Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Nine
Nick is shit company, and he knows it. Warrick sticks with him anyway, starts building a little house with the cardboard coasters he scams of the tables around them, giving him all the space he needs but being there all the same.
"I'm sorry," he says out of the blue.
Warrick looks up at him. "Huh?" he asks.
"I've got to be about as much fun as a root canal," he says with what he hopes is a sheepish smile. "I'm sorry."
"Hey," Warrick says gamely, "no problem. You got shit going on in your life, I get that."
He finds enough breath to let out a huff of unhappy laughter. "You know what Brass wanted to talk to me about?"
He shakes his head, knocks over a wall of his house with his index finger.
Nick watches the whole thing collapse. "Nigel Crane."
Warrick winces, shakes his head. "That's old news," he says. "Why'd he want to talk to you about it now?"
"He, uh, it's nothing." Nick takes a long pull from his beer and flicks at the bottle's label with his thumb. He's not ready to deal with this, he's not ready to talk about it rationally. Just like he's not ready to deal with the Gil-Greg thing, either; when it rains, he thinks, it really fucking rains.
"Come on," Warrick says, nudging his shoe under the table with the toe of his boot. "What is it? Is he writing a book or something?"
Nick looks curiously at Warrick. "Writing a book?" he asks. "Where the hell did that come from?"
A stylish shrug with one shoulder. "Isn't that what psychos do these days? Write a book and as soon as they get out they tour the talk shows."
"That never even occurred to me," Nick says.
"Then what is it?"
And he thinks, Why not tell him? It's not like he can go home and cry all over Gil or Greg about this - they've both got problems enough of their own. Not that he'll keep it a secret or anything; he thinks of the cost of keeping secrets from the people you love. Just... he doesn't need to make it their problem, too. Not yet.
He looks down the neck of his bottle. "He's up on appeal," he says as neutrally as he can.
There's a long enough silence that he has to look up, and finds himself facing one of Warrick's more stunned looks.
"You okay?" Nick asks, waggling his fingers in front of Warrick's face.
He snaps out of it. "What?" he says. "Yeah. I - shit, Nick. What - that's - holy fuck."
He feels a stupid grin creep onto his face. "Yeah, well," he says, "sorry I was so useless tonight."
Warrick is shaking his head slowly, like he's trying to force something to settle in his mind. "Don't sweat it," he says, "you were a hell of a lot better than I would have been."
Nick ducks his head. "It's creepy, you know?" he says. "More than creepy. It's... man, I really do not want to deal with this again."
"No kidding," Warrick agrees. "Man. Anything I can do?"
He takes a deep breath and thinks about it. "Not really," he says. "This thing doesn't hit the court until next week, I think - and Brass says nothing's going to come of it anyway."
Warrick tilts his head to one side. "Greg know about this yet?"
"Hm?" Nick shrugs. "No. I mean, I'll tell him, but... he's got other stuff to deal with."
He can see that Warrick is trying to decide whether or not to say something. "He, uh, huh. Okay."
"What?"
"Nothing." He glances at his watch. "Hey, you want another?"
"You have somewhere to be, Warrick?" he asks.
"Nah," Warrick says, "just keeping an eye on the time. You remember Nancy?"
He thinks for a moment. "Clarinet player?" he hazards.
"No, that was Alicia. Nancy's a resident at Desert Palms."
"Oooh," Nick says, "a doctor. Moving up in the world, Warrick."
"Yeah," Warrick says with a roll of his eyes. "Anyway, I told her I'd pick her up for lunch and I'd hate to be drunk when I show up."
Nick glances down at his own watch. It's only a few minutes to ten, and he does a little mental math. "We've got time for one more," he says, "and you gotta tell me all about Nancy, because you've never mentioned her before."
Warrick raises his eyebrows. "It's going to take a lot longer than one drink to tell you all about Nancy," he says.
Nick pushes himself away from the table and stands up. "This one's on me," he says, and grabs Warrick's empty.
He stands at the bar with his wallet in his hands, knowing that Warrick is watching him, assessing him. He doesn't really want to hear about Nancy, and Warrick probably doesn't really want to talk about her - but Warrick will make enough noise to keep him from thinking about Nigel Crane, and that's part of friendship. He would do the same for him, any day of the week.
He sets their beers down between them and drops back into his chair. "All right," he says with an exaggerated kind of interest, "let's hear all about Doctor Nancy."
The house is about as quiet as he expects when he gets home. He drinks a glass and a half of water in the kitchen, and moves restlessly through the house for a bit, trying not to think about Nigel, Greg or Gil, a feat which proves harder in the privacy of his own home than it did sitting in a dark bar with Warrick.
