The Official Fanfiction University of CSI Chapter 4: The Classes Begin and the Heat is On, a csi fanfic

Chapter Four: The Classes Begin and The Heat is On

A few days later, still nursing an aching butt (those Komodo dragons bit hard!), Theresa was putting her plan into action. Today was the first day of class, which was both looked forward to and not so much. Look forward to for the chance to glimpse their favorite CSIs more, not so much for all the work of studying. In a few hours, their formal education would begin. Woe and joy be to them all.

She knew with determined certainty in her heart that one of the CSIs would teach this class; she was hoping for Nick or Warrick, but would settle for Greg. Unfortunately, it had been difficult recruiting other students for her plan. Sure, there were hundreds of students who were willing to help her ensure the class was taught by a shirtless CSI, but for some reason, every willing helper turned out to be one of the Enemy GSR shippers, and she had to chase them off under threat of bony elbow to the ribs.

Theresa had tried very hard to locate a member of The One True Shipper Faith to help her. She would have gone to her roommate, but after seeing the gaping hole in her clothes left by the dragons, Juliana was laying low for now. Eventually, she settled for the help of Pocky, a Nick/Greg shipper who was so eager to see both shirtless she didn't mind helping a CGRer.

No matter. Her plan would go forward without a hitch. It wasn't that hard to wreck OFUCSI's air conditioning units, after all.

When the time came for the first class of the semester to begin, the casino-cum-university was sweltering inside. Students fanned themselves, panting. The only reason no one had lynched Theresa yet (especially all the Geeklovers who had been ready to help her until they discovered she was one of those insane fangirls who couldn't possibly actually watch CSI, since she totally missed all the Geek Mind Melds and such) was because the rumor had spread quickly that one of the male CSIs would teach the class sans shirt, and lust was running at an all time high.

A few students were hoping for one of the female CSIs to show up in as little clothing as possible, though the majority was holding out for a male. All students arrived in the class a little ahead of time, which was unusual for students, wearing skimpy bathing suits and trunks, hoping to catch the eye of their Lust Object. Lust could make eager students out of anyone, it seemed.

Then, it happened. The door to the classroom turned. The students held their collective breath. Would it be Warrick who stepped through the door? Sara? Nick? Grissom? The anticipation built to staggering levels.

The door opened.

"Welcome, class, to Relationshipping 101," a gentle, grandfatherly voice echoed through the room.

"Aiiiii! My eyes, they burn!" a nearby student, by the name of Dawn, shrieked in dismay. She had been watching the door intently, hoping for a glimpse at Grissom in small amounts of clothing.

"Who is that?" asked Katie, looking quite baffled. There wasn't anything on CSI but the eyecandy and the Geeklove, was there?

"He's OLD! He's so very old!" This was not how it was supposed to happen!

The teacher, who was indeed dressed in nothing but swim trunks, smiled. It was not an entirely reassuring expression. "My name is Doctor Al Robbins. I'll be your instructor for this course." Then, with a straight face, he added, "is it hot in here, or is it just me?"

Many, many students slumped deeply in their chairs, and not a few directed glares of such heat at Theresa that she was sure she would be incinerated on the spot.

Up on the staff level, they didn't mind so much that the air conditioning was down. It would be repaired soon enough, but in the meantime, it was a good excuse to try out the rooftop pool.

CSIs and lab techs, as well as Miss Cam and Miss PA, lounged around the pool, sunning themselves, reading books and journals, or splashed around in the pool. Several Komodos were also there, soaking up the warm rays of the Vegas sun. Most of the dragons were gathered around Grissom's beach chair, but a few were in the water. Kathryn was teaching the young Poncho how to attack students.

All told, it was a really nice day.

A really, really nice day. Miss Cam kept shooting a finely toned Warrick surreptitious glances from behind a book, enjoying this particular perk of her job at OFUCSI more than she would ever admit to even under torture. Miss PA, from her spot in the pool, was happily watching the Komodos play, or so it appeared; they were down on the end where Greg was swimming, and dragon watching was a perfect cover for Greg watching.

