FIC: Feel you. Chapter two.
Title: Feel you
Chapter: Chapter two
Author: M. F. Luder
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Author's note: Hope you like it and... *giggles* Have fun.
Betad by elmyraemilie who totally makes this story worth it. *nods*
Feel you
Chapter two
Time, for him, is not so much as an entity as a whisper. It passes him by, barely leaving trails in its wake. At least, that used to be the case.
Grissom didn't use to feel the passing months or years. Time was measured in conferences, books published, bought, updated. Months had their meaning in solving rates, in cases closed and the ones that got away. They meant puzzles solved and information learned.
It had never, until now, meant such a sudden change.
When the encounter with Nick is nothing but a memory is some long away past, the Larsen case happened. More like it went awry, but it's the same principle. And then, well, there wasn't one shift but two. Three of his guys were gone. Catherine was supervisor.
And things, from Gil Grissom's point of view, just went downhill from there.
Two weeks after the team was split, Grissom wakes up on a Tuesday night, the sun long ago set on the other side of the pulled dark curtains. He sits up on the bed, turns around to look at the clock -- 8:01 -- and suddenly it feels like he's about to throw up. He belches onto his fist, takes a deep breath that doesn't quite go as planned, and he jumps off bed and makes a run for the bathroom. He reaches the toilet just as his self-control cracks. He throws up for minutes, it seems, though he's certain it can't be more than one.
Finally, when his forehead is damp with sweat, along with his hands, and his chest feels like something inside him might have cracked, he takes a deep breath and sits down on the tiled floor. He rests against the side of the toilet, head leaning over the edge where there's no lingering vomit and lets it out slowly.
He closes his eyes and tries to think what he had for dinner last night. He had pasta and a glass of wine, for a reason he still can't fathom. Still, if that had been it, then he would have woken up in the middle of the night with the nausea. But he hasn't; ergo, it can't have been the food.
Well, the flu has been going around the lab, leaving them shorthanded last week, one of the reasons both Nick and Sarah had to pull a double. The only reason Grissom actually worked a case with Nick. For the first time; since the change of shift. Grissom and Nick actually shared the same space, breathed the same air, as they processed evidence of a case, barely eleven days ago.
He shakes his head, brushing away the memory, back to the drawer where it belongs. He stands on unstable legs and takes another deep breath. He doesn't throw up again, and he's very proud of that, only belching onto his fist once again. He can't exactly get sick right now. Greg hasn't even passed his proficiency case. If he has to take a night off because he can't get out of bed, then they might as well close down the night shift. Sara and Greg won't be able to handle the caseload.
He flushes the toilet and looks at his reflection in the mirror. It tells him in very blunt words that he looks like shit. He runs a hand through his hair before walking into the shower. A good long shower, three cups of coffee and a good puzzle and he'll be as good as new. That and a dosage of Tylenol Flu before the shift. He'll pass by the drugstore before going to the lab.
Two hours later, by the time he arrives at the Kingsley crime scene, he doesn't worry about the flu anymore. Greg runs the idea of a suicide, Brass says he's interview the neighbors. He tells Greg to bag up the evidence just as a wave of nausea hits him. He pauses, index finger pressed against his upper lip as he inhales through his mouth. He lets it out slowly and the nausea seems to subside to the back of his throat, not really leaving him. Maybe he should forget waiting for eight hours to pass and just have the second dosage
"So. Are you going to say, The game's afoot?"
Greg's comment catches him by surprise. It takes him a moment to think of an answer.
"I didn't know you were a Conan Doyle fan, Greg."
Greg shrugs, head tilted, eyeing the DB. "I'm not. I saw a Sherlock Holmes movie once. By mistake."
Grissom swallows something that doesn't quite taste like bile, but not like saliva either. His bottle of water is in his truck and as soon as he can, he'll drink half of it. He looks at corpse of Mr. Kingsley, dressed in a robe. He takes a breath in and the smell of the dead, which had never before bothered him, hits him right in the face. He swallows with difficulty.
