Title: The Sun Always Shines On TV
By: elfin
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: NC-17
Summary: post-Grave Danger fic, massive spoilers!

Catherine watched Warrick rubbing his eyes as he approached.

“You should be at home, in bed.”

He regarded her with a grim expression. “You too. How’s Nicky?”

She said nothing, letting Warrick make up his own mind as he stopped next to her and pressed his hand to the window, unconsciously mimicking Gil’s earlier contact with Nick through the lid of the coffin.

In the cool, private room beyond the glass the lights were off but the dim corridor lighting threw in enough to gently highlight the patient and his guardian on the bed.

Gil Grissom - iceman – was sitting half-on, half-off the mattress, up on the pillows where Nick’s head should have been. Instead, Nick was using Grissom as a pillow, head rested on the soft swell of Gil’s stomach, lying on his side curled tightly against the other man’s leg, one ravaged arm across the wide body.

Gil was gently rubbing the fingertips of Nick’s right hand were it rested on Gil’s left. With his other hand he was tenderly stroking Nick’s hair - the only part not of him not swollen and covered in the chalky white salve that was supposed to stop the bites from itching. Once Nick was aware enough to feel them, presumably.

Gil’s was an unfailing touch, never tiring, despite his eyes being closed and his looking as dead to world as his ward.

But while the only things keeping Nick under were sedatives and anti-toxins, Gil was finding sleep to be an elusive luxury.

Nick’s heart rate was too high, his blood pressure above normal, and there was an answering tension in Grissom’s body. He was utterly exhausted but wide-awake.

“He’s been sitting like that for over three hours,” Catherine murmured, almost to herself.

Warrick tapped his thumb silently against the glass. “He’ll stay there all night if it’s what Nick needs.”

“I know. I owe him an apology.”


Gil opened his eyes – he knew they were being watched and he knew who by. If he didn’t understand they needed to be there just as much as he did he’d have ignored them. But he understood all too well.

He inclined his head, inviting them in.

Catherine opened the door silently and Warrick stepped passed her, standing between her and the bed. Asking permission with dark eyes, answering Gil’s tired smile with one of his own, he moved his hand over Nick’s head. Tears pricked his eyes. He was wiped out, physically and emotionally. The night felt as if it had lasted a lifetime.

But Nick was alive. Safe. Back with them, where he belonged. He was battered – maybe beaten – but to see him sleeping there was a breathtakingly intense thing. It would be a while before they got over this. They had to accept that Nick might not, ever, get over it.

Gil didn’t speak. He let Warrick work through whatever was in his head, keeping up the soothing strokes that had finally settled Nicky, persuaded him to stop fighting the sedatives and eventually succumb to sleep.

Nick remained terrified - his mind still back in the coffin, imaging his body was too.

After a few long minutes, Warrick told Nick goodnight, that he’d see him in the morning. He brushed feather light fingertips over the feather light blanket then turned, gave Catherine a brief hug and left.

Gil let out a deep breath and met Catherine’s empathic gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, and he knew what for. He nodded. In the end, the money hadn’t made one iota of difference except to break his heart, tear into his soul just that little bit more. For now he didn’t have the energy or inclination to explain. He was glad Catherine didn’t need him to.

It was a while before she spoke again. “He’s not going to get over this one.”

Gil swallowed. “I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

For a second he couldn’t answer. The whole night flashed through his mind like a graphic movie, and tagged on the end was the memory of Holly Gribbs. His breath snagged on a sob that broke from his throat.

Catherine raised her hand to her mouth for a moment before sliding an arm around Gil’s shoulders.

Gil took a deep breath and leaned into her just a fraction. “I don’t know…. I’ll keep him with us. We’ll keep him with us. He’ll be safe with us.”

She nodded, squeezing the tears from her eyes, letting them slide over her cheeks and into Gil’s hair as she pressed a kiss to his head.

He looked up at her as she straightened, his own tears tracking a tickly path over his nose.

“You need some sleep,” she told him, knowing she was wasting her breath.

“I’ll sleep soon.”

