Title: Beautifully Wrecked
Author: Dee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1528
Pairing: Gil/Nick...but implied Gil/Sara and Nick/Catherine
Characters: Nick Stokes and Catherine Willows
Warnings: AU and angst!
Spoilers: None.
Disclaimer: In my dreams they are like, totally mine!
Unbeta-ed: All mistakes will be mine.
A/N 1: This story is a missing scene from a fic written by gotstoked ...‘Beautiful Wreck’. You should read that story first (visit her Lj by clicking on the above Lj tag) and my scene fits in at the end, although it is almost self explanatory.
A/N 2: Of course she’s given me her permission to write and post this!

Nick stood in front of the door; his palms were clammy and his breath was catching in his throat as he tried to take some deep breaths.  He never thought he would ever stand here about to do what he had to do.

He had to do.

Nick had never, in a million years, expected Sara to relinquish her title to Gil Grissom. Gil himself could hardly choose and the years that he and Nick had lived their lives with such fraudulent duplicity made him feel ashamed as he stood before the front door.

He had never loved anyone as he had loved Gil.  Still loved him.  And yet Nick had ended it, he’d sent Gil to Sara so that he could be with Catherine and be a provider, a lover, a father figure.  A heterosexual man in a homosexual body.

For three long years he’d dreamed of Gil.  He’d never set eyes on him again after the night he left the lab.  Not once.  And yet he knew that Gil couldn’t entirely sever their bond.  The small tokens he sent were always a reminder.  They were in each others thoughts as much as they had ever been. They just weren’t in each others arms.

Sara, of all people, had confirmed, so simply, what he already knew.  That every moment they spent apart was filled with the longing they had for each other.

Sara knew and had conceded defeat.

Catherine had no idea.  Not yet.

At least he didn’t think she had any idea.  He was about to find out as he stood before her front door.  It was Catherine’s day off work.  And he knocked the door, even though he had the key to the door on his key ring.

His breath hitched as he saw her form walking towards the door, through the frosted glass, and as she opened it he swallowed and tried his best to relax.

He knew he had to break her heart to mend his own and his dread of this moment was in direct conflict with his joy at the prospect of seeing, touching, holding his love and never letting him go again.

The door swung open and Catherine’s surprised smile greeted him.

“Nick, you lost your key?”  She sounded so happy.

Nick ignored the question, intent on delivering his devastating message as quickly and directly as possible.  He knew that it was for his own benefit...get it over and done with as quickly as possible but he owed it to Catherine to be quick and...brutal.  He was going to be fucking brutal to her and his eyes involuntarily stung with tears as he realised, not for the first time, the enormity of his task.

“I need to speak to you, Cat.  Urgently.”

“Oh...” Nick walked past her before she could finish her sentence.

He walked to her kitchen and he heard her close the door and then pad across her lobby towards him.  His heart was thumping hard in his chest and loudly in his ears.

“This is serious isn’t it?”  Although she was smiling broadly as she finished speaking Nick watched as it gradually faded away and she understood that whatever it was, it was serious.

“It is isn’t it?”

Nick nodded.

“Go on then.”

She sat down at the table in her kitchen and looked like the Catherine he knew at work. Business-like and serious.  Nick eased himself into a chair opposite her.

He looked straight at her and started.  “I’ve spoken to Conrad this morning and requested a leave of absence...”

“...leave...what for?  What’s happened?”

Nick wasn’t going to be deflected; he’d sorted out in his own mind what he was going to say and how he was going to say it.

“I've asked for a year off, but I’ve told him that I will know, quite quickly, whether or not I will be leaving permanently.  I think I will...because, Cat...”

“...what is going on?”  Catherine was a breath away from angry.

“There’s someone el...”  Was as far as he got as Catherine sprang to her feet.

“I don’t believe it, YOU bastard...who is it?  Who is it you’ve been fucking behind my back? Who?  You owe me that much.”

She was leaning across the table at him and she was shaking with emotion, with anger.  He heard the venom in her voice.  It was now, or never.

