Title: Outside the Box: Director's Cut
By: Julian Lee
Pairing: Gil/Warrick
Summary: How can one tiny box cause so much upheaval?
Note: Dedicated to Em Brunson, XFreak, and my beta-what-rules, Perpetual Motion.

Warrick rummages through the freezer, searching in vain for the box he put in it just a week ago. "Man, who eats all my popsicles?" Though he knows full well.

At the sink, Nick snickers. "You and your popsicles, Greg and his Fruit Loops - some nights I can't decide if this is a legitimate crime lab or a kindercare."

Warrick smirks. "Very funny." He wanders to the counter, where someone's left a copy of the newspaper. Yesterday's paper, by now. All he wants are the comics. With the night he's having, he needs an uncomplicated laugh. He flips through the sections. A, B, D, E - hold up.

"How's it going with the drowning?" Nick asks around a mouthful of apple.

"Gruesome." Shaking his head, Warrick flips through the paper again. "Drowning in the middle of--" He gestures out the window at the desert. "--all of this." A, B, D, E. Damn it.

"The irony's almost too much, isn't it?" Nick smiles, commiserates. He tosses his apple core in the trash. "I'm back to it. Greg's found something in the samples we brought back from the Giraldi scene." He grimaces. "Off to listen to him break it into really small words like I'm a six-year-old."

"Nick, he does not do that." Warrick frowns at Nick. "What is wrong with the two of you lately?"

"Nothing." Nick waves his hand. "We're working it out."

"Work faster, man. You bug me."

With a chuckle, Nick crosses to the door. "By the way," he says, "that package is for you."

Warrick turns too fast, almost goes down on the cold, slick tiles. "What package?"

"The one on the table. Later."

"Yeah, later, bro." Though Nick's already gone. Warrick moves to the table and the package he hasn't noticed before. On the outside of the box is a simple, 'For Warrick.' Nothing else. No indication of who put it there, or what's inside.

Or wouldn't be, if he hadn't realized, the instant he picked it up, exactly who it's from.

Catherine looks over his shoulder. "What's in the box?" Warrick hadn't heard her come in.

He shrugs. "I have no idea." This, at least, is not a lie.

"Who's it from?"

"Dunno." This is a lie. He's surprised Cath doesn't recognize the handwriting. It's pretty distinctive: prissy and ultra-correct, every bit as over-perfected as the person it belongs to.

"People are leaving you anonymous packages in the middle of the break room?" Catherine raises an eyebrow. "Not so sure I like that."

"I'm sure it's fine, Cath." He shakes the box - gently, because he never knows with these things what will be in them. "See you later?"

"Don't forget we have to go talk to Brass about the--"

"The pool. Right." He nods and wanders out of the room. When he reaches his destination, he's smiling. "Unmarked packages in the middle of the break room, Gris?"

Gil looks up from his notes and smiles. "I knew you would figure out who it had come from. You open it?"

"Catherine wandered in. Figured she didn't need to see whatever's in it."

Smiling a bit deviously, Gil rises and comes around the desk. His fingers brush the back of Warrick's hand - barely noticeable except in every last one of Warrick's nerve endings. "You're right. Think you can wait until we get home to open it?"

Warrick groans. This man is going to be the death of him. "Do I have any other choice?"

The smile is definitely wicked now. "You could open it now. But that would spoil the surprise."

Warrick returns an equally sultry look. He refuses to stand here and take this without giving Gil a little of his own back. "Then I guess you have to wait 'til we get home to open me," he says softly. It's an empty threat. Gil has the patience of a fucking redwood; waiting for the end of their shift won't torture him the way it will Warrick.

Gil laughs roughly. "I'll look forward to that, then." He sighs and moves away. "You should get back to work."

"Yeah." He backs up to the the doorway but lingers there, reluctant to go. Gil's returned his attention to the Giraldi crime scene photos, and Warrick could stand here all night and watch the gears in his brain spin. "Oh, Gris?"

"Hmm?" Gil looks up again.

"Stop eating my popsicles."

Now Gil's laugh is brighter - gleeful, like a child's, almost. "They make me think of you. I put one in my mouth and suck on it until the end starts to drip--"

"Stop. Stop right now." Nothing like a child, after all. Warrick leans against the door frame, unsure of his legs' ability to support him. "Fine. Next time I'm buying a second box just for you."

Gil quarter-smiles. "Pleasant daydreams, Warrick."

Warrick groans and escapes the office while he still can. Like he's going to be able to think of anything for the rest of the night but Gil fellating his popsicles. He heads toward the locker room to put away his box.

The image of Gil fellating his popsicles turns out to be the only thing that gets Warrick through the rest of the shift. The meeting with Brass sends him and Catherine back to the scene of their drowning, which now looks less like suicide or misadventure than plain, old-fashioned murder. Sara returns from a hit-and-run sobbing; Warrick doesn't know what happened, just that she spends way too long in Gil's office with the door closed. Whatever Nick thinks he and Greg are doing to 'work it out' is failing; they're at each other's throats all night. Every time Warrick looks at the clock, he swears it's ten minutes earlier than the time before.

