Come out come out come out Virginia, don't let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late...
Nick pauses on the stairwell, squinting up at his doorway. It's been a long shift and he's a little behind on sleep, but he's fairly sure he's not tired enough to hallucinate the bouncy pop-rock song blasting from his apartment. Shaking his head, he unlocks the door, and the music increases tenfold.
Sooner or later it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one...
Greg, of course. It looks like he set out to mop the floor, but the bucket sits abandoned in a corner while he bops around the kitchen, swinging and popping his hips like he thinks he's Elvis, lip-syncing melodramatically into the mop handle. His sneakers are soaked.
He spins and catches sight of Nick standing there in the doorway staring at him, and instead of looking embarrassed, he throws out his arms and belts out the chorus at the top of his lungs. "...you know that only the good die young!"
Nick closes the door and leans against it, folding his arms, laughing. "Since when do you listen to Billy Joel?"
"I don't. It was in with your CD's."
"I own this on CD?"
"Apparently." Greg dips the mop in the bucket and slops it on the floor without bothering to squeeze it out first. He's grinning, loose and bouncy the way he never is around the labs anymore, and Nick wonders sometimes if anyone else even remembers the smartass kid who once danced through the halls in a showgirl headdress.
They probably think Greg finally grew up, but he knows better. "Man, you're crazy."
"Better crazy than boring," Greg says with a particularly enthusiastic swipe of the mop, and Nick thinks that, right there, is why he's still here.
"Yeah," he says. "Would you put that down and come here?"
And Greg does. He slides both hands up under Nick's shirt and he smells like lemon floor-cleaner. "So does this make you Virginia? I mean, neither of us is Catholic, but--"
"We are not going there," Nick murmurs darkly against his hair, and lips his ear. That always makes Greg shiver, and this time is no exception.
He makes a low, contented humming noise and presses against Nick, all warm, loose limbs, hand sliding up to tweak his nipple. Nick slips his hands into Greg's back pockets and pulls him closer, and he's just about to suggest that they take this someplace that doesn't have a four foot tall open window overlooking the street when Greg stiffens abruptly and pulls back.
Nick frowns. "What is it?"
"I spilled the orange juice." The words are totally at odds with Greg's panicked tone.
"You what?"
Greg frees one hand and points at a spot on the floor. There is, indeed, a puddle of orange juice spreading across the blue tile. "The orange juice. I spilled it. Well, the container broke, actually, because I dropped it, but it's not my fault those things are so cheaply made and I was going to mop it up before you got home but I got distracted and--"
Laughing, Nick pulls him back. "Come back here, you freak. It can wait."
Greg relaxes against him, cups his cheek and pulls him in for a kiss. "But that was your orange juice. And you said you'd throw my coffee down the garbage disposal if I spilled it again."
"Tell you what," Nick whispers against his mouth, "I'll let you make it up to me."
A/N: The song Greg's dancing to is (surprise) Only the Good Die Young by Billy Joel. The title of the fic is taken from the same song.