By: Evan Nicholas
Summary: ((Sequel to "NICKY")) -- Things don't magically get any simpler.
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes Genres: Character Study, Drama, Established Relationship
Warnings: None
It sneaks up on him without warning, which is a little strange. About halfway through the shift, Greg squeaks into the trace lab where Nick and Warrick are working patiently on a filthy blanket from behind a restaurant, and demands the keys to Nick's car.
"Why?" he asks.
"Just 'cause," Greg says, and grins that impossible grin that Nick just can't say no to, so with a vague feeling of doom Nick fishes his keys out of his pocket and tosses them underhand.
Greg catches them, grins like an idiot again, and disappears.
"God only knows what he's going to do your car," Warrick says, "but seeing as it's your birthday and all, I guess it's probably not going to be fatal."
He has to think about that for a moment before he remembers that yeah, it is his birthday, isn't it? He knows that it's Gil's birthday - he's been thinking about it for a couple of weeks now - but despite knowing full well that their birthdays are back-to-back, he somehow lost track of his own.
"Huh," he says, and looks down at the tape-lift he's got.
Warrick is eyeing him carefully. "You did remember it, right?" he asks knowingly.
"Sure," he lies, and it's such an obvious lie that Warrick laughs at him.
"Cake and all that in the break room," Warrick tells him. "So don't disappear in a cloud of dust come sunup."
"I never-"
"You did last week," Warrick contradicts. "Remember? Sped out of here like a bat out of hell. As I recall, you actually forgot to clock out."
Oh, Nick thinks, that's right. I did. It had been Gil's day off, and they'd made plans for breakfast at a fancy place that merited a long shower and preening. They've been doing that a lot lately - going out for elegant meals, to movies, they even went to a play once. And each and every time, Gil does something gentlemanly: brings him flowers, opens doors for him, all with a knowing and indulgent smile. Nick supposes it's his little way of accommodating Nicky, of letting Nick know that he hasn't forgotten about their broken conversation a few weeks ago about expectations and where things go from here.
"So you doing anything?" Warrick asks, his eyes never leaving the abused fabric under the bright UV lamp.
"Huh?"
"For you birthday," Warrick says and that teasing edge is back in his voice. "You're really out of it, Nick."
He manages to smile at that. All things considered, he wants to say, I'm doing just fine. And he is, really; since he had his secret wormed out of him by Greg and then was coaxed into explaining it to Gil, he's been on a remarkably even keel.
"Sorry," he says. "Just distracted."
"Uh-huh," Warrick says, not buying it. "What's her name?"
He blinks at that. Her name? "What makes you think-"
"Oh come on," Warrick says and rolls his eyes. "I recognise the symptoms."
"Symptoms?"
"The subject is distracted, prone to staring off into space - or at walls, which he's been observed doing on more than one occasion. Random things can make him blush, which he refuses to elaborate on - case in point right now, in fact - and there is a definite air of conspiracy around him." A quick grin. "How'd I do?"
Nick is blushing, of course. "Not bad," he admits. "But I'm, uh, I don't have a girlfriend."
He knows he's being assessed, the way Warrick narrows his eyes and half-frowns. Nick can almost hear the gears turning in his head, except of course Warrick's mind is too fast for gears. Solid-state transistors at the very least, if not faster-than-light silicon superconductors.
He realises he's rambling in his head and stops himself; it's a nervous habit he's picking up from spending so much time with Greg, although he thinks it's pretty good that so far he's managed to keep it as an inner monologue. He hasn't started broadcasting it yet.
"Sooo..." Warrick lays the blanket down carefully and rests his hands flat on the table in front of him. "This is the bit where I ask if you're dating a guy, and then hope you don't break my nose."
Blush turned to full force, Nick can't maintain eye contact. "Sort of," he admits, because he knows the rumours are flying. Nicky's been seeping into his work life a little bit each day, in the way he walks and sits and opens doors, the way he tugs at the hair at the base of his neck. The way he dresses, although he's been careful not to let that get out of hand: his wardrobe is a little less utilitarian than it used to be, thanks to Greg's demented shopping spree a couple of weeks ago, but Nick put his foot down at anything overtly feminine.
"Sort of," Warrick echoes. "Isn't that like 'sort of pregnant'?"
Nick swallows. "Okay," he says, "yes, I'm - seeing someone. Someone male."
"Does this someone male have a name?"
Blush cranked up to eleven. Nick clears his throat and worries the frayed edge of the blanket with his thumb. "Um," he says.
"Let me guess," Warrick says, and Nick is endlessly relieved to hear that there's still humour between his words. "Sort of?"
He risks a glance up and feels a tense grin tug at the corners of his mouth. "Sort of, yeah."
"Is his name the kind of name that might get you in trouble if people knew about it?"
Wow, Nick thinks, I didn't know I could blush this hard. "Sort of?" he tries.
"Is it a DNA-type of name," Warrick asks patiently, as though he's used to dragging answers out of recalcitrant children and Nick is no big challenge, "or an insect-type of name?"
Nick blinks. He's known the rumours about him and Greg have been going for years, in varying degrees of indifference and disbelief, but him and Gil? "Um," he says. "It's, uh, not a DNA-type of name."
Warrick nods as though this is merely confirmation of something he's known all along. "Cool," he says.
There's that tense grin again, tugging at Nick's mouth, full of hope. "Yeah?" he asks. "I mean, we're - cool?"
Warrick raises his eyebrows. "Of course we are, Nick," he says. "What, you think we wouldn't be?" An edge of hurt starts to seep into his voice.
"No," Nick says hurriedly, "not - it's just, you know. A little scary. For people to know about it, that's all."
After a heartbeat or two, the eyebrows come down again and all the years of their friendship warm up his eyes again. "All right," he says. "I'm happy for you, for what it's worth. Both of you. You've been dancing around each other for way too long."
"We have?"
Warrick laughs, and picks up a bottle of luminol. "If I didn't know better," he says, "I'd think you were just playing dumb."
Warrick is just finishing up with the spray bottle in his corner of the blanket when Nick unravels the hidden insult and puts on an affronted face.
"Hey," he says, one hand on his hip in a posture that is somehow reminiscent of his mother. All he needs, he thinks, is an apron on crooked and a dishtowel in the other hand, and a gaggle of muddy boys standing innocently in the middle of a clean kitchen floor.
"Too late for a clever comeback," Warrick tells him with a smirk. "You done over there? Let's turn this bad boy over."
***
He doesn't get a chance to interrogate Greg as to the state of his car until almost sunrise, when everyone is gathering in the break room and Catherine is fussing over a cake with two names on it.
"Nothing," Greg swears earnestly, dropping the keys into Nick's outstretched hand and gamely ignoring the suspicious gaze.
"Then what'd you need the keys for?" Nick asks in a pleasant growl.
"If I said I had to run an errand...?"
"...then I'd ask what was wrong with your car."
"Huh. Good point." Greg puts on a comically thoughtful face. "Let me get back to you on that, okay?"
Nick is ready to pursue the issue but then Gil wanders into the room absently, his nose buried in a file, and he looks surprised when he glances up and sees his entire staff standing around a cake-laden table.
"Is it six already?" he asks, pulling his sleeve up to get a look at his watch.
"Yes," Catherine says with her usual dealing-with-Gil patience. "Although I'm impressed that you remembered it's your birthday."
Gil blinks. "Is it?" he asks, and then, "Right. I knew that."
Catherine rolls her eyes and pulls a lighter out of a pocket. "Are we ready?" She looks around, uses her eyebrows to direct Gil and Nick to their respective ends of the rectangular cake, and clears her throat.
They sing 'Happy Birthday' together, Sara and Greg more or less hitting the right notes, Catherine carrying the tune and Warrick managing a decent harmony a few notes below her. Nick meets Gil's eyes over the cake and lets a small smile creep onto his features. Gil returns the smile, and then they both lean over the cake and blow out their candles.
Then there are presents, and they sit around drinking Greg's excellent coffee and eating cake and being sociable together.
Catherine and Sara have conspired to give Nick a 2000-piece puzzle from the Audubon Society of a nest of egrets in a naked tree with an adult a few branches above, glowering pointedly at the camera. The photo is amazing and Greg makes a gentleman's bet with Warrick that Nick will lose a critical piece within an hour of opening the box.
Warrick's gift is the latest football game for his Playstation, and they make cheerful promises to annihilate each other utterly the next weekend. "Loser springs for the pizza," Nick says.
"Uh-uh," Warrick says, "because you always get the cheap stuff that gives me indigestion. Loser picks up the tab someplace classy."
Nick laughs and hangs his head. "Fine," he concedes. "But one of these days, Warrick, I'm going to leave you in the dust."
"Hope that's not what you wished for," Warrick says dryly, nodding his chin at the eviscerated cake on the table and Nick's candle, still sticking out of a corner, "'cause I'd hate for your new year on Earth to start with such a crushing disappointment."
Greg's gift is a Tegan and Sara CD, which Nick grins at and turns over. It's the one they were listening to in the lab that infamous day, the one that started his whole mess. "Thanks, man," Nick says, and smiles warmly at him. "I've been looking for this."
"I know, Nicky," Greg says with a cheeky grin, and leans back. "I had a friend in Toronto send it to me. They're hard to find down here."
Gil gives him a beautiful book on butterflies, from the same series as his coffee table book on the Amazon. Nick smiles his thanks across the room at him, and flips through it. The colours are unbelievable, the detail in each photograph breathtaking, and Nick knows there's a subtext too - cocoons and transformation and all that implies. Butterflies have come up in conversation more than once between them lately; Gil's attempt to draw parallels and analogies for himself, Nick supposes. It's kind of touching, in an endearingly dorky way.
For Gil, there is a bottle of excellent Scotch from Catherine; a box of chocolate covered insects from Greg, which is politely declined by all when Gil offers it around to share; and an elegant black sweater from Sara, which worries Nick a bit and judging by the half-scowl from Catherine, he's not the only one it worries.
Nick's present to Gil is the last one to be opened, and although it's not the real gift he's giving him - that will come later, when they're alone - it's somehow the one he's been more awkward with. It's just a thing, albeit something that he thinks he'll like, but still – it seems trite given the nature of their relationship these days. He watches Gil unwrap the small box, and lift out the hardened chunk of amber to peer at it. It's small enough to fit comfortably into the palm of his hand, and trapped at the center is a little smudge of black.
Gil brings it up close to his eyes and examines it, and Nick knocks the folded piece of paper out of the bottom of the box and hands it to him. "It's a beetle that's been extinct for, uh-" Nick reads the paper upside down. "-fifteen million years?"
Gil's eyes go huge at that, and he pats himself down for a magnifying glass immediately. Catherine laughs at him. "Easy, boy," she says. "You've got a sexy dissecting scope in your office, remember?"
Gil is halfway out of his chair before he remembers that this is a party, and he lowers himself back down with a sheepish smile. "Thank you, Nicky," he says, and there's a level of affection there that just wasn't present for any of the others.
Including Sara's, Nick thinks, and studies the look of tightly-contained conflict on her face. He knows that she's realised it too, but when his eyes move back to Gil it's to find the man eagerly reading the fact sheet that accompanies his dead insect, totally oblivious to the politics swirling around him. Gil absently reaches out and plucks a disturbingly-shaped chocolate out of the box from Greg and pops in his mouth without taking his eyes from the tiny printing.
Catherine is considering Sara with a thoughtful look of frustration, and Nick smiles inwardly. It's good to have friends like these, he thinks; and he hopes he can hang onto them through everything to come.
***
They scatter back to their respective cases after a few more minutes of idle conversation and pawing-over of gifts, especially the butterfly book. There's still an hour or so on the clock, and they all have cases to solve.
Warrick flips him for trace on the blanket and wins, but before Nick can collect the fibres and move into the next lab to keep working, Warrick says, "You going by Nicky again these days?"
He freezes, but just for a moment. Because it's just a question, it's not an accusation or a stab in the dark - it's just a casual question from a good friend.
"Sort of," he says with a small smile.
Warrick rolls his eyes. "I mean, it's not - if I start calling you Nicky, it's not some kind of pet name, is it?"
"No," Nick says. "No, it's not."
"'Cause I mean, I like you and all - but I don't want to start calling you by some kinky bedroom thing, you know?"
His smile broadens. "It's not a kinky bedroom thing," he says, and wonders where that suggestion is coming from. "It's, uh - yeah, I'm going by Nicky again. Trying to."
"Any reason?"
Easy, Nick tells himself; it's still just a question. "Sort of," he says, shrugs, and scoots out the door before Warrick throws something at him.
***
Their plans are to meet at Nick's place in the early afternoon. That gives him time to run home and clean like a crazy person and start to cook; and it gives Gil enough time to disentangle himself from Ecklie's ridiculous status meeting and then recover at home before being required to be pleasant.
Two o'clock is a fashionable hour as far as Nick is concerned, at least with the schedules they keep. It's roughly equivalent to eight or nine in the evening for the more rationally-scheduled individual, plus it has the bonus of sunlight, which Nick has always loved. His condo has a south-facing balcony for a reason.
As day shift filters into the building and everyone else trickles out, Nick wanders past the door to Gil's office to see him bundling an armload of files together and mentally steeling himself for the bureaucratic nightmare waiting for him in the office down the hall. A tame wave of affection washes up against Nick, and when it recedes, Nicky is left admiring the view.
She leans against the door frame and says, "Does he know it's your birthday?"
Gil glances up at her and his scowl transforms into a smile. "Knowing Ecklie," he says, "he's probably got something unpleasant up his sleeve, just for the occasion."
"I don't get why he hates you so much," Nicky says.
Gil shrugs. "He's a career paper-pusher," he says, "and I'm a chronic paper-stopper. It's a natural antipathy."
"Even before you became supervisor?"
"Right from the start."
Nicky takes a casual look around to make sure they have some measure of privacy, and says, "I want to eat in tonight. I'm making something special. Is that okay?"
Gil raises an eyebrow. "You want to cook on your birthday?"
"I want to cook for you."
Gil blinks at that, and something kind of like a blush tinges the lines of his cheekbones. "That's - that sounds terrific, Nicky."
Her grin broadens. "I'll see you later, then?"
Gil nods.
"Have fun at your meeting."
"Don't be cheeky."
***
She's actually forgotten about Greg and her car keys until she gets out to her car with her bag in one hand and her jacket in the other. She unlocks the passenger side first because it's a convenient place to dump all the crap she carries around with her, and finds herself staring at a cheerfully-wrapped box with a ribbon and a card sitting in the passenger seat.
She looks at it for a moment, then drops her stuff onto the floor under the dash, and picks up the box. It's not heavy, and it's not particularly big, either - slightly deeper than a gift box you'd get if you bought an expensive shirt. She shakes it, decides that whatever it is, it's soft, and considers opening it then and there.
She sits it back down and pulls the card out of the envelope - a kind of stunned goldfish is peering at her on the front, from inside a glass bowl, and she opens it up. Nicky- it says in Greg's distinctively bad handwriting, The CD was just something I thought you'd like. This is your real present - hope you enjoy. Anything, anytime, Greg xx.
Nicky closes the card and contemplates the goldfish again, and thinks, There's a reason that Greg didn't give this to you in front of everyone else. This is Greg, after all.
She drives home and tries to ignore the box, which keeps nagging at her attention at every stop sign and street light. Every time she takes her eyes off the road for anything - to look at her speedometer, to check the clock on the dash, to screw around with the radio - her eyes slide back to the box of their own accord. She's mildly surprised when she ends up in her driveway in one piece.
She's not sure if she should be worried or excited, or both, at whatever is in the box. For the last month or so, Greg has become a fixture in her life, teasing her about the mullet she's grown (it's not a mullet, she keeps insisting, it just looks like one until it's long enough to get it trimmed) and renting stupid movies with her and ordering pizza and gossiping.
And directing Nicky's debut into the world.
So far this has consisted of decimating her wardrobe when Nicky was drunk and then dragging her out shopping while she was hungover; slowly denuding her CD collection of music that, in Greg's mind, is an overcompensation of maleness or just plain bad; luring her to a queer club on the outskirts of town full of gender-bending people of every description; leaving books lying pointedly on the coffee table; and nagging her incessantly about seeing a psychiatrist. He's even gone so far as to research the group medical insurance plan and how much therapy they'll cover, but although he harasses her endlessly about making an appointment, he's never upset or disappointed when she doesn't. He just cheerfully keeps up the pressure.
Nicky is coming to appreciate that Greg is a one-in-a-million friend, and the knowledge is both a comfort and a strangely detached terror. It's comforting because she knows she can depend on him; terrifying because it also makes him utterly unpredictable.
So she parks her car and locks it up, and carries her bag and jacket under one arm and the present under the other, and fumbles with the key. She leaves her stuff on the floor in the hallway and takes the box into the living room.
She leaves it on the coffee table and goes into the kitchen, wondering what kind of stiff drink she's going to need to survive this. She's contemplating a screwdriver, because it's fast and easy, when the phone rings. She lifts it off the hook absently while she shakes a jug of orange and says, "Hello?"
"Nick?"
It takes her a moment to place the voice, and when she does, she's ashamed of the delay. She swallows. "Hey, Mom," she says.
There's a little pause. "Are you okay?" she asks. "You sound - funny."
"I'm fine," she says, and feels Nicky fall away into Nick. "Just, uh, you know. Been one of those days."
"Doing anything special tonight?"
"Working," Nick says. He hasn't found the words yet to explain about Gil, let alone about Nicky. "The bad guys never sleep."
"This is true," his mother says. "I just called to wish you a happy birthday. Carrie's here with the kids, there's a racket in the basement - you remember your old air hockey table? It's making a comeback. A loud comeback."
"How is Carrie?" Nick asks.
"Well, you know. Brad's moved out again, maybe it's for real this time - I'll let her tell you about it, though. She's giving me a beady eye from the living room."
Nick sits on the edge of the bed and listens to the news of the family, followed by an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday by a gaggle of nieces and nephews and a little girl he thinks is probably the neighbour's kid. Then his father comes on long enough to wish him many happy returns and to tell him there's a plane ticket home waiting for him anytime he wants to visit, and finally the phone is handed to Carrie, the youngest of his sisters, two years older than he is, and with Carrie comes a sudden background silence.
"Okay," Carrie says, "I'm on the porch, we can talk. So who's this guy you're seeing?"
Nick almost-winces. Carrie is the closest family he has, and the only one who knows about the men that Nick has dated. She doesn't know about Nicky, although he's sometimes tempted to tell her. She does know about Gil, though, in non-specific terms because he stupidly mentioned a date in an email a couple of weeks ago.
"Don't breathe a word to anyone," Nick says, "okay?"
"I never do, you know that," Carrie says, and Nick can almost hear the accompanying roll of the eyes. "So - spill."
"It's Gil," Nick says. He's loved his job since the day he started, and has forced his family to endure more stories about DNA and decomposition than anyone should really have to listen to. They know all of the key players by name.
There's a pause. "Your boss?" Carrie asks. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah," Nick says. "He's, uh - on his way over, actually, so I can't talk for too long."
"You know that's dangerous, right?" Carrie says.
"Carrie-"
"I know, I know - you're a big boy. I'm just saying, is all. Doing the big-sisterly thing. So how long have you been going out?"
He thinks about that. When should he start counting? "A couple of months," he says, because at least it's in the right ballpark.
"Serious?"
"Very."
"Ooooh. You're going to have to break it to the rest of them at some point," she says. "I mean, they're going to want to meet him sometime."
"You mean you want to meet him," Nick says with a smile.
"Busted," she says with a laugh. "But seriously: if this is The One, you might as well let the cat out the bag."
"I know," he says, because he does. But there are so many layers of fear wrapped up in such a simple statement that he's been frozen into silence for too long.
He clears his throat. "What about you?" he asks. "Mom says Brad is moving out?"
"Again," Carrie says with a deep sigh. "It's... difficult, you know? He stays on his meds and everything is good and solid and happy, and then he forgets one morning and nothing happens, so he forgets another morning and then another... I don't know anymore, Nick. If he thinks he'll be happier on his own, then I'm not going to try to stop him from going. I'm just worried that he's going to spiral out of control, forget about the kids and just - disappear."
Nick makes a sympathetic noise. He's always liked Brad, liked his soft-spoken sense of humour and his keen intelligence. His mental problems only surfaced after their fourth child was born, and things in the Stokes-Manor household have been dicey ever since.
"Well, you know," Carrie says gamely. "We take it as it comes."
"If there's anything I can do," Nick says.
"You'll come running, I know. I appreciate it, Nick, I really do. But this thing has to run its course on its own. I'll be fine, and so will the kids."
"That's good," Nick says. "I'm glad you're okay."
"How are you, speaking of okay?" Carrie asks, the tone of her voice shifting from the passivity with which she addresses her own life and into the concerned tone she uses on other people's problems. "You got a cold?"
"No."
"Huh. You sound a little - I don't know. Different. Willowy, maybe? If that makes any sense."
It does, to Nick: it's the difference between the way he talks and the way Nicky talks. Greg was the first to notice it, tried to get Nicky into the phone-sex business on the side ("You'd make a killing, with a little practise..."), and now it's become just another part of his life.
He fights down another urge to blurt out the truth to his sister, knows that this just isn't the right time for it. He wonders if it ever will be. "Must be the phone," he says. "Crappy connection or something."
"Guess so," Carrie says, but she doesn't sound totally convinced.
"Look," Nick says, looking at the bedside clock, "I've got to go. I promised Gil a home-cooked meal, and I haven't even started chopping yet."
"Then skidaddle, muchacho," Carrie says cheerfully, "and don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"Carrie," Nick says, "there's nothing that you wouldn't do. And probably haven't done."
"Exactly," Carrie says. "It's a carte-blanche to have a good time. Have an awesome birthday, and I hope your night at work's not too gross."
"Love you," Nick says. "Say bye to everyone for me."
