FANFIC: Sweet Cool Water by Caroline Crane 3/12

Posted with permission from the author. See notes in sidebar.
Title: Sweet Cool Water
Author: Caroline Crane
Rating: NC17 (See happy reading in sidebar!)
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Summary: A hard night on the job and an unexpected encounter with a familiar face force Nick to re-examine some things about himself.
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12.

Part three

Nick wasn't thinking about anything. His mind was a complete blank, and he was going to keep it that way for as long as humanly possible. He wasn't thinking about difficult cases or Greg or sweaty, dark nightclubs where he should have been safe from running into anyone he knew. He wasn't going to think about his own weakness and how it had gotten him in trouble, not as long as he didn't have to. All he was going to think about tonight was the case Grissom had assigned him, and even though he knew Grissom had given him the biggest no-brainer of the night he wasn't going to complain for once. It was better this way, in fact, because then he didn't even have to think about his case.

He could just go through the motions, bag and tag what little evidence there was and take it back to the lab. When he got there he'd find some lab tech who wasn't Greg to process it for him, and then he wouldn't have to worry about any unwelcome thoughts intruding on his carefully honed blankness. It was a trick he'd taught himself way back in high school, because hormones and a sudden, troubling interest in boys didn't mix well with the Dallas public school system. He perfected the technique in college, when he found it just a little more challenging than he'd expected to make it through hazing and then life in a frat house. And he'd never believed all those movies that made frats look homoerotic until he was actually in one – or maybe that was the reason he'd finally decided to pledge, not that he'd ever admit that to himself or anybody else.

The point was that it turned out to be torture; keeping his eyes to himself was one thing, but putting on the right show with various girls was even harder. The guys spent a lot of time teasing him about the revolving door on his room, but the truth was that he just didn't like to take the same girl out too many times. Girls were harder to fool than guys sometimes, and if you didn't try hard enough to get in a sorority girl's pants she started asking all the wrong questions.

At the time he'd thought of it as doing his time; kind of like a jail sentence, which was painfully ironic when he stopped to think about it. He didn't really feel that bad for the girls – they got what they were after, and they all knew enough about him to know they weren't going to get a commitment. Maybe a few of them hoped they'd be the one to finally cure him of his wandering eye, but in the end they always chalked it up to his fear of commitment and moved on to the next potential husband. It was a game they all played, so he didn't have to feel guilty about it. Once he got out of college it was a little different, but his reputation seemed to follow him and he wasn't above using it to get himself out of any potentially uncomfortable situations with the women in his life.

His current situation, though…that was a different problem entirely, and he wasn't sure what to do about it. He was pretty sure that if he just ignored it Greg wouldn't make a big thing about it, but the fact was that they still had to work together and Nick couldn't avoid him forever. He wanted to; well, part of him wanted to, anyway, but Greg was the best tech they had and Nick knew that avoiding him would only hurt his cases. Not avoiding him could hurt Nick's career just as much, though, and that was exactly the reason why he wasn't thinking about Greg at all.

The whole situation was too messy, and the memory of why he'd ended up at Greg's place was still too raw. He needed time to sort it out, time to let the details of the case fade a little. He was pretty sure the memory of Greg's mouth on his skin wasn't going to fade, possibly not ever, but if he gave it a little time maybe he'd stop wanting it so much. And maybe Grissom would give him a month's paid leave and start letting him work DBs by himself, he thought as he straightened up and tucked the last evidence bag into his kit. He was nothing if not realistic, after all, and he knew himself well enough to know that forgetting last night was going to be next to impossible.

Maybe if he hadn't already been attracted to Greg it wouldn't be so hard to let it go, but the truth was that Nick had thought about it before the opportunity finally presented itself. He'd let Greg flirt with him before, and he'd even flirted back a few times. Okay, more than a few times, but he'd never expected it to go anywhere. Greg flirted with everybody, after all, and Nick had never even suspected that he was into guys. Which either meant that Greg was really good at playing it straight, so to speak, or Nick was losing his touch.

That thought made him laugh; a low, bitter sound in the back of his throat, and he was glad that there was no one around to hear him. For once Grissom hadn't sent Sarah along with him to talk non-stop about the evidence; there was no Warrick to set Nick on the defensive, and no Catherine to give him weird looks until he started to think she could read his mind. So he didn't even mind working a routine robbery, because even though dusting for prints was rookie work, it meant he was alone.

