Find me in the River (1/10)
Title: Find me in the River
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nick/Greg, the workforce of the Las Vegas Crime Lab night shift, some of the Stokes family
Length: ~32,000 (Chapter One: 3,536)
Spoilers: 2.03 - Overload
Summary: For Nick and Greg to get it together, Nick has to acknowledge some things about himself that he's been hiding for years. When he starts to come out to colleagues and family, a number of lives are affected.
Warnings: Child abuse. Domestic violence. Homophobic violence. Contains details of a number of crime scenes.
Author's note: This fic is part of the same universe as Passing Judgement on my Life and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, although it can stand completely alone.
Cracked and dry
Even though they hadn’t discussed Nick’s sexual orientation in the couple of months since the Planned Parenthood case, it was nice to have someone at work that didn’t ask about dates and assume they would be with women. Nick didn’t really notice how much he had come to rely on Greg’s silent solidarity until the gay bashing outside Club Garrarufa.
Greg had gone out with Warrick to the scene; to photograph the blood and chaos in the alley, and to ask Garrarufa’s patrons and staff if they had seen anything of the brutal beating. He’d come back with his face carefully blank and breezed straight past Nick, who was standing in the corridor talking to Archie, without even acknowledging his presence.
“So,” Archie was saying, “The tapes have finally arrived from the surveillance cameras at the lot and I’m just about to start processing them. Want me to beep you when anything pops?”
Nick grunted, mind already skittering away from his investigation of organised car theft at one of Las Vegas’ most upscale dealers, and towards whatever was wrong with Greg.
It used to be that Nick would go for breakfast with the team after shift and talk mostly to Warrick about sports. They would watch the game together, and if that wasn’t a possibility then they would exchange text messages commenting on plays and the color commentary. After a bad shift, as long as neither of them was stinking too badly of decomp, they would go to a bar and suck down beers and play pool.
In the last couple of months, Nick had still talked to Warrick at team breakfasts but he’d started breakfasting with Greg on the days that the whole night shift didn’t drift out to a nearby diner. They’d started out talking mostly about sports and work and the benefits of pickups versus sports cars. Now they talked about politics and books they had read, and things about each other’s families that included funny stories about nieces and nephews, but went beyond that, too.
At the most recent team breakfast Nick had caught himself handing Greg half a wrapper of brown sugar, because that’s what Greg added to diner coffee. Greg, in return, was passing him the extra two packages of syrup that he always poured on pancakes when he had bacon. Nick realised that he and Greg had somehow become friends who knew that kind of thing about each other.
Catherine had snorted and told them both that they needed to eat way less diner food, but Warrick had looked between the two of them with a questioning expression on his face and grabbed his bag, throwing some bills on the table to cover his breakfast.
Things between Nick and Warrick hadn’t been quite right since that and Nick was hoping that he hadn’t said something to Greg at the scene. He almost laughed out loud at the prospect of being in the middle of something that reminded him of his sisters’ sixth grade friend dramas, but the thought of losing a friend wasn’t really funny at all.
***
Nick found Greg in the breakroom, drinking a can of Coke with his sneakered feet propped up on the coffee table.
“Everything go OK at Garrarufa, man?”
“Fine.” Greg’s voice was tight and Nick realised that he was really, properly angry.
Nick sat down next to him. “Are you sure? Because you sound pretty pissed.”
The muscle in Greg’s jaw was twitching. “I just need a minute to feel the rage and then I’ll be back to being the unflappable CSI-in-waiting, OK?”
“Not OK.” Nick shook his head. “Wouldn’t venting work better than you getting an ulcer in ten years time?”
Greg looked up at him. “You really want to know? Fine! I just watched Warrick’s lip curl at Garrarufa, at the people who own Garrarufa, and at the people who go to Garrarufa. I saw him interview a bunch of witnesses from a good two feet away so he didn’t get any gay cooties on him, and roll his eyes when one of the witnesses broke down and had to be comforted by his friends. Apparently seeing half a gay bashing brought back memories of his own boyfriend’s beaten corpse back home in Pahrump. Probably because the guy was a hysterical, swishy queen, right?”
