CSI: Vegas FIC! "Out Loud"
May. 29th, 2005 05:25 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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nickngregTitle: Out Loud
Rating: R
Chapter: 1/1 (although I may do a prequal... we’ll see)
Summary: Is there a such thing as destiny? “There were billions of people traveling the Earth, weaving a picture of bliss and destruction and amongst the wreckage and birth of the human race, they had managed to find each other.”
Genre: CSI: Las Vegas
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Author’s Note: Probably around midseason five, after they’re split between swing and night shifts, but definitely BEFORE “Gravedigger.”
Second Author’s Note: This turned out a lot sappier than I’d meant it. Though I am glad at how it turned out in the end. If your curious about my inspiration, or if you’d just like to know how eclectic my music taste is, the songs I looped as I wrote are as follows:
“Out Loud” by Dispatch and John Mayer
“Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra
“Collide” by Howie Day
“Going to California” by Led Zeppelin
“The Luckiest” by Ben Folds Five
“Firestarter” by Jimmy Eat World (another version also done by Prodigy) The mood of this song has very little to do with this story, but for some reason I imagine Greg listening to this song (more likely the Prodigy— as Jimmy Eat World didn’t do the cover until later— and the mood is different) on his diskman as he walks down Filbert St. (This image will be talked about later in the story— go, read!).
Read the author’s note at the end too, if you’re curious about any of the particular places I name...
*******
“Would you be the wind
to blow me home.
Would you be a dream,
on the wings of a poem.
And if we were walking,
through a crowd,
well you know I’d be proud,
if you called my name out loud.”
~Out Loud by Dispatch and John Mayer
*******
“You’ve been to San Francisco?”
Nick and Greg were sitting on their newly unloaded couch, taking a break from unpacking clothes and kitchen utensils and toiletries to flip through photo albums. Nick, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, was sitting with his sock covered feet up on a box (doubling as a coffee table until they bought a new one) and with Greg’s head in his lap. An old photo album of himself with friends and family— that he vaguely remembered his mother tearfully forcing him to take when he moved from Dallas to Vegas— sat propped in the -V- Greg’s curled body made.
“Yeah, I went my senior year of college for spring break with some of my frat buddies. We’d already done Cabo and all the other College hot spots, so we decided to try something a little different.” Nick smiled at the memory, as Greg paused on the decoupaged title page Nick’s mother had made (and which Greg had already teased Nick mercilessly about–-- “Nicky, I never saw you as the scrapbooking type!”) to look up at Nick’s nostalgic smile. Nick continued, “That trip sure was different, alright.”
“Let me guess, your first ‘gay experience’ right?” Greg was smiling too.
“Got it in one.”
Greg’s eyes unfocused after a moment, which Nick already knew to be Greg’s Math-Geek face–-- he got it whenever he was doing taxes or splitting the bill for everyone at Denny’s after shift– not that Nick had been taking stock of all of Greg’s expressions. ‘Cause he wasn’t. Greg was just expressive, and Nick couldn’t help but stare sometimes. It was one of the things Nick loved about Greg.
“Was this in the spring of 1997?”
“Uh... Check the back of the first photo.” Greg flipped the page, and took the first photo out of the frame Nick's mother had made out of stick-on-photo corners. There, printed onto the back was the date: March 17th, 1997.
“Huh...”
“What?” Greg looked like he was counting again.
“We were in the same city at the same time...” Greg flipped the picture over and on the front was a picture of a group of crewcut boys in polo-shirts shoving at each other and smiling, standing in a grassy park, off center, in front of the gleaming white Church of Saint’s Peter and Paul. It was a park Greg had fond memories of. It was in North Beach, the Italian District of San Francisco.
Greg flipped to the next photo, and in the background was a line of bars and restaurant fronts, all made of dark stained wood and green, red, and white striped awnings.
“See that? I worked there.” Nick squinted at the corner storefront.
“Bohemian Cigar Store?”
“They sold awesome sandwiches.”
“A Cigar store that sold sandwiches?”
“Right, and coffee too. But they didn’t sell cigars.”
