Title: The Things We Never Were, and The Ones We Always Will Be
Author: discoxwithxme
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Fandom: CSI
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Do not own.
A/N: I hope this is good. I've gone through and edited it since the first post so yeah. :)
Summary: It was the image of you, dancing in the hallway of our house like no one was watching. ** Nick’s point of view. **

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It was never just you and me. It was always us.

It was never just touching. It was always a means of reminding each other we were there, a way of connecting, establishing contact in case it wasn’t always there. It was always a way to reassure that the other hadn’t left.

It was never just flirting. It was scared, nervous hinting at what might be, what could have been, what we both wanted but were too scared to go after. It was a silent offer, one we were too frightened to admit out loud so we had to dance around the subject in blind faith that one of us would wake up and realize there was no point in avoiding it.

They were never just innocent looks. They were secret promises, hidden bonds stronger than what we ever knew, possibly could ever fathom; it was longing, made into something concrete yet abstract at the same time; electricity that we always managed to create, but could never harness.

It was never just chemistry. It was something much deeper, something that neither of us knew how to name, how to label, but we were smart enough to realize that there wasn’t a label or name for it, and that we shouldn’t try. There was no need to classify it. It was something that we always had—always will—and something that the both of us acknowledged as something far too powerful to overlook, far too earth-shattering to ignore any longer.

It was never just compatibility. It was fate, destiny, all of that jazz; it was stars aligning and pointing to the glaringly obvious: you and me, we belong together. It was a spark that connected us, so strong that it was impossible to deny. It was a giant sign that blinked, said ‘Soul mates’. It was an invisible tattoo, one over your heart and one over mine. They said the same thing. Said that I was yours, and you were mine.

It was never just a crush. It was always deeper, always more profound. Always something that managed to sweep me off my feet and rob me of cognitive thought. Always stole the breath from me, always took away my ability to speak, to form sentences. Always took away my chances to explain to you just what you were to me—what you are to me—but it didn’t matter, I guess. Words and phrases can’t describe that. Nothing can. Not all of the touches, looks, kisses and words in the world could fully define just how I felt—feel —about you. It’s just too much. It’ll always be bigger than the both of us, and you know that. Or at least, you did. I hope you did. I know I didn’t tell you nearly enough, but it’s true. I would have told you if I knew how, but I didn’t—don’t—so I never tried. Seemed sort of pointless to explain the unexplainable. But that’s how funny life is. Sometimes there are things that you can’t explain, and sometimes there are things that don’t need explaining. I think that last one is the one that works best for us, don’t you?

It was never just a kiss. It was the first step to the rest of my life, the rest of our life. The first block in the foundation I was making for the both of us. I knew we had to rebuild if we wanted to stay together, because the ground where I had previously stood was shaky at best, and too cloudy for either of us to see properly. It was a spontaneous idea – the first one I’d had in way too long to even mention – and the only one I’m glad I made. It was my vain attempt to show you what I wanted, what I needed, how I felt; before you left, like all the rest have, like you inevitably would. It was my last shot at reining you in.

It was never just a key to my apartment. It was a dream, a symbol of what was to come. It was a substitute for what I one day wanted to put in your hands: a key to our house. It was a shaky declaration, one I hadn’t made before because I’ve always been too scared of commitment. It was what I had hoped would be a step forward for us, a step you were willing to make with me. You were.

It was never just meeting your parents. Your parents were different from mine. They were more understanding, more open-minded. They were eccentric, and I always figured they would be. All it took was one look at you to know that. It wasn’t just letting them see who their future son-in-law was going to be. It was declaring what we had, making it real, making it concrete. It was finally saying aloud who we were, what we were, if you can ever really say what we were. We were so much more than words. It was putting ourselves out there, for someone to finally judge us, put us on the line. Your parents hugged me the second I walked through the front door.

