Nick walked into the lab the next night, just praying for some serial killer to whack off a few more people so he'd have something to do, something to keep his mind off Easton and the pregnancy and focused on something else.
As he made his way back toward his office, he could see Catherine Willows and Sara Sidle conversing with Greg in the break room, smiles across their faces. He knew what they were talking about, he just had to pretend he didn't.
"Hey Nick, come on in here, Greg's got some good news I'm sure he wants you to hear," Sara called just as Nick almost made it safely away from them undetected.
Nick reluctantly walked in, biting his lip when he saw the giddy grin spread across the former lab rat's face. "So, what's the big news, Greggo?" he said with false enthusiasm.
Greg's brown eyes seemed to be dancing with a spark Nick had never really noticed in them before. "Easton's pregnant," he announced, the stupid, impish grin still plastered across his face.
"Wow, congrats, man." Nick feigned surprise, clapping Greg half-heartedly on the back. He looked around at his colleagues and realized both women seemed to share the look Greg had. If any of them ever found out the baby might be his, he was worried he wouldn't just be hated by Greg, but maybe the whole team too.
"Yeah, I still can't really believe it yet, I mean I wasn't sure I was ready to be a dad yet, but…"
"I'd love to hear all about it, but can I take a rain check? I have some, uh, paper work to catch up on before we head out into the field," Nick rambled, avoiding eye contact with everyone. Before they had a chance to say anything, he ducked out of the room and scooted down the hall to the safety of his office.
"I kind of get the feeling you already knew about Easton," a female voice remarked.
Nick swung away from his desk to see Catherine standing just inside his office . She quietly clicked the door shut and sat down in the chair on the opposite side of his desk.
Nick laughed nervously, staring at the tarantula in the glass tank he had inherited from Grissom. "Now what would make you say that, Cath?"
"Women's intuition?" she mused with a leer. "Or maybe that the two of you have been carrying on your own version of an affair behind Greg's back?"
Nick nearly choked on his own saliva as the words came out of Catherine's mouth. "An affair?"
"I see the way you guys share googly eyes and smiles every time you're around each other, whether Greg's looking or not." She tucked her leg up under her as she shifted in the chair. "I think Greg's just too smitten with Easton and the fact that he's engaged to a famous heiress to notice anything else around him. But there's still something there with you two, you love each other."
"Yeah, I do still love Easton," he confessed, although he knew that wasn't news to anyone. "And I'm always going to. That doesn't mean I'm not thrilled for her and Greg."
Catherine looked at him pointedly. "But you already knew about the baby, didn't you? She told you before she told Greg."
She had told him alright, told him that there was a chance the baby was his, but he honestly didn't know if she had in fact told him the news before she'd told Greg. "Yeah, East told me herself. But I don't know if she'd already told Greg when she told me." It wasn't a total lie, just some details had been left out.
Catherine had just opened her mouth to speak when there was a quick knock on the door and David Hodges poked his head in, wielding a sheet of paper and a lab jar holding some fibre samples.
"I've got the test results for you, Nick, for the stalker case." He looked back and forth between the two, suddenly realizing he'd interrupted something, but Nick was beyond grateful. He didn't want to be grilled by his supervisor anymore about the status between him and Easton, in fact, if he could have it his way, he wanted to get Easton out of his mind completely.