Sorry this chapter took a lot longer to edit than I planned. Real life can be a pain sometimes. I drive a school van and since school started two weeks ago it has been very hectic trying to get used to the different hours I have this year compared to last year. And before that we had to deal with picking up the van from base, figuring out the route, then calling the parents to let them know when I'll pick up the kids. And we had to buy school clothes and supplies for my kids to go back to school.

Since I have to get up at 4 a.m. every morning now and go to bed early, I've been too tired after coming home to use the computer much. I'm hoping that will change once I get used to the route. Anyway, I've already started writing chapter six, but I don't know when I will get it finished and edited. Please be patient, I will try to update as soon as I can.

Chapter Five

Greg yawned as he sat in the locker room getting ready to go to Nick's house after a seemingly never ending shift. He could not stop thinking about his date with Nick later. He was worried that despite being friends with Nick they would feel awkward on their date with.

"Hey Greg," Warrick greeted entering the locker room. "I heard about your date tonight, congratulations. I didn't think Nicky would ever ask you."

"Yeah me either," Greg grinned.

"You know my offer for a double date still stands although now you know who my friend is," Warrick grinned.

"Yeah, that would be good," Greg nodded looking down at the floor.

"Are you alright man?" Warrick asked sitting beside him on the bench. "You know if you really don't want to double date, it's not a big deal."

"No, it's not that," Greg sighed and ran his hand through his spiky hair. "I had trouble sleeping," Greg told him. He had a nightmare that made it impossible to fall back asleep afterward. He dreamt that he and Nick were walking down a street after their date and his stalker had confronted them. The faceless man of his dream pulled out a gun. He had aimed it at him, but Nick had pushed him out of the way and was shot instead. Greg had held the older man while he died.

Afterward the image of Nick getting shot and dying kept replaying in his mind the rest of the day. He had gotten up and had cleaned Nick's house as quietly as he could. His mother was always obsessive with making sure everything was clean and orderly and it had stuck with him. The habit of making sure his room and any other room he was in was a kept clean to avoid her lectures stuck with him even after he moved out of his parents' house. And now he found himself unable to sleep if his apartment was not clean.

"Greg," Warrick sighed. "We've all noticed that something has been bothering you. If you need to talk about it you can talk to me, especially about your stalker."

Greg's eyes widened at Warrick's words. "I told Nick I made it up, there's no...."

"Greg, you're not as good a liar as you think. If you had really made it up, you wouldn't be acting so strange lately, well stranger than usual. You might have acted differently around Nick for a few days because of feeling bad, but you would be fine by now. If you don't want to talk to me fine, talk to Grissom, or Brass, or even Nick; make him believe you. Tell him you didn't make it up. You need to tell someone before that psycho does something," Warrick instructed him.

Before Greg could respond his cell phone began to ring. He took the device out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID. He was surprised to see the number for the Gourmet Coffee Warehouse on the small screen. It was the warehouse he got his coffee from, but they usually called his home number, not his cell phone. He actually didn't remember giving them his cell number. "Sanders," he spoke after flipping the phone open.

"Mr. Sanders, this is Ralph from the Gourmet Coffee Warehouse. We've left several messages on your home phone," a deep man's voice spoke into his ear.

"Yeah, I've been busy and haven't been home a lot lately," Greg explained.

"That's fine Sir. I was told to contact you and let you know that, due to a new policy, if you do not pick up your order within a week we may be forced to sell your order to someone else. And your order will be reordered for you to pick up later or your money will be refunded."

"What? You've got to be kidding me, I paid for that order you have no...."

"Sir, I'm sorry, but my boss is tired of keeping orders for months at a time sometimes before our customers pick them up. We do not have the space to keep our customers orders for a long time," the man explained.

"Yeah, fine I'll pick it up today. I'll be there in about an hour. I'm still at work right now, so I have to go," Greg said flipping his phone closed.

"Something wrong," Warrick inquired. He closed his locker and then leaned against it as he waited for Greg's response.

