Off-Balance (On Steady Ground)

Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: Wild Card (illness) and hc_bingo prompt: fever/delirium. Been a while since I wrote for CSI and I'm like a season and a half behind on the show, so I limited mentions of other characters. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.

It's nearly midnight and Nick is thoroughly exhausted. He's just off a double shift, during which he'd caught a triple homicide that also happened to be a double kidnapping. That mess had turned into a second triple homicide when the bastard who'd kidnapped the two kids proved to be of the 'if I can't have them, no one can' mindset and gone all murder-suicide the second the cops got close.

All in all, it was an awful day and Nick was seriously looking forward to getting the hell out of the crime lab and back to his apartment for a good 48 hours to himself. The time off is mandatory, given his maxed out overtime, so he can't be called in barring some sort of extraordinary emergency. That, however, doesn't stop him from worrying when Sara stops him on his way out of the locker room.

"Can you go and check on Greg on your way home?" She asks, "He was supposed to be here an hour ago and he's not answering his phone."

That is certainly not typical Greg behavior. For as much as Greg somehow manages to maintain something of a social life with his concerts and his book research, he's not one to be late for work. Alarm bells go off immediately and he's nodding to Sara and saying, "yeah, I'll swing by," even though Greg's place isn't exactly on his way.

He hurries out to his car, keeps his cell phone at hand and skips the turn that will take him home to head to Greg's apartment building. He spots Greg's car in the lot, in its assigned spot and observes no signs of a struggle in or around it (and yes, he does check, because that is his life) and so he heads up the stairs.

"Greego!" He calls, knocking on the door with enough force to be heard throughout the apartment. "Greg, open up. Sara sent me over to make sure you're okay."

No answer, but Nick can hear the distant sound of the weather report coming from the television in the living room, so Greg has to be around.

"Greg!" He digs through his pocket for his keys, finds the one he's only had to use once (for feeding Greg's cat while he was on a trip for his book research) and lets himself in. He normally wouldn't be so invasive, but everything about this is kind of alarming and he's not taking any chances. Not with any of his CSI family, but especially not with Greg. He's the only one who's never left and he's one of few left that's been at the lab since Nick started there and he's wormed his way into Nick's life in so many ways that he doesn't know what he'd do if he lost Greg. It might actually be worse than Warrick because Nick's started thinking about Greg in different ways and he's not sure what to do with that. "Greg, I'm coming in."

He finds nothing. The living room is vacant, the television on just as he'd thought. There's a blanket spread messily across the couch (and the cat is curled up in the abandoned blanket) and a half-full cup of something sitting on the coffee table. The room is dark, but there's a light on at the end of the hall, with harsh fluorescent lights that mark it as the bathroom.

"Greg," he says again, a little quieter this time, as he approaches. He nudges the door open to find Greg sitting on the floor, his head leaned back against the cool, tiled wall. He's shirtless, clad in just a pair of pajama pants and he looks clammy and sweaty at the same time, feverish if Nick had to guess. He's been sick - that much is obvious. "You okay there, G?"

Greg looks up at him with glazed over eyes, barely looks able to focus. "I am almost positive that the floor is not actually moving."

And okay, yeah. That is definitely a good reason for missing work. "Alright," he says, kneeling down beside his friend. He reaches out and Greg most certainly has a fever, and a pretty impressive one, at that. He's a little surprised when Greg pulls away from the touch, nearly falling over when he dodges away. "Talk to me, Greggo. When did this start?"

"Nick?" Greg blurts out, as if surprised by his sudden appearance. "How'd you get here?"

"You didn't show up for work. I," he stops, "We. We were worried."

"Work!" Greg gasps and immediately jolts to his feet. He sways rather alarmingly, almost looks like he's rocking with the motions of a boat and Nick wisely reaches out to steady him before gravity takes care of things. "Okay. Okay," he says, staring down at the bathroom tile with wide eyes. "That may have been a bad idea... Um. Why do I feel like the floor is bouncing? Why is my floor bouncing?"

Nick looks down at the floor, too, as if expecting an answer, but the floor isn't moving. "It's not?" He answers, unsure if that's the right thing to say. "Nothing's moving."

"It's not?" Greg asks, though clearly he doesn't believe it because he's still swaying, his feet are still moving, trying to account for non-existent movement. "I'm pretty sure everything's moving. Nothing looks right, it's all... shifty and stretched. And I'm totally going to be sick. So you should probably, ugh, probably let go of me before I-"

He doesn't let go - because he's pretty sure Greg would fall and crack his head open if he did that - but he helps Greg down to his knees and gets him over the toilet so when he does get sick, it's not an awful mess. He keeps his hands on Greg's too-warm skin, but keeps them still out of fear for worsening Greg's already wonky balance issues with any sort of movement and waits him out.

