Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes
Rating: FRM
Warnings: None
Summary: Nothing says I love you like a poke in the head with a sharp stick
Notes: Ahh, Franky - where would I be without you? Mis-spelled and delirious with poorly-chosen words, no doubt. Hung in a hallway of shame. My eternal thanks, as always.
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Later - much later, when he's at home with a blistering pot of coffee and everything is back to what passes for normal in his life - Greg will think, What a bad kiss that was. He will think, That was one of the ten worst kisses of my life, and that's including my first kiss ever where I almost bit the end off of Eileen's tongue.
But right now he doesn't have the luxury of perspective. What he has right now is an awkward armful of Nick Stokes and a burning desire to be somewhere else.
When Nick pulls away from him and rubs at his lip - which is probably going to be a bit bruised in the morning, Greg thinks - he looks embarrassed. No, more than that. He looks humiliated. "Sorry," Nick says uncertainly, and looks like he wants to leave but doesn't quite remember how.
Oh god, Greg thinks, why me? "Nick," he says, catching his arm just before he turns away. He hauls him close enough that they can actually talk over the racket of the band, a band that he had really been pumped about seeing, a band that he now thinks he's not going to get to stick around to see.
He thinks how interesting it is to watch Nick blush. Really, seriously blush - even in the funky club lighting Greg thinks he's never seen a colour quite like it.
"I said I'm sorry," Nick hollers above the racket, not meeting his eyes.
"Look," Greg says, finds he has to turn his back on the band just to talk to him. "We should go somewhere, okay?"
Nick glances up to meet his eyes at that, and his blush deepens impossibly. He wants to say no, Greg can see it all over his face, in the fear embedded in his eye; instead he ducks his head and nods.
Great. Greg pulls him through the crowd towards the exit, and his last half-bitter thought as they cross the tiny packed dance floor is that inevitably Vanilla Coward will be back in Vegas sometime. Eventually. He'll just have to see them then - probably lie his way out of work and lurk like a drug dealer in case anyone catches him playing hooky. Sounds like a plan.
Even the street is pretty packed, and Greg has to haul Nick halfway down the block before they have a chance in hell of hearing each other without shouting. And something tells him Nick's not going to want to shout this out for the world to hear.
"Nick," he says, letting go of his elbow and turning to face him, "what's going on?"
Nick wobbles for a moment, and Greg realizes he's drunk. Not totally insensate, but definitely approaching blotto.
"I'm sorry," Nick reiterates, and sways sideways.
Ah fuck... Greg rubs his forehead and sighs. "So you want to tell me what that was about?"
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing, Nick," Greg says. "Last I'd heard, you were straight. So what's with the lip-lock back there?"
"It's nothing," Nick insists, and now he's starting to sound a little hysterical.
Greg narrows his eyes. "You are straight, right?" he asks.
"Um." Back and forth and side to side - if he doesn't fall over, Greg thinks, he's going to be seasick.
He grabs his shoulder and stills him. "Okay," he says, "you're not straight. I get it."
"I'm not - I'm not not straight," Nick says, "but maybe I'm not really not-not-not straight either. You know?"
"No," Greg says, "but that's okay. Speaking of things you're not, though - um... me?"
"I'm sorry," Nick says, shaking his head and shifting from foot to foot. "It's just - I need to, I mean I want to, I just-"
Greg sees the second kiss coming, which is something he can't say for the first: it arrived out of nowhere, chasing the pleasant surprise at seeing Nick in a punk club on a Sunday. This second kiss he can see even before Nick leans in towards him, so he's able to brace himself for it.
It's not quite as bad as the first, but it still makes Greg's list of top ten kisses never to repeat.
This time, he pushes Nick away, firmly but gently, holds him at arm's length. "Nick?" he asks.
Nick looks like he's going to be ill. Great, Greg thinks. Just what I need.
"Nick," he says again, steadies him as he starts to sway again, "Look at me."
He does, but it's a wobbly kind of look that suggests violent upheavals in the near future.
Greg sighs. "I'm going to take you home, okay?" he asks.
There's a momentary look of panic on Nick's face, followed by what can only be described as weird fascination, and then Nick doubles over against the wall and throws up.
Greg closes his eyes and waits for him, thinking of how much he likes the Vanilla Coward's second album and how, no matter how many times he gets to see them in the future, they're never going to be touring it again.
