Title: Suspicious Eyes
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Greg Sanders/Ryan Wolfe
Fandom: CSI: Vegas/CSI: Miami
Rating: PG-13
Table: 7, 12_stories
Prompt: 12, Watching
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Greg Sanders or Ryan Wolfe, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Greg leaned back in his chair in the office he shared with Ryan, his eyes on the door. He knew that his boyfriend was busy in the lab, but he was fairly sure that Ryan was almost done with what he was working on and would be coming in here within moments.

He wanted to close his eyes, but he also didn't want to look as though he was shirking his duties. He should probably be in the lab with Ryan, but the other man had told him to take a break for a few minutes; he was more tired than usual after they had pulled a double.

There was someone walking by their office, turning their head to look inside. Just one of the lab techs, one that he didn't know all that well -- but Greg could swear that there was a suspicious look on that face, the eyes narrowing in conjecture.

He'd started to feel like that at work every day, as though there were people watching both him and Ryan, just waiting for them to screw up. He couldn't help feeling that everyone who knew them was waiting for them to show proof of their personal relationship.

Ryan had told him that he was just being paranoid, but Greg didn't think so. He was sure that there were suspicious eyes everywhere around them; several people already seemed to know that he and Ryan had deep feelings for each other.

He was positive that Nick already knew, or at least guessed. There was no way that Nick couldn't know, Greg thought with a sigh. Not after the way he'd lost it when they had found Ryan in that freezer, and Nick had been the one to calm him down.

If Nick was the only person who knew, then they had nothing to worry about. Nick wouldn't expose them; Greg was sure of it. He always followed the rules, but he had told Greg before that he thought CSIs should be free to date whoever they wanted, within the confines of work or not.

So Nick wasn't someone to worry about. But there were other people here who would more than likely be only too glad to bring their relationship out into the open -- and try to have them separated, at least here at work. He could name off at least two or three.

Sara would love to see him outed, and to see him lose Ryan as a partner, at least when it came to their being able to work together. She'd had to move to another shift when it had become public that she was fucking the boss, and she hadn't liked that at all.

Hodges was still bitter about Wendy leaving, but Greg didn't think he would out the two of them .Still, he didn't seem overly gay-friendly -- so if he knew that Greg's partner was also his lover, his might have a problem with Ryan being on this shift.

Greg sighed and shook his head, resting his elbows on the desk and propping his chin in his hands. He shouldn't be thinking this way about the people he worked with. None of them would want to make him unhappy; they all cared about him. He was sure of that.

Even if they didn't approve of him dating Ryan, they wouldn't go running to Ecklie about it. They all felt that they should be able to date anyone they wanted to -- and that included their co-workers. None of them would deliberately break up a couple who wanted to work together.

Especially when they knew the reasons why Greg and Ryan wanted to work with each other. Everyone who worked here, especially the CSIs who were out in the field, would have intimate knowledge of just why the two of them wanted to be sure that they had each other's backs.

The only person who might try to force one of them to change shifts and break them up as a team at work as Catherine -- and Greg wasn't entirely sure that she would go that far. She would be able to understand why they wanted to work together, and keep their relationship quiet.

He could feel Ecklie's suspicious eyes on him whenever the other man was around; Greg was sure that he suspected there was more to his working partnership with Ryan than was there on the surface. They would have to be extremely careful how they acted, at least around the lab.

He sighed again, running a hand over his face. Where was Ryan? He'd been in the lab a long time, longer than he'd said he would be. Maybe he had come up with some discovery that Greg should be there to see; he should go back in there and find out what was going on.

Just as he'd made that decision, Ryan strode through the door of their office with a smile. "Okay, I'm done. Let's get the hell out of here and go grab some coffee before we head home, okay? I don't know about you, but I could use some sleep."

What he really wanted was to curl up with Ryan in bed and spend hours kissing and touching each other, Greg thought. But he couldn't say that here; they might be alone in their office, but there was no way of knowing who might be standing just outside the door.

There were not only suspicious eyes watching them, but there were people listening as well. It made Greg uncomfortable to feel that he couldn't explicitly trust the people that he worked with, but in this situation, he couldn't let them be privy to all of his secrets, either.

He'd never even told his colleagues at work that he was into men. They had always thought that he was straight -- and some of them would probably be shocked to find out that he was involved with a man, and had been having one-night stands with men for years.

"Something wrong, babe?" Ryan was standing by his chair now, speaking very softly. Greg glanced over at the door, but there didn't seem to be anybody there -- and Ryan had closed it. He breathed a sigh of relief; no one would hear what they were saying.

Still, he kept his voice down; he didn't want to take a chance on anyone barging into the room without knocking and hearing what they were talking about. "I was just thinking how much it sucks that we can't be open about the fact that we're involved. It's not fair."

"I know it's not," Ryan said, squeezing his shoulder gently. "But maybe one day we'll be able to bring it out into the open. And if we can't .... well, then that's the price we have to pay for being able to spend our days and our nights together."

"I just .... I feel like I see suspicious eyes watching us all the time," Greg confessed, feeling a little silly once the words were out. It sounded paranoid and ridiculous for him to even think of accusing his friends and colleagues of watching them for any false steps.

"I don't think people are watching us in a bad way," Ryan told him, his hand still resting lightly on Greg's shoulder. "I think they're trying to make sure that we don't make any missteps that Ecklie could pick up on. I'm pretty sure they'd give us a warning if we did."

Greg nodded, sighing softly and wishing that he could do something outrageous, like take Ryan's hand in his and kiss the other man's palm. But the windows to their office gave everyone who happened to be in the hallway, or in the offices across the hall, a clear view of what they were doing.

What would they think if they saw Ryan's hand resting on his shoulder? Greg almost wanted to flinch away, but every fiber of his body screamed against it. What he really was to be able to melt into Ryan's arms, to be open about what this man meant to him.

But he couldn't be. Not here. Maybe sometime in the future, it would happen, but for the moment, there were far too many suspicious eyes watching -- and possibly some that he didn't even suspect. They had to be circumspect and discreet while they were here at work.

Once they were at home, behind closed doors, they could be who they wanted to be. There would be no reason to hold themselves back then; they would be in their own personal space, with no one to see them and point fingers, no one to say that they were breaking any rules.

"Are you ready to go, babe?" Ryan asked, his voice soft. "It's five minutes past time for us to leave. I just wanted to get that last piece of evidence processed before we left. I'm sorry it took longer than I expected it to. Am I forgiven, or do I have to work for that?"

"I just might make you earn your forgiveness," Greg told him, arching an eyebrow and giving his boyfriend a mischievous smile. "Let's see how we feel when we get home. We might both be too tired to do anything more than sink into bed and go to sleep."

With those words, he headed for the door of their office, knowing that Ryan would be following right behind him. Somehow, he didn't seem as tired now -- and he couldn't wait to get home and feel safe in a place where no suspicious eyes could focus on the two of them.

***