FIC: One Good Man -- 10/?
Aug. 21st, 2004 01:37 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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nickngregAuthor: geekwriter
Title: One Good Man – Part Ten
Rating: R-ish
Category: angst, romance
Summary: Greg carries on after all that's happened
Greg stayed in the lab most of the night. He didn't pop across the hall to chat with Archie, didn't bug Jacqui in the fingerprint lab, didn't even hang out in the break room to drink coffee and flirt with Sara.
He just stayed in his lab, his safe, secure, little lab. His own tiny world where the only reactions were chemical, where everything could be properly categorized, where he had total control.
He knew Nick would avoid the lab at all costs and he was thankful for that.
Nick. Fucking perfect Nick. He'd never screwed up in his life. Not really. He just pretended that he understood because it enhanced his whole nice guy routine.
What did he see when he looked at Greg? He didn't see his full ride to Stanford, didn't see that he'd been Phi Beta Kappa, had graduated in three years with highest honors, top of his class. He didn't see the Master's from Berkeley, didn't see that Greg had beat out other biochemists with decades of experience for a spot in one of the nation's best crime labs—second only to the lab at the FBI.
And the way Nick had been shocked to find out he actually made a decent salary. He was one of the best DNA analysts in the country and Nick had expected him to make minimum wage? And he didn't just do DNA either—hair, fiber, pollen, glass, soil, dust, if it was there he'd find it and he'd identify it. He could have bitched about it since there was nothing about trace analysis in his job description but he didn't. He liked the chase, liked the variety it gave him, liked learning new things nearly every night, getting better with every shift.
Nick probably had no idea how good he actually was. Like the rest of the CSIs, all Nick cared about were the results Greg gave them. They didn't care that he was top in his field, that at the conference people had actually known who he was before he met them, that he was having a paper published in the Journal of Forensic Science. He probably had no idea how prestigious that was, no idea how much it meant, not only for Greg but also for the reputation of the entire lab.
Of course, Nick didn't actually know he was having a paper published in the Journal of Forensic Science. He'd never gotten around to spilling his secret before Nick accused him of being a lying druggie.
That's what Nick saw—poor little Greg. Poor little Greg, his parents are crazy. Poor little Greg, he used to be a drug addict. Poor little Greg, he carries the guilt of his best friend's death on his shoulders. His scarred shoulders. His karmically scarred shoulders. Poor little Greg got blown up but he didn't die, he's just deformed. Ugly scars on the outside to match the ugly scars on the inside.
His hands shook as he set up the test tubes needed to extract DNA from the ends of the cigarette butts Warrick had given him. He pressed his palms flat against the countertop. They didn't shake when he pressed them against something. They didn't shake when he clenched them into fists.
But he had to work, and in order to work he needed them to stop shaking because he wasn't sure he could even hold the bottle of proteinase K solution, let alone measure it precisely into each test tube along with the detergent and salt necessary to extract DNA.
Nick wouldn't even know where to begin if he had to amplify DNA using a PCR. He probably didn't even know what PCR stood for.
He had to stop thinking about Nick because if he kept thinking about Nick, his hands wouldn't ever stop shaking.
He'd been hoping for too much, hadn't he? It was too much to believe that Nick, gorgeous fucking Nick who he'd been in love with for years, could actually feel something for him. Something other than pity. Something other than the need to save yet another lost soul.
He'd seen Nick sneak over to trace at the beginning of shift. He'd known perfectly well what Hodges was doing when he came in and pretended to be nonchalant as he used the GCMS. He'd been tempted to say, "It's sugar, all right? Tell him it's just fucking sugar because the stuff he has tastes like the lab smells." But that would ruin Nick's fun, wouldn't it? Or maybe it would ruin his fun; he wasn't quite sure, because as much as he hated knowing how little Nick actually thought of him, he wished he could be there to see the look on Nick's perfect face when he found out he was wrong.
That's what he was thinking about when Grissom came by and said, "Come see me when you get a minute."
He wanted to laugh. With his hands the way they were he had nothing but time. He didn't laugh, though, he just nodded and pretended that he was absorbed in something having to do with work.
"Come on you bitch," he whispered to his trembling right hand as he dripped proteinase K into a test tube. It was slow going, but he did it, and he set the thermal cycler running before he left the lab.
"You wanted to see me?" he asked, knocking on Grissom's partially open door.
Grissom looked up from his paperwork and took off his glasses. "Yes, Greg. Come in." He motioned with his pen for Greg to shut the door.
He took his hand out of his pocket to shut the door behind him and he knew it was a mistake the moment he turned around. Grissom's head was cocked to the side and his eyebrows were furrowed in what Greg called his "Shh, I'm cogitating," look.
"They haven't been doing that ever since the explosion, have they?" Grissom asked. He didn't need to ask what Grissom meant.
