Seasons(Nick/Greg, 3/4)
Mar. 4th, 2007 09:25 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
snow-white.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
nickngregTitle – Seasons, part 3 of 4
Characters – Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, various OC’s
Rating – PG13
Warning – you’ll want Kleenex. I “broke Greg”, as someone said when they read the previous instalment.
Disclaimer – Not mine. I wish.
You can find previous parts here…and sorry this one’s taken so long to reach you.
A week of working nights had left him so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, but even though he could have been in bed an hour since Nick was still awake. He could never settle if he had something on his mind, and he’d been this way ever since he was a kid; every so often his mother would re-tell the story of nights when she’d found him awake at two or three in the morning, fretting over a piece of homework that wasn’t even due for another few days – and he would laugh dutifully along, with anyone else who was in earshot at the time, when she would smile and mimic his voice as it had sounded all those years ago. “But mom, I can’t go to sleep till I get this right…”
But it wasn’t the same this time, because he doubted that his mother would smile if she knew the reason he couldn’t sleep now. He thought of all the times he’d wanted to tell her, wanted to put an end to the secret that had eaten him up for more than twenty years; but he’d never managed to do it, because however much he’d needed to talk to her, the fear that she would react in the way he knew his father would had forced him to keep silent…
Could he do this? Could he maintain the charade, no matter how much he wanted things to be different?
This isn’t about what you want now, he told himself then, and before he could stop himself he’d flipped open his cell and dialled his parents’ number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Cisco.”
“Pancho!” his father cried, pleasure evident in the single word. “How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“You sound tired – still on nights?”
“Just finished a week of them,” Nick said, his ears picking up the sound of a Dallas radio station at the other end of the phone; he pictured his father, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, listening to the local news the way he always did before he left the ranch in the mornings. “Listen, I – well, I need a favour.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I was wondering if I could bring someone up to the ranch,” Nick said, quailing inwardly as he spoke – because he was virtually certain of what his father’s reaction would be, and he wasn’t disappointed.
“So that’s why we haven’t seen you up here in ages!” and the words were followed by a familiar chuckle. “Who have you been hiding from us?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Nick told his father, hoping fervently that he was keeping his voice even. “You remember Greg?”
“The young man who works with you in the lab,” was the immediate response, reminding Nick once again of his father’s scarily acute memory. “He was in an accident at Christmas, wasn’t he? How is he doing?”
“I don’t think he’s doing too well,” Nick replied, clenching his free hand so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. “He wants everyone to think he is, but he isn’t,” and he sighed quietly. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask, bringing some stranger out there, but I -”
“When were you thinking of setting this up?”
“I wanted to run it past you first,” Nick said. “He’s back in the lab, but only two days a week – he gets tired, you know?” and he swallowed hard before he went on speaking. “I don’t think he’s ready to be back at all yet, but hey – I’m not his shrink, what do I know about it? Ah, I’m sorry, Cisco, I wasn’t going to unload on you this early in the morning.”
“Will you stop apologising?” his father chided, but there was gruff affection in the words that made Nick’s eyes sting. “You’ve always looked out for your friends, it’s the way your mother and I raised you – when were you thinking of doing this?”
As soon as I talk Greg into it, Nick thought, but what he said aloud was, “Well, it doesn’t really matter – I’ve got weeks of vacation time saved up, and Grissom keeps telling me I ought to take some of it…”
********
“You look half dead,” Greg said when he opened the door to let Nick into his apartment late that afternoon. “Have you slept?”
“Yeah, I have,” Nick told him, recalling the few hours of fitful sleep that had followed the call to his father. “It’s just been a long week, you know?”
“Coffee?”
“That’d be good,” he said, following Greg into the kitchen. “I was talking to my dad this morning – what?” he asked, as his ears picked up a chuckle. “What’s so funny?”
“Well, I know why you’re so tired now,” Greg said, running water into a pitcher before pouring it into the coffee maker. “What was he after this time?”
“I called him, actually,” Nick replied as he sat at the kitchen table. “I’ve been thinking about going out to the ranch for a week or two.”
“Grissom’s been on at you again, hasn’t he?” A canister was removed from the freezer, and Greg spooned coffee into the filter. “How much vacation time do you have stashed, anyway? You never seem to do anything with it.”
“I thought you might want to come out there with me.”
“No.”
“G, I -”
“No, Nick, okay? Just drop it,” Greg said, and since he was turned in the opposite direction Nick couldn’t see his face; neither of them spoke for a while, and eventually the silence was broken by a sigh from Greg that pulled at something inside Nick’s chest. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to snap,” he said softly. “I talked to my dad this morning too,” and he took two mugs from one of the cupboards. “He -”
“Hold on,” Nick said, taking in the taut set of the younger man’s upper body and guessing the reason for it. “Coffee first, and then you can fill me in.”
********
“He was telling me about this house he and mom went to look at,” Greg said, once the pot of coffee had been emptied. “Told me it’s because neither of them are getting any younger, Nick, but I know that isn’t what they were really looking at it for,” and he stared down at the spotless surface of the table. “He said why didn’t I go out there for a few days, have a look and tell them what I thought of it…”
“You think they’re still trying to get you to move out there, don’t you?”
“I know they are,” Greg said, knotting his hands together as he spoke. “Well, mom is, and when it comes to me she always manages to talk dad round, you know?” Another silence followed, during which he picked at the quick of one of his fingernails, and his eyes were shadowed. “Why do you think I wanted to stay here for my rehab, Nick? Why do you think I haven’t been back to visit them since all this happened?” he went on, his voice wavering as he went on speaking. “I love my folks, but I’m afraid if I go out there I won’t come back.” He let his head fall forward, his hands coming up to cover his face - and although this was done in complete silence it still cut into Nick’s heart, deepening a wound that had been opened the day he’d received the phone call telling him about the accident.
It had been more than three months since that night when Greg had given in and wept, and if there’d been tears since then Nick hadn’t been a witness to them. He’d seen the younger man overtaken by a fierce determination, a determination that had made him work out at the gym until his face was flushed and he was dripping sweat; he’d watched Greg in the lab, pushing himself to keep working even when the exhaustion that took hold far too soon put dark pouches beneath his eyes. The wisecracks had begun to come back, but to Nick it was as though Greg’s body had been taken over by someone else…someone who might say and do what everyone expected, but who couldn’t be the real Greg – because every so often the mask would slip, for just a second or two, and Nick would catch a glimpse of the Greg who’d whispered from a hospital bed that he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Have you tried talking to her about it?”
“No,” Greg said, finally raising his head. “It’s been like this my whole life, man, the slightest thing – I’m all she’s got, she’s never really taken the cotton wool off, and now -” he broke off to gesture at the wheelchair, which now bore a sticker saying The Whole World’s Going To Hell And I’m Driving The Bus “–now I’m in this she wants to suffocate me, you honestly think I can talk to her?” and he went back to picking at his fingernail again. “And you know what, Nick? When I think about what the rest of my life’s gonna be like, it’d be easy to let her suffocate me, but it scares me too much to think that all I’ve got to look forward to is my parents fussing over me.” He lowered his head again, letting out another deep, ragged sigh. “Damn, Nick, I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”
Nothing’s wrong with you, Nick thought, you just need to stop carrying this by yourself, but what he said aloud was, “You wouldn’t need to worry about that with my folks,” and he waited for Greg to look at him before he went on speaking. “They don’t suffocate anybody, there were too many of us at home for that,” he said. “Mom would probably want to fatten you up, but -”
“- how long have the rest of you been trying to? I know,” was the answer, accompanied by a feeble half-smile. “I just – your folks have never met me, Nick -”
“No, but you’re a friend of mine, and that’s good enough for them,” Nick said, seeing something spark briefly in Greg’s eyes. “Yeah, I sounded them out about it, that’s why I called home this morning,” he went on. “I think you need to get out of Vegas, G, even if all you do is sleep and eat when you get there, but I’m not going to push you into anything,” and the need to unburden himself of the secret that lay over his heart like lead had never been stronger, but he swallowed it back the way he had done for so long now. “You think about it and let me know, okay?” he said, pushing his chair back. “Shall I make some more coffee?”
