Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Characters: Gil Grissom, Greg Sanders, Nick Stokes
Rating: FRAO
Warnings: None
Summary: ((Sequel to "WHAT YOU WANT")) -- Some things are less unconditional than others.
----------
NOTE:
Franky, love of my life - as always, a dozen roses at your feet.
----------
He knows it's bad news.
Jim Brass sits in his car outside of the courthouse, looking down at the pager he has and trying to talk himself out of the increasingly miserable feeling blossoming in his chest.
He used to be an evidence man, he thinks. He used to chase fingerprints and paint transfers, or at least he used to supervise the geeks that did the actual chasing. In his heart he's always been about the people, but the evidence works for him, too. It's a tidy way to draw the line that connects the perp to his crime. He likes that, likes things he can explain in less than two pages of type-written report.
So where is this gnawing ache of worry coming from? It's just a page from the DA's office, he gets those all the time. This case has been moved up, we need to go over your testimony. This guy's up for parole, we'd like it if you told the board what a bad idea that is. That prick you put away last year just got knifed in jail, there are some forms you need to fill out. He's been into the damn courthouse building too many times to count, this shouldn't be as upsetting as it is. Seems to be. Whatever.
Maybe it's the 911 tagged onto the page. No details, no remarks, not a damn thing that'll help him decide if he's going to need a change of clothes. Just "ADA Childs 911."
He called in as soon as he got the message, got tangled in a hopeless conversation with whatever dweeb in diapers was clerking in her office this time.
"She's in court until three o'clock today," the clerk said. "Can I take a message?"
"She paged me," Jim had explained, again (were the clerks actually getting dumber, or was his fuse just burning dangerously short?). "911 is usually an emergency. Did she leave a message for me, maybe?"
"What was your name, again?"
It hadn't gone anywhere, and Jim knew he was just going to have to live with the gnawing doubt until three o'clock when Robin Childs wrapped up whatever song and dance she was doing for the judge. So he spent the afternoon on the street, talking to whoever Gil Grissom said was a likely suspect in their latest body dump, going through the motions and trying not to be sick. And with Gil watching him carefully, taking mental notes and cataloging his distraction.
He knows this is going to bite him in the ass, and soon. Note to self, he thinks: don't let Gil get you drunk for at least a year.
He sees her then, Robin coming down the worn steps of the district courthouse, briefcase dangling at the end of one arm and a whackload of case files held against her chest. He gets out of his car, crosses the street and meets her at the curb.
"So what's up?" he asks.
She sighs. "Hello to you, too," she says. Her hair is short but she pushes at it absently where it curls around her ear. Jim remembers that she used to have long hair, and reminds himself to compliment her on the new look sometime.
"You paged."
"Yeah. I tried to call you at lunch but your phone was off."
He thinks. Lunch: oh yeah, in the box with suspect number three. "So what's the 911?"
She sighs, pushes her armload of folders at him. "Bad news," she says.
I knew it, Jim thinks. He swallows, tries to sound light. "You gonna tell me, Robin, or am I going to have to guess?"
"Nigel Crane," she says, and extracts a thick manila envelope from her briefcase, holds it out to him.
He looks at it, recognises it as one of the court-sealed documents he comes across once in a blue moon. Seal broken. He takes it, turns it over, looks up at her. "You gonna tell me," he says again, "or am I going to have to guess?"
"He's up on a appeal."
"He WHAT?" It's an instinctive response, that bellow of rage, and he feels a stab of guilt when Robin startles away from him. He takes a deep breath, counts to five, tries again. "He what?" he asks, a touch more rationally.
She sighs. "It's not on the evidence," she tells him, "it's nothing you or your CSIs did. It's a paperwork fuckup, and it's not a sure thing, Jim - he's not going to get anywhere near another trial, I promise you. But it's going to hit the papers, and it's going to be ugly."
"Shit," Jim says, feels the knot in his stomach solidify into a hot pellet of fear. Actual, gut-twisting fear.
