Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Seven
The shift is a strange one, and Nick can feel gossip swirling around him even though no one has enough nerve to come out and say anything to him. He contemplates calling them on it, especially Sara who seems to take some perverse delight in it, or maybe Warrick, who won't even meet his eye right now.
He considers how he feels about that, Warrick avoiding his eyes, and decides that what he's seeing is guilt at spreading the rumour, and not disgust at what he saw. He tells himself this and instructs his inner pessimist to believe it, and then forces himself to ignore it. He'll deal with it later, when he's not so strung out that he can barely speak. He figures he'll need to at least seem okay with this before he deals with Warrick and the rest of the collateral damage.
Greg seems to be taking the brunt of the whirlwind, but he takes it in stride. Nick watches him when he can, when it's not too obvious what he's doing (Gil will come down on him like a ton of bricks if he spaces out while he's on the clock, and well he should), and realizes that Greg takes a lot of shit from a lot of people all of the time. He bristles at that, and decides that if it's the only thing constructive that he does all week, he's going to change that.
His cases are mundane and he spends most of his shift doing paperwork while samples are processed by other people. He wants to go out into the field and get his hands dirty, but he knows it's just a daydream. Most of the time he's moving so fast he can't get any paperwork done and he ends up doing a rushed, sloppy job of it while he's in the middle of other cases; he won't let that happen this time. He'll get it all done, and take some of the pressure off Gil at the end of the month.
He has one high point to his night, though; well, two actually, but only one makes him almost laugh out loud.
He's coming out of the break room just as Greg is trying to explain some lab results to Gil in the hallway outside of his office. Gil is his usual at-work persona, nodding and taking it all in and trying to rush Greg through his dramatic monologue of evidence, and Greg -
He ducks his head and slips back into the break room so he doesn't call attention to himself by giggling.
Greg is doing his best impression of someone not terrified of Gil Grissom.
Catherine shows up just as he's deciding the coast must be clear by now, and gives him a look. "What're you laughing at?" she asks, narrowing her eyes.
"It's nothing," he says, and glances around her into the hallway. Yep, empty. "Just - just a Greg thing." He grins and then realizes what he's actually said.
Catherine smiles at him. "I guess we're going to be hearing a lot of Greg things now, huh?" she asks, teasingly but so lightly he almost blushes.
"Yeah, well," he says, wishing he could add something to it.
She rests her hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry," she says, "I'll let you know when you cross the TMI line, Nick." She winks at him and delves into the coffee-and-donuts display.
He smiles at her, wonders if he should say something but "Hey, thanks" seems really lame, so he keeps his mouth shut and wears his smile out into the hallway.
He snags Greg a little bit later, alone in the DNA lab with a slew of samples for someone else's case. "You holding up okay?" he asks.
Greg glances up, grins, drops his head back to his microscope. "Sure," he says. "Never better."
Nick's grin gets a little bit bigger. "He's not going to rip your head off," he says, "you know that, right?"
"Right. Like I actually believe that."
"He's two people, Greg. Grissom and Gil. And they both like you, so don't sweat it."
Another shy smile, a tight shake of the head. "If you say so."
"I do." He hasn't come in from the doorway, doesn't want to throw more wood onto an already out-of-control fire. "Grab a bite after work?"
"Manny's?"
"Where else?"
Another smile and a nod send him on his way, back to his paperwork and boring old responsible stuff that being a CSI is all about. The stuff they don't tell you about until after you've signed your contract.
The anticipation will carry him until morning.
They arrive at Manny's to find, to their utter horror, that they're not the only CSIs there. He hesitates in the doorway with Greg frozen in absolute terror just behind him. Nick stares at the friendly spread of coffee and pancakes between Gil, Catherine, Jim Brass and Al Robbins, and is deeply conflicted about what he should do.
On the one hand, he knows that everyone comes to Manny's once in a while, and it's no big deal to bump into each other. It's also not unusual for newcomers to pull up a chair and join in the chatter. But this is a date dammit, this is the first totally sanctioned all-up-front date he's had with Greg, and he doesn't really want to sit with the Fearsome Foursome.
On the other hand, they can't just come in and sit down and ignore them, without drawing that much more attention to themselves. And just because they can't hide it per se, they sure as hell don't have to flaunt it. Besides: Gil and Greg at the same table is a daunting prospect, definitely not a dream-date scenario.
He's thinking about leaving before it's too late, only it suddenly is too late: Catherine looks up, sees them, waves them over.
"Shit," he hisses at Greg through a clenched smile he's throwing Catherine's way.