“I thought I’d order pizza,” Greg said, once he’d glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Want to stay and share it, or have you got somewhere else you need to be?”
“No, I don’t have anywhere else I need to be,” Nick replied. “I signed my life over to Grissom when I started working for him, we all did,” and the quip was rewarded by a smile – one that lasted mere seconds, but for these brief moments Nick saw the real Greg, and the weight over his heart was lifted.
********
“Nick’s going to visit his folks in Dallas.”
“Oh?”
“He asked if I wanted to go with him,” Greg went on. “He thinks I need to get out of Vegas.”
“I think you do too,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what you used to be like, but you’re going to drop if you keep pushing yourself the way you are now,” and she fixed black-rimmed eyes on him as she spoke. “If I was him I wouldn’t ask you whether you wanted to go, I’d put you in a car and take you.”
“Anything else you want to share?” Greg asked, raising a brow, but he was unable to prevent himself smiling, because the previous months had taught him that Robin would always say what was on her mind; she only came once a week now that Greg was more independent, and the visits had become more like meetings between old friends than patient and client.
“Just that you need to start separating your clothes before you wash them,” was the response, and Robin held up a previously white T shirt that was now splotched with red. “Didn’t your mom teach you anything?”
“She gave up on that,” Greg told her. “And you don’t have to do my laundry for me.”
“Well, you can’t go out wearing that, can you?” she said smartly. “So, when are you going out there?”
“I don’t think I can,” Greg said, propelling himself towards the fridge to get a drink. “You want a Coke?”
“I want you to stop changing the subject,” Robin told him as she began pairing up socks. “Why don’t you think you can?”
“Well, for one, their house…”
“Greg, even for you that’s a weak excuse,” and when he looked at her she was shaking her head. “His folks know about what happened, right? Then they’ll know there are ways to work around it, won’t they? You’ve got to get back out in the big bad world sometime.”
“I’m back at work,” he said, popping the tab on his can of Coke and trying to keep the defensiveness from his voice. “I go out…”
“With people from work,” was the immediate answer. “You used to have a life outside work before the accident, didn’t you? What’s happened to it?”
“I don’t need it,” he said, swivelling away so she wouldn’t see his face. “Can you see me going to a bar in this thing?”
“Other people manage it.”
“There isn’t any point, Robin,” he told her. “Not in the kind of places I used to go to.”
“You can’t just shut that side of yourself off, you know,” and Robin went on speaking even though he didn’t look round. “You’ve still got feelings, Greg – what the hell did I say now?” she said when he was unable to hold back a snort of laughter despite the tightness in his throat.
“I never really worried about feelings,” he said, staring at a spot on the kitchen wall as he spoke. “The guy I was with right before the accident? I’d been seeing him for just over a month, and that’s pretty much the longest I was ever with anybody – it was just – look, can we talk about something else?”
“Not everybody’s just after sex,” was the answer, and when his head snapped round he saw crimson-slicked lips twitching into a smile. “This is me you’re talking to here, Greg,” Robin added. “I’ve been in your spare room, remember?” and he cringed inwardly at the memory of the afternoon shortly after he’d moved in when he hadn’t been able to find one of his PlayStation games. “Try the box nearest the door in the spare room,” he’d said when Robin had offered to help him look for it, and after several minutes of silence had elapsed he’d gone down the hall to find her looking into the black nylon bag where he’d kept his toy collection. “I think I opened the wrong box here,” she’d told him, and after they’d looked at each other for a split second she’d burst out laughing. “You know what?” she said now. “If you and I batted for the same team, I’d go out with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you,” was the answer. “You’re funny, you’re a smartass…”
“People aren’t going to see that, though, are they?” he said, once he’d taken a swig of Coke to buy himself time. “They’ll just see this,” and he nodded down at his wheelchair. “Only half of me works, I’m not going to be able to give a guy what he needs -”
“Stubborn, too,” Robin said, rolling her eyes. “You’re seriously going to shut yourself off the rest of your life?”
“I’m not going to keep looking for something I won’t get, if that’s what you mean,” he told her. “You want to stay for lunch?”
“On one condition.”
“What?”
“Call Nick and tell him you’ll go to Dallas with him,” and Robin held a hand up to silence Greg when he opened his mouth to speak. “Bake in the sun, eat some decent food, get some of this nonsense out of your head,” she added, placing the heap of folded clothes in a basket. “People want to help you, Greg, stop trying to fight them off.”
“I’ll call him later,” Greg told her, knowing instinctively that she wouldn’t be satisfied with this answer – and when Robin folded her arms and set her mouth in a line, he knew he’d been right.
“You call him now.”
**********
A week later
“You need to make a stop before we leave here?” Nick asked, stowing the keys in his pocket as the two of them moved away from the car rental counter; he’d fended off his parents’ attempt to come to the airport, guessing that Greg wouldn’t want any more “fuss” made than necessary. “Shall I get us some coffee for the journey?”
“That’d be good,” Greg said, and the faint tone in which the words were delivered made Nick look at him closely; the younger man’s face was pale and drawn, and he was squinting against the fluorescent lights.
“You okay, G?”
“Just a headache.”
“You got your meds with you?” Nick asked, and the question was met with a nod. “Come on over here,” and he pushed the luggage trolley in the direction of the nearby Starbucks outlet as Greg followed in his wake; fishing in his pocket for his wallet, he ordered two coffees, one of them with a double shot of espresso. He handed this one over, watching as Greg shook a couple of pills from a small plastic container and chased them down with some of the paper cup’s contents. “Better?”
“The lights are too bright in here,” Greg muttered, as though this sign of weakness was a source of embarrassment. “Which way do we go now?”
“Follow me,” Nick said, mustering a smile, and he led the way towards the exit; he’d seen Greg in the grip of these headaches before, mostly while he’d been back at the lab following the accident - and while he was no analyst, Nick was fairly certain that the cause was not altogether physical.
And he wasn’t sure that what he was doing was going to make things any better, because he wasn’t a shrink who knew how to fix these things - but he had to try.
*************
He pulled the rented van up outside the ranch, the country music station dying abruptly as the engine was turned off, and then Nick turned to look at his passenger. Greg was asleep, his head tilted to one side, and a lock of hair had fallen across his forehead; Nick was seized by a compulsion to reach up and smooth it back, and as he clenched his fist against his thigh he felt a familiar ache wash through him.
“Nick?” Greg mumbled, groggy with sleep, and his eyes blinked several times before opening fully. “This it?”
“Yeah, we’re here,” Nick told him, slowly unclenching his hand again. “I’ll go and get your wheels out,” and he unfastened his seatbelt before opening the driver’s side door. He vaulted out and moved to the back of the van, where he opened the door and lifted the wheelchair out; he pushed it round to the passenger side, making sure it was still switched to manual, and then he opened the passenger side door.
He’d lost count of how many times he’d done this over the preceding months, but it never hurt him any less – Greg’s arm snaking round his neck, the muscles taut because working out had increased the younger man’s upper body strength like Nick wouldn’t have believed, and then the warm dead weight that never failed to break his heart as he lifted Greg down and into the wheelchair. He swallowed the pain, though, the way he’d become so used to doing, and he heard himself asking Greg how his headache was; there was an answer of better, and as he moved towards the house he caught sight of the wide piece of wood that had been laid against the porch steps to create a makeshift ramp. “Right behind you,” he said to Greg, and the two of them made their way in the direction of the sloping piece of wood; stepping behind the wheelchair, he watched it move slowly up the ramp, and out of the corner of his eye he got a glimpse of a curtain twitching in one of the second floor windows.
