Summary: ((Sequel to "NICKY")) -- Things don't magically get any simpler.
It sneaks up on him without warning, which is a little strange. About halfway through the shift, Greg squeaks into the trace lab where Nick and Warrick are working patiently on a filthy blanket from behind a restaurant, and demands the keys to Nick's car.
"Why?" he asks.
"Just 'cause," Greg says, and grins that impossible grin that Nick just can't say no to, so with a vague feeling of doom Nick fishes his keys out of his pocket and tosses them underhand.
Greg catches them, grins like an idiot again, and disappears.
"God only knows what he's going to do your car," Warrick says, "but seeing as it's your birthday and all, I guess it's probably not going to be fatal."
He has to think about that for a moment before he remembers that yeah, it is his birthday, isn't it? He knows that it's Gil's birthday - he's been thinking about it for a couple of weeks now - but despite knowing full well that their birthdays are back-to-back, he somehow lost track of his own.
"Huh," he says, and looks down at the tape-lift he's got.
Warrick is eyeing him carefully. "You did remember it, right?" he asks knowingly.
"Sure," he lies, and it's such an obvious lie that Warrick laughs at him.
"Cake and all that in the break room," Warrick tells him. "So don't disappear in a cloud of dust come sunup."
"I never-"
"You did last week," Warrick contradicts. "Remember? Sped out of here like a bat out of hell. As I recall, you actually forgot to clock out."
Oh, Nick thinks, that's right. I did. It had been Gil's day off, and they'd made plans for breakfast at a fancy place that merited a long shower and preening. They've been doing that a lot lately - going out for elegant meals, to movies, they even went to a play once. And each and every time, Gil does something gentlemanly: brings him flowers, opens doors for him, all with a knowing and indulgent smile. Nick supposes it's his little way of accommodating Nicky, of letting Nick know that he hasn't forgotten about their broken conversation a few weeks ago about expectations and where things go from here.
"So you doing anything?" Warrick asks, his eyes never leaving the abused fabric under the bright UV lamp.
"Huh?"
"For you birthday," Warrick says and that teasing edge is back in his voice. "You're really out of it, Nick."
He manages to smile at that. All things considered, he wants to say, I'm doing just fine. And he is, really; since he had his secret wormed out of him by Greg and then was coaxed into explaining it to Gil, he's been on a remarkably even keel.
"Sorry," he says. "Just distracted."
"Uh-huh," Warrick says, not buying it. "What's her name?"
He blinks at that. Her name? "What makes you think-"
"Oh come on," Warrick says and rolls his eyes. "I recognise the symptoms."
"Symptoms?"
"The subject is distracted, prone to staring off into space - or at walls, which he's been observed doing on more than one occasion. Random things can make him blush, which he refuses to elaborate on - case in point right now, in fact - and there is a definite air of conspiracy around him." A quick grin. "How'd I do?"
Nick is blushing, of course. "Not bad," he admits. "But I'm, uh, I don't have a girlfriend."
He knows he's being assessed, the way Warrick narrows his eyes and half-frowns. Nick can almost hear the gears turning in his head, except of course Warrick's mind is too fast for gears. Solid-state transistors at the very least, if not faster-than-light silicon superconductors.
He realises he's rambling in his head and stops himself; it's a nervous habit he's picking up from spending so much time with Greg, although he thinks it's pretty good that so far he's managed to keep it as an inner monologue. He hasn't started broadcasting it yet.
"Sooo..." Warrick lays the blanket down carefully and rests his hands flat on the table in front of him. "This is the bit where I ask if you're dating a guy, and then hope you don't break my nose."
Blush turned to full force, Nick can't maintain eye contact. "Sort of," he admits, because he knows the rumours are flying. Nicky's been seeping into his work life a little bit each day, in the way he walks and sits and opens doors, the way he tugs at the hair at the base of his neck. The way he dresses, although he's been careful not to let that get out of hand: his wardrobe is a little less utilitarian than it used to be, thanks to Greg's demented shopping spree a couple of weeks ago, but Nick put his foot down at anything overtly feminine.
"Sort of," Warrick echoes. "Isn't that like 'sort of pregnant'?"
Nick swallows. "Okay," he says, "yes, I'm - seeing someone. Someone male."
"Does this someone male have a name?"
Blush cranked up to eleven. Nick clears his throat and worries the frayed edge of the blanket with his thumb. "Um," he says.
"Let me guess," Warrick says, and Nick is endlessly relieved to hear that there's still humour between his words. "Sort of?"
