nickngreg | New fic offering! Let's Be...

Title: Let’s Be…
Author: quasilogical
Rating: PG
Summary: Nick Stokes didn’t expect this on his night off.
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters of CSI, the Discovery channel, or TiVo.
AN: This little idea has been on my hard drive for a while, and I just now finally polished it up to something I’m not too ashamed to offer to the community. This fic is inspired in part by the extreme overabundance of weird commercials which air during my late night TV programming. The timeline of this can really be whenever you want, but a certain reference could put it before Fight Night.

A CSI Three only got one night off per week during a busy time like this, and probably only after pulling his fair share of doubles. After a rough week plagued by a serious arson, a double murder, a nasty car crash, and a handful of robberies, Nick Stokes was definitely going to take full advantage of his night off.

His alarm clock displayed a late hour when he finally dragged himself out of bed and puttered around in a lethargic version of his everyday morning routine. He finally flopped down on the couch with a cold drink in his hand, the television set to the Discovery channel special on sea birds he had TiVo-d. All in all, it was shaping up to be a nice, relaxing, uneventful evening.

Until he heard the knock on the door.

Nick groaned, paused a moment to lament his lost peaceful evening, stopped his show, and wandered over to the door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, so he imagined it must be some pudgy, balding, eager little salesman, or a weary maintenance guy for the phone or electric or something. So it naturally came as quite a surprise when he saw the one person he knew who could be best described as a live wire. Fidgeting impatiently on his doorstep was an animated personality confined in a wiry built, energetically moving, vibrantly clothed body.

A rather nice body at that.

Nick shook that thought from his head and watched as Greg Sanders burst into his home, with a swiftly narrated, “Hey Nick, knew you had the night off too, brought take-out, what’re you watching?”

Before Nick had a chance to answer, he suddenly had his hands full of Chinese take-out and Greg had seized Nick’s remote control to find out for himself. “Discovery Channel. I should have known.”

Nick was still staring blankly as Greg dropped to the couch and made himself comfortable. He struggled to gather his thoughts enough to vocalize them and just when he was ready to speak, Greg teased, “Why yes, Nick, since I brought the food, it would be very good of you to provide a beverage. How generous of you to offer.”

“What would you like to drink, G?” Nick replied automatically

“Surprise me.” Greg said, playing with the buttons on the remote and eventually rewinding the show a bit to catch up.

Nick walked off to the kitchen and reached into the back of his fridge for the nearly forgotten soft drink cans that Greg and Warrick had left after their sports night almost a month ago. He glanced over to the other room and tried to ignore the feeling in his stomach seeing Greg on his couch. The certainty he felt that Greg truly looked like he belonged on that couch. The realization that Greg really was watching the bird special, not just shaking his head and writing Nick off as a hopeless geek. The look of deep concentration on Greg’s face as he gazed at the glowing television screen that Nick was sure was a perfect example of the kind of concentration Greg would devote to other…

Nick viciously pushed back that thought and returned to the living room and handed Greg the pop can, then carefully settling into the furthest couch cushion.

“You came back just in time to see the migration of the Fratercula arctica.” Greg said, in the sort of hushed voice one would use to bring someone up to speed on a movie at the theater, not wanting to disturb the other patrons.

“Artic Puffins?” Nick asked in that same hushed voice and Greg nodded, looking down for a moment to poke around in his take-out box with his chopsticks.

And so it was that Nick and Greg watched the hour long special and were well on their way through the second in silence. And if Nick was mentally giving Greg points for watching the Discovery channel with him for nearly two hours, he wasn’t going to admit to it. And if Nick had popped open a bag of chips after the Chinese ran out just so he’d have an excuse to reach for the bowl Greg was holding, he would claim that was innocent.

And if Greg was closer to Nick on the couch than he had been almost two hours ago, Nick didn’t notice.

And just when the show was nearly over, Greg was about to fast forward through the commercials when he dropped the remote. Which wouldn’t have been a problem except the batteries came loose and rolled across the room. Greg swore under his breath and went to stand, but Nick put out an arm to stop him. “I’ll get it.”

Nick snatched one off the floor quickly and looked around for the other. He knew it rolled this way… He looked under his desk as he listened to some advertisement for life insurance for people over 65, immediately followed by an ad for a retirement community.

“Nick?” Greg said, turning his head to speak to him.

“Yeah?” Nick called back, finally finding the battery where it had rolled slightly under his bookshelf. He stooped to snatch that off the floor and made a note to vacuum soon.

“Let’s be old men together.”

“What?” Nick chuckled as he stood. Who could blame him? Greg’s statement, apparently prompted by the commercials geared at senior viewers, came more or less out of left field.

“No, really.” Greg said earnestly. “You can make fun of my ridiculously thick glasses, and I’ll help you find your dentures when you forget where you put them.”

“Dentures?” Nick repeated, amused, as he sat back on the couch. “Why do I have to be the one with dentures?”

“After all my orthodontic work, there’s no way I’m losing my teeth.” Greg said matter-of-factly.

“And the faulty memory?”

“Well you are the older of the two of us, Nick.” Greg said, with a tiny smile tugging at his lips.

Nick laughed and swiftly replaced the batteries and handed the remote back to Greg, “Sure G. We’ll be old men together.”

There was a short pause before Greg softly asked, “Hey Nick?”

Nick turned to face him again. “Yeah?”

There was an unexpected glimmer in Greg’s eye and a tentative smile on his face. Suddenly, the remote was placed on the coffee table, forgotten as Greg was leaning into Nick’s personal space to press his lips to Nick’s. Then, even more suddenly, Greg’s hands were on Nick’s shoulders, Nick’s hands in Greg’s hair, and Greg’s whole body in Nick’s lap as the once timid kiss became very pleasantly confident.

And the only little detail that Nick would remember later was that before exchanging several more kisses he had heard Greg whisper, “Let’s be young men together, too.”