Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Three
It takes Greg Sanders a while to work out what he's whistling. At first he thinks it's Bolero, then he thinks maybe it's from Carmen, and then he thinks, why the hell am I whistling opera?
He's standing on the front porch of Gil's townhouse, going through the keys on his chain. There's the keys to get into his apartment, his keys for work, to his mother's place in San Francisco, to his father's place in Modesto, to Papa Olaf's place by the beach (why he carries those around all the time is a little beyond him). And somewhere in that mess is the key to Gil's house.
The key to Gil's house. It still stops him cold, when he thinks about it.
Gil had given it to him about a month ago, just handed it to him like it was nothing, like it was a letter to mail or a piece of toast.
"You should have one," Gil had explained at the time with that enigmatic almost-smile of his. "You're part of this house now. You don't need to knock like the pizza guy."
"Besides," Nick had said, wrapping his arms around him from the other side, "this way I have someone else to let me in next time I lose my key."
"Do that a lot, do you?" he'd asked, leaning back into Nick's arms and wondering at how amazing it felt to be given a key - given permanent, unrestricted access - to this.
"You have no idea," Gil had said, watching them and smiling.
So he's had this key forever now, but he's never used it. Partly he hasn't needed it - he's always coming in with someone, and he's never the last out who has to lock the door - but mostly it hasn't seemed right. It's not that he's needed an occasion, exactly; or so he keeps telling himself. He's just been waiting for the moment to be exactly perfect.
Such as when he's whistling something maddeningly familiar with a bag of movies in one hand, his toothbrush in his pocket, and he can smell something heavenly coming from the kitchen. This moment has perfection written all over it.
He finds the right key, runs his thumb along the ridges, and feels a little shimmy of pleasure as he slides it home in the lock. Mmmmm. First times always take his breath away.
The lock has a little catch in it, he discovers, but if he pulls the door handle towards him and twists it about three degrees the wrong way, it unlocks cleanly. He makes a note of that, because it seems like something worth noting. Red-letter detail on a red-letter day, if he kept a diary, which he doesn't.
He feels the mechanical click in the heel of his hand, grins and lets the door swing open.
Man, he thinks, that smells like coming home.
Strange how quickly this place has come to feel like home. He still has his own place, obviously, but truth be told he doesn't spend a lot of time there. He goes there enough to collect the mail, to keep the plants alive and to pass a half-hearted duster over the more obvious horizontal surfaces. He actually sleeps there once or twice a week, when their schedules fail to line up in anything approaching a useful configuration. He knows that Gil and Nick catch a few quick hours together when he's not there, and it doesn't bother him anywhere near as much as he thought it would.
When it had just been him and Nick, with Nick and Gil happening in parallel and unseen, he'd been okay with it. There had been them, and there had been the other them, and never the 'twain shall meet.
Except now it isn't two couples dancing around each other. Now it's the three of them under one umbrella and it feels a little weird to think about what goes on when he's not there. So he generally doesn't think about, and when he does he reminds himself of all of the fun he's had with Nick on his own, and he feels a little better. Besides, Nick and Gil go back a lot further than Greg.
But. He won't dwell on what happens when he's not there, because he is there now.
With his own key, and a movie that he thinks is going to blow Gil's socks off. Probably not so much Nick, but that's okay. Nick will watch it anyway, stretched on the couch between the two of them, his feet distracting Gil and his head distracting Greg. He's good at that, being distracting. In the best way possible, of course.
"I'm home," he hollers, pulling his key out of the door.
"I'm in the kitchen," Gil calls back.
Home.
"Smells great," he says, his sock feet flapping across the hardwood of the living room and then into the kitchen.
"Thank you." Gil is standing at the stove, stirring a pot with a wooden spoon and he smiles over his shoulder. "Recipe my mother sent me."
Greg stifles his giggle before it escapes. It is too, too funny that Gil Grissom swaps recipes with his mother. He isn't sure why, but it is. "She must have excellent taste."
"She does." Another smile, and he turns back to the stove.
"Nick here yet?" Greg asks, sliding onto a bar stool at the elevated counter. There's a bowl of mixed nuts near the phone and he pulls it towards himself, sinks his fingers in and probes for a cashew. Gil mines for them but won't admit it. One of these days Greg is going to remember to bring him a five-pound bag of salted cashews and leave it somewhere conspicuous.
"He didn't call you?"
Greg stops, an almond almost halfway to his lips. "No..." he says guardedly.
"He won't be back until late."
"Oh?"