Greg shook his head quickly. "No. The shaking stopped a few days after you noticed it the first time."
"But they're shaking again."
He sighed and forced a smile. "Yeah. It started this morning."
Grissom frowned.
"It'll stop," Greg said. Fuck. He wasn't going to cry. He wasn't going to cry over Nick and he definitely wasn't going to cry in front of Grissom. "It did before, just like you said." He forced a smile.
"But if it's intermittent and ongoing it might be—"
"It's not nerve damage," Greg said. "Trust me. The doctors ran every test possible. Besides, they haven't done this in months. It's just, you know, stress."
"You're not worried about the paper, are you?" Grissom asked. "Because I have to say, I expect it to be very well received. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you considered presenting your findings at the next meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences?"
And he should have been elated. He should have been jumping for joy that Grissom was even suggesting it, but he couldn't really feel anything at the moment. Except, of course, for the shaking of his hands.
"That would be awesome," Greg said, and he knew his voice didn't mirror his words. He knew he sounded like he was speaking at a funeral.
"Do you want to…" Grissom paused, and Greg knew he was searching for the right words, "talk about it?"
Greg shook his head and Grissom looked relieved. Then Greg found himself talking anyway. "You remember the day I nearly got blown up and had to spend almost an entire week in the hospital with second degree burns?"
Grissom smiled a curious half smile. "Of course I do, Greg."
"Yeah. That would be a good day compared to this."
Grissom was silent for a moment and Greg suspected he was trying his hardest to think of what the most compassionate thing to say was. "Maybe you should take a personal day."
Greg shook his head. "No. I need to work. I'll go home if I feel like I'm going to drop something caustic or if this gets so bad it affects my work, but until then I'd like to stay right here."
Grissom nodded and Greg knew he understood.
"I've got tomorrow off, anyway, so…" He started to turn towards the door. "It'll stop before I get back."
"Greg," Grissom said as Greg started to leave. "If you do need to talk…"
"I'll find Catherine," Greg finished the sentence for him. He smiled, a real smile that time, though small. "I'll live," he said.
"I don't doubt that."
He was feeling like he might actually survive, too, until he walked into his lab and found Nick standing there, staring at the thermal cycler.
"That's a 30,000 dollar piece of equipment," Greg said. "Don't touch it."
Nick turned around sharply. "I wasn't."
Greg knew that Nick hadn't touched it, but it was his lab and therefore his thermal cycler and he didn't want Nick anywhere near it.
"I talked to Hodges," Nick whispered.
Greg nodded and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. "I know."
"Greg, I'm so sorry. Jesus. I know what you must be thinking right now and—"
"No, you don't." His voice was harsher than he expected, but he didn't mind. He liked the way it made Nick flinch.
"Why didn't you just tell me?"
Greg shrugged. "Why didn't you just ask?"
Nick didn't have an answer for that. He bit his lower lip and looked down at the floor and Greg felt bitter triumph flare in his chest for just a moment when he realized that Nick was ashamed.
"Do you have anything for me?" Greg asked.
Nick sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Greg, I don't even know where to start."
"Blood, fingernail scrapings, swabs of potential biological fluid," Greg said. "That's where people usually start."
"I'm not talking about work," Nick snapped, though Greg noticed that he kept his voice quiet enough that it wouldn't carry out into the hall. He kept one eye on the glass walls that surround them to see who might be watching.
"I'm busy, Nick," Greg said, and it was true even if he wouldn't start working again until Nick left. Working meant taking his hands out of his pockets and even though they were clenched in fists he knew when he took them out they would continue to shake.
"We need to talk about this." Nick's voice was pleading, even meek. It made Greg want to punch him, because he wasn't allowed to make Greg feel sorry for him.
"I think you said all you needed to yesterday."
"I know I was wrong and I'm so—"
"You know the thing about the horse and the zebra?" Greg asked, and Nick furrowed his brow. "If you hear hoof beats, look for a horse, not a for a zebra. Look for the most likely thing, the most obvious thing first."
"I've heard that," Nick said.
"You do that," Greg told him. "You do that every day of your life. You see a hanging and you think suicide first, only think murder after you've ruled suicide out."
Nick nodded. "Yeah."
"When you saw my sugar, your first thought was that I was using again. Never mind that I'd promised you, that I'd promised myself. Never mind that sugar doesn't even fucking look like meth. You were so eager to find a zebra you didn't even consider the horse."
"Greg, I…"
"That says more to me than any empty apology you make. Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do and I'd like to get back to it."
Nick took a shaky breath, and Greg had to look away from him because in his eyes were wet crescents of tears and Greg could not see him cry. He didn't know what would happen if he did, but he knew he couldn't see it, not if he wanted to make it through his shift without losing control of more than just his hands.
