Title: The Innermost Ponderings of Robert E. Dawson
Author: amazonqueenkate
Pairing: Nick Stokes/Bobby Dawson
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: #12: in a good mood
Warnings: stream-of-conciousness; doubt, self and otherwise; the rules of friendship; boyfriendly duty
Disclaimer: Oh, ha ha ha, funny.
Author's Notes: Psuedo co-written with subluxate one day when I was stuck in my work computer and bored out of my mind. A little cracky, but also very funny. So it's worth it.

Bobby Dawson was definitely not in a good mood.

It started innocently enough, Warrick's voice echoing out of the locker room and down the hallway. "Damn, Nicky," Bobby heard him saying, and stopped abruptly enough that Judy nearly ran into his back, "someone fattening you up to eat you?"

Nick's chuckle was just as clear in the hallway as Warrick's dark tones. "Nah," he replied oh-so-casually, all in his normal Texas twang. "I just haven't been eating well."

"You've been eating great, from the looks of it," Warrick retorted, and Bobby scowled at nothing and no one. "Sheesh, man. Lighten up on the pork rinds."

Nick might have replied, or he might not have; Bobby had no idea. He had no idea because he started back down the hallway, grumbling miserably to himself.

In his defense, it really wasn't his fault that he'd started cooking so much more food so much more often. He and Nick used to eat like reasonable human beings, with well-balanced meals and lots of salads. But then, one day, he'd noticed something he'd never noticed before:

Everyone wanted to sleep with his man.

Now Bobby was not, by definition, a jealous man. In fact, he was a pretty reasonable man, when push came to shove, which was probably part of the problem. Jacqui had warned him that he was too trusting, and he hadn't believed her, and what had happened? Alan had cheated on him with Tom. And then Steve. And then Paul. And he couldn't forget Rob, who had been the last straw. He'd vowed to be less trusting once all of Alan's AC/DC memorabilia was out of the house, and it'd worked. Maybe too well, because he had since made it his duty to notice how Greg looked at his man. And Cath. And Sara. And Grissom. And Hodges. And -

Fuck. Everyone really did want to sleep with his man.

Which was why he'd called his mother and asked for some recipes. Specifically, recipes for chicken-fried steak, chicken-fried chicken, biscuits and sausage gravy, and every other dripping-with-fat grease-ball he could remember eating as a child. His mother, so impressed that he was actually planning to cook, sent him a whole file of tasty treats, and he employed them immediately.

Nick was, of course, not suspicious. Well, mostly. He'd mentioned a few times that he missed salads, but Bobby simply smiled every time and passed him the French fries. And he'd also mentioned that he wanted to start going back to the gym, but thankfully, Bobby found a solution to that, too: sex. Lots and lots of hot, sweaty sex every time the gym came into conversation. Yes, he realized it was sort of a dirty, underhanded, conniving method to employ, but Nick feeling satisfied and sweaty and not in the mood to go to the gym was much better than Nick feeling fat and lazy and completely in the mood to go to the gym. Because that meant he'd get less hot. And then, no one would look, anymore.

Besides, Bobby read some nutrition articles, and sex does burn calories. Just not as many as running and weight-lifting. But that was fine by him.

He justified it, of course, by convincing himself that he wasn't making Nick any less sexy. Nick would be his personal sex god even if he was shaped like a bowling ball. It wasn't the physical stuff - the muscles and the sharp angles and the muscles - that made him sexy. But it was what made other people ogle him. They didn't get the benefit of seeing his sweetness, his caring, his consideration and his good soul. They just saw the chest and abs and ass and - well. It wasn't hard to get the idea, now was it?

So a little bit of extra weight on his Adonis was a rather good idea. Because, really, there was nothing more disturbing - at least, in Bobby's mind - than appreciatively watching Nick bend down to pick something up and then catching Hodges doing the exact same thing. That just wasn't right. In fact, it was kind of dirty.

Because, really, of all the people in the crime lab, Hodges was the least likely candidate to invite to a threesome. Greg? Absolutely. Grissom? Perhaps. Archie? He'd consider it. But despite the fact that David Hodges was an excellent friend, he was also not threesome material.

Nick would agree, probably.

