Title: The Colours We See
Author: Moppig
Rating: PG-13
Three Words: Chocolate, Forever, Love
Two things don't want to see: Deathfic and het
One Location: Ocean
Note: Hideously unbeta'd but written with love. This is actually two interconnecting stories.

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Gil

Growing up Gil Grissom had always been the strange kid but that didn't mean he was excluded from group activity. More often than not the opposite was true. It was usually Gil dragging along his posse of six buddies into one adventure after another, always with a scientific bent.

When they were nine he'd led a nighttime raid on the fishery an hour's bike ride from their houses. They'd have gotten away scot-free expect for Stevie Carter's decision to take home some of the more gross "booty" they'd found. Their hiding place under the porch of his parents' sunroom was usually undetectable, expect this time for the pungent smell that start to become evident six days after their raid. All seven of them were grounded for two weeks with no outside activities expect for a daily trip to the fishery to help clean out the smelly gutters at night.

During his high school years his reputation as a science geek had solidified but his school-cred was enhanced by the infamy he'd earned when he'd helped the local authority solve a spate of murders involving family pets. He'd made the front page of both the Marina Del Ray and his high school papers. To this day he remains thankful that the pictures they used of him were taken when he was remarkably spot free.

Admittedly he'd not had a lot of dates during his high school years but he'd had his circle of friends including several girls. They'd seemed to appreciate the fact he saw them as people and not as answers to his teenage-hormonal desires.

By college he'd start to drift more towards his books and less to people. Between his studies and work at the LA Coroner's office Gil found less and less time for social activities. Nobody seemed to notice though, he was after all undertaking a science degree majoring in entomology. The fact that he could actually hold a conversation with another, non-scientific, person placed him high on the social totem pole amongst his peers.

It wasn't till he started working full time at the coroner's office that Gil began to fully realise that maybe he was different. He liked people, he really did, it just was that he found bugs easier to understand. He tried to conform, to fit into what others wanted of him. He dated, he went to parties, he even got engaged to a woman that he truly thought he loved. Her callous dumping of him two weeks before their wedding didn't only break his heart it also lead to him closing it off. Her parting words hurt him not because of their viciousness but because Gil could see the truth in them. Maybe he really was incapable of love.

A job offer at the Las Vegas crime lab had been welcomed opportunity for him to run and reinvent himself. He'd take a break from the world and try and mend his heart. Gil turned his back on his beloved beaches and turned to the dry desert of Las Vegas and his one true love, science.

It was only meant to be a temporary adjustment but the years started to mount up and Gil found himself stuck in world he'd invented. His increasingly infrequent attempts at dating invariably ended in one disaster after another. He hated the imperfection of it all, his inability to conquer the art of socialising. It became easier for him to live up to image that people saw of him – the asexual bugman who never showed his emotions because he didn't have any.

He became like the desert that surrounded his home, dry, harsh and unforgiving. Yet even the desert supports life, offers glimpses of hope and it was one of those rare glimpses that let Nick Stokes into his life.

Nick accepted him for who he was and didn't try to change Gil - much. The team now had a monthly dinner/breakfast together to reconnect as friends. From Nick he learnt that not everything was about fuelling his compulsive curiosity but that sometimes it was OK to kick back and do nothing, especially if that nothing was with Nick.

It was Nick who brought him back to California and to his beaches. Nick who had the audacity to compare him, favourably, to the ocean.

They were taking a quiet nighttime walk along the beach near Gil's mother's house. Nick was happy to carry on walking ahead as Gil wandered off to investigate a dead seagull here or an interesting pile of seaweed over there. A particularly intriguing pile of decomposed fur held Gil's attention for sometime. After a thorough investigation, using a couple pieces of handy driftwood, he concluded that the remains were not that of some family's cat but that of a possum who'd died, most likely, of natural causes. Satisfied with the conclusion to this mystery he glanced up and noted Nick was standing a way up the beach staring out into the water.

Gil jogged quietly up behind Nick and wrapped his arms around his lover. The two stood watching the crashing waves for what seemed like an eternity. Finally Gil broke the silence "What's it you see out there Nicky."

Nick leaned back into Gil's chest and for a moment it seemed he wasn't going to speak but when he did it was with an answer that Gil never expected to hear "You."

Gil looked out at the inky waves and tried to see what Nick was seeing "Me, Nicky? You trying to tell me that I'm wet and smell like fish."

Nick didn't appreciate Gil's attempt at levity. "Gil" he warned him in with that tone whenever he used when Gil was being particularly self-deprecating.

"You' he repeated. He pointed out at the ocean. "Everything about that is you to me. The colour is you. During the day the ocean is the colour of your eyes. At night, like now, it's like staring into your eyes when we're making loving. The blue and black combining into passion. The smell of the sea, it's about life, about pureness, about nature. That's you. The sound of the waves as they break - regular, strong, proud - its that great heart of yours beating in your chest. The taste of salt in the air" Nick had the grace to blush a little "well, yeah I guess you get that one."

"The feel of the breeze, the touch of the sea spray, that the most essential part of life, water and air, without them we couldn't survive. Without you I don't think I'd want to survive.

Gil stumbled for the right words "Nick, I... "

Nick grimaced slightly "Gil's it OK. I didn't mean to get so sappy. I, sorry, its just the ocean, I love the ocean. I love you. Forget it OK?"