It was never just meeting my parents. It was that final step, the one I was afraid to take. Because my parents were different than yours. My parents weren’t so welcoming, so open-minded. And it wasn’t because of the Christian Texas cliché, either. It was because my parents had raised us right, had raised us to do what was honourable, what was acceptable. My parents had taught me to always be strong, always follow the right path, always speak the truth and nothing less. Lying was an abomination to the Lord, and I was never to do it. So I didn’t. I was always truthful. Even with you, and sometimes I felt like I should have lied, to spare us from those menial tiffs we had. Because Hell or no Hell, I would have rather had just a couple more happy moments with you than memories of disagreeing about the colour of our carpet, or who was going to take the dog out, or whose turn it was for laundry. And it was never easy, walking into my parents’ ranch and telling them what we were, who we were. It was never going to be, and I knew that. But I looked them in the eye anyway and told them, without shaking, without backing down. My voice didn’t waver or crack. You were surprised, I know you were, and I don’t blame you. My mom cried, but not from shame. She cried because her baby boy had finally found someone to settle down with, and she said you had always been a nice boy anyway. My Dad said I had better be sure, because he wasn’t sure Momma could take me leaving someone else. I told him I was never going to leave you. I wasn’t lying.

It was never just a house. It was our home. It was our place, our place. It was proof that we had overcome all of our past hardships, we had overcome the troubles that followed people of “our kind.” We were strong. I always knew you were. I wasn’t always so sure about myself. It was the smile on your face when we unlocked the front door and stepped inside for the first time. It was the way you clung to me, whispered, “This is it, this is our home. You and me, Nicky. Finally.” It was the way I could only nod, because I didn’t know what else to say. You’d said it for me. It was you and me. Finally.

It was never just a ring. It was something too big for me to say, too much for me to call out, so I settled for a gold band for you to put on your finger. It wasn’t nearly close enough to how I feel about you, what I wanted to say, what I was thinking; but you didn’t care. You cried that night. You cried and hugged me and kept repeating ‘Yes.’ It was the first time I’d seen you cry since I was buried. I know you thought I hadn’t seen you cry that night, but I had. I didn’t say anything. I know you wanted to be strong, for the both of us, but you were only one man, and I didn’t blame you. I cried when you were thrown through the lab walls. That ring was something I both loved and loathed. It made me so warm, the way you wore it every day, no matter what, prouder than anyone I’d ever seen. You smiled so much more after I gave it to you. I loathed it because it was only a promise ring. It wasn’t even a ring meant for engagement. And I didn’t hate it because I couldn’t give you a wedding ring – because it’s still illegal, I loathed it because I was too scared to tell you that I wanted to marry you. I was too scared to give you an engagement ring, even if we couldn’t get married. I was too scared to tell you I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, no matter where we were or what we had to go through to do it. I was too afraid of what you would say, how you would react. I didn’t want to move too fast. And it was silly, because we’d always moved too slowly. But you never commented. And you always wore it, and that made me hurt a little every day, even though I never told you.

It was never just sex. It was never just making love. There was no control when we came together, united, joined, became one. Because it wasn’t about control, about domination or submission. It wasn’t about anything physical or primal or animalistic. It was about showing each other what we were like at our most vulnerable and open; about giving each other the most intimate thing you can give someone else: your body. It was about trust, about love – and it wasn’t love, because love is such a general word, and what we had was so much more than that – and about becoming one. It didn’t matter who was doing what to whom. We weren’t focused on that. It wasn’t about the details. It was doing the closest thing we could to how we felt about each other. It was about giving ourselves over to each other. Because it was such a beautiful thing, to look at you like that, when you were unguarded and so, so gorgeous. It never failed to make me catch my breath, make my heart beat faster, make me nervous. I didn’t want to mess it up. No matter how many times it happened, I was always scared that I would do something wrong, that I would mess up your perfection, smear your beauty. I didn’t want to do that. I never wanted to do that. It was about letting you have all of me, everything I had to offer. It was about laying everything out on the table for your eyes and your eyes only. You always took what I had, and more. And I gave you all that I could. I wish I could have given you more. You deserved more.