Nick shook his head, “Only you Greg.”
Now Nick was counting back, “Wait, weren’t you still in your... Senior year of high school in LA? I’d finally been old enough to stop using my fake ID that year so you must have been eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen actually, I turned eighteen that summer. I was a boy genius, what can I say? I graduated early and moved to SF for that spring and summer before moving up to Berkeley for school.”
Nick looked down at Greg with a smile, and just a little awe, “Your amazing, you know that right? Graduated a semester–“
“A year, actually, but who’s counting?”
“A YEAR early, moved out on your own at seventeen, full ride to Berkeley, graduated Valedictorian while going to school AND working, Chemistry Masters, and yet you still want to become a CSI and take a pay cut, just to help people...”
Now Greg was blushing, but he was never one to pass up a chance to joke, “And you forgot my stunning good looks and mad bedroom skillz.”
Nick leaned down and stopped a hair’s-breadth away from where Greg’s jaw met under his ear and let out a puff of hot air against Greg’s oversensitive scar-marred skin. Greg shivered as Nick whispered, “and so modest, too...”
Even though the angle was off, and hurt his neck, Nick’s tongue darted out and licked a hot stripe across Greg’s jaw, the smooth, ridged skin of chemical burns and the scratchiness of Greg’s 10 a.m. shadow making Nick shift restlessly under Greg's head. Nick sucked Greg’s bottom lip into his mouth before meeting their lips together in an awkward kiss. The angle of their head’s made it sloppy, tongues winding around each other, hot and insistent, until they were both gasping for air and the photo album had been shoved to the ground in favor of Greg crawling onto Nick’s lap. When they broke apart, Greg found himself sitting up, straddling jean-clad hips, as they touched foreheads, breath mingling. Nick’s glasses had been tossed aside sometime during their kiss.
“Fuck, we’re never going to get anything unpacked tonight–“
“Mid-morning, actually—“
(Working night/swing shift respectively screwed with both their internal clocks and made naming meals and times of day rather confusing.)
“— if you keep making me want to kiss you so badly. Why do you have to be so damn amazing, huh?”
Greg would have blushed again if he hadn’t already been overheated from the friction their jeans were creating as Greg slowly rotated his hips. Nick grunted and bit down on the junction where Greg’s neck met shoulder. Greg rotated his hips once more before Nick stilled them with his slightly shaking hands.
“Let’s go test out our new queen sized bed, huh? We don’t have anyone living below us anymore to yell at us for corrupting their kids.” They’d just bought a small but private house together in the suburbs of South-Vegas, and were quite happy with the newfound privacy that their twice insulated walls and thrice-layered windows (all the better to keep out the simmering Vegas heat out— and sounds in) gave them.
Greg stood with a groan, bending down to pick up the album and loose photo to set on the couch, when the photo of Nick’s friends in Washington Square of North Beach, the picture that had started their conversation, caught his eye. Greg set down the album and squinted at the photo, bringing it close to his face.
“Nicky, that’s me in the corner of the photo!” Nick took the picture from Greg and patted the couch 'till he found his glasses in the crack between couch and cushion, setting them on the end of his nose again. He didn’t remember taking the picture, but there were his frat buddies off center, and in the left corner was what appeared to be a young Greg holding a green apron and walking. He’s clad in nineties green plaid and zippered pants, a black Zeppelin shirt that Nick vaguely remembers Greg still has and wore last Friday to bed (only it's now worn and grey and has a hole in the lining of the neck), and has short buzzed red hair, and there might be black splotches on his head too, but that might just be the graininess of the photo.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I distinctly remember that hairstyle, Lady-bug-couture, I called it.” Greg said, and those WERE black spots on Greg’s fire-engine red hair.
"Wow..." Nick whistled low.
“What a small world! That’s like a.... a one in... 4.9 billion chance kind of photo.” Nick thought briefly of how Greg-like it was to remember the population estimate in 1997 before looking back at the photo, both in surprise and wonder. Both wondering if it wasn’t chance that Nick had taken the photo just a little off-center, just a little to the left, just enough to catch a seventeen year old Greg on film 11 years ago.
