In the Desert
By Emily Brunson
©2005

The Denali hit a patch of gravel and Gil felt the tires flailing for purchase, stabilizing fast but no mistaking that brief slide. They were going too fast, far too fast, and he had to clamp down on the urge to grab the armrest, the dash, something, his brake foot tapping uselessly on the passenger-side floorboard.

"Right," Nick said, and snorted. His hands, Gil saw, were clenched tight on the steering wheel, correcting – and overcorrecting – in jerky increments. Nick was normally a very good driver, if a little prone to pushing the speed limit. Tonight he wasn’t paying attention: not to the poor road surface, not to his speed, and certainly not to Gil’s silence.

The Denali hit another chuckhole, and Nick spat, "Motherfucker." Gil was certain the curse had very little to do with the crap road.

Well, he’d let him stew this long. Long enough. Stew, or maybe a better term was "vent," a volcano letting off steam, safety valves of carbon dioxide and lethal hydrogen fluoride, and superheated vapor. Superheated. That pretty much described Nicky tonight, all right.

"Pull over," Gil said softly.

"Huh?" The truck slewed left as Nick glanced at him.

"Pull over to the side. Park the car."

Watching Nick overtly might suggest there was a question of whether or not he would obey. He couldn’t afford that, not tonight, so he kept eyes forward, feeling rather than seeing Nick’s reflexive pulling back, fingers drumming a moment on the wheel before he gave an audible sigh and yanked the Denali over. No shoulder on this dirt track; pulling over put them simply to the side. But it would do.

"What?" Nick snapped, when the vehicle was in park. Still running.

A sharp flare of anger ignited in Gil’s belly. He ignored it. "Get out of the car, Nick."

He didn’t wait to see if he complied. But the closing of his own door didn’t cover Nick’s theatrical sigh or whispered, "Fucker."

It was crisp out tonight, sky so clear it made his eyes ache. He gazed up, tracing the curve of the slivered moon, and waited for Nick to join him. Nick, scuffing his feet in the dirt, knowing very well that one of Gil’s pet peeves was scuffing feet, doing it on purpose. Passive aggression, to go along with the earlier and not-so-passive.

"What?" Nick barked again, splitting the blissful silence.

"I need you to calm down."

"FUCK you! You fucking KNEW what you were doing! How –"

Gil flicked him a quick glance. "Careful, Nicky." Calm. Stay calm, Gil, don’t give in. Don’t fall for it, don’t let him get you. You still have control, although it doesn’t feel as if you do right now. Trust the training.

"Didn’t you?" Nick’s face was hard to see in the last remnants of twilight, but there was no mistaking the hurt in his voice now. The betrayal. "You knew, and you LET him –"

"It could only play out one way, Nicky," Gil said evenly. "And when you’re thinking more clearly, you’ll agree with me. I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about your behavior."

Nick gave a gasping kind of laugh, one with no humor in it. He took a few stiff-legged steps away, and spun around again. "Behavior? WHAT behavior? I called you on it! I was doing my JOB, Grissom! What did you want me to do, lick your goddamn BOOTS?"

And so, Gil thought tiredly, it finally comes. The thing Heather warned me about, the very thing I was so sure would not be a problem. Work, and personal lives. Clash of the titans. "Did you want to lick them?"

"Fuck you."

"Say that again, and you won’t sit down for a week, Nick."

He said it calmly, as matter-of-fact as saying the sky was clear, and for a moment Nick didn’t reply. Familiar with that tone, recognizing the truth of it. And then, finally, lumbering on in spite of it.

"I won’t be – THAT – when I’m on the job," Nick said shakily. "I can’t. Not and do my JOB. Is that what you’ve wanted, all this time? Little slave-boy, hangs out at the office and wears a fucking COLLAR? That’s not what I signed on for, Grissom! Out here, I’m not your goddamn fuck toy, all right? I have a right to my opinions! And –"

"You’re right."

Nick cut off as if his lips had suddenly sealed shut.

Gil smiled, turning his gaze upward again. "It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it? The moon’s so clear, you could almost reach up and peel it off the sky. With your fingernails."

"I don’t understand."