"I know," Robin says, and shakes her head. "I don't know what to say but sorry."
"Jesus, Robin - it wasn't you-?"
"No." She shakes her head again, more firmly, and there's a grim set around her mouth. "It was one of the clerks, I think."
He wants to laugh at that, but there isn't anything funny about it. "Maybe you guys shouldn't hire first-year students anymore," he says.
"We don't."
"Hmph."
She snaps her briefcase shut, takes her files back from him, rearranges herself for the trip back to the office. "I'll need those back tomorrow," she says, nodding at the Crane envelope.
He looks down at it, then back up at her. "Is there anything new in here?" he asks.
"No."
He hands it back to her. "Then hang onto it," he says. "I've got my own notes to look at."
She smiles, says goodbye, heads off to her office.
"Besides," Jim mumbles to her back once she's too far away to hear anything, "it's permanently burned into my memory." He slides his hands into his pockets and ambles back to the car.
He wastes the rest of the afternoon doing stupid stuff like paying his bills and pretending to get some sleep, because he knows he should go and find Nick and sit down with him and share the ugly truth of the situation, but he doesn't. He wants to be a chicken today, so that's what he's going to do.
In the early evening he gives up pretending he's a coward, takes a long hot shower followed by a short cold one and drives to the precinct house. It's quick work at the station to finesse Nick's address out of the computers. Jim copies it down absently in his notebook, logs off the system, and heads back out to his car.
He doesn't want to do this. He doesn't want to have to sit down with him and explain that Nigel Crane is going to be in the news again, that people are going to be harassing him to comment on it, that he has to consider the possibility of Crane being out on the street, doesn't want to have to convince him to trust the DA's office.
He could, he thinks, leave it be. Let him find out at the same time everyone else does, but - dammit, he kinda likes the kid. Even if he is a cheating sonofabitch. Even if Gil doesn't see it that way.
He sighs, rubs his eyes as he waits at a stoplight.
He doesn't get it. The thing with Gil and Nick - he's been a detective way too long to have been unaware that they were together. Gil didn't want to talk about it, fair enough. Jim comes from a generation where that's okay, hell that's better than okay: everyone knows it happens, just so long as no one says it out loud. Gil had been happy, Nick had been happy, Jim had been happy that they had been happy.
But then - Sanders. He clenches his jaw.
Out of nowhere, suddenly Nick and Greg are an item, joined at the lip from what he's heard and the few times he's seen them together, they look like quite a couple. And Gil -
He sighs again, watches balefully as the light resolutely stays red.
Gil just doesn't make any sense at all. Sure, okay, Jim gets the whole Zen thing that the guy's got going on, gets that he accepts change as part of the universe and blah blah blah, can't hold onto a personal hate, whatever. It's all bullshit, as far as Jim can tell, but maybe that's really what floats Gil's boat. Maybe altruism really is better than sex.
It's one thing to be okay with the fact that your lover has ditched you for someone younger. He can give Gil a pat on the back for that, it's better than he was when he found out his wife had been screwing around.
So it's one thing to be okay with it, but isn't it something completely different to encourage it? To invite them over as a couple, to have them sitting in the same living room where Gil and Nick used to make out?
To Jim, that smacks of a masochism he just doesn't think Gil possesses.
So, he's missing something. And as a detective, that rankles him. He hates not knowing.
But what can he do? He can stand by Gil, no matter how much he thinks he's going too far in the benevolence department. He's Gil's friend, after all, and there's a certain unwavering support inherent in calling someone a friend.
So Gil wants to let it slide, okay. He can live with that. He doesn't have to like Nick particularly to be there for Gil.
The light changes and he eases his foot off the brake, lets the car slide forward into traffic.
Second-worse part of the job, he thinks, giving someone shit news like this. The worst, of course, is telling them that someone they love is dead. But this is a pretty close second.
