Title: A Fire That Feeds Our Life
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: Eight months after having survived being buried alive, Nick Stokes is still trying to put the event behind him and re-connect with his family and friends, when a new graveyard supervisor is appointed. Meanwhile, Gil Grissom arrives in Las Vegas burnt out and hoping for solitude.
A/Ns: Slightly AU, takes place a few months after Grave Danger. You can assume that Nick’s background and defining experiences are largely similar to canon. Except that neither he, nor the rest of the team, have ever met Grissom.

I apologize for the question mark in terms of chapters, but experience has taught me that the characters tend to develop their own minds, and don’t even respect the fact that I’m trying to edit a finished story. This was supposed to be three to four chapters. Now it’s about eight. We’ll see! :o)

The title is from a quote by Pablo Neruda “To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life”.

He hasn’t been assigned to a case alone since… well, since then, and it’s starting to piss him off. Catherine works alone, Warrick works alone, hell, even Donovan and Park, both level two, occasionally work alone. Not him, no matter how simple the case, no matter how thin they’re spread. Leave it to the dayshift rather than send little Nicky out on his own.

He kicks his locker shut, trying to release some tension, but the loud clang just feeds his indignation. Who knows what boring, routine case he won’t be trusted to handle alone today? Hell, why even join the briefings? Just tell him who’s been assigned as his babysitter, and he’ll tag along for the ride.

He squares his shoulders before walking into the meeting room. He’s damned if he’s going to let anybody see how affected he is by all this bullshit. He should have quit long before now, only every night he thinks, This is it, this is when Brass sends me out solo. It can’t last much longer, can it? At some point, people forget, don’t they?

He sits down next to Catherine, who flashes him a quick smile, just as Brass walks in, Ecklie on his heels. A third man brings up the rear, but while Brass and Ecklie move to the front of the room, he remains at the back, stepping to the side of the door and leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.

Everybody sits up a little straighter; Ecklie rarely participates in the nightly briefings and handing out of assignments, and by the sour look on Brass’ face, he’s not here to simply to observe. Something’s up.

“Is everybody here?” Ecklie asks Brass, who nods. “Okay, I’ll make this quick and let you all get back to work. Some of you may be aware that a few months ago, Jim asked to be transferred back to the crime squad. A suitable position has opened, so it’s with mixed feelings that I have to announce that, as of next month, he will no longer be graveyard shift supervisor.”

Nick hears Catherine’s quick intake of breath, and out of the corner of his eye he can see her lean slightly forward in barely concealed anticipation. She’s next in line in the hierarchy, and ever since Brass’ request leaked to the grapevine, she’s been the odds-on favorite to replace him. Nick’s gut tells him she’s not going to like what’s coming next. He turns to look at the man standing quietly in the back. In his late 40s or maybe early 50s, medium height and build, a bit soft around the middle, he doesn’t look like a cop. More like a scientist or a professor. Nick suddenly realizes that his scrutiny is being returned, and, before he can stop himself, he jerks around to face Ecklie again, his face heating up.

“On the other hand, the Las Vegas Crime Lab is extremely fortunate in his replacement,” Ecklie continues. “Gil Grissom comes to us with solid experience; he’s spent over a decade at the Quantico crime lab. I’m sure we will all benefit from his knowledge.”

There are murmurs of surprise and curiosity around the table as they all turn to look at their new supervisor. Catherine is suddenly ashen, her lips pressed together in a thin line.

“Gil, why don’t you say a few words? Tell the team what to expect.”

“The Las Vegas lab has quite a reputation, and I’m pleased to be here. I look forward to working with you.” He’d straightened up from the wall and taken his hands out of his pockets for the short speech, and now he leans back against it again, smiling faintly.

“Uhm, anything else?” Ecklie looks a little disappointed; Nick supposes he’d expected more from the man from Quantico.

“Everybody calls me Grissom,” Grissom says obligingly, and Nick bites back a smile.

“Thank you, Gil,” Ecklie says deliberately, with faint emphasis on the name.

“You’re welcome, Conrad,” Grissom responds, his voice even, and this time Nick has to cough to disguise the laughter bubbling up. He doubts that Grissom did it deliberately, he’s probably just a geek who takes everything at face value and wouldn’t recognize sarcasm if it bit him on the ass, but in that brief exchange he’s managed to simultaneously antagonize Ecklie and maybe gain a toehold of acceptance with the rest of the team.

“I’ll leave you all to it, then.” Ecklie gives a brief nod without really meeting anybody’s eyes and walks out of the room, and Brass steps up front and center.

“OK, guys, pay attention. Warrick and Sun Hee, 411 on the Strip—”

“411? That’s stolen vehicle, right? You want us to look for a stolen vehicle?” Sun Hee protests, her voice high with indignation.

“Undercover car. Guns in the trunk. It’s important.”

“And it went missing? How did that happen? Don’t we lojack police property?”

Brass looks heavenward, then turns back to his sheets.

“Catherine, I need you and Donny at the Bellagio. Probably a double suicide, but Vega has some doubts.”

Nick can’t believe it. They’ve all been paired up, and he’s the only one left. Finally. A solo. Unless, of course, there aren’t any more cases, and he’ll be stuck in the lab, doing paperwork. No, that’s—

“Nick, hit and run on Las Vegas Boulevard,” Brass interrupts his racing thoughts. “We have a suspect and only one witness, who is apparently now having second thoughts about what he saw and didn’t see, so we need you on the scene.”

It’s all Nick can do not to pump his fists in the air in triumph. Trying not to look as excited as he feels, he slowly gets to his feet and takes the sheet from Brass. About fucking time people started trusting him again.

He’s almost at his truck, kit and vest in hand, when he notices that Grissom is behind him.

“Something I can do for you?” he asks politely, when Grissom slows down alongside him as he opens the tailgate to store his things.

“I thought I’d come along for the ride. It’s been a long time since I worked a hit and run.”

Figures.

“Uh, has Brass approved this? I mean access to a crime scene is limited; are you officially in yet?” Now he’s telling his future supervisor rules a level one knows and that he can’t observe him working; he’s committing professional suicide, that’s what he’s doing.

Grissom raises his eyebrows. “I have clearance.”

“Of course,” Nick says hastily, and motions helplessly towards the passenger side of the Denali.

Gil’s used to not feeling welcome. Nobody’s ever happy to see the FBI arrive, not even when circumstances are dire. He might not be FBI any more, but he’s still the interloper. Brass had warned him that it’s a tightly knit team, and that they might first close ranks around Catherine Willows. But she’s fair. Win her over, and you’ve got it made, he’d told Gil. Yeah, right. Gil’s not an optimist by any means, but even so, he realizes that he severely underestimated the problem. When Ecklie made his announcement, Catherine looked incandescent with rage, and Gil didn’t miss the angry shock on the faces of both Warrick Brown and Donny Donovan. Sun Hee Park was also clearly taken aback and upset. The only person who’d seemed to realize what was coming had been Nick Stokes. He swung around to stare at Gil the moment Ecklie announced Brass’ transfer, then flinched away when their eyes met.

Brass had given him a brief account of everybody’s background and experience, but even without it, Gil would have known all about Nick; eight months ago, Nick had been front page news, when his name and the fact that he was buried alive somewhere in the Nevada desert had been leaked to the press. Even though premature, the obituaries had been very informative. And although Nick had been rescued in a little less than 72 hours, public interest had remained high for over a month, while he recuperated and the persons responsible were captured. After that, the press moved on, but Gil supposes that the story will be brought out, polished and re-published once the trial starts.

He almost hadn’t recognized Nick at first. Most of the papers had used the picture that the LVPD had shown around when Nick first went missing; a smiling young man with dark eyes and eyebrows, a strong nose and jaw, and a high and tight haircut. It was only when Gil made his flippant response to Ecklie's request for a longer speech, and he saw Nick smile briefly, that it sunk in that this was the same man. Despite the trendy longer haircut, the Nick sitting beside him and guiding the truck through traffic looks tired and drawn, and despite the laugh lines radiating from the corners of his brown eyes and bracketing his mouth, there’s an almost palpable sense of anger and sadness about him.

Nick murmurs a curse and stomps on the brake as a taxi suddenly swerves into their lane, and Gil realizes he’s been staring at him, so he turns to look out of the window. Las Vegas Boulevard, flanked by hotels on either side, alternates from impressive, to gaudy and, sometimes, to just plain seedy. One thing it’s not, is quiet; hard to believe there was only one witness to a hit and run. Most likely nobody wanted to ruin their vacation by volunteering any information, although one would think that even the remote possibility of appearing on a TV interview would have been an inducement for some to do their civic duty.

Ever since Gil funded his way through college with his poker earnings, he’s enjoyed a steadily growing reputation as a poker player, and he’s spent several vacations in Las Vegas. Part of the reason he chose to relocate here is the ease with which he can find others of his caliber to play with. More importantly, however, he wanted a place that won't challenge his independence, a town of tourists and travelers, where nobody is really permanent, where the likelihood of forming ties or growing roots is low. Reaction to the breakup of his relationship? Male menopause? Perhaps. All he knows is that a party town suits him just fine for the foreseeable future, even if partying isn’t really his style.

Gil spots the patrol car guarding the scene a moment before Nick flicks the turn signal on in order to switch lanes. A policeman is diverting all traffic into the left lane, and he waves them over to the right when he spots the CSI emblem on the door of the Denali. They pull up in front of an open air parking lot. Climbing out, Gil sees that there’s a construction site across the boulevard. The scene now seems to have attracted a number of gawkers, but it’s entirely possible that this small part of Las Vegas Boulevard would have been pretty deserted at the time of the accident.

A heavy set man with a buzz cut and an ill-fitting suit jacket, who looks like he came straight out of Central Casting, makes his way over to Nick, who’s shrugging into his vest.

“Hey, Nick. How’s it hanging?”

“Stop flirting with me, man,” Nick drawls, and the cop snickers, before turning towards Gil, obviously waiting for an introduction.

“O’Riley, this is Gil Grissom; he’ll be replacing Brass. Grissom, Ray O’Riley.”

O’Riley extends his hand to shake Gil’s, but he’s looking sideways at Nick. “Replacing Brass?” he asks, and Nick nods in confirmation. “Uh, huh. Well, good luck.” The You'll need it bit is clear in his tone. Obviously, another of Catherine’s many fans.

“So, what do we have?” Nick asks, and O’Riley pulls out his notebook. At first he delivers his report to both of them, but in the course of their walking over to the victim’s body and then to the car, he directs more and more of his remarks towards Nick. As far as Gil can see, Nick is asking all the right questions, so he’s content to stay in the background, only half-listening to O’Riley, concentrating on the scene instead and trying to form his own impressions.

After a while, O’Riley moves away, and Nick starts walking the scene, setting down markers, taking photographs and making notes. He hasn’t said a word to Gil since the lab parking lot, when he asked him if he had clearance to be on the scene, and while Gil doesn’t think the silence between them has been exactly comfortable, neither has it been unfriendly.

“So what happened?”

Nick is squatting to examine the bumper of the car and he looks up at the question.

“Not much I can say at this point. It’s so beat up, it’s hard to distinguish a possible point of impact from all the other dents.” He straightens up and motions towards the crumbled body of the victim. “Besides, they pull him over about five hundred yards from the victim, heading in her direction? Why would he drive by here again? Hit and run drivers typically stay as far away as they can.”

“Well, he was being pursued. Maybe he just went in a circle?”

Nick shakes his head. “No. According to O’Riley’s report, he was already on Las Vegas heading this way when they spotted him.”

“He thinks he hit somebody and he’s coming back to check? Fled the scene in a panic, but regretted it?”

Nick shrugs. “Maybe,” he says, the doubt evident in his voice. He looks back at the car. “In that case, though, he flipped again, since he's denying any involvement. That hollow might be consistent with a body landing on the hood, but if she flipped over the bumper and landed there, you’d expect to see some signs of impact on the windshield, as well. It doesn’t add up.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“There’s still the witness statement; he only got one digit of the license plate number wrong, and the car description fits, even though he’s now not so sure. But he didn’t actually see the accident; he was just coming to the pedestrian crossing and first saw a car accelerating away. He noticed the body immediately afterwards, and he says he’d heard a noise right before he saw the car, that might have been the impact.” Nick tilts his head slightly to the side and frowns at the car. “I’ll have it transported to the lab. Once Doc Robbins conducts the PM and I’ve had a chance to process the car, we should be able to come to a conclusion.”

It isn’t until they’re heading back to the lab that Gil abruptly recognizes the sense of connection he felt with Nick for those couple of hours at the scene. Once they started talking, the exchange of ideas and observations and the development of a couple of possible scenarios felt fluid and natural, almost as if they’d been working together for years. Almost the same way it had felt working with Sara two or three years ago.

He stares blindly out of the window, the blood suddenly roaring in his ears, and he tries to regulate his breathing. He came to Las Vegas because he doesn’t want connections. How the hell is this happening, literally five minutes after he arrived?

On the drive back to the lab, Nick is feeling mellow, in a groove. Hit and runs aren’t his favorite type of case, because they’re rarely solved, and he’s still unsure about whether he’s working the case solo – is Grissom involved, observing or just along for the ride? – but he’s more at peace than he’s been in a long time. He starts to reach out to turn on the radio, only remembering at the last moment that his future supervisor is sitting in the passenger seat next to him. Grissom is such a calm and quiet presence. Or maybe quiet isn’t the right word, Nick muses. Controlled. A lot going on underneath, just not breaking through the surface.