”You’ll get cricks if you stay here much longer,” more misspent air. She knew he wasn’t leaving. “I’ll bring you a change of clothes if you give me your keys.”

He nodded at his coat over the back of the chair behind her but he said, “He asked me if my soul died a little every time I pushed the button.”

She didn’t need to ask who. “I think we all died a little tonight.” They knew hell by name, sight and smell now. Nothing would ever be the same as it was. God alone knew how Nick would cope. If he’d cope at all.

She lifted the keys from Gil’s coat and found the one to his apartment, taking it off the ring. Then she stood, her gaze settling for a moment on Nick’s poor face, fixing in mind the certain knowledge that they’d saved his life; at least physically he was going to be okay.

Touching her lips to Gil’s forehead she squeezed his shoulder. “Goodnight, Gil.”

“Night, Catherine.”


He remained awake long after she’d gone, playing the ends of Nick’s hair through his fingers, feeling the strong if rapid heartbeat against his thigh.

It would be a while before he felt able to let Nick out of his sight again – a personal battle he wouldn’t be alone in fighting. All he could do – all any of them could do now – was to be there for Nick when he needed them and to let him go when he asked them to.

Gil slept eventually, but only until he was woken by raised voices and a vicious squirming against his chest.

One raised voice, he realised as he snapped awake. Nick, struggling to free himself from the plexi-glass prison still locked around his mind, sobbing in his desperation. Gil tried to calm him but he was just another restraint in the muddle of Nick’s drug-enhanced panic. Instead of trying to contain him, Gil slid from under him and dropped to his feet. His numb leg gave out and he managed only a controlled drop to his knees next to the bed, hands gripping the mattress to steady himself as he went down.

Nick instantly curled up, pulling his legs tight in front of him, forming a foetal ball, trembling and sobbing in the grasp of a nightmare born of real terror.

Still kneeling, Gil touched the tips of Nick’s fingers and reached one arm around to stroke his hair. And he spoke, softly, his voice almost a lullaby. “Nicky, you’re safe. We’ve got you. You’re safe. You’re out of there, Nicky. We’ve got you. You’re safe.”

By the time the trauma specialist arrived, Nick’s sobs had muted, his breath hitching but his body steady again. She checked his vitals quickly before leaving them be, not wanting to disturb her patient further. There was only so much medicine could do for patients under her care, a fact she knew too well. Nick had to do the toughest part on his own, but not – it seemed – by himself.

She’d spoken to Catherine earlier, and to Nick’s friend who had had to be talked out of letting go of Nick’s hand when the entourage had arrived. She’d met his parents who’d cried a lot and told him that they loved him. And after they’d all gone Gil had remained, offering everything he was, all the strength he possessed for Nick to draw from, surrounding him with safety.

Gil continued to purr reassurances as he reaching back to pull the chair up to the bed, to rest his arm on the pillow above Nick’s head and resuming the even strokes of his hair until Nick’s breathing evened out and he sank once more into sleep.

This, Gil reasoned darkly, was a critical time. It was essential for Nick to know that crying and being comforted was okay, that this was the least Gil would do for him. Soon Nick would be aware of them, aware of his wounds and his fears. He would come to understand that a part of him that had died in that grave and he needed to know it was all right to mourn.

They couldn’t afford to let him push them away – if they lost sight of him for a moment he would be lost to them for good.

The person Nick had been was gone. All they could hope was to shape the new man he became. Their strength had to be his strength, because right now it was all Nick had.

 

 


Gil leaned forward, keeping up the gentle stroking of Nick's hair and fingertips, watching red-rimmed eyes open slowly and lift to meet his own.  He tilted his head and smiled.

"Hi, Nicky," he murmured softly.  They weren't sure how Nick's eardrums had fared.  They knew he could still hear, he'd heard Gil through the glass lid of the coffin, but they didn't know if for Nick the words had been backed by a continuous ringing courtesy of the gunshot he’d fired three feet from his head in an enclosed box.

"Grissom...."  It was a beautiful sound; the rough, croaky voice.

