By: Evan Nicholas
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes
Rating: FRAO
Warnings: None
Summary: In which Nick is toast, and Greggo's back in town.
NOTES:
1. This is a Gil/Greg fic, but there's a bitter aftertaste of Nick/Greg
2. Thanks, as always, to Franky - I'll find the right words one of these days, babe.
------------
"Here's to those who wish us well
and those that don't can go to hell"
-- a toast my mother learned from her father
***
He can't even hear the music anymore.
It's still pounding: he can feel it coming up through his shoes, in the communal pulse around him, in the bodies pushing against his, he can taste it. But it's bypassed his ears, and that's a good thing, because if he has to listen to another fucking verse about how fine love is, he's going to be sick.
He doesn't go clubbing much anymore. He's usually at work when the clubs are hot anyway, usually sitting with his nose in a petri dish and five people standing in his doorway, tapping their feet and demanding to know why he can't work faster. He's learned to live with that, learned not to feel bad about the fun he's missing out on. After all, he tells himself when it gets to him, he asked for night shift, right? He ((asked)) to work for Grissom, to be part of The Team. Brought it on himself.
So stop bitching, Sanders, he lectures himself, stop whining and enjoy the anonymous ass grinding into you, grab on with both hands, baby, because Greggo's back in town.
Someone's arms find their way around him and he lets them pull him back, now it's his ass grinding into someone, and that's just as good as anything else. Better, even, because this - the filthy wonder of it, of wanting someone to pound into him right here, right now, to make him pass out from sheer pleasure in front of all of these strangers - this is what he's been missing.
And don't go there, he warns himself when one of those hands slips up under his shirt and traces something skittish on the skin between his belly button and the line of his boxers. Don't even think about Nick right now, Nick never did this to you, Nick never took you out and showed you off, never let anyone else touch you while he was watching, Nick never let you have any goddamn fun.
Those random hands keep moving, keep dipping lower and cupping him and doing all the right things, all the things he's needed forever and ever and hasn't had in nearly as long, and hey those lips at his jaw, those can't be from the same body as those hands and hot fuck - that just makes it that much better.
He groans and a mouth finds his and sucks the noise right out from his lips, so he moans again because that feels good, too. And someone is moving behind him frantically, he can feel the rhythm change out of synch with the rest of them, and he starts to twitch to his own inner pulse too - those hands and those lips and those other hands and holy christ more more more -
***
He thinks, I really should change.
He keeps an extra set of clothes in his car just in case. Not in case he just had amazing group sex fully-clothed in a club that he's never even heard of before - it's been waaay too long since that happened. No, usually it's because he's spilled something on his good clothes at work and doesn't want to go home covered in blood or garbage or whatever unspeakable thing Grissom gave him to play with that night.
But right now, he doesn't want to change. He likes the feel of being sweaty and sticky and obscene, and he wants everyone to know it. It itches like hell, his own semen gluing itself irreversibly to the inside of his shorts, and he's pretty sure he's got someone else's splattered across the seat of his jeans, but who cares? Who the fuck cares? It's not like Nick gets to throw a fit about how he's being disgusting. It's not like Nick has any say in what he does anymore.
Nick. Ha, fuck Nick. Nick doesn't deserve him. And you know what?
He slides into his car and starts it, slams it into gear and peels out of the parking lot.
Nick doesn't get to have him anymore.
***
Random speed check, seat belt check, drug test, breathalizer, whatever. He knows he was driving badly, and he grits his teeth and hands his wallet through the open window to the cop who sniffs indelicately and glowers down at him.
He wants to glower back, but doesn't. It's one thing to be caught smelling like sex and covered in ejaculate, it's another thing entirely to get tossed in general lockup smelling like sex and covered in ejaculate. He'll take the ticket, the fine, whatever they want to throw at him - hell, they can take away his license for all that he cares right now - but he's not going to give them an excuse to take him in for the night.
"Pull your car over onto the shoulder," the cop instructs him when he comes back without his wallet. "Just over there, where the officer is waving."
He crawls across the white line and turns the engine off. "What's going on?" he asks.
He hasn't been drinking, he hasn't done any drugs - maybe someone at the club was smoking up and he smells like it, but there won't be any in his blood, at least not enough to test for (and he would know, wouldn't he - hell, if he times it right the test will come through the lab on his watch and wouldn't that be a laugh and a half) and if they're going to ticket him, they should just ticket him.
The second cop leans in the window and takes in the scene with the same blank disgust as the first guy. "Gregory Sanders?" he asks. This is the guy in charge of his wallet, now. It's open and he's looking down at the driver's license.
"Yeah."
"You were driving erratically, Mr Sanders."
"I know." He tries to grin, decides it probably looks feral and stops. "I've had a shitty night. Just write me the ticket, I'll pay the fine, put it on my record - whatever."
The cop shines a light in, lets it linger at his crotch for just a moment longer than strictly necessary. "Everything all right, sir?"
He wants to laugh, he really does. He wants to say, Do I ((look)) all right? He wants to say, Jesus suffering fuck are you ((blind))?!
"I'm fine."
"Uh-huh. Just wait here."
Greg watches him saunter away in the rear view mirror, contemplates taking off while the guy's back is turned. His shorts have long ago passed 'itchy' and are well into 'Spanish Inquisition' by now, and suddenly he's tired - he's exhausted, man, he hasn't gone out like that in a long time, maybe he's getting old or something.
The cop is showing no signs of coming back anytime soon, so Greg undoes his seat belt, slouches down in the seat, and scratches as furiously as he can.
***
"Greg?"
He's starting to doze when the voice stabs at him, and he snaps his eyes open, not entirely sure where he is. It comes back to him immediately, in a wretched flash that almost hurts, because that's Grissom - Gil goddamn Grissom - leaning over to peer in his car window, and yep - he's still the sorry-assed debauched louse he was an hour ago.
"What?" he asks, because he really is too tired to make excuses. Right now he'd rather be fired on the spot so he could go home than have to stay here at this roadside stop for another minute.
It's not often that Grissom is at a loss for words, and under different circumstances Greg would find it hysterical. He's memorizing the inside of the car, Greg thinks, like he would any other crime scene. Memorizing the stench of semen and the incriminating stain on the front of his jeans, made worse because he's been scratching; and there's probably a hickey if not actual teeth marks on his neck, and he knows Grissom is making a note of that, too.
"Greg, do you know what time it is?" Grissom finally asks.
"What?" Greg asks, blinks. "No. Late?"
"Is this what you do on your nights off?"
He wants to laugh, but where before he stopped himself so he didn't get arrested, now he just doesn't have the energy. "Define 'this'," he challenges. "Get laid? Ha. Hasn't happened in a long fucking time."
Grissom frowns ever so slightly. "Are you okay to drive home?" he asks after a long pause. It's amazing how he doesn't have to inflect his voice for Greg to hear his pity, his contempt.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You almost drove into a tree, Greg."
He what? He sits up, looks over his shoulder. "What tree?" he asks.
"The officer who called said you seemed drunk," Grissom continues, "but you blew zero."
"What tree?"
Grissom points at something behind them, something almost out of sight. "Back there," he says. "That's why they flagged you down. What happened?"
What the... He almost drove into a ((tree))? How'd he miss that?
"I don't know," Greg admits. "I don't remember a tree."
Grissom's frown deepens. "Did you black out?" he asks. "Have you hit your head at all tonight?"
"No. I guess I was just distracted."
"Distracted."
"Angry. Look, Grissom - I'm fine, okay?" He tries another smile, hopes it's got more grin and less teeth than the last one he tried. "I'm on my way home anyway."
Grissom studies him for another while, then shakes his head, a tiny movement that purses his lips. "I'll take you home," he declares. "I'll have someone tow your car in."
Aw, shit. "I'm fine," he insists.
"No, Greg," Grissom says in his totally reasonable voice, "you're not. Here." He hands him his wallet through the open window. "Get your jacket and come with me."
***
He sits on his jacket in Grissom's truck. It's bad enough the guy came all the way out to a roadside stop to deal with him, he doesn't need to clean someone else's semen off the passenger seat in the morning. He doesn't think about what his own car probably looks like. Oh well - he'll deal with it later.
"So why'd they call ((you))?" he finally asks as they get near his apartment building.
Grissom shrugs as he drives, doesn't take his eyes off the road. "Courtesy?" he says. "Someone saw your work ID in your wallet, punched through to the switchboard."
"Ha." Greg looks out the window. He hates his neighbourhood, isn't too sure why he's still here. Too much of a pain in the ass to move, he knows, but still. This place depresses him.
"Is this you?" Grissom asks, pulling up in front of a boring low-rise.
"Yup." He opens the door and scrambles out. "Thanks for the ride."
Except Grissom is killing the engine, he's getting out, too, standing on the street and looking around. Taking it all in, squirrelling it away somewhere in some internal database of seedy areas in Vegas.
"See you tomorrow?" Greg says hopefully from the curb.
Grissom turns to face him. "I'm coming in with you," he says.
"You don't have to-"
Grissom gives him The Look, the one that not-too-gently reminds Greg of who is in charge and who takes the orders.
Greg swears under his breath and marches up the steps, knows Grissom is following him silently, patiently. Like a shark.
***
It's been ages since Greg has been here. Sure, he drops by once in a while to pick up his mail, but pretty much he doesn't set foot in the place. Sure as hell doesn't clean, and when he opens the door and steps inside, he gets a snoutful of dust and thinks, oops. Didn't mean to let it get this bad. He sniffles and wills himself not to sneeze.
Grissom follows him in, stands just inside the door with his hands in his pockets while Greg finds the lightswitch and turns it on.
"Yeah yeah yeah," Greg says, "it's a pigsty, I know." He moves through the main room towards the window, which he forces open against years of being painted shut.
Grissom is still looking around him, cataloguing what he sees. "It looks like you haven't been here in a while," he says conversationally.
"Yeah, well," Greg says. "I haven't."
"Where have you been living?"
He hesitates a few seconds before answering, but only a few seconds, because if Nick is such a absolute bastard then why the fuck should Greg protect his dirty little secret anymore? "At Nick's," he says with a little rush of triumph, and goes into the kitchen.
There's a short pause. "Nick Stokes?" Grissom asks from the other room.
"Yeah," Greg says. "But I guess I'm moving back here now." He wishes it didn't feel like such a life sentence. He looks around. He can always move, he knows, but he's thinking maybe he should burn all of his furniture, first.
He comes back out with two glasses of water, offers one to Grissom, who takes it but doesn't bring it to his lips. Greg can see the gears turning in his head, see him work through all the permutations and corollaries of that piece of news.
"Oh," he finally says, and then, "What happened?"
"The usual," Greg says, and wonders just how cruel he's allowed to be. "We had a fight, it's over, it's done."
"When?"
"Before he left for work."
It's like a little light going off somewhere in Grissom's mind, like something rattling around has spontaneously found its place.
"Let me guess," Greg says, "he was a queen bitch tonight."
Grissom almost smiles at that - almost. "Close," he says. His eyes fall on a withered plant in the corner.
Greg follows his gaze. "That's Kenny," he says.
"Kenny?"
"South Park?" Greg says.