"Will do. Take care."
***
He has a shower and grates about a pound and a half of cheese and makes the salad and does a cursory clean of his bedroom, changes the sheets and tidies the bedside table, and he's on his way downstairs to wrap Gil's real birthday present when he remembers the box waiting for him in the living room.
He stands looking at it for a few seconds before deciding, First things first. He hunts around for some wrapping paper and then some tape, and finally for the curly ribbon he knows he has somewhere; and he sits at the dining room table to wrap the two small boxes. It only takes him a couple of minutes, even when he tries to get fancy with the ribbon in tying them together, and he gets distracted by the candles on the table and decides they need to be changed before Gil gets there.
By the time he's set the table with the good place settings and futzed around with the candles and the lighting, it's almost one-thirty, and he decides not to open Greg's present just yet. He'll save it for tomorrow, when he's got a moment alone and he can be privately embarrassed by whatever insanely inappropriate, perfect thing Greg has gotten for him.
So he takes the present upstairs and leaves it on his dresser, and stands in front of his wardrobe, wondering what he should wear. He eventually settles on the slim-fitting black slacks that Greg made him buy, which feel a little funny but which he has been assured by several people look good on him - the day he wore them to work still sticks in his mind, because he's never been complimented by so many people before. He wears a slightly-stretchy blue shirt with buttons that he knows for a fact Gil likes. He knows it because he's caught him staring once or twice, when he thought no one was paying attention.
He examines himself in the mirror, catches a glimpse of Nicky grinning back at him, and feels a little curl of excitement extend into his stomach. He hopes he hasn't miscalculated something major, and that the afternoon unfolds according to his plans.
At ten to two he brushes his teeth, then changes the bath towels and straightens up in the washroom. The new cabinet over the sink still makes him wince in memory of that awful awful night not too long ago when everything came crashing down around him, but he tells himself that the association is a healthy one: a permanent reminder not to ever do that again.
Inside the cabinet there's still a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills, because sometimes he needs them. Between the long overtime hours he puts in on really gruesome cases and the simple fact that he lives twelve hours out of synch with his natural circadian rhythm, he has trouble sleeping on occasion. He hasn't overdosed again, and he and Gil haven't really talked about it, but it's early yet. They're still hedging around each other, although Nick knows that Gil makes a point of counting the pills whenever he's here.
At first Nick wasn't sure that he was doing it; Gil would ask for an Advil or something, and disappear into the washroom and come out thirty seconds later, and the next time Nick would be in the cabinet he would notice that the bottle had been moved. After a couple of weeks he put it together, and felt a tug towards anger that was equally balanced by one towards affection. He'd written a tiny note that said "trust me, okay?" and stuffed it in the bottle, and after that it had stopped being moved. Which doesn't mean that Gil has stopped looking; maybe he's just being extra careful about not getting caught.
Either way, it's another thing between them that they don't talk about, and Nick's not sure what that means. It could simply be that Gil doesn't do heart-to-hearts, or that he doesn't talk about things he's unsure of. Or it could mean that Gil doesn't want to know. Despite Greg's assurances to the contrary, the pessimist in Nick thinks it's probably the latter.
But he can't really blame him for that, try as he might. He thinks, If I were dating me, I wouldn't want to know all of it, either.
Nick stands facing the innocent little bottle, and on a sudden impulse he opens it, knocks about twenty pills out into his hand, and flushes them down the toilet. A test, he tells himself, and feels a sliver of sadness that there have to be tests at all, that nothing in his life is simple.
Then the doorbell rings, and Nick launches himself out of the bathroom and down the stairs. He passes through the living room and double-checks that things are exactly right, and stops just inside the front door to pull himself together. He doesn't want Gil to know that he came running, that his heart is hammering a little too fast, that he still gets weak at the very thought of them.
***
Gil hesitates, his hand over the doorbell, wondering how long proper etiquette demands one wait before ringing a second time. He's got a bouquet of flowers - lilies, he's discovered, are Nicky's favourites - and a bottle of wine, and he's more nervous about this date than any he can remember since high school.
It's strange, he thinks; the more dates they have, the more tense he finds himself beforehand. Once they break the ice he's able to relax, able to loosen up and enjoy himself - but the buildup is getting worse and worse, and he's not sure why. He suspects it's because with every passing day he becomes more aware of the things he could do to upset Nicky, without even realising it, and so he's more anxious about not screwing up again. He's already screwed up plenty.
Just as he decides that it's not rude to ring again, the door opens and Nicky's smile shines out at him. Part of the knot of tension in his stomach unravels, but not all of it. Not yet.
"Hey," Nicky says, stepping towards him.
Gil returns the hug slightly awkwardly, wine in one hand and flowers in the other, and waits for another notch of unease to disappear. After a stretch of hesitation it does, and Gil finds the strength to smile back.
"Happy birthday, Nicky," he says, and kisses him lightly on the cheek.
Nicky laughs and captures his mouth for a real kiss, and Gil feels another sliver of tension dissipate.
"Happier now that you're here," Nicky says, taking the flowers and inhaling their fragrance deeply, and he steps aside to invite Gil in.
He watches Nicky take the flowers through to the kitchen, and toes off his shoes on the welcome mat. That's another thing he gets uneasy about, Gil thinks: he doesn't know how to think of Nicky yet. In his head he's still male, still referred to as 'he' when he's thinking about him, but one some base level, Gil thinks that's wrong. Every time he tries to switch pronouns, though, he gets screwed up. He can't picture Nicky when he thinks of a woman, can't match the face and the word. He hopes that will come with time, because he's got a pretty good idea how Nicky would react in five years' time to Gil's continued inability to see him as female.
That makes him grin, sort of: he's never thought of himself and another person on that kind of time scale. Usually he's content with looking forward a month, maybe two or three if things are going well - but five years? The thought both terrifies and electrifies him, because he actually can see himself at Nicky's side five years from now. Ten years from now, when Gil is old and grey and his reprieved hearing finally succumbs to the inevitable. In his mind, Nicky has learned to sign by that point, and even their silences are eloquent.
Of course, all of this presupposes that Gil doesn't screw it up between now and then. He swallows, twitches the collar of his shirt, and follows Nicky into the kitchen.
"How was your meeting?" Nicky asks without turning from the sink as Gil comes through the archway.
Gil watches the flowers appear one by one in a vase, prodded until they satisfy some secret esthetic criterion. "About as miserable as can be expected," he says with a shrug. He sets the bottle on the counter and wonders if it would be too familiar too soon to go through the drawers until he finds the bottle opener.
The last stem falls into place and Nicky turns and catches him in a surprise hug, and Gil feels lips meet the side of his neck.
"I've missed you," Nicky says into his skin.
Gil's arms come up around him and he hugs him in. "It's only been a few hours," he says.
"Still," Nicky says. "I've been waiting for this all night."
And that kind of scares Gil, too. Not because Nicky is clingy - somehow that doesn't entirely surprise him, and it's a kind of clingy that he can deal with in good humour - but because he feels a kind of clinginess, too; a shadow of possessiveness he didn't feel before learning about Nicky, and that worries him. Worries him because it means, among other things, that deep down he regards men and women differently. He doesn't like that, doesn't like that it's so completely demonstrated in one person, where nothing has changed but his perception and that is enough to make him behave in a way that he would call sexist in any other person.
The flowers don't strike him as an expression of sexism, because he knows that he would bring flowers to anyone he was dating if it made them happy. And he could, if he were really determined to free himself from chauvinism, make a case for opening doors for Nicky along similar lines.
But the core-deep sense of possession and protectiveness he feels towards Nicky is unparalleled in his experiences with men, but somehow familiar in the context of his relationships with women. Previously he has always rationalised this dichotomy as personality-driven, that he had been responding to some subtle signal that they were giving that this was how they wanted to be treated - but Nicky hasn't done that. Nicky is still essentially Nick, a little more relaxed maybe now than he was a month ago but still fundamentally unchanged, but Gil can feel an instinctive drive in him to be an alpha male. It's still in the young stages, this drive, because Nicky is still Nick for the most part. But when Nick really is Nicky - when they kiss or curl up to watch a movie and Nicky cuddles against him in one of those impossible contortions that he insists is comfortable - it gets stronger, and he has to make a conscious effort to avoid creating a gender-based power dynamic.
He feels Nicky kiss his neck again, and then pull away. "Dinner is mostly ready," he says; pushes a short strand of hair behind his ear. It's not really long enough that it needs to be moved, but Nicky seems to draw some comfort from the action, so Gil has learned to find it endearing.
"I'm sure it'll be wonderful," he says, and takes his usual place at the kitchen table. Most of their dates start here, with wine and food or sometimes just wine, sometimes popcorn and hot chocolate if they're going to watch a movie.
A lot of their dates so far have been house-bound, and Gil understands that this is because Nicky gets depressed when he sees women - actual, physical women - out on dates, and even more depressed when they go to a gay restaurant or bar and he doesn't see any women at all. Gil supposes that in the comfort of his own home, Nicky can be exactly who he needs to be; but in public, confronted by the realities of other people, he feels boxed into his biology. They do go out, once a week maybe; Nicky makes a point of insisting on it, of being social and what he calls 'normal', but Gil can tell that it makes him uncomfortable.
"It's fondue," Nicky says, and cranks the heat up under a saucepan burbling on the stove. "Actual, real fondue - a guy I went to school with is living in Switzerland, he sent me an authentic recipe."
Gil smiles. "Could you find the right cheese?" he asks.
Nicky rolls his eyes. "Christ," he says, "I drove all over town looking, finally ended up in Henderson of all places at this German shop - you have no idea. They didn't have - what's it called..." He peers at a piece of paper stuck to the fridge. "...vacherin, but the German woman assured me this was acceptable." He holds up a bowl of shredded cheese. "Let's hope so."
Gil goes to the right drawer and gets out the bottle opener, takes down two glasses that he knows Nicky likes, and pours the wine that he brought. He's not sure if this is another measure of sexism, or just of familiarity. This hyper-awareness of his own actions is hauntingly dizzying.
"I have the utmost confidence in you," he says as he hands Nicky a glass of wine.
Nicky takes it and gives him another one of his smiles, the ones that stir something in Gil's blood and make his heart skip a beat or two. And not with tension this time, but with a fluttering warmth that has been building slowly over weeks now and is starting to settle comfortably around Gil's shoulders. He likes that Nicky smiles at him that way, and he likes the way the corners of his own mouth twitch upwards involuntarily in response. Despite his moments of terror, of utter conviction that he's going to destroy this cocoon before it opens, he likes this, likes them.
"Penny for your thoughts," Nicky says, and the way that he says it tells Gil that he's talking to girl-Nicky now; and despite his best efforts, he feels something realign in his mind, like he's changing gears from gay to straight, from man to woman, from equal to - to something else.
"My thoughts aren't worth a whole penny," he says with a smile, and sips at his wine because it gives him a chance to half turn away from the delicate scrutiny of Nicky's eyes.
"How about a kiss?"
He glances back at that, and there's Flirting Nicky, back in full force, and Gil feels his pulse speed up a notch. He swallows. "A kiss for my thoughts?"
"Or just for the hell of it," Nicky says and sidles up against him.
Gil lets their lips touch briefly, but only that, and then he smiles and says, "Don't want your cheese to burn, do you?"
A flit of forgotten worry shoots across Nicky's features, and he darts towards the stove with an urgency that Gil almost finds funny. Under different circumstances, he thinks, he would laugh at the dance of kitchen panic that Nicky is displaying. Circumstances such as knowing who he was laughing at - he knows that Nick would probably throw a dishtowel at him and make a face at him if he were to start laughing at him. But Nicky? He's not sure. It's as though he started dating one person, and all of a sudden is dating someone else.
But he knows that's not true, even at the same time that he knows it is true. He can tell himself intellectually that Nicky expects to be treated the same as Nick, that that's what he (she? dammit) wants, but but but... But Nicky isn't the same as Nick.
Not yet, anyway. Maybe someday she will be, when she's not so tremulous.
"I think," Nicky says, still standing over the stove with a wooden spoon sticking out of the pan of melted cheese and wine, "that this is almost ready. Want to get the candles?"
It's an excuse not to worry himself to death about something he can't control, so Gil pushes away from the counter and says, "I'd be happy to." He stops behind Nicky on the way past, rests one hand on his hip and drops a quick kiss to the nape of his neck, and then moves into the dining room with something akin to relief.
***
As she clears away the plates and leaves the fondue pot to soak in the sink, Nicky analyses dinner and decides it counts as a success. She was painfully aware throughout that Gil was struggling with something, but they managed to be charming and have fun despite it, and Nicky supposes that hesitations comes with the territory of dating a - well, someone like her.
She hears Gil follow her into the kitchen to retrieve another bottle of wine, and in passing he deposits another quick kiss on the back of her neck without saying anything. She smiles where he can't see it, and thinks, That's why I can live with whatever is bothering Gil. Because it's not an all-consuming bother, and he's dealing with it.
She comes out of the kitchen to find Gil sitting in the living room at the end of the couch where all of Nicky's momentous things have happened, and she thinks, That's appropriate. She picks up her gift for Gil, which she left sitting on the bookcase, and joins him on the couch.
He eyes the ribbon-wrapped boxes with a slightly lopsided smile, and pulls a long, narrow box out of his own pocket. "Great minds think alike," he says.
She laughs and picks up the glass of wine waiting for her on the table. "So who goes first?" she asks.
"Well," Gil says, "I believe it's traditional for ladies to go first..."
She smiles, and takes the box that Gil holds out to her. "I hear that good things come in small packages," she says, and slides the silky ribbon down the length of the box.
Gil watches her while she slits the tape holding the paper on, and she pulls the box free of its wrapping to discover the velvet box of a chic jeweller's in town. Her eyes go wide and she catches Gil's slightly shy smile.
"I'm not used to shopping for women," he says, "so I hope you like it."
Inside the box is the thinnest gold chain that Nicky has ever seen, and nestled against the black cloth is a tiny hummingbird pendant, gold with highlights that look an awful lot like platinum. Nicky takes it out and it feels fragile in her hands, big and clumsy and inept.
"It's-" she says and swallows with some difficulty. "Thank you."
Something that looks like relief passes over Gil's face. "It's okay?" he asks.
"God, yes," Nicky says, and leans across to kiss him. She suspects that she's passed some kind of test, because she knows that he's been trying to plot the boundaries of acceptable behaviour without coming out and asking her what's okay. She can see the struggle he has in treating her as a woman without compromising how he thinks of Nick, and maybe this is a watershed moment for him, because flowers and wine and opening the occasional door are sweet, but this necklace - this beautiful, beautiful piece of jewelry - is feminine in a way that nothing between them has been to date.
Gil returns the kiss but pulls away, and takes the box from her. "Let me put it on for you," he says, and lifts the chain from its nest of soft cloth. "I want to see it against your skin."
Those words are somehow the sexiest thing she's ever heard, and her fingers are trembling slightly as she undoes the second button of her shirt to give him better access. His hands ghost against the smooth skin along the line of her neck, and then disappear behind her head. She can feel him fumble with the clasp, the brush of fingers against her hair almost ticklish but not quite. His hands circle around to her front again, and two fingers come to rest just under her collarbone.
"It's beautiful on you," he tells her. "It looks like it belongs there."
He smiles warmly at her, then leans in to kiss her again. This time he doesn't make it short and playful, doesn't dampen it before it generates any heat. This time he works a hand into the hair at the base of her skull and pulls her closer.
She kisses him with all the enthusiasm and love she can scrounge up, because in a way, he's passed a test, too. He's proven that he can do it, even if it takes a lot of effort on his part - ease will come with time, and with familiarity, and she sincerely hopes that they'll have a lot of time to get very familiar.
The angle of his body changes some tiny fraction and she mewls against his lips, wriggles closer and enjoys the familiar thrill that shoots up along her spine and back down through her veins to pool in her abdomen. They've come this far several times, but for a thousand wordless reasons they haven't gone further. Tonight is a special night, though; after all, their birthdays only come once a year.
She pushes her hips closer to him, slips one knee over his thigh and pulls away from the kiss. They rest with their foreheads touching, and Nicky reaches behind her blindly for her gift to Gil, which has fallen behind the cushions and which takes her a long moment to find. She doesn't want to have to turn to find it, doesn't want to break the intensity that is crackling between them, the focus that is shining in Gil's eyes.
When she finds it she kisses him again before bringing the twin boxes to eye level between them.
"It's not fancy like yours," she tells him, "but I kinda hope you'll like it, too."
"I'm sure I will," he assures her, and there's a certain reluctance in his movements when he lets go of her back to take the boxes. He kisses her chin and says, "Which should I open first?"
She thinks about it while she kisses his forehead, and then touches the top one.
She finds that she's holding her breath while he unties the ribbon and starts on the wrapping. She may have been uncertain about the amber-encased beetle, but this terrifies her in a weirdly detached way. She knows that this is precisely what she wants to give him, what she wants to share with him, but - but. Now that the time is here, her heart is hammering.
It takes him a moment to figure out what he's looking at, which is kind of endearing and makes her almost giggle; it bursts her bubble of fear, and when his clued-in eyes meet hers, she leans down to kiss him again.
"Are you sure-" he starts to ask.
"Yes," she says. "Open the other one."
He doesn't bother trying to be delicate with the paper on this one, and before long he's looking up at Nicky with a box of condoms in one hand, a jar of self-warming lubricant in the other, and a sudden erection pressing up against her.
"Nicky-" he says again, and his voice is starting to get husky around the edges.
"Gil," she interrupts and kisses him again, leans down enough that their foreheads touch and takes a deep breath. "I've wanted this for so long," she confesses, "I've dreamed about having you inside me - please." She kisses him again. "It's my birthday."
"Mine too," he says, and pulls her body tight against his in a way that he hasn't before, not since the horrendous first time they made out on this couch that ended in a quick escape on Nicky's part and a miserable non-conversation over an unbandaged hand.
"I've never," she tries to explain, but isn't sure how to finish the sentence.
He makes a low noise against her throat and pulls her tight again. "Nicky, are you sure?"
"Yes," she says, because she is. Because she's tired of coming so close to it and then not, she's tired of her sexual energy only expending itself when she's alone with nothing more than an imaginary Gil with her. "I want this, I want you, I love you - please, Gil."
He presses his lips against her neck just under her jaw and says, "God, Nicky - I've wanted to touch you for so long-"
She groans at his words, and at the low way they thrum through her nerves, and even though she's still playing a mental game with the reality of her body, she feels herself get hard against him. "So touch me," she whispers and catches his upturned mouth with a certain predatory energy that almost surprises her.
He kisses back and then stops, abruptly. "Not here," he says, breathing hard, "not our first time. Come to bed with me."
***
They've never been naked with each other, and the thrill of dipping her hands below Gil's waistband is exhilarating. Their shirts come off quickly, a practised easy intimacy that they're already comfortable with. Nicky rests one hand on the buckle of Gil's belt, and looks at him uncertainly.
"Is this okay?" she asks.
They're standing next to her bed, the lights dimmed the way she'd left them, Gil's hands resting at her waist and his eyes dark with arousal.
"Of course it is," he says, and kisses her deeply. "What could possibly be wrong with this?"
"I don't know," she says, "but I just - I keep expecting it to fall apart all of a sudden."
"It won't," he says, and kisses her neck.
She takes a shuddering breath as his teeth graze her skin, and she undoes his belt and flicks the button of his fly open. She enjoys the way he presses against her, the way his hands travel up her back and down to her ass, and when a brave moment seizes her, she unzips his slacks and pushes them down.
It's not that she's tentative about Gil's anatomy - far from it; she's been lusting after it for years - but it's the reciprocal nature of the act that has her spooked. She's done her best to avoid the issue of the geometry of her crotch, and even though she's known it would eventually enter into the equation, she hasn't come up with any good plans for dealing with it.
She doesn't want Gil to involve her - Nick's - genitals in their intimacy, and she has no idea how to phrase that. The thought of Gil handling her penis is not a sexy one at all, because the fact that she has a penis at all is like a slap in the face. She knows she can come without touching herself, because she's been doing it for a while now, but she isn't sure that Gil will understand that. He's dated men before, but Nicky doesn't want to be made love to like a man, despite the brutal reality of her biology. She isn't sure how to communicate that.
"You okay?" Gil asks, noticing her hesitation.
"Sure," she says, and draws his face towards hers for another searing kiss.
"Nicky, we don't have to," he tells her.
"We do," she says, and slides a hand under the elastic of his boxers. "Believe me, we do."
He makes a hungry little noise and pulls her tight against him. "Can I tell you something?" he asks, half-breathless.
She nods, and lets her fingers stroke lightly against the heat between his legs.
He groans. "That's really - distracting, you know," he says, and grins when her hand stills. "Not that it's a bad thing," he adds quickly, and laughs when she does. "But just - I'm not really sure what to do."
She blinks at him.
"I mean," he says, "I know what to do, I just - I don't know how to account for Nicky in all of this." He's looking at her so earnestly, so openly and trustingly despite what her fingers are doing to him, that she feels her eyes start to fill.
"Shit," he says, and tries to take a step back, "I didn't mean-"
His legs hit the mattress and she follows him forward, pushing him over onto the expanse of bed and settling down against him.
"I love you," she says, and kisses him soundly, pressing him back against the cover with her own body. "I love everything about you."
***
It's clumsy undressing on top of the covers but they do it anyway, tugging at socks and cuffs and lifting their hips in an awkward choreography of lust. Gil is naked first, and he smiles knowingly when Nicky rakes her eyes up and down the length of his body, stopping just short of licking her lips.
When she finally sheds her last layer of protection, her black briefs, she half-curls on her side to keep her crotch mostly-hidden.
Gil touches her knee, gently pulls her back until she's lying flat. "You're beautiful, Nicky," he assures her, and leans down to kiss her, his body covering her own. He doesn't try to sneak a peek at what she's trying to hide, doesn't snake a hand between them and touch her. He just lets his body settle against hers and seeks out her mouth with his own.
