Never Too Late

[maddieamazing.livejournal.com]

Title: Never Too Late
Chapter: 15 and Final (Part Two)
Rating: NC-17

            Michael coughed again, and Nick shuddered at the sound of it; guttural, throaty, and resonant, like it was coming from deep inside his lungs themselves. It was so familiar, yet it seemed so out of place at the same time.

            “Almost ready, baby?” Nick asked, sitting on the side of the bed they shared at the home that wouldn’t be Michael’s much longer, and stroked a hand up and down Michael’s exposed arm.

            He nodded, and smiled a little fakely. Nick returned it, but as soon as they made eye contact, their smiles turned into worried frowns, and as if every fake emotion and false strength he’d been putting up for months faded away completely, Michael took in a deep sigh and his chest rose and fell rapidly as he began to sob, clutching Nick’s hand in his own, feeling the pain rumble through him like thunder.

            Nick crawled into the bed behind him, wrapped his arms around him tightly, and just held him, periodically placing a simple kiss to the back of his skinny neck. And for at least an hour, that’s what they did. Michael sobbed, and Nick shed many of his own tears with him, and they clung to each other. For many rare moments, Michael let down the front he had in front of his parents and his sister and all his other friends; he stopped joking and laughing and not caring, and he cared for a while. He cared and he cried and he grieved, and when his breathing steadied again and the tears dried on his cheeks, he looked up at Nick.          

            “I’m not afraid to die, mi amor,” Michael whispered into Nick’s neck. A few more tears fell as he worked up the strength to say what needed to be said next. “I’m afraid to leave you.”

            Nick’s heart broke into what felt like a million pieces, his strength wavered and his stomach lurched. He held Michael tighter and kissed him, a lingering, heart-felt kiss to the top of his sweat-soaked hair.

            “You don’t need to be,” Nick whispered through his own silent sobs. He struggled with what to say, not wanting to upset Michael, but not wanting to lie, either. And in the tradition of what Michael believed in and lived by, Nick decided on honesty. Open, complete honesty. “I will miss you, Michael,” Nick whispered. “I will miss you so much, more than there are words to say. And I don’t want you to go, and I wish you didn’t have to, and I’m angry. At God, or the doctors, or fate, or whatever. And I’m sad, honey, I’m so sad.” Nick felt weak as he spoke and tears drained from his tired eyes. He caught a glimpse of two suitcases by the door, filled with clothes and pictures and books and as much of the life of an immortally exuberant man as would fit in two suitcases. He looked at Michael, and found his strength. “But most of all, I am certain, so certain, that you will always be here with me, even when you aren’t. And no matter what, Michael, I will always love you.”

            Michael’s hands clutched to the front of Nick’s tear-stained shirt, and grasped tighter as the words left his lover’s mouth. Ready was a useless word, he would never be ready to leave Nick, to leave life. He would do it of course, he would die soon, and he would be okay. But all he wanted in that moment was to feel something one last time.

            “Nick,” Michael whispered almost inaudibly. Nick responded with another kiss to his hair. “Make love to me,” He almost begged. “Just one last time.”

            And there was no stopping the tears that continued to fall from Nick’s eyes at the thought of one last time. One last time wasn’t enough, one last time was too short, too soon. But one last time was what they had, and one last time was what he was going to give the man he loved.

            Nick gently moved himself to a sitting position, and found Michael’s lips in a kiss that was deep and slow and seemed to never end. Tongues that knew each other well battled as if for the first time and hands that could perfectly map the bodies they were trailing felt every muscle, every dip and turn like it was nothing either of them had ever felt before. Mouth on mouth, hands intertwined with hands, tongues on nipples and necks and stomachs, and it was all so familiar, but all so new.

            After an eternity, when clothes were finally shed and there was nothing more for tongues to taste or hands to feel and all necessary words had been spoken and all necessary glances had been exchanged, Nick reached, one more time, into the drawer in the bedside table and extracted supplies that he’d extracted thousands of times before. His fingers shook and his lips whispered “I love you’s” and “it’s okay’s” and “one last time’s”. Nick stroked Michael’s member slowly, because there was no room for fast just then, as he opened the bottle of lube and warmed some in his hands before entering one, then two, then three fingers into the man whose body he knew so well.

