It all started early in the evening on a Tuesday.
Swing shift had been called in an hour earlier than usual, a minor annoyance considering the fact that Nick had already been half-awake and plodding around his apartment in search of a clean coffee cup. In fact, he’d just found the cup when his cell phone and rung and Catherine announced that there was a double homicide at the Tangiers and, since she and Warrick were on their way to the scene, Nick was going to have to go back to the lab and work on the evidence from one of the shift’s other open cases. He’d grumbled his agreement before downing his coffee and throwing on clothes.
He made it to the crime lab five minutes before Catherine’s arbitrary deadline, and was just walking into the building when someone on a cell phone came very close to literally plowing him down in the doorway.
“Hey, careful!” he shouted, annoyed, and then frowned as he recognized the retreating back of one Bobby Dawson. Or rather, the slightly-retreating back of Bobby Dawson; now outside, Bobby stopped abruptly on the sidewalk and ran a hand over his hair. Nick shrugged it off as a fluke and reached for the door when he heard a curse fly from the usually mild-mannered technician’s mouth, and then an irate accusation:
“Well, who totaled my car, Scott? Because it wasn’t me.”
For some reason that Nick never quite figured out, he paused, hand clenched around the door handle, and tossed a glance over his shoulder at Bobby.
The other man had taken to pacing, and his voice rose and fell in angry crescendos as he crossed back and forth in front of the handicapped parking spaces. “Show some responsibility,” he demanded to no one in particular, and waved a hand at the air. “No, Scott, I can’t just have someone drive… No! I am not asking Jacqui, either!” He growled, the sound low in his throat. “If you can’t pick her up – Scott. Scott, don’t be an assh – dammit.”
He snapped his phone shut, hard, and before Nick could pull open the door and flee from sight, he whirled around and was glaring death daggers directly at Nick. “What?” he snapped, throwing up his hands. “Never seen a guy get pissed at his ex?”
Nick’s jaw slackened involuntarily and he blinked, for once in his life, found himself rendered absolutely speechless. Not even his homegrown Southern politeness prescribed a behavior in this situation – at least, one he knew of – and he forced a tiny little smile. “No,” he drawled, pulling out the word like taffy and buying himself a precious half-second to come up with a better reason than curiosity, “I was just – ”
A buzzing sound interrupted him, and Bobby flipped his phone back open. “What?!” he shot in the mouthpiece, and then his face immediately softened into a pained expression. “No, oh, no, no. Lisa, I thought you were – Yes, babydoll. I know. I was just about to call Auntie Jacqui and ask her to come… No? You need me.” The sigh that followed his statement was anguished, and Nick dropped the door handle as soon as he heard it. “Okay, babydoll. I’ll find a way. Be there soon.”
When he closed the phone this time, Nick did have a response.
“Everything okay?”
Eyebrows shot up at the query, as though Bobby was surprised by the gesture of kindness. Nick couldn’t blame him, he supposed; despite the fact that they often worked together, they could barely be counted even as casual acquaintances. For a moment, the man looked entirely unready to answer at all, his fingers worrying the cell phone in his fist, but then he shrugged and tossed up his hands. “My daughter got sick at preschool,” he admitted with a slight shake of his head. “And it’s my ex’s week with her, but he’s got something-or-other somewhere and…” He frowned. “Why am I telling you this?”
“Because I own a vehicle?” The words fell from Nick’s lips before he realized what he was saying, and he pursed his lips as soon as he finished the question. “I mean,” he clarified after a brief, awkward moment of silence, “if you really need to pick her up. She’s a sick kid, and she wants her dad.”
Bobby nodded distractedly, glancing down at his cell phone. Nick wasn’t sure what he expected the answer to be, or what he wanted the answer to be, but for some reason, he couldn’t help but abandon the step up to the door entirely and move forward, towards Bobby. “Catherine’s not even here,” he pressed, “so it’s not like she’ll notice if I’m ten minutes late for shift.”
When he finally glanced up, Bobby was smiling wider than Nick had ever seen the man smile, and he couldn’t help but smile back.
“As long as you’re sure,” he agreed, and Nick nodded his consent before leading the way back to his truck.
==
Nick arrived back at the lab after dropping Bobby and his daughter – an exhausted, upset little girl with ringlet curls – at their home just in time to run into Catherine and Warrick. Catherine admonished him briefly before stating that they’d only come back to the lab for extra swabs and collection kits. He watched them leave with his arms full of random trace from the new case, and trudged off to Hodges’ to deliver the goods.