He couldn't risk losing control. It wasn't just that rumors would run rampant about exactly what kind of relationship he and Nick had; it wasn't just that he didn't need people poking their noses into his business. He couldn't risk losing control because if he was ever going to make it out of the lab he had to prove to everyone, from Grissom to the temp at the front desk, that he did not fall apart in stressful situations. He could handle challenges and things not going his way. He would search through sewers and dig through piles of matchbooks and do every shit job anyone threw at him. He would work long hours and let people tell him he should stay in the lab and suffer dirty looks from lab techs who thought he was a traitor and CSIs who thought he was pathetic. He would keep working and he wouldn't ever give up because if he had to spend the rest of his life in his tiny, safe little lab he was sure he'd suffocate without even knowing it and turn into one of the walking dead.
When Greg finally looked up Nick was gone, and that was fine because his hands had started shaking again even though they were still in his pockets.
**********
The patio next to Greg's was wild, nearly overgrown with large terra cotta pots of everything from pansies to cucumber vines. The pots edged off the cement patio onto the red rock around it, and some of them had even made their way onto his patio, which he didn't mind since he never used it, anyway.
"Good morning, Mrs. Palmbach," he said. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there somewhere. She always was.
A tiny elfin head popped up from behind a particularly bushy tomato plant. "You're home early," she remarked, brushing dirt off the front of her overalls. "Not much murder last night, I take."
He shook his head as he leaned against his front door. "No, not much."
"That's always good to hear. You work too much overtime as it is." She made her way around the tomato plant and past the rosemary to inspect her strawberry pots. "You tell your friend with the insects that the ladybugs you brought me did the trick. No more aphids."
"I'll tell him," he said.
"Now, what's your little article about again?" Mrs. Palmbach asked as she straightened up to her full height of nearly five feet. "I was talking to my sister, Lucille, she's the one who lives in Florida. I was talking to Lucille and I was telling her that the nice boy who has me feed his fish when he's gone was going to have an article published in a magazine, but I couldn't tell her what the name of it was because I didn't know. I told her I'd ask you the next time I saw you."
"Genetic analysis of amplified DNA with immobilized sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes," Greg said quietly.
Mrs. Palmbach thought about that for a moment. "Not a very catchy title, now, is it?"
He smiled and shook his head. "No, no it's not."
"I suppose it has to do with your robots and laser beams," she said.
He grinned at her. He'd never quite been able to explain that science didn't automatically equal robots and lasers. "Yeah," he said. "Something like that."
"Now I saw this program on the TV," Mrs. Palmbach started, "about, oh, whatchamacallit. Those doohickeys that they say they're going to be able to install in our brains pretty soon so if we want to read a book we just scan it like at the grocery store and whoomf! We've already read it. Now…"
Greg was exhausted. All he wanted to do was go inside and collapse on his bed and sleep for the next three days, but he listened to Mrs. Palmbach anyway because she fed his fish for free. She gave him fresh herbs from her garden. She always noticed when he had a new haircut. She was completely unperturbed by the fact that he had both "lady friends" and "gentleman callers."
He listened to Mrs. Palmbach go on about brain implants and mind control chips because he thought it was really shitty that her kids never came to visit even though they only lived in Salt Lake. He told her what he knew about nanotechnology and how the brain was far too complex for them to just scan information into it, because once when he'd had the flu she brought him a bowl of the worst chicken soup he'd ever tasted, but she'd brought it to him and that was what mattered.
He stayed and talked with Mrs. Palmbach because as long as he was talking to her he didn't have to think about Nick, and as long as he didn't think about Nick he could keep his hands mostly steady. As long as he could keep his hands mostly steady he could believe that he wasn't losing his mind.
When he finally got inside he didn't bother turning the lights on. He had his aquarium lights set up on timers so that they switched from moonlight, to dawn, to day automatically. It was enough light to see by as he kicked his shoes off next to the door and headed towards the kitchen. He flipped his coffee pot on—he always filled it with water and grounds before he left so it would be ready to go when he got home. He stared at the pot and didn't wait for it to finish brewing before he poured himself a cup.
He flipped open his tin of sugar and stuck a spoon in it, but the spoon didn't even make it to his coffee before his trembling hand spilled the sugar across the counter and at the sight of the scattered brown crystals Greg let out the sob that he'd been holding in for nearly a day.
He sank to the floor and pulled his knees to his chest and cried. He tried to stop. He didn't want to cry for Nick, for his own naivety, for his desperate hope that what they had was real and would last, but he couldn't stop no matter how hard he tried.
He didn't want to cry and he didn't want to feel the pain that washed over him so he pulled himself up and dug in his cabinet for the Xanax he'd gotten after his hands started shaking the first time. He had 23 left, had only taken seven before, even when cold sweats and terror woke him up at night at the memory of the explosion that flung him through the glass wall as easily as if both the wall and him had been made of paper.