"What?" Greg whispers into his back.
"We've been spotted."
The others are following Catherine's gaze now, and there's a strange moment of tension at the table before Al grins broadly at them.
"Too late to back out now," Greg grouses low enough that only he can hear it. "We're cooked, aren't we?"
"Oh yeah," Nick says, and there's nothing he can do but join them.
Catherine scoots down her side of the booth, nudging Jim against the wall, and across from her Gil shuffles in closer to Al. Greg very casually insinuates himself next to Catherine, and the tiny little look he sends Nick says 'if I have to sit next to Grissom I'm going to throw up'.
"So," Catherine says with her shit-eating grin, "what brings you two out at this hour of the morning?"
"Breakfast," Nick says with the closest he can manage to a normal, friendly smile. It feels good to be sitting with his leg pushed against Gil's, but this isn't quite the way he would have chosen to do it.
Especially not when Greg's feet seek his own out under the table. Very distracting.
"Oh?" Catherine continues. "Just a buddy-breakfast kind of thing?"
"What else would it be?" he asks sweetly.
"You tell me."
Al Robbins laughs, and Nick discovers that he likes the sound. Doesn't hear it often enough in the morgue, except that it's probably a good thing. Hilarity among the corpses would be wrong. "Leave the poor boys alone," he scolds, and his eyes are all mischief.
Nick sighs. So the gossip's made it all the way to the basement, he thinks. Maybe there's a clerk in the mail room who doesn't know about it yet.
"Oh come on, Al," Catherine says, "you never let me have any fun-"
"I bet," Al interrupts, "that they'd much rather be alone, but they're sitting with the old fogeys anyway, so the least we can do is be nice."
"We are, actually, still here," Greg pipes up.
Al laughs again, and so does Catherine. "Okay, okay," she says and claps her hand over Greg's where it's resting on the table, "you win."
Gil turns to Al. "Who are you calling a fogey?" he asks with his signature puzzled frown.
It's strange, Nick thinks, to see Gil with his friends. He knows these four are tight, has always known it and it gives him a warm feeling, that Gil has solid people around him. But he's never been out with them, not with the self-imposed restrictions they've placed on their relationship. They've had conversations about it, about whether anyone can be trusted and whether, in fact, trust has anything to do with it at all. In the end they decided to keep it all under wraps, and Nick has never had cause to regret that, until now.
Until he sees the camaraderie that's so important to Gil, sees it and knows he can't be part of it.
Except now he can, can't he? He and Greg can tag along once in a while, and Nick can have the best of both worlds.
He gives Gil a thoughtful sidelong look, then across the table more openly at Greg.
Greg, who is trying not to make eye contact with anyone except Catherine, who has adopted such a mothering attitude towards him the poor guy can't help but be taken in.
Okay, maybe double-dating (if that's even the word for this permutation) isn't in the cards.
Then he catches an evil, evil look from Jim, who holds his gaze for a few freezing seconds before looking away deliberately, turning his eyes to his plate of hash browns with a frightening focus. Nick blinks at the side of his head.
What? What has he ever done to Jim?
He can feel amusement radiating off Gil in waves, and turns and looks at him. "What?" he asks.
Gil is shaking his head, trying not to laugh. "It's nothing," he says, but now he has everyone's attention, including Greg's reluctant version that doesn't include looking up from his fork.
"What?" Al asks from his other side, and elbows him. "No giggling without explanation," he admonishes cheerfully, "you know the rules."
"Just thinking of a joke I heard once," Gil says, and catches Jim's eye from across the crowded table. "It's about these three novices in a Buddhist monastery."
He launches into the lengthy anecdote but Nick tunes it out, certain that the punchline won't be funny until the middle of the night when the Zen conundrum resolves itself in his unconscious and wakes him up without warning.
He spends the time examining his dining companions instead, starting with Jim (whose expression is still chiseled steel) and then moving on to Catherine and Greg, and then - inasmuch as he can, with the peculiar geometry of six people crammed into a small booth - Al and Gil.
He thinks, I like this. This is fun.
He's smiling, a real smile this time, by the time Gil's story winds down.
Gil actually has to take off his glasses to wipe at his eyes as his voice trails off, but aside from an amused shake of the head from Al, everyone else seems confused; this confusion only makes it seem even funnier to Gil. Nick's smile stretches even more at this precious moment, at Gil laughing so hard he can't hang onto his cup of coffee.
Catherine levels her finger at him. "Don't tell me you thought that was funny," she warns him.
