Find me in the River (6/10)
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.
Longing to See the Roses
It had been a straightforward enough bank robbery. If a 24 hour long siege that ended with a shootout could be described as straightforward. If the injury of two hostages and two police officers and deaths of all four robbers was business as usual.
The whole night shift had been at the scene, photographing blood spatter and bullet casings; swabbing the foam that they had used to blow open the safe deposit boxes of the small savings and loan.
In the middle of the detritus of 30 scared people who had been allowed to eat and drink and, eventually, sleep, Nick had set up an improvised desk. He had swabbed people’s cheeks to add to the DNA record of the case. He collected fingerprints and contact details; checking IDs like a scrupulous doorman.
Last in line was a young woman with long brown hair under a headscarf and a pinched, white face.
“Can I see some ID?” Nick held out his hand.
“I have my passport and stuff with my address on it. I was here to open an account.” She sounded like him.
Nick glanced over it. “Miss, as you’re only 16 I’m going to need your parent or guardian’s permission to get a DNA sample and fingerprints. Is anyone here with you?”
She shook her head. “I’m legally emancipated from my parents. They don’t live in Las Vegas.”
Nick looked closely at her. She had a graze on her hand, but seemed basically ok. “Do you have the order that the judge gave you?”
She drew a thin wallet out of her backpack and pulled out a court order; handing it to Nick. She had been emancipated from her parents in Texas. He printed and swabbed her briskly, and then, because she seemed so young and alone, he asked if she was ok.
“I think so,” she answered. “I feel kind of odd, but I’m ok.”
Nick bit his lip. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”
She shrugged. “I just moved here. All my roommates are at work or school and I don’t know anyone else well enough to call.”
Nick hesitated. “Could I call your parents then?”
Her face darkened. “No way.”
Nick sighed. “Whatever led to you becoming emancipated, don’t you think they’d want to know you were just a hostage?”
She shook her head. “They’ve given me over to Satan.”
Nick did a double take. “Pardon me?”
She almost laughed. “Sorry, I still forget that this stuff sounds like mumbo jumbo to the rest of the world. My parents’ church is really strict and I’ve broken almost all of the rules by leaving and getting emancipated.” She shrugged. “ ‘Turning people over to Satan’ is a concept from the Bible, where Paul says people who are expelled from the church should be shunned and that the devil will get rid of the sin in them.”
She did laugh then, a hollow, bitter laugh. “They would see this whole hostage situation as bringing me closer to God by reminding me of the death and sin in the world. I don’t want to talk to them.”
Nick hesitated. “This is none of my business, but do you have a place to stay?” Vegas is no place for lost sixteen year old girls, he thought.
She nodded. “It’s a house for women run by a more liberal church. I’m going to stay until I finish high school. I really love science, which was part of the problem.”
While the rest of the CSIs photographed, collected, swabbed and scraped she told Nick about how her mother had taken her to the small library in her West Texas town when she was a child and how she’d read almost every book in the children’s section. When her parents had moved the family to a stricter church and started homeschooling them, she couldn’t help but contrast the homeschooling textbooks with what she’d read at the library.
As she’d grown older, her parents thought she was scouring the internet for creationist websites, and praised her dedication to promoting their worldview. She had actually been reading the words of the palaeontologists, geologists, chemists, and biologists that disagreed with the authors of the books her parents gave her.
When she’d finally told them that she wanted to go to a top ten school to study science she had been offered attendance at a Christian school with a strong creationist science curriculum. She had used the internet to find out about emancipation and to leave, against a backdrop of recriminations, denunciations and threats of eternal hellfire.
“Wow,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I couldn’t live a lie. I just didn’t realise that living the truth would be so lonely and so hard. Still, I’m sure it will get easier.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I hope so.” His eyes drifted to the scarf on her head.
She fingered it self-consciously. "I've worn this since I was five. I know I don't need to carry on but somehow my hands put it on every day."
Nick smiled sympathetically before he realised that Brass was beckoning him over.
He looked at the girl. “I have to get back to work now,“ he said. “Good luck with everything.”
“Thanks.” She had a nice smile. He hoped she would make it.
“Wow,” said Greg, between bites of an apple. “I’m not sure my dedication to science would have made me emancipate myself from my family.”