He shook two of the small oval pills into his palm, popped them into his mouth, swallowed them with a mouthful of coffee, no sugar.
He headed back into the living room, pulled the blanket off the back of his armchair and snuggled beneath it on the couch. He stretched out, trying not to think of anything, and he watched his mated pair of coral banded shrimp clean each other as he nodded off to sleep.
His limbs were heavy, almost as heavy as his head and he knew somewhere in his hazy mind that someone was knocking on his door but he didn't care. Everyone knew he worked nights so whoever was knocking was probably a salesman or a Jehovah's Witness. He rolled onto his other side without even opening his eyes and let himself drift back into sleep.
In the slow, stubborn world of his dream the ringing of his telephone became a bird chirping at his window, the knocking at the door became a monkey playing drums.
He jerked awake at the first touch of a hand to his shoulder, though, and sat upright on the couch, the adrenaline pumping through his veins enough to counteract the Xanax for the moment.
He looked up at Nick and thought he was still dreaming until he saw Mrs. Palmbach, a shadow in the door silhouetted by the bright light of day. She was holding his keys in her hand and she peered in at him as she shifted from foot to foot.
"Scared the shit out of me," he muttered.
"Your friend kept knocking but you didn't answer," Mrs. Palmbach said. She took a step inside. "You didn't answer when he tried your phone, and then I tried to call and you didn't answer for me and he kept knocking and I was worried. You didn't seem quite yourself this morning, and I thought maybe you'd slipped in the shower or fallen while working on one of your aquariums. I didn't know if I should use the key or not, but I was worried so I did. I hope you're not angry."
"I didn't mean to scare you, Mrs. Palmbach," he said, rubbing his forehead. "I took a Xanax before I went to sleep."
Mrs. Palmbach seemed relieved by the explanation. "He was in an explosion," she half-whispered to Nick.
Nick nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I know."
And Greg would have thrown him out, would have physically shoved him out if that's what it took but Mrs. Palmbach was there so all he did was assure her that he was OK and that he wasn't mad at her for letting Nick in, that she'd done the right thing and yes, of course he wanted some of her cherry tomatoes as soon as they were ripe.
"She's nice," Nick said after Mrs. Palmbach left.
"So, you thought I'd offed myself?" Greg asked as he headed towards the kitchen. He was still groggy. He needed coffee.
"No," Nick said.
"Whoa," Greg said as the floor tilted under his feet. He reached for the back of a chair and gripped it tight and he let Nick steady him and lower him into the chair before he batted Nick's hands away. His legs were heavy and tingling and his arms felt like gravity was ten times as strong on them as anything else.
"I didn't know you took Xanax," Nick said softly.
"You don't know a whole hell of a lot, do you?" Greg reached forward and pulled a long, narrow paper bag open, pulled out a fat bottle of pills. "I take these, too," he said, lobbing the bottle in Nick's general direction. "Since you're so interested in the drugs I take."
Nick looked down at the bottle of pills in his hand, touched the label gently.
"Three hundred milligrams of Effexor," Greg said. "That's four a day. Lucky we've got a decent insurance plan, huh?"
"These are new," Nick said softly.
"Yeah. That's where I went yesterday morning, to see my shrink and get my prescription renewed." He laughed and couldn't keep his eyes from closing, his head from dropping forward. He jerked his head back up and tried to fix his gaze on Nick. "So you were right. I did go on a drug run."
"Let me get you into bed," Nick whispered.
"Taking advantage of the mentally imbalanced, now?"
"These are just antidepressants, Greg. They don't mean you're mentally imbalanced. Everybody takes them nowadays."
"Even you?"
Nick shook his head.
"Of course you don't."
"Let me at least get you back on the couch," Nick whispered.
"I don't need any help." Greg stood up and concentrated on walking, braced his hand on the wall as he headed towards his room. He noted that his hand wasn't shaking and even thought he knew it was just a result of the anti-anxiety pills it was nice.
He stumbled, though, and Nick caught him, and he was too tired and too synthetically calm to care.
"I was scared," Nick whispered as he helped Greg into bed. "But not that you'd tried to hurt yourself. I was scared that you were on the other side of the door and you were never going to open up. I was scared that nothing I did would ever get you to open up to me again. I love you, Greg, you have to believe me."
Greg let Nick pull his shirt off and flopped back down onto the bed after Nick had pulled over his head and off his arms. He thought he should maybe be pissed that Nick was taking off his pants, but he wasn't. And it wasn't like Nick hadn't seen it before, anyway.
Nick tucked him into bed and ran his fingers over Greg's cheek. "I'm so sorry, baby. I don't know how I'll make it up to you but I will. I promise you I will, no matter what it takes."
"I hate you," Greg whispered. He smiled a sleepy smile when he saw the look on Nick's face, when he knew Nick believed him. In the peaceful haze of the Xanax he could admit that sometimes, just sometimes, it felt good to cause pain.