Greg pays the taxi driver and watches him drive away while Nick begins the laborious search for his keys.
"They're in here somewhere," he mumbles into the shadows around his door as he frisks himself. "I know they are, I put them there."
"Take your time," Greg says, because standing outside with nothing to do while Nick's hands are otherwise occupied is by far better than whatever Nick is drunkenly planning. He thinks, I shouldn't be here. I should have piled him into the taxi, paid the driver twenty bucks, and gone back to catch the rest of the act.
But he can hear what Papa Olaf would have to say about that, about ditching someone when they obviously can't be left to their own devices. Why does the moral center of his universe have to wear an ugly yellow cardigan with socks to match? Why can't he just have a crazy grandpa who collects bagpipes or something?
"Got 'em," Nick says, and begins the intricate process of inserting the key in the lock.
Greg watches him while he works, or while he fumbles at any rate, and wonders what is bringing this fiasco on. Because it sure as hell isn't some hitherto undiscovered infatuation with Greg Sanders. Lust, no matter how inebriated or terrified or ill-advised, infuses a kiss with a kind of electricity that was noticeably lacking in both of Nick's attempts.
Those had felt like duty kisses, Greg thinks: acted on out of some bizarre sense of obligation. And that was ridiculous, because the only obligation between Greg Sanders and Nick Stokes is a PS2 game that Greg has borrowed and never given back.
"There," Nick declares, swinging the door open and stumbling in after it.
Greg mutters a secular scientist's prayer under his breath and follows him into the dark hallway.
There's the inevitable attempt at a third kiss, and Greg endures it with a clenched jaw and tight lips, and Nick almost trips over something and mumbles an apology and makes a bee-line for the wall where, presumably, there's a light switch.
Greg turns and closes the door behind them. The lights are on when he turns back, and Nick is standing in front of him, his eyes kind of glassy and his torso still swaying ever-so-slightly.
"So," Greg says, trying to decide the best way to get past Nick and into the apartment without being molested. "You wanna fill me in?"
Nick shrugs. "I - I think I like guys. You know?"
Greg nods. "Got that," he says, eyeing the space between Nick and the chest of drawers and wondering how dulled his reflexes are and if he can move fast enough to get through.
"And, you know. So do you." At least he has the decency to frown at that, Greg thinks. "Right? I mean, you - you know. Like guys."
"Yes," Greg admits, "I do." And for the first time since he left puberty he kind of wishes it weren't true.
"So?" Nick says with a forced smile. "You like guys and I like guys and-"
"Just because," Greg interrupts, because that is a thought that needs to be stopped before it gathers any momentum, "just because I like guys and you like guys does not mean we have to like each other, Nick."
There's a puzzled kind of silence for a bit, and Greg seizes upon the confusion of the moment and squeezes past Nick into the living room. He heads for a comfy-looking one-person chair and flops down in it.
Nick wanders in about a second and a half after Greg has wiggled his ass into the sweet spot of the cushion. "But," Nick says, and that stupid look of incomprehension is there.
"No buts, Nick," Greg says firmly from the depths of the best chair in the known universe. "It's like - it's like Warrick and Sara. Right? Warrick likes girls, Sara likes guys. But they can be friends without sleeping together. See?"
Something like comprehension begins to dawn on Nick, and Greg relaxes deeper into the chair. "It's okay," he tells him with what he hopes is a friendly smile, "it was a newbie mistake. You're allowed one before they start giving you penalties."
"But," Nick says, and then he looks like he might be sick again and disappears down another hall.
Greg sighs and lets his eyes close. He likes this chair, he thinks. Under different circumstances, he might decide to never leave it again. He wonders if it would fit in the lab - maybe if they got rid of the GCMS, moved it into Jacqui's lab or something, and pushed the lab bench against the far wall...
"Greg?"
He opens his eyes again. Nick is propped against the wall. "Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
He smiles. "I know," he says, "it's okay."
"I'm going to bed," Nick says. "I don't feel so good."
"You don't look so good," Greg tells him.
"If you want to stay, I can get a blanket-"
Greg waves his hand. "I'll take care of it, Nick," he says. "Go to bed."
"Okay." Nick smiles at him, a thin wavering line that is the most honest thing he has shown Greg all night. "Later."
Greg watches him wobble down the hallway and out of sight, then lets his eyes close again. So what if he could be out having fun? So what if he could be in a minute club packed beyond capacity listening to the best band ever?
