Summary: Nick && Greg One Shot. Greg receives an anonymous Valentines message, who is his secret admirer?
Warning: SLASH warning! If you're not into that sort of stuff then don't read it. Simple as.
Rating: T
Pairings: The Love. (Nick&&Greg) a slight hint of YoBling.
Disclaimer: I own nothing! If I did the relationships on CSI would be rather different!
A/N: This is my first FanFic. R&R, please be gentle.
I blame any remaining spelling or grammar mistakes on MS Word, I promise I'll be as thorough as possible.
Sorry if there are any words that aren't common usage in America, but I live in England and my American vocabulary only goes so far!
Writing in italics are the characters thoughts.
Greg Sanders hated Valentines Day.
Every year it reminded him of his loneliness, and this year was no different.
If it weren't for Catherine had placed around the lab he wouldn't even have remembered what day it was. As he made his way into the locker room to get ready for his shift he silently cursed Catherine for spoiling the good mood he had been in before arriving at the lab.
Sighing, Greg opened his locker and was distracted by a Post-it note fluttering to the floor. Puzzled, he bent down to retrieve it. It read,
Greg,
Happy Valentines,
Guess who!?
Love xxx
His heart and mind racing, Greg stared, transfixed at the note until the sound of someone entering the locker room startled him back to reality. Hurriedly returning the note to his locker, Greg looked around to see Nick Stokes appear at the end of the row. When his eyes fell on a flustered Greg he spoke in a southern drawl full of concern, "You okay, Greg?"
Greg shivered slightly at the voice of his naughtiest daydreams.
"Um, yeah. I zoned out, you startled me." Greg admitted sheepishly through a shy smile.
"Sorry." Nick replied before pulling his shirt over his head to replace it with another.
The mysterious note was pushed from Greg's mind by the sight of Nick's muscles flexing as he pulled on a new shirt. Returning the old shirt to his locker, Nick turned to Greg, "Why weren't you in the break room when Grissom was giving out assignments?"
"I'm back in the lab for a few days, Ecklie's orders." Greg replied, watching as Nick holstered his gun.
"Bummer," Nick said, as he picked up his field kit from the bottom of his locker, "Guess I'll see ya later then."
"Count on it." Greg replied with a bright smile as he watched Nick walk to the end of the row, turn his head once to return Greg's smile and then disappear towards the door.
Greg smiled to himself as he retrieved his old lab coat from his locker and slipped it on.
He'd had a serious crush on Nick for a little under a year now, and it intensified a little more everyday. This made Valentines Day even more torturous this year, not only was he lonely, but the one person he had felt anything for since the beating last year, was a straight, red-blooded, Texan ladies-man.
'You sure know how to pick 'em, Sanders.' Greg scolded himself.
His thoughts returning to the note, Greg's CSI instincts kicked in. He carefully retrieved the note from his locker using a spare latex glove to prevent any further contamination. He closed the locker and made his way back to his old lab to begin examining the note in a way only a CSI can.
Settling himself in his old chair, he started examining the note for trace, but found nothing after 10 minutes of careful searching.
Looking around and seeing no evidence to be processed, and nobody around to drop anything off, he set off to see if he could get imprints of what had been written on the post-it note before the one the message had been written on, hoping that it might provide a clue to the author of the note.
15 minutes later he was no closer to finding the author of the note than when he had first found it.
On his last hope, Greg headed off to fume the note in the hope of finding fingerprints that were not his own from holding the note at the beginning of shift. He set up the note and returned to his lab to see if anyone had left anything in need of processing in his absence.
When he returned to his note he saw that several fingerprints had become visible around the edge of the paper. "Finally, something useful!" he mumbled through a slight smile as he set to work on collecting the fingerprints.
Mandy looked up from her position in front of the computer as Greg entered the print lab with a handful of prints.
"Hey Greg, thought you were in the lab this week," she said through a confused frown as she took the prints from Greg to run through the system, "How come you've got stuff to be processed?"
"Oh, I am in the lab this week, this is a personal case. It's a slow night so far so I've got some spare time on my hands." He replied through a bright smile. "Oh, and, um… Quite a few of those prints are gonna come back as mine, just ignore those."
"Sure thing," Mandy replied, "Give me an hour or so and they should be done."
Returning to his lab, Greg was greeted by a small stack of evidence to be processed. Sighing, he set to work, still pondering the author of the note and what he would do when their identity had been discovered.