Hodges was bent over a microscope when he entered, but by the time Nick had taken three steps into the lab, he found himself standing face-to-face with the surly technician. Hodges snatched the various collection bags right from his arms and tossed them haphazardly onto a countertop. Ordinarily, this would have bothered Nick, but ordinarily, Hodges was not glaring at him as though he planned to cut out and eat his liver. The ice-cold glare caused Nick’s stomach to turn over in a number of very unpleasant ways, and he forced the tiniest of smiles.
“Nice to see you too, Hodges.”
“I heard about what happened, Stokes,” he growled, and pressed past Nick just long enough to slide the only escape route shut. Nick wondered if Hodges was just deranged enough to kill him in a laboratory that had glass walls. “Bobby called Jacqui and Jacqui called Archie and Archie told me.”
“Is there some sort of demented technician phone tree I don’t know about?”
Hodges’ glare only deepened at the joke, leaving Nick the options of either standing his ground, or taking a step back and creating some sort of buffer. He tried the latter and ended up running into the counter.
“You listen to me, Stokes, because I am only going to say this once.” Hodges’ voice was a snake-like whisper. “If you tell a single living soul – including, but not limited to, your coworkers, your friends, or your dog – about what you learned today, I will personally kill you with plumbing supplies and still manage to make your death look like an accident.”
He frowned, and blinked at the oddly-worded threat. “Tell anyone what, Hodges?” he asked. “That I drove Bobby to pick up his – ”
“Shhh!” Hodges hissed, raising a finger to his lips. Out of the corner of his eye, Nick could see the blurred forms of people passing the lab, and he could definitely tell they were slowing down at the sight of David Hodges physically menacing a man who could beat him in an arm-wrestling contest with both arms tied behind his back. Nonetheless, Nick was tempted to gesture for help. “That’s exactly it. No one knows about…her. Or about…him.”
Realization dawned ever-so-slowly, and Nick let out a slow sigh. “Oh, you mean his – ”
“We call him Luscottfer, Prince of Darkness, and I suggest you do the same if you ever want to refer to him again and live to tell the tale.” The glare-of-doom continued. “But of course, you are not going to ever refer to him, or any of this, again, now are you?”
He considered arguing the point, but then realized that he was alone in a lab with a man who was, quite literally, a mad scientist. “The secret’s safe, Hodges,” he finally agreed. It took a great deal of willpower not to roll his eyes. “And you can assure the rest of your posse of that, too.”
“Good.” Hodges stepped back, straightened his lab coat, and then coughed into a fist. For a moment, the room was silent before he looked back up at Nick, and when he did, there was no sign of the deep-rooted anger in his expression. In fact, he almost looked apologetic. “Look, Stokes,” he said, looking earnestly in his direction, “it’s nothing personal. Bobby’s just afraid, with a state job – ”
“Say no more, Hodges.” Nick shrugged his shoulders and straightened up, pushing away from the counter that had been digging painfully into his lower back. “Trust me, Bobby’s not the only one around here with secrets worth keeping.” He gestured at the pile. “There’s tonight’s work, all laid out for you.”
“Great. Something to argue with Grissom about when he gets in.”
Nick smirked, nodded, and then exited the lab as though that conversation had never taken place.
==
Nick was, in fact, completely content in pretending that the conversation with Hodges – and even the car ride with Bobby and his child – had never happened, and he went about his normal life in the normal way until a week later. Another call from Catherine had the swing shift in with night shift, and suddenly he was running prints with Sara and cracking jokes with Greg as though the split had never happened.
Halfway through shift, however, Catherine thrust a bullet in his direction and sent him off to ballistics. He didn’t even think about who he was going to see there, in the ballistics lab, until he stepped through the door and started in on his normal greeting.
“Hey, Bobby, I got – ”
He paused on the word and Bobby glanced up from the gun he was inspecting to shoot Nick a curious look. Nick forced a happy smile to cover his embarrassed one as he stepped the rest of the way into the lab and handed the bullet off to the technician. “From our scene,” he explained. “Catherine wants it run through all the databases, just in case there’s a match.”
“If it’s Catherine’s hunch, it’s probably right,” he joked back, opening the envelope and emptying its contents onto a small plate of glass. Within a few seconds, the striations were running through the computer and both men stood watching the different exemplars running past at breath-taking speeds.