He risks a glance up and feels a tense grin tug at the corners of his mouth. "Sort of, yeah."
"Is his name the kind of name that might get you in trouble if people knew about it?"
Wow, Nick thinks, I didn't know I could blush this hard. "Sort of?" he tries.
"Is it a DNA-type of name," Warrick asks patiently, as though he's used to dragging answers out of recalcitrant children and Nick is no big challenge, "or an insect-type of name?"
Nick blinks. He's known the rumours about him and Greg have been going for years, in varying degrees of indifference and disbelief, but him and Gil? "Um," he says. "It's, uh, not a DNA-type of name."
Warrick nods as though this is merely confirmation of something he's known all along. "Cool," he says.
There's that tense grin again, tugging at Nick's mouth, full of hope. "Yeah?" he asks. "I mean, we're - cool?"
Warrick raises his eyebrows. "Of course we are, Nick," he says. "What, you think we wouldn't be?" An edge of hurt starts to seep into his voice.
"No," Nick says hurriedly, "not - it's just, you know. A little scary. For people to know about it, that's all."
After a heartbeat or two, the eyebrows come down again and all the years of their friendship warm up his eyes again. "All right," he says. "I'm happy for you, for what it's worth. Both of you. You've been dancing around each other for way too long."
"We have?"
Warrick laughs, and picks up a bottle of luminol. "If I didn't know better," he says, "I'd think you were just playing dumb."
Warrick is just finishing up with the spray bottle in his corner of the blanket when Nick unravels the hidden insult and puts on an affronted face.
"Hey," he says, one hand on his hip in a posture that is somehow reminiscent of his mother. All he needs, he thinks, is an apron on crooked and a dishtowel in the other hand, and a gaggle of muddy boys standing innocently in the middle of a clean kitchen floor.
"Too late for a clever comeback," Warrick tells him with a smirk. "You done over there? Let's turn this bad boy over."
He doesn't get a chance to interrogate Greg as to the state of his car until almost sunrise, when everyone is gathering in the break room and Catherine is fussing over a cake with two names on it.
"Nothing," Greg swears earnestly, dropping the keys into Nick's outstretched hand and gamely ignoring the suspicious gaze.
"Then what'd you need the keys for?" Nick asks in a pleasant growl.
"If I said I had to run an errand...?"
"...then I'd ask what was wrong with your car."
"Huh. Good point." Greg puts on a comically thoughtful face. "Let me get back to you on that, okay?"
Nick is ready to pursue the issue but then Gil wanders into the room absently, his nose buried in a file, and he looks surprised when he glances up and sees his entire staff standing around a cake-laden table.
"Is it six already?" he asks, pulling his sleeve up to get a look at his watch.
"Yes," Catherine says with her usual dealing-with-Gil patience. "Although I'm impressed that you remembered it's your birthday."
Gil blinks. "Is it?" he asks, and then, "Right. I knew that."
Catherine rolls her eyes and pulls a lighter out of a pocket. "Are we ready?" She looks around, uses her eyebrows to direct Gil and Nick to their respective ends of the rectangular cake, and clears her throat.
They sing 'Happy Birthday' together, Sara and Greg more or less hitting the right notes, Catherine carrying the tune and Warrick managing a decent harmony a few notes below her. Nick meets Gil's eyes over the cake and lets a small smile creep onto his features. Gil returns the smile, and then they both lean over the cake and blow out their candles.
Then there are presents, and they sit around drinking Greg's excellent coffee and eating cake and being sociable together.
Catherine and Sara have conspired to give Nick a 2000-piece puzzle from the Audubon Society of a nest of egrets in a naked tree with an adult a few branches above, glowering pointedly at the camera. The photo is amazing and Greg makes a gentleman's bet with Warrick that Nick will lose a critical piece within an hour of opening the box.
Warrick's gift is the latest football game for his Playstation, and they make cheerful promises to annihilate each other utterly the next weekend. "Loser springs for the pizza," Nick says.
"Uh-uh," Warrick says, "because you always get the cheap stuff that gives me indigestion. Loser picks up the tab someplace classy."
Nick laughs and hangs his head. "Fine," he concedes. "But one of these days, Warrick, I'm going to leave you in the dust."
"Hope that's not what you wished for," Warrick says dryly, nodding his chin at the eviscerated cake on the table and Nick's candle, still sticking out of a corner, "'cause I'd hate for your new year on Earth to start with such a crushing disappointment."