He knows he's going to have to tell them about Nigel, because sooner or later he's really going to freak out about him and they're going to need to know why he's suddenly taken to hiding under the bed. But between Gil's overriding sense of guilt and Greg's undeniable terror, he doesn't see that there's room in this house for his demons, too.
He walks a circuit of the house, checking all the windows and double-checking the patio doors, a habit he thought he had done away with the first time Nigel was exorcised from his life. He remembers that time, the sheer knee-buckling fear he'd felt in his own house, which didn't really go away even after he'd sold it and bought the semi in a different neighbourhood. There, too, he had been obsessive-compulsive about locks and blinds and window bars, and at least once a week he'd poked his head into the crawlspace above the ceiling, just to make sure.
It hadn't really stopped until he'd found students to live in his place, and he'd moved in here. Here, where Gil had watched him with amusement as he did his nightly rounds, until he felt kind of silly doing it.
He unlocks and relocks the front door, and thinks, Well, time to get used to this again. Time to get used to being scared again, to looking over his shoulder all of the time again. At least he's not sleeping alone this time. He'll have someone there to hang onto him when it gets too bad.
With a little luck, he'll still have two people to hang onto him. To keep him safe, one on each side.
He's surprised when he finds the master bedroom empty - he's pretty sure he saw Greg's car parked outside, and he can't imagine where else he would be. Usually there's music or the tv or something, some brand of noise permeating the house, when Greg is conscious. He listens to the brooding silence.
He stands next to the empty bed for a few seconds, waiting for his brain to kick in. When it doesn't supply him with a rational explanation, he decides to try an irrational one instead: he looks in the bathroom - which he knows is going to be dark and empty before he toes open the door - and then steps out into the hall. He stops and listens again, then checks the bathroom across from Gil's office, which is also - inevitably - empty.
Hm.
Then he sees the door to the guest room is half-open, and without much hope of success, he pushes it wide and pokes his head in.
It takes him a moment to process what he's seeing, that Gil and Greg have apparently tied themselves in a knot in their sleep; and then a stupid kind of grin works its way onto his face, because this looks promising.
He turns on the hall light and leaves the door open, letting just enough light fall on them that he can study them. Gil in his sleep is generally peaceful and child-like, and Greg tends towards a slack and brainless expression. In Nick's eyes they're both beautiful when they're out, but tonight something seems off. Both their faces are drawn, even in sleep: Gil looks exhausted and Greg looks tense, and the redness in the swelling around their eyes tells him they've been crying.
He kneels down on the floor beside them, torn between wanting to wake them and make sure they're all right, and wanting to let them sleep because he has never seen them piled like puppies before.
Watching Gil breathe, he has a worrisome thought that maybe they tried again to be alone together, and this was the result: another panic attack, another moment when all Gil could do was hold on and ride it out uselessly.
Greg makes a little noise then, a little hitch in the back of his throat and starts to roll over. Gil catches him as he moves, and follows him across the mattress, settling half-on top of Greg's back in the centre of the bed. Greg makes another noise then, a contented one, and even in his sleep, Gil's mouth twitches towards a smile.
Or maybe, Nick thinks, things are going to be all right.
He strips down to his shorts, leaving his clothes in a pile next to Gil's just inside the door, and he eases himself into the warm spot that Gil had just vacated. It's not a familiar bed, he knows; he's going to sleep like shit and be cranky as hell tomorrow, but the one thing he knows is that he wants - no, he needs to wake up with both of them tomorrow. More than anything else, he needs to trick himself into thinking that all is right with the world.
He closes his eyes and presses his face against the warmth of Gil's back.
He wakes up, predictably enough, with his heart hammering and a sickening feeling of not knowing where he is. Someone is shaking his shoulder carefully, and someone is saying something - his name, maybe? He forces his eyes open.
Gil is staring down at him, and just over his shoulder Nick can see Greg's face, lined with worry.
"It's okay," Gil is saying, "we're right here, you're okay."
"What happened?" he asks, although he already knows because he can still remember the last tendrils of his dream, of Nigel falling through the sky towards him.
"Nightmare," Gil says, touching his face. "Bad one."
"Oh." He lets his eyes find the white plaster of the ceiling over the bed, and he tries to banish the last vestiges of Nigel's grating voice, of his hands, of the sharp reality of his existence.
"Been a long time since that happened," Gil says, moving his hand through Nick's hair now, a rhythm of soothing that has always worked in the past. His eyes are full of love, though; no sign of impatience, of irritation at having been jerked awake by whatever flailing and screaming monster he had become.
"Sorry," he says weakly.
"Don't apologise," Gil tells him. "Just know that you're here, with us, and you're safe."
