Home of Greg Sanders Slash Fiction
Chapter Ten
It goes on like that for a few weeks.
At the lab Nick is Nick as always, doing the work and not complaining too much, succeeding in not flirting with Greg on company time and even Brass is starting to warm up to him again. Outside of work he splits his time between Gil and Greg, and is constantly amazed that it works. He even tries one experimental sleepover at Greg's place, only to be the most exhausted, sorry-looking whelp wearing a badge the next night and (of course) earning him one hell of a ribbing from Warrick. He tries to be angry at him, for talking when he should have been quiet and then for this, but he can't bring himself to. He's missed being friendly, can't make himself keep his distance.
He and Greg go out once or twice with Warrick and Sara and Catherine after work, and despite a certain lingering awkwardness, it's okay. Sara goes back to being her old frustrating, wonderful self that has him torn between wanting to hug her and wanting to slug her.
He lets Gil drag him out into the desert once to look for some extraordinarily rare beetle, and he brings along a bottle of maple syrup and a thick blanket and they manage to have a lot of non-entomological fun, too. They talk a lot about Greg, Nick doing most of the talking and getting more of a rush out of Gil's curiosity than he's entirely comfortable with. He thinks out loud about ways to broach the possibility with Greg, most of which have Gil laughing out loud at him. He likes that laugh, likes the amazing easy intimacy they've built up, likes how Gil's unending love makes him feel. He likes the time he and Greg have together, likes the concerts they go to and the long mornings they spend in bed. He likes they way they've come to an understanding of some kind, Gil and Greg, without having to say a word. He likes his life.
He life, right now, is pretty near perfect.
Gil says, "I have an idea."
It's a lazy Wednesday afternoon. He's begged off an exciting tour of the bio labs at UNLV with Greg, and he hasn't bothered to get dressed yet. He and Gil are sitting on the terrace peeling oranges and drinking sangria.
"I usually like your ideas," he says with a smile, "except the ones that involve spiders. Shoot."
"Al's birthday is Saturday," Gil says, concentrating on his fingers. His peel is about a foot and a half long and he's only halfway down his orange. "I told him I'd take him out for dinner."
"Uh-huh..." Nick prefers to make his orange peels into elephants, two ears and a long trunk. He's waiting for the 'idea' part of Gil's idea. He glances up and sees Gil smiling at him. "What?"
"I should make dinner for him, here."
"Okay." He's not sure why this merits a declaration. "I can clear out, go to a movie with Greg."
"No," Gil says, "you and Greg should both come to dinner on Saturday night."
He blinks. "Say what?"
"Al likes you," Gil says with the straight face that says he's chewing on the insides of his cheeks. "And it is, after all, his birthday."
"Huh."
"Of course," Gil continues, and looks back down at his orange-oiled fingers, "to make it a real party, we'll have to have Catherine and Jim along, too." He flashes Nick a grin without looking at him.
"Oh," Nick says, and then, "ohhhh."
"It's just an idea," Gil adds.
"No no," Nick says, "it's a good idea. It's a very good idea. It's just... I'm not sure how much Greg is going to be into it."
"Ah." Gil leans back and holds out his long tendril of orange peel. "I'd be happy even if it were just you," he says, sizing it up, "but in the honour of the illusion we're maintaining..." He shrugs, and lets the peel coil onto a plate on the table.
"I'll see what I can do."
Gil smiles, wipes his hands on a paper towel and reaches for his glass of sangria. "Thank you," he says.
"What?!"
"It'll be fun," he insists.
"Again," Greg says, "what?!"
"Come on..."
"I really think we need to agree on a dictionary definition of 'fun' before this comes up again."
They're in the lab, but it's a deadly slow night and people are making up excuses not to do any work. "Greg, please." He puts on his best puppy-dog face. "Just hear me out, okay?"
Greg bristles and crosses his arms, but nods.
He grins. "It's not like us together is a new thing anymore," he says. "You don't have to be worried about what they're going to say."
"It's not them I'm worried about," Greg grumbles.
"What - Grissom?" He's trained himself not to ever, ever call him Gil at work. Ever. "Don't worry about him. This was his idea."
"What?!"
He has to laugh at the look of horror on Greg's face. "If he wanted to kill you and hide the body, Greg," he says, "not only would he have done it by now, but he also wouldn't invite witnesses over the night before."