Greg's gift is a Tegan and Sara CD, which Nick grins at and turns over. It's the one they were listening to in the lab that infamous day, the one that started his whole mess. "Thanks, man," Nick says, and smiles warmly at him. "I've been looking for this."
"I know, Nicky," Greg says with a cheeky grin, and leans back. "I had a friend in Toronto send it to me. They're hard to find down here."
Gil gives him a beautiful book on butterflies, from the same series as his coffee table book on the Amazon. Nick smiles his thanks across the room at him, and flips through it. The colours are unbelievable, the detail in each photograph breathtaking, and Nick knows there's a subtext too - cocoons and transformation and all that implies. Butterflies have come up in conversation more than once between them lately; Gil's attempt to draw parallels and analogies for himself, Nick supposes. It's kind of touching, in an endearingly dorky way.
For Gil, there is a bottle of excellent Scotch from Catherine; a box of chocolate covered insects from Greg, which is politely declined by all when Gil offers it around to share; and an elegant black sweater from Sara, which worries Nick a bit and judging by the half-scowl from Catherine, he's not the only one it worries.
Nick's present to Gil is the last one to be opened, and although it's not the real gift he's giving him - that will come later, when they're alone - it's somehow the one he's been more awkward with. It's just a thing, albeit something that he thinks he'll like, but still – it seems trite given the nature of their relationship these days. He watches Gil unwrap the small box, and lift out the hardened chunk of amber to peer at it. It's small enough to fit comfortably into the palm of his hand, and trapped at the center is a little smudge of black.
Gil brings it up close to his eyes and examines it, and Nick knocks the folded piece of paper out of the bottom of the box and hands it to him. "It's a beetle that's been extinct for, uh-" Nick reads the paper upside down. "-fifteen million years?"
Gil's eyes go huge at that, and he pats himself down for a magnifying glass immediately. Catherine laughs at him. "Easy, boy," she says. "You've got a sexy dissecting scope in your office, remember?"
Gil is halfway out of his chair before he remembers that this is a party, and he lowers himself back down with a sheepish smile. "Thank you, Nicky," he says, and there's a level of affection there that just wasn't present for any of the others.
Including Sara's, Nick thinks, and studies the look of tightly-contained conflict on her face. He knows that she's realised it too, but when his eyes move back to Gil it's to find the man eagerly reading the fact sheet that accompanies his dead insect, totally oblivious to the politics swirling around him. Gil absently reaches out and plucks a disturbingly-shaped chocolate out of the box from Greg and pops in his mouth without taking his eyes from the tiny printing.
Catherine is considering Sara with a thoughtful look of frustration, and Nick smiles inwardly. It's good to have friends like these, he thinks; and he hopes he can hang onto them through everything to come.
They scatter back to their respective cases after a few more minutes of idle conversation and pawing-over of gifts, especially the butterfly book. There's still an hour or so on the clock, and they all have cases to solve.
Warrick flips him for trace on the blanket and wins, but before Nick can collect the fibres and move into the next lab to keep working, Warrick says, "You going by Nicky again these days?"
He freezes, but just for a moment. Because it's just a question, it's not an accusation or a stab in the dark - it's just a casual question from a good friend.
"Sort of," he says with a small smile.
Warrick rolls his eyes. "I mean, it's not - if I start calling you Nicky, it's not some kind of pet name, is it?"
"No," Nick says. "No, it's not."
"'Cause I mean, I like you and all - but I don't want to start calling you by some kinky bedroom thing, you know?"
His smile broadens. "It's not a kinky bedroom thing," he says, and wonders where that suggestion is coming from. "It's, uh - yeah, I'm going by Nicky again. Trying to."
"Any reason?"
Easy, Nick tells himself; it's still just a question. "Sort of," he says, shrugs, and scoots out the door before Warrick throws something at him.
Their plans are to meet at Nick's place in the early afternoon. That gives him time to run home and clean like a crazy person and start to cook; and it gives Gil enough time to disentangle himself from Ecklie's ridiculous status meeting and then recover at home before being required to be pleasant.
Two o'clock is a fashionable hour as far as Nick is concerned, at least with the schedules they keep. It's roughly equivalent to eight or nine in the evening for the more rationally-scheduled individual, plus it has the bonus of sunlight, which Nick has always loved. His condo has a south-facing balcony for a reason.
As day shift filters into the building and everyone else trickles out, Nick wanders past the door to Gil's office to see him bundling an armload of files together and mentally steeling himself for the bureaucratic nightmare waiting for him in the office down the hall. A tame wave of affection washes up against Nick, and when it recedes, Nicky is left admiring the view.