Nick ran both hands through his hair. ”Warrick? Are you sure?”
Greg snorted. “Are you kidding me? Because Warrick’s the founder member of the Vegas chapter of PFLAG?”
“I’ve never had the slightest notion that Warrick has a problem with gay people.” Nick racked his brain for a case that might have revealed Warrick’s true thoughts.
“Yeah, Warrick is definitely a straight ally. That’s why you were so super-comfortable coming out to him.” Greg’s tone was snide.
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
Greg finished his Coke. “What’s not fair about it? You’ve never told him you’re gay, right.”
Nick cast an anxious glance at the breakroom door.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Greg, standing up. “Your secret is safe. No one would ever guess in a thousand years that you bat for my team.”
***
Half an hour before shift was due to end, Greg turned up in the AV Lab with some Blue Hawaiian coffee for Archie and Nick. Acknowledging it for the olive branch that it was, Nick smiled at Greg as he took his cup.
“Are we still doing breakfast later?” Nick’s voice was hopeful.
“Sure.” Greg smiled down at him, and there was something in the exchange that made Archie look across sharply from the surveillance footage he was working on.
Beep. Nick looked down at his beeper. “I’m getting paged to the interview room. Catch you guys later?”
He left the room without noticing that Archie was still staring at Greg.
“Something you want to say, dude?” Greg had his chin up, which Archie knew from the nights that Greg ended up crashed out drunk on his sofa wasn’t always a good thing.
Archie grinned. “You used to tell me about your dating adventures, Sanders. Now you’re moving over to team CSI are you forgetting that I have a need for lab news too?”
Greg shook his head. “There is no news. Nick and I are just friends.”
“Whatever you say, man.” Archie turned back to the AV controls on his bench.
“Archie, listen.” Greg paused, trying to decide how to frame this to get away with giving as little information as possible. Tried to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“I like Nick as more than a friend, but I don’t want to scare him off and ruin our friendship. He’s been through a lot in the last few years and I don’t want to remind him of Nigel Crane.”
The smile had left Archie’s face at the mention of Nick’s stalker.
He lightly punched Greg’s shoulder. “Your secret is safe with me. Just remember Andrew and your habit of falling for guys that aren’t in a place to be available, OK? You’re a messy drunk, Sanders, and I’m not sure how much unrequited love stuff I can bear, even if you do pour me scotch while you tell me about it.”
***
Eating breakfast opposite Nick in their diner of choice, Greg felt more frustrated than he’d ever been in his life. Greg was afraid that the night Nick came out to him had been the high water mark, and that Nick was never going to be more comfortable with his sexuality than that.
He tried to pretend to himself that he only cared for Nick’s sake but, actually, he’d wanted Nick on and off since the moment he saw him. If not for the fact that Nick was so far in the closet he was halfway to Narnia, it might have been interesting to see if their mild flirtation had gone anywhere.
“I saw the tapes,” Nick said.
“The tapes?”
“Of the beating outside Garrarufa. They really went to town on that guy. He was on his knees, begging for his life and they hit him over and over and over again.” Nick’s voice was empty.
Greg frowned. “Where did you see the tapes?”
“Archie was trying to get a clear shot of their faces when I arrived in the AV lab to go over my car lot footage.” Nick shook his head.
“My first year on the job in Dallas we had this gay bashing, a guy called David McMartin. The guy survived but only just and his face looked like hamburger when they’d finished hitting it with rebar. The 911 call was phoned in by his boyfriend, who saw the whole thing.” Nick clenched his hands.
Greg ran a finger over one of Nick’s fists.
“My Daddy used to have these poker games with other Dallas law and order bigwigs, and they were all in his den one Saturday night when I had to go past the ranch to drop off something I’d picked up for Momma in town.” Nick’s voice was bitter.