Gil glances up again. "Warrick and Sara took him out after work," he says. "Who knows what time they'll get tired of him."
"Oh." Greg tries to think of something to say. "I, uh, didn't check my phone." He feels around in his pocket for his cell. He can tell that he's starting to blush and he's not sure why.
Well, okay, he admits, he's probably blushing because he's never really spent an entire day alone with Gil. A few hours here and there, but he's always been kind of uneasy when it happens, and they generally end up playing chess or Clue or the insane variant of checkers that Greg invented in college that involves two dice and deck of cards and which he can tell has Gil hooked. They do platonic things together.
Only problem is, he doesn't want to be platonic right now.
"Greg?"
He looks up from the phone, which he's opened and turned on and - apparently - been staring at for a few seconds.
Gil has stopped stirring. "Are you okay?"
"Sure," he says. "Just, you know. Spaced out." He smiles.
The look on Gil's face says he isn't buying it. "What is it?" he asks. Pulls the spoon out of the pot and sets it on a saucer.
Greg thinks, If only he didn't sound like he cared so much. "It's nothing," he says, but as soon as he says it he knows it was a tactical error. Grissom and Gil may be two entirely different entities, but there's enough overlap that Gil won't let go of something that Grissom wouldn't, either.
"Greg. We've talked about this." Gil leans back against the counter next to the sink, crosses his arms on his chest. "Whatever it is, tell me."
He sighs. They have had this conversation before, about how Greg is supposed to grow a backbone (his words) and speak up for himself (Nick's words). Gil will generally take his hand and tells him gently how important he is to them, that he has to remember that he counts, too - but it all amounts to the same thing: pipe up in the bleachers.
"I had - plans," he says finally, picking his words.
"Oh?" Gil is smiling again when Greg looks up from his hands. "What kind of plans?"
He shifts on the hard seat, wishes Gil had sprung full out and gotten the padded ones. "You know," he says, "plans. Movie, maybe a little music, stuff." He shrugged.
"That sounds like a seduction," Gil says.
He knows he's blushing for real this time, hates it but can't stop it. "Maybe," he admits, amazed that he can feel his capillaries dilating all through his face. Can actually feel the skin heat up as it turns red.
"So?" Gil says and his smile increases in radiance, reaches his eyes and ignites something there. "Seduce me."
He knows that there's some snappy comeback to that, knows that somewhere in the ether there's a good line that will get him off the hook. He swallows. "Um."
"Started with a movie, right?" Gil asks. "Your plans?" He's still standing in front of the stove, still watching him with that half-smile twinkle in his eyes that never fails to make Greg feel like a new and exciting insect. In the way that delights someone like Gil.
"Yeah..."
"So?" Gil shrugs. "Let's watch a movie. This still needs to simmer for a while."
He wants to be skeptical, wants to try to keep his brain engaged but it's so hard when Gil is directing all of his considerable attention to him. So he shrugs instead, and lets Gil take his hand and bring it to his lips.
It stutters his breathing, and he knows that Gil can hear it because he feels those lips curl into a smile. "Well," Greg manages to say, although it's a little squeaky, "when you put it that way."
Gil rewards him with a touch of teeth along the line of his thumb, and a wicked sparkle in his eye.
They actually do watch the movie, or at least the first part of it. It's an disappointing film from Belize, something existential that Greg loses the thread of after about twenty minutes. Gil makes a vague attempt at explaining it but Greg shushes him: he likes the flicker of the pictures and the random staccato of the Spanish, and the wonderful heat of Gil's body pressed against him.
After a while he senses that even Gil has become confused - from what Greg can tell, the main character's reflection in the mirror of evil just leapt out of the glass and is stalking the love interest - and he decides, it's now or never, Sanders. Carpe that diem.
They're lying side by side on the couch, and Greg rolls over enough to sit up, and now he has Gil's undivided attention because he's not moving away, he's just sitting there, looking down at him.
Gil arches an eyebrow at him, and Greg leans down and touches his lips to the corner of his mouth. It's funny, Greg thinks as he pulls back enough to look at him, really look at how fucking beautiful he is; he's been naked with this man more times than he can count, and yet the prospect of just kissing him scares the daylights out of him. This terror wrapped around his heart is - is something. He can't think of the word for it, but he knows the feeling well. Overwhelming and utterly uncalled for and more than a little frustrating.
Gil's hand comes up and touches the back of his neck. "What is it?" he whispers, reading the expression in his eyes in less than a heartbeat.
Greg tries to smile. "I'm a little nervous," he admits.
