Find me in the River (5/10)
Title: Find me in the River
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nick/Greg, the workforce of the Las Vegas Crime Lab night shift, some of the Stokes family
Length: ~32,000 (Chapter One: 3,536)
Spoilers: 2.03 - Overload
Summary: For Nick and Greg to get it together, Nick has to acknowledge some things about himself that he's been hiding for years. When he starts to come out to colleagues and family, a number of lives are affected.
Warnings: Child abuse. Domestic violence. Homophobic violence. Contains details of a number of crime scenes.
Blessings in the Valley
“I don’t think I can do this,” Nick said. His voice sounded stretched to breaking point.
In the awful, cathedral-like silence that followed Greg thought about how this relationship of thirty minutes might be over already, and how deeply unfair it was that this was so impossibly hard.
“Do what?”
Nick looked at Greg, confused. “Have sex tonight.”
It was all Greg could do to keep himself from laughing out loud. He couldn’t imagine anything less arousing than the sight of Nick hunched over himself, the light from his bedside lamp pooling on his face in a way that accentuated his expression of misery.
It felt wrong to be like this in Nick’s bed. To be having this conversation somewhere that was supposed to be a place for warmth and comfort and love.
“I think,” said Greg, “that we should get up and have some cocoa, and discuss this in the living room.”
Nick looked at him in confusion, but obediently swung his legs out of the bed. By the time Greg had installed him on the sofa and put the two mugs on the coffee table, Nick was starting to look more like himself.
“Nicky, what happened with Robert?” The time he had spent heating milk and making their drinks had given Greg the opportunity to think.
Nick pulled his knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.” Greg stroked his hand down Nick’s back. “I think something’s going on with you, but I’m not sure what it is. Do you not want to tell me what happened tonight?”
Nick sighed. “We just had a date, man. We went for dinner and drinks and then I went back to his place for a while and then I left.”
Greg considered that. “What happened at his place?”
“Are you my mother? We just fooled around.”
“What do you mean by ‘fooling around’?”
“Look, I just wanted the night to be over, ok? I just wanted to come back here and tell you how I felt. What I’d been thinking in Texas about us and how much I wanted to be with you.”
How every day I sat on the porch swing and watched the sun set over the pasture, and thought of you. How every time I saw David touch Annie or Annie touch David I thought of your hands. How I missed talking to you so much that it hurt.
At Greg’s look of confusion, Nick continued. “I thought if I made him happy then I could leave. He’s a grown man. He has needs.”
Greg bit his lip. “No, Nicky, he has wants. And a right hand if those wants don’t coincide with the wants of the person who he’s with. Did he -“
Greg didn’t know how to continue. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to ask, except that Nick shouldn’t look like this; shouldn’t be curled over on himself like he was trying to prevent the world from hurting him again.
Nick looked up, shocked. “No! No. Jesus, how pathetic do you think I am?”
“I think you’re as far from pathetic as it’s possible to get. Which has absolutely zero to do with the conversation we’re having just now.”
“What are we talking about, man?” Nick sounded irritated.
“We’re talking about why you came back from a date looking like you just worked a triple in a serial killer’s basement.”
“Because I’m a pathetic, sad fuckup. Because I can’t do what people expect me to do.”
“And what do people expect you to do?” Greg’s voice was even.
“I’m a thirty-five year old gay man. I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to be able to give someone a blow job without wanting to throw up.” Nick blushed a deep, ferocious red.
Greg relaxed slightly, and nearly made a joke about practice and gag reflexes, and then another reading of what Nick was saying percolated through his brain. He laid a hand on Nick’s back, feeling the muscles ripple underneath his t-shirt and wondered briefly how someone who was so strong in every way could feel so weak.
“What made you want to throw up?”
Nick looked away and Greg felt the bitter sting of possibly being right. “All I could think about was the last time I did that.” His voice choked. “To Mark.”
Greg felt his chest tighten. “Mark?”
“My babysitter’s boyfriend.” Nick’s voice was so quiet that Greg almost couldn’t hear it.
“The guy who abused you?”
Nick’s back stiffened under his hand and Greg wanted to smash things; break everything in this room, this apartment, this city. It wasn’t fucking fair.