I hope you're happy, Papa Olaf, he snarks in his head, but without rancour; because he knows that this is what it means to be someone's friend.
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About fifteen seconds after waking up, Nick wishes he hadn't. His head hurts, his knees hurt, his back hurts, his eyelids hurt, his tongue hurts, and frankly the fuzzy spot in his memory hurts too.
He decides to lie there for a while, hopes maybe he can trick his body into thinking it's still asleep so things will stop hurting.
Except then his bladder draws attention to itself, and then comes the awful taste in his mouth, and Nick realizes that the longer he lies there the worse he's going to feel. Every few seconds another part of his body is going to start to complain, and if he's not up doing something then he's never going to be able to ignore them.
So he negotiates himself into a sitting position, and from there into a standing position, and he keeps one hand on the wall while he picks his way towards his door and then to the bathroom. He hasn't felt this bad in years, not since his frat days. What the hell did he do last night?
The beginning of the answer hits him when he's standing in front of the toilet with his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. It comes in the form of a strong feeling that he made an ass of himself, and an equally strong feeling that he should go and see who's sleeping in his living room.
He flushes, washes his hands, spits out his toothpaste and wanders down the dim hallway trying valiantly to ignore the chorus of protest from every joint he possesses. His eyes fall naturally to the couch, which is empty - huh. And then they gravitate to the lazy-boy in the corner, where the unmistakable hair of Greg Sanders is poking out from under a blanket.
Uh-oh.
The end of the answer slams into him with the force of a rocket-propelled pingpong ball driving itself into his memory and leaving a crater. He thinks: Greg. Music. Club. Kiss. Taxi. Kiss. Bed.
Oh, shit.
The ensuing wave of panic that crests over him does a good job of muting his hangover for a little while. He's not sure what scares him more: that he actually got liquored up and went out looking for Greg last night, that Greg turned him down, or that Greg probably remembers the whole thing.
Nope, he thinks after a heartbeat, that's a no-brainer. Greg knows.
Greg knows.
Greg knows.
Shit shit shit shit shit.... he takes a deep breath and then another one, and issues strict instructions to his stomach not to throw up while he's about to hyperventilate.
Look, a rational part of him says, he's gay too, right? So he's not going to set out to ruin your life with this.
That's not the fucking point, the rest of him screams, the point is he knows something you've never told anyone before, ever, and that has to be a bad thing, right?
Right?
Greg starts to stir, and Nick bolts as quickly as he can in his sorry state back to his room and closes the door.
Smooth move, he tells himself.
Then he tells himself to go fuck himself.
Eventually there is a smell of coffee, and a little bit later a smell of toast, and Nick realizes that Greg is not going to spontaneously go home. He's going to stay there until Nick makes an appearance or until shift starts: whichever comes first.
So he runs a hand through his hair and creeps out into the hallway.
Greg is sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper and a stack of toast and cheese. He doesn't look up when Nick fills the doorway to the kitchen, keeps reading until Nick makes a noise.
Then he looks up, and - Nick feels a lot of tension leave his body - smiles.
"Hey," Greg says, and pushes a chair out from under the table for him. "It's about time. I was about to put together a search party."
Nick sits down carefully, eyes the toast. "Yeah," he says because it's a nice non-specific thing to say.
"A little hung over?" Greg asks with an evil grin.
"Shut up," Nick suggests mildly, eyeing the coffee pot next to the toast. His stomach is torn between keen interest and sheer mutinous disgust.
Greg shakes his head a little, still grinning. "You know," he says, "the temptation to torture you is pretty overwhelming right now."
Nick hopes Greg didn't notice his panic-frozen moment there. "Oh yeah?" he asks as neutrally as he can.
"I looked through your CDs," Greg continues, "and I see you have, among your collection of questionable country ballads, some actual rock music. Loud stuff. I was going to blast you out of bed a couple of hours ago, but I took pity on you."
He winces. "Thanks."
Greg prods the toast a little closer to him. "Eat something," he says. "It'll sop up all that acid."
God... Nick takes a slice of toast, picks off the semi-melted cheese, and stares at the slightly-burnt square looking back at him. "Not too sure this is a good idea," he says.
"You can't go into work like that," Greg says pleasantly, "so you've got to eat something."