"Just so you know? Those movies never ended like this," Grissom says as a way of explanation, not certain why he's saying anything at all.
He turns around and walks out of the house. As he makes his way into the front yard, he takes a deep breath and his lungs seems to agree with him that this smell is much, much better. Nausea doesn't bother him again during the night and when the shift is over, Grissom thinks nothing of it. He doesn't even have the second dosage of his flu medicine.
*****
One day of nausea, it's understandable. A week? Grissom tells himself it's the flu and consults with the pharmacist before doubling the dosage. However, when it's week number two and he has to leave an autopsy because the smell is too much for him -- for the first time in over thirty years -- he knows something is very wrong.
The smell in the hotel room was strong, yes, but bearable, even if he had to tell Sara that he was going to process the bathroom so he could leave the scene. He didn't throw up because he'd rather eat his bile than contaminate a crime scene, but he did have to take very long breaths and burp onto his hand.
But in the morgue, after Al tells Grissom that he's collected sperm from Martha Krell, the smell of the corpse hits him with so much strength Grissom feels bile in his mouth. He tries to swallow it down but he can't. Desperate, he takes out his cell and opens it, pretending he's got a call and leaves the morgue. It's one thing to know he's sick, it's another entirely to let Doc Robbins know that as well.
He takes a deep breath on the hallway, hand pressed against his mouth, trying to keep his breakfast inside. He fails, horribly. Trotting to the bathroom just down the hall, he makes his way into a stall and throws up, long and hard, just like he did only five hours ago when he woke up this morning. And the morning before that, and the morning before that.
It takes him a moment to collect himself and to breathe without something in his stomach stirring. Then again, there's nothing left in his stomach at the moment. He makes his way out of the stall and splashes water onto his face.
He groans as he shakes his head, looking up at his reflection in the mirror. If there's one thing he hates more than paperwork and closed mindedness, it's going to the doctor. Still, there's only so much he can do without a medical degree. By the end of the week, he tells himself, I'll make an appointment. Delaying and denial are tendencies Grissom has mastered a long time ago.
When he arrives home, very, very late in the morning, Grissom places his keys on the kitchen island as he pours himself a large glass of orange juice. He finishes it and pours a second glass as he considers making something for dinner. He had a sandwich about three hours ago, which usually is more than enough to see him through the night, except he threw it up ten minutes before leaving the lab, along with his lunch, probably.
He settles for scrambled eggs and bacon along with some bread as he has his third glass of orange juice, suddenly hungry.
By the time he's done with dinner it's almost noon and eight hours of sleep sound like bliss. He makes his way to his bedroom and takes off his clothes. The shirt is in the hamper as he undoes his belt. He unbuttons his pants, pulling down the zipper, and notices a red line on his skin. He touches it with his fingertips, wondering for a minute if he might be having an allergic reaction to something. It takes him a moment to put two and two together and realize that the red line coincides with the edge of his pants.
He frowns, head tilted. He does the button again and zips it up and he realizes that yes, the pants are digging into his skin. He lets out a soft sigh through his lips, irritated. He's put on weight? How in the world--?
He shakes his head, taking off his pants and toeing off his shoes. In the bathroom, he takes out the small scale he keeps under the sink and never dares to actually use it. Weight, at his age, has become quite a subject. He was never the slim and muscular type of guy, considering books and bugs were more of his thing, but he was never chubby either. Knowing that going to the gym would not fit his schedule, Grissom has always been careful of what he eats.
However, there comes a time when even being careful is not enough. And being one candle away from fifty is as close as it gets when putting on a pound makes him frown and look down at himself. His fingers move to his hips, soft to the touch, finger sinking into a layer of fat that certainly wasn't there twenty years ago. His belly curves outward slightly, and when he runs a hand over it he notices than there's more on that curve that there used to be.
With a sigh, he steps onto the scale and frowns at the numbers.
