Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Evan Nicholas <[email protected]>
Pairing: Gil/Greg
Summary: Grissom's been having a bad month.
Rating: FRT
Warnings: Surely you jest.
Notes:
1. Based exceedingly loosely on the events of the two
most recept episodes, "King Baby" and "Big Middle"
2. Not beta'd, but reread more than once in hopes of
catching obvious mistakes. I'm sure I've missed a
bunch - sorry. I suck.
I'm going to count to ten, Greg thinks, scuffing his
shoes in the dirt by the side of the road... and then
- and then I'm probably going to count to ten again.
And maybe a third time, if I have to.
He looks towards the east, out over the ruler-straight
highway to where the sky is already lightening, and
wonders what time it is. He lost his watch a week ago
and hasn't bought a new one yet, and the clock on the
dashboard would be great except he doesn't have the
keys, and he doesn't really think Grissom is going to
give him the keys any time soon.
How do you ask someone if they're having a nervous
breakdown?
Grissom is standing off to the side of the road,
staring at a clump of something tenacious that hasn't
given in to the ravages of sand. From where is Greg
is watching, leaning against the hood of the truck, he
thinks the guy looks exhausted. And twitchy, in a
quiet kind of way. In a worrying, quiet kind of way.
"Let me ask you something," Grissom says from his own
personal pit of misery.
"Huh?" Greg asks. The wind is whipping up and
distorting sound, so he has to take a few halting
steps towards him to make sure he hears him right.
Maybe this has to do with the case, he thinks
hopefully; maybe Grissom had an epiphany while he was
driving, a brainstorm that he had to stop to really
explore - and now he wants to share it. Yeah, he
thinks, that's gotta be it. He takes a marginally
more confident step forward, stops when they're almost
elbow-to-elbow.
"Do I seem gay to you?"
What the... Greg blinks. "Um," he says, wondering if
there's a right answer to this question. "Is this
about that guy, at that restaurant...?" He waves his
arm back the way they came, down the highway to a
tragic little diner in the middle of nowhere, to the
body they took care of and the evidence they still
have to deal with.
Grissom turns to face him, head-on, hands in his
pockets and a creepily calm look on his face.
"Seriously," he clarifies. "Do I seem gay to you?"
He thinks of a way to phrase his answer, preferably
some clever twist of words that won't betray how
stupidly he's been in love with Grissom for years. He
clears his throat. "Not especially?" he says
hesitatingly.
Grissom narrows his eyes, and looks back out over the
desert.
"Um," Greg says again.
"Because all of a sudden," Grissom says, "everyone
seems to think I'm gay."
"Oh?" Greg looks longingly back at the truck, only a
few feet away but somehow desperately out of reach.
He misses standing next to it and waiting for the sun
to come up. Coming over here was a really bad move.
"That woman," Grissom says, ticking things off on his
fingers, "at that store, and then that woman at the
convention, and now that guy at the diner..."
"Well," Greg says authoritatively, because he hasn't
got a clue what the man's talking about on those first
two but he does have a handle on the third, "you were
standing in the men's room at the time, and you did
have that I-haven't-seen-that-before look on your
face, which looks kinda like interest... I guess..."
Grissom turns to him again. "This is new," he says
flatly.
"Yeah?" He tries a smile.
"No one used to think I was gay, Greg."
"Um..."
"Even the guys I was sleeping with, while I was
sleeping with them, never really thought I was gay.
So what's changed?"
Greg moves his mouth a few times and hopes that he'll
eventually start saying something. Something
intelligent, hopefully, because this whole situation
could use a little infusion of smarts. "Um," he says,
wracking his brain, "beard?"
Okay, he admits when Grissom narrows his eyes at him,
that was really lame. But dammit... bombshell city
here, give me a break!
"Beard?" Grissom asks in a clipped voice.
Ah, shit. Explain that one away, Greggo - just
because your crush got magnified ten-fold when the
beard shows up doesn't mean anyone else likes it, too.
"Well," he says, waiting for the next brainwave to hit
him, "I mean, that's new, right? I can't think of
anything else that might have changed, but okay I
didn't know you back when, you know, you were sleeping
with - I'm going to wait in the truck, okay?"
He knows Grissom is watching him walk away. He can
even guess the expression he's wearing. But he's not
going to, because not feeling all that masochistic
right now. Despite the evidence to the contrary.