"Any better?" Nick asks, when Greg seems to have downgraded to dry-heaving. He fills a bathroom cup with water and offers it to Greg.

"Little better if I keep my eyes closed," he says, sipping slowly at the water. "What's wrong with me?"

Nick sighs, "I have no idea. I can take you to the ER, if you want."

There's only a second of hesitation, which says a lot because Greg is not exactly a fan of hospitals. "Yeah. Yeah, that might be a good idea." He cradles his head in his hands and rubs at his temples, chasing away a headache that's not giving in. "Just... can you go and get me a shirt or something? And shoes?"

Nick stands and makes for the door. "Yeah, yeah. Just give me a second and I'll get that. I'm gonna call Sara quick, too, okay? Let her know you won't be in."

"Okay. I... I'm not going anywhere, don't worry."

Nick ducks into Greg's bedroom and finds a Stanford t-shirt nearly immediately. Socks take him a minute, but he knows Greg's Converses are by the front door so he doubles back for those. He grabs Greg's phone and wallet off the table by the door, too, because he'll probably need those. Once he's collected everything, he calls Sara.

"Sidle," she answers, but seems to register that it's him calling before he can explain. "Is Greg okay? I caught a case and ended up dragging Hodges along."

"He's pretty sick," Nick explains. "I'm gonna take him to the ER, but don't worry. I'll keep you updated, okay?"

Nick hears voices in the background, sounds like Hodges arguing with a uniform. He hears Sara bite off a question, but she settles on, "Yeah, let me know how he is. I gotta go, okay?" and before he can comment, she's ended the call.

"Nick?" Greg calls out, just as Nick returns to him.

"Right here," he says, kneeling beside Greg again. He helps him into the shirt, combating sluggish movements that Greg claims feel like swimming through quicksand. "Think you can stand?"

"Not really, no. But I guess I have to."

Not an answer that Nick was hoping for, but he gets an arm around Greg's shoulders and uses the other to leverage them both to their feet. "Hold on to me as much as you need to, okay?"

"No worries, there," Greg laughs, his hands fisted tight in Nick's shirt. "Ugh... couch, maybe? Let's do this in small bursts."

Nick can deal with that. He stumbles them forward a few steps, out of the bathroom and down the hall. Finally he's setting Greg down on the couch and the walk doesn't seem to have helped him any. "You gonna be sick again?"

Greg shakes his head (which he immediately regrets) and grabs at his head again, dragging his fingers roughly through his messy hair. "No. No, but everything's spinning again and my ears are ringing and someone has a bass drum shoved in my head and please make this stop."

"I would if I could, Greggo," Nick says sadly, forcing Greg's bare feet into socks and then shoes, making sure that they're tied securely (last thing they need is Greg tripping with his balance issues) and then he has to pull Greg to his feet again. "Maybe to the top of the stairs?"

Greg okays the plan and they make for the door, but sunlight is a new factor in the equation and it is apparently not a positive addition. Greg backpedals away from him, trying desperately to get back into the darkness of his apartment, but he ends up falling in his escape attempt. Nick grabs for him, trying to catch him, but he's not fast enough and Greg goes down hard in the doorway.

"Okay, need a new plan. Way too bright. Felt like I was walking directly into the sun."

But there's blood on Greg's sleeve, and upon inspection, Nick finds a considerable gash on his shoulder and, "yeah, that's gonna stitches."

"Fantastic," Greg replies. "I'm bleeding and I feel like a seasick vampire. This is just awesome."

Nick laughs and shakes his head and helps Greg back to the couch. He grabs a CSI cap off of a hook full of jackets and a pair of sunglasses off of the table by the door, offering them to Greg with a request of, "Put those on, okay?" Then he disappears long enough to grab a towel from the closet in the hall and ties it in place around the wound to slow the bleeding a bit. "Ready to try this again?"

"Yeah, guess we have to."

They make it out the door, pause for a few seconds at the top of the steps, somehow manage to safely get down to the ground level where the stop again, and then Nick shuffles Greg over to his truck. It takes way longer than it rightly should, but he helps Greg lay down in the backseat (grateful for tinted windows that do a fairly decent job of blocking out the light). "Just let me know if the dizziness gets worse or if you're gonna be sick, okay?"

"The dizziness is already worse, but I don't think I have anything left to be sick with, so your car should be safe." He says, his face buried against the seats as he curls up as much as he can.

"Not really what I was worried about, but good to know," Nick comments as he slides into the driver's seat and sets off. Luckily, Desert Springs isn't far off and traffic, for once, proves to be something less than truly awful, so he doesn't have to resort to lights and sirens, which is a good thing for Greg's headache. The ride takes less than fifteen minutes, and then he's helping Greg out of the car.