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Nick had just finished putting some broccoli in the steamer, and was leaning against his kitchen counter.
“Yeah. Good luck to her.”
Nick hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about writing to my parents.”
Greg’s eyebrow flickered. “Since speaking to this girl?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Greg sighed. “It means that I’m worried that you’re looking everywhere for signs to tell you what you should do.”
Nick curled his lip. “You’re making me sound like some delusional, horoscope-reading housewife.”
“I just think that the reason you’re having such a hard time making this decision is because it’s a hard decision. If it was so easy, wouldn’t you have found the answer by now?”
Nick sighed. “I’m speaking to Grissom tomorrow. I just want to get passed all of this so we can get on with our lives.”
Greg shook his head slowly. “Nicky, I think you need to face the fact that there may be no ‘passed this’. Depending on how your family react, this may affect the relationships with them for the rest of your life.”
Nick looked at him with an expression that hovered on the fringes of dislike. “So you keep saying.”
Greg stepped towards Nick, curling one hand round the back of Nick’s neck. “Don’t you think I would give anything to have their reaction be a good one? To have them accept us? To be able to hang out at the ranch during the holidays with all of your brothers’ and sisters’ wives and husbands and kids?”
Nick tipped his head forward until his forehead was resting against Greg’s chest. They stood in silence for a long moment.
“I love you.” Nick’s voice was husky.
“I love you, too.”
Nick lifted his head and looked at Greg. “I love them as well. And I don’t understand why this has to be so hard.”
Greg stroked one finger down the side of Nick’s face.
“Why are your family so cool with this?” There was a pleading tone to Nick’s voice.
Greg dropped his hand from Nick’s face. “Different people. Different views.” Greg shrugged. “My parents weren’t particularly engaged with my life. Maybe they didn’t have such clear ideas about what they wanted for me?”
Nick turned round to check on the broccoli. “Was that ok? Their lack of engagement?”
Greg’s mouth twisted. “It was what it was. They had this view that they had a street smart kid who could navigate the world pretty well. They were lucky to be right.”
Nick frowned. “What do you mean?”
Greg bit his lip. “Do you remember me telling you about my first boyfriend, Andy?”
Nick nodded. Greg had a million funny stories about partying hard with Andy across San Francisco’s scene. Of first love and first sex. Of learning the ropes of a new subculture.
“When we first got together I was 15 and he was 27.”
Nick blinked.
“My parents met Andy, and thought he was a nice guy. He was a nice guy. He treated me with incredible kindness. But I do think my parents were out of their minds to let their teenager run around town with someone in his late twenties. There are a thousand ways that could have gone wrong, but they didn’t seem involved enough to care.”
Nick pictured a fifteen year old Greg, thin veneer of bravado in place, taking his first stumbling steps in a relationship with a much older man. Not knowing how to ask for what he wanted or to give what someone else needed. His heart flipped.
“Greg - “
Greg looked past Nick to the stove. “Broccoli’s done. Let’s eat.”
“You wanted to speak to me, Nick?” Grissom looked up from his paperwork, which was cast with shadows from the lamp on his desk. Nick was grateful that it was so dark in Grissom’s office; that the fear on his face wouldn’t be remorselessly picked out by overhead lighting.
“Yeah.” Nick’s voice stuck in his throat.
Grissom gestured at the seat opposite him. Nick sat down gingerly, as if testing his welcome in his supervisor’s space.
“How can I help.”
Nick cleared his throat. “I’ve been in a relationship with a co-worker for about a month. I know you need to know that kind of thing.”
Grissom blinked. Nick could almost see him trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“May I ask with whom?”
“Greg.”
Grissom’s face was so perfectly blank that Nick thought for a moment that he hadn’t said Greg’s name out loud. The silence hummed between them.
Grissom’s forehead wrinkled. “Nick, are you ok?”
“What?”
“You seem upset.”
Nick’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t want to let you down.”
Grissom’s frown deepened. “You haven’t let me down. Department procedure just requires a file note on personal relationships between staff to protect cases from legal challenge. I’ll lodge the paperwork right now.”
Nick swallowed. “I mean, because I never told you. Because I’m different than you thought.”
Grissom considered this. “Have you told everyone else?”
“No.” He made a frustrated noise in his throat. “It’s not who I thought I was. It’s hard -” He broke off.
