nickngreg | "Seasons" (Nick/Greg, 2/4)

Well, thank you all for the lovely feedback on the first chapter – nice to know I’m not the only one with a thing for angst. And without further ado…

Title – Seasons, part two

Author -

black_dahlia63

Character – Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, various OC’s.

Rating – PG13. Sorry ‘bout that.

Warnings – *MAJOR KLEENEX ALERT*

Thanks go to my wonderful baby bro Michael for medical input. Even if I did say I’d “tell him later” when he asked what kind of story I was writing. Heh. Also, kudos to the brilliant

dagdrommer for beta assistance and for helping me over the language barrier again.

part one here…

Disclaimer – not mine. If they were…well, we won’t discuss that.*snerk*

“Du trenger ikke å gjøre dette.” You don’t have to do this.

“Jo, det gjør jeg, mamma.” Yes, I do, mom, Greg said, and he managed to smile despite the lump in his throat – because he knew she was right, he didn’t have to do this. He could let his parents stay, and it would be easy to do it because if he was honest with himself the thought of going through this without them scared him – but he wanted his life back, and if he was going to get it

(can you have it back, though? Can you really?)

he had to let them go home. He let his parents hug him one after the other, saw the tears in his mother’s eyes and felt his throat tighten; he heard his father say that their flight was boarding, they’d have to go, and he watched them walk towards the security screen hand in hand – and it was the sight of this, more than anything else, that broke his heart.

“You okay?” a familiar voice said behind him. “Want to go grab a coffee? You look like you could use one.”

“I’m fine,” he said, the words clipped as he struggled with the emotion swirling in his head. “Can we just go? Please?”

*******

“Looks like that’s done,” Catherine said as the two of them left the courthouse. “Till he appeals, anyway,” and she watched as her companion removed his tie and crammed it into his jacket pocket. “You want to grab some lunch before we go and see Greg?”

“Robin probably cooked,” Nick said, manufacturing a smile even as his throat tightened involuntarily. “You know how she is.”

“You’re led around by your stomach,” Catherine told him, and when a cell phone shrilled the two of them automatically reached into their pockets. “It’s mine,” she said. “Hello? Yes, it is,” and Nick saw her eyebrows draw together. “What? Well, is she running a fever? It might just be - no, ma’am, I’ll be there as soon as I can – yes, thank you,” she said, snapping her cell closed again. “Nick, you’re on your own today, Lindsey threw up at school and I have to go and collect her,” and she began walking swiftly in the direction of her car. “I knew she shouldn’t have had that fifth slice of pizza last night, but she wouldn’t listen…”

“Cath, drive me as far as the lab, would you, so I can get my truck and go home?” Nick said, still keeping the artificial smile on his face. “Greg won’t need anyone visiting him today, his folks just left to go back home -”

“That’s why he will need someone there.”

“He’s got…”

“He needs a friend,” Catherine interrupted, raising one eyebrow. “Anyone would think you were afraid to go and see him on your own,” and she fished her car keys from her purse. “Call a cab and get your ass over there.” She unlocked her car and got into the driver’s seat without another word, her face creased with concern for her daughter – and then almost before he realized what was happening, Nick was alone in the parking lot with the thought that his colleague had been right.

He was afraid, but she would never have guessed the reason why.

*********

This was one symbol of how everything had changed; he’d always been able to just walk in to Greg’s old building, because the lock on the lobby door had hardly ever worked, but now he was faced with a keypad and a video monitor. Taking a deep breath, he tapped in a series of numbers, and after a short pause a familiar voice said, “Hello?”

“It’s me – uh – Nick,” he said, hating how awkward he sounded as he looked into the tiny screen. “If this isn’t a good time…”

“Get your butt in here,” was the immediate response, followed by a short laugh, and then the sound of the buzzer echoed in his ears; he pulled the outer door open, his limbs unwilling to move at more than a snail’s pace, and he crossed the spotlessly-carpeted lobby where a uniformed man eyed him as he passed on his way to the stairs. Two flights instead of the six he’d had to take previously, because the elevator in Greg’s old building had worked just about as often as the lock on the lobby door, and then he was outside an immaculately-painted front door which was opened before he could ring the bell.

“Looking good, Nick.”

“How is he?”

“You can ask him yourself in a minute,” and Robin stepped aside to let him into the apartment. “On your own today?”

“Yeah,” Nick replied. “Catherine was coming with me, but her daughter got sick at school.”

“Well, take that jacket off – or aren’t you stopping long enough?” and the expression that flickered in grey eyes heavily outlined in black gave Nick the uncomfortable feeling that Robin could tell exactly what he’d been thinking before he reached the apartment. “Greg! Someone here to see you!” she yelled along the hallway, and she turned back towards Nick as he was hanging his jacket over one of the hooks on the back of the door. “Come on into the kitchen, he won’t be long.”

***********

“I brought lunch, do you want some?” Robin asked. “It’s gumbo, there’s enough for three.”