But whatever the case, it just wasn't right of Hodges to be ogling his man. There were rules, after all, of friendship. Rules that stated you did not, under any circumstances, openly check out someone else's significant other. Bobby had always gone out of his way not to check out Greg in Hodges' presence (fear of death aside), so it wasn't fair that Hodges felt he could break that rule.

Of course, there was always the argument that, with Nick always around, Bobby didn't feel comfortable ogling Greg for a whole different reason. But that wasn't relevant.

And this - combined, as it was, with Warrick's comment - put Bobby in a bad mood. He sunk into his seat and started processing bullets from Greg's crime scene, mostly to get his mind off of Nick, fried chicken, and ogling.

But then again - as long as Bobby was trying not to think about all this - he could remember how touchy-feely Greg and Nick always used to be with each other. Shoulder-pats, back rubs, nudges… Yeah, he could remember that. Was there a piece of office gossip that Bobby had somehow missed?

Come to think of it, Nick hadn't ever said much about his dating history. Hmm. Bobby wondered if maybe he should have asked a bit more about that when they got together, since maybe there was a Nick-and-Greg history he'd missed out on. After all, other than the incident with the hooker, Nick never bothered to share. When asked, he always just responded that he'd never seen anyone "special." That just smacked, at least to Bobby, of lying through his pretty white teeth.

Maybe he should try talking to Nicky. Having a nice sit-down conversation about pasts, futures, and Hodges' ogling might just be the correct way to rectify the situation.

But then again, Bobby had read Cosmo in the past, and that certainly did not encourage him to talk to his man. It encouraged hot sex (check) and subterfuge (check), but no sit-down heart-to-hearts.

But, of course, Cosmo was Cosmo. It wasn't like the authors who wrote those articles knew his Nicky. At least, not the way he knew his Nicky.

Thought he knew his Nicky, actually. He wasn't sure he could be sure anymore.

Because, again, Nick apparently had ridiculous sexual chemistry with Greg. And Grissom, now that he thought about it. And sometimes, even with Hodges, disturbing as that sort of thought was.

Hmm. Was Nicky a whore and just never mentioned it?

Yeah. Okay. That clinched it. Bobby actually needed to sit down and talk to his man.

Mostly because, well, Nick had to have learned that tongue thing somewhere, and it was most definitely his boyfriendly duty to share such knowledge with his significant other.

And, really, Bobby - without directly asking, of course - should make sure that Nick wasn't practicing that talent of his anywhere else. He, of course, would never suspect Nick of cheating on him, but even the most secure men wanted to be sure, right? And it wasn't paranoia when actual concern was present, right?

Especially when a hot guy like Nick - and Nick was, pudgy bits or not, a hot guy - was surrounded by other hotties (and Hodges) all the time. He had probably had offers that he'd just kept a secret from Bobby. And Bobby certainly wasn't capable of watching him all the time, and last time he asked about GPS chips under human skin, Archie had given him a really, really, really odd look.

He nodded to himself as he pulled another bullet from the bin. That was it, then. This weekend - seeing as the kid would be at her grandparents' through Monday - he would grill a couple steaks and Nick. Well, in completely different ways, of course.

(Despite hating his ex, Bobby had never had any problem with his parents. They were, in fact, good, decent, warm, friendly human beings if one could take the few seconds to overlook the fact that they'd raised the Great Satan of the western United States. And when Bobby got something out of them - like a weekend alone with his significant other - he certainly could overlook the Great Satan thing. Most days, at least.)

Of course, talking to Nick about such a thing would require the utmost in subtlety. Starting the conversation with "Who else are you fucking?" would probably not end well.

In fact, it'd probably serve to piss Nick off. And if there was one thing Bobby had discovered about his boyfriend, it was that he tended to yell a lot when he was angry. Loud, scary yelling. Bobby never really liked yelling. Well, angry yelling, at least. He always liked passionate, expletives-whilst-in-the-throes-of-ecstasy kinds of yelling. Definitely.

Maybe after he cleared up the whole "who else is Nick sleeping with?" issue, he and Nick could do a bit of the other kind of yelling. He'd like that. A lot.

Especially since the kid was definitely going to be out of the house. Because Bobby, really, expected Nick to be his normal, charming, smiling self and reveal that he would never even dream of sleeping with anyone else. Ever.

Hopefully.