Title: One Good Man – Part Ten
Rating: R-ish
Category: angst, romance
Summary: Greg carries on after all that's happened
Greg stayed in the lab most of the night. He didn't pop across the hall to chat with Archie, didn't bug Jacqui in the fingerprint lab, didn't even hang out in the break room to drink coffee and flirt with Sara.
He just stayed in his lab, his safe, secure, little lab. His own tiny world where the only reactions were chemical, where everything could be properly categorized, where he had total control.
He knew Nick would avoid the lab at all costs and he was thankful for that.
Nick. Fucking perfect Nick. He'd never screwed up in his life. Not really. He just pretended that he understood because it enhanced his whole nice guy routine.
What did he see when he looked at Greg? He didn't see his full ride to Stanford, didn't see that he'd been Phi Beta Kappa, had graduated in three years with highest honors, top of his class. He didn't see the Master's from Berkeley, didn't see that Greg had beat out other biochemists with decades of experience for a spot in one of the nation's best crime labs—second only to the lab at the FBI.
And the way Nick had been shocked to find out he actually made a decent salary. He was one of the best DNA analysts in the country and Nick had expected him to make minimum wage? And he didn't just do DNA either—hair, fiber, pollen, glass, soil, dust, if it was there he'd find it and he'd identify it. He could have bitched about it since there was nothing about trace analysis in his job description but he didn't. He liked the chase, liked the variety it gave him, liked learning new things nearly every night, getting better with every shift.
Nick probably had no idea how good he actually was. Like the rest of the CSIs, all Nick cared about were the results Greg gave them. They didn't care that he was top in his field, that at the conference people had actually known who he was before he met them, that he was having a paper published in the Journal of Forensic Science. He probably had no idea how prestigious that was, no idea how much it meant, not only for Greg but also for the reputation of the entire lab.
Of course, Nick didn't actually know he was having a paper published in the Journal of Forensic Science. He'd never gotten around to spilling his secret before Nick accused him of being a lying druggie.
That's what Nick saw—poor little Greg. Poor little Greg, his parents are crazy. Poor little Greg, he used to be a drug addict. Poor little Greg, he carries the guilt of his best friend's death on his shoulders. His scarred shoulders. His karmically scarred shoulders. Poor little Greg got blown up but he didn't die, he's just deformed. Ugly scars on the outside to match the ugly scars on the inside.
His hands shook as he set up the test tubes needed to extract DNA from the ends of the cigarette butts Warrick had given him. He pressed his palms flat against the countertop. They didn't shake when he pressed them against something. They didn't shake when he clenched them into fists.
But he had to work, and in order to work he needed them to stop shaking because he wasn't sure he could even hold the bottle of proteinase K solution, let alone measure it precisely into each test tube along with the detergent and salt necessary to extract DNA.
Nick wouldn't even know where to begin if he had to amplify DNA using a PCR. He probably didn't even know what PCR stood for.
He had to stop thinking about Nick because if he kept thinking about Nick, his hands wouldn't ever stop shaking.
He'd been hoping for too much, hadn't he? It was too much to believe that Nick, gorgeous fucking Nick who he'd been in love with for years, could actually feel something for him. Something other than pity. Something other than the need to save yet another lost soul.
He'd seen Nick sneak over to trace at the beginning of shift. He'd known perfectly well what Hodges was doing when he came in and pretended to be nonchalant as he used the GCMS. He'd been tempted to say, "It's sugar, all right? Tell him it's just fucking sugar because the stuff he has tastes like the lab smells." But that would ruin Nick's fun, wouldn't it? Or maybe it would ruin his fun; he wasn't quite sure, because as much as he hated knowing how little Nick actually thought of him, he wished he could be there to see the look on Nick's perfect face when he found out he was wrong.
That's what he was thinking about when Grissom came by and said, "Come see me when you get a minute."
He wanted to laugh. With his hands the way they were he had nothing but time. He didn't laugh, though, he just nodded and pretended that he was absorbed in something having to do with work.
"Come on you bitch," he whispered to his trembling right hand as he dripped proteinase K into a test tube. It was slow going, but he did it, and he set the thermal cycler running before he left the lab.
"You wanted to see me?" he asked, knocking on Grissom's partially open door.
Grissom looked up from his paperwork and took off his glasses. "Yes, Greg. Come in." He motioned with his pen for Greg to shut the door.
He took his hand out of his pocket to shut the door behind him and he knew it was a mistake the moment he turned around. Grissom's head was cocked to the side and his eyebrows were furrowed in what Greg called his "Shh, I'm cogitating," look.
"They haven't been doing that ever since the explosion, have they?" Grissom asked. He didn't need to ask what Grissom meant.
Greg shook his head quickly. "No. The shaking stopped a few days after you noticed it the first time."
"But they're shaking again."
