(no subject)
Dec. 26th, 2006 11:44 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
inflowers.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
nickngregChapter: One.
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None, really.
Genre: Angst. Romance. Post-Ep.
Summary: Post ep for Feeling the Heat. Greg's angst about the case and the events afterwards.
“… baby in a car in a parking lot …”
”… father just left him there!”
”... how could anyone be so stupid …”
He only caught snippets of the conversations carrying on outside the lab, but even so it was enough to make Greg feel sick to his stomach. How anybody could hurt their own child like that seemed completely unfathomable to him, and as the minutes in his shift ticked over, so did his mind with a barrage of questions. None of his questions were when or where’s or how’s. They were all whys.
Why would anyone let their son die?
“Hey Greg,” He looked up as Catherine wandered into the lab. Even her steps seemed melancholy, the discovery of the dead infant had taken its toll on the entire department. Cases with children were never easy, babies were the worst. “How we doing with that swab?”
“Should be done any minute.” He replied, followed by a pause as he silently debated whether or not to continue. “Another baby. I hear the DA’s gunning for the father. What’ll they charge him with, murder?”
A part of Greg wanted the son of a bitch behind bars for eternity, but underneath his anger he knew that the guilt would imprison the father for the rest of his life anyway.
“Not likely. Child endangerment, child neglect, child abuse … “ Catherine listed all the possible charges and Greg felt his stomach sink at the thought that this would be written off as a misdemeanour, and not the heinous act that it was.
“Sounds like a slap on the wrist to me.”
”You and the DA can shake hands.” This case was getting to Catherine, he could tell. It wasn’t just every day stress or Catherine’s consistent dislike for Greg that caused her to be short with him. ”Your printout’s ready.”
Scanning quickly over the results, he handed the sheet to her.
”Brompheniramine maleates. USP-1”
“Cough syrup.”
And he knew the conversation was over.
Greg knew where Catherine was coming from with her passion for this case. It was the same burning anger that he felt when he thought about the innocence that was lost in the backseat of a car that sweltering hot
Some days Greg wished he could be given the same kind of leeway, but as he was constantly reminded, no one was allowed to know.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Yeah Nicky, I’m here.” His arms wrapped around Nick’s waist as Greg buried his head in the crook of Nick’s neck.
”Are you okay, G?”
”No.” A sniffle followed the short answer, and it was only then did Nick realise that Greg was crying.
”Hey now, what’s wrong?”
Nick led Greg to the couch in the centre of the room and sat him down, before reaching up and wiping away a tear with his free hand. He walked into the kitchen and filled a glass with water before going back to the living room. Setting the glass on the coffee table and taking hold of Greg’s hand, he rubbed softly over the skin in an effort to comfort the clearly upset lab tech.
“Why are you home from work early?” Nick asked carefully, not wanting to cause any more distress. “I thought you finished at six? It’s only three.”
Greg took a large gulp of water and coughed slightly before wiping the remainder of his tears off his face and looking up.
”I just couldn’t be there anymore.”
“What happened?” Nick questioned. “Did something happen at the lab when I was out at the lake?” Nick and Sara had been out chasing dead ends with a girl washed up on the shore all shift, he hadn’t been into the lab at all.
“No, nothing happened at the lab. It’s just this case.”
“Which one, mine?” He couldn’t imagine why his case would be bothering Greg, he hadn’t even sent any evidence to him.
“No, not yours Nicky. Catherine’s.”
“Oh, the baby in the backseat. Yeah, everyone is talking about it. The DA likes the father for it, huh.” Nick got caught in his train of thought and didn’t even notice that tears were slipping down Greg’s face again. “Hey, hey. Stop.”
“I can’t. It’s too …” Greg began, but couldn’t seem to find the words to explain his erratic emotions.
“It’s too what, G?”