Whoa. He’s got to stop reading too much into everything. Okay, so maybe Grissom’s not the complete geek he initially took him for, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything particularly complicated about him. All he’s done so far is stand back and let Nick do his thing. After all, a hit and run must be pretty boring stuff after Quantico. Except… Except, Grissom hadn’t seemed bored. Quite the opposite. While at the scene, Nick had looked over suddenly and seen him doing a weird twisting pirouette, like he was visualizing how a body might have turned and flipped at impact. Grissom had caught him looking, and instead of seeming embarrassed, had flashed a quick smile; it was the same kind of smile Nick often exchanges with runners he crosses paths with during his evening run, the kind that acknowledges the other as a comrade in arms, at least for that shared split second.

And he enjoyed exchanging theories and ideas with Grissom; it didn’t feel like Grissom was second-guessing or humoring him, but like they were brainstorming together, like no idea was out of scope unless and until they found that the evidence didn’t support it. With Grissom the objective turned into figuring out possibilities rather than trying to solve the case as soon as possible; it occurs to Nick that Grissom’s way might be a quicker path to the truth than the one he’s been following so far. He realizes that he wouldn’t mind if Grissom wants to stay involved. If he’s going to be around, that is.

“Will you be going back to Virginia between now and month-end?”

“No. My stuff is already on its way here; there’s no reason to go back.”

My stuff. So, no family, or at least not one that’s coming with him, and Grissom’s flat tone doesn’t encourage further questions regarding Virginia, so Nick changes tack slightly.

“And have you found a place here already?”

“I’ve got a couple of prospects.”

“Well, if you need any help moving or anything—”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Grissom interrupts him. Despite the words, it’s definitely a rebuff, and Nick feels the heat rising to his cheeks. Shit. Now Grissom’s going to be thinking that he’s trying to suck up to the new boss. He presses his lips tightly together and determines not to say another word until they reach the lab.

“O’Riley said the driver was drunk, right?” Grissom asks, interrupting Nick’s quiet seething.

“He blew a 0.12.”

“Over twice the legal limit.”

“Yeah.”

Grissom doesn’t follow up on his observation. And unless he’s got extreme short-term memory problems, there’s no way he could have forgotten exactly how drunk the driver was, because he was right there when O’Riley reported the breathalyzer results; he even listed the symptoms the driver was likely to have exhibited. Which makes the whole thing feel like a rather transparent effort by Grissom to… what? Soften the rejection? Apologize?

Nick’s resentment drains away and the silence between them starts to feel companionable again. And when he thinks about it, Nick isn’t even really sure why he got his undies in a bunch, it’s not like Grissom has to accept an offer of help from somebody he barely knows, and that’s assuming he needs help in the first place. It doesn’t mean that it’s personal in any way.

Which is exactly the problem, and has been since Nick woke up in the hospital over half a year ago: he’s taking everything fucking way too personally and he knows it. And yet, he can’t seem to help himself. When Warrick kids him, it’s no longer just to get a rise out of him, it’s because he really thinks Nick is a southern hick. If Sun Hee flutters her eyelashes at him, it’s not because she’s trying her flirting skills on somebody safe, it’s because she really wants his body. If Brass asks him a question, it’s not because he needs clarification, it’s because he doubts Nick’s conclusions.

It wouldn’t be so bad if people just let him be for a while. Sort of like Grissom next to him is doing right now. No, they insist on interfering, on his joining them for breakfast, on discussing the Cowboys’ game with him, like they (or he, for that matter) give a shit. And every time, he sees the avid curiosity in their eyes. What was it like, lying there in the stink of your fear? What went through your mind right after you realized that you’re going to die all alone? Would you really have blown your brains out, if you hadn’t suddenly heard Warrick yelling at you? And were you scared that you’d feel the pain of the bullet ripping through you and that it would be a million times worse than the pain of the fire ants biting you?

They never ask him outright, of course. Not even the department shrink he was forced to see immediately afterwards asked outright. No, he seemed more interested in pontificating about the resilience of the human spirit, and in hearing whether Nick had had a happy childhood (yes), whether growing up gay in Dallas had traumatized him in any way (not really, and he’d learned to deal), whether having a psycho cable guy drop out of his ceiling had left any lasting scars (well, being tossed out of a second floor window by him sure had) in order to determine if Nick had it in him to display the necessary resilience, or if he should be found unfit for further duty. Imagine what Dr. Idiot would have done with the information that Nick had been sexually abused at the age of nine, and that he still felt a gut-wrenching rush of shame and guilt whenever he thought about it, no matter that he knew that he absolutely wasn’t to blame in any way. Nick figured out soon enough what he needed to say so that the sessions could come to an end. Not that Ecklie needed much convincing, department budgets being what they are.

They all still treat him like a victim, or like somebody that needs to convalesce from a long illness. Well, he’s not weak, and he’s not sick, and if they all just realize that, things will be okay again.

Nick is a smooth, competent driver. Sitting next to him, only muted sounds penetrating the cabin, passing through alternating pools of darkness and neon lights, Gil is reminded of the long road trips his parents used to take him on when he was a child, back before his dad passed away; he’d lie on the back seat and look out the window, the only thing visible from his position the night sky, and the moon that seemed to keep up with the car, no matter how fast or slow his dad was driving. It’s an odd thing to remember and he mentally shakes himself.

He wishes he’d been less abrupt when Nick offered his help; he felt the sudden tension in the air, and tried to break it with a stupid question he already knew the answer to. Nick still seems withdrawn, but there’s a different quality to the silence now, more like Nick is miles away rather than angry. Good. Gil knows he’s going to feel responsible for everybody in his team soon enough, and that in and of itself will probably build closer ties to them than he’d like. If everybody gets the message that there are lines he won’t cross without considering it some sort of a personal insult, life will be a lot easier.

You never let me in. He’d tried. God knows he had. Shared things with her that he’d never shared with anybody else. But it was never enough for Sara that he loved her, that he wanted to be with her. In the end he never quite figured out what more she needed to hear from him. One day she just up and left; quit the FBI, quit their relationship, quit the U.S. for all he knew. Not that it would have been that difficult to find out; he was with the Bureau, after all.

He lasted fourteen months longer after she left. In truth, neither Sara nor he were really suited for a career in the FBI. Sara because of her personality and her childhood, because she couldn’t compartmentalize, because solving one crime didn’t equate to solving evil or even making a dent in it, and he because, contrary to what X Files would have everybody believe, the FBI doesn’t give slightly eccentric loners free rein to do their own thing. And no matter how interesting the job, sooner or later you start noticing the tight straitjacket of politics and frequently meaningless policies you’re constantly required to wear. Well, he’d noticed soon enough, once trying to protect Sara from herself was no longer occupying most of his attention and he started concentrating on himself and his own contentment.

And here he is, fifty years old and adrift, and wishing that a ride through nighttime Las Vegas with a silent and morose young Texan sitting next to him could somehow last forever, so that he doesn’t have to start dealing with the repercussions of his decision to move here. Because he doesn’t know if he really wants to be here, only that he didn’t want to be there any more.

Not already, he silently protests, when Nick pulls into a parking spot right in front of the lab, and he shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to find the energy to face the present. The engine continues to idle, and he opens his eyes again. Nick is sitting with his hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. Gil checks, but there’s nobody in Nick’s line of vision.

“Nick?”

Nick gives him a tight-lipped smile. “We’re here,” he states needlessly, in a bright voice, then turns the key, releases his seatbelt and opens his door in a series of jerky movements. He’s out of the truck a second later, slamming the door behind him.

“Yes,” Gil agrees out loud, even though there’s nobody to hear him any more. “So we are.”

Gil doesn’t have much time to indulge in doubt in the ten days that precede the official assumption of his duties. He narrows his housing choices down to two and finally one, a townhouse in a quiet suburb of Vegas, about a twenty-minute drive to the lab. His things arrive, and while arranging them, his spirits slowly lift. Somehow his furniture, prints and books take on a whole different aura in new surroundings; they’re no longer indicative of routine and escape, but of a home base from where he can explore a fresh possibilities. He scoffs at his fanciful thinking, even as he draws comfort from it.

The lab draws him back time and again. He doesn’t need to spend quite so much time there yet, but he’s too curious to stay away. It’s been a long time since he’s worked in the field, actually collecting evidence rather than analyzing what’s being sent to him, studying a real crime scene rather than photos of it.

Encouraged by the relative success of his tagging along with Nick that first night – or rather by the fact that it wasn't a total disaster – he attempts to do the same with the rest of the team. He’s always been proud of the fact that he tackles problems head on, yet he’s not quite brave enough to face Catherine first off. Better to deploy a flanking strategy, win the rest of the team over first, let them convey the information that he’s not interested in bossing people around, that he’s there to help and support towards a common goal, rather than to challenge anybody’s position.

It doesn’t work out quite the way he envisaged. His first target is Donny Donovan, who looks harmless enough, whippet thin, with blue eyes and brown glossy curls; unfortunately Donny Donovan also turns out to be the most miserable son of a bitch he’s ever met, griping about the weather, the case, the idiot cops who trample all over “his” scene, the budget that won’t allow for anything other than stone age tools. Gil first tries to ignore him, but soon discovers that lack of response is no deterrent; in fact it encourages Donny to also offer his low opinion of the Nevada economy and the Rebels’ last season, as well as his deep disappointment that, over the past ten years, the Oscars have never gone to the best actor. Finally Gil is forced to politely ask Donny to shut up, which surprisingly enough he does. For about five minutes.

So call it a mixed success; although Donny will probably freely share his opinion of Gil with everybody within earshot, it won’t be a positive one and everybody’s probably given up listening to him long ago anyway.

Gil is considering between Warrick and Sun Hee next, but Catherine heads him off at the pass.

“If you’re going to tail everybody before officially taking over, you might as well pick me next,” she says dryly.

“I’m not tailing anybody,” he replies, stung.

“Uh huh. Well, we’re about to head out, if you’re interested.”

She turns on her heel, leaving him gaping at her back as she moves down the corridor and out of sight. Belatedly, he sets off after her, accelerating and bursting though the exit only to find her obviously waiting for him in the passenger seat of a Tahoe, her elbow resting on the window frame, a smirk on her face. Looking past her, Gil sees Nick in the driver’s seat, but it’s too dark to make out his expression. Probably amused, as well, Gil thinks, a spark of irritation shooting through him.

He climbs into the back and Nick drives off. After about ten minutes of stony silence, Catherine twists around and leans between the two front seats, so that she can see him.

“Nick says you’re not so bad.”

Gil is torn between being more surprised at her temerity or at his own pleasure at Nick’s assessment of him. He finally decides he’s better off ignoring the latter.

“That’s nice,” he says icily. Maybe he’s been following the wrong strategy so far; it’s probably better to establish the boundaries right at the outset. He’s the boss and it’s either his way or the highway. Unfortunately Catherine doesn’t appear in the least intimidated by his tone of voice, or by him, period. She simply smiles and turns towards the front.

Gil settles back and crosses his arms, anger burning hot in his chest. He’s always hated games of one-upmanship. Especially when he’s on the losing side. Suddenly he catches Nick’s eyes on him in the rear view mirror; it’s probably his imagination, but they seem sympathetic rather than amused, and slowly the hard knot inside him starts to soften.

He’ll sort Catherine out. He’s damned if he can see how right now, but he will.

Grissom has beautiful eyes; Nick noticed them the very first day, when Grissom had stood at the back of the meeting room, observing them all as he waited to be introduced. It isn’t just the color, a clear deep blue, or the shape, but the intelligence and fierce intensity burning in them, and the smile that sometimes softens them, even as the rest of Grissom’s face remains solemn. Nick wonders about his background; a guy doesn’t reach fifty and suddenly decide to change job and city for no reason. Probably divorced, and probably not through his own choosing, and that could account for those infinitesimal periods, when Grissom suddenly seems to be a million miles away.

“You should give him a break,” he says absentmindedly, thinking out loud more than actually speaking to Catherine, who’s working alongside him.

She doesn’t need to ask who he’s talking about. “A break? Why? Who’s giving me a break?”

“It’s not his fault, Catherine. He applied for a job, or maybe he was even recruited for it. If you’re going to be mad at anybody, be mad at Ecklie.”

“If he can’t stand the fire, he should get out of the kitchen,” Catherine retorts dismissively.

He shakes his head to indicate his disagreement, but says nothing more. It’s pointless to continue the discussion; Catherine’s still pissed off and she’s not going to listen to reason. Certainly not while they're on their current case.

They work silently for a while, Nick dusting for prints, Catherine methodically searching through the closet and dresser for signs of whether the teenaged girl, who vanished overnight from her room, did so of her own free will or not. The parents mentioned that there had been an argument regarding curfew, and that they’d grounded her for a month. But it hadn’t been the first time that had happened. She knows she can wrap her dad around her little finger and that she’d be going out again in less than a week; there was no reason for her to run away, the mother kept on insisting, her voice thick with tears. Interviews of the girl’s friends disclosed that she wasn’t staying with any of them, and none of them could see her as possessing the initiative, resources, or nerve, to stray too far from home on her own.