“I went down to the den to say ‘hi’ but I didn’t go in because I could hear them through the door. They were listening to that 911 call and laughing their asses off. I thought Cisco was going to be sick he was laughing so hard. And then he stopped and said ‘Awww, did someone hurt your wickle boyfriend.’ And then they all laughed some more.”
“Jesus, Nick.” Greg was struggling to keep the abject horror off his face and hoped he was succeeding, for Nick’s sake. Homophobic old prick, he thought.
“That was the moment that I knew that I had to get out of there. That it wasn’t going to end.”
Greg frowned again. “That what wasn’t going to end?”
Nick took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot these past few months.” He looked at Greg, and then his eyes slid away as though he couldn’t bear to see Greg’s reaction to what he was about to say.
“My Daddy was very - exacting. There were lots of ways that my choices didn’t please him and I wasn’t a good ol’ boy like Bill Jr and Alex. They both got married their first year on the job and Bill III and Alexander Jr. appeared in short order.”
Nick’s was staring out the diner window at the heat haze shimmering off the blacktop. “When I was a teenager I wanted to be a profiler, like my sister Annie eventually became, but my Daddy said that was sissy. There wasn’t a week that went by when one or other of my choices wasn’t sissy.”
He turned eyes full of misery to Greg. “And so - I’ve been thinking - that he’s known all along. What I am, I mean.”
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Nick, sorry if I’m being really dumb here, but isn’t that a good thing? I mean, even if he isn’t exactly happy about it, doesn’t the fact that he knows mean you don’t have to hide it?”
Nick laughed, mirthlessly. “In my Daddy’s universe, Momma was responsible for raising us right with some disciplinary backup from him.” He lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. “I’m worried that if I confirm his suspicions she’ll pay for that.”
Greg raised his eyebrows. “You think he’ll hurt her?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Greg wrapped his fingers round Nick’s hand. He didn’t pull away. “Did your dad hit your mom when you were growing up?”
Nick let out a sigh. “I truly don’t know. My Daddy has a fearsome temper but I never saw him lay a hand on Momma. Of course, it was a big house.”
Greg took a breath and let it out slowly, trying to dispel the sinking feeling in his stomach. “Nicky, when you say that your dad provided ‘disciplinary backup’, do you mean that he hit you?”
Nick nodded; a short, jerky nod.
“Like a slap?”
Nick was quiet and unmoving.
“Like a punch?”
The jerky nod again.
“Like with his belt?”
This time when Nick nodded, Greg realised that his eyes were bright with tears.
Pulling out his wallet, Greg put enough bills on the table to cover their coffee and pancakes. “Nicky, I think we should go.”
Nick said nothing on the drive back to Greg’s apartment; nothing when Greg installed him on the navy sofa; and nothing when Greg passed him a beer. It wasn’t until Greg sat down sideways on the sofa beside him and ran his hand down Nick’s back that Nick eventually spoke.
“Greg, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about him. We had a complicated relationship.”
Greg rejected the first five answers that sprang to his lips, which were full of words that he didn’t think Nick would appreciate anyone using about his family.
“It’s not really that complicated. He hit you because he didn’t like something about you. That’s why people hit each other.” Greg’s hand was still moving over Nick’s back in long, smooth strokes.
“It wasn’t like that, man. He thought he was raising me right.”
Greg took that in, thought for a minute. “Nick, do you remember the first time he hit you with a belt?”
Nick drew a shuddering breath. “Yeah. It was the summer before I went into sixth grade. Our church had a summer camp and we had to choose activities. My Daddy really wanted me to go out for this rodeo skills activity, but I just wanted to go trail riding with Annie and Andrea.”
Something squeezed around Greg’s heart. “How is trail riding wrong? Did he take a belt to Annie?”
“No way,” Nick said. “He would never hit a woman.” Except maybe your Momma, thought Greg.
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Nicky, at age 11 and 12 both you and Annie were children; children who sound like the freaking Waltons. I could almost, almost understand your dad belting you in sheer terror if you were a sixteen year old gangbanger who kept violating parole, but that wasn’t it.”
