Quickfic: Coping Gil/Greg
Title: Coping
Author: Laurelgardner
Rating: PG for language
Pairing: Gil/Greg, established relationship
Summary: After the events of No Humans Involved, Greg needs some help coping. Hurt/comfort. No porn.
Author's Note/Warnings: Spoilers for No Humans Involved. BTW, although I'm fitting this series in with canon, I may stop doing that at some point in the future and send it in the direction of an AU. It depends on what the writers do with the series. I mean, thus far it works because we haven't seen Grissom and Greg interact much lately to disprove that they're sleeping together, but if that changes, or Gil starts dating Sophie, I'm just going to ignore the bits that I don't like. Whatever. End rambling.
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI. CSI owns me.
previous stories in this series can be found here.
Morning. The sun was just rising, now, casting an orange light over the parking lot at the Las Vegas crime lab. In December, this was exactly what the end of Gil Grissom's day always looked like.
Night shift life was something he was more than used to by now. Every once in a while, though, it still struck him as strange, this sense of time unending that came with keeping active nights, with ending one's day when the rest of the world was just starting.
Well, he thought, time was unending. To feel otherwise was the real illusion. Time was unending, it was only humans who imposed upon it their own strange sense of beginning and ending; days, years, lifetimes...It was humans who were not unending.
Greg Sanders stood at his car, his back against it, staring at the ground. The sight brought Grissom back to his time.
"Hi," he said.
Greg looked up sharply as Grissom approached, apparently surprised to see him. He looked tired and his eyes were red from crying.
"Oh," he said. "Hey." He wiped his still-wet eyes with his hands. "What are you doing here?" he croaked. "Didn't you park on the other side?"
Grissom had. "Sophia said you'd left."
"But you knew I hadn't?"
"No. I thought I'd come see." Grissom stopped and stood a few feet short of Greg, hands in his pockets.
Greg sniffed and stood up straighter, rolling his shoulders a little.
"Are you okay?" Grissom asked him.
Greg took a deep breath and laughed, but it was not a cheerful sound. "Whadda you think?" he said. "I'm out of it now, I'm..." he chewed his bottom lip, looking like he was about to burst. "I'm still in that goddamn alley." These last words broke on a sob and he bowed his head, shoulder's hitching as he cried. After a moment's consideration, Grissom fished an object from his pocket and held it out to him.
Greg looked at it in confusion. "What's that?"
Grissom blinked. "It's a handkerchief," he said stupidly.
Greg shook his head in disbelief. "Look," he said, a little irritated, "we've been going out for a while now. Sometimes there are things people in a relationship need from each other that they shouldn't have to ask for, okay?"
Grissom stared dumbly for a moment before he finally got it. Quickly he went to Greg, took him in his arms and hugged him.
Greg laughed through his tears, squeezing back hard. "There you go," he said. Feeling more confident now that he knew this was what he was supposed to be doing, Grissom stroked Greg's back, pressing a kiss into his temple. Greg sighed and sagged against him.
"How do you do it, Grissom?" he muttered into Gil's shoulder.
Grissom didn't flinch at the sound of his last name. Greg went back and forth with how he adressed his lover these days, sometimes slipping into old habits, especially when they were at the lab.
"We're talking about the kid, right?" Grissom asked. Greg pulled back in his arms and stared in disbelief.
"What else would we be talking about?"
Grissom shrugged. "We're crime solvers. Every case we work on is unpleasant..."
Greg snorted.
"Okay," Grisssom amended. "Awful? Brutal? Inhuman? It all is, whatever you call it. And as individuals, it bothers some of us more than others, or different things bother us more at different times."
Greg narrowed his eyes at Grissom. "Are you saying this didn't bother you?"
"No," said Gil softly, "I didn't say that."
Greg gave him a long, surmising look, then nodded slowly. "I want you to come home with me tonight," he said.
* * * *
A half an hour later they were in Greg's living room. Gil sat on the leftmost edge of a very large, squishy sofa, Greg laying with his head in Gil's lap. The TV was on before them, but the sound was barely on. They weren't really watching; it was just background buzz, something to fill the silence.
"So how do you deal with it?" Greg asked.
Gil thought for a moment. "I let it go," he said. "When I can."
Greg rolled from laying on his side to his back and looked up at Gil. "What do you do when you can't?"
Grissom frowned, shook his head. "It's not good," he said.
Greg considered this. "I think I've seen that," he said thoughtfully.
"You have," said Grissom darkly.
Greg sighed and clasped one of Grissom's hands, resting on his chest. "Do you know what really gets me about this one?" he asked.
"What's that?"
"That I found him by accident," said Greg. He stuck his other hand in his hair, balling it into a fist as his face contorted with pain at the memory. "I mean...Jesus, Gil! I know they don't find all of them, but I thought they found most of them. But it's like Brass said, I wouldn't have found that kid if the dumpster hadn't been full." He laughed bleakly. "Right now, I feel like I should go look through every damn trash heap in town to see if there are any dead kids there."
"Sometimes people do things like that," said Gil.
Greg buried his face in Gil's abdomen and groaned. Flummoxed, Gil just held him, bending over to wrap his body around Greg's
"Tell me what I can do," he said.
Greg threw his arms around Gil's neck. "Just be here, okay?" he said softly.
"Okay," said Gil. "Okay."