She opens her legs to him so he can rest more comfortably, and the feel of his penis against her own is a strange one. It sends little shocks of pleasure up along her spine, but they're half-scrambled by her brain because they're not exactly the right signals. She tries to ignore it, instead just enjoys the feel of Gil's obvious pleasure moving against her body, and the little sounds he makes as they shift into a tighter configuration.
Eventually she reaches for the condoms and the lube and presses them into his hand, because her body is craving this intimacy on such a base, primal level that has little patience for these familiar preliminaries. He takes them from her with a soft little chuckle against her skin, and props himself up on one elbow while he unscrews the lid from the jar.
It's somehow almost unbearably erotic to watch Gil dip his fingers into the gel, a look of almost-predatory lust creeping onto his face as he rubs it evenly between his digits, watching Nicky squirm in anticipation.
"Isn't that enough?" she asks eventually, because now he's just teasing her, enjoying the little movements of her body and the uneven pace of her breathing.
"Better too much than not enough," he says sagely, but sets the little jar aside with the lid on crooked, and he brings his hand slowly down between her legs.
She freezes the moment he touches her, because he's in a no-man's-land now and she isn't sure what he should be doing or how she should be feeling about it. She swallows hard and holds Gil's gaze as evenly as she can.
"Are you sure, Nicky?" he asks for what feels like the thousandth time.
"Yes, dammit," she says breathlessly, and uses her shoulders for leverage to push herself down onto him. Her mouth falls open in surprise at the pain of the intrusion, not crippling, but a lot more than she expected.
Gil winces in sympathy at her sharp movement, and bends down to kiss her thigh. "Let me do this, Nicky," he murmurs.
"Okay," she says, and knows she sounds subdued. She is subdued. She bites her lip as Gil's finger starts a gentle probing movement, twisting enough to start to stretch her. That hurts, too, more than she thought - but she remembers when Carrie got drunk enough to tell her about her first time, and how much it had hurt, so Nicky bears down and deals with it.
She feels Gil's lips touch her inner thigh again. "Relax, Nicky," he says against her skin. "You've got to let go a little bit, I know it hurts but it'll hurt less if you can let me in-"
She takes a deep breath, and then another, and she's just starting to think that maybe it's not so incredibly bad after all when Gil forces another finger in, and there's a whole new world of pain. She hisses and can't help the involuntary muscular lockdown, and when Gil stills his hand she isn't sure if no movement is better or worse than the small, halting movements he had been making so far.
"Nicky," he says, a hesitancy edging his words.
"Don't stop," she says, and even though it's pushed through clenched teeth, she means it. So it hurts, she thinks, so what. Everything good hurts at first, right? It'll get better.
"Nicky, I'm hurting you," Gil says, "there's no rush for this-"
She squinches her eyes shut and squirms down on his fingers again in response, hissing again and trying to ignore the prickling behind her eyelids. It's not the smothering pain of a broken arm, she thinks, but it's the specific and unbearable agony of pulling out an eyelash. Fuck, she thinks. Fuck fuck fuck.
"Jesus," Gil says, and tries to pull his fingers free, but she won't let him. "You're going to injure yourself doing that-"
"Then you do it," she grinds out. "Do it right. Just - don't stop."
"Nicky, open your eyes."
It's harder than she expects, to peel herself out of her private pain to look at Gil. She knows she has tears streaking her face now, but - she wants their first time to be over with so it doesn't have to happen again. She knows it will get better than this, better with practice and repetition and all that.
"This isn't right," Gil says, softly, and makes another abortive move to free his fingers. "It shouldn't be this painful, you shouldn't have to endure this. This should be fun."
"It will be," she says, although it sounds pretty lame even to her. She clears her throat and tries again. "It's okay, Gil," she says, "yeah it hurts but I'll live. I want this, I want you. Please."
He stares at her for a long time. "This is just two fingers," he says slowly, "you have no idea how different it's going to be when it's-"
"Please," she says, "I want this, really I do, I really do want this..."
Maybe it's the rhetorical power of her new mantra, or just the fact that Gil's fingers have stopped moving and she's starting to get used to the feeling of their invasion, but she almost starts to believe it again. She does want this, she does want Gil, she wants to feel him inside her - all of it. She finds a smile and puts it on display.
She watches Gil's eyes soften away from fear and towards love again. "Just - let me do this, okay?" he asks eventually.
She nods, because in all honesty she doesn't think she has it in her, knowing how much it would hurt, to thrust against his hand again. She fixes a calm look on her face and reminds herself to breathe.
For a long time, Gil doesn't move his hand, doesn't do anything, just watches her with infinite patience. He watches while she forces herself to relax, while she gradually moves from hesitation to frustration. And then just as she's about to say something, he leans forward and plants a kiss just above her bellybutton. His hand is still motionless - fingers probably going numb inside her but he's not doing anything about it - when he leans up a little further and kisses her stomach, and then again and kisses her sternum, then the centre of her chest.
Her breathing eases a bit when he glances up and catches her eye mischievously, almost winks before turning his lips to her right nipple.
This time her breath hitches with pleasure, because if there's one thing that Gil has learned about her body, it's that she likes his mouth right there, doing exactly that. She thinks, I can do this. As long as he keeps that up, I can do this.
She brings one hand up to cradle his head, to run her fingers through his hair in time to the movements of his tongue. Her eyes shutter half-closed again and now her smile is genuine, Jesus she could do this all day.
At her contented little noise, Gil starts to wiggle his fingers again, gently, just a tiny fraction of movement but it's enough. Enough to make her wince and hold her breath, enough to blank her mind to the nerve endings in her chest, enough to forget what Gil's mouth is up to as opposed to his hands.
He stops again, stills his hand and rests his head on her chest, peering up at her. "Nicky," he whispers, "honey - it's okay."
"It's not okay," she snaps at him, then takes a deep shuddering breath to rein in her frustration. It's not Gil that's driving her nuts, it's her own body - he doesn't need this. "It's - I want this, Gil. I do. I really really do."
"I know you do," Gil says, "but you're not ready for it - and that's okay. It's not a race, I'm not going anywhere-"
"I want it now."
She feels his sigh puff against her skin. "Why?" he asks. "Why is now so important?"
As long as he isn't moving his fingers at all, she can mostly ignore that they're there. Not pretend they aren't there, because there's nothing that could erase the sensation completely; but she can move it to the side, sort of, and think of something else.
"Because-" she starts, and isn't sure how to explain it. How Nicky's body wants this more than anything, how she's been having the most erotic dreams of her life about this, about Gil moving in her and under her and around her, about their bodies pushing into each other, about her legs wrapped around him, pulling him in tighter and tighter. The reality of Nick's body isn't so sure about it, but she wants - no, she needs to have this one thing, because it's - it's like Nicky wants some physical validation or something.
"Because why?" Gil asks.
She almost laughs. What a great time to have this conversation, she thinks, with your hand up my ass. "Because it's a Nicky thing," she says and closes her eyes, her voice a little closer to a warble than she'd like but that's life. "Instead of a Nick thing. It's - Nicky is inside me but she wants to be outside, too, just a little bit. I want this, Gil. It's important to me."
He's silent for a long time, and she concentrates on his pulse, beating gently through her ribs from his cheek. Then he says, "This is one of the things I can't understand." He doesn't say it with anger, or with resignation, just - a statement of fact, a lament of the incommunicable.
"I guess so," she says, and wonders what he's going to do about it.
Another sigh exhales against her chest. "You have to promise me," he says in his sombre voice, "that you'll tell me stop when it's too much."
Her own heart pounds at the fact that Gil will do this for her, even through his overwhelming reluctance. "I promise," she says. "I love you Gil, and I promise that if it - if it's too much, I'll tell you."
There's another long moment of silence, and she risks peeling her eyes open to see his expression. It's a mix of thoughtful and concerned, with a heavy dose of sad suspicion. "What?" she asks.
"I'm not sure I believe you," he says softly.
"Trust me," she says, "like I trust you. I know it's going to hurt, Gil, but I want it anyway."
Gil holds her gaze for another long second, then makes a decision because he kisses her nipple again, turns his attention to the other one for a bit, and slowly starts to work his fingers against her reluctant muscle.
She keeps her eyes closed for this preparation, and she manages not to hiss when a third finger is added, when it starts to stretch beyond what she thought she could endure. She knows she's wearing a grimace through it all, but Gil - true to his word - doesn't stop. He keeps kissing her stomach and her thighs for the eternity it takes for her body to start to relax.
When it stops hurting completely, when she's just aware in a strange way of something moving inside her but without recognition of pain, she opens her eyes and says, "I'm ready."
Gil is half-slouched to one side, propped up on one hand. "I'm afraid I'm not," he says simply, and shrugs with one shoulder.
She lifts her head enough to see that he's completely flaccid. She wants to swear - now that she's actually ready, he's not. "Why - what's wrong?"
"This doesn't feel sexual," he tells her quietly, honestly. "Seeing you in pain doesn't turn me on, Nicky."
"It doesn't hurt anymore."
"Maybe not," he concedes, "but this - it feels too coerced."
She closes her eyes against another wave of impending tears. Why does nothing work out for her? Why is everything one catastrophe after another, one doomed failure hot on the heels of the previous?
"Oh Nicky," Gil says, and pulls his hand out gently. She almost sighs in pleasure at its removal, but she stops herself in time. She feels something twitch inside her, start to relax and unwind.
Gil moves up to lie beside her, spoons her on her side and curls up against her. "Maybe next time," he whispers in her ear just as the tears start.
"What if not next time?" she asks in a tiny voice, wiping at her face, "or the next time, or ever - what then?"
He kisses her shoulder. "Then nothing, Nicky. I love you even without sex."
"But I want sex," she says, and is irritated at how imploring her voice has become. She rolls onto her back and looks him in the eye. "I really - do you know what I dream about?"
Another kiss. "No," he says.
"I dream about you," she tells him. "And me. Sometimes it's really slow and sweet and you have me crying because it feels so good, and other times it's hard and fast and kinda dirty, and I wake up halfway through coming and I - I want it to be true, even just once."
Gil's hand resting on her stomach slides upwards, and his hand cups over her flat and infuriating breast. "It will be," he promises, "some day."
It's the wrong answer, but part of her understands that it's as close as Gil is going to get, because he doesn't understand this. So she kisses him quickly and turns away from him, lets herself be spooned against his warmth again, and wills herself to stop crying.
***
Gil falls asleep eventually, once he feels Nicky's body slump into exhaustion under his arm. He lays awake for a while first, though, staring at the thin line of gold against Nicky's neck, and wondering what he's gotten himself into.
Not that he isn't in love with Nicky - he is, although that took a bit of admitting on his part, because he hasn't told someone he loved them in a very, very long time - and not that he's upset because they haven't had sex - hell, he's been celibate for years, he can certainly keep going that way if it comes to that. It's not even the whole Nick-as-Nicky thing, which he can accept with a strange ease of mind. It's nothing quite so tangible as that, nothing he can point at and say, That. That's what bothers me, that's what I need to work on.
It's something impossible to pin down, something in the way that Nicky flinches away from him with no warning, then turns around and flirts like mad. Something that keeps Gil hopelessly off-balance, always worried that he's crossed some unsuspected line.
Gil has no frame of reference to understand what Nicky is going through, and he has come to realise that that no amount of research on the internet is going to fix that problem for him. And without some kind of common ground, he's not sure they can have any kind of real connection.
He's tried not to think about that too closely, but somehow right now it's hard to escape the notion, because it rattles around in his mind like a marble in a tin can or a pebble in a very tight shoe: utterly impossible to ignore. Something about the way they're naked and wrapped in private miseries, something about the fact that Nicky has cried himself to sleep in his arms, something about the unspoken insult that Nicky has been dealt. And there's no telling who did the insulting: Gil, or Nicky himself, or some phantom inside of Nicky that Gil can't even begin to consider intelligently - Gil wonders if he has the talent, the emotional skill, necessary to successfully maintain this relationship.
Which is a hollow and unpleasant thought, but unfortunately it's the one that chases him to sleep in the end. His unease, coupled with the absurd amount of cheese and wine he's consumed this afternoon, conspire to make it a restless, listless sleep full of strange dreams and half a dozen startled wakeups, heart pounding and a spinning confusion about who and where he is.
The last one, which nudges him into blinking incomprehension around seven o'clock, convinces him that sleep is not something he's going to pursue right now. He carefully disentangles himself from Nicky's limbs, and eases himself to his feet. He stands for a moment next to the bed, rendered almost speechless by how beautiful Nicky is, then shakes himself out of it and pulls Nicky's yellow bathrobe off its hook on the closet door, and lets himself out of the bedroom.
He stops in the washroom to relieve himself, and then to splash a little water on his face, and mostly out of habit, he opens the medicine cabinet and catches himself reaching for the bottle of sleeping pills. He stops, hand extended, fingers brushing against a box of bandaids, and he hesitates, torn between two equally strong instincts.
He thinks, This is something I have no experience with, this Nicky thing. No experience, no perspective, no divine right to meddle. The bottle has been full for weeks now, after all, and Nicky hasn't seemed particularly depressed lately.
Of course, he counter-argues grimly, there's no telling what he's going to be like after this afternoon's study in failed intimacy. How low is this going to push him? Is there going to be another day of tight fear for Gil, of sitting next to a terrifyingly unresponsive body and wondering if he should be calling an ambulance or giving him another half hour to wake up on his own?
He starts to reach again for the pills, the decision having been made by the more pragmatic slice of his personality, when suddenly he thinks, Greg. His hand stops of its own accord, and after a heartbeat, he lets his arm fall to his side.
Greg. That's what's different now as opposed to the last time, Nicky has Greg now. Greg, who apparently has the ability to take absolutely everything in stride without breaking his step, Greg who has suddenly become the best friend that Nicky could possibly have, Greg who overcame a miserable hangover and probably a liberal dose of fear to interrogate Gil about his intentions towards Nicky.
Greg, who knows so much more about what's going on than Gil does, and who will certainly not let Nicky do anything sudden.
Greg, who Gil trusts.
Greg.
Gil shuts the cabinet, washes his hands again, reties the belt of the bathrobe, and wanders out into the hall.
***
He checks on Nicky, is satisfied that he's still asleep, then goes down into the kitchen to make himself useful. He washes some dishes, tidies the living room, throws out the wrapping paper and corks the remains of the after dinner wine. He watches the evening news, makes some coffee and helps himself to an orange from the crisper before deciding, at nine, that he should wake Nicky up in time to make himself presentable for work.
Again he's caught by the simple beauty of Nicky asleep, the long expanses of his skin and muscle, the fringe of hair around the nape of his neck, his runner's tan... everything. The curve of his hip under the cover, the angular bone of his ankle tenting the corner of the sheet.
Gil drops one knee on the mattress on what he half-guiltily thinks of as his side of the bed, and shakes Nicky gently. "Nicky," he says, "time to get up."
He shifts away from the touch and buries his head under a pillow. Gil smiles, and lifts the pillow, feels his smile tug a bit bigger as Nicky burrows under the next pillow over, vole-like with his eyes squeezed tight. Gil takes away the other pillow, and the one after that, and when Nicky's nose reaches the edge of the bed, he rolls onto his back and sighs.
"Is it that time already?" he grumbles.
"I'm afraid so," Gil says. "It's a little after nine."
Nicky makes another caveman sound and rolls back onto his stomach, and resumes anew his search for a pillow to hide under. Gil watches him worm around the bed for a bit and then touches his shoulder again.
"Come on, Nicky," he says gently, "I've got coffee on and I can make breakfast. Pancakes? Eggs? You name it, it's yours."
"Coffee doesn't work anymore," Nicky says into the mattress, but at least he's awake enough to be sarcastic. "Not unless Greg is making it."
"He's spoiling you rotten, isn't he?" Gil asks, and settles from his knee to a sitting position, resting against the headboard. He hasn't made a decision yet, if there's even a decision to be made, about this messy entanglement they have, but for now, he'll enjoy what there is to enjoy, and mourn the spaces between them.
"He's horrible," Nicky says, and smiles. His eyes are still stubbornly shut, but the laugh-lines around them crinkle in affection. "Poor me."
Gil reaches out and runs his fingers through the unholy mess of Nicky's hair. "Poor you," he echoes.
There's a short pause. "You're not going to let me go back to sleep, are you?" Nicky eventually asks.
"No."
He heaves an enormous, self-indulgent sigh, and slides one eye open. He stares at the ceiling in accusation for a heartbeat, then turns his attention to Gil. A split second later the other eye pops open and Nicky lifts his head to study Gil very seriously.
"What?" he asks, mirroring the serious look.
"I, uh," Nicky says. "You look good in my housecoat."
Gil glances down at the yellow robe that has seen better days. "I do?" he asks.
"Um, yeah," Nicky says, and props himself up on one elbow to look at him more closely. "Really good."
"Thanks?" Gil hazards.
"Really, really good," Nicky clarifies, and reaches up towards him with one hand. "Who knew canary could be so sexy?"
Gil blinks and lets himself get pulled down into a kiss, albeit a slightly confused one, at least on his end. Canary? he thinks. Sexy?
But the kiss isn't confused on Nicky's end - it's demanding and thorough and electric enough to stir a little interest in Gil, who lowers himself next to Nicky and accepts the instant squid-hug that he receives with a little more enthusiasm than grace.
"Yellow, huh?" Gil asks when Nicky moves his mouth to Gil's collarbone.
"Who knew?" Nicky says, and pushes Gil back against the bed and starts a slow sensual crawl down his body. He opens the robe but doesn't try to take it off, letting it fall to the sides as he moves from neck to chest to stomach to abdomen.
It's a little bit strange for Gil to look down and see Nicky nuzzling at his crotch, but the strangeness is short-lived, replaced by a powerful wave of arousal. "Jesus, Nicky," he gasps when Nicky's tongue discovers a clever way to make Gil's head snap back into the pillowless expanse of mattress.
"Been a long time," Nicky says when he gets a chance, "it'll come back to me."
That scrambles Gil's brain, because his imagination immediately conjures up impossible heights of pleasure further down the road if this is what passes for rusty in Nicky's mind. "Instant recall," he stammers and then moans. "God that feels good-"
He can feel Nicky's smile and the accompanying little chuckle, and that elicits another drawn-out groan from him. Granted, it's been a long time since someone has done this for him, but that somehow doesn't account for the fire racing through his veins at the thought that Nicky - who he has been thinking about for years - is the one he is so desperately in love with.
He shuts his brain off for a while, coasting on the heat and tempo of Nicky's mouth, of his hands and his breathing and his - everything. Everything about Nicky is sexy right now, and it translates wonderfully through his tongue and lips and into Gil. Gil, who is an open receptacle for this kind of rush, who knows that he is making wantonly hedonistic noises and has stopped caring. He had never thought this simple act could be so good, had never thought that Nicky would be the one to bring him to this elevated place, and yet-
Nicky stops.
Gil can't quite stop the curse as it rolls off his tongue, and when he opens his eyes to look at Nicky, he knows that he looks beseeching, imploring, pathetic. "Why'd you stop?" he whines.
Nicky is sitting up now between his legs, his skin flushed and glowing, breathing hard, his eyes almost black. One hand is resting on Gil's thigh, the thumb tracing urgent little circles against the pale skin there. "I want you inside me," he says, his voice barely above a whisper.
Even with his blood pounding through his ears and the better part of his brain scrambled with hormones, Gil manages to stop himself from leaping, and studies Nicky. He's sitting on one hip, his legs curled to the side, leaning on one elbow with that feline line to his shoulders and spine that makes him seem impossibly feminine.
Maybe that's what does it, in the end: the instant recognition - it lasts only a heartbeat or two before it disappears, but Gil clings to the insight of that moment - of Nicky as a woman, who is desperate to be seen and touched as a woman, to be recognised for what she is independent of the skin she wears.
Gil sits up and kisses Nicky. "You're sure?" he asks, although it's more of a formality than anything because he knows, in the way that she kisses him back and the way she opens her legs to him, what her answer will be.
She leans back and retrieves the jar of lubricant from where it was on the bedside table, and in that stretched-out moment of flexibility Gil feels an echo again of that recognition, that femininity - is this what it takes, he thinks, to see Nicky for who she is? Naked, desperate, stretched out against him?
He takes advantage of the recognition and the oddly asymmetric spike of lust it sends through him, and slides one hand up the inside of her thigh and along the cleft until it finds what it's looking for.
The muscle feels swollen to his fingers, hot and protesting but Nicky leans her head back against the mattress and sighs. It's not quite contentment, maybe closer to resignation than to anything else, but it isn't pain, and that's something.
He takes the jar of lubricant from her hand, and coats his fingers without the tease of last time - this time, neither of them will want to wait for it, neither of them is interested in prolonging the foreplay. He slides his hand back between her legs and eases one finger in.
She winces, but only briefly, and he notices immediately that she's still relaxed, still stretched out, from earlier. It doesn't take him long to restretch what needs restretching, and although Nicky is definitely not in sexual nirvana, the pain and abject horror of their earlier experiment is likewise not in sight.
He withdraws his hand and kisses her chest, touches his tongue to one nipple to get her back to the present and when she smiles bravely and opens her eyes, he leans up far enough to kiss her mouth. "You ready?" he asks.
"As I'll ever be," she tells him, and reaches up with both arms to wrap around his neck. She watches him with nervous eyes as he manages to get a condom wrapper open and put it on with one hand; when he kisses her collarbone again, she manages a smile.
"If it hurts," he says as he rearranges himself over her, lines himself up and tries to ignore the fact that there's a penis pressed against his stomach because he does not right now need to be reminded that Nicky is really Nick.
"I know," she says, smiles, and pulls him down for a kiss.
