Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Six
Gil is sitting in the chair nearest the window with a glass of white wine in one hand and the most cunningly benign look on his face that Nick has ever seen. There's a plate with some cheese and sliced fruit on the coffee table, and Gil meets his expression with one upturned eyebrow and a warm smile. Two more wine glasses are waiting for them.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asks Greg. "You looked a little pale there."
Greg gulps and drops Nick's hand. "Sure," he says, all false bravado.
"Good," he says. "Please, have a seat and help yourself."
Nick falls into the cushions at one end of the couch and snags a glass of wine. "Thanks," he says.
Greg takes the other glass carefully, lowers himself uneasily down at the other end of the sofa.
"So," Gil begins with his characteristic patient amusement. "What happened?"
Nick groans, slumps back into the cushions. "Warrick saw us in the parking lot," he says, balancing the stem of the wine glass on his knee and turning it slowly.
"Oh?"
"'Oh' is right. Good thing he was standing on his brakes or he'd have totalled his car."
"Discretion being the hardest part of valour?" Gil asks, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"Something like that." He sips at the wine without tasting it, lolls his head to the side to see Greg still in deep-panic mode. He glances across at Gil, whose eyebrow is once again raised a fraction of an inch, his lips almost-but-not-quite pursed.
He understands then that Greg is not going to spontaneously join the conversation, isn't going to do anything but sit there in utter terror until something changes. Part of him had honestly thought that in bringing him here everything would magically fall into place. It's worked for him - he understands now what Gil has been saying since the start, that nothing with Greg will ever be a threat to them � and he wants Greg to have the same epiphany.
But he doesn't know how to say what he needs to say, what Greg needs to hear. Thinks, maybe it can't be said.
Gil smiles openly and stands up. "I think I'll leave the two of you alone," he says, leaving his glass on the table in front of him.
"Yeah?" Nick asks, looking up at him.
"You don't need me here." He bends his head down far enough to kiss him quickly, then straightens with another smile and pats Greg on the head as he passes behind him, pointedly ignoring the flinch he inspires. "I'll be upstairs," he says, "holler if you want me."
When the stairs upstairs creak to announce that Gil is indeed out of earshot, Greg begins to relax. He stares at the wine in his hand as though he isn't sure how it got there, then drains it in one go and sets the empty flute on the glass-topped table.
"What's going on?" he asks finally.
Nick nurses his own drink. "I don't know," he says. "I think maybe that's up to you."
"What?" Greg asks. "How is any of this up to me?"
"Because now you know," he explains, and has a sudden flash of what he must look like. He feels himself slipping into the Gil-role in the situation, the wiser, older, more serene guru who is utterly unflappable and wholly convinced of what he knows to be true. The image makes him feel good, that he might actually be in a position to do for Greg what Gil did for him. To set him free.
"Yeah," Greg says, "now I know. Now I know what a moron I am-"
"You're not a moron, Greg," he says. "I promise you that." He smiles.
"I can't compete with, with - with Grissom," Greg says.
"You don't have to compete with him," Nick says. "Don't you see? That's why he's upstairs with his office door closed and the radio playing. He's removing himself from this, from us. You can't take me away from him, but-" He hesitates. "I'm interested in you, Greg."
"So?" Greg asks, and he's impressed with how steady he manages to keep his voice.
"So... I'd like to get to know you."
Greg hikes a thumb over his shoulder towards the stairs. "With him sitting up there, listening?"
He laughs. "He's not listening," he says. "If he wanted to listen, he wouldn't have gone up there." He leans forward, out of his slump and at eye level with Greg. "I liked going to the movies with you," he says. "We should do it again."
Greg manages a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, sure," he says. "Just like that."
"Why not?" He smiles again. "Aren't you always telling me to stop fighting it? To trust it, to just let go?"
Greg shakes his head, slowly. "Nice of you to throw that back in my face," he grouses.
Nick wants to let out a whoop of glee that Greg is starting to sound like himself again. He settles instead for one of his smiles that almost takes the top of his head off. "So?" he says. "Wanna go out sometime?"
"Not tonight."
"Okay."
"I mean, I..." Greg shrugs, blushes. "I have to think about this. You know?"
