Good Things Come In Pairs

Ecklie’s departure seemed to be the cue for the entire lab to come and congratulate Greg on his promotion. Catherine actually brought four bottles of champagne—more than enough for all of the graveyard shift who were off the clock and all of the mid people who stayed to celebrate with Greg to have a drink. Outside of the break room, Greg was met by a gaggle of lab techs and got another round of applause. He ducked his head and grinned, feeling happy and exhilarated and happy in a way that he hadn’t since he’d botched his last proficiency exam.

I’ve paid my dues, time after time, Greg thought. “We Are The Champions” had been stuck in his head ever since Grissom gave him the good news, and he couldn’t get it out.

Archie and Bobby each shook his hand. “Little Greggo,” Bobby commented with a smile, “who would have thought?”

“Not me,” Greg replied honestly.

“I knew it all along,” a voice said from behind him and Greg spun around to see Jacqui standing in the doorway, one hand on her swollen stomach.

“Jacqui!” he cried in surprise, bounding over and giving her a hug.

“You didn’t think I’d miss this, did you? Archie called me when he found out that you passed.”

“It’s great to see you! How’s…Andrew?” Greg asked, uncertain of the name she’d picked for her baby.

“Anthony,” she corrected. “He’s huge. With any luck he’ll come out in a few weeks. I hate missing so much work. But enough about me. Sherlock Holmes, huh?”

“Jac, it was unreal. The perp tied the gun inside the fireplace…” Greg stopped talking as Hodges approached from across the room, flute of champagne in hand.

“Sanders,” he greeted.

“Hodges,” Greg replied.

Hodges didn’t say anything else, just offered Greg his hand. Greg shook it and felt his lips turn up at the corners. He and Hodges might not have been best friends, but lab geek solidarity went above personality conflict.

I’ve done my sentence, but committed no crime, whispered his background music.

“It’s a shame I’ll never have to hear that noise you call music blaring through the wall into my lab. I’m really going to miss that,” Hodges commented dryly.

“I’ll buy you a CD,” Greg promised.

“It’s like Christmas come early.”

“What is?” Nick asked, coming to stand at Greg’s side.

“I’m buying Hodges a Black Flag CD to make the transition into working without me easier.”

“Thoughtful,” Nick drawled, amusement evident in his voice. “Let me top you off.” He took Greg’s champagne flute and filled in up again.

“Three in less than an hour. I’m not going to be able to drive home at this rate,” Greg said, not particularly worried about it. He could call a cab.

“We’ll take care of you,” Nick said. “Now celebrate.”

He took hold of Greg’s elbow and led him towards the table where Cath, Warrick and Sara sat. Greg turned around and gave Jacqui and Hodges an apologetic look. Hodges was already turning away to talk to Mia, and Jacqui gave him smirk and wiggled her eyebrows expressively at Nick’s back. Greg felt himself flush and once again regretted admitting his crush to her. She never let him live it down.

When they reached the table, Greg noticed that Sara’s flute was empty. Nick tried to fill it up, but she waved him off. Greg felt a wave of affection and pride for her overtake him and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. She shot him one of her patented bemused expressions.

“Hey,” she said.

“Thank you,” he replied, not realizing he meant to say that until it came out of him mouth, but meaning every word. “Thank you for helping me on this case, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“That’s not true,” she denied. “You’re the one who figured out there was something missing and found the gun.”

“But not the drugs,” he said, still angry at himself for missing that clue, despite it all turning out for the best in the end.

“That’s what we keep Grissom around for,” Nick said from beside him. “G, seriously. Grissom has showed up every person here at some point. It’s like a rite of passage.”

Greg shrugged but felt better when the people sitting around the table, Catherine included, nodded their agreement at Nick’s statement.

“Move over, Sara,” Greg said and bumped his hip into Sara’s side, “I want to sit down.”

“Here,” Nick said and produced a folding chair that he placed between Sara and Warrick at the table.

“Oh, thanks,” Greg said, surprised. “Are you sure you don’t want to use it?”

Nick shook his head with a grin and lifted the champagne bottle that he held by the neck. “I have a job to do.”

“And a noble one it is.”

“So how does it feel, Greg?” Warrick asked him when he sat. He held out his flute to Nick, who filled it without comment.

“I don’t know,” Greg answered. “It hasn’t really hit me yet. Ask me again the first time I spend twelve hours processing a scene.”

The other CSIs laughed and Greg leaned back in his chair, starting a bit when his head hit Nick’s chest.

“Sorry,” he said and shifted. Taking another drink, Greg let his eyes drift shut a moment, riding the pleasant wave of euphoria, alcohol and exhaustion that was finally catching up with his body. He opened them again to see Catherine grinning at him. “What?”