Greg fidgets. "Why?" he whines.
Nick sighs. "Because I never get to go to dinner with him," he says, "and he doesn't get to go to dinner with me. And Al likes you."
"Doc Robbins?" Greg asks, raising his eyebrows. "Me?"
"Yeah," Nick says. "He likes both of us, actually. So... do it for all of us." He bats his eyelashes shamelessly. "Pretty please?"
Greg stares at him in abject terror for another little while, then sighs and rolls his eyes. "Fine," he says, and throws his hands up.
"Drama queen," Nick says from the doorway.
"You love it."
They plan to arrive second-to-last, but they have an argument in the liquor store that makes them late. It's about what they should bring as a present, if they should even bring one at all, and if they should, should it be a "couple" present, or two separate presents...? In the end they grab a bottle of Italian liquor and a slinky gift bag and have another argument about who's paying for it.
"If you really don't want to do this, Greg," Nick says when they're in his car in the parking lot, "you can suddenly develop a migraine or something."
"No," Greg says, sounding just a little petulant.
"You don't sound particularly convincing," Nick says.
He sighs. "I know," he says, "I'm sorry. I just... this kind of freaks me out a bit, you know?"
Nick takes his hand and squeezes it. "I mean it," he says, less coldly this time, "if you really don't want to do this...."
"No," Greg says, and this time he sounds more sure of himself. "No, let's do it."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." Wavering smile. "Punch it, Chewie."
Gil answers the door to sounds of laughter. "Glad you could make it," he says, inviting them in. More laughter, a lot of it Al's by the sound of it.
Nick comes in and tries to pretend that he doesn't live here. He lets Gil take his jacket and catches a stern smile for his trouble, and waits for Greg to extract himself from the sleeves of his jacket before he follows the sound of the party.
Gil hangs onto them for just a moment, a brief hesitation after he's closed the door. "I want to thank you, Greg," he says softly, quietly enough that no one else in the house will be able to hear it, and his eyes radiate all the warmth he can generate. "This means a lot to me."
Greg blushes. "No problem," he says, and fidgets with the bagged and tagged bottle.
Gil touches his shoulder briefly and then heads back into the house.
"You okay?" Nick asks.
"Never better," Greg squeaks.
Nick smiles, laces his fingers through Greg's and pulls him inside.
The living room is awash in candles and indirect lighting, and through the archway Nick can see that the dining room is, too. He smiles. He knows that Gil likes to go all out but always feels he needs an excuse to let loose. He kind of wishes he'd been here to help him set up, but by agreement he had stayed away all day, in case anyone had randomly dropped by early.
He thinks, this really sucks.
Only then Al looks up from his conversation with Catherine, and he beams at them. "You made it!" he says by way of greeting.
"Yeah, sorry we're late," Nick says, dragging Greg after him.
"You haven't missed much," Catherine says from her end of the couch, a glass of something clear in one hand. "Grissom threw a fit about the hors d'oeuvres, Brass just about choked on an olive laughing at him, and Al has been regaling me with riotous tales from the morgue."
"While you scintillate," Al chips in, "don't forget that."
"Of course not."
"The hors d'oeuvres didn't turn out that badly," Gil says appearing from the kitchen with a tray of tiny cheese pastries.
Catherine peers at them. "Jesus, Gil - you make those yourself?"
"What do you think?"
Greg drops into a chair off to the side and accepts the glass that Jim presses into his hand wordlessly. He grins up in thanks, gets one of his less friendly glares in return, and blinks.
"Thanks," Nick says, taking a pastry off the tray as it passes under his nose. "These look good. I didn't know you could cook."
"I can do a lot of things," Gil says somewhat haughtily.
"You should see him drink," Al says with a slightly tipsy smile.
"Oh?" Catherine asks.
"He can tie one on like a marine on a three-day bender when he wants to."
Nick turns his smile on Gil. "Really?" he asks. "I had no idea."
"That was a long time ago, Al," Gil says levelling a finger at him, "and if you're going to bring that up, you leave me no choice but to mention the twins."
Al looks lost for a moment then bursts out laughing. "God," he says, "that was a hell of a long time ago, wasn't it?"
"What twins?" Catherine asks.
"Oh, you haven't heard this one?" Jim asks.
"No."
"Well." He sets his drink down on the coffee table and leans forward. "This would have been, what, eighty two?"
