Title: Dependable Scar Tissue
Author: squara
PAIRING: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Post Ep for 'Grave Danger' This is an old fic, written a long time ago for a 'scar' challenge. Short and to the point.

***

Nick turned the hot water in the shower up. The scabs from the ant bites were beginning to flake away, leaving little white scars that served as a reminder of what he had been through. He had complained to Greg about the scars earlier in the week, immediately realizing how vain it sounded. These little marks would fade away eventually, but Greg would always have the scars from the explosion. Greg hadn't seen it as a vain comment though. He had told Nick that he understood.

Nick stepped into the hot spray of the shower, adjusting the showerhead to hit the sore muscles in his back. Greg still amazed Nick with how understanding he was. After Nick had complained to him about the ant bite scars that peppered his face and arms, Greg had come home from work one morning with some special cream that he had concocted in the lab in his downtime that he said would help Nick's scars fade more quickly. Greg had rubbed it into Nick's face and arms, telling him funny stories about the scars he had that Nick didn't know the reasons for.

"This one here, on my arm," Greg had pointed to a scar about 2 inches long on his right forearm, "I got that trying to be superman when I was 5, apparently you cannot fly off a second floor landing, even with your underwear over your pants, and this one here," he pointed to a jagged, half moon shaped scar on his left calf, "I got that when I wiped out on a rock while surfing." he continued to rub the lotion over Nick's ant bites, his smooth hands willing the scars that Nick hated so much to disappear. "How about you Nick, what battle wounds do you have from your youth?" he had asked. Nick had admitted that he didn't have any childhood scars. He had always been the dependable child, and the dependable child never got himself into situations that might result in scar tissue.

Maybe that is why these little scars bugged him so much, Nick mused as he worked the soap into a lather all over his body. They meant that Nick had been in a situation that he couldn't control. Dependable Nick had lost control for one moment, and look what had happened. He laughed softly to himself as he began to rinse the soap from his body. His therapist would have a field day with that one.

All of the sudden the shower curtain exploded inward and Nick jumped back, slipping on the soapy shower floor. He felt his left shoulder make contact with the faucet, the metal piercing his flesh. He looked up to see Greg standing over him, naked with a horrified expression on his face.

"Oh God!" Greg exclaimed, "I didn't realize that you hadn't head me come in. I thought you were waiting to pounce on me......I wanted to beat you to it.... oh Nicky, you're bleeding!" He braced himself so he didn't fall as well and pulled Nick up off the shower floor. "Come on, let me take a look at it." Greg wrapped Nick in a towel and forced him to sit on the edge of the tub while he examined the wound on his lover's shoulder.

"Ok, so the bad news is I think this needs stitches, so we had better get dressed and head over to Desert Palms." Greg said as he handed Nick a towel to press against the wound on his shoulder.

"Umm, so what's the good news then?" asked Nick, standing up and moving towards the door

"Well, I think you are going to have your first real scar", Greg replied, ducking as Nick threw his towel at him.

***

ript>