Title: In the Uncertain Hour
By: zoemargaret
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Characters are, alas not mine. If they were, they would be working on Caroline's Subtext Channel all year round. Whoever owns them is a lucky, lucky bastard. I am making no money off of this, just a perverse satisfaction in actually getting something written. The quotation is taken from T.S. Eliot's "A Little Gidding".
Summary: Greg muses.

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In the uncertain hour before the morning
Near the ending of interminable night
At the recurrent end of the unending
After the dark dove with the flickering tongue
Had passed below the horizon of his homing
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin.


Greg jolted awake with a shot of adrenaline, feeling like he had just missed a step and was hurtling down the stairs. He'd thought he was over this; it'd been six months, the scars had faded, he seen the CSI sponsored shrink, he was supposed to be fixed. But recently, he has been waking up in the middle of the night, struggling for breath, choking on imaginary smoke and chemical fumes.

Which was nuts, Greg told himself as he stared at the ceiling. He'd been unconscious the whole time. He had never been awake to smell the fire or the burning chemicals. He'd seen the flash, and then woken up in the hospital, drugged out of his mind and desperately wanting someone to hold his hand. He sighed. It was official, he wasn't going back to sleep anytime soon.

He sat up, careful to stifle his groan. Nick slept like the dead, but he had been known to wake up when Greg had a rough night. He looked down at the other man. Nick was on his stomach, head turned toward Greg, a white crust of drool or possibly snot on the pillow. After five years in Las Vegas, Nick was finally developing allergies, a fact which he absolutely hated. Greg hadn't realized that living together would involve waking up to find a puddle of snot on his shoulder. He'd been disgusted until Nick huffily pointed out that he dealt with sperm from dead people everyday, why the fuck was he complaining about a little living phlegm. Greg had then pointed out that "A Little Living Phlegm" would be an excellent name for a rock band, and Nick threatened to stuff his dripping tissues where the sun didn't shine.

Greg leaned back against the headboard. He hated waking up like this. Granted, it wasn't the middle of the night, but in terms of things to do, there wasn't much difference between 2:00 at night and 2:00 in the afternoon, especially if one's boyfriend was trying to sleep. A boyfriend who was very unsexily snorting in his sleep. "I don't care what they say," Greg thought, "Love does not mean finding allergy congestion sexy."

Still weird to be in this relationship, with a man who still hadn't technically gotten around to telling his family or friends that he was in fact, gay. But at least he was honest about it. Nick never promised to tell his family. The way he put it was "Look, G. I crossed three states to get out of telling them this, why should I tell them now?" All right, he didn't actually say that, he spouted some bullshit about not being ready, but Greg preferred his own version.

As for friends, Greg was pretty certain Warrick knew. He'd come across them in the lab once, and Warrick was too observant not to notice Nick jump. Warrick hadn't said anything, but Greg had seen him eyeing them once or twice. Greg never mentioned it to Nick.

God knows he loved Nick, had been infatuated with him since he first saw him, even with the ridiculous haircut. Eventually that infatuation grew into something more and he flirted and teased, delighting in Nick's blushes. He still did; nothing was better than slipping an innuendo at work just to see Nick's mortified glare. But, to be honest, he was a little tired of this black ops gig. They always had to leave work separately, could never arrive less than five minutes apart. No flirting at work, a rule Greg thought redundant, since everyone noticed that he no longer teased Nick, everyone just pretended that it wasn't important. He'd heard Warrick and Catherine discussing it once, they'd apparently chalked the change up to the explosion and some minor form of PTSD.

Greg had no desire to shout out his feelings from the rooftops, but... He would have liked to perhaps go out as a couple more often. The only place he could kiss and touch Nick in public was on their occasional forays to one of Vegas' gay bars. They couldn't go to casinos because of the cameras, they couldn't go to the really nice restaurants because of Catherine and her rediscovered libido, and they couldn't make out at the movie theater because PDAs made Nick uncomfortable (they could hold hands though, which was something, though not nearly as much as he would have liked).

They'd had a few fights over these precautions (Nick's words) and paranoid fantasies (Greg's words). Nothing had ever been resolved; Nick was still scared to be gay, and Greg loved him too much to kick his ass. However, after one of these fights, Nick had held hands with Greg when they went shopping. Granted, it was the middle of the night at a deserted Wal-Mart, but it was a start.

Next to him, Nick turned over, his arm flopping against Greg's thigh. Greg looked down at him. Nick's face was slack in sleep, his sun and stress wrinkles smoothing out. Greg softly smoothed his thumb below the other man's eye; stubborn idiot refused to use sunscreen.

He picked up Nick's hand. He ran his finger along Nick's, tracing his hands. He felt the old baseball calluses on his palm, the healing cut on his finger from a particularly vicious tree branch. He caught his finger on a jagged nail; Nick had tried to stop picking his nails at least four times already. Greg really didn't mind too much. When Nick lost control in bed, those ragged nails would leave scratches that didn't fade for days. He traced the love line on the other man's palm; he couldn't remember his old palmistry lessons (courtesy of a not-really-spacey-but-definitely-unique ex-girlfriend), but he chose to think that that long unbroken line meant an eventual stable and committed relationship.

And it wasn't that Nick didn't love him. It was just that the good ole Texas homophobia was deeply conditioned, and it would take more than a loving relationship to overcome it. And, he reminded himself, Nick was making progress. He was starting to carefully flirt with Greg in the lab again, although Greg naturally considered this more a tribute to his sparkling personality than a growth on Nick's part.

The fact was, Nick had bought a toothbrush and cleared out a drawer for Greg. In the face of that, some latent homophobia didn't seem like much of a challenge. Greg lifted Nick's hand to his lips and kissed his palm.

"Hey." Nick's gravelly voice startled him and he froze, lips still on the other man's palm. Nick was staring up at him, too sleepy to properly conceal the worry in his eyes. "Nightmare again?"

Greg stared down at him, thinking of a variety of answers. Instead, he opened his mouth and let his tongue flicker out to taste the sleepy salt of Nick's hand. Nick smiled, that deep unguarded smile, the one that wasn't worried about what others thought and didn't maximize his dimples. He twisted his hand so he could brush his fingers against Greg's lips. Greg closed his eyes and knew that there really was no other answer.

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