In fact, the truth was, just about everyone was furtively checking everyone else out, enjoying the views. Grissom was happily taking in the view afforded by bikini clad Sara, Catherine, and Sofia—he was a man, after all, and enjoyed looking at women. If he spent some time studying Sara's star-shaped ankle tattoo, none could blame him; few had seen it, and Nick, Warrick, Greg, and Archie were looking at it, too. Sara and Catherine, as well as the other women, enjoyed the view of their attractive colleagues, as well as the ego stroking they got from all the appreciative looks they received. If any of the shippers had been there to see it, they would have likely short circuited their brains trying to keep up with all the glances and trying to interpret all the regular looks to fit their favorite pairings. And there were a whole lot of glances being glanced. A bunch of attractive men and women by a pool? Oh yeah. Ogle-a-thon central.

The only two not checking everyone else out were David Phillips and his fiancée.

Nick, who was sitting on the steps in the shallow end of the pool, lifted his head from where he was resting and peeked an eye at two of the dragons in the pool. "Hey, Sar? Is that Sander hitting on Sarah over there?"

Sara's head shot up from her forensics journal. She gave the two dragons a sardonic look. "Yeah, Nick, it looks like Sander is as shameless a flirt as Sanders."

"I resemble that remark!" Greg shouted from the other end of the pool, where he was swimming laps. "I resemble it very much!"

"Yeah you do," Warrick smirked while trying to get Warrik to stop rubbing against his foot.

Most of them shared a laugh, but Grissom just shook his head, a faint smile on his lips.

Sara asked, "Hey, Greg, what's that on your back?"

Confused blinking accompanied Greg's, "Huh?" After a moment of trying to see if there was anything unusual stuck to his back, understanding dawned. "Oh, those are scars."

"But you didn't have any scars in the shower!"

Suddenly, all eyes were on Sara. Sara looked around, startled.

"Oh, and here I thought you were teasing me when you said you saw everything," Greg replied, a slow smile spreading across his face.

Grissom looked at Sara, then Greg, then Sara, and back. There was a good chance he would require chiropractic visits if he kept it up. The rest kept staring at Sara, although a few of the men paused to give Greg a thumbs up and/or jealous looks. They hadn't heard about any shower, and a number of them would give their left legs to share one with Sara.

"Wha? Wait, huh? Oh...jeez," Sara spluttered. She sunk as far down into her lounger as she could, holding up her journal to hide the bright red blush that crept up her cheeks. She thought for sure everyone had heard about that. "It was a Hazmat decontamination shower," she squeaked.

"Ah, but my charms are irresistible," Greg said, resting against the side of the pool, expression supremely cocky. "Even the strong-willed Miss Sidle eventually succumbs. I suppose it's just natural that she took advantage of the situation."

Greg ignored it and scratched his neck. "But you got a good look at my back, and missed the scars?"

"I guess she wasn't looking as hard as you thought, Greggo," Nick said, smiling.

"No, no scars," Sara said quickly but with certainty, burying her face even further in her journal. This action merely served to call more attention to herself, and the rest began snickering and laughing softly. A few were nice and hid their laughs behind coughs, but Ecklie openly laughed-sneered, an action commonly considered humanly impossible.

"Well, that's odd. Was there a canon-quake?" Archie asked, trying to wipe the grin off his face. It wasn't every day he got to see Sara embarrassed, after all.

"I don't know," Greg answered. "I'm just going to bask in the knowledge that Sara Sidle really did ogle me in the shower!"

"Can we discuss something else, please?" Grissom asked grumpily. He was still Death-Glaring, but Greg didn't notice; he'd gone back to swimming, albeit with a much happier bearing than previously.

Catherine couldn't help snickering behind her romance novel (the one that she had been using as cover for taking good long looks at Grissom, Warrick, and Nick...and Archie...and maybe she peeked once at Ecklie and Hodges, too). "Kids," she whispered to herself.

Miss Cam took a break from Warrick-watching long enough to jot down a few notes for the classes on canon that would be held later. Then she happily returned to her former oh so satisfying activity. Sometimes, life was very good. And it was even better knowing that while she was enjoying herself, the students were probably being very miserable.

Robbins stood in front of the class, a slide projector at his side, no shirt on his torso. "If you would please turn to page 15 in the textbook Relationships for Dummies: That Means You Too, CSI!' we can get started."

Roasting students groaned, retrieving their copies of Robbins' book. One girl stood up, fists planted on her hips. "I," she declared imperiously, "don't write relationships. I only write angst. I don't see why I need this class."

Doc Robbins gave the student a hard look over his glasses. "Well, if you feel you don't need the class, you can take it up with Miss PA. She's the one you want to speak to for student counseling. Or you can go to Miss Cam, since she coordinates the courses. In the mean time, you'll just have to stick it out."