"This can't be right," he says under his breath. He steps down from the scale and thinks. Last time he did this against his own better judgment, he was at 171. The fact alone that he touched the seventies scared him a little bit. He had never been over 170, not since a very bad period of six months back in the early eighties when he was swamped with work and ended up eating more calories than he could lose by not going to the gym.
Five months ago he had been at 171. He told himself he could cut back on some of the pasta he likes so much, start drinking more water and less coffee and maybe he could be back at 168, of which he had been very fond this year.
Staring down at the scale and the way it says, very clearly, 00.00 pounds before he touches it, Grissom thinks cutting back coffee and pasta wasn't enough. He takes a deep breath and steps onto it once again.
The number is the same one it was barely seconds ago. It tells him, very blunt, that he's overweight. Never, in his entire life, has he weighed 182 pounds. Never. Ever. That's too much. If being in the one-seventies somehow scared the living daylights out of him, and certainly didn't help his self-esteem, being over the eighty mark makes him frown and want to stop eating pasta all together.
Well, he'll have to lose that weight, that's it. He doesn't have time to go to the gym, though he knows both Warrick and Nick do and wonders if maybe they don't have enough cases to handle. Then again, he's not longer their supervisor, so it's not his business. His chest constricts and he shakes his head. He has ten pounds too much at the moment, no time to think about anything else but going on a diet.
He places the scale back where it belongs and tells himself he's not touching it for at least another three months, long enough to knock back at least two pounds. Diet and lots of water and... and if that doesn't work out then he's going to have to buy larger pants and that's something he certainly isn't going to do.
Grissom puts on the loose pair of sweats he wears for bed and notices that they aren't exactly loose anymore. Was it like this yesterday? Could he not have noticed? He shakes his head. Stupid really. He pushes back the covers, sitting down on the bed. How can he put on weight when he's been throwing up every morning? Grissom lies down on the bed, on his right side and sighs. He's been eating his three meals a day, right, but he's been having nausea the moment he wakes up, when he smells a DB, when he goes into the mor--
He sits up in the bed with a jump. He blinks, once, twice, head tilted slightly to the side.
There are three pieces of evidence that, looking at them one apart from the other, mean nothing. But when he puts the puzzle together, puts all three items in the same table, the answer to the question is quite different.
Following the evidence shouldn't make his heart race and his palms sweat. It shouldn't make him feel like he might be having a stroke. Nothing too uncommon for a fifty year old man; not as uncommon as the thought that maybe, the weight gain is yet another piece in this whole puzzle.
*****
His mind jumps from thought to thought, not pausing long enough for him to be able to process information, but giving him enough time to freak out so very much so very quietly.
Eight months since he had last thought about this, and usually, that would be of no concern at all. Except, right now, it's totally something to worry about.
It wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep with the sudden thought, the sudden clearness he had found in regards to the answer to a question he hadn't exactly asked.
Instead, he puts on underwear and a shirt, some pants that digs onto his skin and make him sweat even more, shoes and goes to his car. He drives for over half an hour before finding a drugstore in the strip that doesn't make him nervous. A young girl, no more than twenty, sits at the register. Grissom swallows his pride and finds the right aisle, picking up two boxes. He reaches the register, hands them to the girl who, for obvious reasons, gives him a weird look.
Yes, he's too old to be doing this. Think I'm doing this for my daughter or a friend or whatever, I don't care. Just stop looking at me and pass the boxes through the scanners. He narrows her eyes at her and she shrugs nonchalantly. He pays in cash because credit cards means leaving a trail behind and he's suddenly paranoid.
The plastic bag with the store logo and the two boxes sit in the passenger seat of his car. He picks them with his fingertips, as if afraid to leave a print, and walks into his bedroom.
He hadn't thought about this trait of his in a very long time. Eight months, exactly. Eight months since the last time he found a red stain in his underwear and was forced use a pad he would not use otherwise.