An hour and a half later when Greg had processed the pile and returned results to their respective CSI's he quickly made his way to the print lab, trembling with anticipation at the thought of finding out who his mystery admirer was.
That anticipation quickly faded at the apologetic look that Mandy gave him when she caught sight of him.
"Did you find anything useful?" Greg asked with a hopeful lilt to his voice.
"No," Mandy replied apologetically, "they were all yours."
"Damn it!" Greg cursed. He had hit a wall, he had no information as to his admirer and he had run out of leads.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be much help." Mandy said softly.
"Okay, Mandy, thanks anyway." With that, Greg left Mandy's lab to return to his own.
As Greg walked though the glass doors of the DNA lab he noticed his old CD player still sitting in the place it had been in during his days as a Lab Rat, although it had gathered dust from disuse, Greg couldn't help but smile at the machine that had saved him from boredom on more than a few slow shifts. Still smiling, he walked over to it, wiped some of the dust off of it and opened the disc tray; he let out a chuckle when he noticed the old Marilyn Manson CD, that he had believed to be lost, was still sitting there. Pressing play, Greg danced off to his chair, fondly recalling the many hours he had spent dancing around his lab to some of his favourite songs. Gently bobbing his head to the music, Greg's mind drifted back to the note and once again pondered the identity of his admirer; whoever they were, they sure were thorough! They'd left no prints, no trace, no nothing! Whoever they were, they knew what they were doing.
Greg had lost track of how much time he had spent pottering around the lab, dancing to his music, processing the occasional evidence brought in, and dwelling on the origin of the note, but he was aware that several hours had past since the beginning of shift and he was starting to tire. Heading out to the break room for a cup of his beloved Blue Hawaiian, Greg almost walked straight into Nick, who had a large stack of evidence envelopes cradled in his arms.
"Whoa there, Greg! Careful now, you almost sent me flyin'." Nick chuckled at his friend.
"Sorry, didn't see you," Greg said through a smile, gesturing to the Texan's overflowing arms he asked, "You need any help there, cowboy?"
"Nah, I got it, thanks"
"Cool, Catch you later then."
With a final smile at Greg, Nick headed off to the layout room.
Humming to himself, Greg continued on his route to the break room. When he entered he headed straight to the coffee machine to set up a batch of his favourite coffee. There's no way I'm drinking that brown water that the lab calls coffee! Greg thought, shivering slightly at the thought of drinking the vile, flavourless substance that his co-workers drunk. Greg dropped onto the couch and curled himself up with a forensics magazine while waiting for his coffee.
Several minutes later, Greg walked back into the lab and seated himself in his chair with his coffee in hand. As he went to take a sip of the steaming liquid he caught sight of something on his keyboard that caused him to stop, cup halfway to his mouth, which was hanging slightly open.
There was another note. Putting his coffee aside, Greg reached for a pair of latex gloves and snapped them on. He then pinched the top right corner of the note between his thumb and index finger, lifting it up so that he could read it. In the same neat handwriting as the previous note, this one read,
Oh dear, Greg,
Still don't know who I am yet?
Keep on searching CSI man.
Enjoy your coffee,
Love xxx
Quickly regaining his thoughts, Greg set straight to work examining the note in the same way he analysed the first, concentrating especially hard to make sure that he didn't miss anything.
Greg was so preoccupied with the new piece of evidence that he didn't notice someone watching him from the other side of the glass behind him, or that same person walking off down the corridor with a satisfied smirk on their face.
After finding no trace evidence, and finding only the imprints of the first note on the new post-it note Greg's enthusiasm was beginning to fade, the imprints only told him that the second note was written on the same pad as the first, but seeing as he had no idea who owned the note-pad, this told him nothing. He was on his last resort; fingerprints.
Greg was soon once again setting up the fume tank, hoping that he would get something conclusive.
Several minutes later when Greg had returned from taking his coffee mug back to the break room, Greg spotted a single pink fingerprint on the bottom left-hand corner of the note. Excitement surged through him at the sight of the print, that most definitely was not his own! It could only be his admirers!
After forcing his shaking hands to remain still, he took considerable care in collecting the print for analysis, then practically bounced his way back to Mandy with a grin plastered on his face.
"Hey Mandy, I've got some more prints for you." Greg said as he bounced into the room.
"Jeez, Greg, I'm swamped from Nick and Sara's case," Mandy replied in a tired voice while gripping her head with one hand, "If it's a personal case it's gonna have to wait until I'm done, and that's gonna take a few hours."