“Have you been thinking about this stuff a lot, Nick?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I thought all of this was behind me.” Nick’s chin was propped on his knees and he sounded completely defeated.
“And then?”
Nick licked his lips. “I’ve been thinking about this all night. Where this latest round of this came from. I think that it started at the ranch.” He paused. “Momma had some baby photos she wanted to show Annie and she sent me upstairs to get them from my old room. I haven’t been in that room in years.”
He shuddered. “Jesus, Greg, that bed. It was so small. I just stood there looking at it. It was so small.”
Greg’s face was full of distress as he tightened his hold on Nick. “God, I’m so sorry.”
Nick half turned his head towards Greg, his cheek resting on his knee and his arms wrapped protectively across his shins. “For what?”
“For everything. For what you went through as a child. For the fact that I never asked you about it. I feel like we should have discussed this. I feel like I should have realised that the physical stuff might be a problem for us.”
Greg looked at Nick’s hunched form. “I was so wrapped up in not going crazy wanting you that I stopped thinking about what you might need.”
Nick waved his hand, as if to brush away the possibility that Greg had been selfish and inconsiderate.
“Greggo, how could you possibly know something that I didn’t even know about myself? It wasn’t until I was with Robert that I realised something was really wrong.”
“Was he nice to you?” Greg’s voice was fierce.
Nick paused, assessing. “Yeah. Yeah, he was. He didn’t hurt me, Greg. I hurt myself.”
Greg laughed shakily. “Oh, I think that Mark deserves as much of the blame as you can spare.”
Nick ducked his head. “Yeah.”
Greg looked at him, sharply. “Is this ok to talk about? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, or cross any boundaries, but if we’re going to navigate all of this then we might need to get specific.”
“No, it’s really ok.” Nick smiled a half-smile. “You might not realise this because I’m a basket case right now, but I’ve done a lot of work on this.”
“I know.” Greg fluttered his hand down Nick’s spine.
“So, you can ask me anything you want.”
Greg took a breath. “I don’t really know how to phrase this, but is there anything that we might do together that doesn’t have a really unpleasant association for you?”
Nick thought, eyes closed. “Kissing. And he never, um, used his mouth on me.”
“Jesus, Nicky.”
Nick surveyed Greg’s face. Saw the shock in his eyes, but also the love. He stretched out his own hand and rested in on Greg’s knee, feeling the thin cotton of the pyjama pants under his fingers. Squeezed his fingers around Greg’s knee.
“Greggo, I can’t explain why blowing Robert was a strong reminder.” He paused. “I don’t think that just because Mark hurt me in some specific way that doing something with you that’s physically similar is going to be a problem. Abuse isn’t the end of people’s sex lives.”
Nick grinned. “Don’t you remember that conference three months ago where you ended up rooming next to Sara and she and Grissom provided empirical evidence of that, thanks to those paper thin walls.”
Greg’s smile barely reached his eyes. “Nicky, you need to promise me something.”
“What?”
“We can wait as long as you need to do any and all of those things you’ve got bad memories of. Hell, I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life jerking off in the shower.” He took a beat to steady himself. “I just need to know that if we’re ever doing something and you want it to stop then you’ll make that clear. Straight away.”
Nick scanned his face. “Ok.”
“Promise?” Greg said, fiercely.
“I promise.” He paused. “Truth?”
“Truth.”
“I’m scared I’m never going to be enough for you.” His voice was strong and even.
“Enough?”
“Yeah. You’ve been with a whole bunch of guys. I’m sure that most of them were real experienced and real proficient at things that I probably don’t even know the names for. And here I am, this blushing schoolgirl.”
Greg’s mouth fell open. “Nicky, none of that matters.”
“It feels like it does.”
“Ok, tell me to back off if this is none of my business, but have you liked the sex you’ve had with any of the women you’ve slept with?”
Nick’s face fell. “Not really. It just seemed kind of expected.”
Greg laced his fingers through Nick’s. “That’s not unusual. Let’s not forget that you’re a gay man.” He smiled. “The point is that sex isn’t a performance you put on or something you do to someone. It should be something you do with someone.”
Nick sat up straighter. “You mean, if you’re in love?”
