FIC: It's Not The Same As Running (CSI; Nick/Greg)

Title: It's Not The Same As Running
Author: beingothrwrldly
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Length: 1,583 words
A/N: Nick tries to sort things out, before and after. Beta by kissingchaos9, who rocks so hard. ♥!!



It’s Not The Same As Running

Once he’s out of the hospital, Nick begins dividing his life into two halves.

Before, and after.

And it makes sense, in the beginning. The way things were, and the way things are, and it sounds like it should be similar but it really couldn’t be further from that. He feels like he’s a new person, like everyone around him is walking on broken glass, but he doesn’t have anything to clean it up with. He tries to imagine how it must’ve been for them, to see him on the screen and to be so helpless, but his thoughts inevitably turn to how *he* felt, how helpless *he* was, and he can’t seem to move past that.

At their first session, the therapist tells him, “I want you to work on getting a routine, getting back to normal. I want you to focus on what’s most important to you, and keep focusing on that as you move forward. Keep that in your mind and in your heart, and that’s what will ultimately pull you through this.”

And he goes over everything in his mind, eliminating memories and moments and images, and the thing it comes down to, the thing he realizes is most important, is the thing that’s been hardest to come back to. The thing he’d been so comfortable with before, and the thing that just doesn’t seem to fit, not right now, not after. And it hurts when he first realizes it, more than anything it hurts and aches and pounds, but the therapist had also said, “Keep that in your mind and in your heart.” He figures, as long as that’s what he focuses on, he’ll do fine.

So he tells Greg one night, “I need some space,” and he means it in more ways than just the literal sense. Greg nods because he always understands, and Nick feels like he underestimates Greg sometimes. He puts his jacket on, quietly, and grabs his keys, quietly, and he turns to Nick before leaving and says, “Let me know when you’re ready,” and then he leaves.

And Nick just thinks, for a while, lying on his back on his bed and both loving and hating the extra space, because it had felt like a neverending rift between them when Greg had been here, and now that he’s gone it’s like a thousand neverending rifts, end to end and back to back. Nick knows he’s not gone forever, it’s just space and it’s just temporary, but he can’t help but feel like he’s suffocating.

But he has to keep going, keep the routines and the treatments and the getting back to normal, and he does, as best he can. Therapy goes uneventfully, and he takes medications he doesn’t bother to read the names of, because they all soften the blow of post-traumatic stress, which he says he doesn’t have but he knows he does. He’s seen enough cases, heard enough stories. The medications help, though, erasing some of the nightmares and dulling the shock of waking up and being able to breathe deeply. He ignores everyone’s concerned glances and pretends he likes the time alone, when it really just frustrates him and makes him anxious and short of breath, because he’s had more than enough time in seclusion. He tries to pretend Greg doesn’t still see it, that Greg doesn’t still watch him whenever he walks into a room, that Greg is handling things just fine.

And that’s the thing, really, is how Greg’s doing and how Greg’s handling it and how Greg’s feeling. Except, since before, things have done a complete one-eighty between them, and Nick sometimes feels like Greg just doesn’t *get* it. And he’s trying, he really is, to keep it in his mind and his heart and everything, but he can’t seem to stop trying to place the blame on someone other than himself. He’d done everything he was supposed to do, he’d followed procedure, and even though he’d flipped the coin with Warrick and not with Greg, he can’t stop trying to blame Greg, somehow. He needs to explain the space, convince himself why it’s absolutely necessary, but he can’t stop thinking about the coin and he can’t put Greg’s face where Warrick’s really is.

So he tells the therapist, at their next session, “Sometimes I try to blame Greg,” and the therapist nods and jots a note on her pad. “And it’s more like always,” Nick adds, his voice soft and guilty, “I always try to blame him.”

“Why do you think that is?” the therapist asks.

Nick shrugs. “I don’t know, really. He’s just a kid,” he says, even though Greg’s not, but it makes it easier, somehow. “He doesn’t know better? I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re trying to blame him because you can’t blame Warrick,” she says gently, “because your career has caused you to find someone to blame for the crime.”

“It’s more than that,” Nick begins, but the therapist shakes her head.

“I know it is,” she says, “but does your mind know that?”

Nick doesn’t know how to answer.

He dreams about the coin, sometimes, and it’s crystal clear like it’s happening all over again, right in front of his eyes. The light glinting off of the ridges of the coin, the soft thud as it lands, the smug grin and the roll of the eyes. Sometimes he wakes up with a start, and he can feel a hard, cold circle in his palm, and he can’t rub his hands enough to warm it away.

He tells Grissom about it, when he does go back to work, and Grissom rattles off an answer about sympathy pains and memory scars, but when Nick works out the explanations in his head, a call comes in and Grissom tells him to stay in the lab, they’ll take care of things on the field, and is that how things are going to be, from now on?

“For a while,” a voice says behind him, and Nick hadn’t even realized he’d spoken out loud. He turns to see Greg, leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed, and Nick’s heart thuds in time with Grissom’s clock. Greg pushes away from the door and walks towards Nick, and Nick sighs and closes his eyes. “Look,” Greg says, his voice hushed like everything’s a secret, “I know you want your space and everything, and that’s really fine, but if you need to talk—”

“I have a therapist for that,” Nick says, his voice hoarse, and he doesn’t mean to sound like he’s angry. “Shouldn’t you be out on the field?”

Greg shakes his head and sticks his hands in his pockets, scuffing at the floor with his toe. “I’ll go out after,” he says nonchalantly, and Nick squints at him. “They won’t need me yet, anyway,” he offers, and Nick still doesn’t answer. “I don’t feel like going,” Greg says finally, and Nick can tell it’s the truth from the way Greg is almost whispering. “Happy?”

Nick shakes his head. “No,” he replies, and Greg sighs and sinks into the chair next to him.

“I know you have your therapy,” Greg says. “And I know you want your space, and I’ve already said that that’s fine, but I want you to know that I’m here. If you need me.”

Nick nods slowly and Greg pats his arm, squeezing a little too gently, like he’s afraid Nick will break if he presses harder. “Keep it in mind,” he says quietly, and then he gets up and leaves the office, quick and quiet, and Nick wonders for a minute if he was always that quiet, before.

When he gets home, he walks into the kitchen and Greg’s coffee mug is right in the front of the cupboard. One of his shirts is tangled at the foot of Nick’s bed, and he finds a dogeared book between the cushions of the couch, and it’s like Greg planted all this evidence of something Nick had thought was gone forever, because of the way things were before and the way things are now.

The next therapy session is when he tells her about Greg, about how that’s the thing he thinks of and that’s the thing he keeps in his heart and that’s the thing he can’t figure out how to bring from before to after, and the therapist takes a lot of notes. There are lots of long pauses when Nick thinks things are just going to fall into nothingness, and then the therapist takes a deep breath. “Maybe you’re ready to take that next step, Nick,” she says. “Bringing him back in.”

So Nick calls Greg before he even starts his truck, his fingers dialing the number before he can think of what to say, and Greg answers after two rings, almost three. “Sanders,” he says, and he sounds professional and serious, and Nick has an uncontrollable urge to laugh.

“Hey, Greggo,” he says, and the nickname is surprisingly warm, comfortable on his tongue. He can almost hear Greg smile through the receiver, and he laughs a little, and it seems to help.

“What do you want?” Greg asks, and it doesn’t sound menacing or accusatory, just curious.

“I think I’m done,” Nick says slowly, and he wonders if Greg’s holding his breath or counting to ten or closing his eyes, because that’s what he does, sometimes, when he’s nervous. “With this space. I’ve gotten some space. I’m ready to move on.”