some point Gil must have told Orion that he was being an asshole, or words to that effect, because that was Orion’s opening phrase when I arrived home from work one morning to find him sitting on the porch, just like in the old days.

“The old dude said I’m being an asshole.”

I approached him slowly and sat down next to him.

“Did he?” I asked, stalling for time, trying to figure out what to say to him. Trying not to start crying with relief.

Orion took a drag on his cigarette. “He’s a lot older than you. Almost the same difference as the two of us.”

“It’s different at our age.”

“You love him.” It was more a statement than a question, but I nodded nevertheless.

“Yes.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.” I thought of qualifying the statement, explaining how it was different, but decided not to. You don’t qualify love.

He turned towards me then. “Good. I love you, too. Very much.”

“I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

“You didn’t. Not really. I mean I was all pissed off and everything, but I sort of understood what you were saying, even then, even if I didn’t want to admit it.”

“So why did you leave then?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking too straight. Pride maybe, or revenge; whatever the reason, it still felt like you were rejecting me, and I figured ‘screw you’.”

“Will you come back?”

He took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it into the gutter.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m sharing an apartment with a couple of guys, and I’ve got a job and school. I’m okay.”

“Okay.”

“You saved me,” he said abruptly. “I’ll always be grateful for that. Always.”

I shook my head. “You did the same for me, Orion. Thanks to you, I was never alone.”

“Aw, you old softie,” he said gruffly, bumping me with his shoulder, then he stayed leaning against me, warm and solid. “Do you still go to IHOP for Sunday brunch?”

“Yep.”

“With the old dude?”

“Uh huh.”

“Maybe I could join you sometime.”

I smiled.

“We’d like that. We’d like that very much.”

Orion is standing talking with a couple of his friends, but he sees me approaching, and he comes over to me.

“Hey, Nick,” he smiles, then hugs me and kisses me on the cheek. “I didn’t think I’d see you until afterwards.”

“Hi. I just wanted to give you something.”

I give him the box, and watch him carefully unwrap it and open it.

“Nick, this is beautiful,” he says, taking the watch out of the box and putting it on. He holds his wrist out and admires it for a while. “What is it, Russian?”

“Yes. It’s an Orion,” I tell him, and he smiles. “It’s not expensive, but—”

“I love it,” he interrupts me. “Thank you.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you later.”

“The old dude’s here too?” he grins.

“Yeah. And have I mentioned how much he likes you calling him that all the time?”

Orion laughs and takes another look at his new watch.

“I gotta go,” he says, and sets his mortarboard on his head. “You two aren’t going to start crying and embarrass me, are you?”

“Well, I can’t speak for Gil, but I just might.”

He rolls his eyes and goes to join his friends.

“Everything okay?” Gil asks me when I sit down next to him. The first notes of Pomp and Circumstance sound out, and my eyes fill with tears.

“Awww, fuck,” I answer in a watery voice. “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

He takes my hand in his.

“You old softie,” he whispers, as the new graduates start filing into the auditorium.

“Hey, watch who you’re calling old,” I tell him, and I lace our fingers together.

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