Nick sighs. He hates cases involving possible kidnapping, they all do, but at least he can maintain some distance and objectivity. It’s a lot harder for Catherine. Brass would have never assigned her to this case, but Grissom doesn’t know enough about their backgrounds yet to make that kind of distinction. He picked the most experienced available members of the team, and that was that.

“Hey, Nick!”

Nick stops what he’s doing and looks out the second floor window down at Donny.

“Find anything?”

Donny nods and looks back towards the garden shed. “Come down?” he says, in an uncharacteristically low voice, and Nick’s heart sinks. Donny being considerate is never a good sign.

He turns around to find that Catherine has straightened up, her eyes glued on him.

“Uh, Donny needs my help with something,” Nick mutters uncomfortably.

Catherine doesn’t call him on the obvious lie. She merely nods, and bends over the dresser drawers again, her whole body exuding tension.

Nick hurries down the stairs and out of the house, and follows Donny across the garden into the shed.

“There,” Donny points.

“What? It’s just a ladder,” Nick says, relieved. All sheds have ladders.

Donny silently focuses the beam of his flashlight on the top three rungs and Nick sees the brown smears on them, and then again on the sixth and seventh rung.

“Mud?” he asks, even though he knows that Donny may be the world’s biggest whiner, but he’s also very good; certainly too good to make a mistake like that. “Maybe she cut herself climbing down.”

Donny shakes his head. “No. Look closer. There. And there.”

Nick bends down and sees the hair strands matted in the dried blood. Dark blond, wavy and long; definitely the girl’s.

“Looks like he carried her down in a reverse fireman’s lift, and she banged her head against the rungs,” Donny says, and Nick’s gut churns sickeningly as he visualizes it.

“We should analyze this to be sure, and—”

“It’s a kidnapping,” Donny interrupts impatiently, cutting to the chase. “And there’s been no call or message in the last 24 hours.” They both know what that means.

“Fuck,” Nick exhales. “Fuck it to hell.”

“Yeah.” Donny bends over the ladder, taking pictures. “When I’m done, I’ll take this to the lab. Will you…?”

“Fuck,” Nick repeats in a low voice. “Yeah. I’ll let everybody know that at this point we’re no longer looking at a runaway.”

Outside the shed he bends over, hands on his knees, breathing deeply and trying to control the sobs rising in his throat. It’s moments like this that make him regret he didn’t let Dr. Idiot diagnose him as unfit for duty: moments when he knows in his bones that whatever they do will not make a bit of difference. Sure, they might eventually catch the perp, but the lives in this house will have been damaged forever.

“Are you okay?”

Nick slowly looks up to see Grissom standing a couple of feet away from him. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stands upright.

“Yeah. Fine.”

Grissom cocks his head and silently studies him, then nods, as if satisfied with Nick’s answer. “I thought I’d swing by and see how things are going.”

“Not good,” Nick says, then launches into a brief report of Donny’s findings, feeling a certain relief in being able to unload everything onto Grissom.

Grissom starts to move towards the shed. Almost at the door, he pauses and looks back at Nick.

“Have you finished processing inside the house?”

Nick shakes his head.

“Okay. Vartan’s out front. Tell him to come back here, then go finish.”

“Grissom. Maybe you need to pull Catherine out.”

Grissom frowns at him, a puzzled look on his face.

“Uhm, she has a daughter a couple of years younger than...” Nick gestures vaguely towards the house, not wanting to mention the victim and Lindsey out loud in the same sentence.

“How?”

“Huh?”

“How do I pull her out?”

“I don’t know.”

Grissom looks towards the shed again, then turns resolutely back to Nick. “No. She’s here now. She’ll probably feel better doing something rather than being yanked and not being able to do anything.”

“But, Grissom, that’s just it. There’s nothing we can do any more!” Nick bursts out in frustration.

“If you really feel that way, get out of here,” Grissom says harshly. “Otherwise, tell Vartan to come see me, and then go do your fucking job and finish processing inside.” Not waiting for a further response from Nick, not even checking whether Nick is following his instructions, he turns on his heel and enters the shed.

For long seconds, Nick stands stock-still, his heart thundering so loudly, he feels like it’s going to explode. Then he turns numbly back towards the house. He’s aware of Vartan’s sharp look as he tells him to go find Grissom, and he knows he must sound shell-shocked, but for once he doesn’t care what other people might be thinking of him. Then he climbs the stairs slowly to confront Catherine.

“Not a runaway,” she forestalls him.

He shakes his head.

Catherine sighs and looks around at the posters on the walls, then at the photos of smiling girls in cheerleader outfits taped to the vanity mirror. “In that case, it probably makes more sense if I go downstairs and try to figure out how he or they took her away from the house, and the timeline. Are you okay to finish up here on your own?”

He nods, watches her walk briskly out of the room, and then pulls a fresh pair of gloves on and goes back to dusting for fingerprints, trying to think of nothing other than the task at hand.

At first, Gil has trouble concentrating on what Donny Donovan is showing him. His thoughts are racing, regretting his angry reaction towards Nick, wondering if he really should pull Catherine off the case, worrying that it’s all going to hell in a hand basket on his second day. And he can’t afford not to be concentrating; until there’s conclusive proof otherwise, as far as he’s concerned they’re looking for a live girl, and it’s imperative that they find her now. With an effort he snaps back to the present, makes sure Donny understands what needs to be done, and then confers with Vartan on next steps.

He sees Catherine rounding the corner, her flashlight aimed at the grass in front of her feet as she moves slowly towards the shed.

“Catherine.”

She indicates that she’s heard him, then places an evidence marker down and walks over. Once she’s standing in front of him, he’s unsure how to continue. For once, there’s no overt animosity emanating from her, and it's throwing him a little off balance.

“Nick says you have a daughter.”

“Lindsey. She’s thirteen.”

“He thought you might want to be pulled from the case.”

She looks at him sharply. “Do you?”

“No. No, I don't. But it’s up to you.”

“I’m fine,” she says quietly. “I want to work this.”

“Okay.”

She nods once and walks back to the marker she’d set down, resuming her study of the ground.

There comes a point in every investigation, when there’s nothing more the criminalists can do; from then on, it’s up to the detectives, and depending on what they find, the CSIs may be called in again. It’s frustrating and goes against every fiber of their being that they have to call it quits, so it’s a subdued trio in Gil’s office. As ranking team member at the scene, Catherine gives the final report, Donny jumping in a couple of times to add a detail or make a clarification. After his initial contact with Donovan, Gil now can’t help but be impressed. And Catherine’s work is as impeccable as Brass assured him it would be, whatever personal resentment she may be harboring.

“Anything else?” Gil asks, looking around the room. They all shake their heads, but the only one who doesn’t meet his eyes is Nick. “Okay, then. There’s nothing more to be done right now.”

Catherine and Donny nod and get up, but Nick remains in his chair, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles are white, one knee jiggling. He looks behind him, as if to ensure that Catherine and Donny are out of the room, then back down at the floor.

“I want to apologize,” he says. “For what I said back there, how I acted…” He pauses and swallows. “I’m sorry.”

Gil leans forward. “What was that?”

Nick still has his eyes glued on the floor in front of him. Gil gets up, walks around his desk and stands directly in Nick’s line of vision, so that Nick is forced to look up at him. Once their eyes meet, Gil backs away until he’s half-sitting on the desk, maintaining eye contact but giving Nick some space.

“Nick?” he prompts, when Nick doesn’t answer. “You mentioned a reason why Catherine shouldn’t have been working the case. Are there any types of cases you shouldn’t be working?”

Still more silence, but at least this time Nick doesn’t try to look away. He’s staring at Gil without blinking, his brown eyes pleading, but Gil doesn’t know what he wants.

“I need to know,” he says gently. “I need my guys not to give up.”

“I don’t give up,” Nick bursts out. “I never give up.” There’s so much pain in his voice that Gil almost gasps in reaction. “I… It was just a moment. It won’t happen again.”

Please believe me. It won’t happen again. Please, Nick begs mutely. He can see the doubt flickering in Grissom’s eyes, but he can offer no further reassurance, because he himself barely understands what happened back at the scene.

“I was found,” he says, trying to clarify, needing to hear it said, but his voice doesn’t sound like his own. “I don’t give up, because I was found.”

“Are there types of cases you shouldn’t be working?” Grissom asks again. He doesn’t sound unsympathetic, but then he doesn’t sound particularly sympathetic either. He might as well be asking Nick what his shoe size is, and it helps Nick pull himself together and focus.

“No.”

Grissom clearly doesn’t believe him, so he can't be absolute; he’s got to offer a compromise, give something up that sounds half-way reasonable, yet doesn’t really limit him. It’s the same strategy he followed with the shrink, and it worked. “Uh, maybe I’m not too good at enclosed spaces yet.”

“Enclosed spaces.”

“Yeah. Basements, crawlspaces, that sort of thing.” He meets Grissom’s gaze unflinchingly, trying not to look to the left or the right, not to give any indication that he’s lying or prevaricating.

“That sort of thing,” Grissom repeats blandly.

“Yeah.”

Nick can hear the ticking of a clock somewhere behind him, and he counts the seconds, waiting for Grissom to say something.

“Okay.”

Grissom’s agreement is so unexpected that Nick can’t help but question it. “Okay?” he asks, only just barely hiding his surprise. It worked. It actually worked.

“Yes. No enclosed spaces. Otherwise, no case is off bounds.”

Nick smiles in relief and jumps to his feet.

“Okay. Good. And about before, again, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Grissom hasn’t moved. “Fine,” he says, and that’s when Nick sees it in his eyes. The fact that Grissom hasn’t believed a word that Nick has said, that he knows Nick is bullshitting him. And yet, he’s agreeing to take Nick at his word and give him a chance.

“I won’t let you down,” Nick tells him quietly and with conviction. “You can count on me.”

Grissom really does have beautiful eyes, he thinks inanely, especially when they turn warm like they are now. Suddenly aware that he must be gawping like a star-struck teenager, he nods quickly, bares his teeth in an effort to smile, and hurries out of the room. He ducks into the locker room for a while in order to rinse his face with cool water and pull on his coveralls, then heads to the garage, where the car from the hit and run is still waiting to be processed.

It feels like a long time ago since that case, but it’s been less than two weeks.

It takes a little over a month for Gil to learn the ropes in his new workplace. He can remember which lab technician does what without having to look at the directory, and, with Brass’ guidance, knows which judge is most likely to provide a search warrant depending on the case. Where his own small team is concerned, however, he feels like he’s barely scratched the surface.

Catherine Willows is part queen bee and part den mother; she’s the unspoken leader whose favor everybody seeks. She can be sarcastic and bossy, but she’s also fiercely protective of ‘her’ people, and he starts to see that while she’s disappointed at not receiving the extra pay, autonomy and recognition a promotion would have brought, another important reason she wanted the position was so that she could run interference for the rest of the graveyard shift.

And god knows they need somebody running interference for them. Much as he chafed at the restrictions of the Bureau, he finds himself missing the discipline it imposed. As it is, he sometimes feels like he’s supervising home room rather than a crime lab.

There’s Warrick Brown; smart, obsessive, but also unpredictable and hot-headed. Impatient with authority, he’s had run-ins with most of the LVPD top brass, not to mention several ADAs and judges, and the only reason he’s still around is that the commendations in his file still exceed the numerous reprimands. There are rumors of gambling, drinking and pills, but if they’re true, nobody’s been able to provide hard evidence.

Donny Donovan is undoubtedly brilliant. He’s also inexperienced, immature, too full of himself, and apt to not only see the glass completely empty, but broken, as well. Most of these characteristics might be tolerable, if only he were introverted; unfortunately Donny isn’t shy about sharing himself, and his opinions, with the world.

After Nick, Sun Hee (“Don’t call me Sunny!”) Park is probably the most disciplined one in the team. No task is too small or too large for her, she’s meticulous, logical and determined. Gil doubts she’ll ever be as good as Catherine or as Donny, but she’s a dependable performer and with further training and experience she should have no problem achieving level 3. If she ever gets rid of the chip on her shoulder and the foot in her mouth.

Unlikely as it seems, they somehow not only function together, but maintain the highest solve record of the three shifts, and it’s clearly Catherine who’s the lynchpin. Warrick is attracted to her, Donny adores her and Sun Hee idolizes her, and she keeps them in line through a combination of cosseting and bullying.

And then there’s Nick: a member of the team, yet apart from them. Although he works well with all of them, he seems to prefer solo cases, even if they’re beneath his abilities. Warrick, Donny and Sun Hee obviously respect him, but equally obviously feel ill at ease with him. When they joke with him, they look tentative, as if they’re not quite sure whether he’ll laugh along or turn around and bite their head off. You wouldn’t want to come along for breakfast, would you? they ask with a strained smile, and when he refuses, they look disappointed but not surprised.

Even in the short six weeks he’s been here, even with his still limited familiarity of the people and dynamics in the Las Vegas crime lab, it’s clear to Gil that who Nick is today bears little resemblance to who he must have been in the past. It’s hard to imagine that he once participated in almost every departmental softball game, that he dressed as a chicken at a Halloween party, or that he won the LVPD annual beer-chug-a-thon three years in a row before being beaten by Doc Robbins. The evidence is all around, in photos on the break room walls, in the departmental newsletters. Most of all, in how people look at Nick, when his back is turned.