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
“What?”
“It’s from Shakespeare, Nick. It means that if you truly love someone then them changing, or you finding out new things about them, shouldn’t change your feelings for them.” Nick looked at his hands.
“You’re an excellent CSI and the best student I ever had.” Grissom paused. “You’re also a good man, Nicky. Never doubt that.”
Nick started, wordlessly, to cry.
Warrick eyed Nick’s flushed face curiously as they headed out to the parking lot en route to the savings and loan, but said nothing. Nick offered up a silent prayer of thanks as he swung his Denali on to the busy Vegas street.
Day shift had made some progress with their laser reinactment of the fire fight at the small bank, but despite their best efforts to construct a theory there were still some unexplained bullet holes.
After three hours of crawling on the floor moving the laser units around, Nick and Warrick had developed a credible theory for the exchange of fire. They were now looking for an additional suspect, who had been crouched down behind the counter for the majority of the gun battle; out of the sight line of witnesses.
A stray palm print, lifted expertly by Warrick, would go some way to help identify the additional shooter.
“Archie has been over the surveillance tapes of them entering the building,” said Nick, straightening up. “There were definitely only four of them then.”
“Our guy must have either sneaked in after they disabled the surveillance cameras, or must have already been here.”
Nick looked thoughtful. “My money is on ‘already here’. That way he could merge in with the rest of the customers after he’d been involved in the shoot-out.”
Warrick looked at him. “If so, you’ll have his details on file.”
Nick grinned. “Yep.”
Warrick surveyed the scene. “There’s no more we can do here. I’ve uploaded the laser co-ordinates onto my tablet, and photographed them for backup. Should we head back to the lab and start looking at the customers?”
Nick nodded.
They had only just buckled themselves in when Warrick touched Nick’s arm. “Tell me to back off, but is everything ok? You didn’t look ok earlier.”
Nick paused, key in the ignition. “I spoke to Grissom.”
“About being gay?” Warrick’s green eyes regarded him unflinchingly.
“About being in a relationship with a co-worker.”
Warrick’s eyebrows shot up. “Greg?”
Nick leaned against the headrest. “Good guess.”
Warrick grinned. “My next guess was Archie.”
Nick leaned forward. “You think Archie -?”
Warrick shook his head. “No. But I can’t picture you and Hodges doing anything more than have a quick hatefuck and I know you and me weren’t hooking up.”
Nick grimaced. “’Hatefuck’ is such an ugly word, Rick. In fact, it’s an ugly idea.”
Warrick smiled. “Sorry, man.”
Nick shrugged his forgiveness. “What about David?”
Warrick regarded him soberly. “You as a homewrecker? I don’t think so.”
Nick half-smiled. “Nice to know that some people still think that I’m on the side of the angels.”
Warrick frowned. “Did Grissom -?”
“No, no.” Nick swallowed. “My Daddy. He guessed. He’s not tacking a rainbow flag to the front of the ranch. In fact, he’s forbidden me from telling my Momma.”
Warrick’s face softened. “I’m sorry, man. That sounds rough.”
“Yeah.” Nick stared out of the windscreen.
“So,” Warrick cleared his throat. “You and Greg.”
Nick smiled. “Yeah. Kind of strange, huh?”
Warrick shrugged. “He’s a good guy. You have my blessing.” He looked at Nick’s smiling profile. “Things are good?”
Nick rolled the question around in his head. Thought of how things were going. How Greg’s sleep-warm body smelled in his bed. How they were often sharing the same pillow when they woke up, having tangled themselves impossibly around each other while they were asleep. How Greg’s fingers felt trailing under his waistband. How Greg’s mouth felt on him. How Greg could sense Nick drifting away sometimes when they were having sex and how he stopped what he was doing and looked at Nick with such love and concern that it twisted in Nick’s chest like a knife. How Greg tasted. How Greg almost never stopped talking, even when he was cleaning his teeth but how he knew, infallibly, when Nick needed silence. The look on Greg’s face when he came. How sometimes he felt such enormous love for Greg it was like a laser beam splitting his chest open.
Nick looked at Warrick. “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.”
Turning the key in the ignition he felt his decision slide into place. I’m writing to Momma tonight.
( Chapter seven: Feeling the pricking thorns)
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.