He feels his eyes fill up with tears. "Nigel," he whispers.
"I know," Gil tells him, "but it's okay. You're not alone, and Nigel Crane is locked up in a nine-by-twelve box."
He wants to tell them, he wants to have it out in the open, but something in him won't let him. For now he wants to pretend that everything really is all right, that everything is going to stay all right.
So he squeezes his eyes tight, rolls onto his side to hug his knees to his chest, and he keeps his mouth shut.
He feels Gil and Greg moving on the bed, and then feels a wall of warmth press up against him from behind, and another in front. He winches his eyes open enough to see that Greg is staring earnestly at him, looking exhausted and worn out and ready to slay dragons if that's what Nick needs.
He lets himself smile even as his eyes prickle with tears. "Hey," he says. "Sorry I woke you."
Greg returns the smile, and touches the side of his face. "Sleep is for wusses," he says. "Are you okay?"
He shrugs with the shoulder he's not lying on. "Been better," he admits.
Greg coaxes him to ease his legs down, away from his chest and towards the foot of the bed, at the same time that Gil's arm works its way confidently around his waist and pulls him in tight. Then Greg worms his way deep into Nick's personal space, and he kisses his eyelids.
"Try to sleep," Greg tells him. "If the monsters come back, send 'em to me."
He feels Gil's lips touch the back of his neck, and after a few seconds he's able to relax enough to nod. "Okay," he says, and knows he's still not going to sleep worth a damn but at least he'll be safe.
And that's good enough for the moment. The rest can wait until later.
Gil finds out about Nigel when they wake up later in the evening, while Greg is belting out some garbled showtune in the shower. He's lazing in bed with Nick, still haggard from the second nightmare that dragged them all back into daylight an hour after the first.
Gil is holding him loosely against his chest, the fingers of one hand tracing a mandala against the fuzz of Nick's stomach.
"Greg?" Nick asks quietly out of the blue, and Gil knows exactly what he's referring to.
He kisses the side of Nick's head. "I think we're going to be okay," he says, and he can feel half of the tension along Nick's spine evaporate. "It's - a mess, but it's a manageable mess. It's our mess."
He feels Nick shift against him, weigh what he has said and what he hasn't said, and he lets a smile find its way to his mouth. Maybe he and Greg will never have the easy intimacy that he shares with Nick - although he sincerely hopes they will, someday - but he thinks maybe some of the utter fear is dispelled. He thinks - hopes that they have moved past terror and into nervousness. Nervousness he can deal with, they both can. Nervousness just requires patience.
He's going to have to find some way to convince Greg that he loves him more now for his honesty than he ever thought possible; simply having told him so in the throes of misery will not be enough, he knows. But he has time enough to do that, to demonstrate his love at length.
He feels Nick take a deep breath, and lets his attention come naturally back to the body in his arms.
"Nigel Crane," Nick mutters.
Gil kisses the side of his head again. "Yes," he says. "What brought that on?"
"He's, uh - he's up on appeal." He feels Nick's flinch as he says it, and his own body's instinct to echo that flinch is powerful.
There are too many questions begging to be asked. "How?" he asks after a moment, choosing carefully among the contenders.
"Some paperwork thing, I think," Nick says, and Gil can hear the shakiness around the edges. "Jim told me about it yesterday at work. I - he says it's not going to happen, he says I don't have to worry about it, but..."
"You do anyway," Gil finishes for him. "I'm going to start worrying about it, too. So is Greg. So is everyone. Jesus, Nick... whatever happens, you're not alone in this. And I promise you that come hell or high water, Nigel Crane will not come within a mile of you."
He knows the words are nearly meaningless in context - if Crane could move into Nick's house without anyone knowing, there's not much else he can't do either. But if it comes to that, if it comes to Nick and Crane at large in the same city, he will hire someone to sit on Crane twenty-four hours a day. Hell, if it comes down to it, he'll do it himself - anything to keep Nick safe, to keep Nick knowing that he's safe. That no one will touch him again.
"Guess I'd better get used to this, huh?" Nick asks as the shower in the next room falls silent.
"To what?"
"Even if this appeal thing doesn't pan out, he's not going to stop trying, man." Nick takes a shuddering breath. "He'll try again, and then before I know it he'll be up for parole, and..."
"He will never set foot outside of prison, Nick," Gil tells him.
"Maybe not," Nick says, "but there's always going to be the possibility. I guess I have to get used to that."
Gil pulls Nick in tighter, a real hug this time, not the companionable half-hug of earlier. "I love you," he says against his hair.
"I know," Nick says. "I love you, too. I'm just... scared."
"I'm here," Gil says, because there's nothing else he can think of saying.