Title: Coming Clean
Author: squara
PAIRING: Nick/Greg
Rating: R
Summary: Written for a 'dirty' challenge, and it, somehow, did not come out to be shameless porn.

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Greg ground his cigarette out on the table top. He knew that it was probably bad manners, but who gave a fuck about manners anymore? Not Greg, especially when he was having a night like this.

Two dead prostitutes. Nothing new in Vegas, except these weren’t just any hookers. They were kids. Jesus Christ, fucking kids. Two little girls, stuffed in a dumpster on the wrong side of town. Tossed out like the trash they probably thought they were. Greg was tempted to light another cigarette as he stared at the photos from the autopsies. What was their story? How did they end up selling their faux innocence night after night? Who were the perverts that got off on that? He felt bile rise in the back of his throat at the thought of it. Imagined men that had little girls the same age at home using these lost souls to enact their twisted fantasies. Greg swept the pictures to the floor. Sometimes he forgot why he had wanted to become a CSI. Fuck it, he was having another cigarette, maybe the smoke would blind his eyes to the horrific pictures that covered the floor around him.




Nick had scrubbed the skin raw, yet he could still feel the sickening slickness of decaying flesh on his hands. There were not enough lemons in the world to remove the residue of what he had encountered during his shift.

A nearly liquified man in a bathtub. Nothing unusual about that. Die in the bath, and that’s what happened. Routine, in fact, until the people from the morgue had begun to move the remains of the body. Then they discovered the third hand. The hand of a woman, wedding ring still gleaming on the bloated finger. That’s when all hell broke loose. When it was just a simple matter of one body, you only needed to shift the mess from one container to another, but when it was two.....they had gone through the tub carefully, trying to differentiate the male chunks from the female chunks. Nick shuddered, remembering how they had squelched against his gloves. He turned the water up hotter, as if the burning of his hands could also burn the memory from his mind.



Greg pushed the door to the bathroom open, and saw Nick still rubbing his red hands under the faucet on the sink. Steam rose from the basin, reminding Greg of the smoke the had followed him down the hall when he had finally decided to call it a night. He had heard about the bodies in the tub, and figured that Nick’s night had been just as hard as his. As the door fell shut Nick turned to address him. “Hey Greg, rough night?”

“What makes you say that?” Greg replied as he moved to the faucet and turned the taps off, the steam from the water dissipating into the dim light of the room.

“Could smell you before I knew you were there,” Nick replied, taking the paper towels Greg handed him, gingerly blotting at his sore hands. “ I cant believe you are smoking again, you know what it does to lungs, you’ve seen it at autopsies, plus we aren’t supposed to smoke in the lab.”

“I think that after a few windows got busted out they decided that they’d rather have one unpleasant smelling room than a stack of bills for glass replacement.” Greg replied with a shrug. “You outta here, Nick? I was thinking of going to get a drink, wouldn’t mind some company.....”

“A drink sounds good”, said Nick as he threw the paper towels into the garbage can by the door, “but lets go back to my place, I don’t really feel like going to a bar right now.”

Greg nodded his assent, and they made their way to the parking lot.


Greg slapped his hand against the steering wheel along the to beat of the song on the radio. Why was he following Nick home? This was crazy. For months now they had been in the same routine. One of them would ask the other “out for a drink” after work. They would end up, inevitably, at Nick’s, groping each other on the couch. Greg wondered where this was going, if it meant anything to Nick. He sighed and lit another cigarette. Between Nick and work he was easily going to be smoking a carton a day by the end of next week. “Too bad I took that pay cut to be a CSI” he said out loud, thinking he could really use that money now that he was picking his expensive habit back up again. He knew it was not the best thing to do to relieve stress, he knew Nick was right about what it did to his lungs, but it felt so relaxing. It was something he could control, and right now he felt that everything else was just out of his grasp.

He knew that he would see horrible things as a CSI, but he hadn’t realized that no matter how hard he tried to forget the blood, the bodies, the lives ruined by acts both random and calculated when he left the lab every night, they would still invade his dreams. Dreams once populated with steamy Nick fantasies were now ruined by blank eyed children that had seen to much, or mummified corpses found in shallow desert graves, and what about his Nick fantasies? Now that they were being enacted in the flesh he should have been happy. Instead he was usually left feeling cheaper and dirtier after each encounter. It wasn’t as if Greg hadn’t had a “friend with benefits” before, it was just that he had always thought that if he and Nick ever got together it would be different. That it would mean more. He flicked his cigarette butt out the window as he pulled into Nick’s driveway. “I guess that beggars can’t be choosers” he mumbled to himself, as he watched Nick get out of his truck and open the front door, holding it for Greg. He resolved to himself that he would just enjoy it while it lasted, get what little pleasure he could from their clandestine encounters, and not be too heartbroken when Nick moved on.