"It's Gil," he told him firmly as long lashes swept down for a moment and a single tear tracked over Nick's cheek.  "We've got you, Nicky.  You're safe.  You're in the hospital."

A shudder ran the length of Nick's body, breaking in a sob.  More tears followed the first and Gil's heart threatened to break entirely.

"I'm sorry...."

"No.”  The older man swallowed his own emotion.  No weakness to be shown here, they had to be strong for Nick.  “There's nothing for you to be sorry about.  You did everything right, you didn't put a step wrong."  He hesitated, the thought occurring belatedly that he shouldn’t be hinting at the presence of the web feed from the box just yet and that maybe he'd misinterpreted Nick’s apology anyway.  "It's okay to cry, Nicky.  You need to cry."  Nick's head moved in small jerks, side to side.  "There's a lot inside you right now.  You need time to work through it."

The wet face crumpled and Gil thought for a second about calling someone else.  Catherine had always said he wasn't a 'people-person' and this was far from the best time for him to be practising his non-existent psychology skills.  But equally it wasn't the time for him to be running away from his own insecurities.  He stayed put, letting Nick find his own precarious balance, relieved when those big brown eyes found his again.

"Is everyone okay?"  He didn’t sound like himself at all, voice not much more than a painful rasp.  But it was okay – it would recover far faster than its owner.

"Everyone's fine, Nicky."

"Rick...."  Gil wondered if Nick had heard Warrick's quiet mantra at the graveside.

"Warrick's gone to get some sleep.  They all have."  He considered his next words carefully.  "We were there with you, every step of the way.  You were never alone."  There was no way Nick was going to believe that without an explanation, but he was absolutely sure this wasn’t the right time to be telling him about the feed, or that it was them switching on the light and depriving him of air.

Gil had even warned the others – it was something Nick was going to have to know.  But not yet, not until he had a few reserves to be able to deal with it.  Right now he had nothing.

If Gordon hadn't have already killed himself, Gil may have done it for him.

Nick's eyes had already closed again.  Gil felt a pressure on this hand and as the tension drained slowly from Nick, as he gave in to the seductive velvet unconsciousness of the drugs in his system, he curled three fingers around Gil's thumb.

Closing his own eyes, Gil let the tears run silently over his face until no more would come.

~

Judge Stokes pulled the door closed behind him, hearing the quiet click, looking at his wife fighting to hold herself together against the odds.

The specialist - Dr Sui - was waiting for him outside the private room and Stokes tried to listen to what she was telling them about trauma victims and the different ways in which different people dealt with what they'd endured.

But his attention kept slipping, focusing instead on his son on the other side of the glass.  Nick's old boss had pulled the chair back to the bed.  Nick - still not really 'with it' - was saying something and the older man was smiling with all the affection the judge knew he should be showing but couldn't.  It didn't come easily to him.  Somehow he knew it didn't come easy to Grissom either.  But he was managing, and Nick was responding to him in a way he wasn't responding to his own parents.

Stokes felt a touch to his arm, glanced apologetically at his wife, and realised Dr Sui was speaking to him. 

"...no way of knowing what's going on in Nick's head.  But Dr Grissom has a fair idea because of what he and his team saw, because of how they were involved.  Right now he's saying all the right things and given time I think he can ask the right questions."  She looked at Nick's father, her expression sympathetic.  "I know it's hard, but if Nick feels comfortable with Gil, it wouldn't be a good idea to upset that."


It was later, when they were back in their hotel room, when Nick's Mom asked her husband why he was jealous of Gil Grissom.

Judge Stokes stared out over the dusk-haloed city from thirty storeys up and tried to explain, "He's our son, my Pancho.  I'm the one who should be at his bedside, offering him the kind of support... a father should be offering."

Gillian Stokes looked surprised.  "You think Dr Grissom's playing a father-figure role?"  She didn't wait for answer - she didn't want one, or want to respond to his obvious question.  She closed the bathroom door behind her and started to run a bath.

As she sat swilling the hot water in with the cold, she thought about the way Gil had been touching Nick's hand and petting his hair when they'd arrived at the hospital that morning.  Not fatherly touches - Gil's were the tender caresses of a lover.