“Gil.”  He whispered the name but Catherine jumped back as if she’d been struck.

“Gil?  Gil Grissom?  You’re gay?”  She could not disguise the absolute shock in her voice.

He nodded. “I...I...have loved him for years, many years, but I didn’t want...I wanted you to be my family.  I loved you...I love you, Cat, I do, but...I love him, I need him...and...”

“You were seeing both of us weren’t you, at the same time?”

“I’m so sorry.  I wish I could take it all back, I wish I could, but I can’t.  I never meant to hurt you, or him, but I did both.”

It was if all the fight left Catherine and she sagged back down into the chair.  “I've wasted...how long, eight, ten years, being with you and for every moment of that time you’ve loved someone else.  A man.  I can’t even fight...for you.”

“Oh God, how I wish it was all that straightforward, I really do.  I love...I thought that I would spend my life with you Cat, I really believed that.  I sent Gil away.  I told him to leave and go to Sara...”

“...Sara?  Jesus, does she know?  Is that why she came back?  That’s why she came back.”

“Yes.  She left Gil because he dreams of me; it’s my name he calls out in his sleep.”

They were silent for a minute or two...Nick let Catherine process what she’d heard.

“It’s all dropping into place.  You’ve said you loved me, but you never moved in, always kept your own place.  With everything we’ve discussed, you’ve never mentioned marriage, not once.  I mean I wasn’t that bothered but now, with the benefit of hindsight...it’s so obvious isn’t it?”

“I wanted to marry you, Cat, but every time I thought about it and was ready to ask you, Gil would there like the elephant in the corner of the room.”

“Oh, my God.  No wonder you liked to take me from behind!”  She laughed bitterly.  “I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t want me to take it up the ass from you...”

“...Cat, please.  I’m sorry.  If I could take it all back I would.  I never intended to hurt you and I never intended to ever be with Gil.  I never expected Sara to come back and to have left him...she wanted him so badly.”

“Yes, she did, didn’t she?  Like me with you. Who’d have thought I would ever have anything in common with Sara?”

“It’s such a mess and all of my own making and I've badly hurt you, and Sara, and even Gil, to try and fulfil what I thought was right...for me.  I was selfish and deluded.  If I could take it all back I would, I promise.”

Catherine stared at him for a few moments and then laughed bitterly.  “Do you know, Nicky?  You’re dead right, you are a selfish bastard and all you’ve done in trying to do the right thing is leave a trail of destruction.  But you, you, are going to sail off into the sunset and leave it all behind to be with your beloved Gil Grissom.  It doesn’t matter how sorry you are, it doesn’t matter how you never meant for it to happen: it has and I’m the one that’s going to be left to pick up the pieces.  Aren’t I?  Just little old me.”

Nick put his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.  He nodded into his hands and then lifted his head up.

“I’d better go.”

“Yes, you had.  Get out.”  She paused. “When do you leave?”

“Two weeks.  Conrad wanted two weeks notice.”

“Pity it’s not today.  I don’t think I have the stomach to see...or speak to you again.”

“I understand.”  He stood up.

“No, you don’t.  You couldn’t possibly understand.”

“My heart has been broken for years and I have a chance, now, to mend it, if...if he’ll have me back.  I tried to make...us...work.  Honestly.”

“Honestly?  Honestly?  Do you even know the meaning of the word?  You’re a fool...and I’m a bigger one for not realising.”

They both had tears running down their cheeks.

Nick stood and took his key ring out of his pocket and slipped Catherine’s front door key off it and placed it on the table.  He looked at her, at her broken face and he was so desperately ashamed of himself, he turned and left.

When he reached the front door and was about to open it Catherine called out.

“Nick?”

He looked back at her forlorn figure sitting at the table, but he didn’t speak.

“He’ll have you back.  Who wouldn’t want you...”

Nick couldn’t speak for the tears choking him, he nodded at her, opened the door and left her house for the last time...

The End