She leans against the door frame and says, "Does he know it's your birthday?"
Gil glances up at her and his scowl transforms into a smile. "Knowing Ecklie," he says, "he's probably got something unpleasant up his sleeve, just for the occasion."
"I don't get why he hates you so much," Nicky says.
Gil shrugs. "He's a career paper-pusher," he says, "and I'm a chronic paper-stopper. It's a natural antipathy."
"Even before you became supervisor?"
"Right from the start."
Nicky takes a casual look around to make sure they have some measure of privacy, and says, "I want to eat in tonight. I'm making something special. Is that okay?"
Gil raises an eyebrow. "You want to cook on your birthday?"
"I want to cook for you."
Gil blinks at that, and something kind of like a blush tinges the lines of his cheekbones. "That's - that sounds terrific, Nicky."
Her grin broadens. "I'll see you later, then?"
Gil nods.
"Have fun at your meeting."
"Don't be cheeky."
She's actually forgotten about Greg and her car keys until she gets out to her car with her bag in one hand and her jacket in the other. She unlocks the passenger side first because it's a convenient place to dump all the crap she carries around with her, and finds herself staring at a cheerfully-wrapped box with a ribbon and a card sitting in the passenger seat.
She looks at it for a moment, then drops her stuff onto the floor under the dash, and picks up the box. It's not heavy, and it's not particularly big, either - slightly deeper than a gift box you'd get if you bought an expensive shirt. She shakes it, decides that whatever it is, it's soft, and considers opening it then and there.
She sits it back down and pulls the card out of the envelope - a kind of stunned goldfish is peering at her on the front, from inside a glass bowl, and she opens it up. Nicky- it says in Greg's distinctively bad handwriting, The CD was just something I thought you'd like. This is your real present - hope you enjoy. Anything, anytime, Greg xx.
Nicky closes the card and contemplates the goldfish again, and thinks, There's a reason that Greg didn't give this to you in front of everyone else. This is Greg, after all.
She drives home and tries to ignore the box, which keeps nagging at her attention at every stop sign and street light. Every time she takes her eyes off the road for anything - to look at her speedometer, to check the clock on the dash, to screw around with the radio - her eyes slide back to the box of their own accord. She's mildly surprised when she ends up in her driveway in one piece.
She's not sure if she should be worried or excited, or both, at whatever is in the box. For the last month or so, Greg has become a fixture in her life, teasing her about the mullet she's grown (it's not a mullet, she keeps insisting, it just looks like one until it's long enough to get it trimmed) and renting stupid movies with her and ordering pizza and gossiping.
And directing Nicky's debut into the world.
So far this has consisted of decimating her wardrobe when Nicky was drunk and then dragging her out shopping while she was hungover; slowly denuding her CD collection of music that, in Greg's mind, is an overcompensation of maleness or just plain bad; luring her to a queer club on the outskirts of town full of gender-bending people of every description; leaving books lying pointedly on the coffee table; and nagging her incessantly about seeing a psychiatrist. He's even gone so far as to research the group medical insurance plan and how much therapy they'll cover, but although he harasses her endlessly about making an appointment, he's never upset or disappointed when she doesn't. He just cheerfully keeps up the pressure.
Nicky is coming to appreciate that Greg is a one-in-a-million friend, and the knowledge is both a comfort and a strangely detached terror. It's comforting because she knows she can depend on him; terrifying because it also makes him utterly unpredictable.
So she parks her car and locks it up, and carries her bag and jacket under one arm and the present under the other, and fumbles with the key. She leaves her stuff on the floor in the hallway and takes the box into the living room.
She leaves it on the coffee table and goes into the kitchen, wondering what kind of stiff drink she's going to need to survive this. She's contemplating a screwdriver, because it's fast and easy, when the phone rings. She lifts it off the hook absently while she shakes a jug of orange and says, "Hello?"
"Nick?"
It takes her a moment to place the voice, and when she does, she's ashamed of the delay. She swallows. "Hey, Mom," she says.
There's a little pause. "Are you okay?" she asks. "You sound - funny."
"I'm fine," she says, and feels Nicky fall away into Nick. "Just, uh, you know. Been one of those days."
"Doing anything special tonight?"
"Working," Nick says. He hasn't found the words yet to explain about Gil, let alone about Nicky. "The bad guys never sleep."
"This is true," his mother says. "I just called to wish you a happy birthday. Carrie's here with the kids, there's a racket in the basement - you remember your old air hockey table? It's making a comeback. A loud comeback."
