Title: Tear In Your Hand
By: kennedy
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Inspired by a few lines in a song by Tori Amos, this story is an excerpt from the life of Nick and Greg, where things seem so bad they seem insurmountable. A visit from Nick's parents leads to a walk-out.

***

"All the world just stopped now
so you say you don't want to stay together anymore
let me take a deep breath, babe"
- Tear In Your Hand, Tori Amos


It broke Greg's heart to see Nick walk without a word into their bedroom. Before he knew it he was out the front door and chasing after Nick's parents.

"What the hell is wrong with you people?"

Bill and Jillian Stokes swung around, perturbed by the slight but angry man confronting them on the sidewalk.

"Excuse me?" Jillian asked, shocked. Bill tightened his grip around her shoulder.

But Greg, on the rare occasions that he got fired up, was not to be dismissed. "That is your son in there. Are you really just going to walk out on him?"

"He walked out on us years ago." Bill Stokes spat angrily.

"He hasn't. He's in there right now. All he wants is your love."

"We love him. We just don't like what he's doing with his life."

"Well, that's just great. If you love him, then why can't you just spend a couple of hours pretending that you approve of him. Even just pretending would mean something to him, because that would mean you were trying. But you can't even do that for him."

"Who the hell are you to tell us what we should do with our son?" Bill demanded.

"Who am I? I'm the one who actually loves your son. And he has been pretending for decades to you people, trying to be the perfect son. And it's too much for him."

"You should lower your tone." Bill warned. "The whole street can hear you."

"I don't care!" Greg yelled, exasperated. "How the hell did Nick come out of you people? The way Nick is, I would have thought that his parents would have been some of the best people you could ever know. Now I just think genetics and environment obviously don't shape you that much."

"Let's go, Bill." Jillian said, but for one split second Greg thought he saw her expression change.

Greg kicked the side of the pavement with his boot, and didn't wait to see them leave. He trudged back up towards the house, and through the front door.

It was then he saw Nick standing by the window, his arms crossed defensively against his chest.

"Hey." Greg said tiredly.

"Did I just hear you yelling at my parents?" Nick asked, just as tiredly.

"Apparently the whole street did." Greg tried to make a joke.

"It's not going to make a difference."

It was the most dejected he had ever heard Nick. Greg crossed over to him, and laid a hand on his waist. "Nicky..."

Without a word, Nick turned away and headed for the bedroom.

Greg sighed, and followed him.

And stopped at the doorway.

A suitcase was sitting at the end of the bed. Their bed.

Nick was scrabbling in the robe.

"What is this?" Greg asked evenly.

Nick didn't answer.

"Nick!"

Nick emerged from the robe, a pile of clothes in his hands. He couldn't look Greg in the eyes. "I just need some time... away."

Greg couldn't believe it had come to this, that these words had to be spoken. "Are you... leaving me?"

Still no eye contact. "I just need to get away. I can't think clearly."
A sob finally escaped him. "It was so much easier when they were away! I could just pretend it didn't matter... but my own parents looked at me like..."

Greg moved over to hold him, but Nick shrugged him off.

"This isn't going to make anything better." Greg tried the sensible route. "In fact, you'll probably feel even worse. We have each other Nick, we have to hold onto that."

"Is that enough, Greg?" Nick asked in a dead tone.

Greg would have rather had Nick hit him, than this. No playful Greggo, G or Gregster, among the other plentiful nicknames he had for him. Just this dead, flat emotionless tone in which his name was uttered without depth or history.

"Don't do this, Nicky. Don't let them do this to you, after everything..."

"They're my parents!"

"And look at what they're doing to you!"

"Don't, Greg. Don't even say it."

Greg sagged against the wall. "Oh, god, you're really doing this."

"I just need to breathe."

"And is it me who is stopping you from breathing?" Greg demanded. "Is it?"

Nick paused and looked at him. Greg could see the torment in his eyes, but instead of making him empathise it suddenly stirred up an anger in him.

"They've convinced you." Greg let himself slump to the floor, and pulled his knees to his chest. "That I'm the one to blame."

"It's not like that." Nick started slamming the clothes into the case.