"Apparently due to a policy change my coffee distributer needs me to pick up my coffee now or they're going to give my coffee away to someone else then I'll have to wait for them to reorder it. Now I get to drive all the way out to Mount Charleston and back before I can go to sleep," Greg sighed.

"Mount Charleston, are you telling me that you have to drive there just to get your coffee," Warrick questioned.

"Yeah, usually I wait until I have a night off to pick it up, but with the new policy I can't do that, Nick's coffee sucks compared to mine anyway," Greg told him.

"Compared to your coffee almost any other coffee sucks man," Warrick concurred. "You still have to talk to someone about the stalker Greg. You can't use your coffee as an excuse not to talk to anyone."

"I'll talk to Grissom before my shift tonight, right now I need to get my coffee and get some sleep before my date with Nick," Greg assured him.

"Good," Warrick nodded taking a step away from the locker.

Greg stood up to leave the locker room but stopped at the doorway and turned to look at Warrick. "Thanks for believing me."

"Sure. You just make sure you tell Grissom or I will tell him and you know that he won't be happy you didn't tell him yourself. He'll probably lecture you on waiting so long to tell anyone, though.

"I know. I'll talk to him first thing tonight before work, don't worry," Greg promised and left the room.

**********************

Nick stood beside Greg's car in the parking garage waiting for the younger man to come out of the building. He knew that Greg would be out soon since he had seen him cleaning the DNA lab as he always did before leaving. He shook his head as he thought about when he woke up in the afternoon. He had gone to the bathroom and noticed the smell of cleanser. He knew Greg must have cleaned the bathroom. Later when he walked into the kitchen he found the younger man cleaning out his refrigerator. Apparently he had a lot of spoiled food pushed to the back of the appliance. Nick shook his head; he had never had a house guest who kept his place cleaner than he did.

A few minutes later Greg walked through the elevator doors of the parking garage. The younger man smiled when he saw Nick waiting for him. "You couldn't wait till I got to your place to see me."

Nick smiled too. "I was going to leave, but I kinda wanted to ask you something first."

"Alright, what do you want to ask me?"

"You had a nightmare last night," Nick told him. "You were calling out my name, but by the time I got to your room you had calmed down and appeared to be asleep again. When I woke up this afternoon you were cleaning everything in my house you could instead of sleeping. Was the dream about your stalker?"

"Nick," Greg began with a sigh.

"No," Nick cut him off. "Don't tell me you made it up. I was talking to Officer Jones today. He asked me if you were alright. He said you went out to the Denali last night, looked across the street and you suddenly looked anxious like you saw a ghost or something. Your stalker was across the street wasn't he?"

"Nick, I already talked to Warrick. He made me promise to talk to Grissom or Brass, which I'm going to do before work tonight. Right now I need to go. I have to go pick up my order of coffee before they give it to someone else due to a policy change. I would also like to get some sleep, because I have a hot date tonight and I really don't want to fall asleep in the middle of it."

"Yeah, your date may want you to be awake," Nick grinned. "Seriously though man, you really do need to talk to Grissom or Brass. If you want I can go with you when you talk to them."

"Alright," Greg nodded.

"Where do you have to go to pick up your coffee?"

"Mount Charleston, it's the Gourmet Coffee Warehouse on Pecora Springs Road off Kyle Canyon Road," Greg replied.

"Wow, that's like 40 miles away," Nick whistled. "Would you like some company for the ride?"

"It's actually 37 miles and about 40 minutes one way depending on traffic and road construction delays. You don't have to come with me if you don't want to," Greg told him.

"No, I want to go. I want to see where you get your famous coffee," Nick grinned. "We can come back here later and pick up my car."

"Alright," Greg nodded pulling his keys out of his jeans pocket.

Nick walked around to the passenger side of the silver car and got in and sat down after the other man unlocked the door. The first fifteen minutes were spent with Greg explaining what was going on with the stalker in greater detail than his first attempt to tell Nick about it.