Nick had just about decided on saying something to break the silence when Bobby looked up at him and smiled. “Thanks for the other day,” he stated plainly. Nick glanced back, and when their eyes met, Bobby snapped his gaze back to the computer. “My car’s fixed, now, so…” He trailed off.
“Hey, no problem,” Nick replied, shrugging. The bullets clicked by, one after another. “Glad to help.”
“And sorry about Hodges. He shouldn’t have done that.”
He chuckled. “It was…bizarre, but nothing I couldn’t handle.” He paused, and when he looked down at Bobby again, Bobby’s eyes were trained on him. “We all have our secrets.”
“Yeah, we do,” he agreed. The computer beeped loudly, and bright red font declared a match. “Well, look at that,” Bobby announced, stepping forward and clicking a few keys. “It’s a semi-automatic used a couple months ago in a grocery store robbery up in Henderson. No definitive owner, but the P.D. should still have a list of suspects from that case.”
“Cath was right.” Nick nodded, reaching up to pat the other man on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. I’ll see you ‘round.”
He was almost all the way out the door when Bobby’s voice called after him. “Hey, Nick.” He glanced over his shoulder, watching as the technician ran a hand over his hair and sent Nick what could only be described as a patently bashful look. “After shift, you want to get breakfast? I owe you one.”
He smiled brightly and nodded. “Sure.”
The smile Bobby gave him in return easily beat the one from the parking lot.
==
Despite the fact that their shift ended at eight a.m., the nearby diner that most night-shifters preferred was nearly empty, and a cheeky waitress ushered them into a corner booth and offered them syrup-sticky menus. Two cups of oily coffee and two plates of mediocre eggs-and-bacon later, they laughed together about Hodges’ assault on Nick in the trace evidence lab.
“Greg mentioned it was hilarious,” Bobby chuckled, spearing a rogue bit of egg, “but I didn’t realize he went to that extreme. I’ll have to talk to him about it.” His smile faded slightly, and he set down his fork carefully. “I appreciate that you listened to Hodges, though.”
“It had to happen sometime,” Nick replied, smiling. Bobby snorted a half-laugh and shook his head at the mock-serious tone. “Truth is,” he continued, pushing at his burnt hash-browns with his fork, “that everyone has secrets. I’m certainly not going to run yours up the flagpole and see who looks.”
“I never meant for it to be a secret, really.” Bobby leaned back in the booth and took a long sip of his coffee. “We were together for years – Scott and I, that is – before I even got the job at the lab. We adopted Lisa a few months later, and it was fine for a long time.” He shrugged. “About a year ago, Scott decided he was bored and just sort of…left. And he’s made everything difficult, since.”
Nick nodded and kept on pushing the hash-browns.
“And when it happened, well, Jacqui and everyone decided it should be kept a giant secret, so I wouldn’t have to deal with idiots and my failed relationship.” He smiled. “And here I am, eating breakfast with the man one of my best friend threatened to kill.”
“Kill with plumbing supplies,” Nick amended, and they both laughed again.
The conversation fell to a lull and Nick found himself picking at his food and more pushing it around then eating it, watching Bobby but trying not to watch him. Bobby ate pleasantly enough, and soon his meal was gone and Nick was left with the hacked up pieces of a breakfast less tasted.
Bobby leaned back in his booth again, cupping his mug in his hands. “Can I ask you something?”
Nick kept hacking at his eggs. “Sure. I’m pretty much an open book.”
“If everyone has secrets, what’s yours?”
The waitress came with the check, and Nick paid the bill instead of answering.
==
It was another week before Nick actually spoke to Bobby aside from short greetings in the hallway between shifts. In fact, it was his first day off in three weeks and he was blissfully reading a very interesting book on the mating habits of flightless African birds when his cell phone rang, and he almost didn’t pick it up before giving into his own sense of obligation and flipping it open.
The voice on the other end rambled on so quickly that it took him three full sentences to realize that the caller was Bobby.
“Look, Nick, I really hate to ask this of you, and you know I wouldn’t if I wasn’t in a jam. But Scott just flaked out on me – I have no idea where he went, and he’s not supposed to do shit like that to me – and I just got called into days. Lisa doesn’t have preschool this week, it’s their fall break or something, and Jacqui’s asleep and Hodges is – ”
“Slow down, Bobby, slow down,” Nick calmed, and the rushed jumble of words on the other end halted immediately, leaving room only for slow, deep breathing. “What can I do?”