The tone was thin, lost, and Gil looked back at him, still smiling. "I know, Nicky," he said gently. "I know you don’t."

Nick’s nostrils flared, head rearing back. "Then TELL me –"

"Kneel."

Another fraught moment of silence, and Nick’s whispered, "I don’t WANT to."

"I know. Kneel."

Nick didn’t move, taut as a wire on a high-tension bridge. And then his knees folded, plopping in the dirt. He gave Gil a long, tight look before dropping his head. Hands touching his thighs, shoulders sagging. Normally the position was tantalizing, erotic. Tonight Nick looked beaten, far worse than Gil could ever do with crop or lash.

Gil’s throat ached. He made himself walk slowly to where Nick knelt, hand brushing the leather covering Nick’s shoulder, easing behind it to stroke the skin of his neck. "We’ve never discussed this," he said softly. "Not in detail, at least. We work together, and we live together. And eight months ago, you agreed to belong to me. Do you remember that?"

Beneath his hands, the cords in Nick’s neck stiffened as he nodded. "Of course," he muttered.

"What we didn’t decide," Gil continued, resuming his slow pace to complete his circuit of Nick’s body, "was how we would handle that outside our home. And for a long time we haven’t had to. Nothing overt, business as usual for the most part. It’s worked very well for us. Until tonight."

He came to a halt again, standing very close to Nick, gazing down at the twirl of cowlick on the crown of Nick’s shorn head. Close enough for a blowjob, if he’d been so inclined. He wasn’t, fortunately. Not right now.

"Out here," Gil said slowly, "in the field, working – there is no difference. Do you understand?"

Nick’s head came up a couple of inches, and stopped. A battle between training and rebellion, fascinating in a way. "No," he told Gil’s kneecaps. "I don’t fucking understand."

"You belong to me here, too. Every bit as much as when we’re at home."

"But –"

"Don’t speak. Listen. You felt I wasn’t letting you do your job tonight. I’ve never interfered with your work, and I never intend to. But I expect respect, and trust." He placed his hand on Nick’s head, tightening his fingers just enough to make his grip clear. "I own you, Nick," he said clearly. "And the bonds of that ownership do not break when we walk out our front door. That was our agreement, was it not? Do you have doubts? Second thoughts? Do you want out?"

Nick shivered convulsively, but didn’t otherwise move. "No," he said in a small voice.

"Then accept the full package, or this ends right here." Gil released Nick’s head, stepped back a few paces. "All or nothing, Nick. Job and home, everywhere we do, everything we do -- I own you. You belong to me, your body, your brain, your cock and your ass. Your sometimes very foul mouth. They are mine. And when we disagree, I’ll hear you, but I will hear you in a tone of respect when we are in the field, am I understood?"

"Yes." Choked out, as reluctant as taking poison.

"Nick?"

"Yes, SIR."

Gil nodded. "Now look at me, and tell me what happened tonight."

Nick glanced up, and the Denali’s headlights reflected off his eyes, too bright. "You – let him keep going," he stammered, hands clenching on his thighs. "And you knew he did it. You KNEW. You let him GO."

"I knew the evidence would suffice. He wasn’t going anywhere we couldn’t find him. And you know that, as well. You’re just angry."

Gazing at him, Nick swallowed, throat working convulsively. "You didn’t CARE," he whispered.

"Oh, Nicky." Gil paused, and then hunkered down, ignoring the slow flicker of surprise in Nick’s tormented eyes. The master, on the level of the slave? Wonders never cease, Gil thought tiredly. "Nicky, when I use a crop on you, plenty of people would say I don’t care about you. Are they right?"

"No. No, they --"

"Of course they aren’t. Is that what this is really about? Caring? Do you think I don’t give a shit about that girl?"

"She –" Nick’s voice broke, and he gave a hitching little gasp. "It’s been so long. For her. We c-could have taken her away from him. Tonight. She DESERVES that, she –"

"And we will. And I agree, Nicky, my God, I agree. But I couldn’t do that yet. I couldn’t allow it. Can’t you see that?" He reached out, letting the tips of his fingers touch the silvery tracks on Nick’s cheeks. "It’s because I care, that I have to make sure things are done the way they must be done. And when you’re further away from it, when you have some distance, you’ll agree with me."