He seizes her distraction of lip and tongue as a good moment to enter her, and although he feels the kiss freeze when he pushes past her defensive ring of muscle, he doesn't stop until he's in far enough that it's real.
When he breaks the kiss and lifts his head, the staggered look of blankness on Nicky's face is almost enough to make him pull out again. He doesn't. He kisses her chin, props himself on one elbow and uses the other hand to rearrange her legs as best as he can, trying to remember from his own dim days of virginity what was the least uncomfortable position.
"Nicky," he says, kissing her chin again, "look at me. Please?"
Her eyes come back to him, slowly, and she swallows. "I didn't - didn't know," she whispers, but he's relieved to hear that it's less pain than it is detachment.
"Are you okay?" he asks softly, kissing her slowly at the corner of her mouth. "Do you want me to stop?"
She thinks about it for a moment, which Gil decides is also a good sign: she's not just going to say yes because she feels she's supposed to.
She takes a deep breath and pulls her legs up a little higher, and fixes a brave look on her face. "Keep going," she says, and if her voice seems just a little ragged around the edges, it's not enough to break. "Please. Just - go slow."
"As slow as you want, Nicky," he promises, kisses her again, and starts to move.
***
It's strange, she decides as she feels Gil moving inside her and on top of her. Strange. Not good, and not quite bad enough to really be bad. It's... definitely not sexual, though. Hm.
After a few cautious strokes, he finds what she can only assume is her prostate, and that is - not as good as she'd always thought it would be, either. Yes, it feels good, but it's more along the lines of a really good stretch when she wakes up or a yawn that makes her toes tingle. It is most definitely not an explosion of sexual bliss, and she feels - disappointed, she thinks. Probably. Now is not the time to analyze it too much.
She keeps her eyes open, fixes a smile on her face and watches Gil enjoy himself. He's still moving slowly, which is good because if he tried to push for something harder she wouldn't be able to handle it like this, but there's a restrained urgency to his movements that speaks of overwhelming passion just under the surface.
She makes a semi-encouraging noise at one point that seems to go straight to the sexual centre of Gil's brain. He makes a strangled noise of his own and rests his head against her neck. She can feel him mouthing obscenities against her skin as his pace picks up, but even as he approaches his climax he is still keeping himself in check, not thrusting in deeper than he already is, not pushing for something that he probably wants with every fibre of his being.
When he comes, she feels it, and the strongest emotion she feels in herself is... relief. It's over, she thinks; I survived it and it's over.
Which is not a thought she associates with sex. And not one that she enjoys, either.
***
Gil rests against Nicky for a moment before pulling out, slowly and carefully. He is very acutely aware that Nicky didn't come, didn't even come close to coming, and he feels guilty that he was able to find his release where his partner wasn't.
He settles on the mattress next to Nicky and opens his eyes, studies the body stretched out next to him. The ghost of female-Nicky is gone, leaving Nick-Nicky staring at the ceiling with a cold kind of clinical shock.
Shit, he thinks. He touches Nicky's chest lightly, waits for some kind of response from him, and when he doesn't get one, he fights against his lethargy and pushes himself up on one elbow so he can look at Nicky's face.
"Nicky," he says softly, and touches his chin.
Nicky startles, and looks at Gil for a long moment before blinking. "Hey," he finally says.
Gil feels a little pang of loss that female-Nicky is gone, and then feels a stab of responsibility: did he chase her away? Or is she still there and he's just too stupid to see her?
"Are you okay?" he asks, which is not something that he's used to asking after having sex.
"I guess so," he says, and he isn't even trying to sound convincing.
Shit. "Did I hurt you?"
"No." That sounds less than sincere, too.
"I'm sorry," he says, even though he's not entirely sure what he's apologizing for. For enjoying himself? For finding release when Nicky so obviously didn't? "I should have stopped-"
"No." Nicky sits up awkwardly and winces, squirms and winces again. "It's okay. It's - I need to take a bath, I think."
Gil catches his wrist as he starts to scootch to the side of the bed. "Nicky," he says, "I'm so sorry-"
"Don't," Nicky says. "Just... leave it."
He strokes up Nicky's arm, ghosts his fingers along the line of his shoulder, which he knows turns him on. "Do you want me to-"
"No."
Nicky flashes him a smile but it has all the warmth and sparkling life of a cardboard cutout. "I just - I need to go soak in bubbles for a bit. Is that okay?"
Even his words seem brittle, but there's not a lot that Gil can say or do right now when it is so patently obvious that Nicky wants to be alone. So Gil sits up, kisses the back of Nicky's neck and rests a hand on his thigh. "Of course," he says, trying to cram as much love as he can into those syllables. "If you need anything, let me know."
He smiles again, or at least arranges his face in a smile, and moves away from him.
He watches him cross the room, walking stiffly and trying to look casual while doing it, and when he disappears into the hall, Gil sighs and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He peels the condom off and throws it out, wipes himself off with a handful of Kleenex off Nicky's dresser, and eyes the wrapped box sitting there, unopened.
The card is lying on top of its envelope, and Gil peeks at it just to confirm his suspicions: it's from Greg. He doesn't read the sloppy scrawl on the inside of the card, barely even looks at the fish on the cover; he just nudges the card back to where it was when he had flicked it open, then returns to bed.
He wonders if they've just done something so terrible that they can't extricate themselves from it, if his transgression - however well-intentioned and heavily petitioned from Nicky it was - is going to require Greg's supple touch to remedy it.
He lies down on his back and looks up at the ceiling. According to the bedside clock it's almost ten, which means he should be showering and making breakfast right about now. Instead, he listens to the sound of running water in the bathroom and tries not to worry.
***
Bubble baths are not something that Nicky indulges in often, because they're time-consuming and she always has to shower afterwards to get rid of all the soap, and she just generally doesn't pamper herself that much. But tonight...
She sighs, and sinks deeper into the water. Tonight she needs it.
It had stung like a bastard when she had first lowered herself into the water, hurt enough that she had hissed and hovered for almost a full minute, half-in and half-out, before deciding that this pain at least would pay off in pleasure. It had taken a couple of minutes before the sting had either subsided or just become background discomfort; in either case, she's enjoying the indulgence now that she's able to relax into the heat.
Relax, and... think. Think about things she doesn't really want to think about, like how bad that was, and the look on Gil's face when she left, and the ominous silence coming from the bedroom.
And how late it is, and work, and how she's supposed to wander around the lab without making it painfully obvious that she just had Gil's dick up her ass, and how she's supposed to concentrate on anything other than the latest disaster in her life.
And why she isn't crying. She thinks, I should be crying. I should be in tears by the fact that I can't have functional sex, or even some kind of sex that approximates functional, and the man I love is probably lying in bed thinking that he raped me and I should be crying about that, too - I should be crying and in there trying to convince him that it's not true - but I'm not. No, I'm lying in a bathtub filled with lavender-scented bubblebath, wondering why I feel so numb.
All in all, she decides, not a happy state of affairs. She thinks about what to do for a few seconds, then - feeling like shit for doing it - sinks further under the surface until her nose is almost touching bubbles, and using one foot she turns the hot water faucet on.
She doesn't want to deal with her life. She can't deal with it, not right now. Not after - whatever that was. It wasn't sex, and it wasn't rape, and it wasn't... it wasn't anything. Not anything good, anyway.
***
At almost eleven o'clock, Gil decides he's already waited too long, so he gets up and hunts down his clothes. They're mostly in a neat line leading from the door to the bed, so this is not a big problem. He stops and fingers the silky synthetic that Nicky's shirt is made of, and the gloomy part of him wonders if he'll ever get to fondle it again.
He lingers longer than strictly necessary in the process of dressing, straightening his socks and rolling up the cuffs of his sleeves and fastening his belt, hesitating, then refastening it a notch looser. That cheese is not helping matters, he thinks. God; the last time he'd eaten so much dairy he'd been in grad school and didn't have the expectation of working around rotting corpses for the next ten hours.
When he honestly doesn't think he can put it off any longer, and when Nicky has failed to appear in the bedroom wrapped in a towel and swearing about how late it suddenly is and where the hell are his slacks, Gil steps out into the hallway and crosses to the bathroom.
He thinks about knocking then decides against it - what's the point? They both know he's going to have to come in sooner or later, and it's not as though he hasn't seen Nicky naked. So he just pushes the door open halfway, and slips into the room.
The mirror is covered in steam, and there's condensation on the little window above the bath, and the air is warm and moist and smells vaguely floral; Gil takes this all in with one glance and a deep lungful, taken more to calm his nerves than to examine the space, and lets his eyes fall on Nicky.
He's almost totally submerged in the water, his knees poking out of a mountain of bubbles at about the midpoint of the bath. He looks asleep except he obviously isn't, because to keep his head at that angle requires neck muscles.
So Nicky is awake, but ignoring Gil. Or possibly so deep in thought as to be totally unaware of Gil - he thinks of the moment in bed when Nicky had been fixated on the ceiling, when Gil had had to touch him to bring him back to the present.
He clears his throat. "Nicky?" he says softly.
Nicky's eyebrows twitch, and he sighs, and opens both eyes and turns them on Gil. "Hi," he says with a mechanical smile.
Gil takes this as something less than a welcoming embrace but still better than being told to get out, so he lowers the lid on the toilet and sits down, facing the bathtub. He feels Nicky's eyes on his as he moves, and after a few seconds of staring at each other, the humidity in the room is too much. Gil undoes the top button of his shirt and props his elbows up on his knees, tries to read Nicky's mind.
"Are you okay?" he eventually asks, because telepathy has once again failed him.
"I don't know," Nicky replies honestly. "I feel like I should say yes, but..."
"If you're not all right, Nicky," Gil says, "then don't say that you are. I hate for there to be any kind of posturing between us." Never mind that everything Gil has done tonight feels like posturing; for the moment, he will ignore that. For the moment, he will concentrate on Nicky.
Nicky sighs, and unslouches enough to bring his chin fully clear of the water. A residue of bubbles clings to his face, giving him a Santa Claus goatee that nearly makes Gil smile.
"I'm sorry, Gil," Nicky says.
Gil rubs his eyes. "Don't apologize, Nicky," he says. "If anyone should be asking for forgiveness, it's me. I should have - been more aware of what you were feeling."
"Or not feeling, more to the point," Nicky mumbles, eyeing his knees and absently sculpting something with his hands out of the bubbles.
Gil doesn't know what to say to that. He knows by the way that Nicky said it, and by the way that he's studiously not looking anywhere near Gil, that it's an important point, that it means more than it says. But he has no clue how to interpret it, how to apply the right spin so that it all makes sense.
He sighs. "I'm not sure what that means," he confesses.
"I know," Nicky says, and Gil is surprised at how much hurt and sadness can be packed into two words.
"What can I do?" he asks, hoping that there is a positive answer, You can do this for me and things will be all right, even knowing as he does that this is not what Nicky is going to say.
It isn't. "Nothing," he says.
It strikes Gil then that the most unsettling thing about this, about sitting on the toilet when he should be on his way home to change before work, about talking to Nicky who is up to his neck in a bubblebath and obviously in pain, is that Nicky seems so... unemotional about it. There should be tears, or at least the threat of tears, or - or something. Some outward expression of the anguish in his words.
"Nicky," he says, and then doesn't know what to say afterwards.
"I know."
Gil watches Nicky add a dob of suds to the side of his creation, and feels a lump start to form in his throat. "You can't come in to work like this," he hears himself say, and isn't sure who is speaking: the supervisor or the lover.
"I know."
Gil studies the top of Nicky's head for a bit. "You're still thinking of quitting," he says; not a question.
Nicky shrugs. "I - don't know."
Gil lets out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "I don't want to lose you," he says, and knows as he says it that Grissom is talking to Stokes, not Gil to Nicky.
Apparently, Nicky knows it too, but it elicits no more emotion than anything else that has happened. "I don't think that matters," he says.
Christ. "Don't-" Don't what? Don't do whatever it is that you need to do to get through this? Don't inconvenience me, personally? Don't curl up to lick your wounds in private? "Don't decide anything now."
Nicky nods. "I won't," he says.
Gil glances at his watch, realizes that there's no way he can make it to his place on his way to work but if he leaves now he can still get to the lab more or less on time, and looks back at Nicky. "I have to go," he says.
Another nod.
"I don't feel good about leaving you like this," he says.
"I'm sorry."
He sighs. "That's not your fault, Nicky," he says.
"No?" Nicky asks, still not looking up. "Then whose is it?"
"It's - it's not anybody's fault, Nicky. It just is. Will you be all right?"
Nod. Not as reassuring as Gil would like, but he doesn't exactly have a choice in the matter. He stands up, smoothes out the folds at the knees of his slacks - his good slacks, he thinks, which under normal circumstances would not get anywhere near the lab, and tries to think of something to say.
"Call me," he settles on, "if you need me. Okay?"
"Okay."
Docile Nicky worries him, and as Gil turns away from the bathtub his eyes flit past the medicine cabinet, and then flick back to settle there. He wonders if he should take the sleeping pills with him, the ones that are never far from his mind these days. Should he pocket them, here and now while Nicky is watching him? Or is that too much of a vote of non-confidence?
He turns back to Nicky and has the distinct impression that Nicky knows exactly what he's been thinking. He licks his lips. "Look," he says, and decides not to even try to defend himself. "Greg has the night off," he says instead. "If you need to talk to someone." If you need to talk to someone who understands, he doesn't have to add. Someone who isn't me.
Nicky holds his gaze for a moment longer, then lets his eyes drop back to the sea of white covering his body. Blinks, but says nothing.
"I hope you'll be all right," Gil says as he reaches for the door, because he has no idea what else to say. He leaves the pills where they are, behind the closed door, and lets himself out into the hallway, down the stairs, and eventually out into the night.
***
When the water gets too cold to be comfortable, and the tub too full to just add more hot, Nicky pushes herself to her feet, pulls the plug, and turns on the shower. She doesn't scrub, just rinses; and when she steps out of the tub and wraps a towel around her waist, she keeps her eyes away from the mirror.
She's getting used to seeing her body as it is, getting used to seeing it without having to turn away in tears, but tonight she can't do it. She has never felt quite so unfemale as she does right now, and she doesn't need to the visual reinforcement.
She doesn't know why this, of all of her personal injustices, is the thing that makes everything unravel. So sex sucked - it's sucked her entire life, hasn't it? So why is this so damned different?
Once in her room she lets the towel fall to the floor and she catches the yellow bathrobe off the end of the bed. She tries to ignore the state of the bed sheets because they seem like a nail or two in the coffin of her happiness, but it's hard to miss them. So she makes her bed roughly, pulling the sheets up and dropping the pillows from the floor back into place.
She doesn't understand how it was so bad. She wanted Gil inside her, right? And he was. So... it has to have been a good thing, by definition. Right? Except it wasn't. It wasn't sexy, it wasn't fun, it wasn't playful, it wasn't good; it wasn't any of the things that she thinks sex ought to be. It was painful, and then awkward, and uncomfortable, and then it just couldn't be over fast enough.
She raises her eyes to the mirror above the dresser, tries to look herself dead in the eye. It doesn't work, and when her eyes slide down to the dresser itself, she finds herself looking at a red-wrapped box.
Greg, she thinks, and takes the box to the bed and sits down with it.
She opens the card again. Nicky - The CD was just something I thought you'd like. This is your real present - hope you enjoy. Anything, anytime, Greg xx
Well, she thinks, there's no reason not to open it now, is there? Now that Gil has retreated and she's alone for the night. She slides the ribbon off the box, peels open one end of the wrapping, and slides the box out.
It's a plain gift-box, white, unassuming, and not at all helpful in figuring out what Greg is giving her. She hesitates before opening it, wonders if she can possibly guess what it is. Clothes, she imagines; knowing Greg, it's probably an orange sundress with spaghetti straps or something impossible like that. Something that she will absolutely love and absolutely be unable to wear, ever.
She pops open the one piece of tape keeping the lid on, and lifts it.
At first she isn't sure what she's looking at, when she folds back the top layer of tissue paper. She lifts it out to get a better view of it, and feels a furious blush creep up her neck. It's a satiny-elasticky tank top, designed to fit tight, with unmistakable definition across the chest: two gentle mounds at breast-height, and a closer examination of them reveals them to be gel-filled sacs that fit into pockets on the inside of the top.
Jesus, she thinks, holding the thing out at arm's length. Greg bought me breasts.
It takes her mind a little while to work around to believing that, to accepting that Greg bought - what's the world, falsies? That Greg bought falsies for her, stuck them in a box and put a ribbon on it. It's... creepy is not the word she wants to settle on, but it's the one that keeps popping up in the foreground.
She tugs at the elastic material again, holds it up to the light, realises she can see through most of it, that it's sheer and stretchy and kinda scary-looking. She stretches it, lets it relax, slides a hand inside it and pulls the back of the top tight over her fingers, looks at the webbing and the shimmery detail she can make out on her fingers.
Well, she thinks; maybe it's less scary when it's actually worn.
She stands up and lets the robe fall to the floor, and she takes another hard look at Greg's present, trying to figure out how to put it on. She pulls it over her head and almost gets her elbows locked above her head; a shimmy, a wriggle, a stubbed toe and a stream of swear words eventually sort the problem out, and she's standing in the middle of her bedroom with this thing bunched up around her armpits.
She pulls it down and smoothes it out, arranges the breasts so they look more or less symmetrical from above, then steps into view of her mirror.
It looks a little creepy, too, to be honest. The tone of her own skin shows through the fine mesh reasonably well except where the breasts are, and those are perfectly smooth appendages to her chest, not at all like real breasts. Huh.
She goes back to the bed with the intention of taking the damn thing off when she notices something else in the box, and she pulls it out. A pair of selectively-padded underwear to go with the top.
She feels ridiculous enough as it is, standing around half-naked with a fake bosom and a penis, but since it's her birthday and everybody she knows is at work and not likely to drop by unexpectedly, she shimmies into them. They go on a little bit easier than the top, although not by much, and she feels tenfold more ridiculous standing in front of the mirror fully decked out than she did half-naked.
She sighs, wonders what the hell Greg was thinking, and snatches her yellow robe off the floor. She slips it on and ties it loosely, and is about to go make herself some conciliatory coffee when she catches sight of herself out of the corner of her eye, and she stops.
Takes two steps backwards to line up with the mirror.
Gawks.
There's a woman in the glass. She has Nicky's face and Nicky's hair and she's wearing Nicky's robe, but - damn. She's woman-shaped and everything.
She runs her hands down herself, over the swell of her breasts, down to her cinched waist and her new hips, along the outside of her thighs which seem somehow softer. She slides a hand down from her belly button to her crotch, and is delighted beyond words that there are no lumps to be felt. Everything unpleasant is hidden behind a double-seamed stretch of stubborn fabric, and it's smooth. She turns to study herself in profile, discovers a delightful little ass and a small but perky bosom, and - the best of the best - a perfectly flat groin.
She sheds the robe and starts going through her closet, trying on all of the clothes that Greg has made her buy over the weeks, discovering that they all look a hundred times better on a woman than on a man. Slacks that were decent if a bit swishy on Nick are absolutely perfect on this new Nicky, and shirts that hung listlessly before now accent the curves that are there.
She examines the clothes more closely. None of them are overtly female, she realises - none of them are pleated for waists, or darted for breasts. They just work.
And Greg had the intelligence and keen eye to see that in the store. While they were still on the rack. While Nicky looked skeptical and only tried them on because Greg was holding her wallet and cell phone hostage.
Creepy is not the word of the day any more, Nicky thinks, modelling a slim-fitting black tee shirt with a pair of loose, beige slacks. Absolute fucking genius is more on the mark.
While she's fiddling with the collar of a green striped shirt that predates Greg's analysis of her wardrobe, her fingers find the thin chain of Gil's gift and she tugs it out into view. Gil, she thinks, and her moment of sheer unrestrained joy is turned down considerably.
The necklace, and the hummingbird, are beautiful. And wonderful, and she loves them. And they demonstrate that he's trying, that he's truly making an effort to make the right gestures, to meet her halfway.
But this gift from Greg, this perfect, insane, dangerous gift... It demonstrates that Greg doesn't have to try at all, that it comes naturally to him.
Effortlessly.
She glances back at the bed, which has now been covered in discarded clothes as Nicky whirlwinded her way through her wardrobe, and thinks of what a miserable failure the first part of her night has been.
And then she thinks of Gil's parting words of comfort: Greg has the night off, too.
***
She strips off Greg's present and gets dressed again, finds her wallet and her car keys and stuffs her feet into a pair of shoes. She'd been tempted to leave her female form on underneath, say, a bulky sweater, but knowing her luck she'd get pulled over for a broken tail light and have her head beaten in against the pavement by an ever-friendly Las Vegas Police Department asshole.
She's not even sure why she's going to see Greg, except that she wants to see him. Which, right now, is as good a reason as she needs.
***
Predictably, no one says anything when Gil starts the assignment meeting and Nick is not there. Nicky's absences are becoming something that they Do Not Talk About. On the one hand, Gil thinks, it's a kind of team solidarity. On the other hand, it'll end up destroying everyone.
Sara takes her assignment and wanders off, lips pursed, obviously itching to say something but reining the impulse in. Warrick likewise takes his assignment, then lingers in the doorway as though he's thinking of the right way to say something, then changes his mind and slopes off after Sara.
Which leaves Catherine, who takes her assignment chit with a flick of the wrist and lets it fall to the table in front of her without so much as looking at it. Her eyes are fixed on Gil, who changed out of his good shirt in his office but couldn't find a work-suitable pair of slacks so he's still wearing his dress blacks.
"Still not feeling well?" she asks coldly.
Gil sighs, rubs at his temple and leans back in his chair. Not a migraine, he thinks; he can't have to deal with that on top of everything else tonight. "You know the answer to that," he says.
She shakes her head, a slow gesture of frustration. "This is becoming unacceptable, Gil," she says. "Management is going to notice."