"Why?"
"I've never done this before," Greg confesses, "not with you, not with just you." He blinks slowly, bites his lower lip. "I don't want to get it wrong."
"How on Earth could you get it wrong?" Gil asks, touching the side of his face, ghosting his fingers across his lips and back up to the edge of his eyes.
"I'm sure I could find a way."
"How?" Gil's other hand touches the base of his throat, just above his collarbone, skips across the skin there.
Greg tries for another smile. "What if I say the wrong thing?"
"What wrong thing could you say?"
He shrugs uncertainly. He hates that he needs to have this conversation at all, but loathes that he needs to have it now, when he has Gil all to himself for the first time. "What if..." He tries to think of something he can say that will derail the heavy weight of his feelings, let him escape from this utterly terrifying moment. "What if I say I - I want to tie you up?" He manages a smirk then, or most of one anyway - well, an attempt at one.
There's a moment then, a short moment by most standards but Gil isn't laughing at him, isn't even laughing with him - is just looking at him curiously. "Well," he finally says, "I have a thing about blindfolds, but I'll try anything else."
What? Greg opens his mouth and knows that it's just hanging open, but can't coordinate himself to get it closed again. "That's not-" he says when he can form words, "I didn't actually-"
Gil pulls him down softly for a kiss and then lets go of his head again. "Greg," he says, "you aren't going to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, or disappoint me-"
He doesn't actually flinch, but he thinks he might as well have because Gil stops talking then, takes his face in both hands and studies him with a curious little frown.
"Shit," Greg says, pulls his face free and sits back, "what did I do, I told you I would fuck this up-"
Gil sits up smoothly - a move Greg isn't sure he could pull off even on a good day so how does Gil manage to make it look so damned effortless? - and catches his face again between his hands.
"You didn't," Gil says and leans in closer to him. "You didn't do anything wrong, Greg."
He doesn't get it, but he likes the way Gil is almost kissing him, like it's the simplest and most exquisite thing he's ever done. He kisses back as softly as he can, and lets their foreheads come together while they share each other's space, and even though he knows his face is red and hot and he's closer to tears than he wants to be, he doesn't pull away from Gil's touch.
"Greg," Gil says a moment later, picking his words carefully, "if I did this to you - if I made you doubt yourself this much - I am truly sorry."
Shit shit shit - now he's really going to cry. "You didn't," he says, willing his tear ducts - for once in his miserable fucking life - to listen to him.
"I think I did," Gil whispers, "oh Greg - oh honey, I'm so, so sorry..."
So much for conscious control of his body. He feels the prickle in his eyes and he squeezes them shut. Not now, he thinks, not now not now not now not now...
Gil is saying something and he forces himself to listen, to hear his words. "Not now what?" he's asking so softly it's barely sound.
What? That was out loud?
"Yes," Gil says, "that was out loud." He kisses him carefully, lets their lips fall away from each other. "Tell me, Greg - talk to me, tell me what's going on in your head-"
He hates to hear Gil so uncertain, hates that he's begging because of him, that it's his fault.
"It's not you," he hears himself say, and here come the tears for real, and no amount of blinking or holding his eyes shut is going to stop them now. "Gil, it's not you, it's not Nick, it's not - it's not anybody, it's just me."
"No," Gil exhales against his lips, "it's not you, Greg, I promise - if you could see yourself the way I do, Greg, the way Nick does-"
Fuck it, part of him thinks while the rest of him disappears, so much for your composure. Greg lets his head fall onto Gil's shoulder and deflates against him.
He wishes he could hold his tears back, he thinks distantly, wishes he could keep himself silent and graceful and not at all like this, not sniffles and that raw noise that must be coming from him. He feels Gil pull him down and hold him, wrap both his arms around him and his leg too, and he hears him mumble random syllables in his ear and soothe his entire body and it feels so good, Greg thinks, it feels so good to not even try to hold it in. He doesn't let himself think of the mess that's going to be waiting for him when he pulls himself together, he doesn't want to face the hole that he's sure he's just dug.
But the inevitable thoughts come anyway, because they always do when he really needs them not to.
-what were you thinking - like you could actually have a place here like you aren't going to fuck it up like you've fucked up every other goddamn thing in your life - did you honestly think they would make room for you in this little slice of paradise - grow up greg grow the fuck up because this doesn't happen in your life - you always fuck it up and you're going to fuck this up too like everything else - because they don't know and you know you know you know they'll kick your sorry ass out of here - you're not good enough and you know it and they're going to know it too and then it's over and you know what that means - you think by now you'd recognise a set fucking pattern when you meet one-
He runs out of steam eventually, exhausted and empty, and he can't remember ever feeling so vacant. His head is pounding in time to something, something that isn't his pulse, isn't inside him at all but - now that he thinks about it - is around him, is under him...
