Chapter Five: Quakes, Names and Ass-Ogling Odds

It was very fast becoming very apparent to Nina that this, all in all, had been a spectacularly Bad Idea to bet on.

When she woke up this morning it had seemed so clear, so brilliant in her mind. Sara and Grissom were not dating because Grissom was afraid of how it might affect their work. So if that was removed, there would be love, lust and litters. And who better to remove that obstacle than Ecklie, their boss?

That thought had been the first mistake, really. The second had been to act on it and attempt to make Ecklie a romantic. Obviously, Nina hadn't been paying attention during Ecklie's welcome speech.

But it had seemed such a brilliant idea when she'd thought about it then and the odds had seemed all in her favor. How was she to know Ecklie was the assiest ass of all bum's asses? It wasn't that she hadn't known before that he was an asshole; it was just that the reality clearly outstripped the fantasy. All that effort gone to waste. She'd even done research, namely talking to T'laren, one of the male students and follower of True Geeklove (nevermind what Doc Robbins had to say) about what he found romantic. She wasn't sure that had helped much, though. He had just spoken a lot about how romantic ogling DNA could be and 'mmm, Norwegian'. Those Greg lusters sure were everywhere.

So Nina had just decided to go with her gut and subject Ecklie to what she found romantic. That had been her third mistake.

"Now, Miss Moore, let's go over this again," Ecklie's voice sounded silky, but she could feel the roar beneath as he leaned across the desk (he'd asked to borrow Miss Cam's office and she'd seemed only too happy to agree). "You attacked me to…"

"I didn't attack you," she muttered and sulked. Men had no taste. Apart from Grissom, who was taste just being, of course.

"You jumped out behind me dressed all in red and pink, declared yourself the cupid of OFUCSI, threw rice on me, started singing... What was it?"

"My self-composed 'Love Be a Butterfly'."

"Yes, I can believe it was self-composed," Ecklie replied, looking amused for a moment. It quickly faded. "Then you threatened to lock me in a room for a day with the most romantic movies of all times playing until I gave in and ordered Grissom and Sara to hook it up, marry and have heaps and heaps of children and puppies. Have I more or less summed it up, Miss Moore?"

She looked down at her feet. "Yes, Mister Ecklie."

"You are indeed lucky I know what forgiveness is. Brass did offer to teach you just how assault and harassment gets dealt with, but I have decided to be… crueler. You have a week's bug-gathering duty on the body farm. I don't know what Grissom wants with all his creepy crawlies, but as long as you will suffer for it, I could care less. Now get lost, your pink sweater is making my eyes water."

Ecklie knew what forgiveness was all right, Nina realized. He just chose not to believe in it, opting for vengeance instead.

She shuffled out, feeling down for a moment before it occurred to her that maybe bug-gathering duty would be a wonderful chance to capture a thousand butterflies to swarm Sara and Grissom, making them both see the symbolism of their symmetry in each other. (She had to remember that line, too, for her next fanfic. It sounded very deep, though she wasn't quite sure what it meant. But that had never stopped her before.)

Feeling decidedly brightened up, she wandered back towards her room, humming as she went. Sure, not everything was going exactly according to plan, but she had time, she had…

The hallway shook violently, the ground seemed to buck under her feet and a moment later, she found herself face down on the carpet. It smelled very strongly of beer and Komodo (she would never forget the smell of Komodo, especially since she'd had to wash it off her bum) and she grimaced.

It was silent for a while, then doors began to open and students looked out and at each other.

"What was that?"

"Was that an earthquake?"

"What are you doing on the floor, Nina?" Caty asked, peering down. Caty was a nice enough girl, though sadly not a follower of the True Love, just the True Lust as Nina liked to call Catherine/Warrick. But since the ship wasn't directly in the way of GSR, Nina mostly tolerated her. And she felt a little bit of compassion since Caty had been unfortunate enough to misspell Warrick on her enrollment form and thus entered her Lust Object as Warwick. The Komodo had been more than happy to show his appreciation.

"I decided to try out carpet burns," Nina muttered sarcastically, getting up. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't know," Caty muttered, then brightened. "Maybe the shake trapped Catherine and Warrick in a tight, enclosed space and they're playing bunnies!"

"Don't be idiotic," Nina snapped. If anyone was trapped and playing bunnies, it would be Sara and Grissom. "Whatever it was, our class starts fairly soon."