Greg looks paler when Nick gets him standing again. His eyes dart around quickly, unable to stay focused for long. "I feel like I'm still in the car, still moving. And the floor is bouncing again."

Nick settles his hands on Greg's arms, trying to maybe offer him some stability in the chaos and it seems to help a little. Greg's a little steadier walking after that, at least for a moment. He's swaying again by the time they cross the parking lot and get into the Emergency Department. It's a normal level of crowded, but not packed (as they know it can be, at times), so Nick leads Greg to the registration desk and does as much of the talking as he can for his friend.

The triage nurse calls them back just a few minutes later, taking Greg through the typical assessment. They learn that he has a fever of nearly 103 degrees, and that his heart rate's a little higher than it should be. Greg reveals that this has been going on since sometime last night, though the skewed perceptions and the vertigo have been getting progressively worse. Further assessment reveals an impressive double ear-infection and the nurse suspects that this might be causing the dizziness. The nurse replaces Nick's makeshift towel bandage with a more sterile and secure gauze wrap and sends them back to the waiting room, with a promise that, "someone will take you to a room shortly."

"You could've called me. Any of us," Nick says, frowning down at the floor when he reclaims a seat next to Greg against a shadowed corner of the waiting room. "We're like family - one of us could've come last night." It couldn't have been him, since he was dealing with the double-triple homicide, but someone could've...

"It wasn't that bad, then." Greg counters. "Just a headache and a little dizziness. Not like it is now, with the moving floors and warped objects and stretchy walls. And when it was getting that bad, you might've noticed I wasn't really up to finding a phone, so I'm glad you showed up."

"Me, too," Nick says. The thought of Greg trying to walk on his own with how off balance he's been is a scary one. Chances are that it wouldn't have ended well and the last thing he ever wants to do is get called to Greg's place on a case.

"Greg Sanders," someone calls from down the hall, and Nick leads him through a set of double doors to a row of small rooms. They're left in one and told that a doctor will be by in a few minutes.

It's a long few minutes, but going by ER time, it could've been longer. Nick and Greg fall into a quiet conversation about the case Nick had been on (because it's never good when there are kids involved) which then morphs into a quick chat about Nick's plans for his time off (watching football, sleeping) while they're waiting and then they are interrupted by a nurse who arrives to patch up Greg's shoulder wound. It takes eight stitches, but it goes quickly, so there's not much to complain about.

A doctor enters just as the nurse leaves. She checks out Greg's ears for herself and then asks him a series of questions related to the vertigo and eventually she starts calling it labyrinthitis. It's a really cool name for a really uncool infection (that comes as a direct result of the ear infections), Greg thinks. He's prescribed antibiotics to fight the infection and an antihistamine to help with the vertigo, along with a couple of pain relievers for the shoulder wound he inflicted upon himself. He's warned that the antihistamines will probably knock him out and keep him that way, but that someone - here the doctor looks pointedly at Nick - should keep an eye on him for a while.

"You can stay at my place," Nick offers.

"I don't want to ruin your days off."

Like he'd be able to go home and watch football and not worry about Greg after this adventure. "You'll be sleeping, you're not ruining anything."

"If that's settled," the doctor continues, "we'll get you discharged and on your way. The more rest, the better."

Nick and Greg are left to wait again. A nurse pops back in with bottles of pills, a few spare gauze coverings, and discharge paperwork. Greg signs slowly, forcing his vision to focus as he writes.

"I got this stuff," he assures Greg, gathering up the papers and pills. He settles a hand on Greg's back and slowly, they take their leave of the hospital.

"Do I need to do anything for Odin before we head to my place? Anything you need?" Greg's cat is perfectly happy to spend his time ruling over his apartment, but Nick doesn't know if he has enough food to last, given that Greg had been out of sorts.

Greg keeps his eyes covered in the backseat, where he's laying again. "No, he'll be fine. Maybe we can stop by tonight and feed him, though?"

"I will do that," Nick counters. "You'll be sleeping."

"Right."

The rest of the drive to Nick's place is silent, which Greg probably appreciates, and it's evident that the combination of drugs he's on are starting to kick in because getting him inside is just as much as of an event as getting him out of his apartment had been, if for entirely different reasons.

His world is still spinning, but he's also kind of zombie-ing his way along, half-asleep, as Nick leads him up the walk and into the house.

"Anything you need before you crash?"

"Just steer me to the sofa and throw me a blanket," Greg says, his voice already rough with sleep.