And Nick knows it’s mushy even to think, but he says it aloud anyway, ‘cause Greg has made him into a little bit of a romantic in the seven and a half months they’ve been together.
“YOU are a one in 4.9 billion kind of guy.”
Greg looked back at him with big brown eyes, a soft muzzy smile on his face, one Nick gets to see only rarely, and in a voice totally and completely without sarcasm or irony, he says, “Yeah, but I’m your one in 4.9 billion, Love.”
And even though they work a job where luck and destiny and movie-story love doesn’t exist, where all they ever see day in and day out are love lost to jealousy and greed and envy; they both believe in destiny and love just a little more on that late-morning, love shining in their smiles and in their entwined hands and in the glare of the Nevada yellow sun.
*******
Author’s Extended Notes: Whew! Finished! And such a cute finish, eh? I tried :-) I do Mushy stuff so rarely.
Oh! And in the summary, the quote isn't mine. I dont even know where it's from, But I just wanted to make sure that if whomever wrote it reads this, they know I'm not plagiarizing. Credit goes to SOMEONE. Though who that is, I don't remember.
If you’re wondering about Washington Square, or North Beach, they do exist. Here, copy and paste this (http://www.sftravel.com/beach.html) into your browser (I'm effing annoyed with myself, 'cause I can't remember how to link to an outside source and I'm still learning how to use LJ). In fact, the Bohemian Cigar Store exists as well. I lived in SF for a year (coincidently, when I turned eighteen I moved to SF) , and it was one of my favorite places to eat and people watch. Sadly, I couldn’t find any online pictures of it, and short of buying a scanner and showing you my own pictures, you’ll just have to use your imagination.
And my parents live in Vegas, (technically in a new suburban neighborhood in South Vegas, borderline Henderson) so the twice insulated walls and thrice-layered glass windows isn’t something I made up. Their house is brand-spankin’ new, and outfitted with all the heat-stroke-preventing amenities, a home I’m sure Greg and Nick can afford in 2005 at 400,000+ if they pooled their combined incomes and Greg’s leftover lab income of 75,000+ (probably mush higher, even– I got this number from a friend who did research on lab jobs, so I’m not sure as to the validity of this number).
About their ages; I’m thinking Greg is about 28ish and Nick about 32ish in the present (2005). I know that seems a little young for Greg to have his masters and to already have a job in the 2nd best CSI lab in the country, but in my fanon, he’s very intelligent, and finished his masters in three years, after finishing undergrad study in three years (it’s possible, just highly difficult). So, he finished school at age 24-25ish. Also, DNA has only been AROUND since... what, 1980-something. Only around 25-30 years, and so all DNA tech’s are young, allowing Greg to be the age he’s at now and BE the lead DNA tech at one of the most prestigious labs in the country (was– as he’s now moving on to CSI).
Hey, plus, if Greg can finish a DNA analysis in THIRTY freakin’ MINUTES, he can have a masters at 24.
What can I say, I’ve always been a nitpicker. I like my facts straight (tee-hee! Though I like my boyz, Greg and Nick, gay).
Sorry, had to say it.
Rating: R
Chapter: 1/1 (although I may do a prequal... we’ll see)
Summary: Is there a such thing as destiny? “There were billions of people traveling the Earth, weaving a picture of bliss and destruction and amongst the wreckage and birth of the human race, they had managed to find each other.”
Genre: CSI: Las Vegas
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Author’s Note: Probably around midseason five, after they’re split between swing and night shifts, but definitely BEFORE “Gravedigger.”
Second Author’s Note: This turned out a lot sappier than I’d meant it. Though I am glad at how it turned out in the end. If your curious about my inspiration, or if you’d just like to know how eclectic my music taste is, the songs I looped as I wrote are as follows:
“Out Loud” by Dispatch and John Mayer
“Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra
“Collide” by Howie Day
“Going to California” by Led Zeppelin
“The Luckiest” by Ben Folds Five
“Firestarter” by Jimmy Eat World (another version also done by Prodigy) The mood of this song has very little to do with this story, but for some reason I imagine Greg listening to this song (more likely the Prodigy— as Jimmy Eat World didn’t do the cover until later— and the mood is different) on his diskman as he walks down Filbert St. (This image will be talked about later in the story— go, read!).