Since that second night, Nick has never given Gil another reason to question his reliability and tenacity. True to his promise, he doesn’t give up, and he won’t let others on the team do so either. Only, he’s slowly crossing to the other extreme, pursuing cases for much longer than he should, seemingly unable to walk away when the time comes. There’s a growing brittleness about him that concerns Gil.

He can’t force Nick into taking sick leave; the PD psychiatrist’s assessment stated in no uncertain terms that Nick is fit for duty, and while Gil might disagree with that, he can’t really challenge it based only on intuition and impressions formed over the relatively few hours he’s spent with Nick in a professional setting. He also can’t only assign “safe” cases to Nick, because assignments are most often just luck of the draw, the next number in a series on the whiteboard.

The only thing Gil can do is watch. And worry.

“Are you working this weekend?”

Nick shakes his head, already resigned to what he knows Warrick’s next question will be, resenting Warrick for forcing him to have to decline yet another invitation. Don’t these people get it? Don’t they realize that he has nothing to offer them anymore, and that he’s exhausted by the effort of trying? That all he wants to do is go home and sleep?

“Why don’t you come over and watch the game with me, then? UNLV vs. Utah. I’ve got money riding on UNLV, it’ll be fun.”

“How much?”

“How much fun?”

“No. How much money?”

Warrick’s grin stiffens. “How much money? What are you, my mother?”

Why does he even bother? Warrick’s never gonna change. “Forget it, man. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“No,” Warrick says after a long pause, “you shouldn’t have.” He turns his back on Nick and bangs his locker door shut, then strides out of the room. A second later, he walks back in. “You know what, Nick?” he grinds out. “You’ve turned into a real asshole. You need help. If you don’t want to admit it, fine, but stop taking your problems out on the rest of us.”

“I need help? That’s really rich coming from you, Warrick. You’re the poster boy for half the anon groups in Vegas. Not that you’d ever go to a meeting, because that would mean giving up everything that makes life tolerable for you, now wouldn’t it?”

He sees Warrick’s nostrils flare and his fists curl into fists, and he stands up hastily. Warrick is taller than him and outweighs him by a good thirty pounds, yet he finds himself eagerly anticipating what’s coming next, an almost wild joy surging through him. He’s suddenly realizes that this is what’s he wanted for weeks, months even. To lash out at someone, to make someone pay.

He blocks Warrick’s first swing, and drives his fist straight into Warrick’s mouth, a small rational part of his brain making him pull his punch at the last second. He regrets his instinct a moment later, when Warrick’s fist connects with his cheekbone, causing him to stumble. The back of his knees hit the bench he’d been sitting on, and he falls backwards, crashing against the lockers and banging his head. He’s up a split second later, and he charges Warrick, head down, hitting him in the solar plexus with his shoulder and bringing them both down.

He’s vaguely aware of people shouting, but he’s too focused on Warrick to understand what they’re saying. He starts to scramble to his feet, when somebody yanks him from behind, pulling him off balance and onto his butt, almost choking him. He struggles blindly to shake whoever it is off of him, because he’s not done with Warrick yet, he’s far from done, and suddenly Grissom is standing in front of him, blue eyes blazing, blocking his way.

“What the hell is going on here?” Grissom asks furiously. “Are you two nuts?”

Nick’s gasping for breath, and he can’t answer, even if he had something to say. He stands up slowly, and looks over Grissom’s shoulder at Warrick, who’s glaring back at him, blood trickling from a split lip.

Grissom roughly grabs Nick’s chin, forcibly turning his head so that he can see the back of it, then mutters an oath.

“You need stitches,” he says, sounding disgusted, and Nick becomes aware of a stinging pain, and of a spreading wetness. He reaches back to touch the spot, and when he looks at his fingers, they’re covered in blood.

“What about you?” Grissom asks Warrick.

Warrick gingerly touches his lip and winces. “I’m okay,” he answers gruffly.

“I want you both in my office first thing tomorrow night,” Grissom says in a tight voice. “And you’d better pray you’re not both suspended.”

Suddenly dizzy, Nick sinks weakly onto the bench. He places his palms flat against the seat on either side of him, and takes deep breaths. He’s starting to realize that the locker room is full of people; Sun Hee, Catherine, a few of the lab rats, a couple of guys from the day shift.

“Doesn’t anybody around here have any work to do?” he hears Grissom ask irritably, and just like that, the room empties.

He doesn’t want to look at Warrick, so he closes his eyes and tries to ignore the pulsing pain on his cheekbone and at the back of his head. He hears Grissom telling Warrick to go home, and then water running. He instinctively tries to jerk away when something cold and wet is pressed against his head, and his eyes fly open.

Grissom is standing over him.

“Hold that,” Grissom instructs, waiting until Nick raises his hand to press the paper towel against his wound. Grissom’s fingers brush against Nick’s as he pulls his hand away. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“ER. You need stitches.”

“There’s no need to—”

“Do me a favor, Nick. Just keep quiet for a while. And do what I say without arguing about it.”

And those are the last words Grissom utters.

By the time they reach the ER, Nick is starting to feel resentful. After all, he didn’t start the fight, and it’s unfair that he’s still being subjected to Grissom’s disapproval, while Warrick got to go home. Not that he’s stupid enough to complain out loud. And adding insult to injury, the ER resident on duty opines that he needs to clip the hair around the wound, so that he can suture it. Shit. It took him months to grow his hair out.

“Don’t get the bandages wet,” the resident warns him. “It’s best if you don’t wash your hair for at least 48 hours.”

Nick opens his mouth to protest at this final indignity, but Grissom is still there, still looking thoroughly pissed off.

“I can grab a cab to get home,” Nick tells him. “There’s probably insurance forms and stuff to fill out. I don’t want to keep you waiting.”

“I need to talk to you,” Grissom says. “And I think it’s best if we do it outside the lab.”

“What, now?”

“After you’ve filled out your forms, of course.” He does sarcasm almost as well as Catherine.

“I’ve got a headache.”

“Tough. If you don’t have aspirin at home, we can stop at a drugstore.”

Driving Nick home, Gil feels as old as the hills. Right before the fight broke out, he’d made up his mind to ask for Catherine’s opinion and advice. Over the past month their relationship has settled into something vaguely resembling mutual respect, and while she probably still wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire, he’s pretty sure she’d help him if it meant helping Nick. Only he’s just run out of time; he needs to confront Nick right now, before everything deteriorates further.

Except for giving directions to his house, Nick remains quiet. Gil can see a bruise forming below his left eye, and his hair at the back is sticking out in all directions. Gil had caught Nick’s look of outrage when the resident told him he couldn’t wash his hair, and thinking about it now, he bites back a smile. He has no idea why Warrick and Nick were brawling, but in the aftermath Nick seems somehow younger and more relaxed. Worried about his hair.

Nick directs him to pull into the driveway of a nondescript bungalow style house. Once inside, Nick gestures towards an armchair and sits on the couch, crossing his arms, a belligerent look on his face. He doesn’t offer Gil a drink or coffee; it’s pretty clear he wants the discussion done with and Gil out of his home as soon as possible.

“You’d better put an icepack or something on your cheek,” Gil says, suddenly reluctant to broach the subject of Nick’s behavior and attitude.

“I’m okay.”

“Actually, Nick, I don’t think you are. In fact, the more I get to know you, the less okay I think you are.”

Although Nick doesn’t move a muscle, he seems to retreat into himself, his eyes focusing on a point in the air mid-way between Gil and himself.

“And what I don’t understand is why you’re not asking for help. Surely you realize you need it?”

No response.

“There’s no shame in seeing somebody. Nobody’s expecting you to get better on your own.”

No response.

“Nick, do you want to continue working as a CSI?”

He thinks he sees a flicker of reaction then, but it’s gone before he can be sure.

“I can see why you might not want to. Being reminded of what you went through all the time. After all—”

“Are you trying to get me to resign?” Nick is suddenly bristling, his eyes angry, color rising to his cheeks.

“You might as well,” Gil shrugs, keeping his voice light. This isn’t the speech he prepared, but now that he’s talking to Nick, it seems more important to get Nick to somehow react, to stop being so goddamn stoical.

“Fuck you, Grissom. We’re out of the lab, so I can say this, right? Fuck. You.” Nick’s voice is low, vicious.

“Why? Because I’m saying what everybody’s thinking?”

“You have no idea what everybody’s thinking. What the hell are you doing here in Vegas, anyway? What happened, did your wife leave you?”

“She wasn’t my wife. But yes, she did.”

That seems to give Nick pause for a second, then his eyes harden again.

“Anyway, you can’t tell me to quit. If you want me off the team, you’ll have to fire me.”

“I’ll do that if I have to.”

“Wh- what? You can’t. Not without a real reason.”

“You know what the problem is, Nick? Nobody sees you. They still see that other guy, the one who dressed in a chicken suit and could solve difficult cases. Well, I don’t know that other guy. I only know you. And do you know how many cases you’ve solved while I’ve been here?”

Nick doesn’t answer, just stares at Gil, his jaw clenched.

Gil forms a circle with his forefinger and thumb. “Zero. You’re just going through the motions. You’re good and it carries you through most of the time, but not when it counts.”

“You—” Nick’s voice sounds strangled. “You don’t—”

“And then you get into fights?” Gil interrupts. “I could fire you tomorrow.”

“Warrick—”

“I saw you attacking him. I don’t care who started it, what I saw is you trying to get at him, even with two people holding you back.”

“You can’t fire me!” Nick yells suddenly. “You can’t!”

“No? Why not?”

Nick’s face crumbles. “Because it’s all I’ve got. Don’t you see? It’s all I’ve got.” He looks away. “Damn you,” he whispers brokenly. “The job is all I have.”

Gil gets up and goes to him, squatting down in front of him, his hands on the couch cushions on either side of Nick. He half-expects Nick to push him away, but Nick just looks at him like a cornered animal that’s run out of places to hide and is too tired to fight anymore.

“Nobody expects you to get better on your own,” he says again, more gently this time. He reaches up and pushes Nick’s hair out of his eyes. “If it were Catherine or Warrick, who went through what you did, if they were in the same shape you are now, what would you be doing?”

Nick gives a watery chuckle. “Kicking their butt all the way to the shrink’s office.”

“So?”

“You don’t understand, Grissom. I can’t talk to someone connected to the LVPD. I can’t.”

Gil doesn’t ask why not. Everybody has a couple of skeletons in their closet, although he doubts that Nick’s can be as bad as he seems to think they are.

“Will you talk to a friend of mine, then? He works with the FBI, mostly PTSD counseling.”

“PTSD?” Gil hears the resistance in Nick’s voice. “That’s not my problem.”

Deep down, they know what’s wrong, Carl Sahlin had told Gil once. Only a lot of them won’t admit it, even to themselves, because they view post-traumatic stress disorder as a sign of weakness, something that only happens to the other guy. Even if they do admit it, they believe they need to fix it on their own; they equate therapy to surrender. Healing themselves is the only thing that they think will allow them to maintain their self respect.

“What is then?”

Nick just shakes his head.

“Well, talk to him anyway.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Something twists in his chest at the question. He stands up and sits on the couch next to Nick, so that Nick can’t see his face as easily. He rubs his right ring finger, where he used to wear the plain band Sara had given him, then stops when he realizes what he’s doing.

“Grissom?”

“Because you remind me of someone,” Gil admits finally. “And I don’t want you to end up the same way.”

“How’s that?”

Gil just shakes his head. “Thinking that the job is all you’ve got, all you’re worth. Never believing that you’re not alone.” He pauses. “Expecting way too much of yourself. It eats you up. Destroys your soul.”

His head hurts. Not just the wound and the stitches, or his cheekbone, but his jaw, from being clenched so long, his eyes from trying not to cry, the base of his neck. He wants to sleep so badly; it’s all he wanted to do this weekend, just sleep. Four hours later, he’s been in a fight with somebody who used to be one of his best friends and put his job at risk (and despite Grissom’s behavior, he knows that with Brass it would have been worse, both he and Warrick would have been collecting their last paycheck by now).

Nick doesn’t know if Grissom is talking about himself or about the woman who left him. I’m not like that, he wants to tell Grissom, but something keeps him from uttering the words, because he realizes that it’s exactly what he’s headed towards, maybe he’s even more than halfway there.

He leans against Grissom, Grissom’s arm warm against his own, and closes his eyes again. “Okay,” he mumbles. “I’ll talk to him.”

Grissom doesn’t answer, but Nick feels him suddenly go slack, as if he’d been holding his breath for a long time and then finally released it.

“I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“Have you? I’m sorry, I didn’t get the message.”

Ecklie walks in and tosses a small stack of pink phone message slips on the desk. “Messages. Seven of them.”

Gil closes the file he’s been reading and sets his pen down next to it. “Sorry,” he repeats. “What can I do for you? Have a seat.”

Ecklie sits down slowly and places his left ankle on his right knee; the only indication that he’s not as relaxed as he appears is the way his fingers are clenched on the armrests. He looks around Gil’s office.

“I like what you’ve done with the place. Is that a pig fetus there?”

“Yes.”

“Most people would personalize their office with pictures, maybe a snow globe.”

“Would they? I’ve never seen the appeal of snow globes.”

“I hear you had a problem.”

“I dealt with it.”

“I hear Brown and Stokes were really going at it and that Stokes ended up in the emergency room.”

“I dealt with it.”

“Really? I don’t see any evidence of that. How, exactly, did you deal with it?”

“I spoke to them.”

