Title: Six Stokeses Greg Sanders Slept With and One He Did Not (But Desperately Wanted To)
Author: amazonqueenkate
Pairing: Greg Sanders/members of the Stokes family - slash & het
Warnings: dead cars; breakfast together; sprained ankles; video games; bar bathrooms; fear; replacement
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no rights to this, and you all know it.
Summary: The sum total of his actions are less than the one thing he wants.
Author's Notes: An idea I came up with and mentioned to hawkeyecat, who encouraged me to write it just as soon as she stopped laughing. Betaed by her, and before you freak out at the concept: it works. I swear it does.

Vincent

He’s covered in sweat and oil when they meet, a streak of dirt across his forehead at the gas-and-service station in the middle of nowhere, and explains in clipped terms that the car is D-E-A-D as a D-O-O-R-N-A-I-L. His jumpsuit says his name is Vincent but he looks like a Vinnie, and his broad shoulders and muscular chest fill out his denim coveralls. Vinnie promises that he and his boys can have the car fixed by the next day. Vinnie’s even got a place to stay, just up the road, and is willing to shelter the poor, stranded traveler if he wants.

Said place to stay is Vinnie’s house, a two-bedroom bungalow on the edge of a dying town. Once he’s showered and redressed, Vinnie’s obviously closing in on middle age, but his wrinkles are all laugh lines and his wet hair is salt-and-pepper speckled. He apologizes repeatedly for the car needing a night – they’re short a part and he’s sent his assistant manager up to the next big city to fetch it, but Oklahoma is a nothing state and it’s a long drive – and offers to buy dinner to make up for it. He laughs when he gets called a country boy, and just for that, pockets his keys and decides they’re walking to dinner. The family diner that Vinnie promises has the best food in the area is only a few blocks away, and they walk there together in the cool night air.

The alley between the dinner and the hardware store is dirty and dark, but he’s not really surprised when Vinnie grabs him by the shirt and pushes him into the alley, against the brick side wall of said hardware store. His lips are chapped and hot, his body hard beneath his t-shirt and jeans, and even though his hands are callused, they know exactly where to go and what to do.

After, Vinnie wipes his hand off on the brick and leads them both into the dinner. They have chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, and Vinnie turns down the couch bed for his visitor.

In the morning, the car is fixed and waiting in the driveway of the little house, and Vinnie’s left a note and the key tucked under the driver’s side visor:

Free of charge. Got your number on file now. Look me up sometime. – Vin


LeeAnn

She’s beautiful and busty, a tall dish of woman with blue eyes and long, dark curls that reach all the way down to her ass. She’s got to be a lawyer or a paralegal or something like that, and waltzes into the crime lab on stilettos. He watches her stride – long, gliding strides, the expert grace of a woman light on her feet – and his jaw hits the floor. He no longer cares about the video games waiting for him at home, or the infinite allure of this week’s People magazine, but about this long-and-slender business-casual vision traipsing in front of his glass walls.

LeeAnn – Lee to her friends, she laughs when he bounds up to her a few moments later with a cup of fresh coffee and a friendly smile – is indeed a lawyer, fresh into town from Southern California to consult for the District Attorney on a tough day-shift case. He points the way to Ecklie’s office – the freak is still in, even though night shift started three hours earlier – and then takes a breath and asks her if she wants a guided tour of the city after work.

The guided tour only includes Las Vegas Boulevard, though, because Lee mentions how hungry she is and Greg can’t resist a lady in distress. Well, if hunger pains count as distress, anyway. He fries some eggs and bacon in his big kitchen – well, big for being in an apartment complex, at any rate – and sums up his life story. Lee doesn’t share much: she has a slough of siblings, she rarely visits her family or old friends, she loves seafood and the ocean.

Her lips don’t taste like seafood but she smells like the ocean, salt and a wet sea breeze. The carpeting in the living room is sand-colored, and there’s a seaside landscape over the couch that they tumble onto. Her bra matches the carpet, and her panties are seafoam green. Not that it matters, because they get to meet the carpet, and the following fifteen minutes are a grunt-filled lust-fest in the breakfast-scented air.

She’s only in town for three days, though, and doesn’t come back to the lab. On day three, Greg finds her business card taped to the centrifuge in his lab with a nice note on the back:

Thanks for the tour. Call me if you’re ever in SoCal. – L


Jill

He twists his ankle in Tahoe when a snowboarding trick goes horribly awry, and the only other snowboarder within earshot is a pretty blond thing. She’s short and thin, and is identifying herself as a doctor – a doctor by the name of Jill – before she even pulls off her gloves. A quick grope of his ankle assures her that it’s not broken, just sprained and Jill helps him up off the cold, hard-packed snow. They hobble back to the ski lodge arm-in-arm, and he orders them both hot coffee while she bandages his injury from the First Aid kit she brought with her to town.

Jill’s short and curvy, he realizes once she’s sitting back with her coffee in hand, her hair perfectly blonde and her eyes a dark clay brown. She talks casually in her twanging voice about philosophy and art, a great distraction from the throbbing in his ankle. Her smile is coy and charming, straight white teeth and pink lips. She looks like a ski bunny, albeit a ski bunny who stops him from standing and informs him that, no, he is not returning to Vegas tonight as planned, he is going to spend the night on the extra queen in her suite.

The suite is large and she’s not at all offended by him stripping down to his long underwear only, and she even settles onto the edge of “his” bed to watch free HBO. Halfway through the movie, when the protagonist is tossing his lady love’s shirt onto the floor, Jill – who has somehow migrated from the edge of the bed to his side – puts a gentle hand on his thigh. He reciprocates by kissing her, and together they stage their own rendition of what happened in that stupid movie.