"I'm Nicky's supervisor," Gil says, "I'll deal with it."
"Either he needs to start showing up for work, or he needs to take a leave of absence."
"If he takes the leave of absence," he says, "he won't come back. I know that for a fact."
"Gil," Catherine says, "if he doesn't take the leave of absence, he's going to get fired."
They look at each other for a long period, and Gil is the one who blinks. "I know that," he says in a low voice. "Believe it or not, that has occurred to me. But the state he was in tonight... I couldn't very well ask him to come in to work like that."
She's shaking her head again. "You're still seeing him." Her voice is pitched as low as his, aimed so that it doesn't leave the room, but she has an edge to her words nonetheless, a measure of blame aimed at him.
He sighs. "Yes," he says. He knows it's indefensible, particularly in light of Nicky's 'mysterious' problems; he's setting himself up to get fired, too.
And he thinks about his afternoon with Nicky; about how badly it went and how quickly it happened, about how out of his depth he is in this relationship. About how he knows he should wash his hands of this - delicately - and leave Nicky to whatever it is that she needs. Without Gil Grissom on the sidelines, limply holding a bouquet of flowers and wearing a gormless expression. But what would that do to Nicky? It might not destroy her utterly but it would probably come close. Unless there's some really slick way to extricate himself...
But he doesn't actually want to extricate himself. He thinks of the look on Nicky's face when she opened the box and took out the necklace, about the love in her eyes that he knew had been reflected in his own. Whatever the trouble, Gil thinks, he wants to be there. With Nicky. With Nick. With whoever will have him.
"And you don't think that this is stupid."
He sighs again, refocuses herself on Catherine. "Of course it is," he tells her. "But it's - it's brilliant, too."
She stares at him for a bit, then pushes herself to her feet, snatches up her chit and starts towards the door. "Whatever it is between you two," she says as she passes behind him, "it had better be worth the damage you're doing to have it."
He listens to her footfalls echo down the hallway and he thinks, I hope so.
***
Greg's place is a second-storey walkup backing onto a cheesy terrace with a pool and some potted aloe plants. Nicky parks in the guest parking against the neighbour's fence, and starts up the stairs towards Greg's apartment.
She's starting to doubt the wisdom of coming here without calling, without thinking, without anything. What if he's busy? What if he's enjoying a little slice of Nicky-free happiness? She has no right to come a-knocking at this ungodly hour. Yes, he had said anything, anytime but that surely wasn't meant literally.
Still, she's here now, and she knows that if she were to turn around and get back in her car, Greg would happen to be looking out the window at that exact moment and probably come charging down the stairs in his underwear shouting at her to come back. Because Greg feels some kind of responsibility for Nicky, some kind of protective instinct that Nicky can feel emanating from him, that Greg is either unwilling or unable to switch off.
She reaches his door, takes a deep breath, and knocks.
While she's waiting, she's relieved to hear music playing from inside the apartment. He's not asleep, she thinks. True, most of the graveyard shift keeps their irregular hours even on their days off, just so it's not a shock when they're back at work, but Nicky usually sleeps in a couple of hours just for the novelty.
She's about to knock a second time when she hears bare feet slapping down a hardwood hallway and a moment later the door opens.
Greg looks out at her, blinks, and grins. "Nicky!" he says, grabs a shoulder and pulls her inside. It's a big grin, this grin he's wearing, as though he's actually glad to see her, as though this isn't a mammoth burden that he doesn't want to have to deal with.
She returns the grin, and once they're inside and the door is closed on the chill of night, Greg wraps his arms around her back and squeezes. "I didn't think I'd be seeing you tonight," he says. "I'd have thought you and Grissom were, you know. Entertaining each other."
She pulls back from the hug. "Well," she says, "you know."
He gives her an unconvinced look, then catches sight of his watch. "Oh," he says, "Grissom's working." He thinks, then frowns. "Aren't you working, too?"
"He gave me the night off." She doesn't know why she feels so awkward standing here, having this conversation; maybe it's because she wants to be sitting down for this, sitting down on Greg's couch with a beer in one hand and Greg sitting next to her, knees up around his ears, listening to every word.
"Oooh," Greg says, waggling his eyebrows. "Birthday present?"
"No."
One eyebrow arches and the mirth leaves Greg's face. "Oh," he says, and takes her hand. "Come in and tell me everything."
Greg's apartment is small but nice. It's technically a two-bedroom but the second room is more like a large broom closet so Greg has set up his computer in there. He jokingly calls it his library because there's a bookcase there too, and a desk; sometimes he calls it his office.
The living room is less cramped than it could be, given its dimensions. Greg has been smart about furniture and space, and he splurged on a flat screen tv the last time got a raise so it's stuck to the wall and not taking up much room.
Greg pulls Nicky towards the couch and they sit down together. It's a fold-out couch, folded out and covered with things: books, papers, cds, a gameboy, a tangle of sheets. Greg is still holding her hand when he clears a space at the edge big enough for two. They sit close enough that their legs are touching, and Nicky likes that additional contact.
"We, uh," she says, and feels herself blush. This is stupid, she tells herself; what can she possibly say after all this time that will freak Greg out? She clears her throat. "We were making out," she says bravely, risks a glance at Greg's face.
He's listening to her with his paying-attention half-frown. Actually hanging on her every word.
"And, uh, it ended badly."
Greg waits a second to see if she's going to finish that thought, then says, "What ended badly? Making out, or... everything?"
She swallows. "We got further than making out," she confesses. "It was... awful."
"Oh."
The music in the other room stops abruptly, and Nicky is startled. She turns away from Greg to see Lisa wander out of the office in shorts and a tank top, her long hair in two sloppy braids down her back.
She stops, sees Nicky, and smiles. "Hey, Nicky," she says with a waggle of her fingers. "How's it going?"
Nicky feels like she shouldn't be clinging so tightly to Lisa's boyfriend while she's standing right there, but Greg doesn't seem to echo the sentiment because he doesn't move. "Um," she says.
Lisa winces in sympathy. "That good, huh?"
Nicky has come to know Lisa decently over the past few weeks. She's come shopping with them from time to time, she chipped in for pizza once, and she's chauffeured them to and from clubs on occasion. As far as Nicky can tell, she writes software on contract for various companies, and keeps even more bizarre hours than Greg. She knows Nicky's story, and the first time they had met her entire reaction had consisted of cocking her head to one side and saying, You definitely need to grow your hair out. She's a slightly more predictable, female version of Greg, and Nicky is fairly certain that she and Lisa are on the road to becoming actual friends.
"Then I'll keep out of your way," she says, wandering into the kitchen and emerging a moment later with a can of pop. "I've got a million lines of code to write anyway."
She stops behind the sofa on the way past and kisses the top of Nicky's head. "Greg'll make it okay," she says with confidence, gives him an affectionate noogie on her way back to the office, and is gone.
Nicky turns back to Greg to find herself being watched with bemusement. "What?" she asks.
"You were almost drooling," he says with a grin.
"Was not," she counters.
"Was so."
She glances back at the office, even though she can't see Lisa from the couch. "Maybe just a bit," she admits. "She just... looks so comfortable in herself."
"You will be too, one day," Greg tells her. "It'll come."
She looks back at Greg. "Thank you for your present," she says shyly.
His grin notches up. "Did they fit?" he asks. "If not, I kept the receipts, we can always trade them in."
"They fit fine," she tells him. "It was... kinda scary, at first. But afterwards, when I took them off and just put on my clothes? I felt naked."
Greg brings a hand up to her neck and pulls their heads together. "That's a good sign," he tells her, "believe it or not."
She finds a smile. "Where did you find them?"
"Store over on Fortuna," he says, leaning out of her personal space. He squeezes her neck affectionately and lets his hand fall. "I'll take you there sometime. I drove the saleswoman nuts. I tried everything on, really fussy about absolutely everything, made sure it fit perfectly – and then bought one size bigger. She was ready to kill me."
Nicky blinks. "You actually tried them on?" she asks, trying to keep the awe out of her voice. "Put them on in public?"
"Sure," Greg says. "It was fun. Lisa came with, and we had a huge long discussion about breast size. Is it, uh, ample enough for you?"
She knows she's blushing, and remembers how it felt to run her hands down her sculpted body. "It's perfect," she says, because it was. It had seemed natural to her, it hadn't looked fake like some of the things she's seen in her life as a CSI, and it had felt comfortable.
"Good," Greg says. He's holding her hand again, and laces their fingers together.
She feels herself tearing up. "Shit," she says, knows her voice is wobbling towards a meltdown.
"It's okay," Greg soothes, not telling her, Don't cry, like most people would under the circumstances. "Let it go, honey."
"I love you," Nicky says, and feels something start to unwind. "God, I love you so much-"
"Me too," Greg says, and pulls her into another hug. "Nicky, you're such an incredible person, how could I not love everything about you?"
Dammit. That's what she needs to hear, so why does it hurt so much?
"So?" Greg says, still holding her close, "tell me what happened."
"Huh," she says, and wipes at her face. "It, uh, sex."
There's a beat, and then Greg says, "Sex... good? Bad?"
"Bad," Nicky confesses, and pushes the heels of her hands against her eyes. "God, so bad..."
"Oh Nicky..." She feels Greg kiss the top of her head. "I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"Is it - can you talk about it?"
At first it seems like she can't - how can she admit to having the worst sex of her life, to feeling detached and violated and indifferent at the same time, with the man she allegedly loves? But Greg works his magic on her, pulling her down to the mattress and curling up with her, nudging and prodding gently and gradually, bit by awful, painful, horrible, embarrassing bit, it comes out.
"I'm... defective, or something," she says when Greg has wheedled the last detail from her.
"No you're not," Greg tells her.
"Yes, I am. I mean, I can't - I can't do anything that doesn't hurt or feel wrong or scary or-"
"It's just new, honey, it's just new." Greg pulls her in against his chest and rolls onto his back, and they lie like that for a while, Greg staring at the ceiling and Nicky letting her bodily fluids be absorbed by his shirt.
She notices the other side of the mattress dip down momentarily, and then she feels Lisa's slim arms come around her waist tentatively.
"Wasn't eavesdropping," she whispers, "but couldn't help overhearing anyway..."
"Hmph," is all Nicky has to say to that. She's not exactly crushed that Lisa knows, because whatever Greg knows, Lisa probably knows too, anyway. Plus she's a nice person, and she's not telling Nicky that she's a freak or a loser, and she thinks she needs more people like that in her life. Friends. Friends who get it. So for the time being, she enjoys being surrounded by understanding and warmth.
Lisa shifts against her back and props herself up on an elbow so she's looking down at Nicky. "You know," she says, "just because you've got a prostate up there doesn't mean you're going to like back-door sex."
Nicky looks up at her. "What other kind of sex am I supposed to like?" she asks, more defensively than she'd intended. "That's about the only option I've got."
The look on Lisa's face is halfway between frustration and pity. "There are hundreds of other 'kinds' of sex you can like," she says in her soft voice. "This is not the end of the road for you. Trust me." She kisses the shell of Nicky's ear.
"It's all I've got," Nicky points out grimly.
"Sex," Lisa tells her sagely, "or at least girl sex, is as much in your head as it is anywhere else." She touches the slight wave of hair along Nicky's forehead.
Nicky thinks about that, remembering her youthful fumblings and the mental sleight-of-hand it had required to enjoy herself, back when herself was himself. She rolls a little further onto her back so that looking at Lisa is less of a neck-breaker, and says, "I feet like a girl until, you know. It hurts. Then it just feels - bad."
"I know," Lisa says, and strokes her hair again. "That's because you just haven't found the right way to do it, yet."
"I don't think there is a right way," she says, and hates how dismal that sounds, how dismal it makes her feel saying it.
"Of course there is," Lisa assures her. "It just takes patience."
"And a willingness to try," Greg interjects, nudging her gently in the hip.
"I'm willing to try," she protests, but weakly, because is she really? "But I don't know how..."
She's aware of a conference of sorts happening above her, a silent negotiation between Greg on one side of her and Lisa on the other, and she's not sure what it means until Lisa slides a hand down from her shoulder to the center of her chest, and lets it rest there.
Nicky looks at Lisa, and then at Greg, and then at Lisa again. "What-" she asks, "I mean - you can't-"
Greg kisses the side of her face. "Why not?" he asks, and the way he's asking it, there really is no logical argument.
Except that means...
Lisa's hand is warm where it's resting on Nicky's chest, and she's looking down at her with nothing but friendship and tenderness. "You can say no at any time," she says softly, and then leans down and touches her lips to Nick's sternum.
Her lips are electric even through the fabric of the shirt, and while a part of her wants to stop this travesty of friendship - what about Greg? Jesus, what about Gil? - another more primal part of her wants to see what happens.
And as Lisa slides a hand up under her shirt, Nicky catches sight of Greg, propped on one elbow a little distance away, watching with some detachment and a lot of affection. He doesn't seem upset by what's happening, so why should she?
Especially when Lisa's hand is so sneaky and determined. It slides across the expanse of her skin and settles lightly over one breast, and Lisa smiles down at her. "Is that okay?" she asks.
Wondering how she has come to be here in the first place, she nods a tiny fraction of an inch, and the smile on Lisa's face is a beautiful sight.
"Good," she says, and squeezes gently before shifting her hand to the other side of her chest. "You deserve to enjoy yourself." She leans down and kisses a spot on her newly bared stomach, and nudges the edge of the shirt up higher.
For Nicky, it's a bizarre and strangely hallucinogenic experience, to have another person - someone not Gil, someone not male - crawling over her like this, but maybe that strangeness is a good thing. Maybe this is just shaken up enough, just far enough removed from her everyday life, that it's what she needs.
Because there is no denying that what Lisa is doing feels good. She's murmuring as she goes, about the curve of her breasts and how they feel in her hand - which is of course nonsense, they aren't breasts at all, they're pecs and not even that impressive all things considered, but - But it feels good to hear someone say that, to comment on the weight and softness they have in Nicky's mind. She closes her eyes and decides to enjoy it, to see what Lisa can show her that Gil couldn't.
The commentary continues, and it transforms Nicky's body as Lisa's hands move across the stretch of skin and muscle and bone. Her hips become real hips as she lifts them to let Lisa tug her jeans off, and her waist becomes an actual shape and not just an anatomical region as Lisa kisses her way across it. Nicky arches into her touch as she whispers into her bellybutton, and for once does not feel panic as hands tug at the elastic waist of her shorts.
Then there's a moment when she's naked from the waist down, with Lisa hovering over her abdomen and telling her how perfect she is, that Nicky falters and for a moment it's Nick again, looking in horror at this girl stretched over his privates, wondering how this happened.
Lisa looks up then, smiles at him and says, "Nicky, everything about you is beautiful."
Nick fades back into Nicky after a heartbeat of indecision, because no one would ever tell Nick that he was beautiful, and Lisa seems to mean it.
"Do you trust me?" she asks softly.
Nicky doesn't even really have to think about that, because of course she does. She wouldn't be here if she didn't. She nods.
Another dazzling smile from Lisa, and another kiss to her stomach: "Good. I'm going to touch you now, okay?"
Lisa's hand is shy as it slides along one thigh and drops into the space between Nicky's legs. Her first touch is tentative, as though waiting for a reaction. Nicky holds her breath, wondering what she's supposed to be feeling, wondering what's supposed to be going on in her head.
And then Lisa tells her, because while her fingers are unmistakably sliding along the length of her erection, the story she's telling says otherwise. A light touch translates to, "One finger inside you, does it hurt?" And she wants to say of course not, there's nothing inside her at all, but Lisa keeps purring it against her skin and then her grip gets a little tighter and Lisa whispers, "That's two fingers, still okay?"
And somewhere in there, in that eternity of movement and hushed syllables whispered against hyper-sensitized skin, Lisa's words fall into place inside Nicky's head, and it becomes - real, somehow. Her fingers are not sliding the length of anything, but they're working in and out, slowly and gently but getting a bit faster, getting a bit rougher, and there's a third finger delivered with a little twist and that feels good, that feels so good-
At some point, Lisa breathes that she's going to kiss her, and Nicky is waiting for lips to find hers but they don't; there's a foil rustle that some part of her brain registers as condom wrapper and a cool feel over the tip of her penis... which isn't really a penis anymore except it obviously is now and the illusion is teetering on the brink of falling into ruins, the illusion of Lisa's actions overrun by the grim reality of biology.
"Four fingers," Lisa tells her, and then - kisses the tip of her penis. Except in Lisa's rush of hot breath, the head of her cock becomes her clit, and then there's another kiss, and Lisa is murmuring her continuous broken monologue of superimposed body parts and it-
- it feels like she knows it should. She feels good even though it's the wrong person moving against her, because this is something she needs, something her body needs.
"Nicky," Lisa whispers against her, "can you do something for me?"
"Mn," she replies, and is surprised to hear how ragged her voice is, how hard her breathing has become.
"Arch your back, Nicky," Lisa urges her, "it'll feel even better."
She's been thrusting gently into Lisa's touch, but at her prompting, she changes her angle, arches her back and feels her chest and her stomach come out, which feels a little odd - until Lisa starts up again with four fingers and her mouth, and then it feels-
Christ, it feels good. It's like a current of electricity up her spine, starting in her groin, and she finds herself squirming to find more of it. There's a high-pitched keening noise that sounds odd until she realises it's coming from her, that wanton, needy, wordless cry for more, more, more...
The orgasm, when it washes against her, is different than her abortive thrusts for ecstasy in the past. It seems to start in her fingers and in her toes, and gather inwards, narrated as always by Lisa's murmured indecencies, which are broken by random kisses and staccato thrusts of her tongue. Nicky fists her hands in the sheet under her, feels the need to move, to find the most perfect, the best, the exact configuration of mind and body to get it all-
She reaches, finds the explosion of nerve endings and rides the wave for as long as it lasts, and then drifts back into something gentle, something warm and soft and welcoming.
***
She sleeps for a time, an uneven, drifting sleep where she half-wakes up more than once, is vaguely aware of movement and noise next to her, of Greg and Lisa mouthing soft demands against each other's tongues, and the tide of sexuality coming across the mattress towards her lulls her back into a blissful daze.
***
The next time she drifts towards waking, the mattress of the couch has settled and there's movement across the room now, someone tiptoeing around, picking things up, opening and closing doors. A patch of warmth to her left reaches out and pulls her closer with a sleepy arm, and she follows it and lets her eyes close again.
***
This time she's actually awake, her body feeling languid and achy and deliciously sated. She opens her eyes and looks at the ceiling above her head, and sighs deeply. It feels good, filling her lungs like that, feeling her body stretch and tingle and send back messages about the springs in the mattress and the wrinkles in the sheet and the-
-leg lying against hers.
She turns towards the other body, half-expecting it to be Gil, and is momentarily confused when it turns out to be Greg. She thinks, Sex. I just had sex; how is that Greg next to me, and not-
Lisa.
Oh, fuck.
She sits up in a rush, barely notices her shirt bunched around her armpits and the nakedness of the rest of her body. All she sees in Greg, slack with sleep, boneless with sex, looking happy. Pleased with life in general.
Fuck, Nicky thinks, feels a panic rising. She looks around the room, casting her eyes from the flat-screen tv to the crap on the floor around the pulled-out couch, clothes and books and a gameboy. It's quiet in the apartment, the kind of quiet produced by two people in and out of sleep. Lisa isn't here, Nicky realises, and doesn't know if that's a good thing or not.
Her first and strongest instinct is to get dressed, followed immediately by leaving. More precisely, sneaking out, hiding in her condo and writing a letter of resignation so she never has to come face-to-face with Greg ever again. Or Gil: what the hell is she supposed to say to him?
She extricates herself from the tangle of sheets and Greg, and retrieves her underwear and jeans from the floor. She tugs her shirt down to her waist, and is perched on the edge of the mattress tugging her socks on when she hears movement behind her, and she knows that Greg is awake and looking at her. She swallows and tries to stay calm.
"Hey," Greg says, still half-asleep, stretching by the sounds of it. The mattress moves and then stills as he settles.
"Hey," she replies, unable to turn and look at him.
He reaches out and touches her back softly, but the contact startles her and she slides sharply forward, standing when the bed disappears out from under her, trying to act natural.
"You okay?" Greg asked, sounding guarded.
"Sure," she tells him, and knows that he's not going to buy the tremulous tone of his voice.
He's silent for a moment, no doubt watching Nicky pat her pockets down, and knowing Greg, he's probably grinning. "Lisa had to go to a meeting," he tells her eventually, and yes, Nicky can hear the smile in his voice. "She was going to wake you up to say ciao, but you were so cute sleeping like that. You looked like a kitten."
She has to turn around at that. "Kitten?" she demands.
Greg is propped up one elbow, watching her. "Well, you did," he teases. "I think you were actually purring."
"Wha-"
He sits up. "What's the matter?" he asks, gentle as always. Nicky doesn't understand how he's not petulant about this, how he's not snotty and upset and, well, furious.
"I, uh, I don't know what to say," she tells him, and drops her eyes from his face.
"About what?"
"About, you know." She shrugs with one shoulder. "Lisa."
"What about Lisa?" Greg asks, and then before she can demand what the hell he thinks she's talking about, he says, "Ohhh. Don't worry about it, Nicky."
She looks up at him at that. "Don't worry about it?" she repeats with an unfamiliar taste in her mouth. "Greg, Lisa and I - we - I mean, you were there-"
"Nicky," Greg says in his most patient dealing-with-Nicky voice, "that was... Yes, I was there. I could have stopped it. I didn't have to. We're okay, Nicky."
"How..." She sits tentatively down on the edge of the mattress, and Greg immediately scoots up next to her and puts an around her, rests his chin on her shoulder.
"Nicky. That wasn't exactly sex. I mean, okay, yes, it was sex, but - are you in love with Lisa?"
"No."
"Do you have madly erotic dreams about her?"
"No."