~

When Warrick and Catherine dropped by after their shift, Gil gave them some time with Nick even though he was still drowsing under the heavy drugs that were attempting to bring some balance to his abused system.

Dr Sui found him standing next to the coffee machine in the corridor staring sightlessly at the plastic cup waiting for him.

“Dr Grissom?”

He started, and was relieved he hadn’t already picked up his drink or he might have thrown it all over her.

“Gil, please,” he recovered quickly.

She gave him a little smile.  “Gil.”  She was a small woman, Chinese by birth, American by culture.  And she’d liked Gil Grissom the moment she’d met him.  “Nick’s mother rang.  They’re leaving for Texas in the morning.”

Gil almost shook his head.  Why would they…?  It didn’t make any sense to him.  Nick was injured and frightened, why wouldn’t his parents put off going home for as long as it took?  Would they want to take Nick…?

“She asked me to keep you informed of Nick’s progress.”

Not taking him with them then.  Gil bent to collect his coffee, ignoring the burning in his fingers where he gripped the Styrofoam cup.

“So… how’s he doing, Doctor?”

“Physically he’s doing well.  The bites look worse than they are now, the drugs and the transfusion have helped clear his blood of the toxins.  They’ll itch like hell as they heal but for no more than a week or so.  His ears look undamaged, although he’s going to need to tell us if he’s hearing any constant ringing.  Mentally, he spent fifteen hours in a box underground thinking he was going to die there….”

Gil nodded slowly.  “I know.”

“He needs to see a psychiatrist.”

“I think he has one.”  He knew for a fact.  Not the departmental one but a private one he started seeing after Nigel Crane dropped into his life.

“Make sure he goes.  Make sure he talks.”

“Don’t worry, Doctor.  We didn’t give up on him when he was taken, we’re not going to give up on him now.”

 


“Nick?”

No response.  Gil stepped a little further into the small room.  Nick was standing at the window, his back to the door, hands on the wall either side of the pane as if he could widen the space simply by pushing.

The window looked out onto a narrow courtyard surrounded on all four sides by twenty-storey hospital wings.

“Nicky?”

Gil knew from personal experience how easily someone could be startled even by a friendly face.  So he crossed the room quietly to stand a couple of feet from Nick, putting his back against the wall, waiting for the younger man to notice him.

Close-up he could see the subtle trembling of Nick’s slim but solid form.  It brought a frown to his face.  But he only had a moment to consider it before dark eyes found him.

“Hey, Gil.”

There was no inflection in Nick’s voice, no surprise at Grissom’s presence. 

All of Nick’s defences were down.  He didn’t have the ability or the energy to raise them yet.  He was naked and vulnerable.  But it wouldn’t last long and then he’d build walls around himself so high and so thick no one would ever to be to break through.  Gil’s plan was to be on the inside when those walls went up.

It was a possibly reckless decision made as he’d stood at the edge of a deep hole lit only by torchlight.  He’d stared at the ground in which Nick had been buried.  And suddenly he’d decided life was too short to hide any longer.

Gil pushed away from the wall and stepped up to look out of the window properly for the first time since Nick’s admittance four nights ago.  He stared at the dark red brick and the neatly laid slabs, at the wilting rose bushes and baking earth.

He put his hand on Nick’s arm, wishing he hadn’t felt the barely-suppressed flinch.

“Let’s get out of here.”


There was nothing physically wrong with Nick.  The ant bite toxins were still being cleaned out by his own natural defences boosted by the serum they’d shot him full of on the first night.  But there was no reason for him to be kept in at Desert Palm (Las Vegas didn’t have hospitals, it had medical facilities) over and above Dr Sui’s concerns for his mental well-being.

Unlocking the Tahoe remotely, Gil opened the driver’s side door and slid the key into the ignition, starting the engine without getting in.  Nick watched him quizzically, expressions not changing even when Gil pressed a button that wound down the rider’s side window.