Greg moved to speak, but felt a wave of sickness and overwhelming lethargy hit him. He stared dumbly at the case. The moment he had dreaded over the past three years had finally arrived, and he was powerless. Just as he had always seen he would be. He had known it would be Nick to walk out.

Nick grabbed his wallet off the bedside table and stuffed it in his back jeans pocket. Neither of them allowed a tear to fall.

Nick felt like there was something sitting on his chest, an extra weight that was suffocating him. He didn't even feel like he was in control of his own actions. All he wanted to do was find a place away from everybody, lie down and not move for a few days. And he couldn't do that at home, with Greg hovering worriedly over him every few minutes. He just needed to be by himself. He could see Greg sitting dejectedly on the floor, staring at the case. All he wanted to do was hug him and try to tell him, but he couldn't even get that out. All he wanted to do was run. The impulse to escape was possessing him and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The suitcase was zipped, his wallet was in his pocket, all he had to do was grab his keys off the hanger in the hall.

He looked down at Greg, wasn't sure what to say.

Greg met his eyes, and Nick was alarmed by how listless they were. The chocolate brown eyes were now muddy and cold.

"Just go." Greg muttered.

That could have been the moment to throw down the suitcase, lift Greg up, apologise and to say that he couldn't believe he had been so stupid for five minutes. But Greg's expression terrified him, the weight in his chest increased, and he swore he could see black spots dancing in his vision. So it was easier to run.

After he said it, Greg was surprised by how much he meant it. He hurt. He wanted Nick to hurt. So he refused to plead any more.

Nick paused for a moment, then took off without a word. The sound of the keys being wrenched off their holder, and the door closing in the night... and Nick was gone. He couldn't even feel him any more, as if he had died as soon as the front door had closed behind him.

Greg didn't know how long he sat there for, but his stupor was broken by his mobile buzzing in the pocket of his cargo pants.
He wanted it to be Nick, possibly still sitting in the driveway. It could still be salvaged, and they could laugh about it in bed and kiss away the stupidity of the night's events. It would just be a blip on the radar, easily ignored.

"H-Hello?"

"Greg?" Of course, it wasn't Nick. Life was never that good to them.

"Sara."

She could instantly tell something was wrong. "Greg, what is it?"

He couldn't tell her what he couldn't even tell himself. So he pressed the ‘end' button and continued to stare out where Nick had suddenly become a hole in his world.

***

Nick Stokes lay fully-clothed on top of the bed in his motel room.

He couldn't even be bothered undressing. He couldn't bring himself to eat, except for the occasional apple from the bag he had bought at the 7-11 on the corner.

He turned on his mobile phone.

No messages. Not even from Grissom, wanting to know when he was coming back to work. He had taken his call-in request for personal leave without question. It made him wonder if everybody would have been able to tell what was going on just by however Greg was acting in the office.

Every day, despite knowing that he had walked out on Greg, that he had inflicted the pain and been the cause of it all, every day he still hoped for a message from him. Some sign that Greg missed him, because Nick couldn't even begin to express the depth of how much he missed his little ex-lab-rat. What he wouldn't give for Greg to be curled up beside him, rattling on about some topic Nick knew very little about, like how The Return of the King was always going to be a disappointment to people because a finale always comes across as an anticlimax after all the events which had precluded it. And how Nick would just take pleasure in listening to him speak, and how Greg could ramble on for ages and still sound intelligent and not just blathering. What he would give to be playing Simpsons Road Rage on the Xbox and shake his head at how his mild-mannered partner could laugh manically and derive so much pleasure from kicking the hell out of the pedestrians, particularly when it was Homer screaming for mercy. What he would give for the feel of Greg's bare skin against his own, and that special moment in the morning when he awoke first and could just lie there basking in that touch of grace.

He wanted to pick up the phone, to cry down it how sorry he was and how he wanted to come home. That he should never have felt alone when he still had Greg. That although he would still like his family's support, he could never do without Greg's. That the only time he felt safe and sane was when Greg gave him a crazy, lop-sided grin.

Could he tell Greg that some nights he had gotten in his jeep and driven near their house, noting that the light from the television always seemed to be on? Knowing that Greg wasn't sleeping in their bedroom? Knowing that had their positions been reversed, he wouldn't have been able to sleep in their bedroom alone either?
Could he tell him, however, that the light had given him hope? That he feared the night he drove by and the light was no longer on, that it meant there would never be a reconciliation? That Greg had finally been able to sleep in their bed without him?