He distracts himself by trying to decide what's in the box. It's small - about four cubic inches. The kind of thing gift stores package little figurines and stuffed animals in. But bric-a-brac sure as hell isn't Gil's style.

A new toy? Warrick grins. That is Gil's style - or has begun to be, in the past few months. Body paint, maybe. Very classy. Very Gil.

Of course it's just possible that the gift won't have anything to do with sex. In the past five months, Warrick has learned never to assume that he can predict Gil's next move. The man is a walking study in contradictions. Most people just never get close enough - get past the veneer of aloofness and utter control - to realize how deep the chaos stretches.

No one proposes breakfast at the end of the shift. All they want, every last one of them, is to go home and do whatever they do to forget that nights like this happen.

Warrick slides into the passenger seat of Gil's Tahoe and lets his head fall against the seatback. "Man, I'm glad you're driving," he says, barely intelligible around a wide yawn.

Gil sneaks a look out of the corner of his eye. "So am I," he says wryly. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Long night." He frowns. "Sara okay?"

Gil makes a noncommittal noise. "She will be. Nothing a good amount of sleep and a couple of stiff drinks won't fix."

"Gil!" Warrick sputters. "You're encouraging us to drink, now?"

"Not 'to drink.'" Gil rolls his eyes. "Not as a habitual practice. I'm merely pointing out that sometimes there are nights that are just...like this."

Warrick flashes him a tight grin. "Yeah, there are."

"We all have coping mechanisms, that's all." Gil reaches over and touches Warrick's thigh for not nearly long enough. "I hope you're not too exhausted," he says, eyes never leaving the road. "There is still the matter of the box."

Something warm and honeyed in Gil's tone glides all the way through Warrick's body, and he scrambles to re-equalize the dynamic. "Why'd you leave it in the break room, anyway?"

Gil shrugs. "I wasn't sure when you'd be back to your locker, and I wanted to make sure you found it."

Warrick swallows. He's glad Gil's hand is on his leg and not his hand, or his neck, or anywhere else Gil could feel how the simple contact makes his pulse race. Five months they've been together, and Warrick far from a tourist on these shores when he and Gil arrived, and still every brush of Gil's fingers can knock him back to age fourteen, being touched for the first time. And of course Gil knows what he does to Warrick, knows Warrick's faking his cool, and Warrick knows he knows it, but the illusion is an integral part of the relationship, because Warrick is trying to maintain a reputation here.

"So, do you think you know what's in it?" Gil lets him off the hook.

"I had a few ideas." Warrick makes a play for nonchalance. "I'm guessing it's one of those little dancing bear figurines from Marcia's - the one with the balloons, right?"

"Warrick." Gil rolls his eyes.

"'Course, knowing you, it's probably some petrified bug or some shit like that."

"Warrick." Gil's voice goes to growling, low in the back of his throat, and Warrick's body shudders once, all the way down.

"Gil, pull over."

"We're almost home." It's a feeble protest.

"Right now."

They're on a fairly deserted street, thank God, a frontage road leading no place useful but the road to Gil's house. Gil pulls over and shuts down the engine, the look in his glittering blue eyes a challenge. He opens his mouth to say something - something snide, probably - but it's lost, swallowed down Warrick's throat as his mouth presses insistently against Gil's.

"Oh, God, Warrick," Gil gasps when they separate.

Warrick's having serious issues with his cool right now. Warrick's having serious issues with his name right now, so it's a good thing Gil remembers it. "Gil, I don't give a damn what's in the box," he growls. "It's been the damned popsicles all night."

"The p--" So lust fogged, Gil's brain, that Warrick sees the connection being missed at half a dozen synapses. Then Gil starts to laugh, a low, dirty chuckle that has Warrick gripping the door handle so tightly the leather creaks under his fingers. "I like those popsicles," Gil says, his fingers working the buttons of Warrick's fly. "I've been stealing one every night and thinking of you."

Six months ago, Warrick would've told you there was no way in Hell that Gil Grissom would be in this position - on a public road, in his truck, about to go down on a coworker, and making awful jokes about it. Six months ago, he would have been right to say it.

But Gil has this - well, he calls it his 'dark side;' Warrick just calls it his 'other side' - and Warrick had refused to back down when Gil tried to railroad their relationship, and it turns out that Gil's kind of crazy in the sex department. He'll try just about anything once. He has boundaries, of course, but Warrick is very careful to respect them.

Sucking Warrick's cock on a service road apparently doesn't cross them.

It's over far too fast - Warrick's been thinking about this all night, and his shift was so deadening, and Gil's mouth is so alive. Warrick thinks that mouth must be illegal, even when it's just sitting in Gil's face not doing anything. Warrick comes hard, roaring something that might, under more coherent circumstances, have been Gil's name. He slumps in his seat, eyes captivated by the color contrast of his dark fingers twined through Gil's graying curls.

Gil lifts his head, smiles, reassembles Warrick from the waist down. Warrick strokes trembling fingers over Gil's cheek. "Doesn't seem fair."

Gil's forehead furrows, but he's smiling. "What doesn't?"

"That you can do that to me."

Gil's smile widens. "Given what you do to me, I consider it more than fair."