“That’d be good,” Nick said as he sat at the kitchen table and watched the young woman with jet-black hair remove a Tupperware box from the fridge. “I didn’t think you were supposed to cook as well as…”

“I’m not,” Robin said, her lips quirking into a smile. “I think he’d just live on junk food if someone didn’t, though,” and she slid the container into the microwave. “Been in court today? Never saw you in a suit before.”

“Yeah, I have,” Nick said. “It was -” and then before he could say anything else he heard it – the soft mechanical whirring, the biggest sign of all that everything had changed, the sound that cut a little deeper into his heart every time he heard it – and he swallowed down the lump in his throat and pasted a smile on his face as he looked round to the kitchen doorway.

“Hey, G.”

**************

“I’m gonna have to go,” Robin said, pushing her chair back and rising to her feet. “My three o’clock’s always on the phone to the office if I’m not there five minutes before I’m supposed to be – you need anything before I leave, Greg?”

“I’ll be fine,” was Greg’s response. “Got Nick here, haven’t I?” and while his smile didn’t falter, there was something in his eyes for just a second that Nick had seen before – the same expression that had been in them when Greg had looked up at him from a bed in Desert Palms and whispered a handful of words laden with panicky breathlessness.

“I can’t feel my legs, Nick…

“…sorry, what?” Nick asked, vaguely aware that words had been spoken in his direction. “Did you say something?”

“I said I’d see you soon, Nick,” Robin said, an amused tone in her voice. “Does he always talk this much, Greg?” and she picked up the coat she’d left slung over one of the kitchen chairs. It was black, ankle-length and fastened down the front with a series of buckles; just about every piece of clothing Nick had seen her wearing beneath her lavender scrubs during the previous month seemed to be made by Tripp, and he’d often asked himself what Robin’s older clients must make of this. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Same time, same place,” Nick heard Greg say; moments later, the front door of the apartment opened and then closed again, and the two of them were alone for the first time since before Christmas. “Nick, you want some coffee?”

“That’d be good.”

“No, stay there, I’ve got it,” Greg said when Nick tried to get up, and the mechanical whirring echoed in the kitchen as he maneuvered his wheelchair away from the table.

Nick watched as a kettle was switched on and two mugs were produced from one of the cupboards, and he thought about how it used to be when he wound up at Greg’s previous apartment after a shift. He’d invariably had to move clothes before he could sit on the couch, and he’d lost count of the number of times that Greg had needed to search the apartment for mugs that needed to be washed before the two of them could have coffee; making that coffee had meant negotiating the chaos of the kitchen, and more often than not one of them had needed to leave the apartment again because the only milk in the fridge was so far past its sell-by date that it had become a science project…

“How was court?” Greg asked, breaking the silence as he spooned instant coffee into the mugs. “Did they convict him?”

“Yeah, they did,” Nick said, once he had taken a deep breath and composed himself. “Well, Catherine said it’s done until the guy appeals, you know how it goes.”

“You didn’t want to come and see me on your own, did you?”

“What?” he said, startled. “No, I…”

“You can’t even look at me when you speak to me,” Greg said as he reached for the kettle. “Even when you come with one of the others you hardly say a word, it’s like you can’t wait to leave,” and he set the kettle down on the counter again with more force than was necessary. “I’ve had mom and dad fussing over me, I’ve – Mack hasn’t been to see me after that one time in the hospital,” and as he heard the name of Greg’s last boyfriend, Nick felt the knife twist a little deeper in his heart. “I said to myself, not Nick, Nick’s the one person who’s going to treat me like the old Greg, but you can’t, can you?” Greg went on. “I’m still the same person, Nick, I thought you’d realize that.”

“G, listen -”

“You should go,” Greg said, and the smile that had been on his face had disappeared. “I’ll be okay on my own.”

“This is stupid…”

“No, I’ll tell you what’s stupid,” was Greg’s response, and he continued speaking as Nick sat stunned into speechlessness. “Stupid is some idiot who gets a Hummer for Christmas and hits the side of the cab I’m in the first time he takes it out, and he gets away with a broken wrist while I get to spend the rest of my life in this!” and he slammed a hand against the side of his wheelchair. “I can’t keep my car, I have to get a specially adapted one if I want to drive now,” he went on. “I can’t go running with you after work any longer - wait a second, Nick, work? You think I’m ever gonna get out in the field now? No, I get to be the gimp in the lab from now on, don’t I? People either make a fuss of me or they feel sorry for me, my boyfriend – well, I can forget about him,” and Greg’s voice became more strained with every word. “I have to use a catheter every time I want to take a piss, nothing works down there now – he’d be nuts to stick around, wouldn’t he? And the last thing I want is to see my best friend sitting looking at me and feeling like he wants to be somewhere else!”