So troubled by his own thoughts that he finds the sheer act of movement too tiring to contemplate, Nick continues to lie alone except for the fantasies that plague him.

--------------------------


Greg moves through the house they shared, should share again, is not sure what the current status is.

Nick left with some clothes. Everything else was left behind. He hasn't heard from him in regards to what he wants done with his stuff. Or if it is getting to the point where they have to discuss selling the house---

Greg cuts off that thought. He is not entertaining that scenario at the moment or else he will really go crazy.

But in this limbo status he already feels he is halfway there.

Everywhere he steps, there is something to remind him of Nick. The coffee table still holds the book he was halfway through, the bookmark sticking neatly out. Greg has picked it up a few times as if it will give him some sense of Nick. Ironically, the last sentence on the page is The heart of the perpetrator is often their greatest enemy, and their only betrayer.

He has only gone into their bedroom to change his clothes every morning. He can still smell Nick in the air, a ghost of his cologne. It takes all the energy he has not to break down there. But he cannot sleep there. Every night, after many hours of channel surfing he manages to catch a few hours napping on the couch bathed in the bluish light of the screen. Over the days his raccooned eyes betray him to his co-workers. He looks like a man straddling the abyss.

He torments himself whenever he hears a car door closing near by, thinking it is Nick and at any moment he will hear his key in their front door.

It never is.

He picks up the phone every now and again, dials the first few numbers for Nick's mobile, then can't bring himself to complete it.
So he starts staying at the office longer and longer, until it seems more like his home than the one he used to think he would never leave. But that isn't his home anymore.

It is just a house.

***

In the end, it was yet another accident which caused them both to re-evaluate everything that had happened.

Nick received a phonecall from Sara when he was sitting in his Jeep after a painful conversation with his mother. Some truths had been discussed, and Nick had been entirely honest with her. Now that that had been dealt with, even though it wasn't entirely resolved (especially as his father hadn't even turned up), Nick felt he could confront Greg and try to get everything fixed.

Sara's tone had been cold, even more than usual. At first Nick had thought that it was because he had shut her out along with everyone else, and when he tried to talk to her about it she cut him off with one simple sentence:

"I just thought you should know Greg is in the hospital."

It turned out that a perp had returned to a scene Sara and Greg were working. Sara had been in a bedroom lifting prints while Greg was doing the same in the lounge. The perp had snuck up on him, throwing him into a wall before Greg had even been able to defend himself. Sara had run into the room at the sound of the commotion, to see Greg lying on the floor, just as the perp threw a heavy bookcase upon him. Sara pulled her gun and it was all over in thirty seconds, the perp allowing himself to be cuffed and lead away once backup was called in.

All in all, Greg had been pretty lucky. In comparison to the death of Holly Gribbs years ago at a scene, or to lab explosions, or even to being buried alive - he had gotten off with a broken arm, some bruises and cuts and a hell of a headache.

Not that that crossed Nick's mind. All he heard was that Greg was in hospital.

And that Sara had been entirely correct when she admonished him for his actions over the past few days. "Where the hell were you, Nick? You should have been here from the moment he was brought in, not find out about it hours after the fact."

By the time he got to the hospital Grissom and Catherine had left, and only Sara remained because she had told Greg she would drive him home.

When Nick ran up to her, she was filling out parts of Greg's release forms.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, and shook her head.

No niceties were exchanged. Nick just said firmly, "I'm taking him home."

"You should have done that days ago." she tapped the pen against her lips.

"You don't think I know that?"

"He can give me a lift." said a tired-sounding voice.

Greg stood in the doorway of the room in which he had been talking to the doctor on duty. Nick's heart immediately burned at the sight of Greg's bruised face, and his arm in a sling.

"Are you sure?" Sara asked, still as if Nick wasn't even there.

Greg nodded. All he knew was that he had to have Nick with him, and if Nick was here then there was some hope.

"I'll call you later." she gave his undamaged arm a brief squeeze, and then as she passed Nick she leant in to him and muttered "Don't screw this up any more than it already
is."