Greg shook his head. “I mean no matter what. Wilkie and I, we’re friends who fuck occasionally. I like him and he’s a good guy. We have nice sex because we enjoy making each other feel good and we’re together in the moment. Brian and I, we were in love. We had great sex because there was a big emotional connection that’s missing from the sex Wilkie and I have.”
Greg paused. “I hooked up with this guy Scott once who thought he was a stone cold fox. He had a toy box the like of which I had never seen and he had this little sex routine going, where I bet he would perform the same tricks for every one of his conquests. I would give him 5.8 for technical merit and a zero for artistic interpretation. I may as well have not been there at all, except that I was supposed to be playing my part as the appreciative audience.”
Greg kissed the back of his Nick’s hand. “The point is, Nicky, that there’s no way that you could disappoint me in bed because I know your heart. I know that if we don’t get beyond kissing it’s not because you’re not trying your damnedest to recover from some nasty shit that wasn’t your fault. And that’s enough. God, it’s so enough.”
He shook his head. “You’re crazy if you think you aren’t the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Nick’s brown eyes were shimmering with tears. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Greg, sliding his hands down Greg’s back and under his t-shirt. Greg realised with a start that this was the first time Nick had ever initiated physical contact like this.
Nick took his head off Greg’s shoulder and smiled, his face two inches from Greg’s. He tilted his head forward until his mouth covered Greg’s. The kiss was warm and soft and tasted of cocoa.
“Come to bed?” Nick said.
Greg hesitated. “I can go back to my apartment, Nicky. It’s not a big deal and today’s been kind of intense. If you need some space, I understand.”
Nick nodded. “I’d like you stay. It’s the kind of thing a boyfriend does.”
He was rewarded by the look on Greg’s face. It was the look of Christmas morning, bright and shining with possibilities.
The second time they climbed into bed was also not how Greg had imagined it, but it was awesome in its realness. To lie on Nick’s crisp sheets and to look at Nick’s bedroom in the half-light that came from the bedside lamps. To feel the warmth radiating from Nick as he lay next to Greg.
Nick looked at Greg’s face lying on the pillow next to his and smiled an embarrassed smile. “On those rare occasions that I have someone in my bed, I normally pretend like this isn’t true but I sleep with the light on. I have a sleep mask if you like. Or I could just turn it off.”
Greg shook his head, rustling the white cotton pillow case. “I’ll take the sleep mask.”
“Day shift matched your six samples to references from six fraternity brothers,” Sara said.
Greg looked up from the first batch of samples from Warrick and Nick’s hotel burglary investigation. Thirty-five rooms at the Luxor had been divested of laptops, jewellery, passports and shopping bags; the third hotel burglary in a month.
“Yeah I saw. I guess they’ve lawyered up?”
Sara nodded. “They’ve got six different lawyers so they haven’t really got themselves organised yet. No doubt they’ll be running a consent defence now that the evidence establishes location at the scene and penetration.” She paused. “The problem is that the physical description the vic gave of one of the perps doesn’t match any of our six, or any of the other fraternity brothers.”
Greg furrowed his brow. “I didn’t miss a donor. I can take another pass at it, but I’d stake my car on having gotten the semen analysis right.”
Sara shook her head. “He could have worn a condom. We haven’t turned one up.”
“I analysed the skin from under her nails but that matched one of the six. She didn’t seem to have scratched anyone else.”
Sara’s face darkened at that and Greg found himself wondering if they’d held her arms or just hit her until she decided not to scratch them anymore and then his mind slid off that topic because God damn it.
“Do you think she’ll be ok?”
Sara had looked at him for a long minute because Greg so rarely asked about the victims. He let the spaces between the words he spoke spell out the empathy he had for the CSIs dealing with rough cases and, by proxy, the victims themselves.
Even her agile mind would probably not have made the connection if Nick hadn’t arrived at just that moment, toting a fresh bunch of evidence bags. Pausing in the doorway of the DNA lab he was as tousled and loose hipped as if they’d spent all night fucking rather than sleeping on separate sides of Nick’s bed.
Thinking about that, Greg hadn’t been able to smooth the look of lust off his face in time and, looking between them, Sara’s brain started to generate a differential diagnosis that would explain all of this.