Grissom shakes his head.
"Never mind. I suck at house plants anyway." Greg drains his glass of water and goes back into the kitchen.
This time Grissom follows him. "Do you - need to talk?" he asks, clearly asking out of some sense of obligation. "About what happened?"
"No." Greg fills and drinks another glass of water. Man, he hasn't been thirsty like this since that time Nick decided he needed to take up running. He pushes the thought aside and sets his glass down on the counter.
"You're sure you didn't hit your head?" Grissom asks.
"Positive."
"Hm."
Greg rolls his eyes where Grissom can't see him, then turns to face him. "What does that mean?" he asks.
"I'm worried that you didn't see that tree."
"It's nothing," Greg tells him. "I was tired, it was late, I was angry - I shouldn't have been driving, okay? I know that."
"Good."
"And I won't do it again, dad."
Grissom does quirk a small smile, but smothers it quickly. "Good," he says again, but with a touch more warmth this time. "I'm sorry about Nick."
"I'm not."
Grissom raises an eyebrow. "No?"
"No. He treated me like shit and I'm done with him." Greg holds Grissom's gaze. "I just need to get my stuff back and I'm good."
"Do you need tomorrow off?"
He thinks about it. He still has Nick's key, he could get his stuff while he's not there and just have done with it. But that feels like cowardice, and he's never backed away from a fight in his life. "No," he says. "I'll be there."
"Greg," Grissom says, "you don't have to be superhuman about this."
He lets himself laugh. "I'm not," he says. "This is me, getting on with my life."
Grissom holds his gaze a while longer, then nods. "All right," he says, "but if you change your mind...."
"You'll be the first to know," Greg lies pleasantly.
After Grissom leaves, he strips down and stands in front of the mirror in the bathroom, looking at himself. Yep, he thinks, definitely going to need to soak that off. Showering just ain't gonna cut it.
***
He's not eavesdropping, Gil tells himself, not really. He's in the break room, legitimately looking for coffee filters for a titration he's improvising in his lab. It's not his fault that the showdown is happening next door, and that Greg's not bothering to keep his voice down.
"Forget it, Stokes."
"Come on, Greg."
"Me? Excuse me for wanting to have a say in my own life-"
"What? We talked about this-"
"No, ((you)) talked, and when I tried to say something, you took off."
"Jesus, Greg-" Nick stops, drops his voice from the near-shout he was reaching, tries again. "That's not fair."
"How is that not fair, Nick? You called all the shots. You still are. Fuck, I left you and you still think you're in charge."
"Can we have this conversation somewhere else?"
"No."
"Shhh!"
"NO! I'm sorry that who you are - who ((we)) are disgusts you, Nick, that you'd rather die than have anyone know what a fucking ((faggot)) you are, what a screaming ((cocksucker))-"
There's a sharp sound, and Gil almost drops the box of filters he's holding because that sounded an awful lot like someone being smacked. There's a long silence and he wonders if he should go next door and see what's going on.
"Fuck you, Stokes," Greg says eventually, and it's such a low, dead sound that it gives Gil the creeps, and he's not even in the same room.
"Shit, Greg, man, I'm sorry-"
"Get out. Of my fucking. Way."
There's a stomp of footsteps disappearing down the hall, and after another protracted silence there's another set, headed in the opposite direction. Gil looks up in time to see Nick walk by with a grim set to his jaw and his fists clenched at his sides.
Well well well, Gil thinks with a nasty taste in his mouth, what am I supposed to do about ((this))?
***
Between the MacGyvered science project in his lab and the case that Catherine is working, Gil doesn't get down to the DNA lab until much later, and he hesitates in the doorway for a bit, watching Greg move around his equipment.
He thinks for a moment that it's been too long since he's told him what a good job he does. Then he thinks, the guy's private life just went to hell, I'm sure the last thing he needs is a pat on the head from his socially inept boss.
He clears his throat, tries not to flinch at the look of cold steel that Greg nails him with when he turns around - and then covers immediately, trying to pretend he didn't just try to kill him with his eyes.
"Hi," Greg says, tries to smile and drops his attention back to the job at hand. "Sorry."
For what? Gil wants to ask. "How are you?" he says instead.
"Me? I'm fine."
"I, uh." He clears his throat again. "I heard what happened earlier, with Nick."
He sees the muscles across Greg's shoulders bunch up momentarily under his lab coat, and then he sees them relax slowly. "Yeah," Greg says, "sorry about that."
"Are you all right?"
"Sure."
"Greg..." Why is his throat so dry all of a sudden? "It sounded an awful lot like-"
"That was my fault." Greg glances up long enough to flash his teeth at Gil in what is presumably supposed to be some measure of humour. "I was baiting him. It's okay."
"It's not okay," Gil says.
"It is if I say it is," Greg informs him, slides one sample into a machine and turns to get another one ready.
"Greg-"
"Look, Grissom, I'm fine. Okay? Things are going to be fine."
He wants to argue with him, wants to know if that was the first time Nick's hit him, wants to know all the sordid little things that sent Greg out doing god knows what last night while Nick acted like a brat all shift and pissed everyone off. He wants to understand how something he didn't know about - something right under his nose that he was completely unaware of - could blow up so spectacularly, with so little warning.
"Okay," he says after a while of watching Greg's hands move from one delicate operation to another. "If you need to talk..."
"Got it."
Gil nods and leaves.
***
He hates gossip, he really does - nothing destroys a workplace faster than malice, and nothing transmits malice faster than people standing around a coffee machine. But in this one instance, this one particular case, it's not the worst thing he's encountered.
He gets the gist of it from Sara and Warrick, who have come to some sort of truce in their eternal fight in the light of a serious meltdown.
"Sanders a queer, okay," Sara is saying when Gil happens to be walking past the trace lab. "I get that. But Nick?" She shakes her head.
"Well..." Warrick shrugs uneasily with one shoulder. "I gotta say, I'm not that surprised."
"What?!"
"He's always seemed a little... forced about women, you know what I mean?"
"No."
Warrick sighs. "Well, anyway, whatever happened it ended badly."
"I wonder what Greg did to fuck it up."
Gil stands in the doorway and listens. He learned to be silent at some point in his life, he isn't sure when - with a deaf mother you'd think he'd never have bothered to learn the art of stealth - but he's always been glad of the skill.
Of course, he thinks, these are Nick's friends, naturally they're going to assume that it was Greg's fault. But at the same time...
He sighs, scares the daylights out of Sara, gives her one of his ill-defined looks that suggests disappointment, and keeps walking the way he was going.
Catherine catches him when he's halfway down the hall to his office. "Got a minute?" she asks, falling into step next to him.
"Sure," he says.
She waits until they're in his office. "You've got to do something about Nick," she tells him.
"I do?" he asks, going around his desk and sitting down.
"He just ripped Archie's head off because he's half an hour behind on the convenience store tapes," she tattled, "he almost slugged a suspect and, oh yeah, if anyone so much as looks at him funny he goes ballistic."
He looks at her for a while. "You've heard, I assume?" he says.
"Oh yeah." She drops into a chair across from him. "What's your take on it?"
"Honestly?" He considers it. "I think Nick is the problem."
She raises her eyebrows. "Oh?"
"It's - complicated. I overheard a conversation earlier, and then, well, there was last night."
"Yes," Catherine says, "I heard about that."
"You did?" What? ((How?))
"Brass asked me if I knew anything about it."
"Oh." He drums his fingers on the edge of his desk.
"So?" Catherine asks. "You gonna talk to him?"
He really doesn't want to. "Sure."
She grins at him. "Good man," she says, and leaves.
He doesn't feel like a particularly good man.
***
"Nick? You have a minute?"
He waits until the shift is wrapping up, until Nick is more or less on his way out of the building, and then he catches him in the hall outside the locker room. He's been waiting, and trying to make it look like he hasn't.
"Not really, Grissom," Nick says.
"Could you ((make)) one?" Gil asks, inflecting his voice in the most supervisory way he knows how.
Nick sighs, shrugs. "Sure," he says, "whatever."
They go back to Gil's office, where there's a door that closes and gives them a modicum of privacy. Well, the illusion of it anyway - people saw them walk in here, they're probably circling like bats outside in the hallway, their ears tuned to the specific frequency of glass.
"What's up?" Nick asks. He sounds tired.
"I'm sure you know the overall tenor of the rumours around here tonight," Gil says, noting the flare of anger that spikes in Nick's eyes. "I'll take that as a yes."
"Look, if anyone has a problem-"
"Nick, we have a zero-tolerance policy in effect at the lab. If anyone gives you any grief, I want to know about it."
Nick simmers across from him but doesn't say anything.
"Likewise," Gil continues, "if you give anyone ((else)) any grief, I will find out about it. It goes both ways. Right?"
Jaw clenched so hard it's a wonder Gil can't hear molars cracking. "Right," Nick agrees with visceral reluctance.
"What's personal is personal, Nick. It should stay out of the lab."
"Got it."
"Okay then. Have a good morning."
His happy thoughts of being a mature adult about this are gone by the time Greg clocks out for the night and he races across town to Nick's complex and hopes to hell he gets there first.
He does, and he pulls his keys out of his pocket and lets himself in. It feels overwhelmingly like coming home, but Greg forces the thought from his mind and goes instead into the bedroom. He wants to do this all at once, he's decided, so he's only taking the bare minimum. The clothes he can't live without, his CDs, his PlayStation 2 (he gets a good feeling of cruelty at that, knowing what a fit Nick is going to throw about losing it), the books he brought with him over the months.
Months. He stops, sweater in hand, half-stuffed into his duffel bag, and thinks about it. Let's see. They started dating in May, he more or less moved in that summer, so that would make it... hell, that would make it eleven months.
Eleven months. Man, how did he put up with this bullshit for eleven months?
He hears Nick come in then, hears him and stands up so he's not sitting down when it starts. Doesn't want to give him the advantage of height on top of everything else.
They meet in the hallway outside the bedroom. Nick's nostrils flare and Greg's eyebrows furrow.
"What are you doing here?" Nick asks.
"Getting my stuff," Greg says, "and returning your key."
Nick nods once, and looks down at the bag and the box Greg's working on. "You're not taking the PS2," he says.
"Yes," Greg tells him, "I am. It's mine."
"It's ours," Nick counters.
"First of all," Greg says, "anything that is ours is half mine at this point. And secondly, it isn't ours at all, it's MINE. It was a birthday present from my mother, remember?"
Nick frowns, thinks for a bit, then shrugs. "Right, fine," he says. "Take it, I don't care."
"I don't need your permission, Nick - it belongs to me."
"You know what?" Nick says. "Take whatever you want. I don't fucking care anymore."
Greg sighs, turns back to what he's doing. "You never did," he mumbles, thinks that Nick is probably sulking in the kitchen by now.
"What did you say?"
Ooops. He sighs, stands up again. "You never cared," he says, more loudly and with a much clearer enunciation than is strictly necessary. "If you did, you might have actually asked me what I wanted at some point in the last year, and then we wouldn't be doing this right now."
"Oh," Nick says with a huge and utterly humourless smile, and holds his arms out to the sides to make a point of some kind. "Oh, oh, I get it. I never asked you what you wanted, is that it? So this is all my fault?"