"I know." He watches Greg stand up and look around helplessly. "Can I give you a lift back to your car?"
Greg smiles down at him, unsure but trying. "Sure," he says.
They sit in his truck for a few minutes when they get there, idling next to Greg's car.
"You know that Warrick might tell everyone what he saw," he says.
Greg nods. "Sorta figured that."
"I'm sorry about that."
"My own fault."
"Yeah, well. Both of us."
"I'm used to being gossiped about, you know." Almost shyly.
Nick takes Greg's hand where it's resting on the seat between them, holds it lightly. "I've got a pretty thick skin, too," he says. "It's just the bit about Grissom that needs to stay under wraps."
Greg looks at him sideways. "He's not going to fire me tomorrow, is he?"
He laughs. "No," he promises, "he won't."
Greg opens the door and swings his legs out, but stays where he is for a long moment. "Can I kiss you goodbye?" he finally asks.
"Yes," Nick says and leans in.
Just as he expected, Gil is upstairs with a violin concerto on and the door closed. Nick slides it open, stands for a long moment just watching him. He's editing the paper on blowflies he's been hammering at for weeks now, and something about the scene makes Nick smile like a kid.
"Hey," he says, tearing himself away from the door and kissing the top of his head.
Gil tosses the paper onto the table and sends the capped red pen skittering after it, and leans back into the half-hug Nick is giving him. "How's Greg?" he asks.
"He's okay."
"Good." He stretches his neck up enough to kiss him, and smiles into the return kiss.
"I love you," Nick says randomly.
"So you keep telling me."
"Come to bed?"
"Gladly."
Tonight proves not to be one of their slow nights.
Nick pulls him down to the bed and rolls him onto his back, descends mercilessly onto his mouth and slides in under his clothes. Gil squirms under him until he has the right contact, the right kind of friction and then he just moans. It's the most wanton, hedonistic sound Nick can imagine, and it does more to turn him on than anything else he has ever encountered. It finds a way under his skin, into his blood, makes him a little bit brainless. The good kind of brainless.
Gil is still mostly dressed when Nick wrenches open his slacks and slips his hand inside. He knows exactly what Gil likes, exactly what it takes to - yes. Those moans become even more incredible, more devastating, more endlessly erotic. The sound he makes thrums up Nick's body, in through his hands and his mouth and straight to his groin. He makes his own dirty sound and takes Gil into his mouth, and - impossible or not - Gil gets even louder, even throatier, even more obscene.
He's speaking in tongues by the time Nick swallows him as deep as he can and it isn't long then before Gil is coming, his whole body tensed and condensed to one point, the point where Nick is pulling him inside out.
Nick keeps him in his mouth until it's over, until he is as sated as he is ever going to be, and when he finally kisses him and crawls back up his body he can tell that Gil is mostly unconscious. He kisses his ear, rolls him into his side and curls up behind him. He himself is so hard it hurts, but he can wait for Gil to wake up.
It doesn't take more than a few heartbeats, and when Gil does let his eyes fall open he kisses Nick drowsily and rolls onto his stomach. He has a thoroughly blissed-out look on his face, and his body is so lax it barely feels alive. He can't do much to help Nick as he's undressed, but his self-satisfied smile only grows as Nick moves around him, and over him, and finally in him. He murmurs something indistinct and wriggles just enough that the angles are exactly aligned then relaxes bonelessly, contentedly.
Nick lets himself go then, and he doesn't last long. Gil is so perfect, so precisely what his body craves, and even semi-incoherent as Gil is he's still making all the right noises to wrench an orgasm from him that feels like it comes from about three miles away. It takes his whole body, and most of his soul, and definitely his breath and his voice.
They spend a long time tangled in bed, both so debauched it's nauseating and so, so delicious. Eventually Gil has to move because he can't feel his feet anymore, and Nick slides off his back to one side and they curl against each other instinctively.
"God," Nick says and his voice is still raggedy.
"You said it," Gil manages to get out, and he's pretty breathless even now, when by all rights his body has returned to Earth.
"You're amazing."
Gil smiles and moves just enough to kiss him. "You're not so bad yourself, Nick," he whispers.