She smiled at Greg then; a pure, brilliant smile and he wanted to talk about it more but not with Nick standing there realising that he’d lain their cards down in front of Sara face up. Not when this was so new and fragile and he’d only just found out that Nick drank his coffee standing up in the kitchen before coming to work and that all of his underwear was exactly the same.
“I think she knows,” Greg said, after Sara had gone.
“Don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
“Greggo, of all the things in this world that give me pause for thought, the fact that Sara thinks we’re together doesn’t even rank in the top 100.” Nick furrowed his brow. “Do you care?”
“God, no.”
“Well then?” Nick sounded defiant.
Greg sighed. “We should probably talk about how we’re going to let people at work know. Sound Grissom out.”
Even the thought of telling his mentor and boss that he was gay and in a relationship with a colleague barely made Nick blink. “Sure. Later.”
“Nicky?” Greg’s voice was gentle.
Greg saw Nick sag slightly under the weight of the reality. “Yeah.” He drew his hand wearily across his eyes. “That’s a conversation I’m not looking forward to.” I never meant to let you down, Grissom.
“I’ll speak to Sara. Let her know that it would be nice if we had a bit more time.”
“Thanks.” Nick paused. “I’m not ashamed. Of you. Of us.”
Greg smiled. “I know that, man.”
“I’m pretty much happier than I’ve ever been.”
“I know that too. But all things in good time, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Sara?” Greg had caught up with her in the corridor, and ushered her into the empty layout room.
Sara leaned against the big layout table with her arms crossed in front of her, smirking. “Nice to know that I’m not going to be the only person in this lab getting sideways glances from here on out. You two certainly kept that quiet.”
Greg held his hands out, palm up. “Sara - “
Her hands dropped to her sides. “It’s ok, Greg. I can keep a secret.”
He gave her a pleading look. “It’s just brand new.”
“And shiny.”
“Yeah.” He grinned shyly.
She smiled. “I’m really happy for you both. This place can kind of suck the marrow out of you.”
“Yeah.”
She looked thoughtful. “You were asking about the vic of the frat house rape?”
He straightened up. “Yes.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “There’s nothing to stop her being everything she was meant to be.”
( Chapter six: Longing to see the roses)
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Fandom: CSI
Characters: Nick/Greg, the workforce of the Las Vegas Crime Lab night shift, some of the Stokes family
Length: ~32,000 (Chapter One: 3,536)
Spoilers: 2.03 - Overload
Summary: For Nick and Greg to get it together, Nick has to acknowledge some things about himself that he's been hiding for years. When he starts to come out to colleagues and family, a number of lives are affected.
Warnings: Child abuse. Domestic violence. Homophobic violence. Contains details of a number of crime scenes.
Blessings in the Valley
“I don’t think I can do this,” Nick said. His voice sounded stretched to breaking point.
In the awful, cathedral-like silence that followed Greg thought about how this relationship of thirty minutes might be over already, and how deeply unfair it was that this was so impossibly hard.
“Do what?”
Nick looked at Greg, confused. “Have sex tonight.”
It was all Greg could do to keep himself from laughing out loud. He couldn’t imagine anything less arousing than the sight of Nick hunched over himself, the light from his bedside lamp pooling on his face in a way that accentuated his expression of misery.
It felt wrong to be like this in Nick’s bed. To be having this conversation somewhere that was supposed to be a place for warmth and comfort and love.
“I think,” said Greg, “that we should get up and have some cocoa, and discuss this in the living room.”
Nick looked at him in confusion, but obediently swung his legs out of the bed. By the time Greg had installed him on the sofa and put the two mugs on the coffee table, Nick was starting to look more like himself.
“Nicky, what happened with Robert?” The time he had spent heating milk and making their drinks had given Greg the opportunity to think.
Nick pulled his knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.” Greg stroked his hand down Nick’s back. “I think something’s going on with you, but I’m not sure what it is. Do you not want to tell me what happened tonight?”
Nick sighed. “We just had a date, man. We went for dinner and drinks and then I went back to his place for a while and then I left.”
Greg considered that. “What happened at his place?”
“Are you my mother? We just fooled around.”
“What do you mean by ‘fooling around’?”
“Look, I just wanted the night to be over, ok? I just wanted to come back here and tell you how I felt. What I’d been thinking in Texas about us and how much I wanted to be with you.”