Gil tightened his arms around Nick "I'm not going to forget the most romantic thing anyone has said to me, ever. I may not see what you see Nick but thank you. And I love you too"

Nick tightened his own hands over Gil's " You know what I see the most of you in the ocean Gil? It's the force of the ocean. It's so strong, so consuming. It's almost overwhelming in its power but it's compelling at the same time. You know deep down that you'll be safe in the water, that it'll protect you, hold you. You've just got take the risk and dive in. And then you can drown yourself in it, forever"

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Nick

Nick Stokes was not a vain man. Nobody who wore the shirts that he did could claim that title.

Yeah he worked out now and then, well ok most days with an extra long run on Sundays. So maybe Catherine was right about that part of it was vanity but it was only vanity in the sense that he wanted to control his body. Wanted to know that he could rely on it when he needed it. He didn't do the squats so that he would have "buns of steel", he did the squats so that his leg muscle would be strong to support him through sixteen hour days of gathering up the miniscule scraps of evidence that made their case.

It was the same reason he downed his protein shakes. He understood that your body was essentially a machine and it needed the right fuel to operate well. If he'd didn't eat the right sorts of food he'd never have the energy to get through the double and sometimes triple shifts they pulled. So he made sure had a salad every day. For the vitamins and not, thank you very much Greg Sanders, because he was gay, which ok he was. But surely even straight men knew the fat content of the most common salad dressings. Right?

Admittedly the super set of abdominal exercises didn't serve any greater physical good but they sure gave him a great set of abs. And Gil liked that, Gil like that a lot. So Nick sweated his way through three sets of 15 crunches, 15 oblique twists and 15 knee-raised crunches per gym session three times a week. Gil got his "washboard abs" to, ah, play with and Nick got his "reward" from Gil more than three times a week.

Hell his latest haircut hadn't been a radical decision to try out a bad boy image. It had simply been the most expediential way to deal with some thick goop that had got stuck in his hair during a rather messy crime scene. Of course it did have the benefit of saving time in the shower and Gil like it when he rubbed it over his .... Well you get the picture. But essentially the haircut was just a practical solution to a sticky problem, so to speak.

So despite the superficial evidence to the contrary Nick wasn't a vain man, not really, not about most things, except, well, about his looks. Not that he wished he was more handsome, taller or anything narcissistic like that. Nope. He just wished he was less boring looking. Brown hair? Boring. Brown eyes? Boring. Brown, brown, brown. Boring, boring, boring.

Growing up his sisters and brother had taken after his father's side of the family – tall, fair and angular. Nick had inherited Grandpa Adamson's dark, square looks and a life of fair-headed envy. He'd even, in his second year at college, bleached his hair blonde. Two weeks later after much ribbing, some even from his teachers, he'd dyed back brown.

Nick had learned to live with his affliction but it was always there, the feeling that he was just little bit blander than everyone else. A brown blob in world of fair-headed blondes with sparkling blue eyes. So he became Mr Brown-and-boring-dependable and tried not to worry about when Gil was going to leave him for someone more blonde and exciting. That is till Gil let his only preferences be known.

They had gathered for breakfast at the recently refurbished McGinty's and the topic had turned from decorating, to wallpaper choices, to finally favourite colours. Sara's had been, rather unsurprising, black, Catherine's red and Warrick's, after much debating whether it was actually a colour, was the red and white gingham of his grandmother's curtains. Nick without hesitation chose blue because it reminded him of the ocean.

Gil put on his best Buddha face as all eyes turned expectantly to him. "Well no disrespect Sara but black is definitely out for me, it reminds me too much of death. The same with the red Catherine, all I see is blood and death. As for gingham Warrick? Sorry but no straight man knows what gingham is let alone prefers it as a colour."

The rest of the team laughed as Warrick tried to protest his heterosexuality. "So what is your favourite colour Gil?" Catherine asked, trying to bring some order to the rambunctious table

"Let me guess your favourite colour's blue, just like little Nicky." Sara gave Nick a sly look. She'd had to learn to accept the relationship between Gil and Nick but it didn't she certainly wasn't going to like it.

Gil lips formed a moue at Sara's game playing "No I'll leave blue and the ocean to Nick" The two men shared a look across the table. Still looking Nick in the eyes Gil continued "Me? I'm going with chocolate, dark chocolate brown."

Sara, of course, protest immediately "Chocolate's not a colour it's a food."

"Hey if Warrick can have gingham Gil can chocolate" Nick stuck up immediately for his man.

"Children!" Catherine stopped the argument before it could get rolling "Let's hear Gil's talk his way out of this one. Hopefully his arguments are better than Warrick's."

Grissom nodded in thanks to Catherine. "Chocolate, which by the way IS a colour, for me is about home. It's the hot chocolates I'd share with my mother when the lights have gone out and there's a storm raging outside. It's the same sickly sweet chocolate cake you have every birthday till you're thirteen and think you're too old to have kiddie parties anymore." Gil leant across the table for Nick's hand anxious that he got his point across He was uncomfortably aware of the rest of team listening in on every word but tuned them out, this was all about Nick.

"It's about looking into a great depth and being swallowed up by it. And yeah its scary because you remember love is all about exposing your heart to another person. But scary's ok because at the same time you feel safe and loved. You feel at home, you feel loved. And that's worth any risk. And you just want to drown in that warm dark chocolate depth forever.

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