That isn’t true, Nick said silently, and he thought about all the times he’d been to visit Greg in the hospital and in this apartment where everything was white and seemed almost exactly like the room at Desert Palms; he thought of all the things he’d wanted to say and hadn’t been able to, because there’d always been somebody else there - and because it would have meant telling Greg something he’d kept to himself for years.

He felt the same way that he’d done for longer than he wanted to think about, and he still couldn’t say it – not even now.

“Go home, Nick,” Greg said, the words delivered in a near-whisper, and Nick shoved his chair back; he didn’t speak, because he didn’t trust his voice in this moment, and the few yards to the front door of the apartment seemed to stretch into miles.

********

Greg listened to the front door clicking shut, and it was only then that it dawned on him – this was the first time since the accident that he was alone. There’d been the ambulance, then the hospital with its endless parade of doctors and nurses and visitors who didn’t have any idea what to say to him…but god, he’d seen the same look in the eyes of so many of these people, the look that said they were glad it wasn’t them. His parents had flown in the day after he’d been admitted, his mother weeping steadily and his father white-faced; he’d held his own tears in check, though, even when the doctor had appeared at his bedside and he’d known just by the taut expression on the man’s face that he was never going to walk again.

T 5 complete. That handful of letters defining the rest of his life, the term that looked so clinical on doctor’s notes and the papers he’d had to sign for the insurance company of the man whose Hummer had hit the cab – the papers that had furnished him with the money to buy this apartment, to hire the nurse who came in every day, to make sure he would be secure for the rest of his life. But it also meant no chance of going out in the field, of fulfilling the ambition he’d had to do what Warrick and Catherine and everyone else on the team did. No running with Nick, no Friday and Saturday nights in the handful of bars and clubs where he wound down after a grueling week’s work; but it was the memory of someone’s hands on him, the warm boneless tangle of limbs on a morning when he didn’t have to get up and start a shift, that was making his throat tighten now – because the idea that for the rest of his life he was going to be alone, trapped by a body that didn’t work because of what someone else had done, made the years ahead of him seem endless.

And the one person he’d thought would understand how he felt had just left, because he’d told them to.

Grabbing one of the mugs, he flung it across the kitchen to shatter against the wall and send shards of red china flying everywhere. He stared at the coffee as it ran down the white tile, and then he let his head drop into his hands; and now that he was alone, when there was nobody to sit and tell him everything would be all right, he let the tears come.

*********

The sound of his cell ringing woke Nick from a fitful sleep, and he scrubbed the heel of one hand into each eye in turn as he swept the other across his nightstand in search of the phone. “Hello?” he mumbled, praying that it wasn’t Grissom asking him to come in and work; he’d finished a double shift two hours before going to court, and the last thing he wanted was to see the inside of the lab again a second before he had to.

“Nick?”

“G?” he said, his eyes opening instantly despite his exhaustion. “Something wrong, man?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“Never mind that,” he said, something knotting in his gut as he spoke. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t sleep,” was the answer. “It’s been months since I’ve had to go to sleep without anyone else around, and I just – Nick, I’m sorry about what I said this afternoon, okay?”

“Shut up about this afternoon,” he said quietly. “Do you want me to come over?”

********************

Nick stood in the kitchen doorway, looking at the fragments of red china on the floor and the rivulets of coffee that had dried on the wall, and then he turned towards Greg; the younger man had changed into grey sweatpants and a black T shirt bearing a logo that was too faded to be legible, the short sleeves of the shirt only half-hiding the scar that had been left on his right arm. A faint shadow of beard stood out on an unnaturally pale face, and there were dark pouches under his eyes; he opened his mouth as though he were about to speak, but closed it again when Nick shook his head.

“It’s starting to look the way your old place used to,” he said, seeing a smile wash across Greg’s lips and then disappear as quickly as it had come. “I’ll get it cleaned up, you go into the living room – did you eat supper?” and Greg’s only response was to shake his head. “I’ll make you something,” he said, holding up a hand when Greg opened his mouth again. “Go on, I won’t be long.”

*************

Nick heated up some soup, decanting it into a pair of bowls which he carried into the living room; the two of them drank in silence, and it was only when they had both finished that Greg finally spoke. “I kick you out of my apartment, and then you’re the only person I can think of to call in the middle of the night,” he said, his voice quiet and colorless. “Pretty stupid, huh.”

“No, man, it’s not,” Nick said, staring down at his hands. “I – uh – I don’t want to be somewhere else, I just don’t know what to say to you,” and he sighed gently, knowing that if anything was true it was this. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do…”

“I’m still me, Nick, treat me the same way you did before this happened,” was the response. “Everyone looks at me like they feel sorry for me,” and Greg’s voice faltered. “I don’t want people feeling sorry for me, I want my life back,” he managed to say, and then there was a choked sob that broke Nick’s heart. He reached over the end of the couch, encountering no resistance when he put his arms carefully round his friend and let him cry; and he closed his eyes as he let his chin rest on Greg’s bowed head, the secret he still kept now seeming like the highest barrier in the world.

To be continued