And his brain had kind of short-circuited for a while, but-- "I haven't. Done anything for you."

He reaches out, but Gil pushes him gently away. "Wait until we get home. You still have to open your box."

Warrick doesn't live with Gil. But Gil refers to whatever house they're headed to as 'home,' and Warrick likes that. He likes that sometimes, when shifts turn unexpectedly long and Gil says, "I have to go home and grab a few things," he means Warrick's home, not his own. And he loves the way Gil will look at him some mornings when they're seeing the sunrise in still on the job, reach out his hand, and say, "We're done enough tonight, Warrick. Let's go home."

And so Warrick will wait until they are 'home.'

They pull into Gil's driveway. Corrine's getting back from her morning run; Warrick waves as she passes.

Beside him, Gil chuckles. "You know my neighbors better than I do."

"The overhead light in their bathroom burns through light bulbs pretty fast, and neither of them is tall enough to change it." Need sits coiled in him like a whip. "Gil, how about we go inside and stop talking about the lesbians next door?"

Gil almost rips the handle out of the door in his rush. Warrick hears a rushing sound but ignores it.

Through the front door, Gil maneuvers them toward the living room, and Warrick lets him, then spins them around and slams Gil onto the couch.

"Warrick--"

"Hush up and get out of those pants." As he sinks to his knees in front of the couch, Warrick identifies the roaring in his ears as the rush of his blood. Gil's obeying as best he can, but Warrick's not a patient man, just now, and he barely waits for Gil's zipper to be all the way down before he leans forward and sets to work.

Better than any damned popsicle.

After the bang, Warrick crawls up onto the couch - into Gil's lap, basically. Gil's got that gorgeous, hazy, doped and dopey air to him, and his thumb runs a lazy circle at the top of Warrick's spine that makes him shiver into the languid kiss they share. When Warrick pulls away he whispers, "Where's the box?"

Gil laughs and points at the coffee table, where the innocent-looking little package that's caused so much aggravation - of the best kind, of course - has come to rest.

Warrick twists for it - tricky, since he's straddling Gil's lap with his back to the table, but Gil's holding onto his hips, and he's not worried about falling. This is like Christmas, except that picturing Gil as Santa Claus raises some images Warrick's pretty sure he can do without. The plain brown wrapping falls away; Warrick pulls up the top of the box, and--

"Oh-hoh!" Chocolate body paint. Expensive chocolate body paint, if he's remembering right. "Oh, are we gonna have fun with this tonight!" He steals a kiss, but when he leans back, Gil doesn't look playful or mischievous. He regards Warrick too intensely, blue eyes laser-focused behind the lenses. "What?"

Gil clears his throat, shifts his hold on Warrick's hips. "It's not empty."

"There's more? Hot damn!" Warrick peers happily into the shadows of the small box. There it is, at the bottom, a square of heavy cream-colored paper. He lifts it out, and his smile flips into a puzzled scowl. "It's an invitation to the award dinner." Brass is receiving a commendation for a major case they helped him break last fall; he made sure the entire team was invited. Warrick looks closer. "It's your invitation to the award dinner. I got one of these. With my own name on it and everything, you know?"

"I know that, Warrick. I want you to go with me."

Warrick's eyes narrow. "You mean, you want us to ride together? Did Lindsay get to you with her save the planet thing?"

Impatience in Gil's sigh, yes, but a small measure of nervousness, too. "I want you to come with me. As my date." He taps the paper. "Gil Grissom and guest." He looks unblinkingly at Warrick. "You, I hope."

When did it get so damned hot in here? Is Gil's A.C. busted? "That'll mean--"

"It will mean whatever we want it to mean."

Typical. What an absolutely Gil response. "What do we want it to mean?" Warrick asks.

Gil shakes his head. "I don't know, Warrick. That's why I'm asking now. The dinner is a month away; that should give us enough time to decide how to approach the evening." He frowns. "If my invitation is accepted, that is."

Warrick laughs and kisses that sensitive spot just in front of his right earlobe. Gil shivers. "Yes, Gil," he says, because Gil likes everything to be laid out so there's no confusion later. "Your invitation is accepted."

"Good." And damned if the man doesn't look relieved. Like he really worried that Warrick would reject him. "I'm glad."

And Warrick realizes: Gil is relieved. Gil had worried that Warrick would turn him down. He slides off Gil's lap onto the couch and regards him solemnly.

Gil tilts his head slightly, like always when he's confused or concentrating extra hard. Residual from when he had to lean closer just to hear what was being said. "What?"

"Haven't you learned anything from our time together?"

Gil's lips twitch. It's almost a smile. "Apparently I've forgotten several important things."

"Important? Try...crucial. Primary. Salient." Gil's breath hitches with Warrick's recitation. Grinning, Warrick tugs at the hem of Gil's shirt. Gil takes the shirt and strips it off. Warrick is already reaching for the jar. "That's okay, though. Because I have an unopened jar of chocolate body paint--" He leans over and plants a long, slow, searing kiss. "--and I have the next ten hours free to reteach you everything you've forgotten. As many times as I need to until it sinks in."