He sighed and forced a smile. "Yeah. It started this morning."
Grissom frowned.
"It'll stop," Greg said. Fuck. He wasn't going to cry. He wasn't going to cry over Nick and he definitely wasn't going to cry in front of Grissom. "It did before, just like you said." He forced a smile.
"But if it's intermittent and ongoing it might be—"
"It's not nerve damage," Greg said. "Trust me. The doctors ran every test possible. Besides, they haven't done this in months. It's just, you know, stress."
"You're not worried about the paper, are you?" Grissom asked. "Because I have to say, I expect it to be very well received. That's what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you considered presenting your findings at the next meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences?"
And he should have been elated. He should have been jumping for joy that Grissom was even suggesting it, but he couldn't really feel anything at the moment. Except, of course, for the shaking of his hands.
"That would be awesome," Greg said, and he knew his voice didn't mirror his words. He knew he sounded like he was speaking at a funeral.
"Do you want to…" Grissom paused, and Greg knew he was searching for the right words, "talk about it?"
Greg shook his head and Grissom looked relieved. Then Greg found himself talking anyway. "You remember the day I nearly got blown up and had to spend almost an entire week in the hospital with second degree burns?"
Grissom smiled a curious half smile. "Of course I do, Greg."
"Yeah. That would be a good day compared to this."
Grissom was silent for a moment and Greg suspected he was trying his hardest to think of what the most compassionate thing to say was. "Maybe you should take a personal day."
Greg shook his head. "No. I need to work. I'll go home if I feel like I'm going to drop something caustic or if this gets so bad it affects my work, but until then I'd like to stay right here."
Grissom nodded and Greg knew he understood.
"I've got tomorrow off, anyway, so…" He started to turn towards the door. "It'll stop before I get back."
"Greg," Grissom said as Greg started to leave. "If you do need to talk…"
"I'll find Catherine," Greg finished the sentence for him. He smiled, a real smile that time, though small. "I'll live," he said.
"I don't doubt that."
He was feeling like he might actually survive, too, until he walked into his lab and found Nick standing there, staring at the thermal cycler.
"That's a 30,000 dollar piece of equipment," Greg said. "Don't touch it."
Nick turned around sharply. "I wasn't."
Greg knew that Nick hadn't touched it, but it was his lab and therefore his thermal cycler and he didn't want Nick anywhere near it.
"I talked to Hodges," Nick whispered.
Greg nodded and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. "I know."
"Greg, I'm so sorry. Jesus. I know what you must be thinking right now and—"
"No, you don't." His voice was harsher than he expected, but he didn't mind. He liked the way it made Nick flinch.
"Why didn't you just tell me?"
Greg shrugged. "Why didn't you just ask?"
Nick didn't have an answer for that. He bit his lower lip and looked down at the floor and Greg felt bitter triumph flare in his chest for just a moment when he realized that Nick was ashamed.
"Do you have anything for me?" Greg asked.
Nick sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Greg, I don't even know where to start."
"Blood, fingernail scrapings, swabs of potential biological fluid," Greg said. "That's where people usually start."
"I'm not talking about work," Nick snapped, though Greg noticed that he kept his voice quiet enough that it wouldn't carry out into the hall. He kept one eye on the glass walls that surround them to see who might be watching.
"I'm busy, Nick," Greg said, and it was true even if he wouldn't start working again until Nick left. Working meant taking his hands out of his pockets and even though they were clenched in fists he knew when he took them out they would continue to shake.
"We need to talk about this." Nick's voice was pleading, even meek. It made Greg want to punch him, because he wasn't allowed to make Greg feel sorry for him.
"I think you said all you needed to yesterday."
"I know I was wrong and I'm so—"
"You know the thing about the horse and the zebra?" Greg asked, and Nick furrowed his brow. "If you hear hoof beats, look for a horse, not a for a zebra. Look for the most likely thing, the most obvious thing first."
"I've heard that," Nick said.
"You do that," Greg told him. "You do that every day of your life. You see a hanging and you think suicide first, only think murder after you've ruled suicide out."
Nick nodded. "Yeah."
"When you saw my sugar, your first thought was that I was using again. Never mind that I'd promised you, that I'd promised myself. Never mind that sugar doesn't even fucking look like meth. You were so eager to find a zebra you didn't even consider the horse."
"Greg, I…"
"That says more to me than any empty apology you make. Now, if you don't mind, I have work to do and I'd like to get back to it."
Nick took a shaky breath, and Greg had to look away from him because in his eyes were wet crescents of tears and Greg could not see him cry. He didn't know what would happen if he did, but he knew he couldn't see it, not if he wanted to make it through his shift without losing control of more than just his hands.