"Your landlord isn't refurbishing the apartment next to yours is he? You just don't want to stay there?"

Greg sighed as he drove down Kyle Canyon Road. "You remember that Lincoln Continental that you were watching out my apartment window, the one you thought was watching the children at the playground," when Nick nodded Greg continued. "I don't think he was watching the playground."

"That's the car that's been following you, the one your girlfriend warned you about? And you are just telling me this now," Nick asked with wide eyes.

"You weren't exactly willing to listen to me the first time I told you," Greg shrugged his shoulders.

"I thought you were playing a prank. You should have told me it wasn't a prank that you were really freaked out over this. Or if you didn't think I would have listened to you should have talked to Grissom or someone else about this sooner. You're lucky he hasn't tried to attack you or anything already," Nick told him.

"Lisa said she didn't think he would do anything to me. She said he'd follow me to see if I would lead him to her. She said if he did anything he may try to convince me to tell him where she is or minor things like flatten my tires, and watch me to make me nervous. I just don't like the idea of some psycho watching me in my apartment," Greg explained.

"Yeah, it is freaky knowing someone was watching your every move," Nick said softly.

"Sorry," Greg said with a quick glance at the other man. "I didn't want to remind...."

"Stop apologizing G, it's not your fault. A lot of things remind me of my stalker, but after we catch your stalker we can help each other out," Nick assured him.

"How about we talk about something else? I don't want to talk about stalkers anymore until we go and talk to Grissom tonight," Greg remarked.

Nick grinned as Greg turned onto Pecora Springs Road. He could not blame the younger man for not wanting to talk about it if he didn't have to. He had felt the same way He also hated the looks of pity he had gotten after the whole incident with his own stalker. "Sure why don't you tell me about cleaning my house, Greg. Your nightmare obviously upset you; do you always clean when you're upset?"

"No, I was just bored and your house needed to be cleaned. And before you try telling me I don't need to do it, it's the least I can do since you are letting me stay with you."

Nick nodded. He realized the pointlessness of arguing with the younger man. Instead he turned his attention to the windy road Greg was driving on. "Wow, I would have thought I'd have to go back to Texas to see winding roads like this."

"Nick," Greg spoke with a nervous edge to his voice that wasn't there a moment ago. Nick noticed the lab tech suddenly looked more worried than Nick had seen him since his first day back to work after the lab explosion. "The brakes aren't working. It's hard to steer and…. Shit!"

Greg's words were interrupted as they quickly approached a sharp turn. Nick knew at the speed they were traveling the car would not make it around the curve. He could see Greg's foot desperately pressing the brake pedal as he tried to slow the car. Instead the vehicle only seemed to go faster.

"Nicky!" Greg yelled as the car went off the road toward a small gulley with a telephone pole on the other side of the gulley.

The first thing he became aware of when he opened his eyes was pain. His nose was throbbing and he could feel the warmth of what could only be blood trickling from his nose. His neck also felt sore, but because of the air bags in the car they seemed to be his only injuries. As awareness of what had happened returned to his foggy mind, he remembered the accident and slowly turned his head to check on Greg.

"Greg," gasped Nick as he looked at the unconscious younger man. Blood covered most of what he could see of the lab tech's face.

The front driver's side of the car had hit the pole on the other side of the gulley. Because of the gulley, the car was leaning against the pole on a 35-degree angle. If he had not been wearing his seatbelt Nick would have landed on top of Greg, most likely causing him more injuries.

"Greg, can you hear me?" With a shaky hand Nick reached out and placed his fingers over Greg's carotid artery. He released a sigh of relief after he felt a steady pulse beneath his fingertips. He then immediately reached for his cell phone to call dispatch. "This is CSI Stokes; I'm on Pecora Springs Road off Kyle Canyon Road near Mount Charleston. I've been involved in a 401B. We need assistance." Nick listened to the response from dispatch and flipped the phone closed. All he could do now was to wait. He did not want to take his seatbelt off and try to get out of the vehicle for fear of hurting Greg further.

TBC