“That kind of punishment wasn’t what I would choose for my own kids, if I had any.” Nick sounded like he was forcing the words out past a throat full of gravel. Greg slid one arm across Nick’s shoulders.
“Any parent would be blessed by a child like you, Nicky.” Greg couldn’t get over the idea of someone living at close quarters with Nick and wanting to make him feel pain instead of loved with all of their heart. “You’re the most decent, kind, brave person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m a liar.” Nick’s voice was harsh.
“A liar?”
“Yeah. I pretend that I date women and want women but really I don’t.”
Greg stroked Nick’s knee, and tried not to notice how warm his leg was through his jeans. “Nicky, that doesn’t make you a liar. It makes you human for taking on board the messages you’ve had your whole life about whom people should love and be loved by.”
Nick shot Greg a look. “You’re truly telling me that you’re not annoyed by the fact that I didn’t go and confront Warrick, waving a rainbow flag?”
Greg made an impatient noise. “Warrick annoyed me, not you. If I’m honest, I didn’t understand why your family’s opinion mattered so much to you. I do now.”
He wanted to know if Nick could get past this, but he couldn’t find any way to phrase it that didn’t sound completely insensitive.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Nick was saying. “I can’t live my life like this. I’m gay. I’m scared of what that means for my life, but I’m still gay. I need to be me. Even if I can’t ever discuss it with my family, I need to start somewhere with being who I really am.”
Greg looked at him. “We could go to Garrarufa tonight? We both have it off and you could dip your toe in the culture?”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Sure, Greggo, and then maybe we could swing past a bathhouse.”
Greg grinned. “It’s not that big a deal. There’ll be a mixed crowd tonight after last night. People always want to go down and show their support for the whole LGBT community after a gaybashing.”
Nick’s stomach flipped. “OK.”
***
Propped against the bar, beer in hand, Nick surveyed the club as the pounding beat tickled him somewhere just south of his stomach. Greg was beside him with his back to the bar, leaning on both elbows. His posture drew Nick’s eye down over the flat panel of stomach under Greg’s tight shirt to the jeans that were skimming his hips. Nick nearly licked his lips. Greg looked hot.
The crowd was heaving already and Nick could almost taste the anticipation in the room as the DJ mixed in a favourite tune and the atmosphere ratcheted up a couple of notches. Arms started to snake above bobbing heads and he could see a few couples who were moving as one, hips mashed together, and hands sliding over exposed flesh.
He grinned at Greg who leaned his head towards Nick. “Having a good time?”
“Yeah.”
Greg smiled at him, remembering the first time he’d gone to a gay club in San Francisco and how much he’d felt like he really belonged, in a way that he hadn’t anywhere else even in that most gay friendly of cities. He felt like he was showing Nick a new world; playing Beatrice to Nick’s Dante.
Out of the throng of bodies a tall, blond man appeared. Striding purposefully up to Greg he put one hand on Greg’s hip and then slid his other hand up the inside of Greg’s thigh. Laughing, Greg grabbed his wrist before his hand reached its destination.
“Long time no see, Sanders,” the man said.
“I’ve been busy, Wilkie.” Nick felt irrationally pleased that Greg wasn’t returning any of the guy’s touches.
“Too busy for this?” The man waved his hand at the dancefloor. “You’re like a fixture in this place.”
Greg nodded his head at Nick. “James Wilkes, this is Nick Stokes.” He nodded back towards James. “Nick Stokes, this is James Wilkes.”
James gave Nick a quick up-and-down and raised one eyebrow meaningfully at Greg. “I see that you have been busy.”
“Nicky’s a good friend,” Greg’s said, without emphasis.
Nick realised in one moment of stillness in the midst of that shouted conversation that he wanted to be more, and was half disappointed that Greg didn’t respond to James’s questioning look. He would have liked to hear Greg explain exactly what they were to each other. He would have liked to know where they were going.