Nick sighs, inserts a corner of toast into his mouth and bites.
Greg is watching him, and Nick recognizes the look of shrewd assessment. "So," he says when Nick is busy chewing and can't really do much about it, "you remember last night?"
He makes himself finish chewing and then swallow before he replies. In theory, this is supposed to give him time to come up with a good answer. In practice, it just lets him realize that he has nothing to say to that at all.
"Yeah," he finally says. "Shit, Greg, I don't know what to-"
"It's okay," Greg tells him, and something in the tenor of his voice tells Nick that he's getting used to saying this to him. "You don't have to apologize, okay? It happened, it's over, we're good." He raises his eyebrows. "Right?"
Nick is proud of himself for holding his gaze long enough to nod and say, "Right."
"Good." Greg sips at his coffee for a few seconds, lets his eyes fall back to the newspaper.
Nick watches him. That can't be right, he thinks. I can't get off the hook that easily. "Um," he says, "I mean, not that I - you know - but, uh, did I...?"
Greg gives him a terrific look of incomprehension. "You want to try that in English, Nick?"
He swallows. "I've never, I mean, I didn't-"
A light goes on somewhere in Greg's head. "Ohhhh," he says, nodding. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. Okay?"
He lets out a sharp breath. "Okay," he says, and he's beginning to think that maybe he means it. Maybe it will be okay. Who knew?
Greg's eyes slide to the paper again. "Eat," he says without looking up. "You'll regret it later if you don't."
Nick drives him to work and promises to drive him home after. "Thanks," he says awkwardly in the lobby where their paths split, Nick on to the briefing room and Greg down to the lab.
"For what?" Greg asks.
He shrugs. "You know," he says. "Everything."
"Oh." Greg smiles at him, claps him on the shoulder. "You'll be fine, Nick."
Nick nods, smiles, thinks he should probably say something else but can't think of what. "All right, then," he says, because that's another good conversational space-filler. "I'll see you in the morning?"
"You'll probably see me before then," Greg tells him, "unless by some miracle your cases tonight don't involve any blood or DNA or other biological samples."
"Right," Nick says, grins. "Later."
"Later."
They go their separate ways.
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"Hm."
If I can just get those three granules of sand isolated, Gil thinks as he peers down his microscope, just - no, not that one, no quartz allowed in this experiment - if I can just get those three off to one side-
"I said, hm."
He sighs, lifts his head and turns to Catherine. "Yes?" he asks.
"I'm just pondering," she says. She's leaning against the counter not far from him, looking out the door of his office into the shift-change swirl of people in the lobby.
"No you're not," Gil tells her. "Pondering is quiet and careful consideration. What you're doing is trying to get my attention. You have it."
She rolls her eyes at him, and he marvels at that: no one else has enough self-confidence to make fun of him to his face. Then he thinks, That's because she's your friend. Friends can do that. Subordinates can't.
"Fine," she says as though she doesn't want to talk about it but is willing to if it makes him happy. "I was just watching Greg."
"Greg?" Gil turns his head to follow her gaze out into the faux-marble expanse of the waiting area where Greg Sanders is slouched in one of the vinyl chairs along the wall.
"Yeah," she says. "He's just sitting there."
"And?" Gil asks, glancing over at her. "I sit all the time, Catherine. It's what people do when they're tired of standing."
Another great roll of the eyes. "He's waiting," she says, as though explaining something to her daughter on a particularly recalcitrant day.
"Waiting?"
"God, Gil," Catherine says with amusement, "how can you be a criminalist and be so completely blind to everything around you?"
"I'm not blind to everything around me," he protests. "I pay a lot of attention. To the evidence, to suspects, to-"
"To insects," she tells him. "I know. But look: Greg is obviously waiting for someone. Waiting for who? And why?"
Gil blinks. "You could ask him," he suggests.
She looks exasperated. "Teaching you to gossip is like teaching Lindsey not to swear," she says. "What I'm trying to get at is that Nick and Greg arrived together tonight, and they're leaving together now."
"You don't know that," Gil says immediately. "He could be waiting for anyone."
"So you knew they arrived together."
"No," Gil says patiently, "but I'm assuming that you're actually relating a known fact to me. The rest is supposition."
"Supposition, huh?" She grins at him, and it's sort of unsettling. It's a little bit feral. "Want to put some money on that?"
"No," Gil says again.
"Friendly wager."