The girl sat down hard, muttering to herself about the deepness of the angst of being alone, woe, alas, wail.

"To get back to the class, the first thing we'll learn about are the so-called ship names'. Keep in mind, ship' is a short form of the word relationshipping, so it doesn't refer to a boat."

"But...the S.S. Geeklove!"

"Sorry, not a boat. Can't fall overboard, but you can certainly go overboard," Robbins replied. "Would you mind hitting the lights?" he asked, pointing to a student in the back. Once the lights were out, he flicked on the slide projector. An image of a chocolate candy bar showed up on the screen.

"First up, we have Snickers, which refers to the Nick/Sara pairing. As you can see on the screen, a real Snickers doesn't really resemble either one of them. People who ship this pairing sometimes refer to themselves as Snickers; again, there's not much of a resemblance."

"Except that Snickers are full of nuts!"

Many Nick/Sara shippers took offense at this and threw wadded up papers at the offending student.

Robbins smiled at that. Somehow, he found the students more amusing than anything else. "Next up, we have Greg/Sara, also known as Sandle." A slide of a flip-flop shone on the screen. "I know it's not spelled the same, but it does sound the same, and that's important. Please note how neither Sara nor Greg looks like a sandal. I don't recall off hand seeing either wear them, either, but then, coming down to the morgue in open-toed shoes isn't the best plan of action."

The projector clicked to a new slide. This time, a picture of a backwoods hick standing in front of a run-down house showed. "Sometimes the Catherine/Nick shippers call this pairing Hillbilly Love. I'm not sure why...neither of them grew up in the mountains, and hillbilly' itself isn't the nicest term to use. Although I suppose they mean no harm, since they call themselves Hillbillies."

Much soft snickering and a few growls greeted this revelation.

"Continuing on," Robbins said, moving the slide forward, "we have Grillows." A picture of a barbecue was prominently displayed. "I know what a grill is, but I'm not sure if the Grissom/Catherine shippers are grilling ows' or lows' on it. Actually, this is a particularly egregious example of the common practice of taking the names of the members of a pairing and smashing them together like a trainwreck. Sandle is another, but it conjures up images of shoes rather than something largely unidentifiable. Incidentally, if anyone tries to ship me with Catherine and calls it RobCat, I can assure you that person will find themselves hip-deep in a ten thousand page essay on the damages of smashing and stupidity."

Theresa frowned hard, very unhappy to hear someone speak ill of anything pertaining to the One Way of Light and Love. Maybe she could try giving him one of her fanfics to bring him to the Grillows way.

The next slide was a picture of a huge, ugly gold dollar sign encrusted with diamonds and hanging off a thick gold chain. "Catherine/Warrick shippers often use the term Yo!Bling to describe their favorite pairing. This," Robbins pointed at the gaudy jewelry, "is bling. Catherine does wear jewelry, but never anything so godawful. Yo' is just something people say. Perhaps the term really refers to some form of yodeling, although again, I'm not sure how that applies.

"There are many other names for relationship pairings amongst my coworkers. I think my favorite by far is Geeklove."

At this, many Geeklovers perked up and started smiling. Nina was fully prepared to lord over all GCR shippers that one of the teachers liked her ship name. Particularly that wench Theresa.

Robbins adjusted his glasses with his free hand, then clicked to the next slide. A picture of every member of CSI with the exception of Ecklie and Brass blazed across the screen.

"I understand that most people think Geeklove only refers to the Grissom/Sara pairing. However, the reason I like the term so much is, as you can see, they are all geeks, every single blessed one of them."

A collective gasp rippled through the classroom. They had not thought of that! Geeklove couldn't possibly refer to every pairing! The very thought of Geeklove referring to Grissom/Catherine or Warrick/Sara made several GSR students so ill they had to headdesk the pain away.

"Some of them are in love."

Hope began to spring in the hearts of the Grissom/Sara shippers, as well as the rest of the class—horrible revelation or not, they smelled gossip in the thick, hot air. Would Doctor Albert Robbins reveal unto them the One True Pairing?

"For instance, my assistant, David Phillips, is engaged. I'm quite happy for him."

The howling of crushed shippers could be heard all the way to the staff section. The desperate cries of disappointed students carried even to the ends of the Strip and beyond. And on the roof, the staff took in the howls as they did the sun, feeling the day very bright and fair with student misery.