Then again, Bobby couldn't be too suspicious about these sorts of things. He'd seen Nick naked every day for months, and he definitely had not been marked up with any sort of love bites that he himself had not put there. Though, there was always the possibility that the other person (people?) were just inordinately careful about the whole operation.

It would not, after all, be very hard to be more careful than he and Nick had a habit of being. And, come to think of it, last week Bobby noticed the odd way Warrick eyed Nick's turtle neck. It'd been like he'd known…

And how could Warrick have known, anyway? Had he seen? Up close and personal? Being married, Bobby knew quite well, did not necessarily make a man straight. Just because Nick and Warrick were "best buddies" meant nothing. They were awful close for "best friends," in fact.

Maybe they were secretly like those best friends on that doctor show Jacqui'd gotten him hooked on. Best friends who secretly fucked in the bathrooms all the time.

After all, Hodges had been married, once. And even if Warrick had been interested in Cath for years before marrying what's-her-face, the guy on that show was on his third marriage and still boning his best friend.

Bobby was suddenly quite glad he thought these things through so thoroughly. It gave him more fodder for the weekend, when he and Nick could sit down and figure these things out. Like how to stop people from ogling Nick without giving him a heart attack. That'd be an excellent starting point, Bobby thought, and pulled another bullet from the bin.

"Hey," a voice suddenly greeted him, and he glanced up and over his shoulder to find that Nick had wandered into the ballistics lab.

Bobby tried to smile, but it didn't quite work out. "I was just thinkin' about you," he informed him as he turned back to the bullets and microscope, contented in the fact that he wasn't completely lying.

"Really?" He could feel it as Nick smirked and sidled up to him, their arms pressing together as he peered at the scope. "What's up?"

"Greg's case." Disinterest. Disinterest, and not jealousy. That was definitely the direction he would take this.

"Cool." Nick sounded somehow detached, so Bobby looked up and met his eyes. That earned him a big, I-am-charming-and-hunky grin, and he mustered a vague semblance of a smile in return. "So, I was thinkin'."

About sex, Bobby assumed, but he cocked his head to the side slightly. "About?"

Now, Nick suddenly looked a little embarrassed, like he had a secret he wanted to share but couldn't figure out how, and Bobby had to wonder about Greg and/or Hodges. "Wanna go somewhere nice for dinner, Saturday? Since it's just us?"

He blinked. Way harder than he meant to, actually, and he wondered if Nick had noticed. "Dinner?"

"Yeah. So you don't have to cook again." Nick actually dared to touch him on the shoulder, and Bobby had to wonder what pod person had just come to replace his boyfriend. "It'd be fun."

"I…" Bobby trailed of for a moment. It probably would not be wise, he reasoned, to inform Nick that he'd been hoping to stage his own sort of Spanish Inquisition over steaks on Saturday. That would just come across as rude, and Nick might be a bit nervous if he gave him a warning. And dinner out together meant sex together, which meant sex that Nick would not be having with anyone else. Bobby liked this. "Yeah, it would," he agreed, and actually really smiled this time, even though he wasn't sure he liked that he was smiling.

Nick smiled back. "Good." His eyes darted around - left to right, back to front, up and down and back again - before he leaned and very, very quickly kissed Bobby, right there in the ballistics room. It was a blink-and-you'd-miss-it moment, and Bobby did blink, mostly because he hadn't expected it. There were many things that he'd come to expect from Nick Stokes, but PDA did not make that list. It was, in fact, not even a list contender. It was on the list of things he never, ever expected from Nick in a million years.

Actually, it was on that list right above cheating, which made Bobby feel a little ridiculous.

"I'll make reservations," Nick informed him, and then turned to walk out of the lab. Bobby watched him leave, watched that glorious region of personal geography that was commonly referred to as an ass flex and move as he walked away, and damn if he didn't suddenly feel guilty about fattening his fine man up.

He smiled slightly - if guiltily - to himself, turning back to his work. Sure, he would still have to talk to Nick about the ogling thing, and inform him that he really was too hot to handle (and too sexy for his shirt - convenient that Bobby often got to remove those, no?), but that could wait for the weekend. So could checking every inch of Nick for marks, because really, dinner out still did not mean he couldn't be fooling around with Hodges.

Then again, ew.

Bobby picked up another bullet and set it on the scope, and suddenly realized that he wasn't in such a bad mood, after all.