When he leaves the next morning, Jill kisses him on the cheek and hands him a sheet of hotel paper with her e-mail address on it – she claims she’s too busy to really take phone calls – and a scrawled, doctor’s-handwriting message:

Hope we can actually snowboard together sometime. – Jill


Gina

Sara Sidle calls Gina a “cute little computer geek”, and when Greg meets her for dinner, he sees her point. She’s got mousy brown hair and glasses, and – were it not for the freckles, dimples, and that winning smile – Greg would write her off as a complete geek. But she speaks intelligently, is open and clever, and talks about her latest project: programming for a video game. Gina’s known Sara for a while but is apparently only in town once or twice a year, but that doesn’t stop her from inviting him out for drinks after dinner at a little bar she’s found in the area.

Over several amaretto sours – the favorite of Gina’s baby brother, or so she tells him casually – they discuss favorite games; Greg likes sports, sims, and first-person shooters, but Gina’s a master at action and adventure games. When that topic runs dry, they run the gambit of everything else. Gina’s from Silcon Valley ten months out of the year, but usually spends part of her winter in Vegas updating video slot machines.

She takes him back to the place she’s subletting with the promise of coffee, but she barely has the condo door closed before she’s leaning up and kissing him hard. He can’t help but kiss her back. Her small programmer’s hands roamed him, explored him, and guided him down into a double-large armchair.

When he wakes up the next morning, he’s balled up on the couch with a blanket thrown over him. His clothes are neatly folded on the coffee table, along with a neatly typed – typed! – note.

Thank you for the lovely night. I had a great time. I hope I see you again next time I’m in Vegas. – Gina


Alicia

The bartender has auburn hair and a killer smile, not to mention a killer, Coyote Ugly figure to go with it. Her top’s low cut, her jeans are skin tight, and she grins at him as she slides him his fourth beer. He’d gone out with Bobby and Jacqui, but Jacqui had split to go home to her pets and Bobby home to the rugrat, leaving Greg with a lonely liver and a need to drink.

The bar starts to close before he’s done with beer number five, though, and the barkeep introduces herself as Alicia and leans on her elbows to chat him up. Her short hair keeps falling in her eyes, and the way she tosses her head to remedy the problem is entrancing. He asks why she’s a bartender – typical conversation for such a place, right? – and Alicia winks. She’s the daughter of lawyers, the sister of successful service professionals. She wanted anything but.

He finishes off the beer and is ready to leave, but Alicia grips him lightly by the arm and instead of walking him out (which would be wise, as buzzed as he is), she leads him into the bathroom. She takes the lead, hops up on the counter, bites his lower lip as she drags his body against her. She’s a master with teeth, lips, and tongue, and he’s trembling before she even gets her hand down his pants.

When they’re done, Alicia leaves him to clean up and walks back into the bar proper. She’s gone by the time he’s finished washing his face and hands, but the pot-bellied guy sweeping the floor hands him a five-dollar bill with a note jotted onto the edge:

Come back, and maybe we can do it in the men’s room, this time. – Al


Erica

Erica only witnessed a shoplifting, but she’s a basket case waiting outside of the courtroom with the other relevant witnesses for the day, himself included. He’s there to ramble about blood analysis, while she’s there to give a firsthand account. Of course, with her nametag and her flowered dress that hugs all her curves, it’s not hard to notice her; she’s buxom and strawberry blonde, and her waves of hair fall in front of her face.

She needs a friend and he provides her with one, sitting with her for the rest of the day’s testimony. She reaches out and grabs his hand when the defendant glares at her; he squeezes it supportively, mostly because he doesn’t like the way the defendant looks any more than she does.

Erica buys him coffee around the corner as a thank you for his kindness, even though he insists he was just doing his duty as a member of the law enforcement profession, but she’s as forceful outside the courthouse as she was nervous within, and before he knows it they’re drinking cappuccinos and wandering around downtown Vegas, chatting about their lives – she’s a secretary at her mother’s law firm back home, and only witnessed the crime because she was visiting relatives in the area.

He offers pizza for dinner, so they settle onto his couch with an extra-large pie and some sodas. Erica eats a good portion of her half – cheese and mushrooms – and he eats all of hers, and when it’s done they kiss. On the couch, in the hallway, in the bedroom, and then on the bed.

When he wakes up the next morning, Erica is gone, but there’s an unused paper napkin on the bedside table:

Thank you for being so kind. – Erica


Nick

He keeps all six of the notes in an index card box in his bedside table, and looks at them sometimes – Vinnie, Lee, Jill, Gina, Alicia, Erica. He feels like a stalker this way, but he’s never been able to throw them out, not since when he called Vinnie a week later and recognized where that twang sounded so familiar or after he’d actually taken five minutes to really look at Lee’s last name. He holds onto them, then, and occasionally makes a phone call; he’s had dinner with Gina three times since their set-up by Sara, frequents Alicia’s bar on a monthly basis, and though he’s not been back to Tahoe, he and Jill have interesting e-mail “conversations” (used loosely) every once in a while.

Jacqui calls it slutty, Bobby calls it creepy, Hodges rolls his eyes and simply calls him pathetic. He ignores them. He doesn’t care. He’s built a whole replacement theory around these things and explains once – and only once – to Bobby over breakfast:

If all six of them were combined into one person, it would almost be like having a relationship with the seventh.

Bobby, at that breakfast, just shakes his head and reaches for the ketchup.

He doesn’t expect Bobby, or anyone else, to understand, though. And when he comes back refreshed after a crazy night with Alicia or a slow afternoon spent at Gina’s sublet and finds a note on his locker that reads,

Man, where you been? Out scoring again? – Stokes

his obvious reply is his own scrawled out answer:

Sometimes, the sum of the parts is still less than the whole. - Sanders