The moment both of them were up on the porch, the front door opened, and the tightness around Nick’s heart loosened when he came face to face with his mother; he stepped forward, a grin spreading across his face, and he was drawn into her arms for a hug that lasted a long time before the two of them broke apart again. “Good to see you, mom,” he said, stepping to one side. “This is Greg.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Greg said, extending a hand. “Thank you for -”
“No, there won’t be any of that,” Nick’s mother interrupted as she shook Greg’s hand. “You call me Jillian – how was your journey?”
“It was good,” Greg said, taking in the friendly smile and the face patterned with soft wrinkles. “Thank you.”
“Well, come on inside, I’ll show you where your room is,” was the answer. “Nick’s going to bring the bags in, aren’t you, Nick? You follow me, Greg.”
********
“I hope this is going to be all right for you,” Nick’s mother said. “It’s been a storage room for years, so I had a reason to sort through some junk when Nick told me you were coming.”
“It’ll be fine,” Greg told her, taking in the yellow walls that were dotted with black and white photos. A double bed, the frame made from dark wood, stood by the window that looked out over the wide expanse of back yard; the only other piece of furniture in the room was a small dresser, made from the same wood as the bed, which looked as though it could easily have been an antique. “This was a storage room?”
“Well, it was a study and then a bedroom before it was storage,” was the answer. “My mom lived here for nearly ten years before she passed away,” and there was a gentle sadness in Jillian’s eyes. “She had arthritis, about as badly as someone can have it, so we put a bathroom in on this floor and then she didn’t have to climb any stairs. The bathroom’s just along the hall,” she went on, pointing to the left of the doorway, “and if you have any trouble managing, you let us know.” There was a short silence as he was studied by kind eyes that were so like Nick’s, and then Jillian sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now, my son’s told me not to fuss over you or give you the third degree, Greg, so I’m not going to,” she said, a smile hovering on her lips. “I’ll tell you what I’ve told every friend he’s ever brought here since he was little – this is your home while you’re here, and you shout if you need anything, okay?” and he nodded. “Well, Nick’s father ought to be home in an hour or so, and then we’ll have supper – do you eat steak?”
“He eats anything,” a voice said from the doorway, and Nick walked in with a bag in each hand. “You’re not interrogating him, are you, mom?”
“No, I’m not,” Jillian said good-naturedly, rising to her feet. “You told me not to, didn’t you? Come and start the barbecue for me, Nick, you know I can never manage to do it the way you and your dad do it.”
“G? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “You go help your mom, I just need a few minutes.”
“Come on in the kitchen when you’re ready, we’ll have a beer,” was the response, and Greg watched as Nick and his mother left the room. Once the door had closed behind them, he manoeuvred his wheelchair across the room until he was next to the bed; setting his hands on the edge of the mattress, he hauled himself onto the bed – something which had been hard for him to do months previously, but which a combination of working out and the nagging of countless physiotherapists had made much easier - and rolled until he was lying at its centre. He stared up at the ceiling, half-hypnotized by the fan that circled there, his ears picking up indistinct voices outside the window; just a few minutes, he was telling himself, because the journey had tired him out more than he’d thought it would. He closed his eyes, turned his head to let it rest in the crook of his arm, and the world slipped further and further away – and by the time footsteps echoed in the hall and Nick rapped gently on the bedroom door, Greg was asleep.
**********
This was how he spent his first few days at the ranch – drifting in and out of sleep, mostly in the chair out on the deck that seemed to catch the sun for most of the day. Whenever he woke, there was someone in the house to feed him; if Nick was the only other person there it was always some sort of sandwich, but if Jillian was around Greg found himself stuffed so full of food he could barely move.
“You’re going to too much trouble,” he told Nick’s mother one afternoon as he sat at the kitchen table; Nick had gone riding after Greg had assured him that he’d be fine by himself, and after several hours sleeping out on the deck he’d come indoors in search of something to eat.
“It’s no trouble,” was the answer. “Your nurse told me you lived on junk unless someone made you eat properly -”
“You spoke to Robin?”
“Nick had her call me before you flew out,” Jillian said, and she opened the oven to remove something in a covered dish. “He thought there might be things you’d need while you were here,” and her eyes twinkled. “She’s quite a character, by the sound of it.”
“Well, she’s part Cajun,” Greg said, his mouth watering at the smell of whatever was in the dish as the lid was lifted. “I don’t know how many people I interviewed before I found her, but she’s been great – hasn’t let me get away with anything.”
“Is she pretty too?” Nick’s mother asked, raising a brow, but before Greg could come up with an answer the phone rang; he watched her cross the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron before she removed the phone from its bracket on the wall. “Hello?” she said, and her face lit up at once. “Meg! How are you, sweetheart? How are those gorgeous grandchildren of mine? Do you know we have your little brother here?” and she reached into one of the cupboards with her free hand to remove a plate. “He’s here for another four days, he’s got someone from work with him – well, why don’t you all come up on Saturday? We could have a barbecue - all right, you speak to Russ when he gets home tonight and then call me. Yes, darling, I love you too.” She hung up and began spooning out what looked like stew, stopping only when the plate was full; she carried it to the table and put it in front of Greg, before pulling a chair up to the table and sitting down. “That was Nick’s sister,” she said. “The one that’s closest to him in age, and you wouldn’t believe how the two of them tormented each other,” and another smile touched her lips. “How’s that stew?”
“It’s good,” he said around a mouthful of food, and he swallowed it before he went on speaking. “I’m gonna have to be rolled home in a barrel if you keep feeding me like this,” and when Jillian laughed, he found himself joining in – the sound almost surprising him, because it had been so long since it had happened.
*********
Three days later
“Good morning, Greg.”
“Hello, sir,” Greg replied as he propelled himself into the kitchen; he hadn’t seen a great deal of Nick’s father during the week and a half that he and Nick had been at the ranch, but he’d always been smartly dressed, and the sight of Judge Stokes in jeans and a flannel shirt now was somewhat surprising.
“You’ll have coffee with me, won’t you?” and when Greg nodded, he watched as a second mug was removed from one of the kitchen cupboards. “You’re up early today.”
“I always used to be up at the crack of dawn,” Greg said. “I think it was because working nights really scr - messes your body clock up, you know?” and there was a nod as a mug was slid across the kitchen table. “Ever since I had my accident, though, all I seem to want to do is sleep.”
“That’ll stop eventually,” was the answer. “Have you enjoyed yourself here? I know we haven’t seen much of each other -”
“Yes, I have, sir,” Greg said, and he honestly meant it. Almost two weeks of eating and sleeping and lying in the sun until he’d started to tan; there’d been no work, no doctors, no dragon-like physios prodding him to keep going - but there had been Nick, who’d gone into in the garage and dragged out a bench and some weights that were dusty from lack of use. He’d set them up on the deck, and every afternoon he’d placed a beer there as well – just out of Greg’s reach - which he’d refused to hand over until Greg had exercised for at least half an hour; there had been a steady stream of banter, the kind the two of them used to exchange at the lab before, and the half hour of weightlifting had passed more quickly than he would have believed. For the first time since Christmas Day, the strain he’d been labouring under was relaxing; left to his own devices for hours on end, but knowing that Nick and his parents were never far away, he’d felt the threads of his being – although they were still taut – slowly starting to knit themselves back together.
********
A horn sounded outside, and Nick sprang from his seat at the kitchen table before running out into the hall. Greg followed in his wake, manoeuvring himself through the front door and remaining on the porch as a sleek black car pulled up next to the rental van; a tall, dark-haired woman got out of the passenger side and moved back to open one of the rear doors. Immediately, there were cries of, “Uncle Nick! Uncle Nick!” and two boys spilled out, racing towards Nick and climbing up him as though he were a tree; the woman leaned into the back seat of the car, emerging moments later carrying a baby over her left hip. She was followed by the car’s driver, a red-haired man who wore a polo shirt together with a pair of jeans that were so new they still had creases in them; by now, Nick had one of the boys hanging onto each arm, and the group walked up onto the front porch just as Nick’s parents emerged through the front door. Greg hung back, watching as hugs and enthusiastic greetings were exchanged, and then he became aware that the smaller of the two boys was looking at him; he wiggled the fingers of his left hand and smiled, and this prompted the boy to step closer. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Rob,” the little boy said, his eyes alight with curiosity. “What happened to y - ow!”