            Another eternity later, Nick began to tear the condom wrapper open. The wrapper to the thing that could that could have prevented all this in the first place, the wrapper to the thing that had kept him safe from an unseen killer for all the years he’d been with Michael. He looked at his lover, eyes open but bloodshot, lips parted but dry, and hands shaking but so desperately wanting, and time stood still. Nick’s hands stopped shaking, his breathing steadied, and all he could feel was love. He looked at the condom for a moment, and then tossed it away, onto the floor, discarded.

            Michael, too weak to protest, too desperate to argue, just smiled. Nick entered Michael slowly, both of them feeling something completely new and uninhibited and stimulating. It was something incredible, and Nick dropped his forehead into the crook of Michael’s neck, sweat mixing with sweat, tears mixing with tears.

            Nick whispered. “Let’s not be afraid.”

           

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            “Do you think this might have been a hate crime?” An older, gray, female doctor asked Nick as he stood in the hallway of Desert Palm hospital with a clipboard in one hand and an evidence kit resting at his feet.

            “Maybe,” Nick responded. “But it seems unusual since the victim is already under hospice care anyway. It’s more likely it’s a crime over life insurance money or something like that. Or perhaps it’s carelessness on the part of one of your staff,” Nick finished blatantly.

            The doctor looked appalled, taking a hand to her chest in a grand, dramatic gesture. “I beg your pardon?” She asked. “My staff is very well trained, they most certainly had nothing to do with this.”

            “Maybe,” Nick shrugged, and finished with an obligatory “Thank you for your time.”

            Nick didn’t make eye contact as he turned and walked away from the still dumfounded doctor, rounding a corner and finding an uncomfortable chair to fall in to. He knew that was out of line, he’d probably get called out on it later. The hospital staff had nothing to do with it. Someone had come into the patient’s room and stabbed him several times in the chest in a futile effort to kill a man near death regardless. The knife had missed all major arteries, and the patient was fine. Well, as fine as one who is dying can be. But nevertheless, the case had gotten to Nick, made him irritable and short-tempered and eager to pin it on anyone, someone. It hit too close to home. The patient, a middle-aged man with no family sitting around his bed grieving for him, was dying of AIDS. It stung Nick like someone was mocking him, like God himself was playing cruel tricks.

A nurse had gathered all the evidence from the man himself, much to Nick’s pleasing, and all he’d had to do was interview potential witnesses and review surveillance tapes. It would be an easy case to close, and Nick could have gone back to the lab, processed his evidence, found the perpetrator, presented it to Grissom on a silver platter, and gone home. But he didn’t. Instead, he tracked down the victim’s room number, and he stood outside, staring through the glass diving him from a thin, dying man hooked up to several machines, and he watched for hours. Watched labored breaths and fluttering eyelids, watched from a distance as nurses and occasional visitors who didn’t stay long and one Doctor Shelby Fox, the very woman keeping his own boyfriend alive, maneuvered in and out of the room, toying with machines and taking vital signs and doing everything they possible could do.

 

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Michael died, and Nick had been there. Not in the room, not with Michael’s family, not close enough to hear the ragged, short, labored breaths or the buzzing of sterile medical equipment.

Instead he’d sat in the lobby many doors down from his room at the large, sour-smelling hospice center. It smelled like death. He sat with his head between his legs, lost in something that didn’t quite yet feel like grief. Doctors, nurses, caregivers of all kinds swarmed around him, and they all knew why he was there. They’d seen hundreds if not thousands of Nick’s, hundreds if not thousands of overwhelmed family members, friends, lovers, soulmates. They knew not to touch him or speak to him or offer condolences, they knew what he needed. They knew that, just for a while, he needed to be caught in a world where Michael was healthy, where he was alive and brimming with spirit, where he was the person Nick really, really wanted him to be again. Michael would never be that person again, but he clung to the memories like the very machines barely keeping him alive. And like the machines that stopped beeping when they were disconnected and like the ragged breaths that eventually stopped all together and like the color that drained from a once beautiful face, Nick shut his eyes, forced out those memories, and said goodbye.

 

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When Shelby Fox exited the room of one of her patients, one of the unlucky ones who was, as eventually happens with all, succumbing to his disease, she noticed someone. A man, standing with his arms crossed protectively over his chest, many yards away from the patient’s room. He looked familiar, a boyfriend of one of her patients, she remembered, and it took her a minute to recall his name. She did, of course, she was good with names. She remembered everyone. 

But as Shelby looked at him, she couldn’t look away. He looked untouchable, unsaveable, so completely lost in grief that couldn’t be placed that it almost seemed there was a thin glass film dividing him from the rest of the world.