Then he walked around and held the door open for Nick to climb in.  When he closed the door, leaving off his seat belt, and immediately hooked one arm out of the window, fingers hugging the hot metal of the SUV’s black skin, Gil knew he’d been right.  He would need to do a lot more of these subtle experiments, hoping each one would have just a minute effect that would in the end help Nick build his resilience and confidence back up to what they had been before Gordon. 

BG. 

He and his daughter were two people the Las Vegas CSIs would never, ever forget.

Fastening his own belt, not hassling Nick about his, Gil tooled the Tahoe out of the parking lot and on to the busy road, crossing two lanes of traffic only to re-cross a couple of minutes later in order to get up onto the highway heading southwest out of the city. 

Gil had combined compassionate leave with eight years’ worth of unused annual leave and the threat of permanently leaving to take Vegas’ CSI count down by another body.  Under the circumstances Ecklie hadn’t been able to refuse and he’d obviously been sure that Gil’s resignation was serious and would have been swift to come had he not agreed.

The sheriff, still stinging perhaps from his own refusal to fund Nick’s ransom – even though paying it hadn’t helped their cause directly – had arranged a Level Three CSI secondment from LA to cover.  If an entomologist was needed, Gil could be called.  Otherwise he would be back as and when.  Nick’s abduction and incarceration had reset a few priorities for everyone, it seemed. 

But if Nick had even thought about work or questioned Gil’s omnipresence, he hadn’t mentioned it.  Gil wondered if maybe doing so would mean bursting the bubble and letting reality in.  It was a difficult thing to face at the best of times – reality - but after what Nick had been through it was a minefield that he would eventually have to cross.

It was a hot day and having the window down was playing havoc with the air conditioning, but Nick didn’t seem to notice and Gil didn’t care.

They travelled in silence until they were out of the city, surrounded by desert on both sides.  Then Nick turned to him and asked, “Where we going?” in a tone that told Gil he’d just figured they weren’t going anywhere he’d expected.

Gil smiled across at him – an easy-going smile that suggested there was no more to this impromptu road trip that his own desire to leave town for a couple of hours.

“Thought you might be hungry,” he quipped.

It worked.  For a second Nick’s mouth opened in a wide, familiar smile.  Then it was gone, choked off by the trauma sticky and cloying around the edges of Nick’s mind.  Gil noted it and moved on.  Everything was a small step and Nick’s recovery was going to be a series of these very small steps.

The Tahoe turned a long, yawning corner and Lake Mead came into view over the dunes, its jagged edges suggesting it had been sliced out of the desert with a knife wielded by a lunatic.  Around the edges of the huge lake there was an eclectic yet predictable selection of marinas and sailing clubs, bars and restaurants.  But the only thing within striking distance of where Gil had parked was a cute ice-cream parlour with eighty-two different flavours and outside seating at wooden picnic tables under a blue linen canopy.

Gil led them to a table closest to the water’s edge, with the tables on either side unoccupied.  They sat down and he watched Nick peruse the extensive choices printed in yellow on a candy-pink menu card over thirty inches long.  Just now the haunted expression was masked by a childlike glee and Gil gave an inward sigh of relief.  Another successful experiment.  A good decision.  He could only hope he made more right ones than wrong ones over the next few crucial weeks.

“Three scoops,” Nick said suddenly without being asked, “choc-chip, cherryade and mint.”

Gil screwed up his face in disgust.  “You’re serious?”

“Sure!  It’s a great combination.  You should try it.”

He felt a warmth in Nick’s ability to just be himself like this.  Here, and for some time to come, Gil wasn’t his boss but his friend.  He was glad Nick appeared to understand that.

Gil kept the conversation light, “It’s unnatural!”

“Unnatural?  For someone who eats ants–“  The word stuck in his throat and Gil watched in helpless horror as the mask slipped, the smile faded.  But Nick took a deep breath and forced the edges of his mouth to lift again. “I’d have thought you’d be more adventurous when it came to ice-cream is all.”