“You spoke to them? Gil, I don’t know how the FBI deals with disciplinary issues, but here we don’t just let things slide.”

“I didn’t let it slide. I spoke to them, and I’m satisfied that it won’t happen again.”

Ecklie shakes his head. “You’ve got to document it. Brown is a loose cannon, has been for a long time. If it weren’t for his union rep raising a stink, we’d have gotten rid of him long ago. You’ve got to create a paper trail, document the problems. This fight is indicative of the problems we face with him.”

“What about Stokes?”

“Stokes? What about him? I don’t have a problem with him, I’m sure he was provoked.”

“That’s not how I saw it.”

Ecklie frowns at him. “What are you saying? That Nick threw the first punch?”

“No. I’m just saying that Warrick Brown is not the only loose cannon in this department right now. If this fight goes into his file, it goes into Nick’s file, as well. And I’m not sure having union reps or internal affairs interviewing people in order to figure out what happened is to our best interest.”

“Of course it is. If we don’t react, we’re setting a precedent.”

Gil runs his finger along the edge of the file on his desk, avoiding eye contact so that he doesn’t appear confrontational. If he backs Ecklie up against a wall, there’s no telling how he’ll react.

“What kind of a precedent are we setting when we allow a person back on duty, who has no business being here? Or when we simply accept the questionable assessment of the departmental psychiatrist without looking into matters further, or without insisting that our people are healthy? I understand that what happened to Nick, happened to him while he was on duty. Do we really want to go down that path?” he asks mildly,

“Who says Nick isn’t fit for duty?”

“In one way or another, almost every single one of his team mates.” Gil pauses, then looks up to meet Ecklie’s suspicious gaze. “The department has invested a lot of money and time into the training and development of both these men, and they’ve both proven that they can be good at what they do. Give me a few months, let me see if I can change things.”

“That’s your recommendation? You’re willing to stand behind it?”

Gil knows that what Ecklie really means is, is he willing to suffer the negative repercussions on his own file, if - or, in Ecklie's mind, when - Warrick receives another reprimand. And it’s not that he particularly wants to keep Warrick, but if Warrick is to be fired, it should be with just cause. Gil doesn’t know who started the fight in the locker room, and he didn’t try to find out; he just made it clear that he held them equally responsible. What Gil does know, however, is that Warrick had backed down the moment he stepped between them, whereas Nick was so out of control, he hadn’t even noticed Gil standing there.

“Yes,” he says firmly. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

Gil waits two full months before calling Carl Sahlin.

“Well, well, well. How’s Sin City?”

“Exciting,” Gil says drily. “How’s Alexandria?”

“Oh, you know, hopping since 1695. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I asked a member of my team to contact you.”

“Nick.”

Relief floods through him; he hadn’t been sure that Nick had ever followed through on his promise to call Carl, and given the irregularity of the whole situation that morning, Gil hadn’t felt it appropriate to ask.

“Yes. I take it he has.”

“Five, maybe six weeks ago. Yes.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, good,” Gil says awkwardly.

“You do seem to find all the birds with broken wings, don’t you? Why is that?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says shortly, almost angry at the official confirmation that Nick is still in pain, and at what Carl seems to be insinuating about Gil himself.

“No?”

Gil remains silent. He’s known Carl since they were both in university, and he’s spilled his guts entirely too often, simply because Carl leaves a question that makes Gil uncomfortable dangling in the air. After a while, Carl snorts in amusement.

“Okay. I get the message,” he says, and then more seriously: “Gil, you know I can’t comment in any way, don’t you?”

Gil swallows. “Yes. It’s just that I need to know, if he’s going to be…” He hesitates between ‘okay’ and ‘better’, finding the first too presumptuous and the latter too halfhearted, unable to pick. “I put him, I put all my team, in danger’s way every day. I need to know if there’s something that will impact their reactions or compromise their safety in any way.”

“That’s for the LVPD counselor to say.”

“He says that Nick’s fit for duty right now.”

“Mmmm. Well, I’m not sure I disagree. Not that there aren’t issues, but Nick’s probably better off working than not.”

“Okay. But does that mean—”

“I don’t see any reason not to be optimistic,” Carl interrupts him.

“Well. Good. That’s good.”

“He seems quite taken by you,” Carl remarks.

“I think this is the first time any of them have had the opportunity to be out on the field with someone more experienced in a long while. Their last supervisor was a detective, not a criminalist. He ran the team, but he couldn’t really teach them anything.”

“I didn’t say impressed. I said taken. He seems to like you a lot.”

“Really?” Gil is both surprised and pleased by the disclosure.

“I think it would be good if you showed a willingness to be his friend,” Carl continues. “At this point, he’s having a little difficulty relating to the people, who knew him before, and he’s isolated.”

“Of course,” Gil responds automatically. “How?”

Carl laughs. “What do you mean, how?”

“Should I try to convince him to get re-evaluated? Take some time off?”

“Gil, I’m not asking you to assist in his therapy. Just be his friend. Take your lead from him. If he wants to talk about it, listen to him. If he wants a buddy to go drinking and whoring with, do that.”

“I’m not sure that would be appropriate,” Gil says, unable to help the fact that he’s sounding prim. “I’m his supervisor. I can’t appear to be favoring one member of my team—”

“Oh, for chrissake! Forget I said anything.”

Gil thinks about it. If he has to be honest, he enjoys working with Nick, and it’s not solely because of Nick’s professional competence. He likes to hear Nick’s thoughts, and to see his rare quick smiles. He likes watching Nick licking his lower lip absentmindedly as he thinks about something. Yesterday he wandered into the break room for a cup of coffee he didn’t really want, just because he happened to walk by and see Nick sitting at the table and eating an apple. He might not want to give the appearance of favoring Nick, but Nick is, without a doubt, his favorite. And, well, at this point Nick needs some extra attention. Tomorrow it might be Warrick. Or Donny.

“I wouldn’t want to do more harm,” he says finally.

“He reminds you of Sara, doesn’t he?” Carl asks softly.

“Yes.”

“He’s not. There's a superficial resemblance maybe, especially right now, but he’s a hell of a lot tougher than he looks.”

“So was she.”

Carl sighs. “It’s different. Trust me.”

“Take my lead from him?”

“Yes. He might never approach you. But if he does…”

“Okay,” Gil says. “Okay.”

“You’ll do fine,” Carl says heartily, but Gil isn’t too sure about that. He’s figured out that the only way to do fine, is not to have anybody depending on him. Or him depending on anybody, and especially not on a bird with a broken wing, as Carl put it.

“Hi, it’s Nick. I’m sorry I’m calling in late. We can’t leave a scene before we finish processing.”

“That’s okay,” he hears Carl’s deep voice on the other side. “I figured you were working on something.”

Not for the first time, Nick wonders if he’d feel less or more comfortable with Carl if he had ever met him face to face. It’s strange talking to a disembodied voice, but somehow liberating as well, and he imagines Carl as looking like Tim Allen’s neighbor in Home Improvement, the one who’s always there with good advice, but whose face you never see. The only problem is that Carl gives no advice. During the first session, he asked Nick a number of questions and had him complete what he called a life satisfaction timeline, where Nick had to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 how happy he was at various points in his life. Since then, all Carl wants to talk about is the sixty-six hours that followed Nick's being grabbed, which is the one thing that Nick absolutely doesn’t want to talk about.

I don’t have PTSD, Nick explained to him when Carl began the second session by asking him about that night. I know Grissom probably implied that I do, but I can send you my psych evaluation. Carl hadn’t reacted one way or another, except to tell Nick that he’d had no contact with Grissom since before Grissom had left Quantico.

It’s now their fifth session, and Nick is still trying fruitlessly, if not to divert Carl’s attention completely, to at least minimize the time he spends talking about himself.

“Weird case. A woman calls the LVPD because she can’t get in touch with her brother and sister-in-law for over a week. The cops go to their house, the neighbors haven’t seen them for four or five days. So they break into the house, and it looks like the couple were eating dinner in the kitchen and suddenly got up and left. The plates still on the table, one glass half-filled with orange juice. Their car’s still parked outside, there are no visible signs of struggle inside, not in the kitchen, not anywhere. They just up and vanished.”

“Like the Mary Celeste,” Carl says.

“Right. So we spray luminol on the floor, turn on the black light and half the damn floor starts glowing. No single drops though, just smears, like bleach would leave if you mopped the floor. So it could be bleach, as well, except that then you’d expect to see the whole floor mopped, not just certain parts, that aren’t even that close to the oven, or the table, where you’d think food might get spilled.”

“Uh huh.”

“And Sun Hee… I’ve told you about Sunny, right?” He’s aware that he’s sounding a little too hyper, and he tries to slow himself down. If he can keep Carl interested in the case, maybe he won’t have to—

“Nick, it’s your dime, and I have all the time in the world, but if we’re going to spend the rest of the hour discussing the case and your co-workers, I’m probably not charging you enough to keep you focused, and that’s easy enough to remedy.”

“Oh. Right.” He pauses. “What do you want to know?” he asks tentatively.

“Let’s talk about something different for a change. Let’s talk about your fight with Warrick.”

“We’re okay now,” Nick says hastily. And they are. They can work with each other, although Grissom doesn’t assign them to many cases together, if it’s just going to be the two of them, and they keep their distance from each other at all other times, not sticking their noses in each other’s business. He explains all this to Carl and tells him what he remembers of the fight. Which isn’t too much, at least not as a cohesive whole. He remembers certain moments in incredible detail: the sense of exhilaration and release, when he realized that Warrick was going to take a swing at him; the feeling of flying through the air and the sound Warrick made, when he tackled him; the wild rage at being held back; the dull roar in his ears that seemed to mute all other sounds. But why he got so mad in the first place, why he even told Warrick what he did, he can’t really remember.

“You mentioned people had to physically pull you off of Warrick, that you wanted to keep on punching him.”

“Yeah. Well…” Nick flushes. “I don’t know, it was just— I was really pissed off.”

“At Warrick?”

“Yeah. No.”

“Which is it? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Why, what did he say?”

“It’s not what he said. It’s just that he’s so damn self-destructive; he’s throwing away his career, his life, everything, and he doesn’t see it.”

“So you thought you’d beat some sense into him.”

“No. I was just pissed off, I’d had enough. It didn’t mean anything. Not everything has to mean something.”

“I can’t argue with you there. But I think that the particular incident does mean something.”

“What?”

“That’s what we need to figure out.”

Nick rubs his forehead and checks his watch. Three more minutes to go.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“About Grissom, something he said to me.”

“No.”

“It’s more about me than him,” Nick says hastily. “I’ve just been curious, and I don’t think I can ask him.”

“Have you tried?”

“Well, we don’t have that kind of a relationship exactly. I mean, I report to him, he’s my supervisor.” Plus, the question really is about Grissom, and more accurately, about whether he’d been talking about himself, or about the woman who left him, when he said Nick reminded him of someone. Because lately, Nick finds himself thinking that Grissom could maybe use a friend in Las Vegas, and that maybe he could be that friend, if he just knew a little something about him.

“I've known Gil for a long time,” Carl says suddenly. “I will tell you one thing about him: his bark is a lot worse than his bite.”

Nick laughs. “His bark’s not all that bad,” he says, and to his surprise, given the run-ins he’s had with Grissom, he finds that he means it.

“Well, then, you see?” Carl asks rather cryptically. “Same time in two weeks?”

“Yeah, okay. Thanks, Carl. Bye.”

“He sucks at paperwork,” Catherine tells Nick that evening as they’re heading out towards their next case. “I’ve submitted a request for two emergency days off next week, and I have no idea if he’s even looked at it. Have you seen his in-box?”

“Are you okay?”

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. My mother is scheduled for cataract surgery, and I want to help her out for a couple of days.”

“A D minus for organizational skills,” Nick agrees. “On the other hand, he’s really good at being a CSI; at any rate, the best we’ve ever had, while I’ve been around. I’ve learned a lot since he arrived.”

Catherine sighs. “I guess I’ll just have to help him out with the paperwork.”

“What?” she asks aggressively, after a couple of minutes’ silence. “Go ahead, I can see you’re dying to say something.”

“Oh, nothing. I’m just surprised you’re willing to help him out. I didn’t think you liked him.”

“He’s okay,” she says in a grudging tone, and Nick grins.

Grissom’s aloof, and sarcastic, and intense, and has a morbid and unpredictable sense of humor, and he goes into lecture mode at the drop of a hat, but yeah, he’s okay.

She stops him in the parking lot, on his way from his truck to the lab entrance.

“You’re Nick Stokes, aren’t you?”

She’s blonde, petite and very pretty. And Nick has never seen her in his life.

“Do I know you?”

She smiles and hands him a document, which he accepts without thinking.

“You have been served.”

“What?” he asks in surprise, but she’s already walking away from him, heels tapping smartly on the sidewalk tiles. He starts on his way towards the lab again, scanning the subpoena as he goes. The names jump out at him, and he freezes, his heart slamming against his chest, his mouth suddenly dry.