“Shut up, stupid,” muttered the older boy, who had just delivered a sharp kick to his little brother’s ankle. “Dad told you we’re not s’posed to ask him that -”
“Hey, my name’s Greg, not him,” Greg said. “You’re Paul, aren’t you?” and his question was answered by a nod. “Your dad really tell you not to ask me?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “He said you wouldn’t want people asking you a bunch of questions -”
“Won’t take me long to tell you,” he said. “I was in a taxi going to the airport at Christmas, and someone drove into the side of it.”
“Were they drunk?” Rob asked, the gap caused by a missing front tooth clearly visible. “Our dad’s a lawyer, he could sue their ass off -”
“Robert Cole!” his mother interrupted, a horrified expression on her face. “Where on earth did you learn that word?”
“He said it,” Rob told her, a smug grin curving his lips as he pointed at his older brother before turning back to Greg. “Well, was he?”
“No, kiddo, he wasn’t,” Greg said, his voice even despite the lump that was forming in his throat. “He just had a car he didn’t know how to drive properly, that’s all,” and he reached up to shake Nick’s sister’s hand. “You must be Meg,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”
“Hey, Greg,” Meg replied, squeezing his hand, and as dark eyes travelled over his face he saw her smile exactly the same way Nick did. “Sorry if these two are bothering you -” but before he could tell her they weren’t, Jillian was saying something about lemonade in the back yard. Paul ran ahead, his uncle in tow, and everyone else started to make their way through the house behind them; Greg brought up the rear, and as he wheeled himself into the kitchen he saw that Rob was holding the door wide open for him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the little boy replied. “Have you got a big brother?”
“Nope,” Greg said. “No brothers, no sisters.”
“You’re lucky,” Rob told him, glancing balefully at his older brother who was roughhousing on the grass with Nick. “You get your mom and dad all to yourself that way. Do you want me to bring you some lemonade?”
“I’d like that,” Greg said, and when he smiled he saw Rob’s eyes light up. “Thank you.”
**********
He emerged from the bathroom and moved along the hall to the kitchen, where the table was covered with the remnants of the salads and desserts that had accompanied the barbecue; Meg stood at the counter, removing something from the microwave, and when she saw him she smiled. “Just making up another bottle for Gracie,” she said. “She’s getting fussy, it’s pretty close to her bedtime,” and she screwed the top onto the bottle before testing the temperature of the contents on her inner wrist. “You coming?” she asked, and when Greg nodded she led the way outside. The sky had turned a dull red, and Judge Stokes had lit several torches that were dotted around the edge of the deck; Rob and Paul were throwing a football around on the grass, while the adults were all sitting on the deck.
“Here, give her to me.”
“I got it,” Nick replied, stretching a hand out for the bottle, and his voice dropped to a barely audible volume. “There you are, sweet pea,” he murmured, and the fretful whimpering from the baby in his lap was silenced at once. “That’s better, isn’t it? You were just hungry.” Meg’s husband said something about Greg having to tell everyone in Vegas about this, and there was general laughter before the conversation resumed - but if Greg said anything, he wasn’t aware of it. He looked across the deck, saw Nick’s head bowed low over his niece, and he was filled with a hollow, empty ache that made his throat tighten; he turned his head, looked out at the fields beyond the back yard, but behind his eyes he could still see the smile on Nick’s face and the way he looked at the baby in his arms.
Who’s ever going to look at you that way now?
He thought of the afternoon when he’d surfaced from a drug-induced sleep in his room at Desert Palms and seen Mack standing by the bed, still in his LVPD uniform; they might only have been seeing each other for a little over a month, it might only have been about sex, but his heart had leapt in his chest – because this man was a piece of his normal life, not the life where he had tubes sticking in him everywhere and he’d been told he’d probably never walk again. He’d managed to stretch an arm out, and Mack had taken his hand; but Greg’s lover had talked to him as though he didn’t really know what to say, and he’d never looked him straight in the eye – and when Greg had watched that blue-clad figure leave the room a scant twenty minutes later, he’d known it was for the last time.
“Greg?”
“Huh?” he said as a hand touched his arm, and he turned his head to see Jillian looking at him.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he told her. “I have a headache, that’s all,” and he hoped she’d believe the lie, but at this moment he didn’t really care. “I get them sometimes, it’s no big deal.”
“You need me to fetch you something?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, forcing a smile that hurt every muscle in his face; he backed up and turned round, headed through the kitchen door and took a route he’d taken hundreds of times since he’d been here. Conversation and laughter wafted in through the open kitchen door, following him and becoming distant before it stopped entirely when he closed his bedroom door behind him without turning on the light.
He wheeled himself over to the bed and then stopped, his eyes accustoming themselves to the near-darkness; the drapes weren’t shut all the way, allowing in a little light from the lit torches outside. Lowering his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and forefinger – pinched hard – and the inexplicable tears in his eyes were cleared, but the empty ache still filled his chest…
…and he didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when the door clicked open, light from the hallway edging into the room.
“G?”
“Go back out there,” he said, not turning round. “I just need a minute, I’m fine,” and the door closed again, but Nick was still there; footsteps crossed the room, and when he sat on the edge of the bed the springs in the mattress whined gently.
“You’re not fine,” Nick said quietly. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t,” Greg said, staring down at his hands, and he meant it, because the things he’d been thinking as he sat in this darkened room were frightening him. He’d tried to think of how it would be when he returned to Vegas in two days’ time and the security he’d felt over the past two weeks was gone; he’d tried to tell himself he was feeling like this now because he’d be going back to a place where he’d be reminded of everything he was no longer able to do, and in a way this was true, but it wasn’t all of it…because his mind had always returned to the tenderness in Nick’s eyes as he’d looked at the baby in his arms, and a little voice had said you want him to look that way at you.
“Shall I tell you something?” Nick said then, breaking the silence. “I wish you’d stop thinking you’ve got to do this on your own,” and something in the way the words were spoken made tiny hairs rise on the back of Greg’s neck. “I’m not just doing this because I’m a friend, G, I – I think about you,” he went on, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve been thinking about you for a long time.”
“Why?” Greg said, forcing the single word from a dry mouth as he thought once again of the moment when he’d watched Mack leave the hospital room. “Nobody’s going to think about me like that now.”
“You’re still the same person here,” Nick croaked, placing a hand on Greg’s chest, and the sudden contact made Greg feel as though his heart was going to stop. “I know what I’d have to give up, dad’s never going to let me back here again, but I don’t care – all you’ve got to do is -”
“Nick?” Jillian’s voice, coming from the kitchen. “Where are you? Meg and Russ are getting ready to leave.”
“Stay there,” Nick whispered, and then he pulled in a shaky breath. “Coming,” he called aloud, and the bedsprings squeaked again before he crossed the room swiftly. “I was checking on Greg, he’s asleep,” he said in the hall, and then the door closed, muffling whatever else he was saying. Greg remained motionless in the dark, his hands knotted in his lap, still feeling sensation in the spot on his chest where he’d been touched moments before; tears brimmed in his eyes, spilled unchecked down his cheeks, but the hollow emptiness inside him was gone.
Concludes next week.
Characters – Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, various OC’s
Rating – PG13
Warning – you’ll want Kleenex. I “broke Greg”, as someone said when they read the previous instalment.
Disclaimer – Not mine. I wish.
You can find previous parts here…and sorry this one’s taken so long to reach you.
A week of working nights had left him so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open, but even though he could have been in bed an hour since Nick was still awake. He could never settle if he had something on his mind, and he’d been this way ever since he was a kid; every so often his mother would re-tell the story of nights when she’d found him awake at two or three in the morning, fretting over a piece of homework that wasn’t even due for another few days – and he would laugh dutifully along, with anyone else who was in earshot at the time, when she would smile and mimic his voice as it had sounded all those years ago. “But mom, I can’t go to sleep till I get this right…”
But it wasn’t the same this time, because he doubted that his mother would smile if she knew the reason he couldn’t sleep now. He thought of all the times he’d wanted to tell her, wanted to put an end to the secret that had eaten him up for more than twenty years; but he’d never managed to do it, because however much he’d needed to talk to her, the fear that she would react in the way he knew his father would had forced him to keep silent…
Could he do this? Could he maintain the charade, no matter how much he wanted things to be different?