“I asked you if you wanted to go for a drink, but you look like you’re about to pass out.”

“No, no,” Greg said. “I’m good to go. I have to see Grissom first though. He wants to talk to me before I leave.” He took another sip of his drink, and Nick’s hand came into view and he reached around him and refilled it.

“You’re getting the ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ speech,” Catherine said. “I remember that one.”

Archie choked out a laugh from the counter. “Did you just compare Grissom to Uncle Ben? Catherine, you’ve never been hotter to me.”

Catherine smirked at him and raised an eyebrow. “Are we ready?”

Greg nodded. “I’ll run over to see Grissom. You guys head out and I’ll meet you.”

“Finnegan’s?” she asked and Greg shrugged his agreement. “Ok, guys,” she said, her voice pitched to reach the people crammed into the break room and spilling out into the hallway. “We’re all headed out to Finnegan’s, if anyone wants to come.”

Greg maneuvered his way through the room, stopping periodically for a handshake or a hug. He knew that his mouth was stretched wide in a manic grin, but he couldn’t temper it.

“And bad mistakes, I’ve made a few,” he muttered under his breath, irony tingeing the words. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this good.

*

Grissom did in fact give him the “with great power comes great responsibility” speech, and it lasted almost forty-five minutes. The whole time, Greg felt impatient, and that damned song still played in his head. I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I’ve come through.

At the end, Grissom informed him that he had the next day off, but would be expected in at eleven on Sunday. When Greg left his office, the lab was quiet again, with only the usual hustle and bustle of the morning shift drifting in around him.

Greg headed to the locker room. Doing a quick scan to make sure it was empty, he finally let loose what he’d kept bottled up for the last two hours.

“I’ve taken my bow!” he cried, doing a shimmy with his hips and bringing a fist up to his mouth like a fake microphone. “My curtain calls! You’ve brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, I thank you all! But it’s been no bed of roses, no pleasure cruise! I consider it a challenge before all human race, and I’ll never lose!”

He added some attitude, spinning around and raising his hands in the air triumphantly, but the alcohol still sloshing around in his system made him dizzy. He tripped over the leg of a bench and crashed into a locker.

“Shit!” he said and laughed so hard that tears started forming behind his closed eyelids. “We are the champions, my friends!” he cried into the crook of his arm, feeling hysterical happy and unable to stop a few stray tears from slipping down his cheeks. “And we’ll keep on fighting…” His words cut off on a sob that caught in his throat.

“’Til the end.”

Greg’s head snapped up and he saw Nick leaning against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, a soft, almost…fond smile playing across his lips. A blush spread down Greg’s neck like butter. “Nick!” he cried, hurriedly swiping at the tears on his cheeks.

“I stuck around to see if you needed a ride,” he said and then gave Greg a knowing look. “A little overwhelming, isn’t it?”

“You could definitely say that,” Greg said, thinking back through the last three years, a catalogue of breathtaking success and near-defeat. “You didn’t have to stay.”

“I told you that I’d take care of you.”

Greg cocked his head and looked at Nick—at the tilt of his hips and at the curl of a lascivious smile—and blurted, “Are you hitting on me?” before he could think better of it.

“Yes,” Nick answered easily, and that surprised Greg more than almost anything else that had happened to him that night.

“Wha…really?”

“It’s about time you noticed, G.”

“How drunk am I right now?” Greg asked. Because whoa. Whoa. Just…there had to be a limit on how many of his dreams could come to life in a single day. “This isn’t being filmed or anything, right? No pranks on the new guy?”

Nick’s answer was to push away from the door and walk over to Greg. “This isn’t the sort of thing I joke about.”

“All right, so you know, I’m counting on your Southern hospitality and honest nature here,” he babbled, taking a step forward. “But I’m telling you right now that if this is a trick, I will kill you, and I’ve spent almost three years learning the best ways…”

Nick’s mouth on his cut him off, and Greg wrapped his arms around Nick’s neck immediately. The kiss lasted long minutes and tasted fruity like champagne. Nick licked into Greg’s mouth, and Greg was helpless against the groan that action produced. Nick’s lips curved against his mouth. He pushed against Nick’s chest, backing him into a row of lockers.

The clash of sound that followed was enough to separate the two men, and Greg leaned against a locker while his breath came out in deep pants that burned his chest.

“Was it the singing?” he asked when he could speak again, rolling his head to the side to look at Nick.

Nick glanced back at him with one of those grins that crinkled the skin around his eyes and Greg felt his breath catch again.