Gil is shaking. No, Greg corrects internally: Gil is - crying.
Gil. Crying. Holy fuck.
He tries to pull himself free, to untangle himself from Gil's arms and legs and get off his chest, the man must be suffocating under all that deadweight but - he won't let go. He's clinging to him like a lifeline, like he's afraid to separate himself from Greg by even an inch, like Greg is the only thing grounding him.
For a while Greg doesn't know what to do, isn't sure who Gil thinks he's holding onto but reasons it can't really be him, but there's no disentangling himself neatly so he doesn't. He shifts most of his weight off his torso, slides it into the crack between Gil and the back of the sofa, feels Gil turn with him and tighten his arms.
"It's okay," he says because his mouth insists on saying something. "Whatever it is, just - let it go..." Someone said that to him recently, he thinks, it must have been Gil. God, he thinks, what the fuck did I do now?
His heart is jackhammering when Gil slows down and his body comes to a sort of a rest, he loosens the death grip he has on Greg's body and brings shaking hands to his eyes.
Greg is astounded, watching this act of intimacy from so close. He's always known that Gil is a deeply passionate man - knew it even before it was demonstrated to him, knew it on an instinctive level, in some gut-clenching way - but he's never even considered that deeply passionate includes this, too.
He swallows hard, touches the heat of Gil's face. "You okay?" he asks, and even his whisper is shaky.
Gil shakes his head and draws his hands away from his eyes, down his cheeks to wipe away what tears were not soaked up by the fabric of Greg's tee shirt. "No," he says, forces a weak smile, and angles his head so that he is looking Greg straight in the eyes.
Greg wants to move away from his stare, from the terrifying way his eyes bore into his head and straight down into his heart. He wants to jerk away but he can't, because Gil's attention is like a magnet and he has all the strength of a pile of iron shavings.
"What?" he asks when he's sure he can make the word come out in one piece.
Gil touches his face carefully, gently, like he would a piece of priceless alabaster. "Greg," he says, and his voice is gravelly in a way that makes Greg's heart lurch. "Do you realise that when you're upset, you think out loud?"
"What?" He frowns, and there's a clunk in the back of his brain as something comes unstuck and falls into place. "Oh - shit," he says and his entire body tenses up.
"Maybe it's a good thing," Gil says gently, stroking the sides of his face, "because otherwise I would never have known how much damage I've done to you." His eyes start to tear up again and he blinks, not to dispel them but to break the meniscus and let them escape the lines of his eyes.
"Fuck..." Greg can feel a stress-tremor starting in his chest, knows if he doesn't get up away from this soon he's going to start to shake, and not just his hands. He tries to push but can't make his muscles work together.
Gil slides his hands down his shoulders and grips his forearms, urges him to come closer, to close the space between them. "I don't even know where to begin to apologise," he says, coaxing him down again to lay his body over him, to rest his head on his ribcage.
"You don't have to," Greg breathes, trying to keep himself together.
"Oh, I do," Gil counters, so softly that Greg can't find the energy to disagree with him, even though he knows to the core of his being that Gil is wrong, that he has nothing to apologise for.
Gil's hand finds the back of his head, strokes through the hair absently. "I-" He falters, stops, takes a breath to start again. "I'm not good with people," he says. "Sometimes it clicks and it's easy but most of the time - I'm too hard. I criticise too easily and forget to compliment when I should and-" He stops again, this time because his breath hitches and he pulls Greg in tighter against his chest. "-and sometimes I let people think the wrong things about themselves because I don't notice the - the warning signs."
Greg squeezes his eyes shut against the words Gil is murmuring in his ear, against the desperate ache he feels to believe.
He feels Gil take a deep, shaking breath under him and resume the wonderful rhythm of his fingers in his hair. "Greg... you're good at your job and you're going to make a hell of a CSI and you're brilliant and you're beautiful and you make me laugh and you're generous and I love you and I'm going to keep telling you this until you're able to believe me."
And yep, there come more tears, again - Greg tries to wipe at his eyes but he can't because Gil is still holding him, still talking, still saying all of the things he's wanted to hear for so long, still murmuring and soothing and making him feel good. Well, better, anyway.
And maybe that's a start.