This isn’t about what you want now, he told himself then, and before he could stop himself he’d flipped open his cell and dialled his parents’ number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Cisco.”
“Pancho!” his father cried, pleasure evident in the single word. “How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“You sound tired – still on nights?”
“Just finished a week of them,” Nick said, his ears picking up the sound of a Dallas radio station at the other end of the phone; he pictured his father, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee, listening to the local news the way he always did before he left the ranch in the mornings. “Listen, I – well, I need a favour.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I was wondering if I could bring someone up to the ranch,” Nick said, quailing inwardly as he spoke – because he was virtually certain of what his father’s reaction would be, and he wasn’t disappointed.
“So that’s why we haven’t seen you up here in ages!” and the words were followed by a familiar chuckle. “Who have you been hiding from us?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” Nick told his father, hoping fervently that he was keeping his voice even. “You remember Greg?”
“The young man who works with you in the lab,” was the immediate response, reminding Nick once again of his father’s scarily acute memory. “He was in an accident at Christmas, wasn’t he? How is he doing?”
“I don’t think he’s doing too well,” Nick replied, clenching his free hand so tightly that his nails dug into his palms. “He wants everyone to think he is, but he isn’t,” and he sighed quietly. “I’m sorry, I know it’s a lot to ask, bringing some stranger out there, but I -”
“When were you thinking of setting this up?”
“I wanted to run it past you first,” Nick said. “He’s back in the lab, but only two days a week – he gets tired, you know?” and he swallowed hard before he went on speaking. “I don’t think he’s ready to be back at all yet, but hey – I’m not his shrink, what do I know about it? Ah, I’m sorry, Cisco, I wasn’t going to unload on you this early in the morning.”
“Will you stop apologising?” his father chided, but there was gruff affection in the words that made Nick’s eyes sting. “You’ve always looked out for your friends, it’s the way your mother and I raised you – when were you thinking of doing this?”
As soon as I talk Greg into it, Nick thought, but what he said aloud was, “Well, it doesn’t really matter – I’ve got weeks of vacation time saved up, and Grissom keeps telling me I ought to take some of it…”
********
“You look half dead,” Greg said when he opened the door to let Nick into his apartment late that afternoon. “Have you slept?”
“Yeah, I have,” Nick told him, recalling the few hours of fitful sleep that had followed the call to his father. “It’s just been a long week, you know?”
“Coffee?”
“That’d be good,” he said, following Greg into the kitchen. “I was talking to my dad this morning – what?” he asked, as his ears picked up a chuckle. “What’s so funny?”
“Well, I know why you’re so tired now,” Greg said, running water into a pitcher before pouring it into the coffee maker. “What was he after this time?”
“I called him, actually,” Nick replied as he sat at the kitchen table. “I’ve been thinking about going out to the ranch for a week or two.”
“Grissom’s been on at you again, hasn’t he?” A canister was removed from the freezer, and Greg spooned coffee into the filter. “How much vacation time do you have stashed, anyway? You never seem to do anything with it.”
“I thought you might want to come out there with me.”
“No.”
“G, I -”
“No, Nick, okay? Just drop it,” Greg said, and since he was turned in the opposite direction Nick couldn’t see his face; neither of them spoke for a while, and eventually the silence was broken by a sigh from Greg that pulled at something inside Nick’s chest. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean to snap,” he said softly. “I talked to my dad this morning too,” and he took two mugs from one of the cupboards. “He -”
“Hold on,” Nick said, taking in the taut set of the younger man’s upper body and guessing the reason for it. “Coffee first, and then you can fill me in.”
********
“He was telling me about this house he and mom went to look at,” Greg said, once the pot of coffee had been emptied. “Told me it’s because neither of them are getting any younger, Nick, but I know that isn’t what they were really looking at it for,” and he stared down at the spotless surface of the table. “He said why didn’t I go out there for a few days, have a look and tell them what I thought of it…”
“You think they’re still trying to get you to move out there, don’t you?”
“I know they are,” Greg said, knotting his hands together as he spoke. “Well, mom is, and when it comes to me she always manages to talk dad round, you know?” Another silence followed, during which he picked at the quick of one of his fingernails, and his eyes were shadowed. “Why do you think I wanted to stay here for my rehab, Nick? Why do you think I haven’t been back to visit them since all this happened?” he went on, his voice wavering as he went on speaking. “I love my folks, but I’m afraid if I go out there I won’t come back.” He let his head fall forward, his hands coming up to cover his face - and although this was done in complete silence it still cut into Nick’s heart, deepening a wound that had been opened the day he’d received the phone call telling him about the accident.
It had been more than three months since that night when Greg had given in and wept, and if there’d been tears since then Nick hadn’t been a witness to them. He’d seen the younger man overtaken by a fierce determination, a determination that had made him work out at the gym until his face was flushed and he was dripping sweat; he’d watched Greg in the lab, pushing himself to keep working even when the exhaustion that took hold far too soon put dark pouches beneath his eyes. The wisecracks had begun to come back, but to Nick it was as though Greg’s body had been taken over by someone else…someone who might say and do what everyone expected, but who couldn’t be the real Greg – because every so often the mask would slip, for just a second or two, and Nick would catch a glimpse of the Greg who’d whispered from a hospital bed that he couldn’t feel his legs.
“Have you tried talking to her about it?”
“No,” Greg said, finally raising his head. “It’s been like this my whole life, man, the slightest thing – I’m all she’s got, she’s never really taken the cotton wool off, and now -” he broke off to gesture at the wheelchair, which now bore a sticker saying The Whole World’s Going To Hell And I’m Driving The Bus “–now I’m in this she wants to suffocate me, you honestly think I can talk to her?” and he went back to picking at his fingernail again. “And you know what, Nick? When I think about what the rest of my life’s gonna be like, it’d be easy to let her suffocate me, but it scares me too much to think that all I’ve got to look forward to is my parents fussing over me.” He lowered his head again, letting out another deep, ragged sigh. “Damn, Nick, I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”
Nothing’s wrong with you, Nick thought, you just need to stop carrying this by yourself, but what he said aloud was, “You wouldn’t need to worry about that with my folks,” and he waited for Greg to look at him before he went on speaking. “They don’t suffocate anybody, there were too many of us at home for that,” he said. “Mom would probably want to fatten you up, but -”
“- how long have the rest of you been trying to? I know,” was the answer, accompanied by a feeble half-smile. “I just – your folks have never met me, Nick -”
“No, but you’re a friend of mine, and that’s good enough for them,” Nick said, seeing something spark briefly in Greg’s eyes. “Yeah, I sounded them out about it, that’s why I called home this morning,” he went on. “I think you need to get out of Vegas, G, even if all you do is sleep and eat when you get there, but I’m not going to push you into anything,” and the need to unburden himself of the secret that lay over his heart like lead had never been stronger, but he swallowed it back the way he had done for so long now. “You think about it and let me know, okay?” he said, pushing his chair back. “Shall I make some more coffee?”
“I thought I’d order pizza,” Greg said, once he’d glanced at the clock on the kitchen wall. “Want to stay and share it, or have you got somewhere else you need to be?”
“No, I don’t have anywhere else I need to be,” Nick replied. “I signed my life over to Grissom when I started working for him, we all did,” and the quip was rewarded by a smile – one that lasted mere seconds, but for these brief moments Nick saw the real Greg, and the weight over his heart was lifted.
********
“Nick’s going to visit his folks in Dallas.”
“Oh?”
“He asked if I wanted to go with him,” Greg went on. “He thinks I need to get out of Vegas.”