His mother explained it to him when he was twenty-six and it happened for the first time. She told him, slowly and through a very long couple of hours, how he had been born with both set of reproductive organs. She also said, though she didn't elaborate, that every single medical record about it had been sealed and/or destroyed. No one else, beside the two of them, was to know about this. She worried about him, about his safety and privacy, and he thanked her for that.
Then, of course, at the sudden awakening of a set of organs he hadn't been aware he had, he had a doctor's appointment. An old friend of his mother's, entirely reliable. Dr Elleanor Gray who had been working in a Hospital in California before moving to Las Vegas. As far as Grissom knows, she worked in County for five years before she quit and put her own clinic. They traveled that weekend and Dr. Gray had had her way with him, in a matter of speaking. She had administered very single test known to man, and some that Gil was positive were unknown, to make sure everything was working inside him. And everything was, even things that weren't supposed to be there in the first place.
The next time he had an episode, five months after the first time -- and he refused to call it a period on the sheer principle that he was not female, he had only one X chromosome and not two --, Gil Grissom had to go back to the doctor's office.
"Understandable," she told him that time as he sat in front of her desk, his gaze shifting to the picture of a grinning little girl sitting in a front yard, if only to take his mind away from things. "You're not producing eggs, not every month it seems at least. In regards to your development, you're only in your early teens, so you have enough time to grown into your body, in a matter of speaking."
In a year or two, she had said, he might be bleeding monthly. But his body refused to do such a thing, it seemed, when five years passed and he had barely had seven episodes. And so, his body had settled for a rather fickle routine. He would have an episode either once a year, or two at the most, when his body would decide that dropping an egg it shouldn't even be producing was necessary.
It had never been a problem, the lack of predictability of this whole thing, the lack of a calendar or a schedule. He had liked, in some ways, that he didn't have to go through this every single month. He had to be careful, always, yes, carrying things in small toilet bag in the trunk of his car, under his bag of spare clothing, just in case it was to surprise him in the middle of work. He still had another toilet bag in his office, behind his book on African Spiders and their venoms, hidden away from prying hands and eyes.
It had never been a problem, until now, because it would just be his freaking luck for his body to have decided that it was time, once again, a couple of days before that night--
He stares down at the plastic stick in his hand. One, first and then, if needed, the second one. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
Two minutes, it said in the box, but as Grissom sits down on his bed and stares at his hands, fingers folding and unfolding, palms damp from a nervousness he can't help but let himself be consumed by.
It's been eleven weeks since waking up at five in the afternoon to the sound of someone in his shower. Eleven weeks, four of which have been spent with only half his team, or what used to be his team. He has past Nick in the lab, sure, when Nick was doing overtime because of a case, or when he was walking out of the lab and Grissom was barely walking in.
He has walked passed Nick, but he hasn't had a full conversation with the man since the time Nick pulled a double, over a month ago.
Grissom closes his eyes and shakes his head. He's way past nervousness and very well into the freaking out area of his psyche.
When he opens his eyes once again, he checks his watch. Well over three minutes. More than enough. He stands up, makes his way to the bathroom and stares down at the plastic stick.
No stalling, no words of comfort. Nothing. Just plain and simple. Two lines. Positive.
His heart seems to stop for a moment before it resumes its pace. His throat is tight and as he tries to take a breath, it sounds more like a gasp.
Positive. He sighs. His jaw trembles, slightly, before he sets his lips into a line.
There's a percentage for error in the test, he knows. He hurries back to the bedroom and picks up the second box. Four minutes later, it says the same thing.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the same voice he has kept quiet for the past weeks as it tried to mutter that maybe he should try and talk with Nick outside the lab, whispers something Grissom refuses to hear. The words baby and soon and Nick and talk are too much for him to deal with at the moment.
He sits down on his bed, hands on his lap, and blinks away the surprise, the shock. Fifteen minutes later, when he throws up all over the toilet, Grissom knows it's not exactly the morning sickness.
*****
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but this story totally rocks. I love it. *pets story* I'm very happy with how it's turning out. *nods* Totally.
Now, let me know what you think.