"Are you planning on having sex with her again?"
"No."
"Well, then?" Greg pokes his nose into her neck. "I'm not worried. It's... I know it's complicated for you, Nicky. Nothing is straightforward, and you need to learn things wherever you can. I get that. Lisa gets that." He squeezes her lightly and lets go. "This wasn't really sex, honey. It was, but it wasn't. We're okay."
Nicky sits in silence for a bit, enjoying the feel of Greg's arms around her, enjoying the tangible presence of his friendship.
Eventually she sighs. "What about Gil?" she asks.
"Ah," Greg says, disentangling himself and sitting next to her, their legs touching over the side of the mattress. "That's - that's a little trickier."
"Yeah."
Greg looks thoughtful for a moment. "Here," he says, "think of it this way. Did you learn anything from Lisa's little, uh, demonstration?"
Nicky feels herself blush. "Yeah."
"Okay. Can you apply what you learned to you and Gil?"
"I guess."
"Then... try it out, and if it works, why does he need to know about this at all?"
She looks at him. "I don't want to start lying, Greg," she says.
"But it's not really a lie, is it?" Greg cocks his head to one side. "If we accept the proposition that it wasn't sex, then it was - a confidence-booster. And Gil would want you to have your confidence boosted, right?"
"...yeah..."
"So..." Greg shrugs, and sighs. "I honestly don't think you need to tell him about this. You weren't cheating on him, you were doing what you have to do. You're allowed to bend the rules, Nicky. At the risk of toting out a horrible cliche, you're special. Special rules apply."
***
Special rules apply.
She thinks about that after Greg feeds her and sends her home to sleep and shower and show up at work that night. Greg, of course, is easy and confident and exactly like he's always been all along, and for the duration of their meal and slightly strained conversation, Nicky lets herself fall into his pattern of thought.
Things are okay. Things will be okay.
She's got new insight into how her life has to be, and that's got to be a good thing, right? She has a new perspective on intimacy, and maybe - one of these days - she'll have the backbone to explain it to Gil. To tell him what he needs to do for things to work. In the long run, everything that has happened is for the best.
But once she's at home, sitting on her bed surrounded on one hand by the evidence of Gil's earlier departure, and the reasons behind it, and by Greg's gift on the other, the strict logic of it starts to fall apart.
Shit, she thinks. I really fucked it up.
Gil will not see things the way that Greg does, the way that Nicky is trying to. Gil will simply see things the way they are: Nicky and Gil are sexually dysfunctional, but Nicky with another partner is not. Ergo, the problem is Gil, or the intersection of Gil and Nicky. Something in the equation is wrong.
But then she thinks, Is it really? Or is it just like Greg said, that it was sex but it wasn't, that it was Lisa but it wasn't cheating?
Special rules apply. That's great. But who's the referee on those special rules? Who decides what crosses the line? Not Greg. For all that he is wonderful and supportive and understanding, he's also an outsider. He's not part of Gil-and-Nicky, and there are some things he doesn't get.
Gil deserves to know, to have all the facts at hand. This is a decision they need to make, together.
And Nicky knows that, whatever happens, Greg will support her. Without that solid understanding, she knows she would stay frozen forever.
***
She showers, and then changes the sheets, because she's not in the mood to crawl back into bed but she needs to do something with her nervous energy, needs to pour it into something constructive. So she makes the bed with clean linens and tidies up her clothes, puts them away and spends a bit of time organising her closet: putting Nick's stuff at one end, Nicky's at the other, and finds a hanger with clips to put between the two: Greg's gift, both halves. A bridge between two people.
The phone rings as she's trying to untie the knot in her vacuum cleaner's cord, and she answers it distractedly. "Hello?"
"Hey, little brother."
She almost drops the phone. "Hey," she says guardedly, and lets the electrical cable fall from her fingers. She's in front of the broom closet in her kitchen, and tugs a chair out from the table and sits down. "How's it going, Pete?"
"Pretty good, pretty good," comes the easy reply. "New York is hot and miserable, but that's August for you. How about you? Sounds like you've got a cold."
She has always felt torn in two around her only brother, eleven years older and infinitely cooler than Nick could ever hope to be. He has settled into the lifestyle of a wildly successful civil rights lawyer in New York these days: senior partner in his firm, married to a beautiful surgeon, father to a brood of three well-dressed, well-behaved children.
Growing up, Peter had always embodied everything that Nick couldn't quite achieve: easy athleticism, natural and vibrant masculinity, and a dynamic self-confidence that carried him through high school, college and now his professional life with class and style. Everybody has always liked Peter.
And Nick, with a tiny little Nicky locked in a corner of his mind, was torn between loving his brother, and hating how easy life was for him. He was a hell of an example to try to follow, and even though no one really told Nick he was expected to turn out the same, that expectation hung heavy in the air around him nevertheless. That expectation hasn't left him yet, still turns him into a wide-eyed boy staring up at the colossal statue of perfection that is his brother.
"Uh," he says, clearing his throat and instructing himself to sound masculine again, "not really."
"Huh," Pete says, with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "Happy birthday, by the way. Sorry it's a day late, things were kind of crazy around here - you know how it is."
"No problem," Nick says. "I understand."
"Carrie-Ann lost a tooth yesterday," Pete explains, "so that was an awfully big production. She's a real drama queen, that one. Can't wait until she's a teenager."
"You'll have your hands full for sure," Nick says, because it's the kind of thing he's expected to say. He's never really known how to talk to his brother, and right now - with Nicky trying so hard to ignore the upcoming capital-c Conversation with Gil - things are not magically any simpler.
"You bet," Pete says. "So. What are you up to?"
"Oh," Nick says, "not much. Work, trying to be social, that kind of thing."
"What you need, little brother, is a wife. No, I'm serious. You need someone constantly in your life, knows you better than you know yourself, and will drag your sorry ass out of the house once in a while. Someone who'll be your liaison between your job and the rest of the universe."
"I'm not getting married to make my life easier," he says automatically. This is not a new argument between them, and Nick finds it easier to fall into his traditional role than to try to be honest for an instant with his older brother.
"Of course not," Pete says, right on schedule, "you get married because you're ass over elbow in love. The making-your-life-easier thing comes afterwards. Trust me."
"I'm not in love with anyone," Nick lies, thinking, How do I explain about Gil? How do I explain about Nicky? How do I stop being this snivelling boy around this guy?
"Yeah, and that kinda worries me, you know." Pete laughs, though, so maybe they're not going to go through the 'this is how you meet girls' part of the script. Maybe that's Pete's birthday present to him.
Pete talks for a bit about work, about some hilarious bit of office politics that has him laughing halfway through his story, and then he asks about Nick's work.
"Things are okay," he says. "There've been some cutbacks, and my friend Greg is thinking about trying to get out of the lab, and, uh..." He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't think about his job as a soap opera the way that Pete does. "Catherine wants a promotion and you know. The usual."
"Uh-huh," Pete says, and asks a couple of questions that make Nick think that he's treating this like a court case, going after details for no particular reason except to establish particulars. Catherine wants to work days. Greg's taking a couple of classes in forensics. Nick thinks it's a lawyer trick that Pete uses when he's not really that interested but can't allow anyone to figure that out.
They make appropriate noises at each other for a while longer, and then Nick says he has to go and Pete makes a lame joke about long-distance relationships, and he promises to say hi to the kids and to Kate, and Nick accepts their relayed birthday wishes, and then they both hang up and Nick sits there for a moment, staring at the phone, wondering what the fuck is wrong with his life.
Is that normal? he wonders. Having a ten-minute conversation with your brother where every other word you say is a blatant lie? Things are great. Nothing exciting happening. Work is just work.
It hits hard, that layer of duplicity, which is a little bit odd, all things considered. His life is falling apart, he's in the process of coming to grips with Nicky, he's ready to quit his job, Gil's about to break up with him, he's probably fucked everything up with Greg and Lisa regardless of what Greg said earlier - and the fact that his brother, who has never been a close friend of his to begin with, is distant with him - this actually registers on the misery-meter? This is not just a blip lost in the background noise?
He feels like he's tied in a knot, sitting at his table with the phone, but he can't bring himself to give into that unhappiness. Somehow talking with Pete has cemented Nick into place, and Nick is a Real Man who doesn't Break Down For No Good Reason. No, Nick the Real Man holds everything in and lets it fester.
He needs to get rid of Nick, he needs to banish him to Nicky's old hole in the wall in the back part of his mind, and let Nicky take the reins again. Nicky knows what she's doing, Nicky knows how to get upset. Nicky knows how to cry because it'll feel better, and that's what Nick needs.
He goes back up to his bedroom, throws open the closet door and changes into his Nicky-undergarments and bathrobe again. He does his wriggle-jump-dance to get the top on, and rearranges his package inside the underwear, and pulls the robe on over top. He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and steps sideways so he's standing in front of the mirror.
When he opens them again, it's Nicky that he sees, and the relief at seeing her, at being her again, is completely overwhelming. She sags back and sits on the edge of her bed, and lets her life catch up with her again.
Gil. Greg. Lisa. Pete.
Fuck.
***
She breaks down for a while, curled up on top of her duvet with a box of kleenex, sniffling and then crying and drifting back to sniffling. It feels good, though, the release; like a spring rain, washing everything and leaving it sparkling when the sun comes out again. Catharsis.
She's still a little sniffly when the phone rings again, and she glances at the clock as she reaches for the cordless set she keeps in her bedroom. It's only been twenty minutes since she hung up the phone and decided to do something to help herself, but it feels like it's been hours.
"Hello?" she says, bringing the receiver to her ear.
There's a short pause. "Nick?"
She swallows, feels something close to panic well up inside her. It's Pete again, why's he calling her back? Did Nick slip up somehow in their conversation? "Yeah."
"You okay?"
And dammit, it's too late to say she's got a cold, because she just got through telling him that she didn't. "Sure," she says, even though she's obviously stuffed up and she probably sounds gravelly.
"You sure? You sound-"
"What can I do for you?" she interrupts. Nick might not be able to break down and be miserable within telephonic earshot of his brother, but Nicky probably can.
"I, uh," Pete says, sounding a little flustered. "I forgot to tell you that we're sending Mom and Dad on a cruise for their anniversary. We're all chipping in."
"Okay. Send me the details and I'll write a cheque."
Another pause, then - tentatively - "Nick, are you sure you're okay?"
She's ready to lie to him, but she doesn't want to. Maybe it's the fresh look everything has now that she's released some of her pent-up frustrations, but she really doesn't feel like feeding him a line. Not right now.
"No," she says. "I'm not okay, but it doesn't matter."
"What, are you sick? Can I call a doctor for you or something? If you give me a number..."
"No," she says again, "you can't do anything."
"Nick-"
"Just leave it, okay?"
"What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing, you're crying."
She wipes at her face. "It's okay," she says, "I'm fine, just let it go."
"Jesus, Nick - I'm your brother. If you can't talk to me, who can you talk to?"
A detached part of her is thinking that she hasn't heard him sound so flustered since Grandad Stokes had a heart attack. She wants to say, I can talk to anyone but you, Pete, but she doesn't. Some part of her won't let her.
She sighs, rolls onto her side again and curls her knees up towards her chest. "It's - complicated, okay?"
"Well, what is it? Work?"
"Yes and no. It's - it's everything. Just, please let it go."
"I can't do that. You're - something is wrong, and I can't just ignore it. Jesus. What happened?"
He's really getting worked up now, she realises, at the same time that she realises that she is not ready to have this conversation with him. Dammit; why did she start this?
"I'll tell you another time, Pete," she says as diplomatically as she can, given how much her nose is running and her eyes watering.
"Nick-"
"Please. This is a bad time. Just... trust me, okay?" She tries not sniffle as she tugs another tissue out of the box. "I'll tell you later."
There's another long silence on the other end, and she recognises it as Pete about to agree to something he doesn't particularly like. "This isn't over, you got it?" he says, more bluster than bluff.
"Okay," she says, and then, "Thank you."
He humphs, says goodbye, and hangs up. She listens to the dead line for a bit, then thumbs the power button on her handset and lets it fall to the mattress beside her.
Oh, she thinks with a sinking feeling, that was a mistake.
***
She almost calls Greg and then decides to leave him alone for a few hours, to let him square things with Lisa when she gets back from her meeting without having to also deal with the ever-present specter of Nicky hanging over his head. She almost calls Gil but can't face the prospect of that conversation just yet, and although she knows that he would come over and keep her company without pressing to find out what's wrong, she decides against that, too. He's probably asleep right now, and he deserves a little privacy.
So she goes back to puttering, and eventually she crawls into bed with her alarm set for nine-thirty. Then she can clean up, change into Nick's work clothes, and pretend that she's doing all right.
***
At some unknown time in the afternoon, the phone rings, and by the time she finds the handset under her bed, the answering machine has already picked up. She strains to hear it from the living room, hesitating over the talk button, unsure of whether she wants to interrupt.
"Hey Nick," comes Carrie's voice, sounding like a big sister, all concern and love and fear. "Just talked to Pete, he says you're not doing so good...? Call me when you get this, you know you can always talk to me. I love you, and I'll talk to you later." Click.
She stuffs the handset back under her bed and goes back to sleep.
***
When Nicky shows up on time for the meeting, her hair combed and her shirt tucked in, Gil finds himself breathing out heavily and hoping that no one else notices his reaction. He spent most of the day in bed, thinking about what he should have said and done differently, and wondering whether he should have phoned her at some point or dropped by to visit, or or or....
But she's here now, looking a little ragged around the edges but trying to pretend she's not. She won't quite meet Gil's eye, but that's sort of to be expected. Nicky's probably having the same thoughts that Gil is having, that this is probably not going to work out well so maybe they should cut their losses and let it go.
Except, of course, Gil doesn't want to. The irrational part of him, the emotional slice of his personality that gets subsumed by work and usually keeps itself well hidden, wants to hold on. For better or for worse. Probably for worse.
Catherine, of course, notices. Gil catches her eye, notices the taut little arch of eyebrow she sends him, and makes a point of not reacting. He knows what his reaction would be, how defensive he would become, and this is not the time or place for it. She'll hunt him down later, anyway.
"Warrick and Nicky, dead body at the Bellagio," he says, handing the call slip to Warrick and trying not to make eye contact with Nicky.
"Related to last week's?" Warrick asks, glancing at the sheet.
"We don't know yet," Gil tells him. "O'Reilly will meet you there, he probably has a better idea than I do."
"You got it."
"Sara," he continues, turning to face her, "we've got a gun that showed up in a fenced-in daycare in Henderson, apparently it smells like it was recently fired."
"Can't have been there long," Sara says thoughtfully. "Any unidentified DBs turn up in the neighbourhood?"
"No," Gil says, "but it's just outside of gang turf, so that doesn't mean much. Check it out and if it looks major, call in someone from days to help you out."
"Okay."
"Catherine, you and I are working a missing person." He slides the sheet across the table towards her. "Seven-year-old boy off the Strip. Brass says it's going to turn high-profile, so expect press scrutiny."
"I just got my hair done," Catherine says dryly, "so I'm good to go."
"All right," Gil says, and looks around the table at his team. He sounded professional, right? Didn't sound consumed with indecision about his love life? Good. "Keep in touch with me."
He watches people get up and leave, Warrick pulling his jacket off the back of his chair, Sara patting her pockets for something, Catherine pushing her chair out from the table. Nicky-
Nicky hesitating just inside the door.
"Nicky," Gil says, "can I have a moment?"
She looks up at that, catches Gil's eye momentarily, then glances away. "Is later okay?" she says. "I'd like to get started with Warrick..."
Gil nods. "Sure," he says, "catch me later when you have a minute."
"You got it."
He watches her leave with Warrick in tow, and then Sara trailing after them with a quick look over her shoulder at him, and then he's alone with Catherine.
"Do I want to know what's going on here," she says after a moment of silence, "or should I keep my mouth shut?"
"You should probably keep your mouth shut," he tells her.
She smirks. "Too bad we're working together all night, then, isn't it?"
"Catherine," he sighs, "it's complicated."
"I know," she says, and holds up a hand. "Everything with you and Nicky is complicated. And you know what? It's only going to get more complicated. You're waiting for me to stop worrying about it, then you're going to be waiting for a long time."
"Let's just focus on the missing boy, okay?"
"Sounds good to me," she says. "I'll meet you at your truck."
He watches her go, and then lets out his breath slowly. It's going to be a long, miserable night.
***
By some miracle, Catherine keeps her word and doesn't pester him about it all shift. She puts on her most winning smile and handles the press once the missing boy is publicly identified as the son of a rock star. The Sheriff shows up and makes some grand gestures and Gil has to chew on the insides of his cheeks to keep from correcting him, and he is more than happy to let Catherine enjoy the limelight, such as it is.
"This is probably hurting your career," she tells him at around four-thirty in the morning after the third press-update he weasels out of.
"My career is fine the way it is," he tells her. "But you? You'll probably end up running the lab one of these days." He smiles at her. "Take everything you can get, Catherine. Just don't turn into Ecklie on me."
"I promise," she says.
They're standing by the dais where Catherine deflected questions with alarming deftness, and for the time being they have little to do except wait. The ransom - if it turns out to be a ransom case - has yet to be called in, the cops are running down all the known sex offenders that could conceivably be in play, and the evidence they've collected is being processed. For right now, until something happens, they can do nothing but sit on their hands with their pagers turned up to max. Waiting.
Catherine sighs. "You want to get a coffee or something?" she asks.
He's about to tell her that he's fine, but then he recognises the lines around her eyes, the stress-lines that tell him she's at the end of her tether. He might not need to sit down for ten minutes and shoot the breeze, but clearly she does.
"Sure," he says.
The end up at a formica table in the basement cafeteria of the building, listening to the air conditioner hum tunelessly and drinking coffee-coloured water out of questionably watertight paper cups.
"Not exactly Starbucks, is it?" Catherine asks, stirring sugar into the insipid brew.
"Not exactly," Gil agrees. "Are you all right?"
She sighs. "I guess so," she says, "but I hate cases like this."
"We all do."
"Yeah, but it's worse when you have kids," she tells him, and he doesn't have the authority to contradict her. "You keep thinking, 'What if that were my kid?' And there's no quick or easy answer."
"Do you think this is about money," he asks, because he doesn't have an intelligent response to that, "or sex?"
"I hope to hell it's about money," she says, "but this long without a ransom..." She shakes her head. "I don't want to think about it too closely right now."
"It is our job to think about it, though," he points out.
"It's our job to process the evidence," she tells him, "and right now, we have no evidence to process. Aren't you the one who always says, 'Don't speculate, follow the evidence'?"
"There's a difference between speculating professionally, and speculating personally," Gil replies.
She raises an eyebrow.
"What?" he asks.
"I think that's the first time I've heard you make a distinction between work and the rest of the universe."
"That's an exaggeration."
"Not by much," she says, and points her stir stick across the table at him. "Nicky must be having a positive effect on you."
He sighs, and lets his eyes close momentarily. "Catherine," he says, "I really don't want to get into this."
"I know that," she says, and her voice is tempered with understanding, "but you need to talk about it. About what's going on with Nicky, and what happens when he gets fired, and then when you get fired, or when Ecklie seizes the opportunity to discredit you and your team because you're sleeping with one of them..."
"I'll deal with that when it happens. If it happens."
There's a pointed silence from Catherine for a few seconds. "Gil, what's going on with Nicky? Is he sick? Is that it?"
"It's - I can't tell you about it, Catherine."
"Gil, I'm not asking out of gossip, okay?" She stares down into her coffee and Gil is surprised at the anger he sees harden around her eyes. "I care about him. I'm worried about him. I want to help him but I don't know how, and you're not making matters any easier."
"I would tell you if I could, Catherine," Gil finds himself saying, "but I can't. I can't betray Nicky's trust like that. He will tell you, when he's ready for you to know. I promise you that."
"How can you be so sure?" Catherine asks.
He shrugs. "He won't have much of a choice, in the end," he says. "I know how you feel, Cath. This is not what you want to hear, but you have to wait. You have to be patient, you have to trust him."
She takes a breath to say something, but at that moment, both of their pagers go off simultaneously, and Gil feels a slight crest of relief overtake him that he's been saved from the bell, again. "Just trust him," he hears himself saying as they push back their chairs. "He'll let you know when he's good and ready."
She gives him a look but doesn't deign to reply to his protestations, digging out her cell phone as they head away from the table.
Gil listens to her half of the conversation with Hodges and follows her. Just trust Nicky, he hears echoing through his mind, in time to his footsteps. He'll tell you when he's good and ready.
He sighs, and decides that for now, he's just got to trust that it's true. That Nicky will talk to him in good time. Until then? All he can do is wait, and trust.
***
The room at the Bellagio is a disaster area of blood, semen, broken furniture and alcohol. After surveying the room from the doorway with them, O'Reilly wishes them luck and volunteers to knock on doors, leaving Nicky and Warrick standing in the middle of the room with kits in hand, trying to decide where they should start their assault.
In the end, they work in concentric rings from around the bed, which seems to be the focal point of whatever combination of fury and passion culminated in the dead body on the floor at the foot of the mattress. They take photos and samples and fall into a companionable silence, finding a rhythm in the soft noises of each others' work.
After a couple of hours, Warrick stands up to stretch, and hearing the crick-crick-pop of his back, Nicky glances up, notices the time, and sets her camera down. "Time for a break, huh?" she asks.
"Damn straight," Warrick says. The area he's already processed is big enough to take a couple of steps in, stretch the muscles in his thighs a bit, and he settles into a relaxed posture and rolls his shoulders.
"Think we need to call for reinforcements?" Nicky asks.
"What time is it?" Warrick asks, then glances at his watch. "Maybe," he concedes. "Let's see if we can get a couple of day shift guys in here early, play catch-up, and then maybe we can get out of here on time."
"Sounds like a plan," Nicky says, and stands up stiffly.