Gil felt a surge of pride stronger than any of the bad feelings milling around inside him.  He wanted to lean over the table and hug Nick.  But instead he stood and with an acknowledging tilt of his head and slight raise of the eyebrows before taking Nick’s order to the counter.


When he returned, hands full, Nick was still sitting, arms crossed on the tabletop, staring out through black sunglasses at the winking water.  The casual pose belied the tension in his shoulders but it was a start nonetheless, for both of them. 

Gil had been able to leave Nick alone, albeit for just a couple of minutes, albeit in bright daylight in a public place.  Gil had expected some level of panic from at least one of them but it hadn’t happened.

It wasn’t a crime scene, of course, and it wasn’t dark.  And that thought made Gil suddenly wonder about the dayshift, and whether that wasn’t the best time for Nick to keep working.  He’d told Ecklie he wanted his guys back but if it meant him swapping shifts so be it.  Not that Catherine would be happy.  He had no idea what was going to happen if and when Nick went back to work but he was sure on a couple of points.  Nick at least was returning to his team and it would be a very long time before he attended another crime scene alone.

All this was in his head as he sat down and put the Styrofoam bowl of oyster wafer and pink, brown and green ice-cream in front of Nick.  The young man’s grin was worth every cent, every dollar, even of the million that had gone up in the explosion – something else Nick knew nothing about.

“What’ve you got?” Nick questioned him around a mouthful of mint.

Gil pointed out the individual scoops with the end of his spoon, “Strawberry, Orange Peel and Crushed Beetles.”

It took a minute but Nick actually laughed.

 


 
They walked along the shoreline for a couple of minutes, but the drugs in Nick's system meant they didn't get too far.
 
"Gris, could we stop for a bit?"
 
"It's Gil.  And yes, we can."
 
The crystal sun on the lake was blinding.  Gil watched the glints like stars against the black of his sunglasses, not really thinking, not ready to touch the raw recall waiting for him close to the forefront of his mind.  If he was feeling that way, god alone knew how Nick was doing.
 
The silence that fell between them was an easy one.  Gil had never considered their relationship easy.  He knew what he was to Nick, or rather what he had been BG.  A mentor, a teacher, someone to be looked upon with awe, despite Gil trying to dissuade him from the hero worship.  Still, in the message that was supposed to be his suicide note, Nick had felt the need to apologise for disappointing him.
 
"You know, Nicky, you've never...."  He caught himself.  He wasn't supposed to know about it, was he?  "I'm very proud of you."
 
He glanced across at the man sitting on the ground next to him, saw his words hit home.  "Not sure I've done anything to deserve that," he responded quietly, deliberately vaguely. 
 
"You're very good at your job.  You bring an... empathy to it that I just don't have."  He inwardly flinched.  This wasn't going the way he'd wanted it to.  "You're a good CSI, Nick."
 
No response this time and Gil was happy to let it drop for now.  Later, when the details started to emerge and emotions were running high anyway, he'd say more.  He promised himself he would say more.
 
"Do I have to go back to the hospital?" Nick asked suddenly.
 
Gil shrugged.  "Only to collect your stuff.  Then I'll take you home."
 
"You don't have to baby-sit me."  But the unspoken need rang in his voice, loud and clear.
 
"I'm not babysitting you, Nick."  He didn't offer any explanation of what he was doing and Nick didn't push for one.
 
But his next question was a surprise.  "Why'd he do it?"
 
"Who?"
 
"The guy who took me.  Why... that?  Why me?"
 
Gil explained carefully about Kelly Gordon and her conviction, about Walter Gordon and his motives.  He kept any bias out of his voice, speaking as he would when calling a scene, without emotion, without that empathy he'd praised Nick for having.  It was one of the hardest things he'd ever done to keep himself out of his voice.
 
"It wasn't personal, Nicky."
 
"That's what you said after Crane.  It felt personal then and it sure as hell does now."  Nick's voice was breaking, the emotion so close to the surface, leaking through the cracks of his shattered control.  Gil nodded once.  Nick's eyes filled with tears.  "You know... I wish I could say I'm glad it was me and not someone else... I wouldn't have done that to my worst enemy... but... truth is... I wished it'd been anyone but me.  I don't want any o'this."
 