"Well," Greg says, "now that you ask... Yeah."
Nick is speechless for a moment, and it's nowhere near as funny as when Grissom was speechless yesterday. "You little shit," he seethes. "How do you figure any of this is my fault?"
"Well, let's see." Greg takes a step back, starts counting on his fingers. "One, there's the sex thing."
"What sex thing?" Nick demands.
"We haven't had SEX in - in - in FOREVER!"
"What? Greg, we have sex every goddamn day-"
"No," Greg says, "I go down on you every goddamn day. There's a difference."
Nick opens and shuts his mouth once or twice. "You said you liked it," he says.
"I did like it," Greg says, "back in the day. But I like a little variety now and then, you know? And I'd like a little attention paid to my dick by some part of your anatomy other than your hand."
Nick starts to blush, and it's strange that Greg can tell the difference between his blush and his flush of rage. "I can't do that," he says through clenched teeth, "I already told you."
"You can let me swallow you whole," Greg says, "you can grab hold of my fucking head and direct the action - but you can't even bring your face to within a foot of my crotch."
"Greg - I tried, man, you know I tried-"
"You won't fuck me, you won't let me fuck you - hell, you can barely even LOOK at me when I'm coming-"
Nick clenches his jaw. "I tried-" he says again.
"No," Greg says, "you didn't. You tried once, like nine months ago and haven't bothered to try again."
Nick clenches his jaw again and Greg watches him take a few deep breaths. "Fine," he says, "so we had a problem in bed."
"No," Greg says, " we didn't have a problem in bed - you had a problem."
"Whatever." It's pretty remarkable that Nick can talk at all without opening his mouth or even moving his lips.
"One," Greg says, "there's the sex thing. Two, the gay thing."
He watches Nick bristle at that. "I'm not gay, Greg-"
"No," Greg agrees, "by most accounts you aren't. I mean, you won't have sex with me, you won't touch me - not even hold my hand, not even when we're alone. You won't go to movies with me, you won't even let me rent a gay movie - even if it's not porn - you can't stand the thought of being seen in public with any of my gay friends, you don't even like Eric because he's a little TOO gay for you - nope, you're not gay. Okay, so you share a bed with a guy - okay, so that's a little strange - but it's definitely not gay."
"Look," Nick says, "I'm from Texas, okay? We do things a little differently there."
"Yeah," Greg says, "no shit. So, where were we? Oh yeah. One: the sex thing. Two: the gay thing. Three: the secret thing."
"Now wait just a damn minute-"
"No." Greg pulls himself up to his full height, crosses his arms on his chest. "You never even wanted people to know we were hanging out."
"They might have put it together-"
"What," Greg demanded, "that the two geeks from night shift play video games sometimes? Go out for pizza? Are actually friends?"
"In Texas-"
"WE-ARE-NOT-IN-TEXAS-NICK."
There's a long silence between them. Nick's nostrils are flared and he's breathing heavily, and Greg is so close to crying he's not sure if he should throw something at Nick or go hide under the bed.
"Well," Nick eventually says, still furious, "if this is how you feel, why did you stick around?"
"I don't know," Greg admits. "I honestly don't." He wants to laugh, now, can feel his shoulders start to shake. "I'm losing it, Nick," he says, "I should have bailed ten months ago."
Nick tenses up again. "Well I'm sorry that you've wasted ten months of your life, Greg," he snaps, "I'm sorry that I was such a - a distraction from your happy, gay little life. But you know what? I've just had a really shitty day, you know that? People are talking about me, saying things they have no goddamn right to say, and to top it off, Grissom tore me a new one just as I was leaving."
Greg goggles at him. "Excuse me?" he squeaks. "I think I win the 'honey I had a bad day' contest, Nick. Everyone at work thinks I fucked you over, and you hit me in the FACE. Is any of this ringing a bell?"
Nick blanches, suddenly, takes a startled step back. "Jesus, Greg, I already said I was sorry-"
"Whatever, Nick." Greg pulls his key from his pocket, works Nick's front door key from the ring and throws it over Nick's head into the living room. "I'm out of here."
He goes into the bedroom and grabs his duffel bag, slings it over his shoulder and kicks the box along in front of him. There's a moment in the narrow hallway when it looks like Nick isn't going to move for him, then he does: he bends down and picks up the box, carries it down the hallway to the front door.
When he turns around he looks exhausted. Exhausted and broken. "So," he says.
Greg swallows hard, instructs himself not to break down and sob like a baby until he's in his car, and takes the box from Nick's arms. "Thanks," he says, won't meet his eyes.
"Shit, Greg..." Nick touches his shoulder.
Greg shrugs his hand off. "Later," he says, and stumbles out into the night with his worldly possessions.
***
Gil drives by the place again, unsure. He wants to go in and check up on him - on his way out of the building at around ten-thirty this morning he heard a vicious version of the fight from earlier, as relayed through a security guard, two lab techs from day shift and the secretary at the front desk. According to the story, Greg had cheated on Nick, lied to him, given him syphilis and then desecrated his grandmother's grave.
He thinks, by tomorrow it's going to be even worse.
And he really wants - he does - to see that Greg is okay.
Ah, what the hell, he thinks, and sees a parking spot about half a block up. It can't really hurt, and by tomorrow night Greg is going to need everyone on his side he can get.
He strolls back along the block, wondering how he came automatically to be on Greg's side. Sure, okay, he heard what actually happened between them near the break room, he knows who slapped who, and that's got to bias a guy. Plus he got a look at Greg in crisis the night before, and it was a pretty painful sight.
He wonders if maybe because Greg is younger, Gil's got a protective instinct in him that makes him side with the 'kid'. That much he supposes is built into the genetic makeup of being human - protect the younger generation, because without them we're nothing. But Greg's not much of a kid, not really - not since he started working outside of the lab, assuming he had any innocence left before that.
He reaches for the door buzzer, scans the list next to the box for Greg's name, and is about to ring up when the door opens. An older woman is coming out, smiles openly at him and holds the door for him.
"Thank you," he says softly.
He climbs the stairs - third floor, as he recalls, and the elevator looks a little rickety - and hesitates before Greg's door. He can hear music, but it's not the painful cacophony he's used to hearing from the DNA lab. It's - classical. Vivaldi?
He knocks.
"Fuck off," comes the eventual reply, in a voice wracked by misery.
He knocks again. "Greg?" he calls out. "It's Grissom." He winces, clears his throat. "It's... me."
There's a shuffle of feet and the door opens. Greg looks out at him. "Grissom?" he asks uncertainly. "What...?"
The sight of Greg with tears running down his face, his eyes rimmed in red and his whole body - usually so electric, so alive - in such a complete slump... It takes Gil's breath away, and he takes a step forward, brings his hands up to Greg's shoulders before he realizes he's done it.
"Greg," he says, "what happened?"
Greg snuffles and shrugs, his shoulders jumpy under Gil's hands. "Nothing," he says, and wipes at his face. "You wanna come in?"
Gil closes the door behind him, takes a few steps inside, trying to ignore the little voice in the back of his head that's telling him he doesn't want to get sucked into this. That this is not his problem, that he should let them sort it out on their own.
But then he sees Greg sidestep a box of clothes and books and he thinks, I'm already sucked into this. Have been since that damn fight. No, he corrects, since the night before, at the side of the road into town. Who knew?
He takes a breath, lets it out slowly. "How are you?" he asks.
Greg lets himself drop onto an ugly sofa, and pushes a stack of CDs onto the floor from the chair next to him, clearing a space for Gil. "Been worse," he says, "been better."
Gil wants to ask about 'worse', wants to know what else has happened to him in his short life. "Tell me about it," he says simply.
Greg hesitates like he isn't sure he should say anything, then he lets his shoulders fall against the cushions. "Nick - I don't even know where to start."
"Pick somewhere," Gil suggests with a warm smile. "I'm sure I can fill in the blanks."
Greg shakes his head slowly. "I'm sure you can," he says, and lets his head loll against the fraying back of the couch. "Well, let's see." He looks up at the ceiling and after a long time he smiles sadly. "Nick's from Texas," he says, and then stops.
"...and?" Gil prompts eventually.
"No," Greg says, "that's about it."
"He's from Texas." It's not that he doesn't get it, exactly - well, okay, Gil admits, he doesn't get it.
"That seems to be the root of all his prob - of all our problems."
"Texas."
"Real cowpokes aren't gay."
"Ah."
"It started in February," Greg continues.
Gil wonders what started - the dating, or the problems? But Greg doesn't need an interrogation, he needs someone to listen. "Oh?"
"We agreed not to do anything mushy or stupid for Valentine's - you know, we both worked that night, yadda, whatever - but the next weekend I made him dinner, got a good bottle of wine, you know - bought him a CD that he wanted - god, I bought Shania Twain for him, how humiliating is that? I mean I actually stood in line in public, me, and bought - never mind."
Gil grins even though Greg can't see it. Maybe because Greg can't see it.
Greg shudders melodramatically and sighs deeply. "So I went all out for him, in my own way of course - I thought he'd like it. I mean, it was just us, we were at home, no one else was going to be there, no one was going to see anything..."
"What happened?"
"Well." Greg licks his lips. "First, he flipped out. Went nuts, said I was crazy, what if someone had seen me buying the wine, the music, the fucking candles - I had candles, you know, it was pretty-" He sighs again, a little huff of air, and lets his eyes close.
Gil can sense a fresh wave of tears building behind those eyelids, and his heart hammers. "Greg," he hears himself say, "I have to ask you this - has Nick ever hit you before?"
Greg laughs, his shoulders shaking once or twice and then falling still. "No," he says, "he probably wanted to but - no. Maybe he should have. I would have left a long time ago if he'd-" His voice hitches and Gil winces, wants to do something to ease his pain but hasn't got a clue what.
After a few shaky breaths, Greg lifts his head, wipes his eyes and looks around. "Shit," he says, as though seeing the place for the first time. He half-hiccups, half-laughs. "This place is a mess."
Gil looks around too, tries to keep a straight face. "It's not that bad," he says.
"Ha."
"No, it - okay, it's pretty bad. But I've seen worse."
"Yeah, there's usually a dead body in the middle of the floor, though."
Gil comes close to smiling at him. "Well, yes," he concedes. "So hire someone to come in and clean."
"What?"
"Call one of those house cleaning services, pay them to come in and deal with this while you're at work."
"Isn't that expensive?"
Gil shrugs. "Just once, not really. It's better than doing it yourself."
Greg is looking at him strangely, with something bordering on suspicious respect. "You sound like you're speaking from experience," he says.
Gil shrugs. "I get caught up in work," he says, "so yeah, once in a while."
Greg looks at him for a long moment and Gil's not sure what he's supposed to be doing. Then Greg starts laughing, and it's a real laugh and because this time he's crying out of something like hysteria, Gil starts to laugh, too.
It takes them almost a full minute to rein themselves back in, and when they do, when they're sitting facing each other and not laughing like idiots anymore, Greg shakes his head.
"Thanks," he says.
Gil returns the sheepish smile he sees. "For what?"
"Making me laugh. I needed that."