It was never just lying on the couch, or eating breakfast together, or talking walks in the park. It was doing everything we could to express how we felt, because without a proper name for it, without any words on how to describe the way we felt, without a definition, we didn’t know how to properly show the other our feelings. I hate that I couldn’t do more than I had. You always chastised me about beating myself up over you, but I did it anyway. Because you were the epitome of luminance, beauty, perfection, brilliance; you were everything and more. You were my world, my soul, my heart and my air. Your face kept me alive every day. Your laugh brought heat to my veins, because I was always cold. Your voice was like music to my ears, and I never got tired of listening to you talk.

It was never just listening to you speak. I was memorizing the way your voice sounded, the way your lips moved, the way your eyes lit up when you were excited, the way you couldn’t talk without your hands; I made it a goal to memorize everything about you. Because you wouldn’t be here forever. Someday, you would be gone, and I’d be gone too. I’d be nothing more than glass shards on the floor, too broken and shattered to put back together again. And I’d need this, need these memories of you to keep going on, even though I wouldn’t want to. You told me to never give up, even if you weren’t there to make sure I didn’t. You said you wanted me to live, no matter what. You wanted me to experience it all, for you, for me – for the both of us. I promised you I would.

It was never just those same memories. It was the image of you, dancing in the hallway of our house like no one was watching. The picture of you, leaning over the back of the couch, watching me cook in the kitchen because you were never very good at it. Watching you whenever you would read (and you didn't do it often, or at least, not in front of me), or whenever you would play Call of Duty on the Xbox 360 - because you were just so adorable, with the way you would get so into it and your face would scrunch up, and it never failed to make me smile. But you always made me smile. You still do. It was the memory of that one time when there was a torrential downpour in Vegas, and it had never rained like that before, and even though you knew you were gonna get sick and you'd have a horrible cold the next day, you went outside anyway. You danced in the street. You asked me to join you. I could never say no to you. We danced and danced for hours and got terrible colds the next day, and we were both too sick to go to work so we had to stay home together. You couldn't stop sniffling and you were determined to make us some soup, but your hands were shaking so bad you dropped a bowl and it broke into twenty pieces at least. And you looked up at me, your bottom lip trembling in a pout and you eyes were so wide and glassy, and you were about to burst into tears because you messed up the soup for me. I took you into my arms and didn't know whether to laugh or cry, because you were so beautiful in that moment, and you got so upset and it was just the cutest thing I had ever seen, and the love you had for me still amazes me to this day.

It was never just guilt. You’d gone out for a crime scene that one night. You’d been beaten. You were all alone in your car, and you shouldn’t have been, but you were. No one was there to save you. I should have been there to save you. I could have, if I had told the others what we were. I was too scared to tell them. You understood. You promised you wouldn’t say a thing until I was ready. I never was. You were beaten, and you had to go to the hospital, and I couldn’t go in until everyone else was done. Because you weren’t wearing your promise ring, like I asked, because I didn’t want us to wear them at work. I didn’t want anyone to know. If you’d been wearing it, I could have seen you. Could have been by your side all night, instead of sitting in a cramped chair in the sickly-smelling waiting room.

It was never just anything we said it was, anything we tried to express it as.

It was never just my heart that I gave you. It was never just your heart that you gave me.

It was never just a whispered promise that I made to you.

They were never just ‘I love you’s.

Because it wasn’t any of the things above that took you away from me. You had made it through the explosion, made it through being beaten in a dark, damp alleyway at night with no one around to hear you scream. It was because your strength, and your courage, and your tenacity never mattered to anyone but me that morning so many months ago. Your eyes didn’t matter, your hair didn’t matter, your scruffy clothes didn’t matter either. The one sort-of-flat tire you had didn’t get a second glance. The picture in your wallet of you and I didn’t get a blink or a question. The bouquet of roses in your passenger seat didn’t matter to anyone else, either. Neither did the little black, velvet box in your front pocket.

It was never just an opportunity crime. It was never just four bored, punk teenage kids.