“I think you do too,” Robin said matter-of-factly. “I don’t know what you used to be like, but you’re going to drop if you keep pushing yourself the way you are now,” and she fixed black-rimmed eyes on him as she spoke. “If I was him I wouldn’t ask you whether you wanted to go, I’d put you in a car and take you.”
“Anything else you want to share?” Greg asked, raising a brow, but he was unable to prevent himself smiling, because the previous months had taught him that Robin would always say what was on her mind; she only came once a week now that Greg was more independent, and the visits had become more like meetings between old friends than patient and client.
“Just that you need to start separating your clothes before you wash them,” was the response, and Robin held up a previously white T shirt that was now splotched with red. “Didn’t your mom teach you anything?”
“She gave up on that,” Greg told her. “And you don’t have to do my laundry for me.”
“Well, you can’t go out wearing that, can you?” she said smartly. “So, when are you going out there?”
“I don’t think I can,” Greg said, propelling himself towards the fridge to get a drink. “You want a Coke?”
“I want you to stop changing the subject,” Robin told him as she began pairing up socks. “Why don’t you think you can?”
“Well, for one, their house…”
“Greg, even for you that’s a weak excuse,” and when he looked at her she was shaking her head. “His folks know about what happened, right? Then they’ll know there are ways to work around it, won’t they? You’ve got to get back out in the big bad world sometime.”
“I’m back at work,” he said, popping the tab on his can of Coke and trying to keep the defensiveness from his voice. “I go out…”
“With people from work,” was the immediate answer. “You used to have a life outside work before the accident, didn’t you? What’s happened to it?”
“I don’t need it,” he said, swivelling away so she wouldn’t see his face. “Can you see me going to a bar in this thing?”
“Other people manage it.”
“There isn’t any point, Robin,” he told her. “Not in the kind of places I used to go to.”
“You can’t just shut that side of yourself off, you know,” and Robin went on speaking even though he didn’t look round. “You’ve still got feelings, Greg – what the hell did I say now?” she said when he was unable to hold back a snort of laughter despite the tightness in his throat.
“I never really worried about feelings,” he said, staring at a spot on the kitchen wall as he spoke. “The guy I was with right before the accident? I’d been seeing him for just over a month, and that’s pretty much the longest I was ever with anybody – it was just – look, can we talk about something else?”
“Not everybody’s just after sex,” was the answer, and when his head snapped round he saw crimson-slicked lips twitching into a smile. “This is me you’re talking to here, Greg,” Robin added. “I’ve been in your spare room, remember?” and he cringed inwardly at the memory of the afternoon shortly after he’d moved in when he hadn’t been able to find one of his PlayStation games. “Try the box nearest the door in the spare room,” he’d said when Robin had offered to help him look for it, and after several minutes of silence had elapsed he’d gone down the hall to find her looking into the black nylon bag where he’d kept his toy collection. “I think I opened the wrong box here,” she’d told him, and after they’d looked at each other for a split second she’d burst out laughing. “You know what?” she said now. “If you and I batted for the same team, I’d go out with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you,” was the answer. “You’re funny, you’re a smartass…”
“People aren’t going to see that, though, are they?” he said, once he’d taken a swig of Coke to buy himself time. “They’ll just see this,” and he nodded down at his wheelchair. “Only half of me works, I’m not going to be able to give a guy what he needs -”
“Stubborn, too,” Robin said, rolling her eyes. “You’re seriously going to shut yourself off the rest of your life?”
“I’m not going to keep looking for something I won’t get, if that’s what you mean,” he told her. “You want to stay for lunch?”
“On one condition.”
“What?”
“Call Nick and tell him you’ll go to Dallas with him,” and Robin held a hand up to silence Greg when he opened his mouth to speak. “Bake in the sun, eat some decent food, get some of this nonsense out of your head,” she added, placing the heap of folded clothes in a basket. “People want to help you, Greg, stop trying to fight them off.”
“I’ll call him later,” Greg told her, knowing instinctively that she wouldn’t be satisfied with this answer – and when Robin folded her arms and set her mouth in a line, he knew he’d been right.
“You call him now.”
**********
A week later
“You need to make a stop before we leave here?” Nick asked, stowing the keys in his pocket as the two of them moved away from the car rental counter; he’d fended off his parents’ attempt to come to the airport, guessing that Greg wouldn’t want any more “fuss” made than necessary. “Shall I get us some coffee for the journey?”
“That’d be good,” Greg said, and the faint tone in which the words were delivered made Nick look at him closely; the younger man’s face was pale and drawn, and he was squinting against the fluorescent lights.
“You okay, G?”
“Just a headache.”
“You got your meds with you?” Nick asked, and the question was met with a nod. “Come on over here,” and he pushed the luggage trolley in the direction of the nearby Starbucks outlet as Greg followed in his wake; fishing in his pocket for his wallet, he ordered two coffees, one of them with a double shot of espresso. He handed this one over, watching as Greg shook a couple of pills from a small plastic container and chased them down with some of the paper cup’s contents. “Better?”
“The lights are too bright in here,” Greg muttered, as though this sign of weakness was a source of embarrassment. “Which way do we go now?”
“Follow me,” Nick said, mustering a smile, and he led the way towards the exit; he’d seen Greg in the grip of these headaches before, mostly while he’d been back at the lab following the accident - and while he was no analyst, Nick was fairly certain that the cause was not altogether physical.
And he wasn’t sure that what he was doing was going to make things any better, because he wasn’t a shrink who knew how to fix these things - but he had to try.
*************
He pulled the rented van up outside the ranch, the country music station dying abruptly as the engine was turned off, and then Nick turned to look at his passenger. Greg was asleep, his head tilted to one side, and a lock of hair had fallen across his forehead; Nick was seized by a compulsion to reach up and smooth it back, and as he clenched his fist against his thigh he felt a familiar ache wash through him.
“Nick?” Greg mumbled, groggy with sleep, and his eyes blinked several times before opening fully. “This it?”
“Yeah, we’re here,” Nick told him, slowly unclenching his hand again. “I’ll go and get your wheels out,” and he unfastened his seatbelt before opening the driver’s side door. He vaulted out and moved to the back of the van, where he opened the door and lifted the wheelchair out; he pushed it round to the passenger side, making sure it was still switched to manual, and then he opened the passenger side door.
He’d lost count of how many times he’d done this over the preceding months, but it never hurt him any less – Greg’s arm snaking round his neck, the muscles taut because working out had increased the younger man’s upper body strength like Nick wouldn’t have believed, and then the warm dead weight that never failed to break his heart as he lifted Greg down and into the wheelchair. He swallowed the pain, though, the way he’d become so used to doing, and he heard himself asking Greg how his headache was; there was an answer of better, and as he moved towards the house he caught sight of the wide piece of wood that had been laid against the porch steps to create a makeshift ramp. “Right behind you,” he said to Greg, and the two of them made their way in the direction of the sloping piece of wood; stepping behind the wheelchair, he watched it move slowly up the ramp, and out of the corner of his eye he got a glimpse of a curtain twitching in one of the second floor windows.
The moment both of them were up on the porch, the front door opened, and the tightness around Nick’s heart loosened when he came face to face with his mother; he stepped forward, a grin spreading across his face, and he was drawn into her arms for a hug that lasted a long time before the two of them broke apart again. “Good to see you, mom,” he said, stepping to one side. “This is Greg.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Greg said, extending a hand. “Thank you for -”
“No, there won’t be any of that,” Nick’s mother interrupted as she shook Greg’s hand. “You call me Jillian – how was your journey?”
“It was good,” Greg said, taking in the friendly smile and the face patterned with soft wrinkles. “Thank you.”
“Well, come on inside, I’ll show you where your room is,” was the answer. “Nick’s going to bring the bags in, aren’t you, Nick? You follow me, Greg.”
********
“I hope this is going to be all right for you,” Nick’s mother said. “It’s been a storage room for years, so I had a reason to sort through some junk when Nick told me you were coming.”