Read the author’s note at the end too, if you’re curious about any of the particular places I name...
*******
“Would you be the wind
to blow me home.
Would you be a dream,
on the wings of a poem.
And if we were walking,
through a crowd,
well you know I’d be proud,
if you called my name out loud.”
~Out Loud by Dispatch and John Mayer
*******
“You’ve been to San Francisco?”
Nick and Greg were sitting on their newly unloaded couch, taking a break from unpacking clothes and kitchen utensils and toiletries to flip through photo albums. Nick, glasses perched on the tip of his nose, was sitting with his sock covered feet up on a box (doubling as a coffee table until they bought a new one) and with Greg’s head in his lap. An old photo album of himself with friends and family— that he vaguely remembered his mother tearfully forcing him to take when he moved from Dallas to Vegas— sat propped in the -V- Greg’s curled body made.
“Yeah, I went my senior year of college for spring break with some of my frat buddies. We’d already done Cabo and all the other College hot spots, so we decided to try something a little different.” Nick smiled at the memory, as Greg paused on the decoupaged title page Nick’s mother had made (and which Greg had already teased Nick mercilessly about–-- “Nicky, I never saw you as the scrapbooking type!”) to look up at Nick’s nostalgic smile. Nick continued, “That trip sure was different, alright.”
“Let me guess, your first ‘gay experience’ right?” Greg was smiling too.
“Got it in one.”
Greg’s eyes unfocused after a moment, which Nick already knew to be Greg’s Math-Geek face–-- he got it whenever he was doing taxes or splitting the bill for everyone at Denny’s after shift– not that Nick had been taking stock of all of Greg’s expressions. ‘Cause he wasn’t. Greg was just expressive, and Nick couldn’t help but stare sometimes. It was one of the things Nick loved about Greg.
“Was this in the spring of 1997?”
“Uh... Check the back of the first photo.” Greg flipped the page, and took the first photo out of the frame Nick's mother had made out of stick-on-photo corners. There, printed onto the back was the date: March 17th, 1997.
“Huh...”
“What?” Greg looked like he was counting again.
“We were in the same city at the same time...” Greg flipped the picture over and on the front was a picture of a group of crewcut boys in polo-shirts shoving at each other and smiling, standing in a grassy park, off center, in front of the gleaming white Church of Saint’s Peter and Paul. It was a park Greg had fond memories of. It was in North Beach, the Italian District of San Francisco.
Greg flipped to the next photo, and in the background was a line of bars and restaurant fronts, all made of dark stained wood and green, red, and white striped awnings.
“See that? I worked there.” Nick squinted at the corner storefront.
“Bohemian Cigar Store?”
“They sold awesome sandwiches.”
“A Cigar store that sold sandwiches?”
“Right, and coffee too. But they didn’t sell cigars.”
Nick shook his head, “Only you Greg.”
Now Nick was counting back, “Wait, weren’t you still in your... Senior year of high school in LA? I’d finally been old enough to stop using my fake ID that year so you must have been eighteen, right?”
“Seventeen actually, I turned eighteen that summer. I was a boy genius, what can I say? I graduated early and moved to SF for that spring and summer before moving up to Berkeley for school.”
Nick looked down at Greg with a smile, and just a little awe, “Your amazing, you know that right? Graduated a semester–“
“A year, actually, but who’s counting?”
“A YEAR early, moved out on your own at seventeen, full ride to Berkeley, graduated Valedictorian while going to school AND working, Chemistry Masters, and yet you still want to become a CSI and take a pay cut, just to help people...”
Now Greg was blushing, but he was never one to pass up a chance to joke, “And you forgot my stunning good looks and mad bedroom skillz.”