This made everyone temporarily forget about the mysterious shake and instead start speculating on something much more important – who would be the teacher this time? Hot Nick? Hot Greg? Hot Warrick? Kickass/whiny Sara (which adjective used depended somewhat on which ship one belonged to and whether or not she was a threat)? Kickass/bitchy Catherine (the adjective often depended on the ship there too)? Grissom?

A majority was hoping for Grissom, and even threatened to strike if he didn't teach at least one class. (Though of course, how one conducted a strike at a University with forced enrollment, no one was quite sure.) Maybe shouting would do it, or if that failed, whining.

Nina hurriedly gathered her books and followed the crowd. She spotted Theresa in a crowd of GCRers and gave an evil glare which Theresa returned, though with less force. After all, her eyesight hadn't quite recovered from being locked by students in a room with Grissom's failed experiments, though the nurse had assured her that it would. Not cruel enough punishment for the A/C plot gone awry, Nina reckoned. Shirtless old man, shudder! No one should be subjected to that. Well, apart from the GCR people. And possibly the Nick/Sara crowd. And maybe the Catherine/Sara shippers.

And Ecklie. Oh yes, Ecklie.

A sigh of disappointment spread through the crowd and as Nina entered the classroom, she saw why. Miss Cam stood at the teacher's desk, arms crossed, an insincere smile on her lips.

"Sit down, sit down," she ordered and people found their seats fairly fast. Rumors had it Miss Cam didn't much believe in patience, since that only gave students time for more plotting. "Don't worry, I will not be teaching this class. Your teacher will be along in a minute. I am merely here with an announcement."

She paused to let the expected excited and lust-filled muttering die away.

"It can still be Greg!"

"Warrick!"

"Nick!"

"Sara!"

"BRASS!"

This last made almost all the students pause and Feather seemed to sink down in her seat as she realized what she'd said.

Miss Cam smiled. "Don't worry, Miss Feather, Brass will be teaching eventually and I'm sure he won't arrest you for ogling him. Well, not too often, anyway. As I was saying, I have an announcement. The shake you just felt was a Canon-quake drill."

"A Canon-what?"

"A Canon-quake," Miss Cam replied patiently. "Canon is, as you all should know, the facts as established by the show. However, as this is a weekly show, Canon can change on a weekly basis. OFUCSI will then be rocked by a Canon-quake as we adjust to the new facts. These quakes can vary in strength and length, depending on the changes. We thought it sensible to have a test drill for one."

"But isn't the point of a drill to warn us first so we know it's coming?" Nina asked indignantly. Though in the back of her mind, wheels were turning. So Canon could be changed here at OFUCSI. Maybe there was a way to make some fake Canon-quakes…

"Is it?" Miss Cam said brightly. "And you all do what we tell you to do so often, don't you? You're just diligent rule obeyers, the lot of you."

A few of the students looked a bit guilty, though most opted for defiant.

"So when Nick and Greg get together on the show, they'll get together here?" a student asked from the slash crowd. Nina had already had a few run-ins with them and their 'subtext'. She quite preferred smut-text, thank you very much and gimme, gimme now.

"If such a thing occurs then yes, they'll be together here too," Miss Cam replied.

"Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!" the original question asker remarked, and the sentiment was echoed by more than a few of the confident my-ship-will-sail students.

"Anyway, I shall leave you to it and your teacher…" She paused for effect as all students leaned forward, fingers, toes and hairs crossed. "Mister Warrick Brown."

There was a substantial amount of squeeing as the door opened and Warrick walked in, a few komodo dragons trailing him. Miss Cam moved to a corner and leaned against the wall, making no signs to leave, probably in case a few students foolishly tried to jump Warrick even with Komodos there.

"WARRICK!"

"Yes, I know my name," Warrick replied dryly, putting his books down and taking in the class, some looking sour, some more pleased. He wasn't bad, Nina had to admit, shirt slightly unbuttoned, making his eyes look blue this morning. "I shall be your main teacher for 'World of CSI 101'. We'll start by how to spell my name."

He turned to the blackboard, the chalk scraping as he wrote. "That's W-A-R-R-I-C-K. Not Warwick, not Warwich, not Warric, not Wakiki – and I don't even want to know how that misspelling was managed. Last name is B-R-O-W-N, which is so simple I expect several of you have gotten that wrong too.

"This class is an introduction to the World of CSI, dealing with a myriad different topics from name spellings to Las Vegas itself. We will start with the very, very basics today, such as… Yes?"