Longing to See the Roses
It had been a straightforward enough bank robbery. If a 24 hour long siege that ended with a shootout could be described as straightforward. If the injury of two hostages and two police officers and deaths of all four robbers was business as usual.
The whole night shift had been at the scene, photographing blood spatter and bullet casings; swabbing the foam that they had used to blow open the safe deposit boxes of the small savings and loan.
In the middle of the detritus of 30 scared people who had been allowed to eat and drink and, eventually, sleep, Nick had set up an improvised desk. He had swabbed people’s cheeks to add to the DNA record of the case. He collected fingerprints and contact details; checking IDs like a scrupulous doorman.
Last in line was a young woman with long brown hair under a headscarf and a pinched, white face.
“Can I see some ID?” Nick held out his hand.
“I have my passport and stuff with my address on it. I was here to open an account.” She sounded like him.
Nick glanced over it. “Miss, as you’re only 16 I’m going to need your parent or guardian’s permission to get a DNA sample and fingerprints. Is anyone here with you?”
She shook her head. “I’m legally emancipated from my parents. They don’t live in Las Vegas.”
Nick looked closely at her. She had a graze on her hand, but seemed basically ok. “Do you have the order that the judge gave you?”
She drew a thin wallet out of her backpack and pulled out a court order; handing it to Nick. She had been emancipated from her parents in Texas. He printed and swabbed her briskly, and then, because she seemed so young and alone, he asked if she was ok.
“I think so,” she answered. “I feel kind of odd, but I’m ok.”
Nick bit his lip. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”
She shrugged. “I just moved here. All my roommates are at work or school and I don’t know anyone else well enough to call.”
Nick hesitated. “Could I call your parents then?”
Her face darkened. “No way.”
Nick sighed. “Whatever led to you becoming emancipated, don’t you think they’d want to know you were just a hostage?”
She shook her head. “They’ve given me over to Satan.”
Nick did a double take. “Pardon me?”
She almost laughed. “Sorry, I still forget that this stuff sounds like mumbo jumbo to the rest of the world. My parents’ church is really strict and I’ve broken almost all of the rules by leaving and getting emancipated.” She shrugged. “ ‘Turning people over to Satan’ is a concept from the Bible, where Paul says people who are expelled from the church should be shunned and that the devil will get rid of the sin in them.”
She did laugh then, a hollow, bitter laugh. “They would see this whole hostage situation as bringing me closer to God by reminding me of the death and sin in the world. I don’t want to talk to them.”
Nick hesitated. “This is none of my business, but do you have a place to stay?” Vegas is no place for lost sixteen year old girls, he thought.
She nodded. “It’s a house for women run by a more liberal church. I’m going to stay until I finish high school. I really love science, which was part of the problem.”
While the rest of the CSIs photographed, collected, swabbed and scraped she told Nick about how her mother had taken her to the small library in her West Texas town when she was a child and how she’d read almost every book in the children’s section. When her parents had moved the family to a stricter church and started homeschooling them, she couldn’t help but contrast the homeschooling textbooks with what she’d read at the library.
As she’d grown older, her parents thought she was scouring the internet for creationist websites, and praised her dedication to promoting their worldview. She had actually been reading the words of the palaeontologists, geologists, chemists, and biologists that disagreed with the authors of the books her parents gave her.
When she’d finally told them that she wanted to go to a top ten school to study science she had been offered attendance at a Christian school with a strong creationist science curriculum. She had used the internet to find out about emancipation and to leave, against a backdrop of recriminations, denunciations and threats of eternal hellfire.
“Wow,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” she shrugged. “I couldn’t live a lie. I just didn’t realise that living the truth would be so lonely and so hard. Still, I’m sure it will get easier.”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “I hope so.” His eyes drifted to the scarf on her head.
She fingered it self-consciously. "I've worn this since I was five. I know I don't need to carry on but somehow my hands put it on every day."
Nick smiled sympathetically before he realised that Brass was beckoning him over.
He looked at the girl. “I have to get back to work now,“ he said. “Good luck with everything.”
“Thanks.” She had a nice smile. He hoped she would make it.
“Wow,” said Greg, between bites of an apple. “I’m not sure my dedication to science would have made me emancipate myself from my family.”
“Pretty amazing, huh?” Nick had just finished putting some broccoli in the steamer, and was leaning against his kitchen counter.