He gets to a hundred and fifty one-one-thousands
before Grissom opens the driver's door and gets in.
He starts the engine and lets it idle for a while.
"I'm sorry," he says eventually.
Greg peels his eyes from the pleasant monotony of his
desert surroundings and forces them to look over at
Grissom. He tries another weak smile.
"That was unprofessional."
Greg shrugs. "I don't mind," he says.
He gets a sharp look for that.
He lets a sheepish look worm its way onto his face,
and just for something to do he opens the glove
compartment and he rifles through the contents. Maps,
mostly; a couple parking tickets, a lottery ticket,
some receipts...
"Is the beard really all that gay?" Grissom asks after
a few seconds.
"What?" Greg whips his head up from the Arizona State
Highway map. "No," he says, "it's just-" His brain
catches up with his tongue then, and he stops himself
before he says something stupid.
"It's just what, Greg?"
Too late, he thinks, as his tongue shrugs off the
oppression of his mental filter. "It's just kinda
hot," he hears himself say, "so..."
He knows he's blushing, really really blushing,
blushing like his hair should spontaneously combust or
something, and he wishes he had the guts to get out of
the truck. He could probably survive a couple of days
in the desert; more if he could find water. There
was that Discovery show once, wasn't there, about
finding water in a desert? Something about
cactuses...
"Greg."
He closes his eyes, counts to ten, then says, "Yes?"
"You think my beard is - hot?"
He sort of giggles a little bit hysterically and
forces his eyes open. Grissom is looking at him
strangely. He tries to rein his voice in from the
contralto octave it seems to be favouring right now.
"Well," he says, "...if I said yes, would you fire
me?"
"No...."
"Then, um, yes?"
There's a long silence then, and Greg is pretty proud
of himself for not looking away, for actually holding
Grissom's gaze for that long.
Grissom, in fact, is the one who looks away, and
Greg's not too sure but in the strange pre-dawn
high-beam light of the highway, it looks like maybe
he's blushing a little bit, too.
Hang on, Greg thinks. Grissom doesn't blush. Grissom
doesn't BLUSH. Grissom doesn't sleep with GUYS and he
doesn't BLUSH.
"Um, Griss?" he asks.
"Hm?" Grissom is still looking dead ahead, and
there's definitely a little pinkness around his ears.
"Are you, uh, okay? To drive, I mean? 'Cause I can
drive, if you want..."
"I'm fine."
"Okay."
They sit for a while longer, the engine still idling,
the car still in park.
Grissom clears his throat. "Greg," he says, and
there's a funny pitch to his voice too, now, which
makes Greg feel a little better. So long as he's not
the only one freaking out here.
"Yeah?"
"Do you - would you like to go out sometime?"
He's a little surprised he doesn't give himself
whiplash when he turns to look at Grissom again.
"What?"
Grissom almost winces, drums his thumbs against the
steering wheel. "Nothing," he says, "I shouldn't have
- I'm sorry."
"No no," Greg says, "I didn't - I mean, yes."
Grissom looks at him. "Yes?" he echoes uncertainly.
"Yes," Greg says, and there's a bit more conviction
there this time. "Yes, I would like to go out with
you sometime." He stops himself before he adds,
Please.
"Hm." Grissom shifts into drive and pulls away from
the gravel shoulder, back onto the road. "Okay," he
says as the approach highway speeds, "let's - do that
sometime. Go out."
"Okay."
A few miles pass before Grissom glances over at him.
"You sure?" he asks. "Because I understand if-"
"Yes," he says, and there is a definite emphatic
overture in his voice this time. "Yes, I think your
beard is hot - I think YOU'RE hot, beard and all - and
I would really, really like to go out with you."
He can't quite believe it when he says that, actually
says it actually out loud, but he's glad he did. Glad
he got it out in the open, glad it's Grissom's problem
now. He puffs out a breath of air and leans back in
his seat.
"Oh," Grissom says, and Greg glances at him and
catches a moment of grin. "Cool."
Cool? Greg raises his eyebrows. Grissom not only
sleeps with guys and blushes, but he says things like
'cool'?
Definitely should have said something sooner, he
thinks, and watches the highway stretch out in front
of them.
<end>