“It’ll be fine,” Greg told her, taking in the yellow walls that were dotted with black and white photos. A double bed, the frame made from dark wood, stood by the window that looked out over the wide expanse of back yard; the only other piece of furniture in the room was a small dresser, made from the same wood as the bed, which looked as though it could easily have been an antique. “This was a storage room?”
“Well, it was a study and then a bedroom before it was storage,” was the answer. “My mom lived here for nearly ten years before she passed away,” and there was a gentle sadness in Jillian’s eyes. “She had arthritis, about as badly as someone can have it, so we put a bathroom in on this floor and then she didn’t have to climb any stairs. The bathroom’s just along the hall,” she went on, pointing to the left of the doorway, “and if you have any trouble managing, you let us know.” There was a short silence as he was studied by kind eyes that were so like Nick’s, and then Jillian sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now, my son’s told me not to fuss over you or give you the third degree, Greg, so I’m not going to,” she said, a smile hovering on her lips. “I’ll tell you what I’ve told every friend he’s ever brought here since he was little – this is your home while you’re here, and you shout if you need anything, okay?” and he nodded. “Well, Nick’s father ought to be home in an hour or so, and then we’ll have supper – do you eat steak?”
“He eats anything,” a voice said from the doorway, and Nick walked in with a bag in each hand. “You’re not interrogating him, are you, mom?”
“No, I’m not,” Jillian said good-naturedly, rising to her feet. “You told me not to, didn’t you? Come and start the barbecue for me, Nick, you know I can never manage to do it the way you and your dad do it.”
“G? You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “You go help your mom, I just need a few minutes.”
“Come on in the kitchen when you’re ready, we’ll have a beer,” was the response, and Greg watched as Nick and his mother left the room. Once the door had closed behind them, he manoeuvred his wheelchair across the room until he was next to the bed; setting his hands on the edge of the mattress, he hauled himself onto the bed – something which had been hard for him to do months previously, but which a combination of working out and the nagging of countless physiotherapists had made much easier - and rolled until he was lying at its centre. He stared up at the ceiling, half-hypnotized by the fan that circled there, his ears picking up indistinct voices outside the window; just a few minutes, he was telling himself, because the journey had tired him out more than he’d thought it would. He closed his eyes, turned his head to let it rest in the crook of his arm, and the world slipped further and further away – and by the time footsteps echoed in the hall and Nick rapped gently on the bedroom door, Greg was asleep.
**********
This was how he spent his first few days at the ranch – drifting in and out of sleep, mostly in the chair out on the deck that seemed to catch the sun for most of the day. Whenever he woke, there was someone in the house to feed him; if Nick was the only other person there it was always some sort of sandwich, but if Jillian was around Greg found himself stuffed so full of food he could barely move.
“You’re going to too much trouble,” he told Nick’s mother one afternoon as he sat at the kitchen table; Nick had gone riding after Greg had assured him that he’d be fine by himself, and after several hours sleeping out on the deck he’d come indoors in search of something to eat.
“It’s no trouble,” was the answer. “Your nurse told me you lived on junk unless someone made you eat properly -”
“You spoke to Robin?”
“Nick had her call me before you flew out,” Jillian said, and she opened the oven to remove something in a covered dish. “He thought there might be things you’d need while you were here,” and her eyes twinkled. “She’s quite a character, by the sound of it.”
“Well, she’s part Cajun,” Greg said, his mouth watering at the smell of whatever was in the dish as the lid was lifted. “I don’t know how many people I interviewed before I found her, but she’s been great – hasn’t let me get away with anything.”
“Is she pretty too?” Nick’s mother asked, raising a brow, but before Greg could come up with an answer the phone rang; he watched her cross the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron before she removed the phone from its bracket on the wall. “Hello?” she said, and her face lit up at once. “Meg! How are you, sweetheart? How are those gorgeous grandchildren of mine? Do you know we have your little brother here?” and she reached into one of the cupboards with her free hand to remove a plate. “He’s here for another four days, he’s got someone from work with him – well, why don’t you all come up on Saturday? We could have a barbecue - all right, you speak to Russ when he gets home tonight and then call me. Yes, darling, I love you too.” She hung up and began spooning out what looked like stew, stopping only when the plate was full; she carried it to the table and put it in front of Greg, before pulling a chair up to the table and sitting down. “That was Nick’s sister,” she said. “The one that’s closest to him in age, and you wouldn’t believe how the two of them tormented each other,” and another smile touched her lips. “How’s that stew?”
“It’s good,” he said around a mouthful of food, and he swallowed it before he went on speaking. “I’m gonna have to be rolled home in a barrel if you keep feeding me like this,” and when Jillian laughed, he found himself joining in – the sound almost surprising him, because it had been so long since it had happened.
*********
Three days later
“Good morning, Greg.”
“Hello, sir,” Greg replied as he propelled himself into the kitchen; he hadn’t seen a great deal of Nick’s father during the week and a half that he and Nick had been at the ranch, but he’d always been smartly dressed, and the sight of Judge Stokes in jeans and a flannel shirt now was somewhat surprising.
“You’ll have coffee with me, won’t you?” and when Greg nodded, he watched as a second mug was removed from one of the kitchen cupboards. “You’re up early today.”
“I always used to be up at the crack of dawn,” Greg said. “I think it was because working nights really scr - messes your body clock up, you know?” and there was a nod as a mug was slid across the kitchen table. “Ever since I had my accident, though, all I seem to want to do is sleep.”
“That’ll stop eventually,” was the answer. “Have you enjoyed yourself here? I know we haven’t seen much of each other -”
“Yes, I have, sir,” Greg said, and he honestly meant it. Almost two weeks of eating and sleeping and lying in the sun until he’d started to tan; there’d been no work, no doctors, no dragon-like physios prodding him to keep going - but there had been Nick, who’d gone into in the garage and dragged out a bench and some weights that were dusty from lack of use. He’d set them up on the deck, and every afternoon he’d placed a beer there as well – just out of Greg’s reach - which he’d refused to hand over until Greg had exercised for at least half an hour; there had been a steady stream of banter, the kind the two of them used to exchange at the lab before, and the half hour of weightlifting had passed more quickly than he would have believed. For the first time since Christmas Day, the strain he’d been labouring under was relaxing; left to his own devices for hours on end, but knowing that Nick and his parents were never far away, he’d felt the threads of his being – although they were still taut – slowly starting to knit themselves back together.
********
A horn sounded outside, and Nick sprang from his seat at the kitchen table before running out into the hall. Greg followed in his wake, manoeuvring himself through the front door and remaining on the porch as a sleek black car pulled up next to the rental van; a tall, dark-haired woman got out of the passenger side and moved back to open one of the rear doors. Immediately, there were cries of, “Uncle Nick! Uncle Nick!” and two boys spilled out, racing towards Nick and climbing up him as though he were a tree; the woman leaned into the back seat of the car, emerging moments later carrying a baby over her left hip. She was followed by the car’s driver, a red-haired man who wore a polo shirt together with a pair of jeans that were so new they still had creases in them; by now, Nick had one of the boys hanging onto each arm, and the group walked up onto the front porch just as Nick’s parents emerged through the front door. Greg hung back, watching as hugs and enthusiastic greetings were exchanged, and then he became aware that the smaller of the two boys was looking at him; he wiggled the fingers of his left hand and smiled, and this prompted the boy to step closer. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Rob,” the little boy said, his eyes alight with curiosity. “What happened to y - ow!”
“Shut up, stupid,” muttered the older boy, who had just delivered a sharp kick to his little brother’s ankle. “Dad told you we’re not s’posed to ask him that -”
“Hey, my name’s Greg, not him,” Greg said. “You’re Paul, aren’t you?” and his question was answered by a nod. “Your dad really tell you not to ask me?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “He said you wouldn’t want people asking you a bunch of questions -”
“Won’t take me long to tell you,” he said. “I was in a taxi going to the airport at Christmas, and someone drove into the side of it.”