As soon as Greg sat down on the couch he reached in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes. They were immediately snatched from his hand.

“Man, I told you at the lab, I wish you’d stop doing that,” Nick’s voice mirrored the irritation on his face. “I hate it, and if you have that bad of an oral fixation I know plenty of ways to satisfy it.” Nick threw the half empty pack into the garbage.

Greg looked longingly at the trash, then turned his gaze to Nick. “I know you hate it, I just can’t help it, and you’re wrong, it’s the stress......it isn’t an oral fixation, though I would be very interested in your theories on how to relieve an oral fixation......” he trailed off, looking up at Nick. Greg’s mind was racing, despite his exhaustion. He thought that for one brief second he had seen more than irritation in Nick’s brown eyes. Suddenly it occurred to him that maybe Nick was just as unsure about what they were doing as Greg was. He thought back over the last few months. All the moments that Nick had taken time to make sure Greg was adjusting to his new role outside of the lab, all the reminders of how bad his smoking was, all the instances where they had actually made it out for that drink, and how Nick had listened patiently while Greg had raged at the way he was losing faith in humanity, one case at a time. Maybe Nick did care, but was just as scared as Greg by what that meant. He was startled out of his revelation by Nick’s hand grabbing his.

“I believe I can demonstrate those theories,” Nick said as he pulled Greg to his feet, “ but first let’s wash the smell of your nasty little habit off of you.”



Nick couldn’t remember how they had began this ritual. As he began to remove Greg’s clothing, he realized that he didn’t care how it began, all he cared was that it continued. He had never been with a man before Greg, had always wondered what it was like, but had been too afraid to pursue his curiosity. Greg made him bold, though, made him feel like he could take on twenty dead bodies in a bathtub, along with his questions about who he was. Nick tested the spray from the shower, making sure it wasn’t too hot, he’d had enough scalding water for the night. When the temperature was just right he took Greg’s hand and led him into the shower. Nick rubbed soap over Greg’s back, using pressure to relive the stress he felt in his partner’s shoulders. Greg made him feel strong, but scared him at the same time. He was sure he wanted more from Greg, but was unsure if the feeling was reciprocated, and he wasn’t brave enough to ask. Nick was afraid that if he even let the other man see the way his heart filled with sadness when Greg talked about how much cases affected him, or how scared he was that Greg was slowly self-destructing, one smoky halo at a time, he would lose what precious little they were sharing. Nick needed this, he needed the release, the comfort of Greg’s warm body against his, the feeling that he wasn’t alone, and was willing to sacrifice a little bit of his heart for whatever fleeting time they were going to share. He pressed his mouth to Greg’s neck, sucking on the wet skin. Greg murmured something into the spray from the shower head. Nick applied more pressure with his hands and lips and felt the tension in Greg melt away, washing down the drain with the water.

He felt Greg shift against him, “Nick, if it’s really that important to you I will try to stop smoking again, ok? I care about you, and I don’t want you to worry over a stupid habit that I should have left back in my college years, where it belonged. I want us to have a future, and if I have you, I don’t think I need anything else.”, Greg reached back to clasp Nick’s waist. His soap slick fingers glazed over Nick’s skin, leaving a heated trail behind them. Nick let out a deep sigh and pulled Greg’s back tight to his chest. Nick felt all the darkness that he had been carrying in his heart the last few months lift. Greg wasn’t just looking for some cheap screw, an easy way to temporarily rid himself of the new demons he carried as a CSI. Greg cared. About Nick. About them. Nick buried his face in Greg’s neck and breathed in the scent of soap, awash in relief that Greg wanted more, just as he did. Nick had spent so many years believing that the thoughts he had about Greg made him wrong, believed they meant that he was dirty, unclean, but as he held Greg close and felt the love, and newfound understanding, that radiated between, them he realized that for the first time in many years he finally felt clean.

***