"Oh, okay. Can you page me when you have the results please?" Greg asked, a little disappointed that he'd have to wait.
"Sure thing." Mandy answered. After watching the noticeable droop in Greg's demeanour from her first response, Mandy felt like she'd kicked a puppy. But it was lab policy that official cases took precedence over personals and Greg was no exception.
The next few hours seemed to creep by for Greg, who was constantly fidgeting and compulsively checking the clock every few minutes. The highlights of the rest of his day were the occasional visits from Sara, Catherine and Warrick, who were either dropping off evidence or collecting their results. To Mandy's annoyance, Greg had checked up on her multiple times during the night, but he hadn't returned after she finally snapped at him upon his 7th visit.
It was half an hour before his shift was due to end, and Greg was beginning to wonder whether Mandy was too pissed at him to give him his results back. Just as he was about to swallow his pride and visit Mandy to apologise, his pager began to vibrate on his desk, alerting him that Mandy was ready to give his results to him.
As Greg made his way to the print lab for the 11th time that night, he became aware of the butterflies flittering in his stomach and that his pulse rate had risen several BPM. He took a deep, cleansing breath as he stepped over the threshold of the print lab and approached Mandy who was sitting at her desk.
"Sorry, I pissed you off earlier, I didn't mean to annoy you." Greg said gently as he came to a stop beside her.
"It's alright, sorry I snapped at you, it's been a long, slow night and I got cranky." She said as she spun slowly on her chair to face him, chuckling slightly. Reverting back to a professional tone, she said, "I ran that print you gave me earlier and I didn't get any hits in CODIS, but since I don't know the nature of your investigation I took the liberty of running it though other databases too. And I got a hit."
Greg's hands were trembling in anticipation as Mandy turned her computer monitor to face him. When he caught sight of the profile on the screen Greg's jaw fell open.
It was Nick.
Ever the romantic, Nick had known that it was a special day the moment he woke up. He had always been a traditional guy and believed that Valentines Day should be made special for the one you care about. For some time now, this someone had been Greg. He was the first thought that entered Nicks mind when he woke up, and the last to leave it when he went to bed. And so Nick had decided that he had waited long enough for confirmation on Greg's feelings for him and that today would be the perfect day to do something about it.
He headed in early for work, eager to begin his plan before Greg arrived. He sat at his desk and grabbed a new pad of post-it notes from his top draw, careful not to leave any evidence of himself on it; he wasn't going to make it easy, Greg would have to work to find out it was him, it would be no fun otherwise. Then, with a slight smile on his face, he proceeded to write out the note that he had been planning in his head all the way to work.
Once satisfied with the message he made his way to the locker room, approached Greg's locker and slid the note in through the gap at the top. He turned on his heel and exited the locker room, smiling to himself when he spotted Catherine, who had also come in early, tacking themed decorations to the walls and windows in the lab. Returning to his office, Nick set to work on the paperwork he had bailed on doing the previous night.
At the start of shift, Nick finished off his paperwork and headed off to the break room to collect the night's assignments. As he entered he nodded at Warrick and Catherine who were flirting on the break room couch and walked over to Sara who was leaning against the table, her nose wrinkling as she took a sip of coffee. Grissom entered just behind Nick and began passing out assignments. To Catherine's delight, she was working a B&E turned murder with Warrick. After they had been given their slip they left the room, leaving Grissom, Sara and Nick. Grissom then informed Nick and Sara that they were working a 419 in a motel off the strip and that Grissom himself would be in his office catching up on important paperwork.
Telling Sara, who already had her kit and gun, that he would meet her at the scene in 20 minutes, Nick walked to the locker room, wondering why Greg wasn't present when Grissom was handing out assignments. Maybe he wasn't in. His plan would be ruined. Nick was pretty sure it was not Greg's day off today, unless the ex-lab rat had called in sick or something.
Nick's paranoia quickly evaporated as he rounded the corner of the lockers and came face to face with Greg, who was standing next to his open locker looking flustered. Nick voiced his concern to Greg, while trying to suppress the smile threatening to emerge on his face. When safely hidden by his locker Nick released the smile he was holding while pulling off his shirt and replacing it with another.
Nick had a brief conversation with Greg as he readied himself for his field assignment. When he learned that Greg would be in the lab tonight he had to hold back another smile. Greg being in the lab was perfect; it would make it easier for him to conduct his own investigation into the note without being distracted by an official case.
As Nick left he took a last look back at Greg before heading out to the crime scene.