How every day I sat on the porch swing and watched the sun set over the pasture, and thought of you. How every time I saw David touch Annie or Annie touch David I thought of your hands. How I missed talking to you so much that it hurt.
At Greg’s look of confusion, Nick continued. “I thought if I made him happy then I could leave. He’s a grown man. He has needs.”
Greg bit his lip. “No, Nicky, he has wants. And a right hand if those wants don’t coincide with the wants of the person who he’s with. Did he -“
Greg didn’t know how to continue. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to ask, except that Nick shouldn’t look like this; shouldn’t be curled over on himself like he was trying to prevent the world from hurting him again.
Nick looked up, shocked. “No! No. Jesus, how pathetic do you think I am?”
“I think you’re as far from pathetic as it’s possible to get. Which has absolutely zero to do with the conversation we’re having just now.”
“What are we talking about, man?” Nick sounded irritated.
“We’re talking about why you came back from a date looking like you just worked a triple in a serial killer’s basement.”
“Because I’m a pathetic, sad fuckup. Because I can’t do what people expect me to do.”
“And what do people expect you to do?” Greg’s voice was even.
“I’m a thirty-five year old gay man. I’m pretty sure that I’m supposed to be able to give someone a blow job without wanting to throw up.” Nick blushed a deep, ferocious red.
Greg relaxed slightly, and nearly made a joke about practice and gag reflexes, and then another reading of what Nick was saying percolated through his brain. He laid a hand on Nick’s back, feeling the muscles ripple underneath his t-shirt and wondered briefly how someone who was so strong in every way could feel so weak.
“What made you want to throw up?”
Nick looked away and Greg felt the bitter sting of possibly being right. “All I could think about was the last time I did that.” His voice choked. “To Mark.”
Greg felt his chest tighten. “Mark?”
“My babysitter’s boyfriend.” Nick’s voice was so quiet that Greg almost couldn’t hear it.
“The guy who abused you?”
Nick’s back stiffened under his hand and Greg wanted to smash things; break everything in this room, this apartment, this city. It wasn’t fucking fair.
“Have you been thinking about this stuff a lot, Nick?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I thought all of this was behind me.” Nick’s chin was propped on his knees and he sounded completely defeated.
“And then?”
Nick licked his lips. “I’ve been thinking about this all night. Where this latest round of this came from. I think that it started at the ranch.” He paused. “Momma had some baby photos she wanted to show Annie and she sent me upstairs to get them from my old room. I haven’t been in that room in years.”
He shuddered. “Jesus, Greg, that bed. It was so small. I just stood there looking at it. It was so small.”
Greg’s face was full of distress as he tightened his hold on Nick. “God, I’m so sorry.”
Nick half turned his head towards Greg, his cheek resting on his knee and his arms wrapped protectively across his shins. “For what?”
“For everything. For what you went through as a child. For the fact that I never asked you about it. I feel like we should have discussed this. I feel like I should have realised that the physical stuff might be a problem for us.”
Greg looked at Nick’s hunched form. “I was so wrapped up in not going crazy wanting you that I stopped thinking about what you might need.”
Nick waved his hand, as if to brush away the possibility that Greg had been selfish and inconsiderate.
“Greggo, how could you possibly know something that I didn’t even know about myself? It wasn’t until I was with Robert that I realised something was really wrong.”
“Was he nice to you?” Greg’s voice was fierce.
Nick paused, assessing. “Yeah. Yeah, he was. He didn’t hurt me, Greg. I hurt myself.”
Greg laughed shakily. “Oh, I think that Mark deserves as much of the blame as you can spare.”
Nick ducked his head. “Yeah.”
Greg looked at him, sharply. “Is this ok to talk about? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, or cross any boundaries, but if we’re going to navigate all of this then we might need to get specific.”
“No, it’s really ok.” Nick smiled a half-smile. “You might not realise this because I’m a basket case right now, but I’ve done a lot of work on this.”
“I know.” Greg fluttered his hand down Nick’s spine.
“So, you can ask me anything you want.”
Greg took a breath. “I don’t really know how to phrase this, but is there anything that we might do together that doesn’t have a really unpleasant association for you?”
Nick thought, eyes closed. “Kissing. And he never, um, used his mouth on me.”