(Part two: Didn't count on suffering)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nick/Greg, the workforce of the Las Vegas Crime Lab night shift, some of the Stokes family
Length: ~32,000 (Chapter One: 3,536)
Spoilers: 2.03 - Overload
Summary: For Nick and Greg to get it together, Nick has to acknowledge some things about himself that he's been hiding for years. When he starts to come out to colleagues and family, a number of lives are affected.
Warnings: Child abuse. Domestic violence. Homophobic violence. Contains details of a number of crime scenes.
Author's note: This fic is part of the same universe as Passing Judgement on my Life and Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, although it can stand completely alone.
Cracked and dry
Even though they hadn’t discussed Nick’s sexual orientation in the couple of months since the Planned Parenthood case, it was nice to have someone at work that didn’t ask about dates and assume they would be with women. Nick didn’t really notice how much he had come to rely on Greg’s silent solidarity until the gay bashing outside Club Garrarufa.
Greg had gone out with Warrick to the scene; to photograph the blood and chaos in the alley, and to ask Garrarufa’s patrons and staff if they had seen anything of the brutal beating. He’d come back with his face carefully blank and breezed straight past Nick, who was standing in the corridor talking to Archie, without even acknowledging his presence.
“So,” Archie was saying, “The tapes have finally arrived from the surveillance cameras at the lot and I’m just about to start processing them. Want me to beep you when anything pops?”
Nick grunted, mind already skittering away from his investigation of organised car theft at one of Las Vegas’ most upscale dealers, and towards whatever was wrong with Greg.
It used to be that Nick would go for breakfast with the team after shift and talk mostly to Warrick about sports. They would watch the game together, and if that wasn’t a possibility then they would exchange text messages commenting on plays and the color commentary. After a bad shift, as long as neither of them was stinking too badly of decomp, they would go to a bar and suck down beers and play pool.
In the last couple of months, Nick had still talked to Warrick at team breakfasts but he’d started breakfasting with Greg on the days that the whole night shift didn’t drift out to a nearby diner. They’d started out talking mostly about sports and work and the benefits of pickups versus sports cars. Now they talked about politics and books they had read, and things about each other’s families that included funny stories about nieces and nephews, but went beyond that, too.
At the most recent team breakfast Nick had caught himself handing Greg half a wrapper of brown sugar, because that’s what Greg added to diner coffee. Greg, in return, was passing him the extra two packages of syrup that he always poured on pancakes when he had bacon. Nick realised that he and Greg had somehow become friends who knew that kind of thing about each other.
Catherine had snorted and told them both that they needed to eat way less diner food, but Warrick had looked between the two of them with a questioning expression on his face and grabbed his bag, throwing some bills on the table to cover his breakfast.
Things between Nick and Warrick hadn’t been quite right since that and Nick was hoping that he hadn’t said something to Greg at the scene. He almost laughed out loud at the prospect of being in the middle of something that reminded him of his sisters’ sixth grade friend dramas, but the thought of losing a friend wasn’t really funny at all.
***
Nick found Greg in the breakroom, drinking a can of Coke with his sneakered feet propped up on the coffee table.
“Everything go OK at Garrarufa, man?”
“Fine.” Greg’s voice was tight and Nick realised that he was really, properly angry.
Nick sat down next to him. “Are you sure? Because you sound pretty pissed.”
The muscle in Greg’s jaw was twitching. “I just need a minute to feel the rage and then I’ll be back to being the unflappable CSI-in-waiting, OK?”
“Not OK.” Nick shook his head. “Wouldn’t venting work better than you getting an ulcer in ten years time?”
Greg looked up at him. “You really want to know? Fine! I just watched Warrick’s lip curl at Garrarufa, at the people who own Garrarufa, and at the people who go to Garrarufa. I saw him interview a bunch of witnesses from a good two feet away so he didn’t get any gay cooties on him, and roll his eyes when one of the witnesses broke down and had to be comforted by his friends. Apparently seeing half a gay bashing brought back memories of his own boyfriend’s beaten corpse back home in Pahrump. Probably because the guy was a hysterical, swishy queen, right?”