He couldn't risk losing control. It wasn't just that rumors would run rampant about exactly what kind of relationship he and Nick had; it wasn't just that he didn't need people poking their noses into his business. He couldn't risk losing control because if he was ever going to make it out of the lab he had to prove to everyone, from Grissom to the temp at the front desk, that he did not fall apart in stressful situations. He could handle challenges and things not going his way. He would search through sewers and dig through piles of matchbooks and do every shit job anyone threw at him. He would work long hours and let people tell him he should stay in the lab and suffer dirty looks from lab techs who thought he was a traitor and CSIs who thought he was pathetic. He would keep working and he wouldn't ever give up because if he had to spend the rest of his life in his tiny, safe little lab he was sure he'd suffocate without even knowing it and turn into one of the walking dead.
When Greg finally looked up Nick was gone, and that was fine because his hands had started shaking again even though they were still in his pockets.
**********
The patio next to Greg's was wild, nearly overgrown with large terra cotta pots of everything from pansies to cucumber vines. The pots edged off the cement patio onto the red rock around it, and some of them had even made their way onto his patio, which he didn't mind since he never used it, anyway.
"Good morning, Mrs. Palmbach," he said. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there somewhere. She always was.
A tiny elfin head popped up from behind a particularly bushy tomato plant. "You're home early," she remarked, brushing dirt off the front of her overalls. "Not much murder last night, I take."
He shook his head as he leaned against his front door. "No, not much."
"That's always good to hear. You work too much overtime as it is." She made her way around the tomato plant and past the rosemary to inspect her strawberry pots. "You tell your friend with the insects that the ladybugs you brought me did the trick. No more aphids."
"I'll tell him," he said.
"Now, what's your little article about again?" Mrs. Palmbach asked as she straightened up to her full height of nearly five feet. "I was talking to my sister, Lucille, she's the one who lives in Florida. I was talking to Lucille and I was telling her that the nice boy who has me feed his fish when he's gone was going to have an article published in a magazine, but I couldn't tell her what the name of it was because I didn't know. I told her I'd ask you the next time I saw you."
"Genetic analysis of amplified DNA with immobilized sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes," Greg said quietly.
Mrs. Palmbach thought about that for a moment. "Not a very catchy title, now, is it?"
He smiled and shook his head. "No, no it's not."
"I suppose it has to do with your robots and laser beams," she said.
He grinned at her. He'd never quite been able to explain that science didn't automatically equal robots and lasers. "Yeah," he said. "Something like that."
"Now I saw this program on the TV," Mrs. Palmbach started, "about, oh, whatchamacallit. Those doohickeys that they say they're going to be able to install in our brains pretty soon so if we want to read a book we just scan it like at the grocery store and whoomf! We've already read it. Now…"
Greg was exhausted. All he wanted to do was go inside and collapse on his bed and sleep for the next three days, but he listened to Mrs. Palmbach anyway because she fed his fish for free. She gave him fresh herbs from her garden. She always noticed when he had a new haircut. She was completely unperturbed by the fact that he had both "lady friends" and "gentleman callers."
He listened to Mrs. Palmbach go on about brain implants and mind control chips because he thought it was really shitty that her kids never came to visit even though they only lived in Salt Lake. He told her what he knew about nanotechnology and how the brain was far too complex for them to just scan information into it, because once when he'd had the flu she brought him a bowl of the worst chicken soup he'd ever tasted, but she'd brought it to him and that was what mattered.
He stayed and talked with Mrs. Palmbach because as long as he was talking to her he didn't have to think about Nick, and as long as he didn't think about Nick he could keep his hands mostly steady. As long as he could keep his hands mostly steady he could believe that he wasn't losing his mind.
When he finally got inside he didn't bother turning the lights on. He had his aquarium lights set up on timers so that they switched from moonlight, to dawn, to day automatically. It was enough light to see by as he kicked his shoes off next to the door and headed towards the kitchen. He flipped his coffee pot on—he always filled it with water and grounds before he left so it would be ready to go when he got home. He stared at the pot and didn't wait for it to finish brewing before he poured himself a cup.
He flipped open his tin of sugar and stuck a spoon in it, but the spoon didn't even make it to his coffee before his trembling hand spilled the sugar across the counter and at the sight of the scattered brown crystals Greg let out the sob that he'd been holding in for nearly a day.
He sank to the floor and pulled his knees to his chest and cried. He tried to stop. He didn't want to cry for Nick, for his own naivety, for his desperate hope that what they had was real and would last, but he couldn't stop no matter how hard he tried.
He didn't want to cry and he didn't want to feel the pain that washed over him so he pulled himself up and dug in his cabinet for the Xanax he'd gotten after his hands started shaking the first time. He had 23 left, had only taken seven before, even when cold sweats and terror woke him up at night at the memory of the explosion that flung him through the glass wall as easily as if both the wall and him had been made of paper.
He shook two of the small oval pills into his palm, popped them into his mouth, swallowed them with a mouthful of coffee, no sugar.