He gets to Nick's house and realises as he puts his car into park that Nick is probably still in bed, or out having fun - he hasn't figured out yet how the guy runs his night shift life yet, whether he sleeps until work and then plays afterwards, or plays before work and then hits the sack come sunrise. Either way, odds are the kid's not home.
Except there are lights on, in what he assumes are the hallway and living room, so... so nothing. So he's out of excuses to not do this, to not be a grown up, to not be a professional about it. He sighs, turns the car off, gets out into the warm evening air.
He rings the doorbell, is wondering how to say what he has to say when it swings open and there's a guy standing there, looking at him.
Not Nick.
And not Greg, either.
Jim frowns. Tall guy, he catalogues without conscious thought. Caucasian, early twenties, dark hair, wearing jeans and not much else. More than a little intoxicated.
His first conscious thought is a mean one: So Nick cheats on everyone, huh?
"Who're you?" the kid demands. He smells like cheap beer.
"Jim Brass," he says, and pulls out his badge. "NVPD. I'm looking for Nick Stokes." He cranes his neck to see around him. "This is his listed residence."
The kid peers down at the ID. "Sure," he says, "it's his place. He doesn't live here, but it's his place."
Jim narrows his eyes. "Who are you?"
"Andrew Willis," the kid says. "I sublet. Nick comes by once in a while to collect his mail and stuff."
"Oh yeah?" Jim shifts from foot to foot. "Know where he calls home these days?"
Andrew shrugs. "Lives with his boyfriend, I think," he says, shakes his head.
Jim considers being an asshole with this kid on general principle, then changes his mind. "With his boyfriend, huh?"
"Whatever works for him, dude. It's a nice enough place, and it's cheap." Andrew yawns, scratches at the back of his neck. "I can get you the address," he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder into the house, "if you want it."
Jim sighs. "Sure," he says, "why don't you do that."
He watches the kid go back inside and come back in a few seconds with a post-it note. "Phone number's there, too," he says and hands it to him.
Brass takes it, sticks it inside his notebook without looking at it, and slides the leather pad back into his pocket. "Thanks," he mumbles.
Andrew shrugs. "Whatever. Hey - when you find him, tell him the back porch needs looking at again, okay? It's still wobbly."
Brass looks at him evenly. "Right," he says, and thinks what a long night it's going to be.
He decides he's going to be a chickenshit for another few hours. He doesn't want to drive to whatever seedy part of town Sanders no doubt lives in, doesn't want to see the den of iniquity that Nick has moved into, doesn't want to confront what's going on with them any more than he really wanted to confront what was going on with Gil and Nick.
At least, he thinks as he drives away, Gil has class. More bugs in glass cases than any sensible decorating scheme really should have, but still. Neutral colours, books on the shelves, matching sheets and pillowcases. But Sanders? Jim shudders. He can only imagine the juvenile, punked-out frat-house look the guy's got going at his place.
And frankly, he has less trouble picturing Nick wandering around in bare feet in a place like Gil's than in a place like Sanders'.
So what the hell, he decides. He'll find Nick at the lab at some point tonight, pull him aside somewhere like the break room, close the door and have a little chat about Nigel Crane. A place like that it won't get too awkward, there won't be any moments of trying really hard not to notice details like whatever trashy posters Sanders has on the walls.
Decision made, Jim feels a little better. Yes, he thinks, doing it at work is the right way to get it done. Professional, not personal.
Keep the personal out of it.
Except that tonight is a vicious night and they're all on the go, all the time; and the only sliver of time that Jim sees Nick not doing three things at once is when he's passing the DNA lab and he happens to see Nick and Greg talking. It looks like it's probably job-related, discussing some finer point of one the cases they're working tonight, but-
He hesitates on the brink of going in and telling Nick that he needs to see him.
They look happy, those two. They're probably playing "Name That Chemical Compound" again, to judge by the roughly hexagonal diagram on the white board. Greg is smirking and Nick is laughing and waving a folder under his nose and he can feel the easy camaraderie from here, out in the hallway.