Gil glances away, still grinning. "So did I," he says softly.
***
It's like his batteries have been recharged when Greg arrives at work the next day.
He dyed his hair blue after Gil left, called his friend Eric to come over and do something drastic with an electric razor to the back - he still hasn't seen it, but what he can tell by touch makes him grin evilly - and he bummed some really obnoxious music from Eric's boyfriend. Hell, even he can't stand the noise on the disc, but this is about image, it's not about substance.
It's about pissing Nick off.
And he gets a fucking beautiful chance to do it, too, not half an hour after he gets there. He's settling in for the night in the lab, figuring out exactly how loud he can blast the racket and still be able to concentrate on his work, when he gets the distinct impression that someone is watching him.
He turns, has a stupid smile ready to spring on his observer if it's Nick - and look, it is. "Hey," he says loudly, refusing to be rattled.
"Look," Nick says, just as loudly. It's clear he wants to kill the music but he doesn't want to come inside Greg's domain to do it. So he stands at the door and yells as quietly as he can.
"What?" Greg calls back. He scoots across the lab floor on his chair to his computer. He moved the CD player as soon as he got in, it's tucked out of sight in a new place and Nick doesn't know where it is. Doesn't know that Greg is sitting with his thumb against the power button, just waiting.
"Look," he tries again, "I just want to-"
Greg tenses, tries not to let his smile falter, itches his thumb a little more snugly against the button.
"I want to say I'm-" Click, silence. "-SORRY!" Still hollering, and looky looky: more than a few heads have turned to look at him.
Greg manages to keep his triumphant aria inside his head at the sudden flush of anger that creeps up the sides of Nick's face. "What?" he asks innocently.
"Fuck you, Sanders," he grits out between clenched teeth, and stalks out.
And it just gets better from there.
Because before he knows it he's standing between Grissom and Nick, and Grissom is listening to his long-winded explanation about the mitochondrial DNA from some degraded evidence, and Nick is still bristling and finally Grissom sighs, turns to face him and says, "Nick, if you're not going to pay attention, go vibrate somewhere else."
Cha-ching!
Nick clamps down on his tension and lasts through to the end of Greg's monologue, mutters something that might be 'thanks' and walks away.
Before he gets out of earshot, though, Gil says (too, too casually), "I like your hair, Greg. Blue suits you."
And he thinks, I could kiss you right now, Grissom, because he couldn't have asked for a better rebound gift. He bounces back to his lab, still high on the conspiratorial little grin Gil gives him at the last second, and he breezes through the rest of the night. He even leaves the music off this time, and Jacqui and Bobby sort of smile at him.
When he gets home, though, sitting in his apartment and looking at it and thinking that he should hire someone to clean it one of these nights, something filters through the caffeine layers of his brain.
I could kiss you right now, Grissom.
I could kiss you right now, Grissom.
I could kiss you...
He sighs, slumps deeper into the cushions, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dammit.
It's not that he doesn't know that Grissom is sexy, not that he hasn't had a few idle thoughts here and there, it's not that he sort of had to convince himself that Nick was good for him at the start there. No no no. And it's not that he's always had a thing for older guys, it's not that intelligence is the best damn aphrodisiac money can buy, it's not that when he finally talked Nick into wearing his glasses on occasion he started having terrible flashes of what Grissom would look like lying next to him in nothing but glasses.
Nope. Not even -
No, wait. Yes, even.
Yes absolutely.
Yes Grissom all the way, who had he been trying to kid with Nick? Nick who was way too young, Nick who was too hung up on what other people thought, too hung up on what he thought other people thought, too self-absorbed and paranoid to actually let himself enjoy what they'd had -
He can imagine what Grissom would be like. But.
...he won't.
He grits his teeth, forces himself to his feet and starts picking things up. His favourite time-waster, his favourite thing to do to keep his hands busy: cleaning. Not. But it needs to be done, and at the very least he'll be too tired after he scrubs this place down ceiling to floor to mope about it.
He thinks, so Grissom didn't freak that you're gay. Didn't freak that you and Nick hate each other. Stuck it to Nick, in fact, in his own way.
Doesn't mean he's interested in you, Greggo, though, does it?
Hm.
Doesn't actually mean that he's not interested, though, does it?
Hmm.
Gil lets his work swallow him for the next few days - three double homicides, unrelated and all over Clarke County - gotta love the summer heat, he thinks. He keeps a weary ear to the vine nonetheless, decides that Nick and Greg have reduced their sudden-death hostilities to a slow simmer, and in his long hours of absence from the lab neither of them has killed the other.
He comes back after four exhausting days of chasing down minuscule particles in impossible cases to find out that, even if Nick and Greg aren't at each other's throats, the rest of the night shift seems to be waging a subtle war against their resident DNA tech.
For what it's worth, Greg seems to be taking it in stride, has started listening to obnoxious music full blast again, added purple and peroxide highlights to his blue hair, and has developed a mean tongue that he lashes at anyone who crosses him.
"Is this a bad time?" Gil asks when he has a free moment to drop in and visit.
Greg looks up and grins at him, turns the volume way down and shakes his head. "No such thing as a bad time in Greg-land," he says.
Gil raises his eyebrows. "Greg-land?" he asks.
"Yeah, didn't the border guard ask you for ID?"
Gil looks over his shoulder at where Greg is looking, finds himself on the receiving end of one of Jacqui's 'just humour him' looks, and turns back with a smile. "I bribed my way in," he says.
"Ooh - contraband. Whatchagot?"
"Well..." Gil digs into his pockets. "I have... a parking ticket from the middle of nowhere, I have a scrap of paper with three numbers on it that mean nothing to me - no, wait, better not get rid of that, they might come back to me. And... half a pack of gum."
"Sold on the last one," Greg says, and actually holds his hand out.
Gil grins and tosses the gum at him. "You cleaned me out," he says.
"I'll have a word with my border guard," Greg assures him and squirrels the gum away somewhere. "Make sure she doesn't take all the good stuff next time."
"Border guards are uppity," Gil says, and there's a sudden shift in perspective and he realizes what this must look like to someone else. Gil Grissom having a nonsense conversation with Greg Sanders for no reason whatsoever.
"Tell me about it," Greg continues. "She wants to unionize."
"With whom?"
Greg points at him. "Good question," he says. "You want to head up Greg-land's Department of Homeland Security?"
"In exchange for...?"
Greg thinks. "Fifty percent of the spoils of war?"
Gil shrugs. "Sounds fair," he says.
The pack of gum reappears and Greg pulls half of the sticks out, and tosses the rest of the pack back to Gil. "It's retroactive," he explains. "So get cracking on the border guard scandal, Chief, and I'll see what other spoils of war I can scare up."
"If it came from this lab, Greg, I honestly don't think I'm all that interested."
Greg pretends to look hurt, but it doesn't last long. "How're your cases?"
"They're impossible," Gil tells him cheerfully, "which is not to say that I won't solve them."
"Good."
"How are you holding up?"
Greg shrugs, drops his eyes to the counter for the first time since Gil appeared. "I'm okay," he says. "Finally got my place clean, you know. I hardly recognize it."
"I meant with Nick," Gil says. "With the others."
Another shrug. "Been better," he says, "been worse."
Gil narrows his eyes. "One of these days," he says, "I'm going to get you to explain what that means."
Greg looks up again and smiles. "It's bad form for the Director of Greg-land Security to be interrogating the Dictator-at-Large, you know," he says. "Bad for job security."
"Well, maybe I'd better head back to Gil-land, then," Gil says, and tosses the pack of gum at him again. "While I still have some scruples left."
"And you're returning the kickback?" Greg asks, his eyebrows climbing. "I'll be damned. There is a moral backbone in this corruptible world."
Gil grins. "When you least expect it," he says, "it'll jump out and bite you in the ass."
"Promises, promises," Greg mutters.
Gil laughs. "Later," he says.
***
He sits in his office for a while, doing paperwork and wondering why all of a sudden, after four brutal days of being lied to by strangers, he's feeling content. Sure, home turf, he thinks, that'll make anyone breathe a little easier, but this is ridiculous.
Catherine calls him on it a few hours later, when he fails to rip her a new one for slipping up with one of their suspects.
"Who hit you with a happy stick?" she asks, leaning against his door frame.
"What?"
"You came in here like a thunderstorm," she tells him, "and now you're smiling and letting me get away with stupid shit."
"You want me to ream you out?" he offers pleasantly.
She holds up her hands in surrender. "Not that I'm complaining," she assures him and backs out of the room. "It suits you, you know. Happy." She waggles her fingers at him and disappears.
It suits you. The words echo in his head for a bit, sound like something he said not so long ago, and then they settle: Greg.
That's what it is, he thinks, that's what managed to turn his mood from foul to fair - his inane little flirt with Greg. His visit to Greg-land. It brought back a ghost of a kind, of the time when Brass was in charge and he still had time in his life to have fun.
He used to date, he thinks, only right now he can't remember when the last time was. He used to laugh and enjoy the sheer intellectual thrill of his job. Now that thrill is blunted by paperwork and looking over people's shoulders and sitting through Ecklie's endless status meetings and he can't remember the last time he did something just for the hell of it.
No, wait, he corrects. He dropped by to say hi to Greg just for the hell of it, and see what a difference it made in his day?
Interesting. Cause, or effect?
He grins, and thinks maybe he should conduct a little experiment to test his hypothesis.
***
Greg's new weapon of choice in the war against the CSIs is competence. He's going to outclass, outperform and generally outdo all of them.
Except, possibly (inevitably), Grissom.
But that's okay, because Grissom is at worst neutral, and at best marginally on his side. He doesn't need to show Grissom up. Which is good, he thinks, because he'd kill himself trying and never get past the foothills.
He discovered entirely by accident that there's a specific volume for any given type of music at which he can ignore it completely. He's not sure why that is - any louder or any softer and he notices it, he starts singing and air-drumming and dancing. But at that particular volume, whatever it is for the music in question, he can tune it out completely, and not even notice when the disc is done.
So he keeps music on all the time now, not just when the mood strikes him, and he works like a maniac. Jacqui's got her hands full with one particularly gruesome case and isn't using two pieces of equipment in her corner of the lab, and she trades Greg the use of them in exchange for putting on one of her CDs.
"I mean," she says, "since we ALL have to listen to it..."
"Cool," Greg says, "excellent," because he doesn't care what it is, he's not going to be listening to it. But he needs something going when Nick and Warrick and Sara come down to sneer at him. Baby, he thinks, Greggo's gonna sneer right back.
His first stun of the night is Catherine, who (to be fair to her) seems equally ticked off at Nick as she does at Greg. But anyway: she's his first catch, and he has his results back to her not only in record time but also colour-coded and collated, spreadsheet layout designed by G. Sanders.
She looks at him, looks at the report (typed, presented in a clear plastic folder that he stole from Hodges' desk when he wasn't looking, quite possibly the most professional thing Greg has done since he left grad school) and then looks at him again.
"That was... fast," she says and narrows her eyes.
He sparkles, or at least he does his best to sparkle. "The new, streamlined, totally Nick-free Greg is a wonder machine," he says.