“It’s too sad, Nick. I can deal with dead bodies, okay? I can accept with the fact that people kill other people, for whatever reason. Sex, drugs, money, the whole nine yards.” He paused before giving an example. “A guy will kill another guy because he slept with his girlfriend, or a wife will kill her husband for the insurance money. It happens, I know this.” Greg sighed and picked up a cushion from the couch, resting it in his lap. “But I refuse to deal with the idea that anybody would hurt their child.”
“So that’s what this is about?” Nick probed further, not wanting to push too far in fear that Greg would recoil as he had been known to do when it came to his feelings. “You’re angry.”
“No, I’m not angry.” Greg reconsidered this and relented. “I mean, I was angry when I first heard about it. And I guess on some level I’m still seething mad that it had to happen, but more than angry I’m scared.”
“Scared of what, Greg?”
“That we’ll lose her.”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I know. I picked her up on my way home from work.”
“Why? They aren’t going to hurt her there. She’s perfectly safe. They’re trained to look after her, just like you’re trained to run DNA at the lab. Which is what you should be doing now.”
Greg couldn’t really understand why Nick was so upset by his coming home early. It wasn’t as though it really affected him at all, but he supposed it was just the pedantic side of Nick shining through. Work was always one of his main priorities, sometimes Greg could swear that if it came down to it, Nick would pick work over him.
“I told you why I left. I was feeling suffocated, I needed to get out of there. Grissom let me go; it’s not a big deal, okay?”
“But it’s not okay, G. Sad things happen every day; we can’t just run away from them all the time. Just because some idiot left their baby in the backseat of their car, time doesn’t stop. We have responsibilities, you know.”
Nick knew he was upsetting Greg, but he couldn’t stop himself. He just didn’t understand why Greg was so upset. He’d done cases with children before, he’d run the DNA and he’d still managed to function like a normal human being. Nick didn’t think that becoming a father should change Greg’s ability to do his job the way he always had. It certainly hadn’t changed the way Nick did his. Or so he thought.
“Screw my job, Nick. I needed to hold her. I needed to protect her.”
“Protect her from what!?” Nick was beginning to lose his patience with Greg, and it was showing on his face. He threw up his hands before burying his head in them, shaking it slowly.
“From … I don’t know, from us!”
“We haven’t done anything wrong. We aren’t like Joshua Winston’s parents, okay? I’d never leave her in the backseat of the car.”
”You know why you’d never leave her in the backseat of the car, Nick?” He paused in mock wonder. “Maybe that’s because you’ve never driven her anywhere.” Greg resorted to verbally attacking his partner when he realised that his fears were most probably irrational.
“You know why that I’ve never driven her anywhere, Greg.”
“Oh, I’m sorry that I forgot. You can’t drive our daughter anywhere, because you don’t want anyone to know that you have a daughter at all.” He hissed the words through his teeth, looking back towards the crib. Adopting a sarcastic voice, he turned back toward Nick and continued. “God forbid anybody ALS the back of your car and find baby spit-up. They’ll automatically suspect that you’ve been lying to them. I bet they’ll all think ‘Nick must have a six month old daughter that he’s been keeping secret from all of us!’ That’s what they’ll think, right Nick?”
“Don’t do this, Greg. We’ve been through it already.” Nick was tired of this kind of argument; they’d been having it for the past three years. Ever since they finally realised how they felt about each other.
“And then, once they’ve discovered that you’ve been a daddy for so long and haven’t told them, they’ll jump to the conclusion that you’re obviously a card-carrying homosexual, and oh yeah, you’ve been fucking the night shift lab tech.” Greg stopped and once again looked back at the crib that held his daughter while she slept, before looking back at Nick and laughing mirthlessly. “Then I guess both your dirty secrets will be exposed.”
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 01:38 pm (UTC)and who's the biological parents? hmm...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 02:07 pm (UTC)Ah, wait wait. All will be revealed.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 02:08 pm (UTC)nick's bitch
Nick's an asshole
greg owns nick's asshole
Angst galore!
yup! haha
Ah, wait wait. All will be revealed.
patience is not my forte, rofl, but ill wait...
no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 03:37 am (UTC)