Nick ran both hands through his hair. ”Warrick? Are you sure?”
Greg snorted. “Are you kidding me? Because Warrick’s the founder member of the Vegas chapter of PFLAG?”
“I’ve never had the slightest notion that Warrick has a problem with gay people.” Nick racked his brain for a case that might have revealed Warrick’s true thoughts.
“Yeah, Warrick is definitely a straight ally. That’s why you were so super-comfortable coming out to him.” Greg’s tone was snide.
“Hey, that’s not fair.”
Greg finished his Coke. “What’s not fair about it? You’ve never told him you’re gay, right.”
Nick cast an anxious glance at the breakroom door.
“Oh, don’t worry,” said Greg, standing up. “Your secret is safe. No one would ever guess in a thousand years that you bat for my team.”
***
Half an hour before shift was due to end, Greg turned up in the AV Lab with some Blue Hawaiian coffee for Archie and Nick. Acknowledging it for the olive branch that it was, Nick smiled at Greg as he took his cup.
“Are we still doing breakfast later?” Nick’s voice was hopeful.
“Sure.” Greg smiled down at him, and there was something in the exchange that made Archie look across sharply from the surveillance footage he was working on.
Beep. Nick looked down at his beeper. “I’m getting paged to the interview room. Catch you guys later?”
He left the room without noticing that Archie was still staring at Greg.
“Something you want to say, dude?” Greg had his chin up, which Archie knew from the nights that Greg ended up crashed out drunk on his sofa wasn’t always a good thing.
Archie grinned. “You used to tell me about your dating adventures, Sanders. Now you’re moving over to team CSI are you forgetting that I have a need for lab news too?”
Greg shook his head. “There is no news. Nick and I are just friends.”
“Whatever you say, man.” Archie turned back to the AV controls on his bench.
“Archie, listen.” Greg paused, trying to decide how to frame this to get away with giving as little information as possible. Tried to keep the desperation out of his voice.
“I like Nick as more than a friend, but I don’t want to scare him off and ruin our friendship. He’s been through a lot in the last few years and I don’t want to remind him of Nigel Crane.”
The smile had left Archie’s face at the mention of Nick’s stalker.
He lightly punched Greg’s shoulder. “Your secret is safe with me. Just remember Andrew and your habit of falling for guys that aren’t in a place to be available, OK? You’re a messy drunk, Sanders, and I’m not sure how much unrequited love stuff I can bear, even if you do pour me scotch while you tell me about it.”
***
Eating breakfast opposite Nick in their diner of choice, Greg felt more frustrated than he’d ever been in his life. Greg was afraid that the night Nick came out to him had been the high water mark, and that Nick was never going to be more comfortable with his sexuality than that.
He tried to pretend to himself that he only cared for Nick’s sake but, actually, he’d wanted Nick on and off since the moment he saw him. If not for the fact that Nick was so far in the closet he was halfway to Narnia, it might have been interesting to see if their mild flirtation had gone anywhere.
“I saw the tapes,” Nick said.
“The tapes?”
“Of the beating outside Garrarufa. They really went to town on that guy. He was on his knees, begging for his life and they hit him over and over and over again.” Nick’s voice was empty.
Greg frowned. “Where did you see the tapes?”
“Archie was trying to get a clear shot of their faces when I arrived in the AV lab to go over my car lot footage.” Nick shook his head.
“My first year on the job in Dallas we had this gay bashing, a guy called David McMartin. The guy survived but only just and his face looked like hamburger when they’d finished hitting it with rebar. The 911 call was phoned in by his boyfriend, who saw the whole thing.” Nick clenched his hands.
Greg ran a finger over one of Nick’s fists.
“My Daddy used to have these poker games with other Dallas law and order bigwigs, and they were all in his den one Saturday night when I had to go past the ranch to drop off something I’d picked up for Momma in town.” Nick’s voice was bitter.