“Jesus, Nicky.”
Nick surveyed Greg’s face. Saw the shock in his eyes, but also the love. He stretched out his own hand and rested in on Greg’s knee, feeling the thin cotton of the pyjama pants under his fingers. Squeezed his fingers around Greg’s knee.
“Greggo, I can’t explain why blowing Robert was a strong reminder.” He paused. “I don’t think that just because Mark hurt me in some specific way that doing something with you that’s physically similar is going to be a problem. Abuse isn’t the end of people’s sex lives.”
Nick grinned. “Don’t you remember that conference three months ago where you ended up rooming next to Sara and she and Grissom provided empirical evidence of that, thanks to those paper thin walls.”
Greg’s smile barely reached his eyes. “Nicky, you need to promise me something.”
“What?”
“We can wait as long as you need to do any and all of those things you’ve got bad memories of. Hell, I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life jerking off in the shower.” He took a beat to steady himself. “I just need to know that if we’re ever doing something and you want it to stop then you’ll make that clear. Straight away.”
Nick scanned his face. “Ok.”
“Promise?” Greg said, fiercely.
“I promise.” He paused. “Truth?”
“Truth.”
“I’m scared I’m never going to be enough for you.” His voice was strong and even.
“Enough?”
“Yeah. You’ve been with a whole bunch of guys. I’m sure that most of them were real experienced and real proficient at things that I probably don’t even know the names for. And here I am, this blushing schoolgirl.”
Greg’s mouth fell open. “Nicky, none of that matters.”
“It feels like it does.”
“Ok, tell me to back off if this is none of my business, but have you liked the sex you’ve had with any of the women you’ve slept with?”
Nick’s face fell. “Not really. It just seemed kind of expected.”
Greg laced his fingers through Nick’s. “That’s not unusual. Let’s not forget that you’re a gay man.” He smiled. “The point is that sex isn’t a performance you put on or something you do to someone. It should be something you do with someone.”
Nick sat up straighter. “You mean, if you’re in love?”
Greg shook his head. “I mean no matter what. Wilkie and I, we’re friends who fuck occasionally. I like him and he’s a good guy. We have nice sex because we enjoy making each other feel good and we’re together in the moment. Brian and I, we were in love. We had great sex because there was a big emotional connection that’s missing from the sex Wilkie and I have.”
Greg paused. “I hooked up with this guy Scott once who thought he was a stone cold fox. He had a toy box the like of which I had never seen and he had this little sex routine going, where I bet he would perform the same tricks for every one of his conquests. I would give him 5.8 for technical merit and a zero for artistic interpretation. I may as well have not been there at all, except that I was supposed to be playing my part as the appreciative audience.”
Greg kissed the back of his Nick’s hand. “The point is, Nicky, that there’s no way that you could disappoint me in bed because I know your heart. I know that if we don’t get beyond kissing it’s not because you’re not trying your damnedest to recover from some nasty shit that wasn’t your fault. And that’s enough. God, it’s so enough.”
He shook his head. “You’re crazy if you think you aren’t the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Nick’s brown eyes were shimmering with tears. He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Greg, sliding his hands down Greg’s back and under his t-shirt. Greg realised with a start that this was the first time Nick had ever initiated physical contact like this.
Nick took his head off Greg’s shoulder and smiled, his face two inches from Greg’s. He tilted his head forward until his mouth covered Greg’s. The kiss was warm and soft and tasted of cocoa.
“Come to bed?” Nick said.
Greg hesitated. “I can go back to my apartment, Nicky. It’s not a big deal and today’s been kind of intense. If you need some space, I understand.”
Nick nodded. “I’d like you stay. It’s the kind of thing a boyfriend does.”
He was rewarded by the look on Greg’s face. It was the look of Christmas morning, bright and shining with possibilities.
The second time they climbed into bed was also not how Greg had imagined it, but it was awesome in its realness. To lie on Nick’s crisp sheets and to look at Nick’s bedroom in the half-light that came from the bedside lamps. To feel the warmth radiating from Nick as he lay next to Greg.
Nick looked at Greg’s face lying on the pillow next to his and smiled an embarrassed smile. “On those rare occasions that I have someone in my bed, I normally pretend like this isn’t true but I sleep with the light on. I have a sleep mask if you like. Or I could just turn it off.”