The case was a difficult one, although they quickly theorised how the victim had died, finding the murderer was easier said than done. The motel was far from upscale and there were fingerprints everywhere. It took several hours to collect all of the fingerprints and relevant evidence in the small motel apartment.
Every now and then Nick's thoughts would drift back to Greg, and he would wonder whether Greg had made any progress; every time Nick thought about it he got butterflies in his stomach. He had never felt this way about another man before, he'd slept with plenty of women over the years, but he had never actually felt anything for them, nor did he ever wish to pursue a relationship with any of them. But Greg was different; Greg was the most amazing person he had ever met. He loved everything about him, from the tips of his spiky, mussed up hair to the end of the sneakers he wore, and everything in between. He was vibrant, confident, intelligent; everything a person should be.
At first, Nick saw Greg as a friend and nothing more, they'd flirted, but back then Nick was too far in denial to notice or even consider that his feelings for the ex-lab rat went deeper than friendship. After the lab explosion, he and Greg had become closer but Nick was still in denial, and so passed off his feelings as concern for a close friend. Years passed with no change, until Nick had been kidnapped. Warrick, his best friend at the time, was too busy blaming himself to give Nick support, and then when he married Tina, Nick felt he had lost his best friend at the time when he needed him most. Greg had noticed this and filled the void, providing support and comfort when Nick needed it. They quickly became best friends, but the kidnapping, which had resurfaced his memory of being sexually abused at the age of 9, prevented him from looking for sexual relationships.
Over the next year and a half, Nick steadily improved, with Greg standing by his side. Times with Greg were never dull and Greg, unlike Warrick, knew exactly what Nick needed and when he needed it.
When Nick heard that Greg was in hospital from being attacked by a mob he was distraught, why would anyone do that to Greg? His mood was worsened when Grissom prevented him from visiting Greg in hospital and instead sent him and Warrick to process the scene at which the beating had occurred. Nick could have cried as he was taking samples of Greg's blood and hair from the concrete floor of the alley. All the while he was processing the scene, Nick was slowly coming to terms with his true feelings for Greg. And when that punk at the Crime Scene tape started hassling them, Nick lost it. As Nick punched the guy in the stomach it hit him, he was in love with Greg.
Ever since then, Nick's feelings had not changed but he still hadn't acted upon his desire for fear that his friendship with Greg would be ruined.
After several hours at the scene, Nick and Sara made a last sweep of the small apartment to make sure they hadn't missed anything, then loaded the evidence into their Denali's and left to return to the crime lab.
15 minutes later, he and Sara pulled into the crime lab's parking lot, retrieved the evidence from the trunk's of the Denali's and walked side by side towards the building. As they entered the crime lab they separate. Nick going straight to the layout room, and Sara dropping off a large stack of prints to Mandy then returning to the layout room to analyse the evidence with Nick.
On route to the layout room Nick passed the lab, stopping in his tracks when he spotted Greg bobbing and weaving around the lab to the loud music coming from a CD player in the corner. Nick stood for several moments, entranced by the sight before him. He had seen Greg dance before, but never like this.
Coming out of his trance, Nick tore his gaze from Greg and fixed his eyes on the floor as he continued walking, determined not to look at Greg. This soon became impossible, however, as Greg rounded the corner straight into Nick, almost knocking him off his feet.
"Whoa there, Greg! Careful now, you almost sent me flyin'." Nick managed to say, caught off guard by the sudden proximity of the golden mop of hair and the familiar smell of coffee.
By the time Nick had reached the layout room Nick was fairly certain Greg had no idea that it was he, Nick, who had written the note. Greg had acted as he always did, so he either didn't know or was doing a damn good job covering it up.
Nick was starting to get impatient, why was it taking Greg so long? 'Maybe if you gave him something to go on rather than giving him no evidence to follow up on, he would have figured it out by now!' He told himself.
Glancing out of the window and seeing Sara deep in conversation with Mandy, Nick got an idea. He quickly made his way to his office, where he grabbed the pad he had used earlier and wrote another note, this time he pressed his thumb to the corner of the note, deliberately leaving a print for Greg to find. On his way back to Greg's lab to plant the note, Nick was thankful that Greg was still curled up on the break room couch with his nose in a forensics magazine, too busy to notice Nick creep past and slip into the DNA lab, walk over to Greg's desk and place the note carefully on the keyboard.