“Were they drunk?” Rob asked, the gap caused by a missing front tooth clearly visible. “Our dad’s a lawyer, he could sue their ass off -”
“Robert Cole!” his mother interrupted, a horrified expression on her face. “Where on earth did you learn that word?”
“He said it,” Rob told her, a smug grin curving his lips as he pointed at his older brother before turning back to Greg. “Well, was he?”
“No, kiddo, he wasn’t,” Greg said, his voice even despite the lump that was forming in his throat. “He just had a car he didn’t know how to drive properly, that’s all,” and he reached up to shake Nick’s sister’s hand. “You must be Meg,” he said. “It’s good to meet you.”
“Hey, Greg,” Meg replied, squeezing his hand, and as dark eyes travelled over his face he saw her smile exactly the same way Nick did. “Sorry if these two are bothering you -” but before he could tell her they weren’t, Jillian was saying something about lemonade in the back yard. Paul ran ahead, his uncle in tow, and everyone else started to make their way through the house behind them; Greg brought up the rear, and as he wheeled himself into the kitchen he saw that Rob was holding the door wide open for him.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” the little boy replied. “Have you got a big brother?”
“Nope,” Greg said. “No brothers, no sisters.”
“You’re lucky,” Rob told him, glancing balefully at his older brother who was roughhousing on the grass with Nick. “You get your mom and dad all to yourself that way. Do you want me to bring you some lemonade?”
“I’d like that,” Greg said, and when he smiled he saw Rob’s eyes light up. “Thank you.”
**********
He emerged from the bathroom and moved along the hall to the kitchen, where the table was covered with the remnants of the salads and desserts that had accompanied the barbecue; Meg stood at the counter, removing something from the microwave, and when she saw him she smiled. “Just making up another bottle for Gracie,” she said. “She’s getting fussy, it’s pretty close to her bedtime,” and she screwed the top onto the bottle before testing the temperature of the contents on her inner wrist. “You coming?” she asked, and when Greg nodded she led the way outside. The sky had turned a dull red, and Judge Stokes had lit several torches that were dotted around the edge of the deck; Rob and Paul were throwing a football around on the grass, while the adults were all sitting on the deck.
“Here, give her to me.”
“I got it,” Nick replied, stretching a hand out for the bottle, and his voice dropped to a barely audible volume. “There you are, sweet pea,” he murmured, and the fretful whimpering from the baby in his lap was silenced at once. “That’s better, isn’t it? You were just hungry.” Meg’s husband said something about Greg having to tell everyone in Vegas about this, and there was general laughter before the conversation resumed - but if Greg said anything, he wasn’t aware of it. He looked across the deck, saw Nick’s head bowed low over his niece, and he was filled with a hollow, empty ache that made his throat tighten; he turned his head, looked out at the fields beyond the back yard, but behind his eyes he could still see the smile on Nick’s face and the way he looked at the baby in his arms.
Who’s ever going to look at you that way now?
He thought of the afternoon when he’d surfaced from a drug-induced sleep in his room at Desert Palms and seen Mack standing by the bed, still in his LVPD uniform; they might only have been seeing each other for a little over a month, it might only have been about sex, but his heart had leapt in his chest – because this man was a piece of his normal life, not the life where he had tubes sticking in him everywhere and he’d been told he’d probably never walk again. He’d managed to stretch an arm out, and Mack had taken his hand; but Greg’s lover had talked to him as though he didn’t really know what to say, and he’d never looked him straight in the eye – and when Greg had watched that blue-clad figure leave the room a scant twenty minutes later, he’d known it was for the last time.
“Greg?”
“Huh?” he said as a hand touched his arm, and he turned his head to see Jillian looking at him.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he told her. “I have a headache, that’s all,” and he hoped she’d believe the lie, but at this moment he didn’t really care. “I get them sometimes, it’s no big deal.”
“You need me to fetch you something?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, forcing a smile that hurt every muscle in his face; he backed up and turned round, headed through the kitchen door and took a route he’d taken hundreds of times since he’d been here. Conversation and laughter wafted in through the open kitchen door, following him and becoming distant before it stopped entirely when he closed his bedroom door behind him without turning on the light.
He wheeled himself over to the bed and then stopped, his eyes accustoming themselves to the near-darkness; the drapes weren’t shut all the way, allowing in a little light from the lit torches outside. Lowering his head, he pinched the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and forefinger – pinched hard – and the inexplicable tears in his eyes were cleared, but the empty ache still filled his chest…
…and he didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when the door clicked open, light from the hallway edging into the room.
“G?”
“Go back out there,” he said, not turning round. “I just need a minute, I’m fine,” and the door closed again, but Nick was still there; footsteps crossed the room, and when he sat on the edge of the bed the springs in the mattress whined gently.
“You’re not fine,” Nick said quietly. “Talk to me.”
“I can’t,” Greg said, staring down at his hands, and he meant it, because the things he’d been thinking as he sat in this darkened room were frightening him. He’d tried to think of how it would be when he returned to Vegas in two days’ time and the security he’d felt over the past two weeks was gone; he’d tried to tell himself he was feeling like this now because he’d be going back to a place where he’d be reminded of everything he was no longer able to do, and in a way this was true, but it wasn’t all of it…because his mind had always returned to the tenderness in Nick’s eyes as he’d looked at the baby in his arms, and a little voice had said you want him to look that way at you.
“Shall I tell you something?” Nick said then, breaking the silence. “I wish you’d stop thinking you’ve got to do this on your own,” and something in the way the words were spoken made tiny hairs rise on the back of Greg’s neck. “I’m not just doing this because I’m a friend, G, I – I think about you,” he went on, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I’ve been thinking about you for a long time.”
“Why?” Greg said, forcing the single word from a dry mouth as he thought once again of the moment when he’d watched Mack leave the hospital room. “Nobody’s going to think about me like that now.”
“You’re still the same person here,” Nick croaked, placing a hand on Greg’s chest, and the sudden contact made Greg feel as though his heart was going to stop. “I know what I’d have to give up, dad’s never going to let me back here again, but I don’t care – all you’ve got to do is -”
“Nick?” Jillian’s voice, coming from the kitchen. “Where are you? Meg and Russ are getting ready to leave.”
“Stay there,” Nick whispered, and then he pulled in a shaky breath. “Coming,” he called aloud, and the bedsprings squeaked again before he crossed the room swiftly. “I was checking on Greg, he’s asleep,” he said in the hall, and then the door closed, muffling whatever else he was saying. Greg remained motionless in the dark, his hands knotted in his lap, still feeling sensation in the spot on his chest where he’d been touched moments before; tears brimmed in his eyes, spilled unchecked down his cheeks, but the hollow emptiness inside him was gone.
Concludes next week.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yippee!!!
Date: 2007-03-04 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 12:47 pm (UTC)This was heartbreaking and wonderful. At first I thought it was gonna be a company-piece to canon, ofcourse I realised things were different after Greg's injury turned out to be Level T5. But you managed to keep them both believable and in character in their (re)actions.
I mentioned before how I feel about stories where Nick has been in the closet for most - if not all - of his life, but when you get into his head, his journey makes sense. The way Greg is fighting to get his spirit back is achingly well written. It's not easy and you're not afraid to show the struggle.
I'm not sorry I caved, even though I wish I could continue with the final part of the story right now, these three chapters were a great read. Whatever happens next, I'm glad I spent some time in this universe and I'm looking forward to the conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 01:26 pm (UTC)I hope they can find a way to each other in the end. Looking forward to last chap:)
Re: Yippee!!!
Date: 2007-03-04 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 04:23 pm (UTC)but this was so bittersweet and touching that I though I'd let you know I really liked it:)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-04 08:42 pm (UTC)And ohhh, those last paragraphs! I'll be sad to read the final chapter next week but I also can't wait to get my hands on it ;).
no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 06:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 06:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-05 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 04:50 am (UTC)I have to wait that long?
I've been enjoying this and I can't wait for the ending. Of course, I'm hoping it's going to be a happy ending...
no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-06 11:59 pm (UTC)