Theresa had raised her hand, Nina noted sourly and Warrick had apparently noticed and decided to pay attention. Why, was beyond her.

"Can you just very quickly confirm you're flirting with Catherine just to make Grissom jealous? The others won't believe me!"

Warrick just stared for a moment, then shook his head slightly. "For that to make sense I would have to be flirting with her in front of Grissom most of the time and I don't think I am. Moving on… How many of you know what CSI stands for?"

Most students raised their hands, Nina among them (even if she thought it more appropriate to have stood for Crime Scene Indulgence, especially once Grissom and Sara would realize their true, true love).

"I guess I'll lose that bet with Hodges," Warrick muttered, then raised his voice again. "CSI stands for Crime Scene Investigation, which makes our jobs…?"

"Crime scene investigators!" the class chorused.

"Not bad," Warrick admitted, showing a faint smile, which made more than one student swoon. "We're not at good yet, but maybe we'll get there. Yes, we investigate crimes in Las Vegas. That's L-A-S and V-E-G-A-S, by the way. Last thing we need is a komodo named after a gambling city. The Lake Meade komodo is bad enough, always dripping wet. Furthermore, I work under C-O-N-R-A-D E-C-K-L-I-E. Spell it 'Eckley' at your own peril. My fellow CSIs are G-I-L G-R-I-S-S-O-M, C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E W-I-L-L-O-W-S, N-I-C-K S-T-O-K-E-S, S-A-R-A S-I-D-L-E and G-R-E-G S-A-N-D-E-R-S."

Nina stuck her tongue out at Greg's name. That Sara-flirting pointy-haired un-Geekloving CSI-wannabe. She didn't much care how his name was spelled, since his true name was O-B-S-T-A-C-L-E.

"I have also worked with S-O-F-I-A C-U-R-T-I-S, though I understand there has been some Canon hiccups about her name. You will deal with this more thoroughly in Canon Contradiction, a class in a later semester, so I will settle for saying Sofia appears to be what is current Canon. Next, we have J-I-M B-R-A-S-S and A-L-B-E-R-T R-O-B-B-I-N-S also in our main cast. Have you all jotted down the spellings? Any misspellings from now on will lead to a night's detention cleaning the komodo quarters."

Theresa and Nina shuddered in unison, then quickly pretended not to have. There was nothing as embarrassing as being caught sharing something with a rival, after all.

"Just to make sure you've all paid attention, we'll have a test on names now," Warrick went on and the class groaned. "Miss Cam will hand it out, since she seems to think that if I touch students, a sudden epidemic of 'I-will-never-wash-this-arm-again' will break out."

He was lucky he was hot, Nina decided, or she'd quickly label him an ass too. Test on the first day, sheesh! And why wouldn't the whole world be sensible and have attractive people be nice and unattractive people be nasty? It was so much simpler to keep track that way.

Miss Cam started moving among the moaning students, pausing here and there to give the drooling a few thwaps. Nina was careful to keep all her drool to herself. Warrick would probably gleefully fail her if the drool made her answers impossible to read. As she took in the questions, she felt a moment of panic. The names of the lab techs? Catherine's daughter? Catherine's father? (Catherine even had a father?) Important recurring characters frequently used in fanfic? What did it matter if she spelled that Sara-clone-murdering-doctor's name right as long as Grissom and Sara triumphed in the end? (And then it wouldn't much matter if Sidle were spelled right either, since Sara would naturally be Sara Grissom and bear lots of mini-Grissoms.)

"Um, Warrick? You didn't actually tell us all these spellings?" she voiced, feeling people nod around her.

"That's right, I didn't. The show did." Warrick's smile was broad this time and a few students whimpered from the glorious lust of it all. "You got fifteen minutes starting… Now. And feel free to do badly. I got a bill riding on this with Greg."

Maybe he was an ass, after all, Nina decided bitterly while she started writing. Though as he turned his back to them and leaned over his desk, she decided it didn't much matter, since… Heeeello, hot ass!

II

Greg was more than little bitter as he counted the money into Warrick's waiting hand. "How did half of them manage to spell Bobby wrong? And Greg Sanders? I was sure those who lust after me would have remembered the s at the end at least."

Warrick merely smiled lazily. He had been an excellent gambler, after all. He knew how to make the odds just a little bit better.

"I guess they were a little bit… shall we say, distracted."