…the State of Nevada vs. Walter Gordon and Sandra Mullins…

He’s known all along this day would come. The first couple of months, he’d even been looking forward to it. Lying in bed and unable to sleep, he’d spent hours planning what he would say when the prosecuting attorney asked him to testify, and how he would respond to their defense attorneys’ questions, how he’d make it clear to everybody, to Gordon and Mullins in particular, that they hadn’t beaten him. Which was nonsense, of course, because his abduction and burial had never been personal; he was just a pawn in Gordon’s plans of revenge. If Warrick had lost the coin toss and turned up instead, they might have taken him, or they might have decided to pass, because it would have been harder for Gordon to quickly manage an unconscious Warrick’s size and weight. Gordon and Mullins didn’t give a shit about whether Nick Stokes was still getting up, brushing his teeth, and going to work every day.

The longer it took for the case to wind its way through the system, though, the less Nick wanted to do with it. He realized that confronting Gordon and Mullins wasn’t going to give him any sense of closure; locking them up wasn’t going to undo what had been done or make him feel any safer. It’s not them he’s scared of, anyway, but the realization that life is just a series of random events, where he’s as likely to be the victim as the victor or the spectator. He approached the ADA working the case and sought her commitment not to call him as a witness, but she wouldn’t agree to pass on what she believed was a sure advantage in her case; she didn’t only want to win, she wanted to crush the opposition.

And now, almost a year later, the subpoena, and the usual 48-hour notice that judges always seem to think is adequate for somebody to rearrange their schedule, so as to appear in court. And once again, he has no power to alter or stop events, and it’s like Gordon and Mullins have him at their mercy all over again.

Only this time he can alter events. He can just get in his truck and drive away. It’s not like his personal presence is necessary; interviews, bank records, sales receipts, their depositions, and, most damning of all, Gordon’s fingerprints on the inside of the Perspex coffin and on Nick’s gun, all provide sufficient testimony to the facts. All he can contribute is feelings and emotions, intensely personal moments that will serve as yet more fodder for newspaper articles and internet blogs. It’s bad enough that they’ll show the video feed and play the tape he made saying goodbye, as if the jury needs those to understand what was done to him. He doesn’t have to be there for any of it. Between being imprisoned for a few hours or days for contempt of court, and spending even ten minutes in the witness box, he’ll choose the former every single time.

“But I need the days, Grissom. It’s an emergency.”

“Are you ill?”

Nick certainly looks ill, his face gray and drawn, his lips twitching nervously as he sits in the chair in front of Gil’s desk.

“I— No, I’m not ill. I just need to go away for four or five days.”

“I’ve already approved two days’ leave for Catherine, starting the same day you’re asking for. I can’t have you both out at the same time. Maybe she’ll switch with you?”

“She can’t. Her mother’s having surgery. I can’t ask her to switch.”

“Well, how about leaving right after she returns? It’s only two days later,” Gil suggests, still trying to reason with him. If Nick had looked less desperate, almost in a panic, Gil would have already lost his patience at Nick's insistence that he must have those particular days off without accepting to provide any explanation as to why.

Nick opens his mouth, looking ready to disagree again, then hesitates and takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He smiles. “It’s just two days later. I don’t know why I’m making such a big deal about this. Forget it.”

The smile, his voice, they’re all wrong.

“So you want the time, starting two days later?” Gil asks, confused.

“Huh? Yeah, sure. Two days later,” Nick confirms. He gets to his feet. “Okay. Thanks.”

The whole episode leaves Gil feeling deeply uneasy.

It feels like he’s just fallen asleep, when his phone starts ringing. He gropes for it, presses it to his ear and grunts his name.

“Grissom, where the hell is Nick Stokes?”

“Huh? Who’s this?” he asks, still fuzzy with sleep.

“It’s Conrad. Where’s Nick?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Was he at work last night?”

“Yes,” Gil responds, suddenly wide awake. “Conrad, what’s this about?”

“They called me from court. He hasn’t shown up.”

“Court? As far as I know, he’s not scheduled. Which case?” He might not always know when staff meetings are held or expense reports are due, but he knows when any one of his team needs to appear in court and provide testimony.

“His.”

“What?” he asks, but it all starts to makes sense, Nick’s insistence on the particular days off, his refusal to explain why he needed the time. He’d been planning this.

“Nevada vs. Gordon and Mullins. The DA is livid. The judge is threatening both fine and prison time, if Nick doesn’t show up until tomorrow. What the hell is he thinking of?”

“I don’t think he is,” Gil says slowly.

He hears Ecklie sigh. “Can you find him? We have about twenty hours time. I don’t want to make a big deal of this by deploying local resources.”

Gil knows Ecklie is asking for an off-the-record involvement of Gil’s old colleagues. If anybody has the means to find Nick quickly, it’s the FBI.

“I can try,” Gil says.

“Okay. Keep me posted.”

After hanging up, gets out of bed and starts to dress, all the while trying to think of whom he can call for help. He doesn’t know anybody in the field office in Las Vegas, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s not likely Nick is anywhere near Las Vegas.

While he’s waiting for his PC to power up so that he can check his contacts list, he impulsively dials Nick’s cell phone number. He waits to connect despite knowing that the whole exercise is pointless; Nick has probably even disconnected his voicemail.

“’lo?”

“Nick?”

“Yeah.”

Gil closes his eyes in relief. It’s all been a mistake, Nick just overslept, or maybe got his schedule confused, he thinks, trying to ignore the little voice inside his head telling him that it’s an extremely unlikely theory.

“Where are you?”

Nick is breathing heavily, as if he has a cold, and he doesn’t answer. On the other hand, he doesn’t hang up, either.

“Nicky?” The affectionate nickname slips out without his meaning to; he heard Catherine call Nick that once, and he liked it, but he’s never said it out loud before now.

“How did you know?” Nick asks finally. “Are they looking for me?”

“Ecklie called me.” He debates telling Nick that he has until tomorrow to show up in court, then decides not to. He’s amazed Nick even picked up the phone, but the connection is still fragile, tenuous. “Are you okay?”

He hears Nick’s breath stop and then a small choking sound. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I’m okay,” Nick says thickly.

Gil wishes he could somehow reach Carl. Alone he’s bound to screw things up. Jesus, why didn’t he make Nick tell him why he wanted the days off?

“Can I come find you?” he asks hesitantly.

“Won’t you get into trouble?”

“I can’t see how,” Gil says evenly. Nick hasn’t said no. Lead him to a yes. “If you’re not too far away, I’ll be back in Vegas before shift starts.” Like hell he will. Not unless Nick is right there, beside him.

Nick’s breathing is quieter now, but he’s taking a long time to decide. Gil resists the temptation to reassure him; any increase in pressure could have Nick hanging up.

“Okay,” Nick says finally. “Just you, okay?”

“You have my word.”

Nick recognizes the burbling sound of the diesel motor of Grissom’s car and he peers cautiously between two slats of the Venetian blinds covering the window. Even though Grissom promised to come along, for the last hour Nick has been full of misgivings, anxiously pacing the threadbare carpet of his room, wondering if he should trust Grissom and wait, or take off. The sun is glinting off the windshield of the Mercedes, rendering the interior invisible. After a couple of seconds Grissom climbs out and stoops slightly in order to lock the door.

Nick moves away from the window and waits for Grissom to knock, his stomach tied in knots. Letting Grissom come here was a big mistake; he should never have said where he was. He should have never picked up the phone, period.

“Hi,” Grissom says calmly, sounding almost absurdly normal, when Nick opens the door. Nick waves him in and then closes the door and leans back against it, his hands clasped behind his back so that Grissom can’t see them shaking.

He tries to squarely meet Grissom’s eyes, but when he sees the sympathy – or is it pity? – in them, he has to look away. He thought he’d feel relieved, maybe even free, once he was out of Las Vegas. When he’d plotted his escape, he’d imagined himself driving all the way up to Butte, but he barely made it to Mesquite, one hour north, before a wave of exhaustion forced him to pull into the first motel he saw. He parked his car in the back, paid a cash deposit for one day, and collapsed in his clothes on the not-too-clean bed cover. He told himself that the reason he couldn’t fall asleep was because the blinds didn’t block the light. When he saw Grissom’s name on the screen of his phone, he answered almost without thinking, just needing to hear Grissom’s voice, at that moment almost convinced that alone would be enough to make everything alright.

He’s not aware of Grissom moving closer, and he jerks in surprise when he feels Grissom’s fingers touch his cheek.

“Nicky,” Grissom says softly, his fingers tracing a path back towards his ear, around its tip, then down his jaw. “What are you doing?”

Nick shakes his head, unable to speak. Fucking up, he thinks, his eyes starting to burn. His breath hitches and he shakes his head again, and now Grissom’s warm hand is cupping his neck, his thumb rubbing light circles behind Nick’s ear. Grissom probably means his touch to be supportive, soothing, but it’s having the opposite effect on Nick, making him feel weaker. He fights a sudden impulse to step closer to Grissom. Christ, that’s all he needs, to break down completely.

He moves sideways along the door to put some distance between them, and goes to sit at the table. He rubs the back of his neck, trying to release the tension; trying to erase the tingling sensation that remains after Grissom’s hand dropped away.

Grissom sits across from him at the foot of the bed.

“What can I do to help?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Nick says. “There’s nothing anybody can do.” His voice is flat, devoid of emotion. He sits with his elbows on his knees, his head hanging so that Gil can’t see his face.

Gil almost reaches over to take one of Nick’s hands, then remembers Nick’s uncomfortable reaction towards him just two seconds ago, and he leans back instead. Gil had intended to provide comfort; instead, the moment he touched Nick’s cheek, out of nowhere he imagined Nick’s light stubble under his lips and against his cheek, and his stomach coiled in reaction, his groin tightening.

Although his relationships have been with women, Gil has always found men sexually attractive. He’s even acted on the attraction, the experience always leaving him both craving for more and curiously unfulfilled and disappointed at the same time. And he hasn’t kidded himself that part of Nick’s draw is sexual. But right now, he’s almost ashamed of his visceral response to touching Nick. Nick doesn’t need or want this, not from him, and especially not now.

“If we call Carl?”

“No. Carl can’t stop this.”

“What? Being in the same room as Gordon and Mullins?”

Nick shakes his head impatiently. “No. Me having to talk about it again, to tell the world about it. How I felt waking up in the dark and not knowing where I was. The terror when I realized that this was real. I pissed in my pants.” He suddenly laughs, a harsh sound that sounds more like a sob. “I know it’s stupid, but out of everything, that’s one of the things that bothers me the most, that I can’t live down. The fact that I pissed in my pants out of fear.”

What can Gil say that will be the truth and won’t sound like a meaningless platitude at the same time? He settles for making a soft sound to indicate that he’s listening.

“They don’t need me. That fucking ADA, she doesn’t need any of it. The whole world is going to know. They’re gonna know not only what happened, but they’re gonna hear me crying when I’m leaving a message for my family, they’re gonna see me holding a gun to my head.”

He falls silent, his shoulders lifting and falling like he’s fighting for breath, like he’s just finished a long run, and Gil kneels in front of him and hugs him to him. Nick fights him for a second, then grabs his shirt, twisting his fists into it, and pushes his face into Gil’s shoulder.

“Nobody will think worse of you,” Gil murmurs, rubbing his cheek against the side of Nick’s head. “They’ll understand.”

“I don’t want them understanding. I don’t want them thinking worse or better of me. I don’t want them thinking of me at all.”

Practical things. Practical things Gil knows how to deal with.

“Get your lawyer to file an application to block the use of the video feed and tape as testimony, and to excuse you as a witness.”

Nick straightens up, and looks at Gil, his eyes wide with sudden hope.

“Will that work?”

“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t see why not. If there’s no probative evidence contained in your testimony or the tapes, insisting on their use is just an infringement on your right to privacy.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Nick breathes. “Jesus, that’s so simple. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

All of a sudden he smiles, that smile that can lift Gil’s spirits, and probably break his heart at the same time, if he’s not careful. Gil scoots backwards and stands up.

“Why don’t you call him?” he suggest gruffly. “I need to use the facilities.”

In the bathroom, he braces both hands on the sink and stares at himself in the mirror, noting the crow’s feet around his eyes and the softening of his jaw line. Fifty years old. You’d think he’d know enough by now to stop falling for people fifteen years younger that don’t need what he has to offer, or not in the long term, at any rate.

“You fool,” he scolds his reflection resignedly. “You damn fool.”

“I need to talk to you.”

Nick looks up from his microscope at the sharply dressed brunette standing just inside the door.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Ms. Lopez, ADA,” he drawls. “And what can I do for you, Ms. Lopez?”

“That was quite a stunt your attorney pulled, getting you excused, and the use of the tape recording and the video blocked. Don’t you care that they might go free?”

“I seriously doubt they will. There’s enough evidence for you to work with.”

“You never know which way juries will swing. We need to engage their emotions, not just their minds. If you agree to testify, we can—”

“No.”

“Well, okay then, but at least let me use the video or the—”

“No.”

“You’re willing to risk them going free?”

“You’ve got all the evidence you need. You don’t need anything else,” Nick repeats.

“You really believe that?” she says contemptuously.

“Yeah. Yeah, I believe that. That’s exactly what I believe. I trust in the evidence. I wouldn’t be a CSI otherwise.” He realizes he’s almost shouting, and he lowers his voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He turns back to the microscope.

“You arrogant—” she starts out furiously, but he never learns what she’s about to call him, because Grissom is suddenly there, a sheath of papers in his hands.

“Nick, do you have the DNA results from the Callum case? Mia said she gave them to you.” Grissom looks at Lopez over his glasses. “Sorry. I’m not interrupting, am I?”