Nick leaned down and stopped a hair’s-breadth away from where Greg’s jaw met under his ear and let out a puff of hot air against Greg’s oversensitive scar-marred skin. Greg shivered as Nick whispered, “and so modest, too...”
Even though the angle was off, and hurt his neck, Nick’s tongue darted out and licked a hot stripe across Greg’s jaw, the smooth, ridged skin of chemical burns and the scratchiness of Greg’s 10 a.m. shadow making Nick shift restlessly under Greg's head. Nick sucked Greg’s bottom lip into his mouth before meeting their lips together in an awkward kiss. The angle of their head’s made it sloppy, tongues winding around each other, hot and insistent, until they were both gasping for air and the photo album had been shoved to the ground in favor of Greg crawling onto Nick’s lap. When they broke apart, Greg found himself sitting up, straddling jean-clad hips, as they touched foreheads, breath mingling. Nick’s glasses had been tossed aside sometime during their kiss.
“Fuck, we’re never going to get anything unpacked tonight–“
“Mid-morning, actually—“
(Working night/swing shift respectively screwed with both their internal clocks and made naming meals and times of day rather confusing.)
“— if you keep making me want to kiss you so badly. Why do you have to be so damn amazing, huh?”
Greg would have blushed again if he hadn’t already been overheated from the friction their jeans were creating as Greg slowly rotated his hips. Nick grunted and bit down on the junction where Greg’s neck met shoulder. Greg rotated his hips once more before Nick stilled them with his slightly shaking hands.
“Let’s go test out our new queen sized bed, huh? We don’t have anyone living below us anymore to yell at us for corrupting their kids.” They’d just bought a small but private house together in the suburbs of South-Vegas, and were quite happy with the newfound privacy that their twice insulated walls and thrice-layered windows (all the better to keep out the simmering Vegas heat out— and sounds in) gave them.
Greg stood with a groan, bending down to pick up the album and loose photo to set on the couch, when the photo of Nick’s friends in Washington Square of North Beach, the picture that had started their conversation, caught his eye. Greg set down the album and squinted at the photo, bringing it close to his face.
“Nicky, that’s me in the corner of the photo!” Nick took the picture from Greg and patted the couch 'till he found his glasses in the crack between couch and cushion, setting them on the end of his nose again. He didn’t remember taking the picture, but there were his frat buddies off center, and in the left corner was what appeared to be a young Greg holding a green apron and walking. He’s clad in nineties green plaid and zippered pants, a black Zeppelin shirt that Nick vaguely remembers Greg still has and wore last Friday to bed (only it's now worn and grey and has a hole in the lining of the neck), and has short buzzed red hair, and there might be black splotches on his head too, but that might just be the graininess of the photo.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I distinctly remember that hairstyle, Lady-bug-couture, I called it.” Greg said, and those WERE black spots on Greg’s fire-engine red hair.
"Wow..." Nick whistled low.
“What a small world! That’s like a.... a one in... 4.9 billion chance kind of photo.” Nick thought briefly of how Greg-like it was to remember the population estimate in 1997 before looking back at the photo, both in surprise and wonder. Both wondering if it wasn’t chance that Nick had taken the photo just a little off-center, just a little to the left, just enough to catch a seventeen year old Greg on film 11 years ago.
And Nick knows it’s mushy even to think, but he says it aloud anyway, ‘cause Greg has made him into a little bit of a romantic in the seven and a half months they’ve been together.
“YOU are a one in 4.9 billion kind of guy.”
Greg looked back at him with big brown eyes, a soft muzzy smile on his face, one Nick gets to see only rarely, and in a voice totally and completely without sarcasm or irony, he says, “Yeah, but I’m your one in 4.9 billion, Love.”
And even though they work a job where luck and destiny and movie-story love doesn’t exist, where all they ever see day in and day out are love lost to jealousy and greed and envy; they both believe in destiny and love just a little more on that late-morning, love shining in their smiles and in their entwined hands and in the glare of the Nevada yellow sun.
*******
Author’s Extended Notes: Whew! Finished! And such a cute finish, eh? I tried :-) I do Mushy stuff so rarely.