Nick and Greg were left alone, staring at each other with the discomfort of the past few days between them.

"I just have to pick up some more meds." Greg said finally. "Then we can go."

-------------------


They walked to the car in silence, the pain between them palpable.

Once in the car, Greg rested his head against the window thinking that the pain in his arm was nothing compared to that in his heart. Nick stole glances at him as he drove out of the carpark, wondering how to start making things right again.

He was just about to speak, when his mobile rang. Sighing, Nick answered it. "Stokes... oh, Mom, hi..."

Greg closed his eyes. Not again.

"I'm sorry, Mom, I forgot... Well, you wouldn't believe the night I've had... no, I'm not going to make it... I'm sorry..."

Greg opened his eyes, looked over at him, and mouthed "What?"

"I'll call you back in five, Mom." Nick pressed the ‘end' button.

"What's all that about?" Greg asked.

"I had coffee with my mother this afternoon. Dad didn't come, of course. I had told her that no matter what she and Dad thought, you were part of my life. The most important part, G."

Greg smiled.

"What?"

"You called me G."

Nick felt a sting in his eyes, and a smile on his lips. He understood what Greg was getting at. "And I said they were trying to make me choose them or you. And I told her that I chose you."

"It says ‘I choo-choo-choose you'. And there's a picture of a train." Greg said through the haze of medication.

The pop-culture referencing meant the old Greg was slowly coming back. Nick continued, "I told her that I chose you even though I had fucked up and ran away from you and I didn't know if you would let me back."

"You used the word 'fuck' in front of your mother?"

"Well, she had already had someone else using it on her this week, so I thought what the hey?" Nick said slyly.

"Oh, yeah. Forgot about that." It dawned on Greg. "You told her that before you found out about me?"

"Yes. I told her that I was on my way to try and get you back. She wished me luck."

"No, she didn't."

"You're right, she didn't."

He was worried how Greg would react to that, but in not-so-surprising Greg-fashion, he let out a guffaw. Relieved, Nick found he could breathe again. "But she did invite us out to dinner tonight."

"Nicky, I did get my head bashed in today. Can you repeat that?"

The reference to his injury made Nick tighten his grip on the wheel. "Greg..." he said sorrowfully.

"Don't start." Greg warned. "It wasn't a recrimination."

"You have no idea what it felt like to get that phonecall from Sara."

"We've both had experience dealing with those phonecalls." Greg mused. "Our personal insurance is through the roof."

"I can't lose you, G."

"You haven't lost me."

"I've been such a fuckwit."

"Uh huh. No argument from me."

"Why are you being so nice about this?"

"Because I love you. Idiot. And I knew you loved me, and you would come to your senses. You're allowed one freakout."

"What are you saying, Greg?"

Back to the seriousness. "I'm saying you better not go back to that motel tonight."

It was too much for Nick. He pulled the car over. Greg watched in alarm as he slumped over the wheel, his shoulders heaving. Greg reached over with his good arm, which was no small feat, to unclip his seatbelt and scoot over the seat towards him.

"It's okay, Nicky, it's okay."

Nick allowed him to embrace him. "I'm such an idiot."

"Build a bridge, and we'll burn it behind us." Greg whispered against his neck.

They sat there for a few moments, relishing the presence of each other again.

"It's time for us to be happy again." Greg said simply.

Nick looked up at him, and gave his heart-breaking smile complete with dimples. "It is, isn't it?"

They kissed slowly.

"I'm too scared to leave this car." Nick breathed. "Like it's all a dream and I'm going to wake up alone in that motel room again."

"Or that I'm going to wake up in the hospital and find this is just some cruel fantasy." Greg agreed. "Maybe we should just stay here."

The sound of the mobile broke their fevered imaginings.

"That'll be my mother. I'll tell her we've cancelled."

"No, don't. She's stepping up to the plate, we can't not do the same."

"G, you just got out of hospital."

"We're going, Nicky. Now tell her."

Nick gave his good hand a squeeze.

"Hi, Mom... sorry about that. We'll be there in ten minutes."

Greg hummed "The Imperial March" from Star Wars to himself.

***

Next part of Tear In Your Hand.