He headed back into the living room, pulled the blanket off the back of his armchair and snuggled beneath it on the couch. He stretched out, trying not to think of anything, and he watched his mated pair of coral banded shrimp clean each other as he nodded off to sleep.
His limbs were heavy, almost as heavy as his head and he knew somewhere in his hazy mind that someone was knocking on his door but he didn't care. Everyone knew he worked nights so whoever was knocking was probably a salesman or a Jehovah's Witness. He rolled onto his other side without even opening his eyes and let himself drift back into sleep.
In the slow, stubborn world of his dream the ringing of his telephone became a bird chirping at his window, the knocking at the door became a monkey playing drums.
He jerked awake at the first touch of a hand to his shoulder, though, and sat upright on the couch, the adrenaline pumping through his veins enough to counteract the Xanax for the moment.
He looked up at Nick and thought he was still dreaming until he saw Mrs. Palmbach, a shadow in the door silhouetted by the bright light of day. She was holding his keys in her hand and she peered in at him as she shifted from foot to foot.
"Scared the shit out of me," he muttered.
"Your friend kept knocking but you didn't answer," Mrs. Palmbach said. She took a step inside. "You didn't answer when he tried your phone, and then I tried to call and you didn't answer for me and he kept knocking and I was worried. You didn't seem quite yourself this morning, and I thought maybe you'd slipped in the shower or fallen while working on one of your aquariums. I didn't know if I should use the key or not, but I was worried so I did. I hope you're not angry."
"I didn't mean to scare you, Mrs. Palmbach," he said, rubbing his forehead. "I took a Xanax before I went to sleep."
Mrs. Palmbach seemed relieved by the explanation. "He was in an explosion," she half-whispered to Nick.
Nick nodded. "Yes, ma'am, I know."
And Greg would have thrown him out, would have physically shoved him out if that's what it took but Mrs. Palmbach was there so all he did was assure her that he was OK and that he wasn't mad at her for letting Nick in, that she'd done the right thing and yes, of course he wanted some of her cherry tomatoes as soon as they were ripe.
"She's nice," Nick said after Mrs. Palmbach left.
"So, you thought I'd offed myself?" Greg asked as he headed towards the kitchen. He was still groggy. He needed coffee.
"No," Nick said.
"Whoa," Greg said as the floor tilted under his feet. He reached for the back of a chair and gripped it tight and he let Nick steady him and lower him into the chair before he batted Nick's hands away. His legs were heavy and tingling and his arms felt like gravity was ten times as strong on them as anything else.
"I didn't know you took Xanax," Nick said softly.
"You don't know a whole hell of a lot, do you?" Greg reached forward and pulled a long, narrow paper bag open, pulled out a fat bottle of pills. "I take these, too," he said, lobbing the bottle in Nick's general direction. "Since you're so interested in the drugs I take."
Nick looked down at the bottle of pills in his hand, touched the label gently.
"Three hundred milligrams of Effexor," Greg said. "That's four a day. Lucky we've got a decent insurance plan, huh?"
"These are new," Nick said softly.
"Yeah. That's where I went yesterday morning, to see my shrink and get my prescription renewed." He laughed and couldn't keep his eyes from closing, his head from dropping forward. He jerked his head back up and tried to fix his gaze on Nick. "So you were right. I did go on a drug run."
"Let me get you into bed," Nick whispered.
"Taking advantage of the mentally imbalanced, now?"
"These are just antidepressants, Greg. They don't mean you're mentally imbalanced. Everybody takes them nowadays."
"Even you?"
Nick shook his head.
"Of course you don't."
"Let me at least get you back on the couch," Nick whispered.
"I don't need any help." Greg stood up and concentrated on walking, braced his hand on the wall as he headed towards his room. He noted that his hand wasn't shaking and even thought he knew it was just a result of the anti-anxiety pills it was nice.
He stumbled, though, and Nick caught him, and he was too tired and too synthetically calm to care.
"I was scared," Nick whispered as he helped Greg into bed. "But not that you'd tried to hurt yourself. I was scared that you were on the other side of the door and you were never going to open up. I was scared that nothing I did would ever get you to open up to me again. I love you, Greg, you have to believe me."
Greg let Nick pull his shirt off and flopped back down onto the bed after Nick had pulled over his head and off his arms. He thought he should maybe be pissed that Nick was taking off his pants, but he wasn't. And it wasn't like Nick hadn't seen it before, anyway.
Nick tucked him into bed and ran his fingers over Greg's cheek. "I'm so sorry, baby. I don't know how I'll make it up to you but I will. I promise you I will, no matter what it takes."
"I hate you," Greg whispered. He smiled a sleepy smile when he saw the look on Nick's face, when he knew Nick believed him. In the peaceful haze of the Xanax he could admit that sometimes, just sometimes, it felt good to cause pain.
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