"He’s not like you," Nick gasped, leaning into Gil’s touch. "He’s not, he’ll –"

"No, he’s not. But that fact doesn’t change us, Nicky. Seeing one person’s misery doesn’t change what we have. And tomorrow, when we take Donald Greene into custody and Darci Greene is free of him, that won’t change us, either. Not the parts that count."

Nick gave a slow, uncertain nod, gazing at him with such intensity Gil felt spotlit, suddenly terribly alone. "It makes me feel like we’re doing something wrong," he said shakily. "Sick."

Gil nodded. "I know it does. But only if you let it. If I kept you against your will, like Darci, then it would be wrong. But I’ve never chained you. I won’t start now. I’m going to ask you again, Nick. Do you want out? I won’t think badly of you if you do. Regrets? Yes, I’ll have those. But you are not Darci Greene. You are Nick Stokes, and the only ownership I will accept is that which you give me."

Nick said nothing, didn’t move. And finally Gil drew his hand back, swallowing dread. So. After eight months – the best eight months Gil could remember, the most complex and exciting and mesmerizing of his life – this was the moment he’d feared would inevitably come. When Nick’s upbringing finally cast judgement, when circumstances brought shame and bedrock-deep fear boiling up, spilling over and destroying the delicate, delicious life they’d so carefully built.

Tonight, he realized with a cold trickle of understanding, had never been about work vs. home life. How jejune of him to assume it would be so simple. No, tonight had been about something far deeper, less tangible, so much more dangerous. Tonight had been about THEM. The core of what they’d started last year, that first night of sweat and whispered promises and the meaty sound of a crop striking bare tender skin.

Throat dry as the desert silent and dark around them, Gil stood, hearing his knees give aggrieved twin pops. He turned and walked toward the Denali, stopping a foot away and turning again. "Your choice, Nicky," he said softly. "I won’t question it. I only ask that you answer with honesty and not anger. Not anything but the truth."

Nick’s head had dropped again, and Gil felt his heart diving at the lingering silence. Nick was a talker, it was one of the things Gil both loved and found exasperating at times, that need to talk, to chatter sometimes about nothing at all. Now he would give anything – anything – to hear that light tone, see the gleam in Nick’s dark, sweet eyes. Anything and more.

And then Nick sighed, a gusty sound like wind through mesquite branches. Placed his hands on the dry soil in front of him and began to crawl.

Kneeling had come hard for Nick. Had never been an easy act, even when he was familiar with it. So many things had been so very natural: bonds attracted him, the pain of a beating heightened his senses until every nerve sang like an open E string. Even the blindfold, that he’d feared so very much, and then found startlingly alluring. Enough that he’d asked for it more than once, and reveled in it when his wish was granted.

But kneeling -- That was somehow different. At different times Nick had said it was embarrassing, or that it was physically uncomfortable, or any of several other excuses, but the flat-out truth was he didn’t like it. Never had, and Gil suspected, certainly never would.

And now Nick knelt and crawled, on hands and knees, and Gil’s throat tightened terribly watching that slow progress, hearing the soft crunch of gravel and Nick’s fast, noisy breathing as he made his way to where Gil stood. And kept going, until his face pressed against Gil’s shin, shoulders bowed without the slump of defeat, curled like a cat against him.

"The truth?" Gil asked hoarsely, without moving.

"Yes," Nick sighed. Forehead touching Gil’s leg. "You aren’t Donald Greene. I know that."

"And the rest? Look at me, Nicky."

Nick’s head tilted back. The tears were gone, his face smooth and then creasing into the awkward, heartfelt smile that had captured Gil’s imagination years before they’d taken their first halting steps toward anything more. "The rest, too," he said slowly. "I want it all. I always will."

"Who am I?" Gil whispered.

"My master," came the calm reply.

"And who do you belong to?"

"You. Always you."

With a thick sound Gil dropped to his own knees, catching Nick’s face between his hands and pressing a hard, demanding kiss on Nick’s open mouth. A kiss, he saw, that was reciprocated as eagerly as it ever had been, if not moreso.

Forehead pressed to Nick’s, Gil whispered, "Let’s go home."

"Yes, Sir."



END