Oh! And in the summary, the quote isn't mine. I dont even know where it's from, But I just wanted to make sure that if whomever wrote it reads this, they know I'm not plagiarizing. Credit goes to SOMEONE. Though who that is, I don't remember.
If you’re wondering about Washington Square, or North Beach, they do exist. Here, copy and paste this (http://www.sftravel.com/beach.html) into your browser (I'm effing annoyed with myself, 'cause I can't remember how to link to an outside source and I'm still learning how to use LJ). In fact, the Bohemian Cigar Store exists as well. I lived in SF for a year (coincidently, when I turned eighteen I moved to SF) , and it was one of my favorite places to eat and people watch. Sadly, I couldn’t find any online pictures of it, and short of buying a scanner and showing you my own pictures, you’ll just have to use your imagination.
And my parents live in Vegas, (technically in a new suburban neighborhood in South Vegas, borderline Henderson) so the twice insulated walls and thrice-layered glass windows isn’t something I made up. Their house is brand-spankin’ new, and outfitted with all the heat-stroke-preventing amenities, a home I’m sure Greg and Nick can afford in 2005 at 400,000+ if they pooled their combined incomes and Greg’s leftover lab income of 75,000+ (probably mush higher, even– I got this number from a friend who did research on lab jobs, so I’m not sure as to the validity of this number).
About their ages; I’m thinking Greg is about 28ish and Nick about 32ish in the present (2005). I know that seems a little young for Greg to have his masters and to already have a job in the 2nd best CSI lab in the country, but in my fanon, he’s very intelligent, and finished his masters in three years, after finishing undergrad study in three years (it’s possible, just highly difficult). So, he finished school at age 24-25ish. Also, DNA has only been AROUND since... what, 1980-something. Only around 25-30 years, and so all DNA tech’s are young, allowing Greg to be the age he’s at now and BE the lead DNA tech at one of the most prestigious labs in the country (was– as he’s now moving on to CSI).
Hey, plus, if Greg can finish a DNA analysis in THIRTY freakin’ MINUTES, he can have a masters at 24.
What can I say, I’ve always been a nitpicker. I like my facts straight (tee-hee! Though I like my boyz, Greg and Nick, gay).
Sorry, had to say it.
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no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:05 am (UTC)Giving credit were credit is due...
Date: 2005-05-30 01:19 am (UTC)i'm also wondering how close this is to Caster's fic...
Does anyone have a link?
Re: Giving credit were credit is due...
Date: 2005-05-30 01:24 am (UTC)Re: Giving credit were credit is due...
Date: 2005-05-30 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:36 am (UTC)You can find Collide here:
http://www.nickandgreg.com/desert_archive/titles.php?action=viewlist&let=C
You're going to land on a page with lots of stories starting with the letter C. Just scroll down till you hit it. And sorry, I don't know how to make it link either, you'll have to cut and paste. Oh wait, I just previewed. It seems to have linked it all on it's own. Good software, pretty software.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 01:58 am (UTC)Huzah!
Date: 2005-05-30 03:12 am (UTC)Sorry. I'm just so high that someone actually was inspired by something I wrote! (People are talking about me and linking my fic? So happy right now.)
I saw the summary and actually thought (I'm not joking either), "Wow. That looks like something I'd write." (Because I can never remember what I write. Vague outlines appear in my head but that's about it.) And then I saw you were listening to Collide and thought, "Do geniuses think alike or what?" And then I scrolled down to comment and nearly fell out.
Someone liked my stuff to actually write a part of it down. Hurray! Mad plot bunnies rule! And yes, I give full permission for you to use whatever quote you want.
Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-05-30 03:22 am (UTC)although I may do a prequal... we’ll see I think this fic must have one! ^_^ A great idea would be to write about them in 1997 where Nick actually took the photo. (Hopefully, another mad plot bunny will attack you sometime soon.) Just wanted to say how great this fic was! (And sorry for the long comment. I tend to start typing and my fingers won't stop.)