She shakes her head. "I'll believe that when you're still doing it in two weeks," she says on her way out.
Greg grins at her back. In two weeks, he thinks, he's going to be even faster.
Next up are Sara and Warrick, tag-teaming on a hit-and-run, and with their usual communications skills manage to both come down looking for the same results within five minutes of each other. The new Greg, however, is a psychic on top of it all, and he has two blockbuster copies waiting for them.
His best catch by far, however, is Nick, who tries to make a joke about it as he examines the glossy report Greg hands him wordlessly.
"If I'd have known you'd work faster, I'd have dumped you ages ago," he says.
Greg shows him his teeth. "You didn't dump me," he says and tries to force a little pleasantness out between his clenched jaws, "I left you."
Nick flashes his most insincere grin and shrugs with one shoulder. "Yeah, sure," he says, "whatever."
"You're not really good at remembering the way things happen, are you?" Greg asks, fully aware that Jacqui is listening. "I mean, in your version I was deadweight, whereas in what we like to call 'reality', I ditched you."
"Keep telling yourself that, man," Nick says.
"I don't have to," Greg says, "because it's the truth. You only have to practice lies."
Nick shakes his head and leaves with his report, and Greg's mood is starting to ebb but then he sees that Jacqui is giving him a thumbs up and so is Archie, from the door to the A/V lab.
Dude, he thinks, I rule.
After three days of ridiculous half-conversations with Greg that earn him increasingly wary looks from Catherine and Brass, Gil decides to move on to phase two of his social experiment.
He's been hearing some grudgingly good things about Greg's work lately, which he translates from Greg-sucks (which is the lingua franca in the field these days) to mean that he's doing something outstanding. He wanders down to officially let him know that he's impressed and watches unseen from the corridor for a few minutes while Greg moves like a whirlwind through his lab.
At the speed he's moving, Gil thinks, it honestly looks like he's got a third arm in there somewhere.
Greg screeches to a halt abruptly, and sighs dramatically.
"What?" Gil asks.
Greg turns, startled, and grins sheepishly. "It's the printer," he says. "It's the slowest part of my operation. It's making me look bad."
"From what I hear," Gil says, "you're looking anything but bad."
"Well," Greg says, "flattery will get you almost everywhere..."
"I mean it," Gil says. "Whatever you're doing seems to be working."
Is Greg actually blushing at that? Hm. Gil makes a note in his mental spiral notebook, the one labelled 'Sanders Observations'.
"Well, you know," Greg says, and tugs impatiently at the sheet of paper spooling out of the printer.
Gil watches him work for another few seconds, though he's not moving at the nigh-invisible clip from earlier. "It's Tuesday," he says after a while.
Greg looks up. "...gold star for Grissom?" he hazards.
Gil grins. "Let's celebrate."
"Celebrate your gold star?"
"Celebrate Tuesday."
"What's to celebrate about Tuesday?"
"It's not Monday," Gil says.
"This is true," Greg concedes, and slides his sheaf of papers into a folder and sticks a label on the cover. "So... okay. How does the Greater Tufted Grissom celebrate Tuesdays?"
"It's a serious affair," Gil says with a knitted brow. "It involves malt beverages. And the possibility of nachos."
"Ah." Greg manages to look sombre. "I understand. Sounds very... grave."
"Very."
Greg sighs. "Well, I suppose one does what one must..."
"The Greater Tufted Grissom Appreciation Society is grateful for your support," Gil continues.
"Well, the sovereign state of Greg-land has always supported the Greater Tufted Grissom Appreciation Society," Greg says.
Gil nods, manages to keep a serious look on his face. "A Society board member will be in contact with his Sovereign Greg-ness to arrange a time and a place," he says.
"Excellent," Greg says. "His Sovereign Greg-ness will ensure that his engagement calendar is kept empty this morning."
"The Society is glad to hear it."
"And his Sovereign Greg-ness is likewise glad."
They look at each other gravely for a few seconds, then Gil nods, and on the edge of laughing he turns and walks away.
He catches a look from Jacqui that suggests that he's on drugs. He shrugs, tries to keep his stupid smile from his face and lets his feet guide him back to his office, where all he has to do is keep from laughing until the paperwork is done. Then the day is all his, and he can laugh all he wants.
***
The bar that Gil chose is across town in a quieter neighbourhood, well away from the tourist strip but worldly enough that it serves beer and bar fare at nine in the morning.
Greg gets there before Gil does, and as he sits in the booth and tears the napkin into fine strips he thinks, This has to be a joke. It's all an elaborate setup to humiliate me, and Nick is probably hiding in the john with a camera and laughing himself sick.
Then Grissom arrives in a leather jacket that makes Greg swallow hard, and he slides into the seat across from him and smiles. "Sorry I'm late," he says, "traffic."
Greg's not sure if he's more surprised that Grissom actually showed up, or that he owns a jacket that sexy. It's just a leather blazer, he thinks, that's it - but it fits him like a fucking glove and it's amazing in some weird way to see him without his ID badge hanging around his neck.
"Greg?"
"Huh?" He pulls his eyes up from the lapels of Gil's jacket. "Yeah," he says, "sorry. I just - jacket."
Gil looks down and then back up uncertainly. "Jacket?" he echoes. "Jackets in general, or mine in particular?"
Greg swallows again. "It's nice," he says. "Haven't seen it before."
"I don't wear it much," Gil says. "It's not exactly a field jacket, is it."
Not unless the field in question is clover, Greg thinks, then stamps his foot down hard on that train of thought. Not going there, he instructs himself, not while Gil is actually sitting across from you.
He pulls an envelope out of his pocket and slides it across to Gil. "Brought you something," he says.
"Oh?" Gil raises his eyebrows and opens the envelope. A laminated business-card-sized piece of cardboard slides out into his hand, and he holds it up to the light to examine it.
On one side it says, "Greater Tufted Grissom Appreciation Society" and has a hand-drawn picture of an owl that has a certain familiarity about the facial features. On the other side it says "Charter Member 000 and Chapter President - Las Vegas".
Gil turns it over a couple times and laughs. "Did you draw this?" he asks, tapping the owl.
"Yeah," Greg says.
"It's good," Gil says, and takes his glasses out to look at it better. "I didn't know you could do caricatures."
"I can't, really. It just worked out." Greg looks over at the bar, wonders what it takes to get some freaking service because if Gil does one more sexy thing on top of the jacket and glasses combo, Greg is going to die of dehydration. As it is he can barely speak for the sudden itch in his throat.
"I love it," Gil says. "Did you make yourself one?"
Greg looks back at him and swallows again. "Yeah," he says, and pulls his wallet out. He takes his own card out, which identifies him as Charter Member 001 and Diplomatic Representative for Greg-land.
Gil looks at the owl again. "Is my hair really that - tufted?" he asks.
Greg grins. "No," he says. "It's a little - something, in the front - but it's not tufted."
Gil raises his eyebrows. "What about the front?"
"It's not a bad thing," Greg says, "it just is. It's kind of cute, actually," and he almost dies of embarrassment at his choice of words and wriggles out of the booth. "I'm going to get a drink," he says. "What do you want?"
"Whatever," Gil says.
"Sure. Be right back." He bee-lines for the bar.
***
Gil looks at his card again while Greg is gone, wonders when he found the time to make it and then remembers how manically quickly he was working when he dropped in to say hi. He must suddenly have a lot of free time on his hands, he thinks, and he shoots that thought on sight for making him sound like a supervisor when he's sitting in a bar.
He picks up Greg's own card and holds it next to his for comparison. The owl is an exact copy, so Greg must have scanned the original - the 000 card one - onto a computer and printed it out. Which suggested that more of these cards could be made.
If anyone else would be likely to find it funny.
Maybe it isn't funny, he thinks suddenly. Maybe it's just him and Greg and they're both insane. In which case they might as well be insane together, since it's arguably a lot more fun.
Fun. There's a thought that Gil hasn't had in a long time. Fun. Fun is....
He thinks about it.
Fun is doing the crossword. Fun is unravelling a Gordian knot of evidence and motive. Fun is figuring something out on his own for the first time. Fun is creeping Catherine out with tarantulas. Fun is creeping Ecklie out with tarantulas. Fun is-
Fun is hanging out with Greg. And isn't that interesting.
He looks up as Greg comes towards him with a pitcher of beer and two glasses.
"They didn't have anything particularly inspiring on tap," Greg apologizes as he unloads his burden and scoots into the booth again, "but they did have Rickard's."
"Sounds great," Gil says and he watches as Greg pours. "I've been making a list of things that are fun," he announces.
"Oh yeah?" Greg asks. "What have you got so far?"
"Mostly tarantulas," Gil admits.
Greg looks up at him with big eyes for a moment, then laughs. "Okay," he says, "I can see that. If you're you, I mean, I can see that."
"What's fun in your book?"
"Surfing," Greg says immediately. "Dancing. Winning."
"Things ending in -ing," Gil observes with a smile. "Winning at what?"
"Anything. And that ends in -ing, too."
"So anything is fun?"
"Depends who you're doing it with," Greg says. "I ordered some assorted deep fried things, too. Breakfast of champions." He holds up his glass.
Gil touches his glass to Greg's, and they drink. "So what else is fun?" he asks again.
"Let's see... sex - obviously. Um... music, clobbering Hodges intellectually, clobbering Hodges physically - well, I can only extrapolate that but I'm pretty confident in the projection - um..." Greg drums his fingers on the table. "Going to the top of a mountain and screaming. Camping. Well, camping if you're with fun people - if you're with the Scouts it sucks because they really don't like you to have sex in your Scout tents."
"How old were you in the Scouts?" Gil asks with a faintly horrified expression.
"Maybe it wasn't the Scouts," Greg says thoughtfully. "Whatever the next badge up is. Whatever. They have no sense of humour, anyway."
"No," Gil concedes, "they probably don't." He's starting to feel old, listening to Greg rattle off things that are fun - they come so easily to him, so quickly and his choices are so energized.
Greg is staring off into space. "What else is fun... making ice cream is fun. Eating two and a half pounds of jelly beans and watching all of the Star Trek movies back to back is fun."
Gil blinks. "It is?"
"Sure," Greg says. "Well... it's a little nauseating in the middle there, but... you know. The overall experience is fun. You have to pace yourself, though."
"How do you pace yourself through - what is it, seven movies?"
"Ten now," Greg corrects him, "but who's counting. The secret is discipline."
"Discipline?"
"And strict rationing of jelly beans. And it helps if you have a stash of chocolate-covered coffee beans on hand, too, because at about number eight you really need an edge."
Gil is shaking his head slowly. "That's... remarkable."
Greg meets his eyes. "Well I don't do it OFTEN," he defends. "Just... once in a while, it has to be done."
"Has to be done."
"Has to be done," Greg asserts. "For reasons of mental health."
"The improvement thereof?" Gil asks doubtfully.
"But of course!" Greg takes a long sip of his beer.
Gil watches him swallow and lick his lips, and there's a painful lurch somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. "Do you do anything 'fun' that sane people might enjoy?"
"Define 'sane'," Greg challenges. "I bungee-jumped naked once."
That takes a moment and a half to process. "Why?"