Warrick is scrutinising her, and it makes her slightly uncomfortable. Not specifically because he's studying her posture and her mannerisms; mostly because she knows how smart he is, and how careless she's been tonight. She's caught herself walking with a bit more hip than usual, striking a pose with her shoulders that feels wonderful but probably looks ridiculous, and continuously tucking her hair behind her ear. Tells, all of them, and she knows that Warrick is keeping track of them.
And what's worse is that she's known it all night, and hasn't been able to stop herself from doing it anyway.
"How're things with Grissom?" Warrick eventually asks.
"Huh?" She tries to look innocent. "Why?"
"Well," Warrick says at length, "you were all excited yesterday - day before, sorry - and now you're... down."
"I'm not down," she protests, knowing how patently false a statement it is.
"Uh-huh," Warrick says, not buying it. "You look like you've been crying, man. Are things okay with you and, you know, Grissom?"
She closes her eyes briefly. Of all the places for him to ambush her with this, she thinks. "Things are fine," she says, and hopes it sounds a bit more convincing to him than it does to her.
"Workplace romances are always hard," Warrick volunteers. "Sometimes it's not worth it, in the long run."
"Yeah," she says, because what else is there to say? He's right, and she knows it. "Well, it probably won't be forever."
"What won't," he asks, "the romance, or the workplace?"
The way he asks it is light, as though he knows what the answer is and he's trying to be jokingly supportive. Nicky knows that, but it still stings in a way she wasn't expecting.
"Both, probably," she says softly, kneeling down and fussing with the camera so she doesn't have to meet Warrick's eye.
She can hear his surprise. "What?" he asks. "You're not quitting, are you?"
"Thinking about it," she hears herself say, and motherfucking goddamn it, her eyes feel like they're about to start watering. Fuck fuck fuck.
"You serious?" he asks.
"Yeah."
"Shit, that's - why? I mean, even if things go to hell with Grissom, you can still work at the lab. Can't you? I mean, you could transfer to days, I know Ecklie would love to have you-"
"It's not that," she says, willing her eyes to stop their nonsense before Warrick notices. She takes a deep breath. "It's... other stuff."
"Nick, man... what's happening?"
She wipes at her eye before she realises she's done it, then realises that she's contaminated her glove and she'll have to change it before she gets back to work, and then realises that her other gloves are in her kit which is over there and all of a sudden she needs a moment alone.
She stands up again, keeps her eyes down, and says, "Gotta hit the john. Be right back."
She knows that Warrick is watching her as she picks her way through the crime scene towards the door, and disappears out into the hall. There are still cops milling around, some of them assisting O'Reilly with his door-to-door inquiries, others standing around looking official and bored. She keeps her head down and walks past them purposefully, knowing that a distracted look and a pair of rubber gloves is often enough to get uniforms to step out of the way.
There's a washroom at the end of the hall, a little cubicle with "Hotel Staff Only" on the door, and she locks it behind her and stands in front of the sink, studying herself.
Her eyes are red. Her eyelids are puffy. Her mouth is wavery. Her body is male.
Fuck.
She turns on the taps, runs some cool water and splashes it up on her face, then pats at her eyes with a paper towel.
This is stupid, she thinks. First Pete and now Warrick... what's going on? Why can't she keep her mouth shut? Why can't she lie to them like she always has, like she's been doing for years? Why can't she keep a lid on it anymore? What is wrong with her?
Well, obviously Nicky is wrong with her. Or maybe it's Nick. One of them is seriously wrong, and if she can't keep it together at work - and clearly she can't - then that's the answer to the burning question, isn't it? Hanging on at the lab will be nothing but stubbornness, and she knows exactly where that will land her: in trouble, in pain, in a mess.
So she'll resign. She'll do it with class, with tact - write a letter, give her two weeks' notice, stick it out that long. Gil will understand, and so will Greg, and the others.... Well, the others will just have to live with it.
She's got enough saved up to keep her in good standing for a year, probably, and that's a year that she can spend trying to sort her life out. Deal with her family, deal with this. Do it right.
Decision made, she feels a weight lifted from her shoulders, and when she splashes her face again and dabs at the skin around her eyes, she finds she looks a little better than she did before. A little more settled, maybe. Too many things up in the air, too many hypotheticals, too much what-if... This is what she needs right now: at least one solid thing under her feet. The rest she will deal with as it comes.
***
A few minutes later, she walks back into the hotel room, snaps on a fresh pair of gloves and says, "Back to work, I guess."
She knows that Warrick is still watching her as she picks up the camera and lines up a scale ruler next to a blood smear, but she makes a monumental effort to ignore it, to focus on her work, to just plough through it.
After a few seconds, she hears Warrick get back to work, too, and she lets herself relax into the job.
Since her decision in the tiny washroom, she realises with a thud that this is probably one of her last crime scenes. She's determined not to fuck it up, not to force herself out in a tangle of controversy. Snap a picture, move the marker, snap another picture.
Go through the motions and keep everything else inside.
***
The ransom call comes from across state lines and the FBI swoops down from their hiding place and takes the case away from them. Gil puts up the usual argument, and so does the Sheriff, but he's actually a touch relieved to have the mess taken out of his hands. He knows that it will turn out to be a straightforward kid-for-money swap followed by a vicious manhunt, and it's something that he can frankly do without.
Even Catherine seems silently glad to have the responsibility taken from her. "We must be getting old," she says as they walk through the parking garage. "I never would have walked away like this five years ago."
Gil shrugs. "We get older, we get wiser." He unlocks his truck. "This isn't an evidence case anymore. Let them handle it."
"Amen to that," Catherine says, setting her kit in the back seat next to Gil's and climbing into the passenger seat. "I can use the time to get my paperwork finished."
"Hm," Gil says. "I should probably finish mine, too."
She laughs at him. "You should probably start yours," she corrects. "What time is it, anyway?"
"Almost six."
"Gives me a couple hours, then," Catherine says. "It'll be good to get my cases filed away before Ecklie comes looking for them."
"He sends his secretary after me these days," Gil says. "He can't stand to do it himself any longer."
"Somehow," she says, "I'm not entirely surprised."
They drive in silence for a moment, then she says, "So if I can't ask about Nicky, can I at least ask about you?"
He glances at her. "What about me?" he asks guardedly.
"How are you doing with Nicky's mysterious affliction?"
He lets the car slide into traffic and nudges it in the general direction of the lab. "I'm all right," he says.
"You sure? You don't really seem all right."
He looks at her sharply.
"Not that anyone else is likely to notice," she tells him. "It's just that I know you so well. I can see through your little ruse. Seriously, Gil. How are you doing?"
He thinks about that for a moment. "I'm all right," he says again. "Working on being all right."
And he's kind of surprised that he means it, that it's true.
***
"Gonna be a long shift for you guys," Warrick tells the day shift CSIs when they wander into the hotel room at six-thirty, still yawning and mumbling about coffee and cigarettes.
They survey the carnage. "I see you've left the choicest bits for us," one of them grumbles.
"We'll get this stuff back to the lab," Nicky says, a box under each arm, turning sideways to fit through the door with her evidence, "and tell the techs to page you with the follow-up."
"You're too kind, Stokes."
"Hey," Warrick says, sounding wounded, "what about me?"
"Generous to a fault," the CSI tells him with a sour smile. "Now get out of here before you contaminate the scene."
Warrick hands over his notes, grabs a couple of boxes and starts down the hallway with Nicky in tow. "What a night," he says in the elevator, "what a night."
"Glad there aren't many like this," she says, rearranging the boxes against her hips and wishing that she had hips to take advantage of. She thinks of the hips hanging up in her closet at home, and wonders what it would be like to wear them outside.
"So..." Warrick says. "Look, I'm sorry I brought that thing up-"
"It's okay," she says quickly.
"I just... damn, Nick, I can't believe you're thinking of quitting."
She shrugs. "Things happen," she says, "and we have to react to them."
He thinks about that for a few seconds while the elevator glides smoothly down. "Is everything okay? I mean, is your family-"
"My family's fine," she says, and then doesn't add, 'but they won't be for long.' Greg is right: she needs a psychiatrist. She needs someone to help guide her through that particular minefield. "It's just... personal stuff."
"Hm." The car slides to a stop and the door dings open. "Well, if you do decide to go," Warrick says as they make their way across the lobby, "and if you decide to stay in Vegas, don't be a stranger, okay?"
She fixes a smile on her face. "Of course not," she lies.
***
Eventually she finds herself standing in the doorway to Gil's office, watching him flip through a pile of papers almost as high as his coffee cup, muttering darkly under his breath about some form or another. She feels a grin tug at the corner of her mouth, and crosses her arms to hug herself as she watches him work.
Clean break, she reminds herself, and then clears her throat.
Gil looks up, sees her, and smiles. "Hi," he says and leans back, as though he's glad of the distraction. "How was your night?"
"Gruesome," she says. "Do you have a minute?"
"Sure." He tosses his pen onto the pile of paper and motions her to come in.
She closes the door behind her and sits in the chair facing him. "Is this a good time?" she asks.
"As good as any," he says. "I think I'm going to stay late this morning and get some of this done." He scowls at the desk. "Every time someone says we're becoming a paperless society, they give me three more forms to fill out."
"Management sucks," Nicky says.
There's a moment of awkwardness, and then Gil blinks and somehow it's gone. It's as though he's thrown a switch somewhere, and gone from Grissom to Gil. "What is it, Nicky?"
"I, uh." She clears her throat. "A lot of stuff has happened."
"Yes," Gil says guardedly. His eyes are shuttered against emotion, and it bothers her that she can't see what he's thinking. But then again, when could she?
"And, uh... Look, maybe we shouldn't do this here."
He looks at her. "Maybe," he concedes, "but night shift is almost over, and there's no one around right now, anyway." His face softens. "What is it?"
"I, uh, I can't do this anymore."
He blinks. "Can't do what?"
She sighs. "All of it? I don't know. I can't work here, not with - not with this, and, uh, there's something else."
"Something else," he says. "Other than you quitting."
"Don't say it like that," she says.
"Like what?"
"Like an accusation. Like it's a personal failing that I can't quite hack this job while my entire life falls to pieces around me."
"It's not that bad, surely," Gil says.
"You have no idea," she tells him. "No idea what it's like. I'm trying, Gil, I really am. I've been doing the best that I can since, since it all started, this whole thing with you and with work and everything, and... I can't do it. It's too hard. I'm out there all the time, dealing with people who don't know me and only treat me the way that I look, and that - it stings, Gil. You know, I thought things would get better if you knew, if I told you what I was going through, I thought somehow that would magically make my life easier, but it hasn't. I've still got the same problems, I still have to face the same realities. I cannot be a CSI and do what I need to do for myself."
She manages to hold it in, the tears that she wants to shed, because this is still work no matter what. It's not the place to have this out, honestly and loudly. She swallows, and stands up.
Gil watches her. "I'll support your decision," he says as she pushes the chair back and steps away from the table. "Nicky, I know that you have to make some big changes, and if you can't work here while you're doing that, I understand."
She turns away from him so he doesn't see her wince. She doesn't deserve that kind of support, she thinks. Not after what she did to him when he wasn't there, what she did with Lisa.
"Nicky, wait," Gil says, and she hears him get up from his desk and walk towards her, so she steps out into the hall where they will have to be civilised.
"Can we talk about this later?" she asks.
He studies her face carefully. "I don't think so," he says softly, and takes her elbow.
It's a surprise, that gesture, because he has never touched her at work in anything other than professionalism. And this isn't exactly intimate, his fingers at her elbow, holding her there gently, but it's not exactly normal for them, either.
"I have to go," she says, pulls her elbow free, and heads for the doors in the lobby.
He follows her, and catches her outside where she stops to take a deep breath of air, enjoying the sun creeping over the city and throwing its long shadows across the parking lot.
"Nicky," he says, "what is it?"
She turns to him. "I - I cheated on you."
He blinks the way he does when some new piece of evidence doesn't fit with the rest of his case. "What?" he asks. "When?"
She swallows. "Yesterday," she says, feels her voice start to go. She pulls her shades out of her pocket and puts them on, hopes that it makes her look less fragile than she is.
"What?" Gil angles himself so that they're looking at each other, and through her darkened lenses she can see the hurt and the confusion in his eyes. Fuck.
"Look," she says, "it was - it's a long story. But it... It worked, Gil. I had, I had sex and it was - good. With someone else." Behind her shades her eyes start to water, and she turns towards her car, parked at the far end of the lot, and starts heading towards it.
Predictably, Gil dogs behind her. "Wait, Nicky," he says, falling into step beside her. "You can't just throw that at me and then walk away."
"Gil." She turns to him. "I'm not worth it, okay?"
"I think you are."
"Well, you're wrong." She wipes at a tear that runs past the rim of her glasses, and looks down at the streak of wet on her finger. "I don't deserve everything you've done for me, everything you've given me."
"Nicky-"
"And you deserve someone better than me. Jesus, Gil, I cheated on you. Don't you get it? I'm fucked up."
He stands squarely in front of her. "Tell me what happened," he says.
"It doesn't matter," she says. "I love you, Gil, but I can't do this. I can't do it to me, I can't do it to you, I just - I can't do it, full stop."
They look at each other for a long moment.
Nicky reaches out and touches his face for a second, draws her finger along the line of his chin. "I'm so sorry," she says, steps around him, and continues out to her truck.
Gil doesn't follow.
***
She's not entirely sure how she gets home in one piece, but she does, and by the time she's inside with the door locked behind her, everything starts to fall apart.
She thinks, Gil.
She thinks, Pete. Carrie.
She thinks, Greg. Lisa.
She thinks, Work. Warrick and Catherine and Sara.
She thinks, Gil. Gil Gil Gil.
And Lisa.
And Greg.
And Carrie, and her mom, and her brother, and her dad and her other sisters...
She thinks it all at once, and it bursts through her like water through a crack in a retaining wall. It starts slow, one little trickle, and that trickle erodes the wall around it and then more comes, and then all of it comes, and she slumps against her front door and buries her face against her knees and lets it come.
***
Her cell phone rings, and then a while later her home phone, and then after that her cell phone again, and again, and she ignores the noise. Every part of her body hurts as though she's pulled all her muscles, but she forces herself up and through the living room to her bedroom, where she strips off her work clothes and traipses naked through to her bathroom.
She showers quickly, doesn't clear off the mirror after the steam settles on it, and in her room she shimmies into her Nicky-underwear and slips her bathrobe on.
She checks her cell phone, which shows eleven missed calls, all from Gil and Greg, and three messages. She contemplates picking them up, but she knows what that will do to her. Right now, clean and warm and sporting curves in all the right places, she feels as though her life is manageable. Not easy, not fun, certainly not the walk in the park it seemed several months ago, but manageable.
She takes a pad of paper and sits down in the kitchen, puts the kettle on and starts a list. It says:
Things to do:
- write letter of resignation
- find psychiatrist -- Greg?
- talk to Gil -- Greg?
- talk to family -- Greg?
When the kettle boils, she drops two tea bags into her favourite pot and fills it with hot water, then looks at her list. Greg, Greg, Greg. She adds,
- call Greg
at the bottom and leaves it to one side. Calling Greg is the easiest and least scary item on that list, so that's where she'll start. She finds her cordless phone and glances at the answering machine in the living room: four new messages.
Greg, she guesses; and Gil, and Carrie, and Pete. Or Mom. She'll deal with them later.
She dials Greg's cell phone, and sits back down at the kitchen table. She loves the smell of tea as it's steeping, loves the way it permeates an entire room but stays almost undetectable to the conscious sniffer while working its way into the unconscious one.
The phone clicks, picks up. "Nicky?"
She swallows. "Yeah," she says.
"Thank god. I was about to go AWOL from the lab and come and check on you." By the background noises, she can tell that he's in the locker room. "You okay?"
She blinks away the tears as they start to grow. "Not really," she says, "but you know."
"No," he says, "I don't know. Grissom looks like someone just ran over his favourite cockroach. He's creeping everyone out, and Warrick's saying that you're thinking of quitting?"
"Sounds about right," she says.
She listens to Greg breathe for a moment, then he says, "First things first. What happened with Grissom?"
"I told him about - about cheating on him."
"Nicky!"
"It's for the best, Greg." She wraps one hand around the tea pot, enjoys the warmth pushing through the ceramic to her skin. "I'm a basketcase and he deserves better."
"Whoa," Greg says, "back up a second. You are not a basketcase and I personally think the two of you are good for each other - fuck off, Hodges, I'm busy - and as for what you told him? What exactly did you tell him?"
"Just that I cheated."
"You didn't cheat-"
"I didn't mention you. Or Lisa. Just that I went behind his back and... and I'm shit."
"Christ, Nicky, you're not - Hodges, what part of fuck off is giving you trouble? Then why don't you do it. Nicky. You are not shit, you are not a basketcase, and you-know-who deserves to hear the truth of what happened."
"Why?" she asks. "So he can be mad at you, too?"
"I'd say he looked hurt and confused more than mad," Greg says, and she can hear him take a deep breath. "So what's really going on, huh?"
She thinks about how to answer that. "It's - too much, Greg. Between me, and you, and now Lisa, and Gil, and then work and my family and just everything... I can only deal with one thing at a time."
There's a pause. "And what's the one thing you're dealing with now?"
"You."
He sighs. "Honey, you don't have to deal with me. The thing with Lisa? It's okay. I'm not angry. Neither is she. It's... she likes you, Nicky. She wants to see you happy. Trust me on this, okay? If she can do something to help make you happy, she will. That's what she did."
"Even if I believed that, Greg," she says, wiping at her face.
"-and you should because it's true-"
"What does that say about me? The first problem I have with Gil and I go crawling to the next warm body - who happens to be a girl, Greg... what if I am a lesbian?"
"Then we find a way to explain that to you-know-who," Greg says slowly, "but that's another issue, isn't it? I was there, remember. I saw what happened, and I don't think that makes you a lesbian."
"You're just saying that-"
"Ha," Greg says with a short laugh. "When have you ever known me to 'just say' something? Honey, if you're a lesbian, that's something different from this. Trust me. One thing at a time."
"That's what I'm trying to do."
"Yeah, but you're mixing a bunch of things up and trying to do it all at once. 'One thing at a time' starts with you. In your head. Pick one thing."
"You."
"I am not a thing you have to deal with. Pick something else."
She sighs. "Gil."
"Okay," he says, "now we're cooking. Give me the lowdown on the situation."
"There is no situation," Nicky says. "We broke up. It's over."
"And you call that not-a-situation? Wow. I think we're working from different dictionaries here. Jesus, Nicky, he loves you. You love him. This poorly-timed confession of yours is a hurdle. I'm good at hurdles."
"Greg..."
"Do you trust me?"
"Greg-"
"Yes or no question. Do you trust me?"
She sighs. "Yes."
"All right. I've got to go rescue some samples from Hodges before he eats them or something - yes, Hodges, I can still see you back there - but I will fix this."
"Greg, don't-"
"Trust me. And for fuck's sake, Nicky, don't do anything rash. One thing at a time, and right now, this thing is out of your hands. Love you."
Click.
***
She takes her tea into the living room, where her computer is set up in an alcove by a window, and pulls up a new Word document. One thing at a time is all well and good, she thinks, but she can get a head start on a second one while Greg does - whatever it is that he's going to do.
She doesn't want to think about it too much, because she's got a really, really bad idea of what his brand of "help" consists of, but... But she could call him back and tell him not to do it, couldn't she? She could make him understand that his gesture, while appreciated, is not actually required. Right?
But she isn't calling him back. So she must want Greg to do whatever meddlesome thing he's got planned.
One thing at a time. Okay.
She can draft her resignation.
***
It's impossible to get back into his paperwork after Nicky peels out of the parking lot at work, but Gil tries. He sits down at his desk, finds the right form and stares at it for a long time before he thinks, I should have a pen to do this.
After about ten minutes of uselessly trying to get anything done, he gives it up. He steps out into the hallway, watches the ebb and flow of people pass him by, and pulls his phone out of his pocket.
He tries Nicky's cell first, then her home number, and then her cell again, and leaves a message. "It's me. Please call me. I just - I want to talk. About what you said. I don't - I don't know what to think. Just call me."
The message doesn't make him feel any better, so he puts his phone away and starts walking. He passes by the break room, then ballistics and the garage, around the corner towards trace, veer away from DNA and towards the interrogation rooms, down the largely-ignored hallways of unused rooms, storage space, utility closets.
Nicky cheated. Nicky cheated. What does that mean, though? She said she'd had sex. With whom? When? Where did she meet someone on such short notice? How-
How could it have been good with someone else, when it had been so terrible with him?
Well, he thinks as his feet navigate familiar corridors, at least that settles one thing: they obviously aren't meant for each other. That need in Gil to grab onto Nicky and not let go - probably just loneliness. It couldn't have been love, because if it had been love then he would be feeling something other than numb disbelief right now. Wouldn't he?
So it wasn't love. But he still needs to talk to Nicky, because... well, just because. Her quitting, for one thing. They definitely need to talk about that. And... other stuff.
He finds himself standing outside the DNA lab, looking in at Greg who is looking out at him. He's not sure how long he's been standing there, staring, but judging by the furrow between Greg's eyebrows, it's been longer than strictly necessary.
He pushes the door open and steps inside. "Greg," he says, and is surprised at how rough his voice sounds.
"Grissom," Greg replies, his voice rich with caution.
"Have you-" He stops. Have you what? Seen Nicky? Figured out what the hell is going on? Do you have words of wisdom for me?
"...have I...?" Greg prompts after another few seconds.
"The case," Gil says, because that's always a safe thing to say.
"Your case?" Greg asks. "I thought the Feds took that over."
"They did," Gil says. "Have you sent them the results yet?"
"Um. Catherine did, a little while ago."
"Oh. Good."
"You told her to."
"Just checking."