"No."
"Not for money, then."
"No. Gambling on a colleague's social life is - it's unprofessional, Catherine."
"Loser buys the winner a drink."
"No."
She sighs. "You used to be a lot more fun," she says accusingly. "And at this point it's not even about their social life anymore. This is - this is a matter of principle, Gil."
"Exactly."
"The principle in question being that you used to be a lot more fun than you are now."
There's a moment of silence. Catherine is staring him down, challenging him, and she's not going to blink.
Finally he says, "That's not a principle, that's an axiom."
"Loser buys the winner a drink."
"Catherine-"
"Gil. I have a ten-year-old daughter. Don't even kid yourself that you can out-brat me."
She's serious, he realizes. "Fine," he says with measured reluctance, "one drink."
She grins at him. "Excellent."
"But not this morning," he adds, "because I have to finish this." He indicates the microscope. "This time-sensitive experiment which you interrupted."
"It's sand, Gil," she tells him. "You're looking for its melting point. That's not time-sensitive."
He blinks, and that feral grin of hers returns.
"I do actually pay attention at your dispatch meetings," she informs him sweetly, and turns back to the lobby. "Drinks tomorrow, then."
"Fine."
And despite his determination not to, he finds himself sitting at his desk with his chair angled just right so that he can keep an eye on Greg. Catherine rearranges the furniture so she's got a good vantage point, too, and they sit in silence for a few seconds.
"You have anything to drink?" she asks after a while.
"No."
"Pity. Anything to eat?"
"Actually, yes."
She watches him reach into a desk drawer. "No insects," she tells him.
He shrugs and closes the drawer. "Then no, I don't."
She sighs.
They watch for another few seconds.
"Remind me who I'm rooting for?" Gil asks about the same time that Greg checks his watch again and Catherine starts drumming her fingers.
"You're rooting for not-Nick," she says.
"Oh. Good."
She raises an eyebrow at him. "Good?" she asks. "What does that mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything, Catherine," Gil says, and feels that his life is slipping by degrees out of his control. He looks longingly at his microscope.
"It must mean something," Catherine challenges, "or you wouldn't have said it. You have a problem with Nick and Greg?"
He turns back to her. "What?" He knows he didn't miss anything she said, but he's resolutely certain that he missed something, somewhere. "What are you talking about?"
"Greg," she says, "and Nick."
"What about them?"
"God, Gil, sometimes talking to you is like talking to my autistic nephew. We are sitting here watching Greg wait for Nick to show up, so they can leave together."
"Or not," Gil says, but she ignores him.
"The extrapolation that I'm implying is that they're dating."
He sighs. "Why does it matter?"
She sends a mouthed prayer for patience up towards his ceiling tiles, and shakes her head. "Because, Gil," she says with severely tested patience, "it just is. It's a little mystery. Don't you like little mysteries?"
"How is this a little mystery?" Gil asks, filled with a vaguely horrifying curiosity. "Based on the fact that Nick and Greg allegedly arrived together?"
"Based," she tells him, "on the fact that they have been flirting for years and that they did arrive together, in actual, observed, empirical fact."
He blinks. "Flirting?"
"Do you notice anything that isn't six-legged?"
His eyes involuntarily move to his pet tarantula, and when he regains control of his facial muscles and looks back at Catherine, he knows with dead certainty that if she had anything she could throw at his head, she would.
"F-L-I-R-T-I-N-G, Gil. All the time."
"Oh."
She mutters something unflattering about men, followed by something even more unflattering about Gil Grissoms in particular, and slumps deeper into her chair.
He watches her fume, and wonders how he lets himself get sucked into this mire of gossip. Nobody else can do it to him like she can - he doesn't want to know all of this, he doesn't want to care either way. And yet, he thinks, and yet.
She gives him a deadly cold look. "What?" he asks.
"What do you mean, 'what'?" she demands. "Gil, I've been talking to you for a several minutes and I don't think we're actually having the same conversation."
"We aren't?"
She casts her eyes around for something she could throw, and Gil feels himself smiling.
"I'm sorry," he says.
She sighs. "Just make sure you've got cash with you tomorrow," she says. "You're going to get me a nice, expensive drink."
"You'll probably have earned it by then," he says.
She whips her head around to face him. "What was that?"
He tries to look innocent. "Nothing," he says.