            She walked over to him slowly and stood beside him, a foot or two away, careful not to break that glass film. She crossed her arms over her chest and he watched the hospital workers through the glass panes surrounding the sterile hospital room. She watched with him. They stood in silence for many moments, just watching, before either one of them spoke.

            “Is this what they’re all like?” A wary Nick asked her in a very small, very wounded voice.

            Shelby took a deep breath, she pulled her thoughts together. “Nick, you know as well as I that the final moments of anyone’s life aren’t pleasant. All it is is the heart slowing down and the organs giving way and short breaths of air…” She looked over at him. His expression hadn’t changed. She wasn’t giving him what he needed, she wasn’t telling him what he needed to hear, and she knew it.

She placed a comforting hand on his forearm, gathered her thoughts, and let out a breath. “But yes,” She whispered. “Eventually…they are all like this.”

Nick let a tear fall; for that truth, for the man dying in the room in front of him, for a man he lost many years ago and the man he might lose at some point in the future. And then, eventually, he took a slow breath through his nostrils, let it out, and went home to the man he had then, in that moment. The man who was alive and well. The man who, yes, would die. Eventually. Eventually his disease would overtake him. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d get cancer or be in a car accident or his luck would run out and an accident at work would claim him. Maybe Nick would die first. Maybe they’d both be old and gray and using bibs to eat before either one of them gave in to death. Or maybe it would be tomorrow. He didn’t know, and it didn’t matter, because they had then, they had that moment. And that was enough.

 

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            Nick smiled at himself in the mirror as he moved his tie a little more to the left, deciding it was centered once and for all. He didn’t look half bad in a suit, he thought. Perhaps it was a look he should try more often.

            He glanced at his watch; 7:33. Greg would meet him outside the stratosphere on the strip in twenty-seven minutes, and Nick knew he would be nervous. Who knew what Greg thought was going on, perhaps he actually assumed Nick would be taking him out for a classic Las Vegas evening. But surely two and a half years of dating and Greg would know better than that, know that Nick was more the secluded parked car with a great view type than the dinner and dancing type. Nick had planned to take Greg to a spot he’d discovered several years ago, just after he’d moved to Vegas, with an incredible view of the city and romantic charm to go around, and they would eat and drink wine and share kisses. And the Nick would propose. Because he’d wanted to for, oh, about two and a half years. Because Greg wanted it too. Because they wanted to consider starting a family of their own. Because they were in love, and Nick wanted to show Greg just how much.

            And then there was a small party, assuming Greg said yes, at Catherine’s house. She’d offered to throw it after she discovered Nick’s plan to propose, and news had traveled quickly around the lab. It was somewhat of a miracle that Greg didn’t know what was happening already, though maybe he did. All their friends, the ones who had been so supportive when it did finally come out that Nick and Greg were dating, would be there to help them celebrate. Work friends, personal friends, Shelby, even some family members.

            Oh yes, Nick had been planning the evening forever, and he was expecting perfection. Of course, as long as Greg said yes, perfection wouldn’t be hard to come by.

            Nick took one last glance at himself, and opened the medicine cabinet to locate the ring he’d hidden inside a bottle of multivitamins (somewhere Greg would never look). He found the ring and rolled it in his fingers a few times before placing the empty bottle back on the shelf.

            His eye caught a glimpse of something; a tinted, orange prescription pill bottle. Greg’s pills, the ones that he took every day, twice a day. The ones that staved off the potentially horrid affects of a definitively horrid disease. The ones that kept him alive.

            Nick just smiled at the lone pill bottle, and he closed the cabinet.   

 

 

 

A/N: The title for this story is taken from two song titles: “Never Too Late” by The Rescues, and “Not Too Late” by Norah Jones. You should probably look both of them up, you know, if you like good music. ;) Thanks for reading, everyone!

Comments

[maldeluxx.livejournal.com]

I love this ending - there's sadness, but there's also love and hope and optimism. Lovely :) <3<3

[rhianona]

I enjoyed reading this. I think you did a nice job of juxtaposing the two romances in Nick's life. There is a lot of positive hope in this, and it's nice to read. Nicely done.

[cindyls1969.livejournal.com]

Beautiful story. Thank you so much for this caring, respectful, loving point of view!!!

[burrollie.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful story! Everyone else's comments sum up exactly what I want to say.

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful story!