Title: Waking Up
By: nigaishin
Rating: NickxHodges
Pairing: PG
Betas: blackangel_life and redleaf0
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Meh. Another response to the dhodges ffic challenge #3.

Nick begins to wake when he feels the weight of Dave's head leave his bent left arm, his lover shifting his right one from around his waist and moving away, and blinks his eyes open blearly.

Dave is sitting on the edge of the bed, still for a couple of moments it takes him to shake at least some of the sleep out if his brain, and then sighs, bending to feel the floor for his shirt.

Nick watches silently, still half-asleep.

He stares at Dave's back and zones out a bit.

He remembers sucking the spot below Dave's right shoulder blade last night, playfully.

Dave.

He rolls the name on his tongue and wonders at how weird it sounds to call him Dave and how comforting, making him feel closer, intimate, as if the other man had let him in on some kind of secret.

Nick knows it's stupid, sappy, but he also knows Dave secretly enjoys the sound of it as well. He knows by the way his lover jumped a bit when he called him Dave the first time in bed, whispering it as he pressed his lips to Dave's to get his attention, the way he looked so surprised at first and then smiled slightly.

The first couple of weeks they were together, it felt so strange it now makes Nick laugh at himself. They couldn’t shake off the feeling they ended up together by a weird chance of fate.

It was confusing, somehow clashing with reality over at the lab but still feeling too good to give up.

Like the way Dave would always get dressed as soon as he got up, or wrap a bedsheet around himself and wander around the room (making Nick feel very much like he was 18 and back in college again, waking up the morning after a toga party) until he found his clothes or had a shower, because having Nick around made him feel self-conscious of his naked body.

Nick himself sometimes didn’t know how to say things without getting some witty remark back, but still felt the urge to talk to him. The apparently grumpy way Dave agreed on things would often threw him completely off, until he saw his lover’s amused expression at his own puzzled one, and then he wanted to tackle him, even if that wasn’t exactly the first thing crossing your mind when thinking about David Hodges (or at least the purposes were probably different).

The first times, it was clear Dave wasn’t used to be touched much, because he sort of jumped or tried to shy away when Nick patted his shoulder or got too close, just before he caught himself and met him half-way in a kiss or a nod of his head, a small smile tugging at his lips in reassurance.

Nick was more open and generally easy-going, talked about this and that and liked to bask in the quiet of the morning with his lover by his side, lying with him, caressing him, touching him, it didn’t matter how.

Dave liked what he called musing and Nick called brooding even when there was nothing to brood about, was no chatterbox and didn’t like to lay in bed just because.

Nick is quite smug at having being able to change at least that, making him enjoy a lazy waking up together now and then.

Dave makes an annoyed, little sound as he realizes his shirt is nowhere in sight that makes Nick open his eyes from where they had slid close again, and grin impishly.

He knows Dave won’t be finding his shirt anytime soon because of two simple reasons.

One, he was the one to throw it behind the one of the fornitures (and he can’t even remember which one right now, anyway) last night, while Dave had his eyes shut tightly because the things Nick could do with his fingers and lips. Two, he has no intentions of letting him go yet.

So he rolls over on his belly and sneaks his right arm around his waist, keeping him in place when he tries to get up.

“Dave,” he says, calmly, his hand grazing over his thigh before curling back over his lover’s hip “stay. The world is not ready to meet your snarky genius yet today.”

He smiles against the small of his back a when he feels his lover’s body relax, giving in even if just for ten minutes or so before they have to head to work, and drags him back down.