Title: Untitled
By: Caroline Crane
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG

Greg’s not sure how long he’s been pacing, but it’s probably been long enough for someone to make a stupid joke about wearing holes in the linoleum. Not that anyone’s dumb enough to get close enough to him to crack any jokes; he snarled at the last tech who was stupid enough to cross his path, and he’s pretty sure he looks like he’s planning to kill the next person who talks to him.

Which isn’t exactly true, because he doesn’t want to kill anybody. He just wants his phone to ring or the door to open and Nick to walk through. He wants to hear something before he drives himself crazy.

Or maybe he already is crazy, because he chased Hodges out of his own lab just so he’d have something to keep his mind off checking his cell phone every three seconds. And it’s been a long time since Greg processed his own evidence, but he’s not out of practice enough to stop him from glancing at the door almost constantly.

He catches himself looking up again, telling himself that Nick’s not back yet and there’s no reason to keep staring at the door. Except when he does look up there’s Nick, looking exhausted and filthy and pissed off, but alive. Catherine’s right behind him, but Greg barely notices her because he’s too busy focusing on Nick. He drops the samples he’s in the middle of processing and heads for the hall, pushing the door open in time to catch the end of Catherine’ sentence.

“…home to take a long, hot bath and sleep for a week.”

“Sounds good,” Nick answers, but he sounds distracted. He stops in front of Greg, letting out a heavy sigh and it’s obvious from close up just how tired he is. “Hey.”

“Hey?” Greg wants to shout, because he’s been waiting around for hours to hear whether or not Nick’s alive, waiting for Grissom to come in and tell him they finally found Nick’s truck and he and Catherine didn’t make it. He wants to scream that Nick’s got a cell phone and he could have used it to let somebody know where the hell he’s been all this time, and why the hell he’s covered in dirt.

Instead he makes an impatient noise and grabs Nick’s sleeve, dragging him down the hall and into the first room he can find that isn’t made mostly of glass. And he doesn’t usually mind the fact that most of the rooms in the crime lab have glass walls, but at times like these he wonders what the hell the architect was thinking.

“What the…” Nick starts, but he trails off when Greg turns to face him, and Greg’s pretty sure he still looks like he’s planning to kill somebody.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“We had an accident. Some jerk ran me off the road,” Nick says, and he looks confused enough that Greg’s tempted to let him off the hook.

“And you couldn’t call? You’ve been missing for hours, Nick. Brass had the whole force out looking for you.”

“Believe me, I know,” Nick answers, reaching up to run a hand through his hair. “Look, G, I would have called, but my phone broke in the crash. Cath and I are lucky we both walked away with just a few scrapes. It could have been a lot worse.”

And Greg knows that, but he’s been so busy trying not to think about it for the past few hours that he can’t start now. If he does he’ll just fall apart, and he’s still got work to do before he has any chance of getting Nick alone. “You’re sure you’re okay? Shouldn’t you go to the hospital, just to make sure?”

“I’m fine,” Nick says, but he lets out a sigh that says differently. “Nothing a few hours’ sleep won’t cure, anyway.”

Greg wants to argue, wants to make Nick go to the hospital just so he doesn’t have to spend the whole night awake, watching to make sure he doesn’t die in his sleep. But mostly he just wants to take Nick home, to pull off his ripped and dirty clothes and crawl into bed next to him. And he knows he’ll be awake all night, but that’s okay as long as Nick’s there too.

“Let me hand off the rest of my samples to Hodges and I’ll drive you home,” Greg says, the rest of the anger draining out of him and now he’s almost as tired as Nick looks. And he knows Hodges is going to give him attitude, but it’s worth it if it means not letting Nick out of his sight again tonight.

“Yeah, okay,” Nick answers, finally smiling and even that looks sort of pathetic. Cute, but pathetic, and Greg’s heart sort of clenches in his chest.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”

“I’m sure,” Nick says, reaching out to catch Greg’s hand and for the first time Greg notices that Nick’s knuckles are bloody. “Just hurry up and track down Hodges, okay?”

Greg nods and stops himself from squeezing Nick’s hand. Instead he leans in and presses their lips together, swallowing hard against a lump in his throat when Nick leans a little too heavily against him. And he wants to forget the samples, forget Hodges and the job that keeps chipping away at them little by little until Greg wonders how long it will take before there’s nothing left. But without this job he never would have met Nick, so it’s not all bad.

He kisses Nick one more time and then pulls him back into the hallway, propelling him toward the break room and pushing him into a chair while he goes in search of Hodges. And he doesn’t even mind if he has to grovel, not when he knows that Nick’s waiting for Greg to take him home.