Greg shrugs. "It was a hundred bucks to jump," he says, "or free if you went naked. A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks."
The image of Greg naked is a distracting one for some ill-defined reason that Gil doesn't want to think about. Supervisor, age difference, recent breakup. There: three perfectly good reasons not to even contemplate it. Too bad his brain isn't listening.
"Bungee-jumping - naked or otherwise - is not sane, Greg."
"And tarantulas are?" Greg asks. "All right, let's think of something mutually fun."
Sex springs immediately to mind for Gil, and he's delighted beyond words that the busboy shows up then with a plate of crunchy things.
"I like games," Greg says, pulling an onion ring apart. "But I've heard about you and poker, and I can imagine you and Trivial Pursuit, and I can't quite picture you and charades, soo..."
"Why not charades?" Gil asks.
Greg raises his eyebrows. "Can't quite picture you at Greg charades," he specifies. "Death metal and euphemisms for sex, mostly."
Ah. What's there to say to that? "So no games, then."
"I like picnics," Greg says.
"Picnics are good," Gil says. "I can do picnics."
"I bet you can," Greg says with a wicked grin. "I bet it's all wasps and ants and daddy long-legs."
"Not exclusively."
Greg tops up their glasses. "So we have picnics in common," he says. "What else?"
***
By the time they stagger out into daylight it's almost noon, and Greg fumbles with his shades while Gil slides his on coolly. Greg watches out the corner of his eye, wondering why that one action is so deadly hot.
"Are you okay to drive?" Gil asks.
"Yes, dad," Greg mutters. "I only had three beers and that was over the course of three hours and more lard than I've eaten in a long time."
"Just checking," Gil says and holds up his hands defensively. "I'd hate for them to pull you over again."
"And what about you?" Greg asks. "What if they pull you over?"
Gil grins. "They never pull me over," he says. "See you tonight?"
"I'll be there," Greg says with a smile, and watches Gil walk towards his truck.
It's not right, he thinks, that someone like Gil Grissom should be so obscenely sexy. And it's not just the glasses or the sunglasses or the leather jacket or the fact that he's single-handedly smarter than most people Greg has ever met.
It's everything and it sucks because he can't do anything about it.
He mopes out to his car once Gil is gone, and goes home to absolutely resolutely NOT jerk off in the shower while thinking of leather jackets and greasy fingers being licked clean.
Not even a little bit.
A couple days later, once word gets around that Grissom and Greg were spotted leaving a bar together, Nick starts to hang around the lab more often.
At first Greg is irritated because Nick is starting to flirt again, and the last goddamn thing he wants is to get back into THAT bed of denial. Then he's sort of relieved, because at least Nick's not trying to obliterate him anymore, and the other CSIs seem to read this as back to normal and they relax.
And then it's back to irritation, because he really is flirting, really is trying to give it - to give them another go.
"Nick," he finally says when he's had enough of the puppy-dog eagerness and he's stifling an urge to kick him in the seat of his pants, "I'm not sure if you got the inter-office memo or not, but we're not dating anymore."
"I know that," Nick says with an easy shrug and damned if that drawl isn't making an appearance again. Only now it's not cute, it's obnoxious.
"So... go moon over someone else."
Nick laughs. "I'm not mooning over you, Greggo," he says. "I just... kinda miss you is all."
"That IS mooning, Nick-o, and the answer is no."
"I haven't even asked a question yet."
"But you're going to," Greg points out, "eventually you are going to ask me a question, and the answer is no. No I won't loan you my PS2, no you can't come over and play it, no you can't crash at my place when you 'accidentally' lock yourself out. No, no, no."
Nick bristles but lets it slide. "That was the old me," he says. "This is the new me."
"What new you?" Greg asks.
"The one that Warrick and Sara and everyone knows is - knows kinda digs guys, right? That one. Isn't that what you wanted?"
Oh Jesus, Greg thinks, please let us go back to trying to kill each other. "No," he says. "I mean, yes. Wanted. Want- ED. Past tense. Present tense? Not so much."
"Why?" Nick is still easy, still affable and charming. "What changed?"
Greg sighs. "I changed, Nick. I spent eleven months with you being someone I didn't like being, and I don't want to do it again."
"It won't be like that, I promise."
Greg closes his eyes before he rolls them in Nick's face. "No," he agrees, "it won't be, because it's not going to happen. It's over. It's done."
"Well."
Greg opens his eyes again to find that Nick is on the edge of getting angry.
"I guess it wasn't that serious to you after all," Nick says, "'cause you sure got over it real fast."
"Nick... it was serious. I was serious about it. You should have clued in when I moved in with you, you know? But then... it wasn't serious to you. And now I see that it would never have worked out, so it's better this way."
"Right." Nick nods, backs out of the lab with his hands in his pockets. "I guess I just don't measure up to Gil Grissom, huh?"
Greg lets his mouth fall open. "What?"
"Everyone's talking about it, you know," Nick says. "But maybe you just like being gossiped about. Maybe that's what you get off on." He stars to walk away.
"You don't KNOW what I get off on!" Greg hollers after him, and instantly wishes he could catch the words before anyone hears them.
Jacqui is staring at him, and he knows if he turns around then he'll see Archie and Hodges gaping at him like the stunned fish that they so frequently imitate.
He stomps back to his lab and turns the music up just enough that he hears it. It's one of Jacqui's discs again, some Evanescence-wannabe that really don't do it for him right now. He hits stop, pops the disc out, and sends it skipping across the hall to Jacqui's lab.
Grrr. And he'd been having such a good day.
***
Gil comes in covered in mud and sludge and something undefinable that he seriously doesn't want to define, and he strips down in the locker room and scours himself raw in the showers. Miserable, hellacious, god-forsaken case that's been eating at him - quite literally eating at his shoes at any rate; they're going to have to be replaced before they disintegrate completely - and after an entire NIGHT of slogging through unspeakable liquids...
...nothing.
He wants to do something to take his mind off of this, to remind him that not all human beings are evil sons of bitches who bury their kids in muck, and the only thing that springs to mind is Greg.
Anything with Greg. Even if it's humiliate-the-old-guy charades, because at least then he'll be laughing. And laughing at his own prudish ineptitude would be better than this.
He gets dressed and goes up to his office, because there's still an hour on the clock and if he's not in the building when Ecklie arrives there's usually hell to pay. He logs onto his computer, sniffs at his forearm and wonders if he got himself as clean as he could have, then sighs and checks his email.
One, from Greg. Subject line: Hostile force besieges Greg-Land. He leans back in his chair and opens it. Nick is driving me up the wall. Wanna buy me breakfast and hear me bitch about it? --Charter Member 001, GTGAS
He grins, feels some of the tension of the last seven hours ebb from his back and shoulders, and sends a quick reply: GTGAS Support Volunteer Army on standby for extraction. Will send word prior to deployment. --000
He watches the clock creep miserably towards the end of his shift, gets a little bit of paper moved from one box to the other, nudges Warrick in the right direction on the B&E he's working, and checks his email compulsively.
Finally, at quarter-to-free, another message from Greg. Does the GTGAS-SVA employ strategic ballistic pancakes? --001
Gil looks at the clock, wonders if it's close enough that he can lock his office and bail for the day. Sighs, realizes he hasn't actually seen Ecklie yet, so no, he can't go enjoy himself.
Only when sufficient syrup reserves are visually accounted for. --000
***
Catherine comes into his office a few minutes after he finally decides that Ecklie can go screw himself, he's leaving. He's just restacking the clutter on his desk and shutting down his computer when he looks up to find her filling his doorway.
She's waving a sheet of paper at him. "You know," she says, "the department has a strict zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment." She's grinning, though, so he figures she's not actually going to castrate him for whatever it is she thinks he's done.
"What?"
She reads from the paper: "To: Greg Sanders. From: Gil Grissom. Subject: Armament. As follows: Only when sufficient syrup reserves are visually accounted for."
He knows his mouth is hanging open but he can't quite remember what to do about it. "What - how - where the HELL did you get that?" He recuperates enough of his motor control to make a grab for the sheet of paper.
Catherine holds it just out his reach. "Hodges is passing them out to anyone who'll slow down enough to take one."
"WHAT?!"
She takes a startled step back. "Wow," she says, "who knew you could roar like that."
"Dammit-"
"Relax," she says, and hands him the paper. "Nobody actually thinks you're dating Greg."
There goes his mouth again.
"It's just one of those fun, insane rumours that gets going and feeds itself. It'll blow over."
"Nick was bothering him," Gil says, "I'm buying him breakfast so he can vent at me unofficially and he wants pancakes, Catherine. Syrup, pancakes."
"Uh-huh," she says. "Watch your toes. You know what Ecklie would do if this were to be, uh, substantiated...?"
She winks at him while he's still stutteringly incoherent, and slips away before he recovers enough to yell at her again.
***
Jacqui is the one who first tells Greg that something is up, and that Hodges is apparently behind it.
"Whatever it is," he tells her knowingly, "if it's rotten you know Hodges is at the bottom of it."
"He was poking around on your computer," she says cryptically, "and I know you don't always log off your email..."
He narrows his eyes at her. "What?" he asks. "And why are you trying not to laugh at me? You always laugh at me. You almost peed yourself last year you were laughing so hard. So why the cover-up now?"
She hands him a folded sheet of paper. "Wait until I'm not here," she says, and scoots back to her lab as quickly as she can. She closes the door, which she never does, and Greg stares at her behind glass for a second.
Then he reads the paper and feels an explosion of rage billow in his chest.
Wow. He hasn't felt this furious in - in - in years. Not even when Nick was being a shit to him did he ever feel this, this, this white hot hate. This overwhelming instinct to seek out and destroy. Obliterate. Eviscerate and bury in separate counties.
He takes a quick sharp breath and holds it for a count of ten, then lets it go. A little calmer, maybe, a little more clear-headed.
Hodges is a dead man.
He storms out into the corridor and directly to Hodges' lab, where the smug bastard is sitting at his computer with a mug of coffee - a mug of GREG'S PREMIUM HAWAIIAN BREW, the sonofabitch - with Nick sitting next to him.
"Well, well," he says suddenly, loudly, from the doorway.
Nick jumps about a foot in the air and slops coffee down his khakis.
Hodges glances casually over his shoulder and smirks. "Aren't you running late for your syrup appointment?" he asks innocently.
"You ratbag son of a-"
"Now, now," Hodges soothes offensively, "don't get worked up for nothing. I'm sure Gil baby has all sorts of uses for that energy. Is he as kinky as people say he is?"
Nick looks uncomfortable, glances from Hodges to Greg and back again. "Maybe I should-"
"No fucking way," Greg snaps and grabs him by the elbow when he tries to squeeze past. He shoves him back towards Hodges and lets his dark side rise to power. "Hodges, this is below even you - hell, it's probably illegal, reading someone's email without a warrant. If I can lay charges against you, you slimeball piece of shit, I will. That's a fucking promise. And YOU." He rounds on Nick. "If this is your way of trying to win me back, you're a bigger coward and fuckwad than I thought you were and if you think I'm going to keep my lips sealed about your sexual hangups now, Cowboy, you're even stupider, too."