Bobby sighed heavily into the phone, and the connection crackled. “I don’t know,” he admitted, his tone filled so full with helplessness that Nick couldn’t help but frown sympathetically at the plastic mouthpiece. “I hate asking you something like this on your day off. I’m sorry. I’ll try Jacqui again.”
“No, Bobby, don’t.” Nick flipped shut his book as he said this and immediately started for the door, phone cradled against his shoulder. He slipped on shoes and rooted around for his jacket. “Listen, you need someone to watch your kid for a couple hours, I’m your man. I have more nieces and nephews than most people have casual acquaintances.”
Bobby’s amused little snort relieved some of his feeling of helplessness. “You sure?” he asked, as though he hadn’t been the one to call Nick and ask for the favor in the first place. “Because, really, I can wake Jacqui up and – ”
Nick chuckled. “I can’t imagine the world of pain you’d be in after rousing Jacqui Franco from her beauty sleep,” he replied, grabbing his car keys. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
==
Bobby left Nick with a long list of emergency numbers, his cell phone number – “in case I’m out of the lab for some reason” – and the promise that he’d left Scott no less than seven messages informing him that he would come over and pick up their daughter as soon as humanly possible, or he’d regret it. Nick smiled and waved with the little ringlet-headed girl – “her name’s Lisa, but she’ll respond to anything” – as Bobby backed his now-mended car out of the driveway and disappeared into the distance.
When Bobby returned at eight that evening, looking bedraggled and exhausted, Lisa and Nick were doing a puzzle on the coffee table and watching Teletubbies reruns on PBS.
“Daddy!” Lisa cheered, and Nick smiled as he watched Bobby scoop up the little girl as though she weighed nothing. He landed a kiss in her hair. “Nicky’s really fun. Can he play more often?”
Bobby arched an eyebrow in Nick’s direction. “Nicky?”
He shrugged. “It was either that or Mr. Nick,” he replied, as though it explained everything. “We thought it sounded better.”
“It sounds better,” Lisa repeated, nodding very solemnly. She sent Bobby a stern little look. “Dada makes me call his friends Mr. Ben and Mr. Tom and Mr. Richard and I don’t like it.”
The frown on Bobby’s face as he set his daughter back on the floor caused Nick’s stomach to roll over. “Dada has that many friends?”
“And Mr. Paul, and Mr. John.” She paused, considering the question. “And I think there was another one I forgot. But you only have one friend. You have Nicky!”
For a moment, Nick swore he could see a bit of embarrassment rising into Bobby’s expression – and into his cheeks. “Yes, well, we’ll talk about that later, babydoll,” he replied, ruffling her curls. “You go get ready for bed, and I’ll be in to tuck you in shortly.”
“Okay!” she chirped, and then turned to Nick. “Night night, Nicky!”
“Goodnight, Lisa.”
He shoved his hands into his back pockets as he watched the little girl run off, and smiled somewhat awkwardly at the man just barely in the door. There were dark circles around his eyes, and his lips were pursed into an uncertain frown, and suddenly, Nick felt as though he should be anywhere in the world except that room.
“I…should go,” he said after a moment’s pause, shrugging. “You probably haven’t eaten, and you want to put your daughter to bed and – ”
“Yeah,” Bobby nodded, “but… I owe you, again.” He smiled slightly, and tossed his hands up. “Why don’t you stay for a beer? I’ll put Lisa to bed, and we can watch TV or something.”
Nick reached up to scratch the back of his neck, his eyes drifting from the expression on Bobby’s face – it was too close to hopeful for comfort – and to the hardwood floor and Southwestern-style rug. “Really, it’s no problem. It wasn’t like I was doing anything at home.”
“I insist,” he pressed. He stepped forward and touched Nick’s arm gently, the contact causing him to give a start and snap his eyes onto Bobby’s face. The hopeful expression remained intact, and the hand settled on his bicep. “Please? It’s the least I can do.”
The hand on his arm disappeared and before he could even consider answering, Bobby was down the hallway and calling to his daughter. Nick frowned at his retreating back and, at a loss of what else to do, moved to the unfamiliar kitchen and opened the fridge. The same modest offerings he’d seen early spread out before him – leftover something-or-other, milk, orange juice, eggs, fruit, some soda, and a six-pack of beer – and he considered just pouring himself a soda and calling it a night when footfalls plodded onto the linoleum.