He shrugs. "It is, kinda," he says. He has no idea what Gil has been saying, of course, and (of course) Gil knows that, too, which is all the funnier.
By the time the waitress shows up to ask the newcomers what they want to eat, Greg and Jim are the only two not having a hard time keeping a straight face.
"I miss something, honey?" the waitress asks Greg.
He shrugs a little helplessly. "I think we both did," he says.
As disaster first-date nightmares go, it's not that bad. Well, Nick has fun anyway, and he can see that Al is delighted to have spent the time together. They shuffle out into daylight, and congregate for a few minutes in the parking lot, hands in pockets and car keys being searched for.
Al is the first to call it a night, as it were. "I'll see you around," he says amiably, grins at Greg and pats him on the shoulder on his way past.
Catherine sighs, pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. "Me too," she says. "Nice of you boys to join us." She winks at them, and heads off to her car.
Which leaves Jim and Gil and Nick and Greg. And something unspoken that is blossoming between them, something unpleasant.
Gil plucks at Jim's elbow. "Let's let them head out," he says and he's still half-laughing. "Let's go for a walk, you and I."
Jim narrows his eyes at them but lets Gil lead him away; Gil doesn't notice the look he throws over his shoulder at them.
Greg lets out a lungful of air in a whoosh once they're alone. "Oh my god," he says, "what the fuck was that?"
Nick laughs and loops his arm through Greg's. "That," he says, "is the shape of things to come."
"What?"
He laughs again. "Come on," he says, "let's go."
They drive to a park and sit for a while beside a pond of sorts, a despondent puddle amid desiccating trees with a weathered bench in the shade. They sit side by side, holding hands, laughing themselves hoarse at the pathetic excuse for a duck trying to be svelte at the soggy edge.
"This is fun," Greg says suddenly, out of nowhere, when the duck gives up and disappears in a fiasco of feathers.
"Yeah," Nick agrees, lacing his fingers with Greg's. "It is."
"Even with that cruel and unusual breakfast, I'm actually - enjoying myself."
Nick smiles. "It wasn't that bad," he says.
"Yes it was! Oh my god, Nick, were you even there?"
Greg is giving him such a goggled look of incomprehension he laughs again. "Yeah, I was," he says. "I had fun. I was kinda hoping we could do it again."
"What? Nick, are you on drugs?"
He laughs again. "No," he says. "It's... I don't get to go out with Gil. Ever. For - obvious reasons. So I've never seen him like that, with his friends."
"Hm."
He squeezes Greg's hands. "And you were there," he says. "It was... like Christmas morning. I was on a non-secret date with you and I got to see Gil laugh so hard he almost spilled his breakfast down his shirt. Everything I could possibly want, all at once."
He can feel Greg's curious gaze on his face, thoughtful. "Can I ask you a question?" Greg finally asks.
"Of course."
"What's Griss - what's Gil like?"
"Sure, ask one of the tough ones." He grins, wonders where to start. "He's... he's smart and intense and unbelievably generous. He's funny, he's got a mean streak to watch out for but he never lets it out - unless your name is Ecklie, or Conrad, in which case you're toast - and he's so understanding, of everything, that it blows my mind."
Greg is smiling sadly. "So... what's this thing with me, then?"
It takes him a few seconds to understand what Greg is asking, and then another second or two to decide how to answer him. "You're... you're amazing, Greg. You're funny and you're brilliant and you're kinda sexy with your hair all over the place like that and, and I like you, man. It's not a competition."
"It is a competition," Greg insists, but quietly, as though he's already resigned himself to something that saddens him immeasurably. "How can it not be?"
Nick brings Greg's hand to his lips and kisses his knuckles. "It's not," he says. "I don't know how to convince you of that. I got room in my heart for the both of you."
The blush that chases itself up the side of Greg's face is adorable. "You say that now," he says glibly, "but you haven't met me when I first get up, before I get the first litre coffee into me."
"You should see Gil when he doesn't sleep well," Nick confides. "Absolute rat bastard."
"So you've already got one," he says, "you don't need another."
"Yes I do," Nick says, "I need you."
Greg shakes his head. "I don't get this," he says. "I mean, I can believe that Griss - that Gil is kinda weird that way, I mean he's weird every other way, sooo... but you?" He shrugs. "You're so... normal."
Nick kisses Greg's hand again, then brings it back down to his leg. "So be normal with me," he says.
"You mean, with you and Gil. And oh yeah - with Catherine and Doc Robbins and-"
"Yes," he says with a laugh, "with all of us."
Greg isn't convinced.
"Please?"