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 03:40 am (UTC)Loved the story. Sometimes I need a little fluff to counter-act my love of angst.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 04:03 am (UTC)1. awww domestic nickgreg
2. hahaha.... Nick scrapbooking is a great image
3. ummm. best boston band ever! DISPATCH!!!!! i went to their final concert, and I've hung out with them backstage a couple times. I LOVE THEM!!!!
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 05:29 am (UTC)Hehe, great minds DO think alike! Originally, I think, your fic caught my eye on FF.net (on the actual list of fics, when they first come out by written date) 'cause I'd always loved the song "Collide" by dear ol' Howie, and I'd always thought it was prime songfic material, although I never committed any of my own plot-bunnies to writing. I only recently got into CSI fanfic, (I used to do Harry Potter before that) and your story was actually one of the first I read, I believe.
So thanks!
Would you believe this is the first thing I've written since last December, and before that, I hadn't written anything but school essays and journal entries and such since... 2003, early 2004?!?
God, but I've missed it!
About the storyline: although I dont think I've ever seen Serendipity, I love the concept. When I was young, I used to take tons and tons of pictures of everything and everyone I passed (I fancied myself a Photographer then) and my parents used to tease that someday I'd show these pictures to someone who'd end up being in one of them. The idea always sort of stuck with me. Especially weird, is that when I was in my senior year of high school, I had a mad crush on my lab partner for Anat. and Phys. I moved out half way through that year, and while I was cleaning out drawers and such, an old newspaper fell out from under the lining of one of my cupboards (which I'd had since I was about 6). On the front was a big black and white photo of said lab partner in his first grade class! (Identifying him was easy as his name was in print at the bottom of the photo, and the picture resembled his elder self)
The particulars of the article, I can't remember now, but the next day I asked said boy to the school Saydie Hawkins dance. I was so sure we were "destined to be!" And we weren't, but the memory of those two weird coincidences stick with me.
Originally, this story was going to be a series of short scenes of Greg and Nick's serendipitous meetings through their life, and how they both ended up in the same place (Vegas) and together... But The opening scene turned into a full on fic, so I'll save all my other plot-bunnies for prequels. Start at the end, and work my way backwards, like George Lucas!
And to
To [Bad username or site: slytherin girl @ livejournal.com], yeah, now that you mention it, I think I have read that on CBS.com. I know I've been to the site often enough! All I really remembered while writing the fic though, was that both Eric and his fictional counterpart were born late spring/ early summer, they were both late twenties, and Nick was older than Greg. I want to fix their ages now! But then the timeline would be off, as their more than four years apart... Oh well, next time! Thanks for the info, I hate getting my facts wrong :-P (although I'm pretty sure I missnamed the Cigar place too... their was a name at the beginning... Damn).
I'm not promising anything (because when I promise, I break) but I'll try and write a prequel sometime soon.
And I hope the username lj cuts work, or I'm going to be really annoyed :-P
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 06:15 am (UTC)Also, I love, love, love the concept of people's paths crossing before they even know each other. There's a word for that, I just can't remember it. It's not serendipity, but it's something like that. Anyway, I adore the idea that Nick and Greg would be so close to one another to be in the same picture but still be unaware of one another's existence.
And little 17 year-old Greg's hair being all "Lady Bug Coture" is just too cute.
Hey, plus, if Greg can finish a DNA analysis in THIRTY freakin’ MINUTES, he can have a masters at 24.
*snorfle*
Entry level DNA techs make 46,000 a year (why, yes, I did look that up at the LVPD employment website, thanks), but Greg wasn't just an entry level assistant tech, he ran the DNA Lab. I couldn't find the salary of head DNA analyst, but head ballistics analyst in Las Vegas makes 75,000 a year.
And Henderson's expensive, yo. My parents' friends who live there have a house about the same size as mine (2,000 square feet) and they bought it for something like 800,000. Of course, that's Henderson, not South Las Vegas, plus I think they live on a golf course, but still.