“She likes you,” Bobby informed him, reaching around and pulling two of the beers from their cardboard holder. He set them on the counter and then removed the Tupperware with the leftovers from the fridge. “You’re now her second-favorite babysitter, knocking Archie down to third.”
Nick smirked and sent one more glance at the soda before closing the doors. “Who’s the first?”
“Jacqui. Apparently, she’s much better with children than she is people.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind next time I need a fingerprint, then.”
The beer bottle was cold in one had so he held it with both, watching as Bobby moved through the kitchen. It was a simple enough action, emptying some sort of casserole onto a plate and popping it into the microwave, but Nick found that he watched every idiosyncrasy as though he’d never seen a man reheat leftovers before: the way the fork scraped against the plastic; the way white socks toed the corner of the stove in impatience; the way the Georgia State bottle opener pried away the bottle top; the way the bottle top clattered against the Formica countertop. The flesh on his arms rose slightly as he watched Bobby bend down to scratch his shin, and – as much as he tried to convince himself it was due to the cold glass against his palms – he felt it was caused by something else entirely, something that turned his stomach over.
He dropped his eyes to the linoleum and smiled slightly to himself.
A few minutes later, a college basketball game flashed across the television screen as they sat together on the couch – Nick at one arm, Bobby at the other – with beers in hand and Bobby’s plate sitting half-ignored on a TV tray. Nick played at watching the game, his mind swimming with other thoughts, and Bobby’s fork scraped the plate as he poked at the remnants of his meal. It was an awkward silence, socially clunky, and it was only when Nick raised his bottle to his lips that he realized he’d never opened it.
He could practically feel Bobby smirking at him from across the couch. “Works better without the bottle cap,” he pointed out. “Want the opener?”
“Nah.” Nick set the bottle on the coffee table and looked at it for a long moment. The cap seemed to be mocking him as much as Bobby’s smile was, and he sighed as he pulled himself to his feet. “Actually, I should go. I have no idea when swing will be called in tomorrow, and – ”
“Yeah.” His companion rose as well. He could feel his presence close behind him, socks plodding against hardwood as he moved quickly toward the door. He paused at the sight his belongings made – jacket hung on the coat rack, sneakers on the rug between Bobby’s boots and Lisa’s saddle shoes – and shrugged off a second flipping of his stomach. “Thanks for the beer.”
Bobby smirked. “Because you drank so much of it.” He opened the door and then the screen, walking outside and holding it wide. “Thanks again, Nick.”
“It’s no problem,” he repeated yet again. He slung his coat over his arm and checked his pockets – wallet, keys, cell phone – before stepping through the threshold and smiling. “It was fun, really.”
“Free babysitting always is.”
It was dark outside in the modest neighborhood, and the porch light cast shadows across Bobby’s smiling face. Nick studied that face carefully, remembering the bright smile from the parking lot, and took a deep breath. The cool night air bit his nostrils, and suddenly, he felt himself shiver.
He reached forward to button his jacket, but Bobby’s free hand reached forward and caught his, fingers brushing against each other. The softness of the other hand surprised him, but not as much as what he voluntarily did next:
He leaned in and brushed his lips against Bobby’s.
In the first half-second of the motion, Nick tried to convince himself that it was a harmless action; after all, Greg had certainly kissed him in fits of hyperactivity before, although never for more than a half-second and certainly never on the lips. But then, the grip on his hand tightened and fingers twined with his, and then his mouth was open and his tongue was introducing itself to Bobby’s in all the right ways, the screen door creaking as the other man leaned in close.
When the moment ended and they separated, Nick’s brain struggled to tread water in a sea of emotions and reactions. In the shadows from the porch light, he could see little more of Bobby’s face then his parted red lips and quickly rising chest, and this time, something different than his stomach stirred at the sight.
He stepped away, his fingers slipping from the other man’s grasp.
“I… I should go,” he repeated, and nearly fell off the front stoop in an attempt to double the distance between them. “I need to sleep. And shift. And…”
Bobby nodded. “You do,” he agreed. Nick couldn’t tell if his expression was hopeful or disappointed, and suddenly found himself both blessing and cursing the porch light. “See you at the lab.”