“It was actually that final trip over the bench that did it.”

“Ah good. I’d meant for that move to be charming and sexy,” Greg said. “I’ll take that ride, by the way.”

“Great,” Nick said. “We should go to my car. Right now.”

“I have to change.”

“Fast,” Nick said.

“Right,” he rasped and felt a surge of excitement run through him. “Umm…” Greg licked his lips as he realized that Nick intended to watch him change. They’d done this a million times before for work, of course, but the situations were so completely different that it was laughable to compare them. “Ok. Right.”

He felt Nick’s eyes burning into his back as he stripped efficiently out of his work clothes and into his a t-shirt and jeans. He bent over more than necessary to pull on his jeans and was gratified at the choked, hurt sound that Nick made behind him.

When his shoes were on, he turned to Nick and swallowed hard at the predatory look on his face. “Ready.”

“Great.”

They made it to the parking garage and into Nick’s SUV in record time. Greg’s pulse jumped when Nick opened the rear door instead of the driver’s seat and ushered him inside. Another record was broken when Nick unzipped his pants and pealed them halfway down his thighs at lightning speed.

“…Just put those on,” Greg gasped, his words already coming out in fragments.

“Sorry,” Nick answered, not sounding sorry at all as Greg’s boxers followed his jeans and Nick buried his face in the skin between Greg’s cock and thigh.

“Shit, jesus!” Greg cried. “God…you…Nick. I never thought…you’d be like this…not you.”

“I’m not usually,” Nick mumbled into the crease of his thigh, the vibrations tickling the sensitive skin and making Greg squirm. “You should have seen yourself. How happy you looked. And you were flirting with Sara.”

“I wasn’t,” Greg argued.

“You were. You always do, and it makes me crazy,” Nick said.

“Jealous?” Greg asked, and yelped when Nick nipped lightly at his skin. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know,” Nick, voice sly, “because you’ve got a crush on me.”

“What? Who…Jacqui!” Greg cried, mortified.

“She told me earlier tonight. Said it was her gift to you for your promotion.”

“Devil woman,” Greg breathed devoutly.

“Save the judgment on her actions until you see my gift for you.”

Greg’s cock jumped at those words, and Nick’s soft laugh coasted warm breath along the suddenly tight skin.

“God, Nicky, please.”

Nick responded by spitting into his hand and gripping the shaft of Greg’s cock in a tight, sure grip.

“Yes, yes!” Greg cried, unable as he always was to stop the stream of nonsense from spilling past his lips during good sex. Nick’s thick forearm over his hips prevented Greg from thrusting up.

When a hot mouth engulfed the head of his cock, Greg choked on his own breath and felt the end rapidly approaching. He propped himself up on his elbows to watch Nick work over his dick in long swallows of his throat and rough, wet jerks of his hand.

“Yes, Nick…Nicky, right there, right there, oh god, perfect, perfect. Your mouth, Nick your mouth. Shit. I won’t last long. It’s…it’s been awhile.”

Nick dragged that mouth off of Greg’s dick with a slurp that made Greg groan. “You’ve been busy.”

“No kidding,” Greg croaked, thinking back on all the doubles and triples he’d pulled as the last year of his training got more and more intense and he had to pick up the slack in the DNA lab at the same time.

“You did good work today. I mean, you always do, but especially today.”

Greg smiled and brought one hand down to trace along Nick’s swollen lips. “Thanks.”

Nick returned Greg’s smile and then declared, “Enough of that.” That was the only warning Greg received before Nick dove back down and swallowed his dick in an envelope of tight, white hot pressure.

Greg’s head fell back and slammed against the window of the door on his side, but he barely felt it. “You bastard, you…yes…please, please, please!” His fingers scrambled against the seat as the pleasure built. He came hard and loud in an embarrassingly short time.

Moments later, Nick crawled up Greg’s body and nosed behind his ear. Greg tilted his head to give him better access and sighed contentedly. Reaching down, he wrapped his hand around Nick’s somehow-freed cock. Nick’s eyes squeezed shut and his mouth fell open while he thrust into Greg’s grip, and he looked so gorgeous that even after having an almost painfully good orgasm, Greg’s cock twitched weakly between their bodies.

Nick didn’t babble like Greg during sex, but he did make low, lewd noises—desperate grunts and choked-off moans—that sizzled along Greg’s nerves.

It only took a few long, hard strokes for Nick to come, his fluid hitting the shirt that Greg definitely couldn’t wear to the bar now, and collapsed on top of him. Greg ran a hand through his dark, sweaty hair and said the only thing that he could think of:

“No time for losers, ‘cause we are the champions…”

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