Chapter: Chapter two
Author: M. F. Luder
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: PG-13
Author's note: Hope you like it and... *giggles* Have fun.
Betad by elmyraemilie who totally makes this story worth it. *nods*
Feel you
Chapter two
Time, for him, is not so much as an entity as a whisper. It passes him by, barely leaving trails in its wake. At least, that used to be the case.
Grissom didn't use to feel the passing months or years. Time was measured in conferences, books published, bought, updated. Months had their meaning in solving rates, in cases closed and the ones that got away. They meant puzzles solved and information learned.
It had never, until now, meant such a sudden change.
When the encounter with Nick is nothing but a memory is some long away past, the Larsen case happened. More like it went awry, but it's the same principle. And then, well, there wasn't one shift but two. Three of his guys were gone. Catherine was supervisor.
And things, from Gil Grissom's point of view, just went downhill from there.
Two weeks after the team was split, Grissom wakes up on a Tuesday night, the sun long ago set on the other side of the pulled dark curtains. He sits up on the bed, turns around to look at the clock -- 8:01 -- and suddenly it feels like he's about to throw up. He belches onto his fist, takes a deep breath that doesn't quite go as planned, and he jumps off bed and makes a run for the bathroom. He reaches the toilet just as his self-control cracks. He throws up for minutes, it seems, though he's certain it can't be more than one.
Finally, when his forehead is damp with sweat, along with his hands, and his chest feels like something inside him might have cracked, he takes a deep breath and sits down on the tiled floor. He rests against the side of the toilet, head leaning over the edge where there's no lingering vomit and lets it out slowly.
He closes his eyes and tries to think what he had for dinner last night. He had pasta and a glass of wine, for a reason he still can't fathom. Still, if that had been it, then he would have woken up in the middle of the night with the nausea. But he hasn't; ergo, it can't have been the food.
Well, the flu has been going around the lab, leaving them shorthanded last week, one of the reasons both Nick and Sarah had to pull a double. The only reason Grissom actually worked a case with Nick. For the first time; since the change of shift. Grissom and Nick actually shared the same space, breathed the same air, as they processed evidence of a case, barely eleven days ago.
He shakes his head, brushing away the memory, back to the drawer where it belongs. He stands on unstable legs and takes another deep breath. He doesn't throw up again, and he's very proud of that, only belching onto his fist once again. He can't exactly get sick right now. Greg hasn't even passed his proficiency case. If he has to take a night off because he can't get out of bed, then they might as well close down the night shift. Sara and Greg won't be able to handle the caseload.
He flushes the toilet and looks at his reflection in the mirror. It tells him in very blunt words that he looks like shit. He runs a hand through his hair before walking into the shower. A good long shower, three cups of coffee and a good puzzle and he'll be as good as new. That and a dosage of Tylenol Flu before the shift. He'll pass by the drugstore before going to the lab.
Two hours later, by the time he arrives at the Kingsley crime scene, he doesn't worry about the flu anymore. Greg runs the idea of a suicide, Brass says he's interview the neighbors. He tells Greg to bag up the evidence just as a wave of nausea hits him. He pauses, index finger pressed against his upper lip as he inhales through his mouth. He lets it out slowly and the nausea seems to subside to the back of his throat, not really leaving him. Maybe he should forget waiting for eight hours to pass and just have the second dosage
"So. Are you going to say, The game's afoot?"
Greg's comment catches him by surprise. It takes him a moment to think of an answer.
"I didn't know you were a Conan Doyle fan, Greg."
Greg shrugs, head tilted, eyeing the DB. "I'm not. I saw a Sherlock Holmes movie once. By mistake."
Grissom swallows something that doesn't quite taste like bile, but not like saliva either. His bottle of water is in his truck and as soon as he can, he'll drink half of it. He looks at corpse of Mr. Kingsley, dressed in a robe. He takes a breath in and the smell of the dead, which had never before bothered him, hits him right in the face. He swallows with difficulty.