It also meant he could hand off his evidence to some lab assistant without feeling guilty about it; right now the only thing he really cared about was avoiding anything that would force him to think, and having to deal with Greg was definitely going to make him think. By the time he got back to the lab he was so focused on not thinking that he barely heard his own voice as he handed off his evidence, and he had no idea whether or not the tech on duty had asked him any questions. All he remembered was nodding and looking around to make sure the coast was clear before he headed down to the break room, intent on a cup of coffee and a few minutes of silence before he found Grissom and reported on the progress of his case.

He got exactly thirty-two seconds of silence before the break room door swung open, and his heart sank when he glanced up and found himself face to face with Greg. He stopped just short of rolling his eyes, because he couldn't actually accuse Greg of stalking him and there really wasn't any other explanation for why he'd be so annoyed at Greg for walking into a public room.

"Hey," Greg said, holding his gaze for just a second longer than strictly necessary before he turned away from Nick and headed for the fridge. "Haven't seen you tonight. You still working that case from yesterday?"

"No," Nick answered, managing not to wince at the mention of the case he hadn't been willing to talk about the night before. "Robbery at a liquor store; about a thousand prints and a couple fiber samples that could have come off anybody."

Greg nodded without looking at him, and Nick found himself watching the movement of the other man's throat as he twisted the top off a soda and took a long swallow. When he felt his own throat move convulsively he shook his head and scowled down at his coffee, the sight of the bitter liquid suddenly making his stomach pitch. This was exactly what he'd spent the first few hours of his shift avoiding. He should have known better than to hang around in the break room; short of heading right for his lab, this was the most likely place to run into Greg.

"Yeah, well, I better go find Grissom," he muttered, tossing his cup in the trash before he pushed himself off the counter.

"Well you're not gonna find him here. He's down at the precinct house with Brass," Greg called after him. "They brought in a suspect on your triple homicide."

As soon as Greg's words sank in Nick forgot to be uncomfortable around him. He forgot all about the reasons he'd spent the first half of their shift avoiding the other man, and he stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at Greg. "When?"

"Grissom took off about an hour ago," Greg answered, the same look in his eyes that Nick had seen just a few hours ago when they were still in his apartment. And it seemed like a lifetime ago that Greg had looked up from the news and fixed Nick with that expression that was a mixture of pity and understanding, but hardly any time at all had passed. "Look, Stokes…"

"If anybody's looking for me tell them I'm at the station," Nick interrupted, turning his back on Greg and his pity. He barely noticed his surroundings on the way out of the crime lab, and by the time he pulled into the precinct house parking lot his knuckles were so white from gripping the steering wheel that he had to concentrate just to loosen his grip.

He'd been a cop for long enough to know how to push all his emotions to the back of his mind and focus on the job. He'd spent more time in the box than anybody else in the crime lab, and he knew how to get information out of suspects. The fact that Grissom hadn't paged him when they brought in a suspect didn't really surprise him, but it hurt in a way he hadn't expected. Only nobody knew why this case was so personal for him, and there was no way anybody was going to find out. Not if he could help it, and as long as Greg kept his mouth shut there wouldn't be a problem.

He took a deep breath before he got out of his truck, pulling himself together so he wouldn't lose it the second he walked into the station. For all he knew the suspect they'd brought in would turn out to be a dead end; they hardly had any evidence to go on even after twenty-four hours of working over every inch of the crime scene. He'd been the last one to give up, and even when Grissom ordered him to go home and get some rest he'd had a hard time dragging himself away. It was how he'd ended up at the club in the middle of nowhere when he should have been fast asleep, and it was the reason he'd been weak enough to let Greg take him home without even putting up a fight.

None of that mattered when he slipped into the small observation area behind the interrogation room, nodding absently at the officer on duty before he turned his attention to Grissom, Brass and the suspect slouched in a chair directly across from him. He wasn't sure how long he stood there listening to the interview, his fingers flexing and relaxing against his forearms as he fought the urge to rush into the room and pull the guy out of his chair.

Any time there had been a need for the good cop/bad cop routine while he was still on the force he'd always played the good cop; he figured it was his smile, or the way he could read people quickly enough to figure out the best way to soften them up. Right now, though, he didn't have any interest in making the guy feel safe enough to let something slip. All he really wanted to do was go in there and pound some information out of him.

The thing was that the guy looked…well, normal. He definitely didn't look like the type of whack job to do what somebody had done to those three kids last night, and even though Nick knew they were looking for more than one killer he was having a hard time believing this guy was one of them. Maybe he knew something, and Nick wouldn't have had a problem beating a few names out of him, but he had a feeling this wasn't the guy they were looking for. Still, he was the only lead they had right now, so when Brass stood up and signaled for the officer to come take the guy away it was all Nick could do to hold himself back.