“Yeah.” He paused on the front walk, unsure if he should say anything else. A single car coursed down the street, casting more light on the stoop, and the frown that curved Bobby’s lips caused him to frown right back. “See you around.”
He turned his back and walked to his car as quickly as he could, and – when he had unlocked the door and slid inside – he was both grateful and horrified that Bobby had already gone back inside.
==
Nick called in sick to work the next day. Catherine sounded dubious at the other end of the line, but she shrugged off whatever suspicions with an inappropriate joke about hangovers and voluptuous young ladies. Even though he chuckled along with her light-hearted ribbing, he felt sick to his stomach as he hung up the phone.
He spent the morning padding around his apartment in his bare feet, cleaning up messes he’d left abandoned over the last few days. By lunch time, the floors were swept and the couch cushions had been vacuumed and fluffed, but Nick still felt like he had more to do. So he scrubbed the bathroom, did a load of laundry, changed his sheets, and emptied some leftover containers in the refrigerator. When he took glass cleaner and a rag and started to study the state of the grime on his windows, he decided he needed a breath of fresh air.
The afternoon was cool, and the wind cut straight through his jacket and t-shirt. He watched cars roll past as he walked slowly down the sidewalk, wheels kicking up gravel as they went. He studied the skyline, and the looming darkness of casinos and hotels in the distance, the sun lowering slowly even behind a spattering of clouds.
As the sunlight faded, his mind came again and again to a single image: Bobby, standing on the stoop, his face an interplay of light and dark under the porch light. He tried desperately to push the image from his mind, but the harder he worked to force it out, the more he saw it.
He returned to his apartment building and stood on the sidewalk for a brief moment, staring up at his balcony and windows from the ground. He considered climbing the stairs and going back to his vain attempts to keep his mind off the obvious.
But since the obvious had no intention of being avoided, and the stirring in his stomach and the swimming of his head caused him to reach into his pants pocket, he stepped off the sidewalk and into the parking lot.
==
The receptionist teased him briefly about his coming into work while sick, but he brushed right past her and started down the hallways to the ballistics lab. Greg yelled something in his direction as he passed the locker room, but he shrugged it off. Sofia glanced up from something in the document room and cocked an eyebrow, but Nick pretended as though he didn’t notice.
Ballistics, however, was abandoned. DNA and Trace stood empty, as well. His heart crashed into his stomach, splashing like a stone, and his feet abruptly failed him, leaving him to hover in the doorway to the fingerprinting lab.
“Hey, Nick,” Greg greeted him, wandering up to his side. “What’s up? Cath said you were sick.”
He blinked down at the other man, a delayed reaction, and then forced a tiny smile. “I am, kind of,” he replied. Greg’s eyes narrowed, and he could tell he was being studied. “There was just something about this gun from a case that was bothering me. I thought I’d ask Bobby about it before I forgot.”
“You’re like the Mounties, aren’t you? Don’t stop until you get your man.” Nick winced as Greg play-punched him in the shoulder, his mouth curved into a brilliant, big-toothed smile. “Well, Bobby and the gang are out on one of Jacqui’s infamous smoking breaks. I feel sorry for the poor soul who ends up on their hit list.”
“Hit list?” he repeated, mouth going dry.
Greg nodded, still smiling brightly. “It’s a technician tradition. When someone has a bad romantic encounter, the whole group goes on a cigarette break. By the end of it, the offender is guaranteed certain death.” He looked entirely too upbeat for a man referencing murder. “Last time it happened, it was when Bobby’s – ”
“Luscottfer,” Nick nodded, and then watched in horror as his companion’s jaw dropped wide open in shock. He swallowed and then dropped his eyes to the floor.
“You know? But then… If you know…” Greg’s brown eyes blinked again and then narrowed suspiciously, and Nick could feel the glare burning a hole into the back of his head. “You’re not sick.”
He shook his head. “No,” he admitted, “I’m not.”
For a long second, there wasn’t a sound from Greg, though he was certain the younger man was staring a hole in his head. When he finally dared to look up from the floor, he met Greg’s eyes just long enough to watch the glare dissipate into something resembling understanding. “They’re out around the back, by the dumpsters,” he said, jerking his head down the hallway.
Nick frowned. “Greg, I – ”
“If you don’t go out there,” he warned, and his tone was certainly foreboding, “it will be like a game of Clue. Hodges, in the Trace Lab, with a lead pipe.”