"Eighty three," Gil corrects with a smile. "That was the same month that club burned down."
"Right," Jim says, "I forgot about that. So anyway, Al here has this girlfriend-"
"It's my birthday," Al interrupts, "don't I get to veto this story?"
"No," they all tell him, including Greg, and Al leans back, resigned. Gil tops up his drink and ducks back into the kitchen only to re-emerge a moment later with another plate of finger foods.
Jim warms up to the story and Al gets redder and redder as the truth of his tryst is drawn out, and they're all laughing so hard by the point in the narrative when the twins figure out about each other that even Greg has forgotten to be terrified.
Nick leans back and soaks it up, this wonderful evening with his friends. No, more than his friends - his family. He catches a warm look of longing from Gil, and tears his eyes away before he does something stupid, like declare his absolute love for him in front of everyone.
Al loves his presents: the bottle from Nick and Greg, the watch from Jim, the subscription from Gil to an obscure forensics journal from Australia and the book of poetry from Catherine. He opens them after dinner, when they're back in the living room thinking that they've probably eaten enough for the entire night staff between the six of them and cursing Gil good-naturedly for the dessert trifle he brings out.
"I knew you'd take a taxi tonight," Gil says, "so I took it as a challenge to see how much alcohol I could get you to ingest in one sitting."
Al throws a shredded wad of wrapping paper at his head. "I hate you," he says with so much affection it's almost palpable.
"More than mutual," Gil assures him benevolently. "I poured a double of whiskey into your coffee."
But of course it winds down, and Catherine says something about her babysitter and Jim offers to take her home, and Al gets Gil to call him a cab and they end up in the entryway, all of them, standing around making pleasant goodbye noises.
"You coming?" Catherine asks Nick when he hasn't made a grab for his jacket.
"Naw," he says, "we were the last to arrive, we'll help clean up."
She smiles at him, not the same smile she's been wearing all night but a more motherly one, and touches his cheek. "You're a good kid," she says, "and I must be fucking loaded or I wouldn't have called you kid."
"Not to your face, anyway," Jim adds under his breath, ushering her out the door. "See you guys on Monday."
"Thank you so much," Al says when the yellow taxi pulls up at the curb. "All of you, thank you. This was wonderful."
"We should do it more often," Gil agrees. "When's Jim's birthday?"
"Sometime in October."
"Nuts."
Greg, who is leaning against Nick in his inebriation and not registering that he's doing it, clears his throat. "Mine is next month," he says.
Al smiles broadly. "It's a date, then," he says, shakes everyone's hand and shuffles out into the night.
They stand in the doorway, the three of them, and watch him disappear.
"Is he as drunk as he seems?" Nick asks.
"Oh yes," Gil tells him and shuts the door. "Let's see if he's still hung over on Monday."
They get the candles blown out in the dining room and most of the dishes piled in the sink, if not in the actual dishwasher, before Gil declares it good enough.
Greg, empty bottle in one hand and two stem wine glasses in the other, looks up, confused. "Did you just give in to chaos?" he asks.
Gil laughs. "Even I bow to entropy, Greg," he says, "especially at-" He looks at the clock on the wall. "-two-thirty."
"You're usually at work at two-thirty," Greg points out.
"All right," Gil concedes, "I should have said, especially at two-thirty when I've had more to drink in one night than I usually do in a week."
"A month," Nick corrects from the depths of the chair he's discovered and has decided never to leave again.
Greg looks over at him and their exact situation sinks in. "Oh," he says, realizing that it's late, that everyone is drunk and that Gil and Nick probably want to go to bed. He'd blush again, except he's already got so much alcohol in his blood that he's been pink about the gills for most of the night.
He sets the glassware he's carrying down on the end of the dining room table and stuffs his hands into his pockets. "Guess I'd better be going," he says.
"Why?" Gil asks.
Greg opens and closes his mouth a few times. "Because," he says, and runs out of words.
"There's food, there's drink - there's coffee if you'd rather - there's music and there's hours to go before dawn." Gil smiles at him. "Why leave now?"
Nick can see the indecision on his face, and then the transition into what-the-hell as he lets himself fall into the couch. "Sure," he says with a lot less conviction than he probably thinks, "I can stay."
From his position, Greg can't see the look of happiness on Gil's face.
Nick can.