"Just so you know? Those movies never ended like this," Grissom says as a way of explanation, not certain why he's saying anything at all.
He turns around and walks out of the house. As he makes his way into the front yard, he takes a deep breath and his lungs seems to agree with him that this smell is much, much better. Nausea doesn't bother him again during the night and when the shift is over, Grissom thinks nothing of it. He doesn't even have the second dosage of his flu medicine.
*****
One day of nausea, it's understandable. A week? Grissom tells himself it's the flu and consults with the pharmacist before doubling the dosage. However, when it's week number two and he has to leave an autopsy because the smell is too much for him -- for the first time in over thirty years -- he knows something is very wrong.
The smell in the hotel room was strong, yes, but bearable, even if he had to tell Sara that he was going to process the bathroom so he could leave the scene. He didn't throw up because he'd rather eat his bile than contaminate a crime scene, but he did have to take very long breaths and burp onto his hand.
But in the morgue, after Al tells Grissom that he's collected sperm from Martha Krell, the smell of the corpse hits him with so much strength Grissom feels bile in his mouth. He tries to swallow it down but he can't. Desperate, he takes out his cell and opens it, pretending he's got a call and leaves the morgue. It's one thing to know he's sick, it's another entirely to let Doc Robbins know that as well.
He takes a deep breath on the hallway, hand pressed against his mouth, trying to keep his breakfast inside. He fails, horribly. Trotting to the bathroom just down the hall, he makes his way into a stall and throws up, long and hard, just like he did only five hours ago when he woke up this morning. And the morning before that, and the morning before that.
It takes him a moment to collect himself and to breathe without something in his stomach stirring. Then again, there's nothing left in his stomach at the moment. He makes his way out of the stall and splashes water onto his face.
He groans as he shakes his head, looking up at his reflection in the mirror. If there's one thing he hates more than paperwork and closed mindedness, it's going to the doctor. Still, there's only so much he can do without a medical degree. By the end of the week, he tells himself, I'll make an appointment. Delaying and denial are tendencies Grissom has mastered a long time ago.
When he arrives home, very, very late in the morning, Grissom places his keys on the kitchen island as he pours himself a large glass of orange juice. He finishes it and pours a second glass as he considers making something for dinner. He had a sandwich about three hours ago, which usually is more than enough to see him through the night, except he threw it up ten minutes before leaving the lab, along with his lunch, probably.
He settles for scrambled eggs and bacon along with some bread as he has his third glass of orange juice, suddenly hungry.
By the time he's done with dinner it's almost noon and eight hours of sleep sound like bliss. He makes his way to his bedroom and takes off his clothes. The shirt is in the hamper as he undoes his belt. He unbuttons his pants, pulling down the zipper, and notices a red line on his skin. He touches it with his fingertips, wondering for a minute if he might be having an allergic reaction to something. It takes him a moment to put two and two together and realize that the red line coincides with the edge of his pants.
He frowns, head tilted. He does the button again and zips it up and he realizes that yes, the pants are digging into his skin. He lets out a soft sigh through his lips, irritated. He's put on weight? How in the world--?
He shakes his head, taking off his pants and toeing off his shoes. In the bathroom, he takes out the small scale he keeps under the sink and never dares to actually use it. Weight, at his age, has become quite a subject. He was never the slim and muscular type of guy, considering books and bugs were more of his thing, but he was never chubby either. Knowing that going to the gym would not fit his schedule, Grissom has always been careful of what he eats.
However, there comes a time when even being careful is not enough. And being one candle away from fifty is as close as it gets when putting on a pound makes him frown and look down at himself. His fingers move to his hips, soft to the touch, finger sinking into a layer of fat that certainly wasn't there twenty years ago. His belly curves outward slightly, and when he runs a hand over it he notices than there's more on that curve that there used to be.
With a sigh, he steps onto the scale and frowns at the numbers.