He managed to wait until Grissom came out of the interrogation room before he started asking questions, ignoring the surprised look on Grissom's face when the older man realized he'd been watching the questioning. "You're not letting him go, are you?" Nick asked, glancing from Grissom to Brass and back again.

"Nick, what are you doing here?"

"Sanders told me you brought somebody in," Nick answered.

Grissom frowned momentarily before he started toward the door that would lead them out of the precinct house. "I gave you a case, Nick. You should be working it."

"Come on, Gris, it was a simple fingerprint job. The evidence is already being processed. Besides, I worked this case too; we all did. Let me talk to the guy. Maybe I can get something else out of him."

"There's nothing to hold him on. He was spotted in the area last night so Brass brought him in, but he didn't see anything."

Nick knew it was true; he'd seen part of the interview, and even from the opposite side of the glass he'd been able to tell the guy wasn't involved. Still, it the only lead they had, and the longer he spent away from the case the more it felt like the whole thing was slipping through their fingers. "You don't know that for sure."

"I know how to do my job, Nick." The sharp look Grissom gave him should have been enough to tell Nick to back off, but he was too caught up in the idea of letting a suspect walk to notice. "This was a messy case, it got to everyone. But we can only go where the evidence leads us, you know that. Making it personal isn't going to do anyone any good."

"It's not personal," Nick answered automatically, but as soon as he met Grissom's gaze he relented. "They were just kids, Gris. They didn't deserve that."

"Nobody deserves it. Now go do your job and let Brass worry about the suspect."

"Grissom, come on."

Grissom was already walking away, but he stopped when he heard Nick's voice and turned around. "Stop whining and go do your job."

Before he could say anything else Grissom was walking away again, leaving Nick to stare after him with his hands balled into fists at his sides. He waited until the older man was already in his own truck before he kicked the pavement, letting out a stream of obscenities under his breath as he made his way back to his truck. He had a feeling Grissom was always going to treat him like a rookie, but there were times when he wasn't sure the job was worth putting up with it.

The last thing he felt like doing was going back to the lab and spending the rest of his shift watching surveillance videos from the liquor store; there was no way they were going to catch the guy who robbed the place anyway, so all he was doing was busywork. He knew Grissom had given him the case just to keep him out of the way, and he knew if he made a big scene about it that it would just make him look bad. That was the most frustrating thing about working for Grissom; no matter what he did to jerk the other CSIs around he always came out of it looking like the professional, and if Nick tried to argue with him he just ended up looking like a spoiled kid.

He pulled into the parking lot of the crime lab and slammed his truck door a little harder than strictly necessary, but even the quick burst of violence didn't make him feel any better. Wanting to do his job felt like a crime all of a sudden, and part of Nick felt like walking straight into Grissom's office and turning in his gun. He was halfway there when someone stepped in front of him, and he stopped just short of colliding with the person standing less than a foot away from him. When he looked up he let out a groan and took a step backwards.

"You okay?" Greg asked. If he noticed that Nick wasn't exactly happy to see him he didn't let it show; his expression was a mixture of concern and nerves, and for a fleeting second Nick couldn't help thinking it looked kind of cute on him.

"No," Nick answered. He tried to step around the other man, but Greg seemed to know exactly what he was thinking and he moved just far enough to block Nick's path again.

"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," Greg said, nodding in the direction of Grissom's office. "He looked pretty pissed when he came through here a few minutes ago."

Nick sighed and gave up trying to get around Greg. "I know. I'm the one who pissed him off."

Greg's eyebrow raised in that expression that told Nick he was more surprised that Nick was admitting it than that he'd been at fault. "Wanna talk about it?"

"No." His tone was flat and expressionless, and he regretted it just a little when he saw Greg flinch.

"Fair enough." For a second Nick thought that Greg might actually let it go and walk away, but a few seconds ticked by and he didn't move. He wasn't sure how long they stood there staring at each other, but before look Nick forgot all about Grissom and the fact that he'd just been considering quitting his job. There was something about the way Greg was watching him that made Nick feel like he was missing something, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what it was. Then Greg tilted his head to the side a little, and the way he smiled at Nick made his heart skip a beat. "Shift's almost over."

Nick opened his mouth to thank Greg for pointing out the obvious, but before he did he realized what the other man was trying to say. He started to shake his head; he knew he should turn around and head in the other direction, maybe get in his car and drive home where he couldn't do any more damage to his career for a few hours. He knew that was what he should do, but somehow Greg had managed to paralyze him with a single smile.

"You remember where it is?" Greg leaned in and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, and before Nick knew what he was doing he was nodding.

"Good."

A few stunned seconds later Nick remembered to tell Greg that just because he knew where he lived didn't mean he was going to show up, but Greg was already gone.

Part four