Title: Closeted Romance
Author: amazonqueenkate
Pairing: Nick Stokes/Bobby Dawson
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Theme: #23 candy
Warnings: Vee Day gifts; Target bags; sea-sickening rocking; dubious balance
Disclaimer: If I had a significant other, I'd want CSI for Vee Day. Good thing I'm single.
Author's Notes: I couldn't not write the boys Vee Day fic. That'd just be mean of me, really.

"You do realize that we'll be killed if we get caught, right?"

Archie asked the question with the prerequisite amount of nervousness as he watched Jacqui press her ear against locker fifty-one and start twisting the dial with a professional thief's precision. In the doorway, Greg rocked back and forth from heel to toe, a sea-sickening kind of lookout. And beside them, Bobby clutched the white plastic Target bag like a talisman, his knuckles almost the same color of the plastic. Every time Archie glanced at the bag - which was often, since he'd been curious since Bobby had pulled it from the bottom of his locker - his normally placid face colored to match the company's bulls-eye logo, providing all three of his partners-in-crime with endless amounts of amusement.

"There!" Jacqui announced, and a metallic clicking punctuated her triumph. The locker opened slowly, revealing a black messenger bag, black leather coat, black work boots, and a neatly-folded black t-shirt. She pulled out the coat and admired it. "Nice."

"Gimme that," Bobby groused, and tugged the coat from her grasp. He replaced it in the locker, and started to open his Target bag.

Archie peered over his shoulder. "So - oooh." He grinned from ear to ear as Bobby scrunched the bag back shut. "You're a closet romantic."

"He's a closet lot of things," Jacqui ribbed, settling down onto the bench. "Does Mr. McHunky know you're doing this?"

"You gotta stop watching Grey's Anatomy," Bobby grumbled, and set the bag on the bench. He pulled the contents out and piled them one on top of each other. The other two watched eagerly as he went about his task, with Greg half-watching from his lookout post.

He'd just about started in on his actual project when he realized his friends were just staring at him. He frowned. "You wanna help, or you wanna stare?"

"Help!" they all offered, and Bobby grinned as he handed off parts of his task.

==

To say Nick Stokes was surprised at the end of shift when an assortment of Hershey's kisses, Jolly Ranchers, and squares of confetti came falling out of his locker would have been a misnomer. Nick Stokes leapt backwards, nearly tripped over the bench, and had Warrick not caught him by the upper arm, would have ended up with the candy and confetti on the floor. Instead, he regained his dubious balance and just gaped at the mess at his feet.

"Dude, somebody really likes you," Warrick jabbed, and bent down to pick something up. He handed the off-white envelope to Nick, who regarded it with caution before opening it up.

The card itself was plain, with just a picture of a back-lit horizon - no shmoopy hearts-and-flowers, thank goodness, though Nick figured that the sum total of the holiday shmoop was actually pooled at his feet - and the inside type read, simply enough, "Thinking of you." A little odd given the day, but the scribble of a signature that may have included two Bs and a Y made him grin, anyway.

"If the wife did something like that to me for Vee Day," Warrick commented off-handedly as he tossed one of the errant Hershey's kisses back in the direction of Nick's locker, "I'd be on her case for a week."

"Yeah, well," Nick dismissed, waving away his cares as he closed the card and tucked it back in the envelope, "you're just not a romantic."

Warrick glanced up at him, frowning slightly, but Nick just popped a chocolate kiss in his mouth and grinned around it.