Snorting, Nick tried to smile, but the expression failed. Greg reached up and patted his arm sympathetically. “Go do it, Nick,” he urged. “Do it before there’s a bounty on your head. And worse, before your goodness makes you feel guilty.”
Greg turned and started bounding down the hallway, and as desperately as Nick wanted to reach out, catch him, and thank him, he instead chose to watch him go. Then, he straightened his back, strengthened his resolve, and started towards the fire door at the back of the lab.
He wasn’t surprised to find that it’d been propped open with a box of swabs, or that the group of missing technicians were standing outside in their street clothes and lab coats, talking in quiet tones about something or another while Jacqui flicked her cigarette ashes into the dumpster.
It was actually Jacqui who spotted him first, her cigarette raised to her lips, and she immediately arched her eyebrows higher than most mortals can arch eyebrows and jerked her head in Nick’s direction. He reached back for the handle to the door, hoping to escape, but within the blink of an eye everyone else – Hodges, Mia, Ronnie, Archie, and of course, Bobby – had turned to gape at him.
“And to think,” Ronnie half-said, half-sneered, “we didn’t even have to hunt him down.”
“Nice to see you too.” Nick tried his best at a charming Texan smile but faltered. His searching hand found the door and pushed, but it didn’t budge. A quick evaluation of the situation revealed the worst; he’d managed to knock the box of swabs somewhere, and the door had locked behind him. He grimaced at forced himself to look at the group of ravenous lab techs. “So much for wanting to talk to Bobby alone,” he mumbled to himself.
Mia snorted. “Smooth, Romeo.” She flipped her hair, and then eyed the others. “C’mon. Jacqui, you can finish your death stick while we walk around the building.”
“Speak for yourself, Dickerson,” Jacqui replied, and her ashes fluttered down onto the pavement. “I want to see Stokes squirm.”
There was enough anger in her eyes to melt the polar ice caps, and suddenly, Nick wished he’d just washed his windows, instead. Somehow, though, he managed to coax his lips into some facsimile of a smile. “Please,” he stressed, and he realized as soon as it left his mouth that his tone was absolutely pleading. “Just a few minutes.”
“What makes you think we haven’t given you a charming pet name already?” Hodges questioned. “You could very well be Jeznickbel. You may already be the butt of our cruel jokes.”
“Not to mention the dart boards with your photo on them,” Archie added.
Nick opened his lips to come up with some half-assed retort – what it’d be, he wasn’t sure – when Bobby’s eyes snapped up from the ground. “Guys, take a walk.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Jacqui’s jaw dropped open. “But, Bobby, we had it all planned!” she complained, her tone bordering on whiny. “We were going to black list him with Days – ”
“Figure out something to do to his car,” Archie added.
“Put all his evidence at the bottom of our piles,” Hodges chimed in.
“Bribe our children to prank call him at all hours of the day and night.” Everyone turned to look at Ronnie, who shrugged. “I thought we could add a little something, this time, especially since Tony’s learned to use the phone.”
Mia heaved a long-suffering sigh and shook her head. “C’mon, guys.”
“But – ”
“Do you really want to tick off the guy whose lab is full of guns?” she asked. The rest of the technicians glanced at her. “That’s what I thought. C’mon.”
After Jacqui’s cigarette had been thoroughly stomped out and a few words of wisdom hissed into Bobby’s ear, the parade of laboratory technicians tromped down the back alley and eventually faded out of view.
Nick waited until he was certain they were gone – no heads peaking around the corner, or whispers echoing from just-within-earshot – before he allowed himself a long sigh. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
There was some form of dejection in Bobby’s voice, dejection enough that it pulled Nick’s eyes away from the corner of the building and straight onto Bobby’s face. The light behind the crime lab was brighter than the single bulb on the Dawson porch, and he studied the lines of Bobby’s face with a CSI’s scrutiny. He stepped forward, away from the door, and managed to force a small smile. “Listen, about yesterday – ”
“Hey, it’s fine,” Bobby replied, and waved a hand. “I wasn’t expecting anything. Jacqui and the others were just joking.”
“That’s the thing.” His fingers suddenly felt antsy, drumming against the denim of his jeans. He stepped forward just a bit further, closing the distance between them. The space between was both tiny and yet enormous, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it that way or not. “I’m not sure I don’t deserve being…what was it? Satanick?”