“I went down to the den to say ‘hi’ but I didn’t go in because I could hear them through the door. They were listening to that 911 call and laughing their asses off. I thought Cisco was going to be sick he was laughing so hard. And then he stopped and said ‘Awww, did someone hurt your wickle boyfriend.’ And then they all laughed some more.”
“Jesus, Nick.” Greg was struggling to keep the abject horror off his face and hoped he was succeeding, for Nick’s sake. Homophobic old prick, he thought.
“That was the moment that I knew that I had to get out of there. That it wasn’t going to end.”
Greg frowned again. “That what wasn’t going to end?”
Nick took a deep breath. “I’ve been thinking about this a lot these past few months.” He looked at Greg, and then his eyes slid away as though he couldn’t bear to see Greg’s reaction to what he was about to say.
“My Daddy was very - exacting. There were lots of ways that my choices didn’t please him and I wasn’t a good ol’ boy like Bill Jr and Alex. They both got married their first year on the job and Bill III and Alexander Jr. appeared in short order.”
Nick’s was staring out the diner window at the heat haze shimmering off the blacktop. “When I was a teenager I wanted to be a profiler, like my sister Annie eventually became, but my Daddy said that was sissy. There wasn’t a week that went by when one or other of my choices wasn’t sissy.”
He turned eyes full of misery to Greg. “And so - I’ve been thinking - that he’s known all along. What I am, I mean.”
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Nick, sorry if I’m being really dumb here, but isn’t that a good thing? I mean, even if he isn’t exactly happy about it, doesn’t the fact that he knows mean you don’t have to hide it?”
Nick laughed, mirthlessly. “In my Daddy’s universe, Momma was responsible for raising us right with some disciplinary backup from him.” He lowered his voice, almost to a whisper. “I’m worried that if I confirm his suspicions she’ll pay for that.”
Greg raised his eyebrows. “You think he’ll hurt her?”
Nick shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Greg wrapped his fingers round Nick’s hand. He didn’t pull away. “Did your dad hit your mom when you were growing up?”
Nick let out a sigh. “I truly don’t know. My Daddy has a fearsome temper but I never saw him lay a hand on Momma. Of course, it was a big house.”
Greg took a breath and let it out slowly, trying to dispel the sinking feeling in his stomach. “Nicky, when you say that your dad provided ‘disciplinary backup’, do you mean that he hit you?”
Nick nodded; a short, jerky nod.
“Like a slap?”
Nick was quiet and unmoving.
“Like a punch?”
The jerky nod again.
“Like with his belt?”
This time when Nick nodded, Greg realised that his eyes were bright with tears.
Pulling out his wallet, Greg put enough bills on the table to cover their coffee and pancakes. “Nicky, I think we should go.”
Nick said nothing on the drive back to Greg’s apartment; nothing when Greg installed him on the navy sofa; and nothing when Greg passed him a beer. It wasn’t until Greg sat down sideways on the sofa beside him and ran his hand down Nick’s back that Nick eventually spoke.
“Greg, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about him. We had a complicated relationship.”
Greg rejected the first five answers that sprang to his lips, which were full of words that he didn’t think Nick would appreciate anyone using about his family.
“It’s not really that complicated. He hit you because he didn’t like something about you. That’s why people hit each other.” Greg’s hand was still moving over Nick’s back in long, smooth strokes.
“It wasn’t like that, man. He thought he was raising me right.”
Greg took that in, thought for a minute. “Nick, do you remember the first time he hit you with a belt?”
Nick drew a shuddering breath. “Yeah. It was the summer before I went into sixth grade. Our church had a summer camp and we had to choose activities. My Daddy really wanted me to go out for this rodeo skills activity, but I just wanted to go trail riding with Annie and Andrea.”
Something squeezed around Greg’s heart. “How is trail riding wrong? Did he take a belt to Annie?”
“No way,” Nick said. “He would never hit a woman.” Except maybe your Momma, thought Greg.
Greg was quiet for a moment. “Nicky, at age 11 and 12 both you and Annie were children; children who sound like the freaking Waltons. I could almost, almost understand your dad belting you in sheer terror if you were a sixteen year old gangbanger who kept violating parole, but that wasn’t it.”