Greg narrows his eyes. "You okay?" he asks, in a tone of voice that Gil has come to recognise as 'Greg knowing that he's treading on thin ice'.
"I'm fine," he says, nods, and goes back out the way he came. He glances back as he rounds a corner, finds Greg thumbing through his cell phone's memory, looking worried.
Shit. Well that didn't solve anything, did it? He keeps walking.
The break room is populated this time around, though, so he stops in there. Catherine and Warrick are sitting at the table, a slew of paperwork between them and Warrick sucking on a straw that disappears into a pop can.
"...serious about it, man," Warrick says around the straw. "I just don't get it."
"Well," Catherine says, "something's obviously been bothering him for a long time."
"Yeah, but quitting?"
Catherine shrugs, glances towards the door and notices Gil there. "You heard anything?" she asks.
"Huh?"
"About Nicky. Is he quitting for sure?"
"I - think so."
Warrick shakes his head. "I wish I knew what was wrong," he says, "but I can't get him to talk to me."
Catherine stares pointedly at Gil, but says nothing.
"I, uh, have paperwork," Gil says and backs out of the room. His office is as good a place as any to hide out for a while, until - until people go home. Why don't people go home anymore, instead of hanging out in the break room?
He passes Greg on the way back to his office, cell phone pressed to his ear as he's walking. He holds out a hand to stop Gil, but Gil sidesteps it. He feels Greg's eyes on him as he passes, and then once the scrutiny has passed, he looks back to see Greg standing in the door to the break room, talking to Warrick and Catherine.
He stops outside his office, pulls out his cell phone, dials Nicky again. It rings to call answer, and he hangs up before it beeps at him to leave a message. What more is there to say?
"Hey, Grissom."
He turns around to see Sara sauntering towards her, hands in her pockets, her usual smile firmly in place.
"You hear about Nick?" she asks, stopping a couple of feet from him. Almost in his personal space, but not quite; skirting the boundaries. Like always.
"What about - him?" he asks.
"Warrick says he's thinking of quitting."
"So I hear," Gil says.
"Isn't that strange?"
"Well..."
"I mean yeah, he's been sick or something - I hope it's not serious."
Gil shrugs. "I hope not," is all he says.
"So he didn't tell you?" she asks, her head cocked to the side a little, a questioning set to her shoulders. "I mean, I know he dropped by to talk to you earlier, and then he just left..."
"No," Gil says, and steps around her and reaches for his office door. "I'll, uh, talk to you later, Sara." He flashes a stupid smile at her and slinks in through his half-open office door, and closes it behind him.
He ignores the shape of her on his closed Venetian blinds, and sits down at his desk again. Paperwork. God. Who's he kidding?
But it's something he can pretend to do until night shift goes away, and he can get out of here without being battered with questions.
***
He gets nothing accomplished in the half hour he hides in his office. The most he can claim is that his mechanical pencils got filled with lead, he made a chain out of his paperclips and then took it apart because he realised how irritating it would be if he ever actually needed a paperclip, and he picked up the papers that had fallen off the edge of his desk a couple of days ago and which he has been stepping around since. And he phones Nicky a few more times, at home and on her cell. He leaves another message on her cell, then gives up and puts his phone away.
He watches Catherine leave, then Sara and Warrick and then the lab techs start to file out in twos and threes, and when he sees Greg stalk past, cell phone in hand and a determined set to his shoulders, he decides that the coast is as clear as it is going to get. He locks his desk, locks his office, and heads out towards his car.
...where he sees Greg, leaning against the passenger door, staring down at his shoes and looking like he has nowhere better to be.
Gil considers going back into his office and waiting him out, but part of him wants to talk to Greg, wants to find out what's going on, wants to hear whatever it is that Greg is obviously burning to tell him.
So he sighs, and walks across the slowly warming tarmac to his truck. Greg doesn't seem to notice his approach, and jumps about half a foot in the air when Gil uses his key fob to unlock the doors.
"Christ," Greg says, catching his breath. "That was mean."
"It's been a bad night," Gil says unapologetically. He watches Greg haul the passenger door open and climb in, and sit back stiffly. Impatiently.
He sighs again, walks around to the driver's side, and follows suit.
"So?" he asks after a few seconds in the sealed car.
Greg rubs his face. "The thing you need to know," he says, "about Nicky, is that... well, in a way she's really young, you know?"
"She's thirty-two, Greg."
"No, Nick is thirty-two." He leans back in the plush seat and stares at the dashboard. "Nicky, on the other hand, is just a pup."
"A pup."
"So to speak. Maybe more of a kitten. Look, what I'm driving at here, obviously unsuccessfully, is that... well, in a way she's a teenager. You follow?"
"No."
"Okay." Greg stops for a moment and thinks. Gil can see the concentration on his face. "She's at the stage of emotional development where she's just starting to figure out what she likes. Who she likes. Who she is. Most of us got that out of the way when we were, like, fourteen. Right?"
"Okay," Gil says.
"Okay," Greg says, and takes a deep breath to push onward. "Think about what you were like when you were fourteen. Or - think of the first time you had sex. It was weird, wasn't it? Scary and exciting and - strange."
Gil narrows his eyes. "All right."
"So. Nicky is that person, right now. I mean yes, Nick has had sex before, but Nicky? She was a virgin."
"And so she - this?"
Greg closes his eyes. "She didn't - look. Fuck, this is complicated to explain." He snaps his eyes open and turns to look at Gil. "Do you realise that I keep having life-altering conversations in cars? There's something intrinsically wrong with that."
"Nicky," Gil reminds him humourlessly.
"Right. Okay. So... let's pretend that you're fourteen. You're in love, and the person you're in love with - guy, girl, it doesn't matter - they've been around the block before. So when push comes to shove, right, this person... well, they know how to make it good for you. You know? They know what they're doing, and you learn from them as you go, and everything works out in the end. Right?"
"Your point?"
"Well... Nicky doesn't know - didn't know - what worked for her, and you just didn't know how to show her."
"I have had sex before, Greg."
He almost winces at that. "Yeah, I know," he says, "but not with a Nicky, though, right?"
There's a pause. "No," he concedes.
"So you did your best," Greg tells him. "You took what you knew - which presumably was how to have sex with a guy, although I really don't need you to confirm that for me if it's all the same to you - and you did your best. Except it wasn't the right thing."
Gil narrows his eyes. "And so Nicky cheated on me?"
"It's not-" Greg pushes the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment, then lets out a deep breath and says, "It was Lisa."
A beat. "Who?"
"Lisa. My girlfriend. She... showed Nicky what to do."
A much longer beat. "Your girlfriend."
"Yes."
"And Nicky."
"...yes."
Gil shakes his head and looks away from Greg, looks out his side window at cars coming and going. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" he eventually asks.
"No," Greg says, and then, "yes. Look, it was sex, okay, but it wasn't sexual. Does that make sense?"
"No."
He sighs. "It wasn't a question of Nicky and Lisa getting it on. It was a question of... of Nicky being in really rough shape, and Lisa knowing what to do."
"That's what it was, was it?" Gil asks coldly. "It was just sex, not - not what, exactly? Not love? Just a fling?"
"Not even a fling," Greg says. "It's like... okay, think of it this way. If Nicky had bought a book about having sex under her circumstances, would that be okay with you?"
"A book is different, Greg."
"Not really," he insists. "Nicky doesn't have that book, but Lisa.... well, Lisa's read it. Think of it that way. It was the most direct and, uh, demonstrative way to impart the information, so..."
Gil thinks about it for a moment. "So it was research-sex?" he finally asks.
"Yes!" Greg punches the roof of the car in victory. "Exactly. I can promise you, Grissom, that Nicky is not in love with Lisa. She's in love with you. And this thing... it's one of the bumps in the road." He pauses, then makes a face. "Christ, did I actually say that? What a Hallmark moment."
"I truly doubt that Hallmark carries a card that says, 'Sorry my girlfriend slept with your transsexual boyfriend', Greg," Gil mutters.
Greg is grinning. "See?" he says. "You made a joke out of it. It'll be okay."
Gil sighs. "I'm not sure I can handle many more of these 'bumps'," he says.
"Well," Greg says, "there are bound to be a few more up ahead."
"That's not the most reassuring thing I've heard, Greg."
"Yeah, but it's true," Greg says, opens the door, and steps out into the morning.
***
He watches Greg wander back to the lab building, and then stuffs the keys into the ignition for want of something better to do. He knows that he should leave, that he should go home and eat something and try to get some sleep, or maybe go for a walk, get a little bit of exercise, see if that makes him feel any better.
Because Greg's little pep talk has left him feeling decidedly shabby. He still stings where the reality of the situation whipped at him - Nicky with someone else - but he's sort of aching, too, with the reality of what he said.
He thinks, I'm not cut out for this. He thinks, I can intellectually know that Nicky is going through something complicated, but I just don't have the empathy to truly understand it. He thinks, I'm bad for Nicky, and Nicky is bad for me.
Then he thinks, I don't really care.
Obviously, he cares that he's hurting Nicky as much as she's hurting him. He cares that he's impotent to help and ignorant of the basic facts of the situation, and he cares that he doesn't trust his instincts.
But he doesn't care that he's going to keep getting hurt, doesn't care that the logical, scientific thing to do is to walk away now, to break things off as cleanly as possible. He wants to make this work, because...
Well, because of Nicky. Because the person that she is. Because he's in love with her whatever. He is.
He's in love with Nicky, and right now, that overrides everything else.
As he starts the truck and puts it into gear, he feels the numbness from earlier start to dissipate, start to fade into feeling again. He feels fear, and anxiety, and frustration; but mostly he feels love.
***
The letter is harder to write than she thought it would be.
For one thing, she makes the critical error of checking her email as soon as her computer is on, and finds two messages from Carrie, one from Pete, and one from her parents. Sweet. She agonises for a while about whether she should read them or not, then decides against it and quits the application before she changes her mind. One thing at a time, Greg had said: the letter. Family is further down the list.
So far she has, "Dear Mister Ecklie, I resign." This is, after all, a draft.
She wants to tell him that it's for personal reasons, but she doesn't want to get into what those personal reasons are but even more than that, she doesn't want to sound wishy-washy and pathetic. She doesn't want him to think that her dog died and therefore she has to find a new job. She wants him to understand that this is serious, but she doesn't want to actually tell him that it's serious.
It's the same situation, she realises, as when she had just started dating Gil, and she'd wanted him to know about Nicky without actually having to tell him about her. And how did she deal with it then? She hid under her bed until Greg made her go and confess.
While she can't deny that the approach worked, she can't really convince herself to do the same thing here. This is professional: this is her, ending her career.
She opens a bottle of white wine and tosses the remains of the tea, and sits staring at a blank Word document for a while. Finally she sighs, leans forward, and starts typing.
Mr. Ecklie,
I am writing this letter to tender my resignation. As I consider it unprofessional to quit without warning, please consider this to be two weeks' notice of my intent to leave my position at the Crime Lab.
My reasons for leaving at this time are personal, and I would like to stress that this decision is not in response to anything that has happened at work. I have greatly enjoyed my time with LVPD, and as much as I have enjoyed being a criminalist, I am unable to continue in this capacity. I do not want to do anything that will compromise the lab in any way, nor put you or anyone else in the position of having to defend the lab's reputation.
I am sorry to leave you short-handed. I know that the lab has some difficulty in retaining new employees, but I am confident that you will be able to replace me without too much trouble. Thank you for your understanding in this matter.
Sincerely,
Nick Stokes
She sits back to read it. It seems surreal that such an impersonal document will be the harbinger of change in her life. She's saying goodbye to a profession she's known and loved for years, and this letter is her swan song?
Except of course it isn't. It's just a formal paperwork thing; the real goodbyes will come later. In person. Which she is really not looking forward to, now that she thinks about it. Hm. Maybe she should quit effective immediately, and avoid all of that?
But that's not her style, and anyway, she really does think that it's unprofessional. And for some reason, it's important to her that she remains professional, although she can't quite put her finger on why it matters so much to her.
She gets up to pour herself another glass of wine, and is standing in the kitchen with the bottle in one hand and her empty glass in the other when her doorbell rings. She tops up her glass and carries it through to the entranceway, still pondering her letter of resignation even as she wonders who it is at her door.
***
Gil is not sure what he's expecting to find. Possibly Nicky in tears, or Nicky not answering the door, or any one of a number of scenarios of Nicky in distress.
He's not expecting to find Nicky in her bathrobe, with a glass of wine, with... breasts. Looking distracted about something and a little bit red from crying, and - beautiful. God.
He's always thought that Nick was handsome. Attractive. Under some circumstances, such as naked in bed, beautiful. But this? This is Nicky looking comfortable and feminine and utterly, utterly wonderful.
She's looking at him with her eyes shaded from the sun, and Gil is not entirely sure how to read the expression on her face. He clears his throat. "Hi," he says, because has to say something.
She blinks at him. "Hi," she says, a little uncertainly.
"Can I come in?"
She considers it, then steps aside to let him through. "Okay," she says.
Gil walks through to the living room, listens to Nicky close the door and follow him. He doesn't know quite what to think, can't remember exactly what he came here to say. To apologise, probably, but for what, again?
His earlier conundrum of being unable to think of Nick as Nicky has resolved itself, apparently, because right now, turning to face her, he doesn't think he's ever going to be able to think of Nicky as Nick again.
He's not sure what it is about her that has bowled him over. Yes, she's got a slightly different contour than before, and yes, because of the shape she's holding herself a little differently - more of that mysterious feline grace, he thinks - but it's.... something else. Something that is overriding his previous attempts at seeing a woman when he looked at Nick.
As though she - undeniably she now, never again a he he thinks - can read his mind, she suddenly seems to realise how she looks, and folds into something defensive. Her chin works its way out defiantly, daring him to comment, and her arms come up across her chest and something close to fear flickers through her eyes.
And it breaks his heart, seeing her like this, afraid of him. Afraid of him, like she was in the beginning, when she broke down and explained the facts of her life to him. Terrified that he's going to leave, and painfully hopeful that he does.
He takes a step towards her, catches himself in the process of reaching out and stops himself. He doesn't know what she's thinking, doesn't know how she feels about him being here. Things are so complicated that he's not even entirely sure what he thinks about being here.
"Nicky," he says, "I'm so sorry."
She seems to tighten up somehow, as though getting ready for a sparring match. "For what?" she asks. "I'm the one who fucked up."
"Greg told me what happened," he says, "with Lisa. I think I understand."
"Oh?" she says, sounding none too convinced.
"He explained something to me," Gil continues, because he has to be able to talk them out of this canyon, "something I really didn't get before. It's going to sound stupid, Nicky, but... I think I have the beginnings of a clue now."
She quirks up a corner of her mouth at that. "That much, huh?"
He shrugs. "It's more than I had before," he tells her. "The first step on the path to enlightenment is ignorance." He doesn't know why he throws that in there, except that in the past, he's always had a truism on hand to get him out of a tight spot. But the look on her face when he says it tells him that he needs to start to form some new habits.
"So?" she says. "What does that mean, Gil?"
He sighs. "I know that I keep saying this to you, but I want to try to try again. With my eyes open, but actually open this time."
"Gil, I cheated on you."
"No," he says, and even though he knows that he believes it now, more or less, he's still surprised at how sincere he makes it sound. "You didn't. You went out and found something that I couldn't give you. That's not cheating."
"Then what is it?"
He shrugs with one shoulder. "A fact of life," he says.
He watches her study him for a few seconds, then she sighs and turns away from him, walks towards the kitchen. He follows because there's nowhere else that he should be, other than right here with her, and he watches her set her glass down carefully on the counter, and stand facing away from him in silence a few seconds.
Then she says, "Gil. I appreciate that you're here, that you're trying so hard, but... this is such a mess, okay? Everything is. I need to - I need to stop what I'm doing and take a good, long look at myself. Do you understand?"
"I do," he says, "and all I'm saying is, I want to be there with you."
"That's not what I mean by taking a good long look at myself."
"I know that," he says, leaning against the door frame so he's not standing in the middle of the room feeling as helpless as he is. "And if that means time apart, I can live with that. But... don't make this break permanent, okay? Please. I just... I want to do what's right for you, I do, but - I want to be there. With you. I want to be with you."
There's another long silence, and then when she turns around, she's crying. "Gil," she says, wiping at her eyes, "I don't fucking deserve you..."
He crosses to her and takes her in his arms and holds her, feels her arms come around his back and feels her tears soak through his shoulder. "Nicky," he says softly, "you deserve better than me, but I hope maybe you can make do with me."
He starts to rock slowly back and forth, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying to find a rhythm that soothes. He's never known how to comfort people particularly well, but somehow this is easy. He kisses the side of her neck and holds her tight through her tears.
***
Her embarrassment at being caught with breasts doesn't fade quickly. Even after Gil hugs her and endures her tears and snot, even after she wipes at her face with her hands and tries to look brave, even when Gil is looking at her with nothing but patience and love. Even then, she feels like she should be apologising for how she looks.
She stands with her arms crossed on her chest, hugging herself protectively and trying to hide the shape of her chest. She leans against the counter by the sink at an angle that she hopes flattens her hips somewhat, and she resists the temptation to push her hair behind her ear.
"Gil," she says eventually, "I don't think this is going to work."
"It will work," Gil says, "if we decide that we want it to work."
She closes her eyes. "I love you," she says. "But I don't know if I can do this."
"I can wait, Nicky," he tells her. "I can wait forever if I have to. We don't have to date, but please don't shut me out completely."
She opens her eyes, because Gil is saying what she wants to hear more than anything, and right now she doesn't know what to do with that. So instead she says, "I'm resigning."
He looks sad, but he nods. "I understand," he says.
Right now, she's not even sure that she wants his understanding. "It's not - it's not because of us, okay?" He nods. "It's not... Look. I love being a CSI. But I can't do that. I can't go out to people's houses and walk past them at the tape, them in tears because their husband just got killed, and me looking like..." She swallows. "Like this."
"You look beautiful, Nicky."
"The point is," she says, her words overlapping the end of his thought because he's just saying that, he can't actually mean it, "that people have enough shit in their lives by the time we show up that they don't need me in their face, either. And evidence? In court? Nobody's going to listen to anything I have to say. And the people I work with - man, Warrick. Warrick's been this really good friend forever, right, but... how can I work with him like this?" Her eyes start to tear up again and she wipes at her cheek with irritation. "How can he work with me?"
Gil takes her hand. "Nicky," he says, "whatever you need to do, do it. I'll help you any way that I can, just - don't shut me out. Please."
For a moment, Nicky has a flash of Gil as a boy, with a box full of scorpions, looking up at his mom with imploring eyes, Please can I keep them? And she knows that it would be damn near impossible to say no.
"I can't - I don't want to shut you out, Gil," she says, "but I'm a mess."
"I don't care," Gil says. "Let's make it our mess. You and me. And Greg, and Lisa, too, if that's what it takes. Whatever it takes."
She smiles. "That was weird," she says. "With Lisa."
"I can imagine."
She looks at him through wet-heavy eyelashes. "Why aren't you pissed off?"
"Because I don't have to be. Greg is... very persuasive. And understanding."
She smiles again. "Yes, he is."
"You're lucky to have a friend like him."
"I'm lucky to have you," she says.
"I think I'm pretty lucky, too."
***
They make coffee and Nicky shows him her draft of the letter. He gets a funny look on his face while he reads it, but at the end he nods and says, "That'll do it, I guess."
They're sitting on the couch, not quite touching, not quite not-touching, either. Just next to each other, in their own worlds that happen to overlap. "I'm going to miss the lab," she says.
"We're going to miss you," Gil says.
She looks down into her coffee. "I kind of wish..."
A pause. "What?" Gil prompts gently.
She sighs. "I kind of wish that the entire world was populated by Gregs, you know?"
He thinks for a moment. "I suspect there are more Gregs out there than you realise," he says eventually, carefully. "There's Lisa, for one. And me."
"Yeah, but the rest of the world?" She shakes her head. "I'm going to have to talk to my family, I'm going to have to talk to my friends, I'm going to have to find a new job somewhere..." She shakes her head. "I really have to start over. From scratch."
He studies her. "Even if you're not working at the lab anymore," he says, "that doesn't mean you can't stay in touch. Warrick and Sara, and Catherine... everyone's going to miss you."
"They'll miss Nick," she says. "Not Nicky."
"They haven't even met Nicky," Gil says softly.
She looks up at him. "You're starting to sound like Greg," she says.
He smiles. "I'll take that as a compliment," he says. "But if I start listening to Black Flag, shoot me?"
"Promise."
The phone rings suddenly, startling them both. "Aren't you going to get that?" Gil asks after the third ring that Nicky has sat through, staring into the depths of her coffee.
"No," she says. "I'll let the machine take it."
They listen to the last two rings before the click of the machine cuts in. "Hi, you've reached Nick, I'm not in, leave a message." Beep.
"Nick, it's Carrie... I'm really worried about you. What's going on? Why won't you call me? Did something happen with Gil? What's going on? I know you're probably getting sick of these messages, either that or you're at work and haven't heard any of them... crap. Look, just... call me, okay? I'm your sister and I love you, no matter what. Please." Click.
Nicky can feel Gil watching her as the machine resets itself, and she makes a point of not meeting his eye. "I'll deal with that later," she says eventually. "Okay?"
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't have to." She sighs. "It's just... I don't know. I can only handle one crisis at a time, and right now, I just want to sit here with you."
He takes her hand after the slightest hesitation, and squeezes it gently. "I like the sound of that," he says.
If she concentrates, she can feel the thin line of his chain around her neck, and the slight weight of the pendant resting against her breastbone. She likes feeling it there, and she likes feeling Gil's pulse in his thumb through her fingers. She likes sitting here, saying nothing, drinking coffee, trying to pretend that she's not freaked out that he's seen her with padding.
If this is the start of the rest of her life, maybe it won't be so bad.
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