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 06:46 am (UTC)The domesticity, Nick wearing glasses, the whole 'meant for each other, paths crossing'element,how very perfectly you wrote it! It was all just wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing! :D
no subject
Date: 2005-05-30 08:05 am (UTC)On Vegas and prices: My parents payed $250,000 for an as-of-then (early 2003, late 2002) unbuilt house in the middle of freakin NOWHERE. As in, when the move-in date finally came up (Nov 2003), the only road that led up to their new neighborhood (200ish houses clustered together, at LEAST a mile away from even a gas-station, and at least 5 from even the hint of civilization), was DIRT, straight off of an unlit part of Las Vegas Blvd. (pretty much a few miles directly south of the Strip. It's the first part of a soon to be developed suburb. North of the strip is crime-central, south and (I think) south-east is Henderson. South-west is some really affluent neighborhood, I think, Seven Hills... South Las Vegas used to be pretty much dirt and freeway. I think, since my parents payed for their home, the price has close to trippled (my estimate would be just shy of 740,000). However, my parent's place is two floors, four bedroom, with all the amneties I mentioned in the story plus a weird extended ceiling, a cool french door I LOVE, and a whole bunch of other amneties I dont even fully understand. And they also have a decent view of the strip, unmarred since my past visit by ANYTHING. They've pretty much got a view of desert, and then the Strip. They got their home at an OBSCENELY low cost, 'cause of still flagging property prices, right before the huge boom. So, I gave Nick and Greg a really great price on a one story in my parent's neighborhood.
Just 'cause their just so darn cute.
Oh yeah, and about their cuteness: I am SO writing a 1997 prequel: Nineties-Greg in my home-city (That one year DEFINED my life... but that's probably TMI so) is just TOO HAUTE!
Also hot: Domesticity: I love reading stories that feel REAL. Real elements, like dropping glasses, (I've always had a thing for guys in glasses), and naming real places (and, if not real, MAKING them seem real), and bad breath.
I wanted to bring that into this...
And once you get me typing, you can't stop me! So I'll end this here, so I can get some SLEEP tonight!
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Date: 2005-05-31 04:23 am (UTC)And you gave them a house in your parents neighborhood. I'd visit my parents a lot more if those two lived down the street.
So excited about the preq! Now I'm writing more N/G stuff... there's been a huge N/G boom lately and I want in. Sleep tonight, write tomorrow!
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Date: 2005-05-31 04:49 am (UTC)I'm glad you'll be writing more N/G! It's my top ship and even with the boom, it's summer, all I have is work until friends get back from THIER universities, so I'm stuck with nothing but my dear old computer.
I need fic to read!
Oh yeah, and glasses? TOTALLY hot.
Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-05-31 05:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-31 05:19 am (UTC)Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-06-01 02:23 am (UTC)I wanted to write Hodges in because he is so awesome. Season finale? He was great. (I'm thinking of posting a Hodges/Nick story. I've been asking people about what they would think and I'd love your opinion. Although Nick/Greg is always #1 and you better believe a N/G will be posted right afterwords! ^_^)
And I also love you Baby Steps. (It's one of my favorites. But then, isn't all Nick/Greg stuff good?) Didn't realize you wrote it until I saw your journal!
Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-06-01 08:32 am (UTC)Oh, and now I'll have to read
Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-06-02 01:21 am (UTC)I teach a swing dance (lindy hop) class Thurs nights so I haven't seen much of Season 5. I'm always behind. But I did see Grave Danger and if Hodges wasn't flirting with Greg I don't know what he was doing. So he is capable of flirting. If you write it, I would definitely read it, no matter what. I'm interested to see what you could do with it. I'm sure it would be interesting. For me Nick/Greg is always #1 also and if writing a Hodges/Nick will get me another of your Nick/Greg's I say go for it.
Oh thank you for saying that about Baby Steps. I'm glad you liked it. I kinda do too. Would it be OK if I friended you?
Re: Huzah!
Date: 2005-06-03 06:49 am (UTC)Re: Greg's age
Date: 2006-01-17 04:28 am (UTC)Anyway, lovely story. I enjoy stories that hint at NG being destiny, which you doing very effectively.