Congruent
Fandom: CSI
Pairing: Greg/Sara/Nick
Rating: NC17
Spoilers: None
Notes: girlnorth made a Christmas list. I responded. Satan is a late entry into next year’s World Figure Skating Championships.
The night – or morning, as it happened – that this all started was not unlike a hundred others that had come and gone since Sara had come to live in Vegas.
A long case over, suspect in jail, rights read, evidence neatly labelled and boxed and stored, the D.A’s problem, consigned to memory until they had to testify.
Bleary-eyed CSI’s, bone weary, adrenaline jangling, bodies too tired for sleep, too wired to unwind on their own, in need of a release.
Some nameless club, because really, how many places like this were there in Vegas, places where the lights were low, the music loud, base beat pounding through their veins like a separate pulse, calming them, seducing them.
A group of them descended upon the place, Jacqui and Bobby staying for one, then leaving, both citing the demands of family. Warrick and Leah had left next, which wasn’t as much a surprise as it might have been to Sara. Past had a way of being prologue after all, and the way that Leah had been looking at Warrick, the way he’d been eyeing up the top that she was wearing – or rather, was almost wearing – a clear indication of just where they were going to end up later on. And if the looks hadn’t given it away, the way they were dancing together certainly removed any doubt.
That left Sara and Greg and Nick sitting at a booth together, which automatically had Sara looking for a graceful way to make an exit. It wasn’t that Nick and Greg were making her feel like a third wheel, far from it – after all, they didn’t even know that she knew about them. They laughed with her, joked with her, included her in their conversation, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was on the outside somehow, that they had their own subtext going on, and she had no part in it.
Reprieve came from a call of nature, and on her way back, she had her excuse all worked out. There was, she rehearsed, searching for just the right jaunty tone, only so much soda that could be consumed in one sitting, and she’d passed her limit; besides which, it had been a long case and her head was pounding… the last, she dismissed, because Greg would frown and Nick would give her that worried look of his and knowing her luck, they’d offer to go someplace else, someplace quieter, someplace with food and coffee when all she really wanted to do was go home.
It was easier, she knew, to be lonely alone.
All her excuses mapped out, she made her way, through the crowd of people, stopping short of the booth, eyes wide at what she saw before her.
Greg and Nick, arms around one another, kissing one another as if the world was about to end.
It wasn’t like it was a surprise to her, she would tell herself later, because she’d known about the two of them, had realised right from the start that their relationship had shifted, that they were more than friends. It wasn’t just in the way that Greg looked at Nick – adoration might just about cover it – because that could be blamed on CSI-wannabe-ism. Rather, it was the way that Nick looked at Greg when he thought that no-one was looking, the smile that hovered hidden in the corners of his mouth, that certain little light that came into his eyes. It was so obvious to Sara, and she couldn’t believe, after all this time, working as they did in a lab of trained investigators, that she was the only one who had figured it out.
So seeing them kissing wasn’t a surprise to her, not really, because she’d known that they were an item. What was a surprise was how it affected her, the pang of jealousy, of longing, that swept through her. It was one thing to feel like a third wheel, still another to be confronted with incontrovertible evidence of it, and standing there, in that too-crowded club, with the music pulsing, couples moving all around her, Nick and Greg oblivious to it all, Sara was reminded once again just how alone she was.
Not a violent person, she would have killed for a beer right then, but her jacket, and with it her wallet, was back at the table, and there was no way she was going to interrupt Nick and Greg. Her next instinct was to flee, banking that they would have thought she’d have been gone longer at the bathroom – and indeed, the lines in the ladies’ room had been non-existent, surely a miracle – so that was the course of action she attempted. It took a long time, though, to get her legs to move, and in that time, Nick and Greg separated, Greg looking right at her over Nick’s shoulder, their eyes meeting.
He froze, his eyes growing very wide, lips unmistakeably forming her name, and that was when Nick turned, his jaw dropping as he saw her standing there, and the way they were looking at her gave her the impetus to turn, to move away from them, intent on escaping them, pretending that none of this had ever happened.
She wasn’t paying careful attention – any attention – to where she was going, blundered onto the dance floor, knocking into someone who didn’t appreciate the attention, muttered a few choice words about watching her alcohol intake. She mumbled an apology, turned away, stopping dead in the middle of the moving bodies when she felt a hand on her elbow. She tried to shake it off, then realised that someone was saying her name, a voice she recognised, and she dragged her gaze up to meet Nick’s worried expression. It was exactly the look she’d pictured his face would wear when she’d rehearsed telling him that her head was pounding, and she wished with everything she had that things had been that simple.
“Sara-” Nick began, and she cut him off with a shake of her head.
“I’m sorry Nicky,” she told him, not quite sure what she was apologising for. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she added, because after all, someone should have a love life, even if it wasn’t her, and that was Nick’s cue to shake his head.