Jim just doesn't have the heart to walk in and bring Nick's world of comfort crashing down around his ears.
He'll wait until after the shift, he thinks. When the bad news won't distract Nick from his work, when he can afford to crumple and reach out for support from Greg.
He watches them for another while, then leaves before they notice him.
He phones Robin Childs, gets her answering machine at home and is in the middle of leaving a quick message when she interrupts him
"Jim?" she asks, sounding breathless. "You still there?"
"Where else?" he asks. He's in his car, sitting in front of a 7-Eleven with the engine running. It's almost half past six in the morning and he's got three people to run down before he goes to bed, and he figures this is the only time he's going to get a hold of her for real.
"I was trying to get one of the cats out of the cupboard," she says, her wind coming back to her. "Sorry I missed you."
"You didn't miss me, exactly," Jim says. He can picture Robin climbing up on the counter to get some four-legged miscreant out from behind a wineglass. He smiles. "I mean, I'm still here."
"So we've established," she says. "What can I do for you? ...or is this a social call?"
"I don't usually make my social calls before lunch," he says.
"Duly noted. What can I do?"
"I'm wondering about the timeline on the Nigel Crane thing," he says.
"Well," she says, and now he can picture her sitting down at the table with the phone held against her shoulder while she paws through her overstuffed briefcase. "Let's see. It's on the docket for next week, uh... Thursday, yeah. That's the first introduction only, though, so it'll be short. After that it's up to the judge."
Next Thursday. Jim flips through the calendar in his head. So not a lot of time to stall, he thinks. "Okay," he says, "thanks."
"Hey Jim?"
He pauses, tries to identify the edge in her voice. "Yeah?"
"We should do lunch some day this week," she says. "I can fill in the details for you, you know, as the schedule firms up."
"Um, okay," Jim says. "I'll try to be out of bed by noon one of these days."
She laughs at him. "Such a hardship, I know," she says. "I'll call you?"
"Sure," Jim says.
There's a distant sound of glassware breaking and the horrified meow of a deeply innocent cat. "I've got to go," she says, and her voice is still rich with laughter. "Later?"
"I'll be here," Jim says, because he has no idea what else to say.
"Great. Bye."
After she hangs up, Jim stares at the phone for a few seconds and then puts it away. Well well, he thinks. That sounded an awful lot like a date.
Jim Brass. On a date.
He has to laugh at that, and he puts his car in gear and thinks, I've got to do something about this thing with Nick, and I've got to do it now. Some lucky star is shining on me at this moment in time, and he'd be an absolute moron not to go with it.
He pulls his notebook out of his pocket and flips through to the sticky note from earlier. He looks at the address, conjures his mental map of the city and is about three blocks away from the convenience store when it clicks: that's not Greg Sanders' address he's driving towards.
It's Gil Grissom's.
He keeps driving but lets his foot off the accelerator a bit, his brain working on the problem from any angle that seems likely to yield a solution.
Nick hasn't updated his address with his tenant, he thinks. Not a huge surprise - it's not like he's getting his mail forwarded, and he's sure it doesn't come up naturally in conversation when he's over to collect his mail and repair the porch.
So he is going to need to wrangle Sanders' address from the computer after all. Dammit.
Or...
He looks at the clock in his dashboard. It's almost seven now, and night shift should be dotting their I's and crossing their T's right about now; well most of them, except for the workaholics. Like Gil.
So he has time to go wake up a few drug dealers, rattle their chains and let them know he's watching them, and then he can head over to Gil's place and dump the problem in his hands. He's Nick's supervisor, after all. Let him the bearer of bad news.
It's still a cowardly thing to do, he thinks as he turns down a side street and heads for the rough end of town, but at least it gets something done. And takes the rest of the burden off of him, which is fine as far as he's concerned, because he's got other things to worry about.
Like a date.
With Robin Childs.
He grins and shakes his head. Lucky star indeed.