He looked up just in time to see Greg walking back from getting his coffee, leaving Nick barely enough time to escape. He hid behind a vending machine for a moment, peering around it to catch Greg's reaction. Satisfied when he saw Greg stop moving for a moment, then busying himself with examining Nick's note, Nick returned to the layout room with a smirk on his face.
"Where've you been?" Sara queried when Nick walked into the room.
"Sorry," Nick replied as he walked over to the table, "I had something I needed to do."
Seemingly satisfied with his answer, Sara shrugged and they began examining the evidence from the crime scene.
With an hour and a half of shift remaining until they could go home, Nick and Sara received a page from Mandy, announcing that she had finally finished running all of the prints.
After many hours of examining the evidence, Nick and Sara were grateful for an excuse to leave the layout room, although their hard work had provided a short list of suspects, and placing any one of them at the crime scene had the potential to break the case.
Mandy, who was already working on another print, pointed them to a small stack of files that contained the profiles of the fingerprints she had been able to match trough CODIS. Just by glancing at the list of matches situated above the files, Nick recognised that one of the names was also on his and Sara's list of suspects.
Nick arrived back at the crime lab half an hour after his shift was supposed to have ended. It had taken them a little over an hour to locate and arrest the suspect, and another half an hours grilling from Brass and Sara to get a full confession.
It had proved a long and tiresome shift, but it was all worth it just to bring a criminal to justice and closure to the family of the deceased.
Now standing in front of his locker, Nick opened it and began to change from his work clothes into something more comfortable.
Just as Nick was about to close his locker and head home he caught sight of a scrap of paper perched on his lockers' top shelf.
He picked it up and began to read, a smile slowly unfurling on his face as he read,
Hi Nick,
I figured it out. )
My house, after shift.
I'll be waiting…
Love Greg
X
Nick pocketed the note, closed his locker and hurried off towards his Tahoe to make his way to the house he had visited many times, though no past visit had ever made him feel as nervous as this.
Greg was pacing in his living room; he was still in shock that it was Nick who had written the notes. It seemed so surreal and he'd had to pinch himself several times to verify that he wasn't dreaming.
At first he had thought it had been some sort of practical joke, but then he thought back to the smile that Nick had given him earlier and all doubts had been pushed from his mind.
Greg smiled just at the thought of Nick Stokes' smile; the genuine one that showed his dimples and made his eyes light up and crinkle at the corners.
Now sitting on the couch with an unstoppable grin plastered on his face, Greg thought back on his relationship with Nick and how it could all change in a single day.
Greg's head snapped up at the sound of someone knocking on the door and butterflies swarmed in his stomach, taking a deep breath, he walked to the door and, with one last cleansing breath, he opened the door.
"Hi"
"Hey, Come on in."
Nick followed Greg into the living room. They stood for a moment in a slightly awkward silence, and then Greg said, "So, what made you write the note?"
"Because it's Valentines day." Nick replied as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
"And…?"
"Well, I thought that if I'm gonna to do somethin' about us then Valentines Day just seemed the right time."
Greg smiled, "So we're 'us' now, huh?"
Nick chuckled and looked into Greg's deep brown eyes, "I hope so." Suddenly vulnerability filled his eyes, "You do realise that I want an 'us', right? I don't want a fling with you Greg, I want the real deal."
"I do, and I want the real deal too," Greg's face burst into a giddy smile, "I can't believe I'm having this conversation with you, I never thought we'd actually get this far."
Mirroring Greg's smile, Nick closed the gap between himself and Greg until they were 6 inches apart, "I hoped we would, but this is so much better than when I was imagining it in my head"
"I can think of a way to make it even better." Greg said with a mischievous smirk as he leaned in and pressed his lips softly to Nick's.
The kiss was soft and affectionate at first but they soon gave into the passion within them both. When Nick started to remove Greg's shirt, Greg pulled back for a moment, hooked his fingers in Nick's belt loops and began to walk backwards, dragging Nick with him. "Bedroom." He explained when Nick gave him a puzzled look.
Each refusing to leave the others lips, they made their way towards Greg's bedroom, bumping into walls and furniture as they went.
Greg awoke 8 hours later snuggled up to a still-sleeping Nick Stokes, who had one arm protectively wrapped around Greg's shoulders and the other lazily draped across Greg's chest. When Greg's sleep-clouded mind registered the events of last night a sleepy smile appeared on his face. Now this is something I could get used to!
AN's:
So… What did you think? R&R please.
Sorry if people wanted a more detailed insight into the bedroom events, but I'm tired and I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to do it justice.