Title: A Man of Turmoil
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: Sequel to With The One You Love. Series 5

Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid. Stupid.

What the hell had possessed him to tell Grissom that he could use a friend? Great career move, Stokes. Why don’t you tell your boss just how screwed up you really are. Over breakfast yet.

He feels like banging his head on the table. With any luck, he’ll knock himself out, get a concussion and forget about the last two months or so. Surely Grissom and the rest the team wouldn’t remind him of them, when he came to, would they? Then they could all live happily ever after. Especially Nick.

The only saving grace is that so far Grissom seems more interested in his breakfast than in Nick. He went over the menu with the waitress like they haven’t been eating in that same diner for the last one hundred years, dithered between scrambled eggs with bacon and pancakes before finally settling for both and reminisced fondly about breakfast runs to IHoP when he was a student. And now he’s digging in like he’s starved.

Suddenly Nick finds himself staring into Grissom’s blue eyes.

“What?” Grissom asks, sounding self-conscious and Nick realizes he’s been glaring at him.

“Nothing. I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

Nick says the first thing that pops into his head: “Grits.” Oh, dear God.

“Grits?” Grissom repeats, his lips twitching.

Well, there’s no hole you can dig for yourself that you can’t make a bit deeper.

“Yes,” Nick responds, his tone firm, pretending this is a normal conversation. Which come to think of it, is better than any of the alternatives he can think of. Like how he messed up with Brian, because he was just so sick of being alone. Or like how the sex he had with Brian now feels dirty because they had a witness. Or like how he wonders if that’s the real reason he doesn’t want to pick up with Brian again, despite Brian’s efforts.

“What about them?”

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know. I just miss ‘em.”

Grissom reaches for the laminated breakfast menu and holds it at arm’s length, tilting his head back slightly to see better. “They’re on the menu,” he states. “Why don’t you order them?”

Nick shudders. “Not here. I’d have to be really desperate.”

“Ah, well.” Grissom puts the menu back. “A man full of grits is a man of peace.”

“What?”

“It’s a quote. I can’t remember where I read it. Something to the effect of if everybody had grits, there’d be no cause for war.”

Nick starts laughing. “You’re just making this up.”

“Nope. I can’t remember the source or the exact quote, but I’m not making it up,” Grissom says placidly.

“Griss, I know you say it’s our job to know stuff, but, I swear to God, you know the weirdest shit.”

Grissom just smiles and takes another bite of his pancakes. So much for that topic of conversation. For want of something to do, Nick stirs his coffee, even though he takes it black with no sugar.

“Are your ribs fully healed?” Grissom asks suddenly.

“More or less. Some spots still feel a bit sore and stiff, but I’m back to exercising normally.”

“Good.”

Another silence. Nick steals a look at his watch, then at Grissom’s plate. He should be done eating in the next five minutes or so. They’ve been here thirty. Say another five or ten to finish coffee without appearing to rush Grissom, that’s almost an hour. He can do this. And never invite Grissom to breakfast again, if it’s going to be just the two of them. Never, ever.

“How are you otherwise?”

Nick chokes on his coffee and starts coughing.

“Okay,” he says breathlessly when he can talk again.

Grissom doesn’t look convinced and just sits there, looking at Nick expectantly.

For a while Nick just looks back, then he reluctantly gives in. “I’ve been thinking about moving.”

“Moving?” Grissom asks sharply. “Where to?”

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know. At first I thought the last thing I should do is let what happened with Crane make me change homes. It’s stupid, but I don’t feel safe any more. Like it’s gonna happen again or something.”

“It’s not going to happen again,” Grissom says.

“I know. It’s just—”

“But you shouldn’t stay where you don’t feel comfortable,” Grissom interrupts.

“I don’t like letting him win.”

“He didn’t win.”

It’s something Nick’s already told himself a thousand times. Somehow, when Grissom says it, even though he sounds a little impatient, or maybe because of it, Nick is finally convinced.