Nick is decidedly pale now. "Greg, come on man, it was just a joke-"
"What?" Greg demands. "You want people to know what you called me when I was going down on you? Is that it? You want people to know that you wear a lace teddy when you take it in the ass?"
Nick's face is a colour of white Greg has never seen before. "I never-"
"Oh yeah?" Greg flashes a cold, evil grin. "If it's juicy enough, Nicky baby, people will believe anything."
He turns on his heel and walks out.
***
Gil runs into Greg in the hallway between his office and Greg's lab.
"You heard?" Gil asks.
Greg nods, a tight movement that looks anything but agreeable.
"Then let's get out of here before Ecklie shows up. He's running late and I could kiss him for that right now."
Greg breathes through his nose for a moment. "You still want to leave with me?" he asks.
"Yes," Gil says immediately, then hesitates. "I mean, only if you-"
"I don't need my jacket," Greg interrupts, patting his jeans pocket for his wallet and his keys. "Let's get out of here."
***
"Will you drive?" Greg asks in the parking lot. "I want to get fucking tanked."
***
They find a place that serves bourbon with their Belgian waffles, and Greg decides that it is one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
Gil watches him slam a second drink back after the first. "Maybe you should wait for your waffles," he says as tactfully as he can.
Greg sighs and thumps his head on the table. "I hate my life," he says to the plastic tabletop.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not YOU," Greg says and raises his head enough to look at Gil. "You're about the only GOOD thing that's going on right now. This is - this is NICK and fucking HODGES and they're out to DESTROY me and they're going to take YOU down, too. Fuck." He fingers his empty shot glass, glances over at the waitress but doesn't order another one.
Gil tries to think of something to say. He draws a blank.
Greg heaves another chest-wrenching sigh and lets his head fall to one side. "Are we dating?" he asks.
"Um," Gil says.
"I mean," Greg continues, "it didn't really occur to me that we would be except people seem to think that we are and now I'm not sure. I mean, we hang out sometimes and I guess an outside observer might argue that we flirt but I flirt with everybody, I mean I even used to flirt with HODGES or I tried to anyway but he's like a black hole and just sucks all of the life out of everything so I gave up on that. But it's only because we never used to talk all that it even looks like I'm flirting with you now and the only reason we talk at all now is because you were there when I almost hit an invisible tree and then I don't know - one thing led to another I guess and we're friends but that doesn't mean we're actually dating does it? I guess it might except by that standard I'm dating half the lab and-"
He stops for breath and doesn't bother to start again.
Gil says, "Do you think we're dating?"
He takes a deep breath. "Maybe?" he says, expelling an entire lungful on one word.
Gil smiles. "I think maybe we're dating, too."
There's a bit of a pause while they look at each other as though they have never seen a species quite like the other until now.
"O-kay," Greg finally says, and looks down at his two empty shot glasses, side by side. "Boy I wish I hadn't had those."
"You seem to be doing all right," Gil says.
"You're not hearing what's going on in my head," Greg tells him. "Wow. Think that food's going to get here soon?"
"It won't be long," Gil says, "I hope."
"Shit. Me too." Greg drums his fingers on the table for a few seconds. "We aren't really dating dating, are we?" he asks.
Gil half-frowns. "I don't know," he says. "Why?"
"I mean, we've already established that all we have in common in terms of fun and recreation are picnics, Pink Floyd and the Muppets. What kind of basis is THAT for - for - for whatever you call it when you're dating but not in a capital-R relationship?"
"A small-R relationship?" Gil suggests mildly.
"I mean, what would we DO?"
"We could have beer and onion rings," Gil says with a smile. "Or waffles and hard liquor. Or we could send scandalous emails where we're sure Hodges will find them."
Greg groans and hits his head on the table again. "We are dating, aren't we?" he asks.
"I think so."
"Shit."
"Is it that bad?" Gil asks. "To be dating me?"
"Quite the contrary," Greg says into the table. "I would be stoned on endorphins right now if I didn't think I was going to die a slow painful death at the hands of Ecklie and Cavallo."
"If they're going to lynch anybody," Gil says, "it'll be me. And you'll have to move your head, Greg, or you're going to have two orders of waffles placed on top of it."
He lifts his head and lets the waitress lay out their breakfasts, and gives her a weak smile.
She's pointing to his empty shot glasses. "Get you another, honey?" she asks in the voice of a lifelong smoker.
"No," Greg says, "but if you have any cyanide lying around..."
"I'll take a look," she says and walks away.
Greg watches her go. "Is she really deadpan," he asks, "or just not that bright?"
Gil grins. "Does it matter?" he asks.
"No." Greg picks up his fork and contemplates the heap of waffle and whipped cream and frozen berries. "Doesn't this bother you?" he demands.
"Esthetically, it does leave something to be desired," Gil agrees, inspecting his own plate.
"Not the WAFFLE," Greg says, "Jesus. I mean - this thing with - well, Hodges. And Ecklie, eventually."
"Well..." Gil watches Greg massacre his breakfast. "I guess it does," he says, "but... I'm having fun for the first time in as long as I can remember, and I can't quite bring myself to worry about it."
"Fun?" Greg asks, with something like a sliver of hope. "You're having - fun?"
"Yeah," Gil says with a shrug. "I forgot how to do it. Somewhere along the line I let it fall off the radar, and now... I don't know. I've found it again."
Greg is silent for a long time before he finds his voice again. "Wow," he finally says. "That's... I think that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."
"Really?" Gil smiles. "That's kind of sweet."
"Fun, huh?" Greg asks with a grin of his own.
"Fun."
"So should I be looking out for tarantulas?"
"If you're good."
Greg's eyebrows make a break for his hairline at that, and Gil grins at him.
The waitress comes back. "Couldn't find any cyanide," she says, "but we have some cinnamon. Is that sort of the same thing?"
Greg takes the jar of spice that she's holding out to him. "Close enough," he says, and soon as she's out of earshot he starts to laugh, and Gil is only a second or two behind him.
Gil says, "Leave Ecklie and the others up to me."
They're on the sidewalk in front of Greg's apartment building, next to Gil's car which is lopsidedly parked. Greg has his hands stuffed in his pockets and from where Gil is standing it looks like he's trying to keep them from shaking. He doesn't want to think about that, though, because it's the kind of thing that a boss notices and comments on, and he doesn't want to feel like a boss.
Only... the person you're dating would notice something like that, too, right? Dammit, he needs a rule book for this. There's a reason he's never dated anyone he works with.
"You okay?"
He brings his attention back to the moment, to Greg standing with his fists crammed in his jacket a couple feet from him.
He smiles. "Yes," he says. "You?"
Greg shrugs with one shoulder. "A little weirded out," he admits.
"Oh?" It's almost noon and there are people on the sidewalk around them, people in business suits going for lunch and kids with backpacks ditching their classes in favour of the video arcade down on the corner.
Gil watches them move around him and Greg, and decides that nobody is listening to anything that either of them is saying. They have all the effect of a lamppost on the world at large. "We don't actually have to be dating, Greg," he says.
Greg's eyebrows reach for the sky again. "What?" he says. "No, I-" He shakes his head once, sharply. "I want to be dating you. I really, really, really want to be dating you."
That sounds good to Gil, but he manages not to let his stupid sodden grin show on his face. "Greg, I understand," he says. "There's an age difference, we work together, you and Nick-"
"Nick," Greg interrupts, "is a non-issue. That we work together is also a non-issue. I don't see you all that often anyway, so... whatever. And the age difference? Definitely not a turn-off, okay?"
Another little thrill manifests itself along Gil's spine, but he ignores it. Well, tries to ignore it inasmuch as it's wrapped around his brain stem and trying to strangle him. He swallows. "Okay," he says. "Then what?"
"I've never been ambushed by the fact that I'm dating someone," Greg says. "It's usually, hey I kinda dig you, you kinda dig me, wanna get a drink? Only this time it's, hey I'm pathetic, you've just seen me at my worst, Hodges is a meddling prick, have another shot with your breakfast, and by the way we're dating." He shrugs again, both shoulders this time. "Weirds me out a little."
"Oh." Gil watches the movement of Greg's hands in his pockets, clenching and unclenching. "Greg, are you all right?"
"I'm fine." A little too quickly?
"You seem a little - wound up."
"I'm resisting the urge to knock you out and drag you back to my cave," Greg says simply.
Gil's brain short-circuits right about then, and it's a heartbeat or two before he has control over his mouth again. "Oh," he says weakly, and then, "You wouldn't actually have to knock me out."
Greg's turn to blink out for a moment, and there's a protracted silence in which neither of them can hear the traffic or the pedestrians or the indignant squawk of a guilty cat. "Cool," he says when he recovers, licks his lips and says as casually as he can, "so you wanna come up?"
That thunk is Gil's heart hammering to a sudden stop and then starting again. "I'd love to," he says.
***
Gil hasn't seen Greg's apartment since it was a disaster, and he allows himself to be momentarily distracted from Greg's presence by the cleaned and rearranged living room.
"Looks good," he says.
"It was cathartic," Greg explains, and takes a nervous step towards him. His hands have come out of their pockets but they're still in fists and they still seem to be shaking, and Gil can't quite stop himself from reaching out and taking hold of them.
"Are you sure-" he asks.
Greg rolls his eyes. "Yes," he says emphatically, "yes and yes again. Jesus."
Gil is surprised when Greg leans in without warning and kisses him, and it takes him a moment to respond. It's been a hell of a long time since he's kissed another man - hell, it's been an embarassingly long time since he's kissed anyone - and he hopes briefly that he hasn't forgotten what to do.
For an instant it seems like maybe he has, because this kiss just isn't doing anything for him. He would have thought that something would click when their lips met, and then he has the sad thought that maybe Allan back in college was a fluke and he isn't really interested in men at all.
But then Greg extracts his hands from Gil's and slides his arms around his waist, changes the angle of his head by about point-zero-zero-three of a degree, and everything falls into place. Gil feels a tingling shoot across his shoulder blades and down his back, and he thinks, Like HELL Allan was a fluke. This is what he wants, this is what he's always wanted and that girl he dated for a while - she was the fluke, the statistical anomaly. Because nothing with her, literally nothing, felt anywhere near as alive as this does.
His own hands come up around Greg's back, and they pull him in closer until their bodies are touching head-to-toe, almost, and then one hand climbs up to the back of his neck and draws his head in closer while the other hand drops to the waist of his jeans and settles there.
Greg groans into his mouth and turns his head away, lets his lips find a happy spot along Gil's jawline and kisses him there, and pushes his hips against Gil's body.
Ohhhhh... Gil closes his eyes and pulls Greg in tighter. Bodies touching isn't enough, he thinks wildly, bodies rubbing would be better but bodies naked... He shudders, works his fingers between the denim and Greg's skin and lets his hand sink further down. Fuck, he thinks, I could almost come from this alone.
So can Greg, by the sound of it, because Greg is not quiet. No, Greg is displaying his full range of non-verbal noises, and each and every one of them goes straight to Gil's groin and diverts even more blood from returning to his brain.