“We didn’t want you to find out like that,” he told her, and she smiled, laid a hand on his arm, surprised to find that she was shaking.
“I already knew,” she told him, and at any other time, she would have laughed at the almost comical expression of surprise on his face. “It’s ok,” she hastened to add, and if her shaking hand surprised her, then the sudden tears in her eyes surprised the hell out of her. “Really… you guys look good together.” Which, she realised suddenly, was the entire crux of the matter, the reason for her shaking hand, her abrupt departure. They did look good together, in fact, they looked hot together, and watching them kiss had awakened something in her that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
The second she realised that, Nick’s face shifted, eyes darkening, jaw setting, and Sara looked down, knowing that everything she’d felt had been written loud and clear on her face. Crimson shame flooded her cheeks, and she made to move again, the need to escape now overpowering, but Nick’s hand was still on her elbow, and he wasn’t letting her go.
In fact, he was doing the opposite, pulling her closer to him, and before she realised what was happening, his lips were on hers and he was kissing her.
More to the point, she was kissing him back, opening her mouth to him, letting her tongue tangle with his, and she was pushing her body against his, hungry, greedy, begging for more. His hands were on her back, crushing her against him, moving up to tangle in her hair, down to the curve of her ass, and she knew that they shouldn’t be doing this, but she didn’t care, because her pulse was thrumming to the rhythm of the music and so was his and it was like they were one person and she wasn’t alone any more…
And then his lips were gone and she was breathing hard, looking into his dark eyes, wondering what the hell they’d just done, seeing nothing like regret there, feeling nothing like it herself.
Not even when his eyes slid off her face, away from the dance floor, to Greg, looking at the two of them, expression blank, eyes unreadable.
Time stopped as they stood there, three points of a triangle, then Greg must have moved, because he was beside them suddenly. Sara wasn’t sure what she expected him to say, opened her mouth to speak, stopping when he reached out, took her hand in his. She looked down at his fingers, wrapped around hers, then looked into his eyes, saw the same look in his that she’d seen in Nick’s.
Pure, simple lust.
Not only in his eyes, but also in his voice as he spoke five simple words. “Let’s get out of here.”
From then on, events aren’t clear, rather a blur of images, of sensation. In the car with Nick, silence thick between them, his hand holding hers, thumb making sweeping patterns across the back of her hand.
Walking into Greg’s apartment, to be greeted by him kissing her hard, not even letting her take her jacket off. That task fell to Nick, stripping the denim from her body, and she heard the dull thud as it hit the floor, but Greg didn’t stop kissing her lips, not even when Nick stood behind her, fingers kneading her hips through the denim of her jeans, lips tracing a path down her neck, her mind reeling from the sensations.
Being laid down on the bed, her clothes having melted from her somewhere on the way, Greg and Nick on either side of her, kissing her, stroking her, touching her. Their voices, low and arousing, talking to her, about her, and from Greg, she expected it, but who ever knew that Nick Stokes had such a dirty mouth?
Dirty but talented, because she distinctly remembers moaning his name as he went down on her, her fingers running over his scalp, seeking purchase and finding none, one hand finally moving to the side, clutching the bed sheets with a white-knuckled grip, the other reaching up, tangling in Greg’s hair as he laughed and kissed her neck, his fingers toying with her breasts.
The world flying apart around her, pulse pounding harder than it had even in the club, opening her eyes to find Nick giving her a self-satisfied smirk before he kissed her. She could taste herself on his tongue and it made her moan, and she moaned again when he pulled away from her, kissing Greg, and if it had been hot in the club, it was a thousand times hotter here.
Greg pouting, teasing them that he felt all left out, meeting Nick’s eyes with a devilish grin before moving with unspoken accord, Nick covering Greg’s lips with his, Sara planting kisses on his chest, moving downwards, finally taking him in her mouth as he gasped and bucked against her, muttering her name and Nick’s and entreaties, more and please and right there and oh yes…
Greg, bucking against her, inside her this time, Nick lying at her side, whispering in her ear, that dirty mouth of his – and where did her sweet, mild-mannered Texan learn language like that? – telling her exactly what Greg was doing to her, exactly what he was going to do to her, exactly what he wanted him to do to her.
Nick on top of her, panting, moaning as Greg moves inside him, her hands moving from man to man, separate from them, but no less a part of them for that.
Falling asleep in between them, their bodies pressed against hers, hands on her flesh, feeling sated, replete.
Waking up the next morning, feeling exactly the same way.
That was the first time, but it wasn’t the last, and even though there are times when she knows that they should end this, knows that it will in all likelihood end with someone – and it will probably be her – getting hurt, she never utters those words.
Because that is for the future, and for too long, she’s lived in hope of a future that could never come to pass, and that almost killed her. She has no interest in living in fear of a future that might come to pass.
For the moment, she has Nick and Greg, and she’s not alone any more. It’s not what she dreamed of, but it is something, and it is hers.
And it is more than enough.