Greg shook his head, rustling the white cotton pillow case. “I’ll take the sleep mask.”
“Day shift matched your six samples to references from six fraternity brothers,” Sara said.
Greg looked up from the first batch of samples from Warrick and Nick’s hotel burglary investigation. Thirty-five rooms at the Luxor had been divested of laptops, jewellery, passports and shopping bags; the third hotel burglary in a month.
“Yeah I saw. I guess they’ve lawyered up?”
Sara nodded. “They’ve got six different lawyers so they haven’t really got themselves organised yet. No doubt they’ll be running a consent defence now that the evidence establishes location at the scene and penetration.” She paused. “The problem is that the physical description the vic gave of one of the perps doesn’t match any of our six, or any of the other fraternity brothers.”
Greg furrowed his brow. “I didn’t miss a donor. I can take another pass at it, but I’d stake my car on having gotten the semen analysis right.”
Sara shook her head. “He could have worn a condom. We haven’t turned one up.”
“I analysed the skin from under her nails but that matched one of the six. She didn’t seem to have scratched anyone else.”
Sara’s face darkened at that and Greg found himself wondering if they’d held her arms or just hit her until she decided not to scratch them anymore and then his mind slid off that topic because God damn it.
“Do you think she’ll be ok?”
Sara had looked at him for a long minute because Greg so rarely asked about the victims. He let the spaces between the words he spoke spell out the empathy he had for the CSIs dealing with rough cases and, by proxy, the victims themselves.
Even her agile mind would probably not have made the connection if Nick hadn’t arrived at just that moment, toting a fresh bunch of evidence bags. Pausing in the doorway of the DNA lab he was as tousled and loose hipped as if they’d spent all night fucking rather than sleeping on separate sides of Nick’s bed.
Thinking about that, Greg hadn’t been able to smooth the look of lust off his face in time and, looking between them, Sara’s brain started to generate a differential diagnosis that would explain all of this.
She smiled at Greg then; a pure, brilliant smile and he wanted to talk about it more but not with Nick standing there realising that he’d lain their cards down in front of Sara face up. Not when this was so new and fragile and he’d only just found out that Nick drank his coffee standing up in the kitchen before coming to work and that all of his underwear was exactly the same.
“I think she knows,” Greg said, after Sara had gone.
“Don’t care.”
“You don’t care?”
“Greggo, of all the things in this world that give me pause for thought, the fact that Sara thinks we’re together doesn’t even rank in the top 100.” Nick furrowed his brow. “Do you care?”
“God, no.”
“Well then?” Nick sounded defiant.
Greg sighed. “We should probably talk about how we’re going to let people at work know. Sound Grissom out.”
Even the thought of telling his mentor and boss that he was gay and in a relationship with a colleague barely made Nick blink. “Sure. Later.”
“Nicky?” Greg’s voice was gentle.
Greg saw Nick sag slightly under the weight of the reality. “Yeah.” He drew his hand wearily across his eyes. “That’s a conversation I’m not looking forward to.” I never meant to let you down, Grissom.
“I’ll speak to Sara. Let her know that it would be nice if we had a bit more time.”
“Thanks.” Nick paused. “I’m not ashamed. Of you. Of us.”
Greg smiled. “I know that, man.”
“I’m pretty much happier than I’ve ever been.”
“I know that too. But all things in good time, ok?”
“Ok.”
“Sara?” Greg had caught up with her in the corridor, and ushered her into the empty layout room.
Sara leaned against the big layout table with her arms crossed in front of her, smirking. “Nice to know that I’m not going to be the only person in this lab getting sideways glances from here on out. You two certainly kept that quiet.”
Greg held his hands out, palm up. “Sara - “
Her hands dropped to her sides. “It’s ok, Greg. I can keep a secret.”
He gave her a pleading look. “It’s just brand new.”
“And shiny.”
“Yeah.” He grinned shyly.
She smiled. “I’m really happy for you both. This place can kind of suck the marrow out of you.”
“Yeah.”
She looked thoughtful. “You were asking about the vic of the frat house rape?”
He straightened up. “Yes.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “There’s nothing to stop her being everything she was meant to be.”
( Chapter six: Longing to see the roses)