“No,” Nick says firmly. “She’s leaving.”

They both watch her storm out.

“Grissom, the Callum case? Warrick’s working on that, not me.”

“Oh. Right,” Grissom says, and after nodding at Nick, ambles unhurriedly out of the room.

“Same time, two Tuesdays from now?”

“No, I don’t think so. We’re done.”

“What?”

Nick had never thought the bi-weekly conversations with Carl would continue for ever (and least he’d hoped they wouldn’t), but he also hadn’t figured on them ending so abruptly.

That morning in Mesquite with Grissom, it was like a breach in a dam. Three days later, the dam burst, and he found himself telling Carl everything: about the endless hours of waiting, as hope slowly ebbed, and his losing battle with terror and hysteria, but also about his regrets, his feeling of abandonment, his anger at others and at himself. About the vows he made to God and whatever other higher power might be listening that if he was saved, he’d be a better person, he’d make a difference in the world, and his guilt and shame, when he reverted right back to his old habits, because it was easier that way, because he came out a bigger coward than he went in. He supposed that Carl must have been listening at the other side of the phone, but he almost didn’t care; his jumbled thoughts and emotions came pouring out of him until his voice turned hoarse, until he couldn’t say another word. At the end, Carl only said one thing to him.

“Imagine that a friend, someone you care about, but whom you also want to be absolutely honest with, is telling you everything you’ve told me. Imagine listening carefully to him, putting yourself into his shoes, and think of what you’d say to him. Not to make him feel better. Just your honest reaction.”

Nick tried. He imagined that it was his brother, his roommate from college, his first lover, even Warrick, talking to him. He knew what Carl was aiming for: that if Nick imagined hearing the story from a friend, he’d also imagine himself telling his friend not to be so hard on himself, that his fear was natural, that it took time to heal. That part wasn’t difficult. The only problem was, not one imaginary word met the honesty test; it was just the same kind of meaningless drivel people had spouted at him when he returned to work and ever since.

Then, one afternoon, on his way to the supermarket, he saw Grissom walking briskly out of a dry cleaners, the clothes he’d picked up slung over one arm. He didn’t look any different than he did every night at shift, he was just going about his daily errands; yet for some reason what struck Nick was an impression of bleak loneliness. He shook his head, snorting at his fanciful thought, but it stuck with him, even though Grissom was, if anything, almost upbeat at work a few hours later. After shift, lying in bed and somewhere half-way to sleep, Nick imagined that it was Grissom telling him his story, and, for the first time, he actually believed the words. That he’d been stronger than many might have been, that a horrible thing had happened, but that he’d survived it, that the vows he’d made might have been heartfelt and sincere, but also unrealistic. That he was a pretty good guy, who didn’t deserve what had happened to him, even if he wasn’t perfect. Afterwards, the sessions with Carl became even easier.

“We’re done,” Carl repeats, bringing Nick back to the present. “Time to get on with life, Nick.”

A bolt of pleasure shoots through Nick, leaving him breathless, and he smiles. Yes. Time to get on with life.

“Griss, do you play chess?”

Gil sets his coffee cup down and looks across the table at Nick. He bears little resemblance to the man, who had turned around to look at Gil that first day in the meeting room. It’s not only the hair, which Nick cut short after he got the stitches in the back of his head, and which makes him look both tougher and more boyish at the same time. It’s the fact that, almost without anybody noticing, he’s reintegrated himself back into the team, and that when he smiles, it reaches his eyes and lingers there. You’re okay now, Nicky.

“I play. Not very well, though.”

“That’s okay. Neither do I, but I miss playing, and none of these numbnuts do.”

“Hey!” Donny protests.

“And Donny plays a little too well,” Nick concedes.

“President of the chess club in elementary, junior high, high school and university,” Donny says complacently.

“Ooooooh. You're so awesome! Can I have your autograph?” Sun Hee asks, clasping her hands to her chest and batting her eyelashes at him.

“Sure. I’ll just make it out to Sunny Park, shall I?”

They start to squabble, and Gil turns his attention back to his bagel, determinedly suppressing the impulse to return Nick’s smile.

“Well?” Nick asks, his voice low.

He wants to. He wants to more than anything, even though logic tells him to steer clear of being alone with Nick. That’s how things had started with Sara, looking for opportunities to be alone together, to get to know her better, to show her more of himself. In the end, what she’d wanted and what he’d wanted were two completely different things, and he’s not ready to go down that road again. At least Sara hadn’t been a subordinate.

Then he makes the mistake of glancing up into Nick's brown eyes.

“Okay,” he hears his voice agreeing.

“Tomorrow evening, before shift?”

“Okay.”

“My place?”

He almost says okay again, but catches himself at the last moment and simply nods.

Gil twists and turns in bed, trying to find a comfortable position. Time to admit it: the move to Las Vegas has not proven a resounding success. Work-wise it’s okay; after a decade of trying to track down serial killers, kidnappers and, more recently, unsuspecting and perhaps innocent citizens thanks to the Patriot Act blurring the lines of due process, he’s happy to be dealing with the more routine cases of a city police department. The rest of his plans, improving his poker game, collaborating on a few of forensic entomology papers with colleagues he’s met over the years, finally cataloguing and indexing his collection of jazz records? Most remain plans almost a year after arriving here.

Nick changed things.

Truth be told, Nick had changed things from the very first moment Gil had laid eyes on him, only Gil hadn’t realized it. Looking back, he’s amazed at how naïve he proved to be. I’m just helping him; he’s just a boy in pain; I’m just fond of him; I just see his potential; all those little excuses and rationalizations that helped him ignore the fact that he was quickly becoming inextricably tangled with someone he barely knew, he barely could know as long as Nick remained locked in the past.

After the trial, and the incarceration of Gordon and Mullins, Nick changed. Gil supposes it would be more accurate to say that Nick slowly became himself again, someone familiar to everybody but Gil, who had never known him before. And that’s when Gil realized what a small part he’d seen of Nick until then, and that he didn’t stand a chance, unless he erected defenses. Which he tried to do.

Only, once again, he seriously misjudged the strength of the opponent. Because somehow he appears to have turned into Nick’s pet project.

The first chess invitation turned into a standing, twice-a-week appointment, then evolved further when Nick started ordering pizza for them afterwards. Then came the invitation to the team’s poker nights; rather than argue, Gil simply showed up and took everybody for every last penny they had, then cheerfully asked when the next game was and expressed the hope that he’d be invited again. Much as he expected, he never was. Then Nick signed him up for the graveyard shift’s softball team. Then came the games themselves, followed, of course, by the celebratory dinners.

And every time Gil thinks he can slink away, Nick is there, blocking his escape, pulling him in deeper, making him forget resolutions and decisions he made long ago. If Gil didn’t know better, he’d think Nick is doing it on purpose.

“You’re not paying attention.”

“I wish I wasn’t. At least then I’d have an excuse.”

Nick moves his knight out of range of Grissom’s pawn. “Check. Man, I can’t believe you missed that.”

Grissom folds his arms on the table and frowns at the chess board. A couple of times he reaches out, his hand hovering over the board, then he pulls back to reconsider. Finally he tips his king over, conceding defeat.

“Good game,” he says, then stands up. “Well, it’s time I left.”

Nick doesn’t need to look at his watch to know that chess night is becoming progressively shorter, to the point where he’s sure that Grissom is throwing the games, just to get out of there. Tonight the pizza hasn’t even arrived yet.

“It’s early yet. Why don’t we play another one? Pizza’s on its way.”

Grissom seems to hesitate, then shakes his head.

“Thanks, but I can’t. There’s a couple of things I need to do before shift.”

“What things?”

It’s only when Grissom lifts both eyebrows at the question, that Nick realizes that his question is out of line, and his aggressive tone even more so. He flushes and opens his mouth to apologize when Grissom surprises him by abruptly sitting down again.

“I guess I can wait for the pizza,” he says and it might be Nick’s imagination, but he sounds a little uncertain.

“Griss? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do you have places you'd rather be? I mean, I feel like I’m monopolizing your time, and you probably have other people you’d prefer being with.”

“No.” Grissom doesn’t elaborate further and Nick isn’t certain which question he just answered.

“So… it’s okay with you? Us spending time together?”

Grissom mouths something, then clears his throat and tries again. “Yes. It’s fine.”

The doorbell makes them both jump, and Nick goes to open the door. Grissom follows him, pulling his wallet out.

“Nick, let me get it this time.”

“No, it’s okay. We’ve had this discussion before.”

“Please. I’m here way too often for you to keep on feeding me.”

The delivery boy looking from one to the other with a long-suffering expression on his face only adds to Nick’s discomfort.

“It’s okay,” he snaps. “Really. It’s on me.”

He carries the pizza to the table and then goes to the kitchen for plates and napkins. He stalls a little, breathing deeply and trying to relax his shoulders. He doesn’t know why he’s so tense. Actually he does. It’s because Grissom is suddenly being weird, and he’s not sure how to deal with it.

When he returns to the living room, Grissom is standing in front of the picture window, looking outside. Unlike other times, he’s made no effort to set up the chess table again. He turns around when Nick sets the plates on the table.

“Nick, do you feel you owe me in some way?”

“Owe you? What for?” Nick asks, genuinely surprised.

Grissom gestures vaguely.

“I don’t know. For before. Carl. Mesquite.”

Nick frowns, trying and failing to follow Grissom’s line of thought.

“Well, I’m grateful. You really helped me, more than you’ll ever know. But it’s not like I’m trying to repay you with pizzas, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Grissom smiles briefly.

“Not with pizzas. By undertaking some crusade to make sure that I’m not spending time on my own. All these invitations. The chess games. You must have better things to do.”

“Not really.”

The whole conversation is moving into dangerous territory. It’s true that Nick started off trying to make sure that Grissom isn’t isolated, that there's something else for him in Las Vegas other than work. It was no biggie; he really does enjoy chess (especially once he found that Grissom is a challenging opponent that he can, nevertheless, beat more often than not), and he knew nobody was going to come out and say they don’t want Grissom joining them for breakfast or on the softball team, especially since he’s finally been blessed with Catherine’s seal of approval. The only open revolt Nick faced in his efforts to include Grissom in extra curricular activities was when he suggested that they invite Grissom for another night of poker.

Spending more time with him, Nick started to see facets and contradictions in Grissom that fascinated him. A forensic entomologist, who quotes Shakespeare; who probably last exercised sometime in the early eighties, but who can still knock balls out of the park all day long; who must have seen pretty much everything horrible there is to see, yet isn’t inured to the ugliness, even if he’s apt to be philosophical about it.

And at some point, maybe when Grissom admitted that he still enjoyed Bugs Bunny cartoons, or when he proved himself to be a sore loser and a somewhat gloating winner, Nick realized that every new discovery no longer really surprises him. Instead, and he spent hours trying to figure it out and to come up with a better and less corny description, what he feels is a sense of delighted recognition, almost of homecoming.

None of which he thinks Grissom would want to hear, even assuming he’ll ever manage to somehow work the conversation around to such an admission. Would you like another slice of pizza? By the way, I’m pretty sure I’m falling for you.

“I wouldn’t invite you over if I didn’t enjoy your company,” he tells Grissom. And if Grissom wasn’t his supervisor, he’d have shown him long before now exactly how much more he’s been wanting to enjoy his company.

Grissom doesn’t respond; he seems fascinated by the lettering on the pizza box.

“But if you’re just being polite…” Nick adds, suddenly uncertain.

Grissom looks up at that. “Christ, no,” he exclaims vehemently, then gives a short laugh. “Can we please talk about something else? Do you think the Padres will make it all the way to the play-offs?"

Nick grins, but there’s an edge of regret to his relief at the change of subject.

“Dear Dr. Grissom,

Upon the unanimous decision of our board, we are pleased to offer you a tenured faculty position in the department of Forensic Sciences at the rank of professor. Your appointment will be effective January 5, and the salary…”

He’s concentrating so intently on the letter in his hands that he doesn’t notice Catherine hovering until she pointedly clears her throat.

“Is whatever you’re reading that interesting or are you purposely ignoring me?”

Controlling his impulse to crumble the letter so as to hide it from her, he deliberately places it in a case file on his desk, as if it belongs there, then motions her to have a seat.

“What can I do for you?”

She gives him an odd look.

“You wanted to see me, you tell me.”

He stares at her blankly, as he waits for his brain to engage, then scans the files on his desk, fruitlessly looking for something to jog his memory.

“The… the ballistics analysis results. Do we have them yet?” There’s always an ongoing ballistics analysis, isn’t there?

“Which case?”

“The one you’re working on,” he says, bringing all his poker-playing skills to bear.

“Is this some kind of test?” Catherine asks, lifting an eyebrow.

“Yes. Or I may be having a senior citizen moment,” he confesses and she smiles.

“Meyers case: Bobby found no matches in the system. Canale case: bullet casing too deformed to be of any use. The drive-by shooting at Sierra Vista last night: five bullets recovered from three guns, two of them matching the drive-by last week near Nellis.” She ticks the cases off her fingers.

The drive-by.

“Brass left a message. They received an anonymous tip on an address near N. Maryland Parkway. When they arrived, nobody was home except for a thirteen year-old with two untreated gunshot wounds to the shoulder and upper arm. They called an ambulance for him. Desert Palm will arrange for the bullets and x-rays to be sent here, but we need someone on site to pick up the kid’s clothes and test him for GSR.” He extends his arm out sideways at shoulder length, palm down, pointer finger and thumb extended, to simulate holding a gun. “From the location of the wounds, Brass believes he might have been in the car, his arm out of the window. Shot while he was shooting.”

