Title: Diversion
Author: podga
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: CSI and its characters do not belong to me. I write and post for fun only.
Summary: Greg has a massive crush (not necessarily gay) on Grissom and Nick gets jealous...
Suggested by: angus_honey

At first it was amusing. Greg, irreverent, too cool, know-it-all Greg, tagging after Grissom, openly hanging on his every word. When Nick called him on it, and implied that brownnosing wasn’t likely to get Greg his certification, Greg just shrugged, a goofy and half-embarrassed smile on his face.

Lately it’s become more than annoying. Not only Greg’s fawning, but Grissom’s response to it. Since when is Grissom so patient with obvious questions and stupid mistakes? They’ve all heard the Grissom “mistakes is how we learn” speech, a few of them repeatedly, but never delivered in such an understanding voice as during Greg’s last screw up. By the end of it, Greg was preening as if Grissom had complimented him for single-handedly solving the case instead of rebuking him – very, very mildly – for leaping to a conclusion that the evidence flat out contradicted.

Still, having a CSI wannabe tagging along has its uses.

“Go ahead,” Nick tells Greg, taking care to stand well upwind of the corpse.

Greg licks his lips nervously.

“You sure? Maybe you’d better take it, man. This is beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

“Come on, Greggo. You’ll never learn if you don’t get your hands dirty. I’ll stand over here and let you know if you’re doing anything wrong.”

Nick crosses his arms over his chest and nods encouragingly toward the corpse.

Greg rubs his hands along his jeans, then reluctantly – and very slowly – takes a pair of gloves out of his pocket. By the production he’s making of it, you’d think this is the first time he’s ever put on a pair of latex gloves. He takes three steps towards the corpse, then backs away, gagging.

“Jesus,” he chokes out. “I think I’m going to throw up.” He swallows a couple of times.

“Try to breathe through your mouth,” Nick says helpfully, and Greg throws him an evil glance, before taking a deep breath and starting manfully towards the corpse again. He makes it one step closer, before retreating again.

“Maybe you should take over,” Nick hears Grissom’s quiet voice behind him. “We need to wrap this up.”

“Greg can handle it,” Nick says deliberately, glaring at Greg, who’s accelerated his pace back towards them, and making him freeze in his tracks.

“Take over, Nick,” Grissom repeats.

Nick turns around to stare at him in disbelief. Grissom’s face is unreadable, but his eyes meet Nick’s and it’s clear he’s not going to back down. Nick stifles his protest and nods. If your boss asks you to wash his car, you do it, he once told Sara. He didn’t say you have to like it.

-------------------

“At his pace, we were going to run into a double shift. I had to step in,” Grissom tells Nick.

“So what? Why the hell are you so patient with him? And since when do you care about double shifts?”

“Since I have a boyfriend to go home to. It’s made me both mellow and a clock-watcher.”

Nick snorts.

“So if your boyfriend does something drastic, like withhold sex for a few months, you’ll go back to being your usual grumpy self, working overtime and not sticking others with Greg’s dirty work?”

“Something to think about, isn’t it?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll­– oh, fuck, yeah, deeper – I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

Then again, maybe he won’t. After all, there are other ways Grissom can make it up to him.