"How is Carrie?" Nick asks.
"Well, you know. Brad's moved out again, maybe it's for real this time - I'll let her tell you about it, though. She's giving me a beady eye from the living room."
Nick sits on the edge of the bed and listens to the news of the family, followed by an off-key rendition of Happy Birthday by a gaggle of nieces and nephews and a little girl he thinks is probably the neighbour's kid. Then his father comes on long enough to wish him many happy returns and to tell him there's a plane ticket home waiting for him anytime he wants to visit, and finally the phone is handed to Carrie, the youngest of his sisters, two years older than he is, and with Carrie comes a sudden background silence.
"Okay," Carrie says, "I'm on the porch, we can talk. So who's this guy you're seeing?"
Nick almost-winces. Carrie is the closest family he has, and the only one who knows about the men that Nick has dated. She doesn't know about Nicky, although he's sometimes tempted to tell her. She does know about Gil, though, in non-specific terms because he stupidly mentioned a date in an email a couple of weeks ago.
"Don't breathe a word to anyone," Nick says, "okay?"
"I never do, you know that," Carrie says, and Nick can almost hear the accompanying roll of the eyes. "So - spill."
"It's Gil," Nick says. He's loved his job since the day he started, and has forced his family to endure more stories about DNA and decomposition than anyone should really have to listen to. They know all of the key players by name.
There's a pause. "Your boss?" Carrie asks. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah," Nick says. "He's, uh - on his way over, actually, so I can't talk for too long."
"You know that's dangerous, right?" Carrie says.
"Carrie-"
"I know, I know - you're a big boy. I'm just saying, is all. Doing the big-sisterly thing. So how long have you been going out?"
He thinks about that. When should he start counting? "A couple of months," he says, because at least it's in the right ballpark.
"Serious?"
"Very."
"Ooooh. You're going to have to break it to the rest of them at some point," she says. "I mean, they're going to want to meet him sometime."
"You mean you want to meet him," Nick says with a smile.
"Busted," she says with a laugh. "But seriously: if this is The One, you might as well let the cat out the bag."
"I know," he says, because he does. But there are so many layers of fear wrapped up in such a simple statement that he's been frozen into silence for too long.
He clears his throat. "What about you?" he asks. "Mom says Brad is moving out?"
"Again," Carrie says with a deep sigh. "It's... difficult, you know? He stays on his meds and everything is good and solid and happy, and then he forgets one morning and nothing happens, so he forgets another morning and then another... I don't know anymore, Nick. If he thinks he'll be happier on his own, then I'm not going to try to stop him from going. I'm just worried that he's going to spiral out of control, forget about the kids and just - disappear."
Nick makes a sympathetic noise. He's always liked Brad, liked his soft-spoken sense of humour and his keen intelligence. His mental problems only surfaced after their fourth child was born, and things in the Stokes-Manor household have been dicey ever since.
"Well, you know," Carrie says gamely. "We take it as it comes."
"If there's anything I can do," Nick says.
"You'll come running, I know. I appreciate it, Nick, I really do. But this thing has to run its course on its own. I'll be fine, and so will the kids."
"That's good," Nick says. "I'm glad you're okay."
"How are you, speaking of okay?" Carrie asks, the tone of her voice shifting from the passivity with which she addresses her own life and into the concerned tone she uses on other people's problems. "You got a cold?"
"No."
"Huh. You sound a little - I don't know. Different. Willowy, maybe? If that makes any sense."
It does, to Nick: it's the difference between the way he talks and the way Nicky talks. Greg was the first to notice it, tried to get Nicky into the phone-sex business on the side ("You'd make a killing, with a little practise..."), and now it's become just another part of his life.
He fights down another urge to blurt out the truth to his sister, knows that this just isn't the right time for it. He wonders if it ever will be. "Must be the phone," he says. "Crappy connection or something."
"Guess so," Carrie says, but she doesn't sound totally convinced.
"Look," Nick says, looking at the bedside clock, "I've got to go. I promised Gil a home-cooked meal, and I haven't even started chopping yet."
"Then skidaddle, muchacho," Carrie says cheerfully, "and don't do anything I wouldn't do."
"Carrie," Nick says, "there's nothing that you wouldn't do. And probably haven't done."
"Exactly," Carrie says. "It's a carte-blanche to have a good time. Have an awesome birthday, and I hope your night at work's not too gross."
"Love you," Nick says. "Say bye to everyone for me."
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