Unable to just sit there, Gil put one large hand on Nick's back, squeezing his shoulder then awkwardly rubbing down and up, following the curve of his spine.
 
Nick wiped his running nose on his sleeve.  "Sorry...."
 
"Stop saying you're sorry.  You shouldn't be.  You need to talk, Nicky, and you need to cry.  It's a release, like screaming.  It's good for you."
 
Only later did the thought occur that Nick might be apologising for crying in front of him.
 
~
 
Gil followed Nick into his apartment and stopped dead.  Low ceilings, dark blue décor, narrow corridor out to the bedroom and bathroom.  He almost laughed, the insane laughter of the hysterical bubbling up from his chest.
 
But he didn’t. 
 
He watched Nick, as skittish as a doe, standing in his own living room, knowing the exact same thoughts were spreading through Nick’s mind but at a much madder rate.  He watched.  And Nick started to unravel right in front of his eyes.
 
Gil caught him, gently stroking his arms, not gripping, not restraining.  “Nicky, come back to my place.”  He heard himself and softened his tone.  “I’ve got… open plan, high ceilings with white walls.  I’ve got… a kingsize bed that’s all yours and a walk-in shower to… to die for.”  He smiled.  Actually smiled.  What else could he do?
 
He was utterly relieved when Nick smiled a little too, so the next words chilled him to the bone.
 
“Jeez, Gil.  I live in a goddamn coffin.”
 
~
 
For the most part Nick was holding the pieces together okay, even if bits kept getting away from him.  Gil knew he had to hold it together too.
 
But it wasn’t easy.  Watching Nick sleep, sprawled out over most of the surface of his bed, Gil let a couple of the myriad emotions filter to the surface.
 
Since they yanked him – literally – out of the box, Nick had had little or no privacy.  So after he’d given his houseguest a tour of the apartment, Gil had forced himself to go out, just down to the store for supplies, and to the chemist to pick up Nick’s prescriptions.  To give the man some space.
 
The whole time he was out he was plagued by an empty dread.  He worried himself into nausea so that by the time he unlocked his own front door again and let himself in, his heart was racing with an irrational terror that Nick was panicking, Nick was terrified, Nick was…
 
…Nick was crashed out on the sofa, television showing some gentle, early afternoon detective show, the remote hanging from loose fingers.  At the sound of the door, he tipped his head back and smiled a small smile and Gil experienced a wholly inappropriate but possibly desperately needed moment of euphoria.
 
He smiled back, letting it light up his eyes.  “Still hungry?”
 
“Not after all that ice cream!”
 
Gil closed the door behind him with his foot and crossed to the kitchen area.  “Well, it’ll take a while to cook.  By the time the apartment’s filled with the smell of garlic and tomatoes, your mouth’ll be watering.”
 
~
 
He hadn’t lied.  Gil’s pasta sauce and home baked garlic bread had been incredible.  Then again, Nick wasn’t sure there was anything that wouldn’t taste incredible.  He was glad, so incredibly glad to be alive.  It was only just sinking in, he thought.  There were more ‘ifs’ than he dared to count.  But he knew one thing for certain.  If Gil hadn’t taken him out of the hospital, brought him home, he wasn’t sure who would have.
 
His heart rate started to speed up.  How the hell would he cope alone?  What if someone came for him…?  What if Gordon…?
 
“Nick.”  The hook in Gil’s voice brought him gently back from the edge.  “I’m here, Nicky.”
 
He took a deep breath and nodded once.  “Sorry.”
 
“No.  Nothing to be sorry for.  You feel like you’re losing it, you reach for me, okay?  Wherever we are, whatever else is happening.  Here, at the lab, on a case, anywhere.”
 
Nick nodded again but it wasn’t enough.  “Promise me, Nick.”
 
Oddly, it brought a smile to his face to hear the words he remembered so well from when….  Best not to remember it.  Not yet.  Not ready.  “I promise.”
 
Gil’s smile was perfect.  “Good.”