“That kind of punishment wasn’t what I would choose for my own kids, if I had any.” Nick sounded like he was forcing the words out past a throat full of gravel. Greg slid one arm across Nick’s shoulders.
“Any parent would be blessed by a child like you, Nicky.” Greg couldn’t get over the idea of someone living at close quarters with Nick and wanting to make him feel pain instead of loved with all of their heart. “You’re the most decent, kind, brave person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m a liar.” Nick’s voice was harsh.
“A liar?”
“Yeah. I pretend that I date women and want women but really I don’t.”
Greg stroked Nick’s knee, and tried not to notice how warm his leg was through his jeans. “Nicky, that doesn’t make you a liar. It makes you human for taking on board the messages you’ve had your whole life about whom people should love and be loved by.”
Nick shot Greg a look. “You’re truly telling me that you’re not annoyed by the fact that I didn’t go and confront Warrick, waving a rainbow flag?”
Greg made an impatient noise. “Warrick annoyed me, not you. If I’m honest, I didn’t understand why your family’s opinion mattered so much to you. I do now.”
He wanted to know if Nick could get past this, but he couldn’t find any way to phrase it that didn’t sound completely insensitive.
“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Nick was saying. “I can’t live my life like this. I’m gay. I’m scared of what that means for my life, but I’m still gay. I need to be me. Even if I can’t ever discuss it with my family, I need to start somewhere with being who I really am.”
Greg looked at him. “We could go to Garrarufa tonight? We both have it off and you could dip your toe in the culture?”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “Sure, Greggo, and then maybe we could swing past a bathhouse.”
Greg grinned. “It’s not that big a deal. There’ll be a mixed crowd tonight after last night. People always want to go down and show their support for the whole LGBT community after a gaybashing.”
Nick’s stomach flipped. “OK.”
***
Propped against the bar, beer in hand, Nick surveyed the club as the pounding beat tickled him somewhere just south of his stomach. Greg was beside him with his back to the bar, leaning on both elbows. His posture drew Nick’s eye down over the flat panel of stomach under Greg’s tight shirt to the jeans that were skimming his hips. Nick nearly licked his lips. Greg looked hot.
The crowd was heaving already and Nick could almost taste the anticipation in the room as the DJ mixed in a favourite tune and the atmosphere ratcheted up a couple of notches. Arms started to snake above bobbing heads and he could see a few couples who were moving as one, hips mashed together, and hands sliding over exposed flesh.
He grinned at Greg who leaned his head towards Nick. “Having a good time?”
“Yeah.”
Greg smiled at him, remembering the first time he’d gone to a gay club in San Francisco and how much he’d felt like he really belonged, in a way that he hadn’t anywhere else even in that most gay friendly of cities. He felt like he was showing Nick a new world; playing Beatrice to Nick’s Dante.
Out of the throng of bodies a tall, blond man appeared. Striding purposefully up to Greg he put one hand on Greg’s hip and then slid his other hand up the inside of Greg’s thigh. Laughing, Greg grabbed his wrist before his hand reached its destination.
“Long time no see, Sanders,” the man said.
“I’ve been busy, Wilkie.” Nick felt irrationally pleased that Greg wasn’t returning any of the guy’s touches.
“Too busy for this?” The man waved his hand at the dancefloor. “You’re like a fixture in this place.”
Greg nodded his head at Nick. “James Wilkes, this is Nick Stokes.” He nodded back towards James. “Nick Stokes, this is James Wilkes.”
James gave Nick a quick up-and-down and raised one eyebrow meaningfully at Greg. “I see that you have been busy.”
“Nicky’s a good friend,” Greg’s said, without emphasis.
Nick realised in one moment of stillness in the midst of that shouted conversation that he wanted to be more, and was half disappointed that Greg didn’t respond to James’s questioning look. He would have liked to hear Greg explain exactly what they were to each other. He would have liked to know where they were going.
(Part two: Didn't count on suffering)