"This can't be right," he says under his breath. He steps down from the scale and thinks. Last time he did this against his own better judgment, he was at 171. The fact alone that he touched the seventies scared him a little bit. He had never been over 170, not since a very bad period of six months back in the early eighties when he was swamped with work and ended up eating more calories than he could lose by not going to the gym.
Five months ago he had been at 171. He told himself he could cut back on some of the pasta he likes so much, start drinking more water and less coffee and maybe he could be back at 168, of which he had been very fond this year.
Staring down at the scale and the way it says, very clearly, 00.00 pounds before he touches it, Grissom thinks cutting back coffee and pasta wasn't enough. He takes a deep breath and steps onto it once again.
The number is the same one it was barely seconds ago. It tells him, very blunt, that he's overweight. Never, in his entire life, has he weighed 182 pounds. Never. Ever. That's too much. If being in the one-seventies somehow scared the living daylights out of him, and certainly didn't help his self-esteem, being over the eighty mark makes him frown and want to stop eating pasta all together.
Well, he'll have to lose that weight, that's it. He doesn't have time to go to the gym, though he knows both Warrick and Nick do and wonders if maybe they don't have enough cases to handle. Then again, he's not longer their supervisor, so it's not his business. His chest constricts and he shakes his head. He has ten pounds too much at the moment, no time to think about anything else but going on a diet.
He places the scale back where it belongs and tells himself he's not touching it for at least another three months, long enough to knock back at least two pounds. Diet and lots of water and... and if that doesn't work out then he's going to have to buy larger pants and that's something he certainly isn't going to do.
Grissom puts on the loose pair of sweats he wears for bed and notices that they aren't exactly loose anymore. Was it like this yesterday? Could he not have noticed? He shakes his head. Stupid really. He pushes back the covers, sitting down on the bed. How can he put on weight when he's been throwing up every morning? Grissom lies down on the bed, on his right side and sighs. He's been eating his three meals a day, right, but he's been having nausea the moment he wakes up, when he smells a DB, when he goes into the mor--
He sits up in the bed with a jump. He blinks, once, twice, head tilted slightly to the side.
There are three pieces of evidence that, looking at them one apart from the other, mean nothing. But when he puts the puzzle together, puts all three items in the same table, the answer to the question is quite different.
Following the evidence shouldn't make his heart race and his palms sweat. It shouldn't make him feel like he might be having a stroke. Nothing too uncommon for a fifty year old man; not as uncommon as the thought that maybe, the weight gain is yet another piece in this whole puzzle.
*****
His mind jumps from thought to thought, not pausing long enough for him to be able to process information, but giving him enough time to freak out so very much so very quietly.
Eight months since he had last thought about this, and usually, that would be of no concern at all. Except, right now, it's totally something to worry about.
It wasn't like he was going to be able to sleep with the sudden thought, the sudden clearness he had found in regards to the answer to a question he hadn't exactly asked.
Instead, he puts on underwear and a shirt, some pants that digs onto his skin and make him sweat even more, shoes and goes to his car. He drives for over half an hour before finding a drugstore in the strip that doesn't make him nervous. A young girl, no more than twenty, sits at the register. Grissom swallows his pride and finds the right aisle, picking up two boxes. He reaches the register, hands them to the girl who, for obvious reasons, gives him a weird look.
Yes, he's too old to be doing this. Think I'm doing this for my daughter or a friend or whatever, I don't care. Just stop looking at me and pass the boxes through the scanners. He narrows her eyes at her and she shrugs nonchalantly. He pays in cash because credit cards means leaving a trail behind and he's suddenly paranoid.
The plastic bag with the store logo and the two boxes sit in the passenger seat of his car. He picks them with his fingertips, as if afraid to leave a print, and walks into his bedroom.
He hadn't thought about this trait of his in a very long time. Eight months, exactly. Eight months since the last time he found a red stain in his underwear and was forced use a pad he would not use otherwise.