Bobby smirked. “Jeznickbel, I think.”
Nick allowed himself a short chuckle. “Yeah. That.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another, and then drew in a long breath. “I’m just saying… Maybe you should be ticked at me. I would.”
A frown creased Bobby’s lips, and his brow creased and furrowed. “Look, Nick, you don’t have to put on this act for me,” he replied, shrugging slightly. “I get it, okay? I’ll call off the dogs, and that’s that. All’s well that – ”
“Want to know my secret?”
The words flew from his lips before he knew what he was saying, and Bobby’s eyes widened ever-so-slightly at the question. Nick closed the distance between them even further. For a moment, the technician – still in his navy lab coat, his hands in his pockets – seemed to be looking for an escape route, but then, Nick summoned the stores of bravery deep in his gut and raised a hand to Bobby’s shoulder. At least, he intended it to be Bobby’s shoulder; within seconds, his traitorous fingers moved instead to touch the soft hair on the back of his neck.
Bobby sighed lightly, and suddenly, the urge that compelled Nick to touch the back of the other man’s neck seized him a second time, forcing him forward and sealing their lips together. His free hand landed on Bobby’s hip, pulling him close, and Bobby’s hands flew to splay against his chest, neither pushing away or pulling him closer. The kiss picked up where it’d left off the night before, warm and intimate. And this time, they only broke apart long enough to grab shuddering breaths.
Finally, the hands on his chest stiffened and Bobby pushed him away, hard. Nick stumbled back and gasped in a cold breath. “You slept with a hooker,” Bobby declared after a moment’s pause, his voice catching.
“What?” The non sequitor caused Nick to blink. “Who told you that?”
“Ronnie. He said you…” He shook his head, running a hand over his hair. “Nick, really. You don’t have to do this.”
Nick couldn’t help but smile bitterly and throw up his hands. “You wanted to know my secret, Bobby,” he reminded him evenly, “and I want to tell you.”
“Nick…”
“I’m gay.” The words fell from his lips, leaving Bobby’s lips to gape open just the tiniest bit. Nick took a deep breath and stepped forward again, shrugging. “I don’t know why I gave you that ride, Bobby, but it wasn’t just because you had a sick little kid.”
Bobby kept staring at him, his face masked by an expression that look ready to either laugh or cry. “Nick, I – ”
“I didn’t want to tell you,” he continued, stepping back towards the befuddled other man. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, but sometimes, your horse takes you down the wrong path.”
Chuckling, Bobby cocked an eyebrow. “The charming Texan isn’t going to work on me,” he noted.
Nick smiled back at him and stepped forward again, reaching down to land his hands on Bobby’s hips. “I’ll have to figure out something else.”
“I’m sure you will,” Bobby nodded, and then leaned up to kiss him.
==
Over the course of the next few days, Hodges spent most his time muttering about pipes under his breath, Jacqui took twice as many cigarette breaks, Ronnie glowered over the rims of his glasses, and when Nick’s iPod was magically reformatted at the end of the week, he caught Archie grinning like a cat in the A/V lab.
Greg arched his eyebrows when Nick passed by him in the lab a few days later, but Nick didn’t really blame him. He didn’t blame Catherine for teasing him about some “hot new girl” who had him “smiling all day long.” And he wasn’t bothered when Warrick elbowed him in the locker room and pried for information on his new girlfriend.
“Man, it just ain’t cool to keep secrets like that,” he complained when Nick simply shrugged the question off. “If I had a new girl, I’d tell you about her.”
Nick smirked at him as he buttoned up his shirt. “We all have our secrets,” he replied casually, and then slammed his locker shut. “I’ll catch you later.”
“Have fun with Miss Secret,” Warrick called after him.
The comment made Nick smile, and he kept smiling even as he strode down the hallway and towards the front doors. Of course, he couldn’t help but take the long way around, or catch Bobby’s eyes through the glass walls of the ballistics lab. And he certainly couldn’t help smiling.
“You know,” Bobby thought aloud that morning, as they lounged on his couch and watched Sesame Street with Lisa, “this probably won’t be a secret forever.”
Nick considered the question for a moment, one arm around Bobby’s shoulders while the other lingered near his coffee cup, and then he shrugged. “Probably not,” he agreed with a smile, “but I’m thinking we’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.”