She narrows her eyes at him but turns back to the show, such as it is. "Oh, and look who's entering stage left," she says after a short while.
Gil looks. He sees Nick wandering down the hall, shrugging into his jacket as he goes, saying something random to someone he passes, exchanging grins and shakes of the head. He comes around the corner into the lobby, hesitates and looks around, and-
-walks directly towards Greg.
Hm, Gil thinks. "Circumstantial," he admits haltingly.
Greg looks up as Nick gets closer, and he stands and says something and Nick shakes his head again and punches Greg lightly in the arm, and they leave together.
"More like probative," Catherine says wickedly, and pulls herself out of the chair. "Nice chatting with you, Gil," she says, "we'll finish this conversation tomorrow over drinks."
He watches her go. "We will?"
"Of course we will." She waves at him from the door of his office, and joins the rest of the exodus into daylight.
After a while, Gil gets up and goes back to his microscope.
His mind won't quite leave it alone, though. He gets another four data sets on his experiment before he realizes he's too distracted to be useful, and he packs it up for the day and logs off his computer.
Ecklie grunts at him as they pass in the hall, and Gil knows that he's watching to make sure he actually leaves the building. He remembers with some fondness a brutal case about two years ago, when he had stayed on the premises for almost forty-eight hours straight, and had uncovered the best way to beat the overtime blues: sneaking up on Conrad Ecklie when he thought you'd gone home.
It's childish, he can admit that - it's a ridiculous thing for a man his age to take delight in, but he figures the inhumane nature of his chosen field allows him a certain peevishness. And as long as it's directed solely at Ecklie and his cronies, he honestly doesn't see how it could do any harm. Everyone wins, he reasons when he's feeling cynical.
He doesn't double back tonight, though. He goes straight out to his car and squints at the staggering intrusion of sunlight into his life, climbs in behind the wheel and allows himself a sigh.
It's not that I wish them ill, he rationalises as he starts the engine. If they're happy together, then... well, good for them. To have found each other in the vast hinterlands of society. I mean, it's hard enough to meet anyone when you work the evil hours that we do; and then to find someone who isn't disturbed - or freakishly turned on - by what you do for a living...
No, he thinks as he pulls out of the parking lot, they're lucky. They know each other, and they also know the dark reality they inhabit ten hours a day. It won't come between them, won't translate into exhaustive arguments about keeping secrets and being obstinately unwilling to talk about their working lives.
The good part of his soul is happy for them.
It's the rest of his soul that's the problem.
He concentrates on the road, and on the traffic, and on the distracted driver ahead of him, and refuses to dwell on his private misery until he's safe at home. He collects his daily paper, exchanges pleasantries with his neighbour as she leaves for work and contemplates the sad state of his garden, then locks himself in his house and draws all the curtains.
He sits on the couch facing his stick insect terrarium with a glass of scotch in his hand and slowly raises the lid on the pandora's box of his heart.
The problem, he is willing to admit, is himself. His own... well, his own stupidity, for lack of a better word.
He sips at his scotch.
Nick Stokes has always been his weakness. From the first moment he had bounded into the briefing room, more exuberance than experience and more gusto than skill, Gil has been smitten. Something in the man's charm, in his smile or his eyes or his easy-going ways or his kindness, has wormed its way deep into his heart and taken root there.
He has never been able to convince himself to approach him, though. There was always an excuse: first Nick was new at the lab, then he was too swamped with his mad rush to CSI 2, and then to CSI 3, and then there was the Warrick-Brass fiasco and suddenly Gil was in charge, and then.... well, then there was the subordinate-supervisor thing, and then his ongoing disaster with Sara, and...
And and and. Always a thousand ands and buts and if onlys.
He's always been comforted, though, by the firm belief that it would have been fruitless to profess his feelings to Nick because Nick was, is and ever shall be, a ladies' man.
He drains his drink and pinches his eyes closed.
You're an idiot, Gil Grissom, he thinks.
And the closest thing to a positive spin that he can put on this is that, just because Nick is apparently not as straight as he thought he was, it doesn't actually mean that he'd be interested in Gil Grissom.
Particularly not when there's young and exciting Greg Sanders around.
He makes the rounds of his insects, feeds the ones that need feeding, spends a few minutes watching the explosion of ants that appear at a few sprinkled granules of sugar, and eventually makes his way to bed.
Sleep is a long time coming.