On the plus side, Greg's too tired to notice that they've already bypassed the couch. No way is Nick letting him sleep on the couch when he's sick and needs solid rest with limited lights and sounds. The bedroom is set up for that - sleeping during the day can be troublesome without certain measures taken to ensure dark and silence - so he's offering up his bed.

But, first, Greg needs to lose his bloodied shirt. Nick divests him of the Stanford t-shirt and trades it for a plain black one that he pulls from the depths of a drawer. It's too big on him, but it'll work.

"Shoes," he says, and robotically, Greg kicks them off his feet without untying them. Nick sets them aside.

It's then that Greg seems to realize that they're not near Nick's couch. "What, where're we...?"

"Sleep, Greggo," he says.

Greg drops onto the bed a little less gracefully than Nick was hoping he would and the rapid change in position plays serious havoc with his vertigo issues. He sits up just as fast as he'd laid down and grabs at his head with one hand, the other fisting into the blankets like he's steadying himself.

"Whoa, there," Nick says, reaching out a hand to offer whatever support he can.

"Okay," he says, eyes darting everywhere around the dark room. "Should not have done that. Remind me not to do that again. Your room looks like a rollercoaster, one of those rickety wooden ones Grissom likes. Oh, jeez, that needs to stop." Greg squeezes his eyes shut tight and waits.

Nick waits, too, sitting there and telling him it'll be okay once it passes, that he can sleep once it does and that it'll go away soon once the pills start to work. Finally, it does start to wear off and Greg feels like he can lie down (slowly) without setting it off again.

"Okay?"

"Better," Greg agrees, heaving a sigh of relief now that the room is stationary again. He curls up on his side, the one without the stitched up shoulder, and relaxes a little. "Are you sure you don't mind me stealing your bed?"

"Nah, it's fine," Nick assures him. "Besides, I have some stuff to do before i can go to sleep," which is unfortunate because he's exhausted and now that Greg looks like he's going to be okay, it's starting to hit him hard. "My couch is fine."

"Fine?" Greg counters.

"Yes," Nick answers, "it's fine. It has been slept on before."

"Since your bed is huge," Greg says, gesturing to the King sized bed, "and, well, really comfortable, I'd suggest we could share?"

"We'll see," Nick promises, but he really does have some stuff to do. He ducks out of the room and leaves Greg to rest. His first step is to call Sarah and make sure she knows Greg won't be in for a night or two, he needs time to get over this dizziness, and he'll probably need a couple of days out of the field after that, just to make sure the dizziness is gone. He sets a reminder on his phone to go off later so he can run over and take care of Greg's cat. He grabs something quick to eat because he realizes he hasn't since sometime yesterday and then grabs a shower since the ones at the lab do not compare to his own. Clean, full, and almost relaxed, his bed is looking more and more inviting. Greg makes it a little more inviting than usual, but that's not something he's willing to dwell on just yet.

He checks the locks on the doors, make sure his security system is armed and flicks off the lights as he heads back to his room. He's already changed - old sweat pants and a shirt that he shrugs out of before he climbs into bed, staying to one side.

Greg's sound asleep, Nick is happy to note. He's betting the antihistamines helped with that knock out job. Hopefully Greg will be a little better when he wakes up, maybe the world won't be quite as prone to spinning off its axis then.

There's an incomprehensible mumble from Greg, who rolls in his sleep and catches Nick's arm.

Nick just laughs and settles down, not inclined to push him away.

"Feel better, Greggo," he says quietly. He certainly is. For the first time since he caught that hellish case at work, he's totally relaxed and, well, if that has something to do with Greg, maybe he should give those thoughts he's been having a little more consideration. He's thinking he might have to tell Greg about these things he's thinking when he falls asleep himself and he sleeps more soundly than he can remember doing in a long time.

Hours pass and Nick wakes to the insistent chirp of the alarm on his phone. They've moved in their sleep, both of them have shifted to the middle of the bed and Nick has somehow gotten an arm curled under Greg and settled it on his back. Greg, to his credit, is curled up against Nick's side, face buried against Nick's shoulder. It's an intimate way to wake up, but Nick brushes off the feelings it stirs because that's not what's happening here.

"Comfortable?" Comes a mumbly voice, the words spoken against his shoulder and therefore further muffled.

"Yeah, actually. Best I've slept in a while," he confesses.

"Me, too."

Nick smiles, says "go back to sleep," and reluctantly climbs out of bed, disentangling himself from Greg as slowly as he can manage.

"M'kay," Greg sleepily agrees, eyes already closing. "You comin' back to bed?"

"Yeah," he answers. "Definitely."

"Good."

He leaves the room, the house with a grin. Maybe there's more hope for this than he'd dared imagine, he thinks.