“Thirteen?” she asks, sounding more disheartened than surprised. She sighs and gets up. “I’ll get right on it. Does Brass need anybody at the house?”

“Not immediately. An initial search didn’t disclose anything, and the kid looks like he didn’t change his clothes, so we should have everything we need.”

“What about his parents?”

Gil shrugs. “No mother. His father is a long-haul truck driver; he’s flying in from Sacramento.”

“Poor little guy,” Catherine says, shaking her head.

Gil waits for a couple of seconds after she leaves to make sure she won’t turn back for something, then retrieves his letter from the case file, folds it into a little square, and puts it safely in his wallet. Dealing with these cases, even just thinking about them, makes him almost unbearably weary; it has done for a long time. And there’s no respite or end to them, unless he leaves them behind.

“I come bearing news.”

Nick swears when, for the third time, the wrench suddenly slips off the rounded corners of the nut he’s trying to loosen, causing him to bang his already bruised knuckles against the engine block. Deciding he needs a different tool, he slides out from under the car and climbs to his feet.

“What news?” he asks Catherine, heading towards the work bench.

“Grissom’s on his way out.”

He forgets about the tool he’s looking for and swings around to look at her.

“What? No way! How come?”

She shrugs. “No idea. All I know is that he’ll be gone by New Year’s.”

“But… I mean, how do you know? Who told you?” he asks, refusing to believe her. It must be some kind of mistake. The graveyard’s stats have never been better. Why would they get rid of Grissom?

“He called me into his office last night. He’s received an offer letter from Michigan State to teach in their Forensic Sciences department.”

“He told you?” He was with Grissom right before shift, their usual chess game, and Grissom said nothing to him. If he wasn’t so unsettled at the thought of Grissom not only leaving the lab, but Las Vegas, as well, he’d probably be more upset at the fact that Grissom chose to confide in Catherine rather than him,

“No. He was so absorbed in the offer letter, I was standing in front of him for a good five minutes before he noticed me. I read the whole thing.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

“I was about to, when he slipped it into a case file, trying to hide it. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it.”

“So it’s not like you know that he’s accepted the position,” Nick says, relief washing through him.

Catherine frowns at him. “Nicky,” she says, speaking clearly and slowly, like she’s about to explain a difficult concept. “Universities don’t randomly mail out unsolicited offers hoping somebody will accept. He’s obviously been preparing this for a while. He’s as good as gone.”

“But I thought he was happy here,” Nick mumbles. His hand is starting to ache, and he realizes he’s still gripping the wrench. He turns to lay the tool down on the workbench and rubs at the red welts in his palm.

“Why are you so—?” Catherine doesn’t complete the question. “Oh, I see.”

“See what?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” she answers quickly. She heads towards the exit, pausing at the doorway. “Breakfast later?”

“Maybe,” he says halfheartedly, then it occurs to him that Grissom might be there, as well, and that he might explain what’s going on. “I guess. Yeah, okay.”

“Okay. See you later.”

He picks up a breaker bar and crawls under the car again.

As it happens, he gets to see Grissom long before breakfast.

“Find anything yet?” Nick hears Grissom’s disembodied voice and he grits his teeth. He’s way past his first shock, and in no doubt as to his state of mind right now. ‘Pissed off’ doesn’t even begin to cover it.

“Nick?” Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Grissom getting down on one knee, and bracing his palm against the floor so as to look under the car.

“No,” Nick bites out, staring resolutely at the underside of the car. “Nothing.”

“Well, I need you to put this aside for a while. We’ve got a DB in the parking lot at the Russell Building Complex. Office workers will start arriving in about two hours and there’s nowhere else for them to park. The sooner we’re in and out the better, so it’s all available hands on deck. Warrick and Sun Hee are already on their way.”

Nick rolls out from under the car, stripping his gloves off and unzipping his coveralls at the same time.

“Okay. I just need to pick up my kit and vest and I’m on my way.”

He’s putting his kit in the back of the truck, when Grissom slides his own case and vest in next to his.

“You’re coming along?” Nick asks.

Grissom raises both eyebrows. “I thought I might. If that’s okay with you.”

“Yeah. Yeah, fine.” So who cares if he’s sounding rude and ungracious? It’s not like Grissom is going to be around for his next performance evaluation.

He climbs into the truck and slams the door shut; he’s rolling before Grissom has shut his own door.

“It’s starting to get chillier,” Grissom remarks conversationally a few minutes later, cracking his window open.

Nick sternly tells himself he should shut up. It’s none of his business if Grissom has decided to leave Vegas. Okay, so he hasn’t said anything, but that’s the point. He hasn’t said anything to anybody. Catherine found out by accident. And despite what she said, maybe the offer was unexpected, perhaps the result of something Grissom had put into motion a long time ago, when he was still in Quantico.

The fact that he’s sitting here, making excuses for Grissom, sets his teeth on edge. Plus he’s never been very good at letting sleeping dogs lie.

“At least there’s no snow. It’s probably already a few inches deep in Lansing.”

He’s gratified by the way Grissom’s head snaps around at his comment.

“ Lansing,” Grissom repeats flatly after a short pause, as if questioning what he heard.

“Mmm hmm. Lansing. Home of Michigan State.”

“So Catherine managed to read the letter,” Grissom states.

“Yeah.”

Now he’s going to explain it to me, Nick thinks with satisfaction, only Grissom doesn’t. He just sits there in silence, his arm relaxed on the arm rest, gazing out of the window.

Nick doesn’t remember ever wanting to hurt someone as badly as he wants to hurt Grissom right now.

Gil decides to ride back to the lab with Warrick. He’s been stupid; stupid and careless. He changed his mailing address to the lab over six months ago, after the mailboxes in his apartment building were broken into for the third time in as many weeks; it never occurred to him to use his home address on his letter of application to Michigan State. And he compounded his idiocy by opening the letter at work.

He’d have to have been completely oblivious not to sense Nick seething next to him on the way to the crime scene. He wishes now he’d said something when he’d started looking for a way out of the crime lab. Only he hadn’t expected things to move quite so fast; it took less than two months from the start of his search to the offer landing on his desk.

Besides, Nick and he have never really discussed personal issues. They know all about each other, where they went to school, how they drink their coffee, that Gil loves peanut butter as much as Nick hates it, but it’s all light hearted and superficial, things they might just as well tell someone sitting next to them at a dinner party. Other than that one morning in Mesquite, Nick has never spoken to Gil about his experience, or about the things that are really important to him or that drive him; other than a couple of passing and vague references, Gil has never mentioned Sara and that he’s still not sure if he’s come to terms with her leaving, or maybe with his being left. He’s certainly never told Nick that it’s becoming harder and harder to drive to work every day and that the prospect of seeing Nick makes him both get into his car, and dread doing so, at the same time. It’s as if they’re drifting along on parallel tracks, their pasts sanitized, their futures irrelevant and never getting any closer.

“ Michigan, huh?” Warrick asks suddenly, and Gil sighs.

“She told everybody, didn’t she?” he asks glumly.

“Not everybody. But she told Donny, and he told everybody.”

Wonderful. The one and only smart thing Gil did in this whole mess was to wait for Ecklie to come in this morning, and personally hand in his resignation. If he had postponed it for even a few hours, Donny would have gotten to Ecklie first.

“You coming over for chess later?”

From his tone of voice, Gil can’t tell if Nick is checking to make sure that he won’t, or if he’s inviting him. Nick’s head is bent and he’s tying his shoelaces, so Gil can’t see his face. He stands awkwardly, at a loss for words.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I should have told you.”

Nick straightens and meets his eyes. “There’s no ‘should’ to it,” he says. “It just surprised me, is all, because you’ve never mentioned anything about leaving. I thought you liked it here.”

Gil looks away, his gaze lingering on the dent Nick’s head left on Catherine’s locker what seems like so long ago. “I’ve been working in crime labs for almost fifteen years. It’s time to move on. Teaching is something I’ve always wanted to try.”

“You’ll be a good teacher. You are a good teacher.”

Nick’s voice is gentle and Gil swallows against the sudden lump in his throat. Nick angry at him is a lot easier to deal with.

“Yeah, well…” He shrugs and smiles tightly.

“You know what? Fuck chess. Neither of us is on tonight, right? Let’s go out later and celebrate. You might as well enjoy Vegas before going to stagnate in boring Lansing.”

“How do you know Lansing is boring?”

“Compared to Vegas? Believe me, man, I know,” Nick says firmly.

You’re never very far from a party in Las Vegas, Nick muses, no matter what time it is. On a Friday evening, the possibilities are endless. Grissom ended up inviting the entire team, even those who are working later, which isn’t quite what Nick had in mind, but he’s glad for their company now. Left to their own devices, Grissom and he would have probably ended up in a bar somewhere and called it quits after a couple of beers. Now the party won’t break up until the rest of them have to go to work, and he likes the fact that Grissom is nearby, even if they haven’t really talked to each other all evening.

There’s a handkerchief-sized dance floor, and most of the team, except for Grissom, have taken their turn on it. Dancing first with Sun Hee, and then with Catherine, Nick tries not to look too often towards where Grissom is leaning against the bar, talking with the others. Sometimes their eyes meet, and every time Grissom’s lips tilt in a small smile, before he looks away.

He’ll still be here for another month, Nick repeats to himself, but he can’t get over the premonition that it’s all ending tonight.

Catherine looks at her watch and grimaces. “Time to go to work.”

She reaches up and gives him a quick peck on the cheek, then makes her way towards the bar to pick up the rest of the team. Nick reluctantly weaves his way behind her through the crowd. It’s stupid to feel that this is the end. There’ll be other opportunities, he thinks despondently, not really believing it.

“You didn’t dance,” he tells Grissom after the rest are gone.

“No,” Grissom agrees. “I don’t really know how to.”

Nick laughs. “You didn’t see that stopping me.”

“Although pretty much anybody can dance to slow music. Even me.”

At first, Nick doesn’t understand Grissom’s comment. He can’t remember a slow song all evening; in fact his shirt is damp and sticking to his chest and back from sweating through one energetic piece after another. Then it abruptly dawns on him that the throbbing beat that has been a constant backdrop since they arrived at the club has been replaced by a slow and quiet melody. He glances at the dance floor and sees a few couples swaying in each other’s arms. His heart kicks against his ribs and he swallows hard. The thought that Grissom might be hinting seems preposterous. And yet…

He turns towards Grissom; even though his face is serious, there’s a hint of a smile in his blue eyes.

“I— Are you asking—? I mean… w-would you like to dance?” he blurts out. Christ, way to go, Nick. Real smooth. He hopes his fiery blush isn’t obvious in the subdued lighting of the club.

“Yes,” Grissom answers, but he remains leaning with one elbow against the bar, as if he has no intention of moving from there.

“With me? Now?” Nick checks.

“Sure. If you want,” Grissom says agreeably, but he still makes no move.

“Are you messing with me?”

Grissom smiles. “A little.”

Nick’s confused smile is abruptly replaced by a frown, and Gil regrets the impulse that made him start something he isn’t prepared to finish, but he’d expected Nick to either ignore him or laugh the hint off, not actually invite him to dance.

“I would like to dance with you. Just not here,” he clarifies, feeling that it’s important to make the point, and Nick’s face changes again, slackening with surprise.

“Grissom…” Nick whispers, then licks his lips nervously.

By rights, it’s Gil who should be feeling nervous. A week ago, even a few hours earlier, he’d seen leaving Las Vegas as the only solution to protect himself; then he watched Nick dancing with Catherine and Sun Hee, looking as happy and carefree as Gil has ever seen him, and for the first time, he wondered if, in his effort to achieve quiet contentment, he’s opting for a life of boring sterility instead. If Nick can throw himself back at life with such bravado and lack of reserve, what is it that Gil is afraid of? In the end, rejection or a failed relationship never killed anybody. Hell, they haven’t killed him yet, and he’s had plenty of practice.

He doesn’t have a clue how he’s going to go about setting things in motion. In the past, men have always propositioned him, not the other way around, not that there have been that many in any case. And if he’s wrong about the fact that Nick might be open to some sort of an advance, he might as well say goodbye to him right now. And whatever he’s planning, this place is way too public.

He motions to the bartender for the bill, then realizes belatedly that Nick might have wanted a last beer.

“I’m sorry, I should have asked. Would you like another drink?”

Nick shakes his head. “No, I’m fine.” He’s already shrugging into his jacket.

Gil follows Nick out of the door and they walk side by side towards where they’re parked. They reach Nick’s truck first and pause next to it.

“Well…” Gil starts, then pauses, butterflies in his stomach. He’s not sure whether he should simply say goodnight or kiss Nick; maybe both, but do it slowly, so that Nick has a chance to turn him down graciously by pretending not to notice him leaning in. Gil’s always prided himself for being in control and thinking before acting, but those qualities seem more like insurmountable obstacles right now. Kiss him, you fool! he berates himself. Okay, that’s what he’s going to do, he’s going to k—.

And then, Nick kisses him. Grabs him by the nape, jerks him against his body so hard that they both fall back against the truck, Nick making a small sound as the breath is knocked out of him,and kisses him.

 

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