His mother explained it to him when he was twenty-six and it happened for the first time. She told him, slowly and through a very long couple of hours, how he had been born with both set of reproductive organs. She also said, though she didn't elaborate, that every single medical record about it had been sealed and/or destroyed. No one else, beside the two of them, was to know about this. She worried about him, about his safety and privacy, and he thanked her for that.
Then, of course, at the sudden awakening of a set of organs he hadn't been aware he had, he had a doctor's appointment. An old friend of his mother's, entirely reliable. Dr Elleanor Gray who had been working in a Hospital in California before moving to Las Vegas. As far as Grissom knows, she worked in County for five years before she quit and put her own clinic. They traveled that weekend and Dr. Gray had had her way with him, in a matter of speaking. She had administered very single test known to man, and some that Gil was positive were unknown, to make sure everything was working inside him. And everything was, even things that weren't supposed to be there in the first place.
The next time he had an episode, five months after the first time -- and he refused to call it a period on the sheer principle that he was not female, he had only one X chromosome and not two --, Gil Grissom had to go back to the doctor's office.
"Understandable," she told him that time as he sat in front of her desk, his gaze shifting to the picture of a grinning little girl sitting in a front yard, if only to take his mind away from things. "You're not producing eggs, not every month it seems at least. In regards to your development, you're only in your early teens, so you have enough time to grown into your body, in a matter of speaking."
In a year or two, she had said, he might be bleeding monthly. But his body refused to do such a thing, it seemed, when five years passed and he had barely had seven episodes. And so, his body had settled for a rather fickle routine. He would have an episode either once a year, or two at the most, when his body would decide that dropping an egg it shouldn't even be producing was necessary.
It had never been a problem, the lack of predictability of this whole thing, the lack of a calendar or a schedule. He had liked, in some ways, that he didn't have to go through this every single month. He had to be careful, always, yes, carrying things in small toilet bag in the trunk of his car, under his bag of spare clothing, just in case it was to surprise him in the middle of work. He still had another toilet bag in his office, behind his book on African Spiders and their venoms, hidden away from prying hands and eyes.
It had never been a problem, until now, because it would just be his freaking luck for his body to have decided that it was time, once again, a couple of days before that night--
He stares down at the plastic stick in his hand. One, first and then, if needed, the second one. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
Two minutes, it said in the box, but as Grissom sits down on his bed and stares at his hands, fingers folding and unfolding, palms damp from a nervousness he can't help but let himself be consumed by.
It's been eleven weeks since waking up at five in the afternoon to the sound of someone in his shower. Eleven weeks, four of which have been spent with only half his team, or what used to be his team. He has past Nick in the lab, sure, when Nick was doing overtime because of a case, or when he was walking out of the lab and Grissom was barely walking in.
He has walked passed Nick, but he hasn't had a full conversation with the man since the time Nick pulled a double, over a month ago.
Grissom closes his eyes and shakes his head. He's way past nervousness and very well into the freaking out area of his psyche.
When he opens his eyes once again, he checks his watch. Well over three minutes. More than enough. He stands up, makes his way to the bathroom and stares down at the plastic stick.
No stalling, no words of comfort. Nothing. Just plain and simple. Two lines. Positive.
His heart seems to stop for a moment before it resumes its pace. His throat is tight and as he tries to take a breath, it sounds more like a gasp.
Positive. He sighs. His jaw trembles, slightly, before he sets his lips into a line.
There's a percentage for error in the test, he knows. He hurries back to the bedroom and picks up the second box. Four minutes later, it says the same thing.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the same voice he has kept quiet for the past weeks as it tried to mutter that maybe he should try and talk with Nick outside the lab, whispers something Grissom refuses to hear. The words baby and soon and Nick and talk are too much for him to deal with at the moment.
He sits down on his bed, hands on his lap, and blinks away the surprise, the shock. Fifteen minutes later, when he throws up all over the toilet, Grissom knows it's not exactly the morning sickness.
*****
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but this story totally rocks. I love it. *pets story* I'm very happy with how it's turning out. *nods* Totally.
Now, let me know what you think.