“Yeah. Good luck to her.”
Nick hesitated. “I’ve been thinking about writing to my parents.”
Greg’s eyebrow flickered. “Since speaking to this girl?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Greg sighed. “It means that I’m worried that you’re looking everywhere for signs to tell you what you should do.”
Nick curled his lip. “You’re making me sound like some delusional, horoscope-reading housewife.”
“I just think that the reason you’re having such a hard time making this decision is because it’s a hard decision. If it was so easy, wouldn’t you have found the answer by now?”
Nick sighed. “I’m speaking to Grissom tomorrow. I just want to get passed all of this so we can get on with our lives.”
Greg shook his head slowly. “Nicky, I think you need to face the fact that there may be no ‘passed this’. Depending on how your family react, this may affect the relationships with them for the rest of your life.”
Nick looked at him with an expression that hovered on the fringes of dislike. “So you keep saying.”
Greg stepped towards Nick, curling one hand round the back of Nick’s neck. “Don’t you think I would give anything to have their reaction be a good one? To have them accept us? To be able to hang out at the ranch during the holidays with all of your brothers’ and sisters’ wives and husbands and kids?”
Nick tipped his head forward until his forehead was resting against Greg’s chest. They stood in silence for a long moment.
“I love you.” Nick’s voice was husky.
“I love you, too.”
Nick lifted his head and looked at Greg. “I love them as well. And I don’t understand why this has to be so hard.”
Greg stroked one finger down the side of Nick’s face.
“Why are your family so cool with this?” There was a pleading tone to Nick’s voice.
Greg dropped his hand from Nick’s face. “Different people. Different views.” Greg shrugged. “My parents weren’t particularly engaged with my life. Maybe they didn’t have such clear ideas about what they wanted for me?”
Nick turned round to check on the broccoli. “Was that ok? Their lack of engagement?”
Greg’s mouth twisted. “It was what it was. They had this view that they had a street smart kid who could navigate the world pretty well. They were lucky to be right.”
Nick frowned. “What do you mean?”
Greg bit his lip. “Do you remember me telling you about my first boyfriend, Andy?”
Nick nodded. Greg had a million funny stories about partying hard with Andy across San Francisco’s scene. Of first love and first sex. Of learning the ropes of a new subculture.
“When we first got together I was 15 and he was 27.”
Nick blinked.
“My parents met Andy, and thought he was a nice guy. He was a nice guy. He treated me with incredible kindness. But I do think my parents were out of their minds to let their teenager run around town with someone in his late twenties. There are a thousand ways that could have gone wrong, but they didn’t seem involved enough to care.”
Nick pictured a fifteen year old Greg, thin veneer of bravado in place, taking his first stumbling steps in a relationship with a much older man. Not knowing how to ask for what he wanted or to give what someone else needed. His heart flipped.
“Greg - “
Greg looked past Nick to the stove. “Broccoli’s done. Let’s eat.”
“You wanted to speak to me, Nick?” Grissom looked up from his paperwork, which was cast with shadows from the lamp on his desk. Nick was grateful that it was so dark in Grissom’s office; that the fear on his face wouldn’t be remorselessly picked out by overhead lighting.
“Yeah.” Nick’s voice stuck in his throat.
Grissom gestured at the seat opposite him. Nick sat down gingerly, as if testing his welcome in his supervisor’s space.
“How can I help.”
Nick cleared his throat. “I’ve been in a relationship with a co-worker for about a month. I know you need to know that kind of thing.”
Grissom blinked. Nick could almost see him trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“May I ask with whom?”
“Greg.”
Grissom’s face was so perfectly blank that Nick thought for a moment that he hadn’t said Greg’s name out loud. The silence hummed between them.
Grissom’s forehead wrinkled. “Nick, are you ok?”
“What?”
“You seem upset.”
Nick’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t want to let you down.”
Grissom’s frown deepened. “You haven’t let me down. Department procedure just requires a file note on personal relationships between staff to protect cases from legal challenge. I’ll lodge the paperwork right now.”
Nick swallowed. “I mean, because I never told you. Because I’m different than you thought.”
Grissom considered this. “Have you told everyone else?”
“No.” He made a frustrated noise in his throat. “It’s not who I thought I was. It’s hard -” He broke off.
