Title: Pouncing like a Cat on Crack
By: Zane Burkoski
Pairing: one-sided Nick/Greg
Fandom: CSI
Rating: R
Warnings: Slash, obscene language, adult situations
Disclaimer: I do not known these wonderful characters, they are property of CBS and the creator of the show CSI. I just like playing with them from time to time.
Summary: Now, I'm not going to get broken hearted on you. I swear to you, I'm not. It's just that...well, I'll explain it to you. (slash, Greg's POV)

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Now, I'm not going to get broken hearted on you. I swear to you, I'm not. It's just that...well, I'll explain it to you.

Like everything it started late at night under the influence of loud music, naked women, and a deadly mix of booze and second hand smoke. But now that I think about it everything goes back to the very beginning. The flirting, the questions, the annoying little brother act on my part, and his nice southern accent that just drips off of his mouth like honey into warm tea.

I have to get myself a empty bottle of Windex and fill it with water to spray myself every time I think about his honey-sweet-sick voice. I'm going to make myself fall in love with him all over again if I keep on going on like that.

Last night was a Saturday night, the first one in a month were I didn't have to work. With all the weight of responsibility lifted off my shoulders and cast towards the heavens without a care in the world, I was stuck in my car, driving around in the perpetual circle across The Strip, down to Freemont and back. No matter how much I make plans in my head while sorting through miscellaneous pieces of bloodied clothing and spit covered water bottles, I would always be stuck in my car, watching counterfeit love pass by under burning lights, all covered by the haze of the dirt on my windshield.

Making plans is one thing. Actually going threw with them is totally different.

I found myself in the same place that I always find myself. A strip club. The type that's run by biker gangs and the tits you see aren't even worth the five bucks you use to pay for a warm beer that you swear that was previously used for an ashtray.

But it made me feel...like a man. After spending hours carefully pulling dye through my hair to make highlights that look like I don't give a damn and then washing the dust off of every surface I could find, I didn't feel very manly.

I planted myself down at a table in the back corner, shrouded in a cloud of blue and grey smoke so I could barely make out the vaguely fleshy figure writhing on the stage that was too small to have the two poles that it did. This is how I liked it. That and they were playing some catchy tune from the eighties over the speakers that were too loud for the room.

"Oh hey, sorry..." He said after he bumped his shoulder into mine. He would tell you it was a bump, but I'll tell you that he body checked me.

"It's my fault for sitting right next to the bathro...Nick?" I finally bothered to look at who assaulted me, and I should have known it was him from his voice. But it was disguised by a thick layer of alcohol that night.

"Greggo!" Yelling in fake enthusiasm, he clasped his hand over my shoulder, which was still throbbing because of the body check. "I did...not knew that you went to these sorts of...things."

"Yeah, all the time," I said with an equally fake smile. My Nicky was drunk, and touching me. Normally I wouldn't have did the whole 'I really don't want to talk right now so I'll be moody' thing but when you just spent a good portion of the daylight hours turning over the thought of kissing that man, the very one who had his hand on my shoulder not so much to say 'hello' but rather to regain his balance, you really don't want to see him in perhaps the only bit of Americana that screams 'I'm straight!' as loud as a strip club.

Maybe that didn't make sense. I'm not exactly straight but I was in the strip club. But, really, in my defence I was looking to be manly. Not looking to bump into my very own Adonis and seduce him.

But, fuck, he was so damn handsome right now, even though he looked like he was about to...

"C'mon. Let's get you some fresh air, buddy." I said, standing and helping him over to the door. I was stupid. If I had only let him go to the bathroom instead of holding him up in useless conversation.

We barely made it into the alley and out of the public eye before he was spewing his guts out. And honestly, I expected that to turn me off the idea of loving this man. But it didn't. Instead, I took care of him, pressing his hair back from his forehead, patting his back, mumbling 'It's going to be okay...that's it, get it all out' and various variations of those phrases.

And honestly, I expected him to hold his liquor a little better than that. I'm not going to start bragging or anything, but I managed to down a fair amount of ash-beer on my brief stay at the club and I wasn't doubled over in an alley that looked like someone recently poured a big bucket of urine over the oil-slicked and cracked pavement.

Right then and there I decided that I loved him. That I wanted to be with him. That I wanted him to have my babies (physically impossible, I know, but it's the thought that counts). It was so clear that he was everything that I wanted once I came to that conclusion. He was smart, funny, compassionate, strong but still vulnerable. And he was so unbelievably handsome right now.

Once he was done, which seemed to take forever, he leaned his back up against the chipped brick wall and whipped his mouth with the corner of the sweater he was wearing, breathing in all the air he forced out when he started to dry heave near the end there.

It must have been because I was clinically insane that night, but I'm also blaming the moonlight and diffused neon rays hitting his damp face right then because I found myself standing a little too close to him, facing him head on. Close enough to smell what he ate for dinner, partially digested, and was now residue inside of his mouth.

"Greggo...Thanks. But I better get back-"

And he couldn't say another word because you know why? I pounced on him right there in the filthy alley, as if I was a cat on crack and he was the mouse that took a roll around in my stash, who I've been hunting for ever since...ever.

I was leaning against him, my tongue rolling around his mouth and you know what? Even though I just watched this man throw up he still tasted good. He tasted like his voice sounds.

As abruptly as it started, it ended. He pushed me off of him, and stormed off back into the club, mumbling something along the lines of, "What the hell does he think he's doing? ...Fuckin' queer..."

So there it is. The object of my lust, love and obsession of the greater part of five years just rejected me. In the coldest way possible. And all I got out of it was a tongue that tasted like puke.

Now, I'm blame myself for it. If I chose to go to another bar, or just stay home that wouldn't happen. It was my fault that I liked a guy who is unattainable in every sense of the word. It was my fault for pretending like something could happen when it so obviously couldn't. It was my fault for ruining a perfectly good thing that we had going. A perfectly good friendship.

But it was his fault for being so Goddamn handsome.

That's what I convinced myself when I got into the back of a yellow taxi and decided to go wallow in angst at home.

***