“No. I know,” he agrees quietly, and he feels like a big weight has been lifted from his shoulders.

“Good,” Grissom says gruffly.

Nick looks up at him. He knows the exact color of Grissom’s eyes, the shape of his nose and his chin, and he still remembers the softness of Grissom’s curls from that one time, long ago. He’s had a crush on Grissom for a long time, but he’s always considered it platonic: mostly admiration, wanting to live up to the expectations of a mentor, that sort of thing. Now he feels a stirring of something else, something that makes his mouth go dry.

“Grissom?” he starts to ask, but he doesn’t really have the courage to continue until Grissom makes an inquisitive gentle sound.

“When Archie told you… I mean, when you knew…” He stops again, his heart thumping so hard it almost hurts. “What did you think?”

“About what?” Grissom asks, but he paused so long before the question that Nick knows that he’s just stalling for time, so he just makes a vague gesture and shrugs a little.

“I don’t know. About me. Did it surprise you?”

“Yes,” Grissom says baldly. “And it made me … well, sad, I suppose.”

It’s the answer Nick’s been sort of expecting, but he still has to ask: “Why?”

“I guess I sometimes like to think that things are simpler and easier than they used to be for my generation. And they’re obviously not. At least, not for you. ”

Nick had been so certain that Grissom would say that Nick’s sexual orientation made him sad, or his hiding it, or his lying and pretending to be something other than what he is, that it takes a second for him to really hear what Grissom is saying and to believe that there’s no implied criticism, only a sense of understanding and perhaps even empathy.

“Your generation? Grissom, you’re not that much older than me.”

Grissom just shakes his head. “It’s not the age difference per se,” he says, but he doesn’t explain further.

“Did you think differently about me?” Nick asks curiously.

Grissom doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he signals to the waitress for a refill and waits until she’s walked away from the table again.

“What do you want to hear?” he asks Nick.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should it matter to you? You know me well enough to know that I wouldn’t think differently of your abilities or your work, don’t you? But even if I did, that would be my problem, not yours. So why should it matter?”

Put like that, Nick doesn’t know what to answer. Once again, Grissom makes it sound so simple. Why should it matter to Nick what he, or anybody else, thinks? When he’d had the big blow-up with Brian, he’d as much as told him that compared to what might have happened Nick didn’t think being outed was a big deal. But afterwards, when he realized that only two people knew, both of whom he could trust even though he was close to neither, he just pulled the closet door tightly shut again. Even though it didn’t matter.

And yet, it does. It especially matters to Nick what Grissom thinks.

He looks at Grissom who’s obviously expecting some sort of answer, but he doesn’t have one. Instead, he only has more questions.

“Not about my abilities or my work. What did you think about me?” He just hopes Grissom doesn’t ask him what he wants to hear again, because he doesn’t know that either.

Uncharacteristically, Grissom seems to retreat, cupping his coffee cup with both hands and starting into it. He takes a deep breath and exhales again, shaking his head slightly. Finally he looks up at Nick.

“I wish I hadn’t found out the way I did. But overall I have to say that you being… bisexual?”

He pauses for confirmation, and when Nick shakes his head, continues: “… gay, is, ah, nice to know.”

“Nice to know?” Nick asks solemnly, but he’s fighting a small bubble of happiness, because Grissom can’t mean what Nick thinks he means.

“Nice to know,” Grissom confirms and gives a lop-sided smile.

There’s nothing Nick can think to ask that won’t sound flirtatious or coy (or worse). The tips of his ears are burning and he knows he must be turning beet-red, because Grissom’s smile deepens.

“Well, okay then,” he says finally. “What I mean is, that’s good. Okay.”

“Yeah,” Grissom agrees, still smiling, and his smile is making Nick feel a bit lightheaded.

Stupid. Stupidstupidstupid. Stupid. But right here, right now, Nick couldn’t care less how foolish the thoughts that suddenly crowd his head might be, and he grins back.