It was the last day of my life. It was the moment I picked up the phone while running a couple of errands, heading on my way back home, back to see you, back to spend our five year anniversary. It was the moment I heard the officer ask me if my name was Nick Stokes. It was the moment I confirmed it was. It was the moment he told me he was sorry.

It was the moment when I spun the car around in a completely illegal u-turn and broke all available speed limits. It was the moment I pulled up in the parking lot of that rundown, grimy convenience store about five minutes away from our house. It was the moment I jumped out of the car and saw Grissom, Warrick, Catherine and Brass already there. It was the moment I saw the tears in Catherine’s eyes, the solemn look on Warrick’s face. The moment I saw Brass look away from a body. The moment Grissom lifted his head and locked eyes with me.

It was the moment I saw your lifeless body on the stained, dirty convenience store floor. It was the loss of breath I felt, the horrible gut-wrenching pain that overwhelmed me so hard that I shook and collapsed, right there, in front of my truck. The moment my palms became too sweaty to hold onto anything, even each other. The moment I couldn’t breathe, the moment I couldn’t see straight and I was dizzy, too dizzy. The world wasn’t standing upright anymore and the only thing I could feel was despair. A hollow, desolate ache burning throughout my skin, prickling the airs all over. It was the moment that I felt the tears well up. The moment I shoved them back down, because I wasn’t going to cry here. Not here, in front of them.

It was the moment Warrick came over and helped me up. It was the moment I fell into him and he hugged me, didn’t say a word and I knew he didn’t need to. It was the moment Catherine came up and touched my face, cried on my shirt. It was the moment Brass shook hands with me, swallowed and patted me on the back. It was the moment Grissom told me he was sorry. It was the moment he looked me in the eyes, and said he regretted ever sending you into the field alone that one night. He told me you didn’t feel a thing. It was the moment, as he was walking back towards one of the Denalis, that it was okay to cry. That I wasn’t going to be held accountable for that. That it didn’t matter. The moment he told me that I don’t always have to be the strong one. The moment that I remembered you telling me that once.

It was because you didn’t die in an explosion, or from being beaten to death. You didn’t walk out on me after all of the fights we had, after all of our petty arguments and that one time we came so close to breaking up right after I was buried alive. You didn’t leave me for anything, just like you promised. Because you were always there, just like you said you would be.

It was because you lied, and you broke your promise. It was because it wasn’t your fault.

It was because you died in a convenience store, on your way home to propose to me. It was because you died paying for gas. It was because you hadn’t filled up that morning on your way to work, like I told you to. It was because you didn’t listen. It was because it didn’t matter.

It was because they shot you. It was because you just happened to be there. It was because they were four punk, teenage kids with nothing better to do than rob a convenience store at ten in the morning. It was because you never saw it coming.

It was never just my house. It was our house.

It was never just a funeral. It was never just your mom sobbing on my shoulder. It was never just your dad shaking my hand. It was never just my Mom, forcing me to stay down at the ranch for a month after you died—you were taken from me. It was never just my Dad, hugging me silently one night when it was only the two of us awake.

It was never just an engagement ring in that box. It was never just a bouquet of flowers.

It was never just your body on Doc Robbins’ table.

It was never just the team working your case. Even if it was a relatively small one.

It was never just Sara coming back from San Francisco. It was never just her standing on my doorstep one morning at one a.m. It was never just her pulling me into her arms.

It was never just me crying into them. It was never just me breaking down for the first time since you died.

It's because we were never just Nick Stokes and Greg Sanders. It's because I’ll never be Nick Stokes without you here anymore.

It's because I’m praying that one night, it won’t just be you in my dreams again.

It's because I’m hoping that one day, it won’t be me without you. Or you without me.

It's because it’s always been you and me, Greg.

It's because I prayed again tonight, before I went to bed.

It's because I miss you.

It's because it’ll always be Nick Stokes and Greg Sanders.

It’s just the way it should be.

-x-

Fin

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