“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.”
“What?”
“It’s from Shakespeare, Nick. It means that if you truly love someone then them changing, or you finding out new things about them, shouldn’t change your feelings for them.” Nick looked at his hands.
“You’re an excellent CSI and the best student I ever had.” Grissom paused. “You’re also a good man, Nicky. Never doubt that.”
Nick started, wordlessly, to cry.
Warrick eyed Nick’s flushed face curiously as they headed out to the parking lot en route to the savings and loan, but said nothing. Nick offered up a silent prayer of thanks as he swung his Denali on to the busy Vegas street.
Day shift had made some progress with their laser reinactment of the fire fight at the small bank, but despite their best efforts to construct a theory there were still some unexplained bullet holes.
After three hours of crawling on the floor moving the laser units around, Nick and Warrick had developed a credible theory for the exchange of fire. They were now looking for an additional suspect, who had been crouched down behind the counter for the majority of the gun battle; out of the sight line of witnesses.
A stray palm print, lifted expertly by Warrick, would go some way to help identify the additional shooter.
“Archie has been over the surveillance tapes of them entering the building,” said Nick, straightening up. “There were definitely only four of them then.”
“Our guy must have either sneaked in after they disabled the surveillance cameras, or must have already been here.”
Nick looked thoughtful. “My money is on ‘already here’. That way he could merge in with the rest of the customers after he’d been involved in the shoot-out.”
Warrick looked at him. “If so, you’ll have his details on file.”
Nick grinned. “Yep.”
Warrick surveyed the scene. “There’s no more we can do here. I’ve uploaded the laser co-ordinates onto my tablet, and photographed them for backup. Should we head back to the lab and start looking at the customers?”
Nick nodded.
They had only just buckled themselves in when Warrick touched Nick’s arm. “Tell me to back off, but is everything ok? You didn’t look ok earlier.”
Nick paused, key in the ignition. “I spoke to Grissom.”
“About being gay?” Warrick’s green eyes regarded him unflinchingly.
“About being in a relationship with a co-worker.”
Warrick’s eyebrows shot up. “Greg?”
Nick leaned against the headrest. “Good guess.”
Warrick grinned. “My next guess was Archie.”
Nick leaned forward. “You think Archie -?”
Warrick shook his head. “No. But I can’t picture you and Hodges doing anything more than have a quick hatefuck and I know you and me weren’t hooking up.”
Nick grimaced. “’Hatefuck’ is such an ugly word, Rick. In fact, it’s an ugly idea.”
Warrick smiled. “Sorry, man.”
Nick shrugged his forgiveness. “What about David?”
Warrick regarded him soberly. “You as a homewrecker? I don’t think so.”
Nick half-smiled. “Nice to know that some people still think that I’m on the side of the angels.”
Warrick frowned. “Did Grissom -?”
“No, no.” Nick swallowed. “My Daddy. He guessed. He’s not tacking a rainbow flag to the front of the ranch. In fact, he’s forbidden me from telling my Momma.”
Warrick’s face softened. “I’m sorry, man. That sounds rough.”
“Yeah.” Nick stared out of the windscreen.
“So,” Warrick cleared his throat. “You and Greg.”
Nick smiled. “Yeah. Kind of strange, huh?”
Warrick shrugged. “He’s a good guy. You have my blessing.” He looked at Nick’s smiling profile. “Things are good?”
Nick rolled the question around in his head. Thought of how things were going. How Greg’s sleep-warm body smelled in his bed. How they were often sharing the same pillow when they woke up, having tangled themselves impossibly around each other while they were asleep. How Greg’s fingers felt trailing under his waistband. How Greg’s mouth felt on him. How Greg could sense Nick drifting away sometimes when they were having sex and how he stopped what he was doing and looked at Nick with such love and concern that it twisted in Nick’s chest like a knife. How Greg tasted. How Greg almost never stopped talking, even when he was cleaning his teeth but how he knew, infallibly, when Nick needed silence. The look on Greg’s face when he came. How sometimes he felt such enormous love for Greg it was like a laser beam splitting his chest open.
Nick looked at Warrick. “Yeah, it’s pretty sweet.”
Turning the key in the ignition he felt his decision slide into place. I’m writing to Momma tonight.
( Chapter seven: Feeling the pricking thorns)