He manages, through a supreme act of Herculean strength, to make his body stop when he realizes that he's grinding mindlessly against Greg and about fifteen seconds from passing out. "Wait," he gasps, and realizes with a tremendous rush that Greg has both of his hands down the back of Gil's slacks, "hang on-"
Greg grumbles something obscene and forces his mouth off Gil's skin. "What?" he asks, and even the breathless tone of voice he has is like a spike through Gil's stomach.
"Not - here," Gil says lamely. "Not against the wall in your living room."
Greg grins and it's a slightly scary grin, and he kisses his neck again and pulls back.
Gil immediately regrets having said anything because now they're not touching and there's no way that's a good thing, is there?
But Greg grabs his hands and pulls him away from the wall, pulls him through a door and into the bedroom, and Gil has to admit that it's a strategically good move because there's a bed in there.
Greg drops his hands long enough to whip his shirt over his head and he stands there, half-naked in front of Gil, still grinning in a vaguely predatory way.
Which should in no way, shape or form make Gil any harder than he already is.
Gil's hands are shaking, too, when Greg's fingers drop to his belt and it's not fair that Greg's fingers are perfectly calm now, perfectly steady as he strips himself, and it's all Gil can do to not launch himself at him with his teeth bared.
Greg gets his fly undone and then stops, cocks his head to one side and raises and eyebrow. "Tit for tat, here," he says teasingly.
Huh? Oh, right. Gil is still dressed. He tries to remedy the situation, tries to rid himself of his clothes by the most expedient route, but he has trouble with the buttons on his shirt and it goes rather sharply downhill from there.
Greg laughs at him, a deep-chested laugh that makes Gil's knees lock. "Need a little help?" he asks.
Gil nods dumbly.
Greg laughs again and Gil's semi-coherent thought is what an amazing sound that is, and then Greg's hands are moving over him, touching and stroking and somehow - in a feat of co-ordination that staggers Gil's shattered mind - manages to work his shirt off and let it slide to the floor, and his fingers settle over the fly of his slacks.
Gil is dimly aware that Greg is like a bronze god and that his own body is approaching fifty and not afraid to show it - a sedentary fifty, at that - but Greg either doesn't notice or doesn't care. He leans in and kisses Gil again quickly, a searing touch of lips to the corner of his mouth that is too fleeting to respond to, and what Gil can see out of his half-shuttered eyes is something approaching bliss on Greg's face.
"Fuck," Greg mumbles in something between ecstasy and misery, leaning in for another kiss at the exact same moment that his hand slides in under the elastic of Gil's boxers and touches him.
Gil says something guttural and knows that he either does something now or he does nothing at all for the next several minutes, so he prods Greg in the direction of the bed and follows him. Two and a half steps later Greg drops onto the mattress and Gil tumbles after him, and before he can even figure out whose legs are whose, Greg has climbed on top of him and is kissing the oxygen right out of his lungs.
He submits to it long enough to remember how his arms work, and then he sneaks his hands up the length of Greg's back to his shoulders, and lets his fingernails negotiate the return path.
Greg breaks the kiss and arches into the touch, a look of - of something that Gil can't place etched on his face and he makes a noise that is suspiciously close to a purr.
"Tell me what you want," Gil asks, amazed at how deep his voice has become, how shaky it is around the edges and how desperate he sounds.
Greg makes a half-choking sound and brings Gil's hands around to his front, to rest against the skin just under his bellybutton. "Anything," he moans, leaning into the touch, bending over to kiss him again, "anything, but-"
Gil returns the kiss but deflects the next one. "Anything but what?" he asks.
Greg attaches his lips to his collarbone and shakes his head.
Gil groans and can't quite stop his hips from bucking. "Greg," he says, "tell me what - anything you want, but you have to tell me-"
Greg raises his head and Gil is amazed at the emotion in his eyes, at the lust and the need, yes, but at the sad hopefulness there, too. "Anything," Greg mumbles, "just face-to-face..."
Gil has a horrible flash of what Nick must have been like, pieced together from the little Greg has told him and from the snippets he's caught flying like sparks between the lab techs. He hates the thought that someone had access to this body - to this amazing person and everything that went with it - and didn't celebrate it every goddamn millimetre of it.
He pulls Greg down for a kiss, and Gil is slightly shocked at how possessive and protective he is all of a sudden. He's determined to undo whatever Nick has done to him, to wipe it clean and start anew.
He rolls them over and kisses down Greg's chest and when he reaches his waist he pulls his jeans down, scoots out of the way just enough to pull them free of his feet and then he settles between his legs again, kisses the insides of his thighs and touches his lips to the tip of Greg's cock.
Greg groans somewhere above him, groans and whimpers and Gil touches him again and lets his lips open a bit, and Greg groans again and whimpers and lifts his hips off the bed when Gil takes him in mouth, gently, hums around it for a few moments until Greg jerks his hips again, and then Gil lifts his head.
"You okay?" he asks.
Greg groans again, and Gil sees that his hands are fisting the bedspread and his eyes are tightly closed and he's got his lower lip caught between his teeth, and Gil thinks he's one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen.
He kisses his way back up his body, lowers himself to the mattress to his side with one leg draped over him, kisses the juncture of his shoulder and his neck, kisses the line of his jaw, tilts his head towards him to kiss the edge of his lips, and whispers, "Open your eyes, Greg."
Greg complies, a slow unveiling of eyes that are more alive than Gil has seen in a long time, and he smiles.
Something in Gil's chest lurches painfully, and he touches the side of his face as tenderly as he can, kisses him lightly and promises, "Face-to-face, Greg."
Greg makes another sound and rolls towards him, pushes Gil's slacks and shorts far enough down that his erection is free of its confines, and he angles himself so that they're touching, sliding against each other in slow, silken torture.
Gil hisses at the maddening sensation, pulls Greg as close as possible and kisses him, rolls onto his back and lets both hands find their way to the beautiful curve of Greg's ass. He wants to tell Greg how amazing this is, how much he wants it to last forever and how badly he needs to feel Greg's orgasm, but he can't find the words.
Greg rocks experimentally a couple of times, finds a rhythm he likes and snakes a hand between them. "Is this okay?" he asks breathlessly.
Gil shudders and nods and pulls him in tighter and feels his breath ripped from his body as Greg speeds up, wishes he knew what had happened to his voice and then suddenly he doesn't care anymore because there are much, much better things than talking and Gil feels his whole body tense around one point, where Greg is holding him and the entire universe is condensed to that one point of unimaginable pleasure-
He comes hard, and feels Greg coming with him, and it seems to take forever and Gil wishes it would take longer and when it's over, when Greg collapses against him and tries to catch his breath, Gil feels a beautiful calm settle over him.
He lets one hand wander to the back of Greg's neck and he strokes him languidly, from spine to shoulder and back again, and he smiles when he feels Greg's heartbeat slip into synch with his motion, and he feels an overwhelming urge to hug him as tightly as he can, so he does.
Greg returns the hug and then shifts to the side and half sits up, and Gil is sure that his own face is matching Greg's in terms of soppy satiation. "Been too long," Greg mumbles and smiles at Gil. "Thank you."
Gil tries to move but can't quite find the energy yet, so he stays where he is, looking up at Greg at a slightly awkward angle. "I should be thanking you, Greg," he says, stunned that he's able to speak so normally on such short notice, "if we're going to talk about how long it's been."
Greg grins and drops his head down to kiss him quickly. "Mutual appreciation society," he murmurs, and relaxes against Gil's body.
Gil smiles stupidly at the ceiling. "Is there a membership card for that, too?"
***
"So, just the Muppets," Greg asks, "or the Fraggles, too?" They're crammed into the corner of Greg's kitchen where his tiny table is set up, dragging spoons across the top of a slowly-melting bucket of ice cream.
Eventually Gil's arm started going to sleep where Greg was resting on it, and the zipper of Gil's slacks was biting into Greg's thigh, and they started to get itchy and restless and hungry. Greg gallantly let Gil take the first shower but joined him after about three minutes, and when they emerged they were breathless and shivering and it was going to be a couple of hours before there was any hot water in Greg's apartment again.
"Mostly the Muppets," Gil says after a thoughtful pause, "but the Fraggles had their own style."
"Hm." Greg licks the back of his spoon and peers into the bucket. He had forgotten he had ice cream until an examination of his fridge told him he needed to go shopping. He likes eating ice cream this way, thinks bowls are for wusses, and that Gil feels the same way, too, is a delightful gift.
"I mean," Gil says, drawing an illustrative shape of some kind in the air with his spoon, "the magic thing about the Muppet Show was the guests. They had the most amazing people, and had them doing the strangest things..."
"Paul Simon," Greg agrees with a nod. "John Cleese."
"Exactly."
"I never really liked the Fraggles," Greg says, watching Gil's spoon disappear into his mouth and trying not to lose his train of thought. "Well, actually, I was kind of scared of them."
Gil raises his eyebrows and sucks on his spoon.
"There was this hole in the wall under my bed," Greg explains, "and I was sure it was a Fraggle hole and that they were going to come out and get me."
Gil laughs. "They weren't inherently creepy things, Fraggles," he says skeptically.
Greg shrugs. "I was a kid," he says. "Kids are freaked out by strange things."
"That's true," Gil says, and leans forward. "When I was a kid, I was afraid of spiders."
There's a stunned moment of silence. "You're kidding, right?" Greg finally asks.
"No." Gil grins. "They scared the daylights out of me. But my mother wouldn't let me be afraid of them without understanding them, so I started studying them." He shrugs. "And I wasn't afraid of them anymore."
"How old were you?"
"Five."
Greg shakes his head. "When I was five," he says, "I was afraid of the kid up the street so my mother told me to avoid him."
"Bully?" Gil asks.
"Teenager," Greg says. "I don't think he even knew I existed, but he terrified me."
"I have a hard time imagining you being scared of anything," Gil says thoughtfully.
"I'm not really," Greg says, "not anymore." He grins. "But I had one hell of an avoidance mechanism until I was a teenager."
"Modesto?" Gil asks.
"San Gabriel."
"Ah. I've never been."
"You should go," Greg tells him, and then says casually, "We could go together, sometime."
He watches Gil think about it, watches him turn the idea over in his head and wonders if he should have kept his mouth shut. He knows that Gil isn't going to turn into another Nick - he's known it long before he actually knew it - but that doesn't mean he should push his luck. Not this soon, not when they've only been officially 'dating' unofficially for a couple of days. Or a couple of hours, maybe, depending on who you listen to at the lab.
But he knows that Gil is who he's been waiting for for a long time now, since long before Nick condescended to let him into his bed, and he knows that he might as well lay all his cards on the table up front, because he doesn't want to waste another year on miscommunication.
After an interminable few seconds, Gil smiles and says, "Yeah. We should."
And Greg starts to breathe again.
- Main CSI page
- The new stories
- Gil/Greg stories
- Gil/Nick stories
- Gil/Warrick stories
- Nick/Greg stories
- Nick/Warrick stories
- Greg/Warrick stories
- Nick/Bobby stories
- Jim Brass stories
- David Hodges stories
- CSI: New York stories
- CSI: Miami stories
- All f/f stories
- Other pairings & threesomes
- Gen CSI stories
- C.S.I. Crime Scene Investigation: The Complete Ninth Season
