Title: Dr…who…?
Author: Dee
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 851
Pairing: Gil/Nick
Characters: Gil Grissom and Nick Stokes, and the team.
Warnings: Fluff and AU.
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: In my dreams they are like, totally mine!
Beta: Not beta-ed, therefore any errors are mine. I thank high_striker for his wonderful icons.
A/N: A ficlet written hastily tonight after revelations by George Eads about Nick Stokes’ academic achievements - in the ad for the issue S.1 on Blu-ray.

Judy brought the letter into the briefing room where the team were congregated, ready for their assignments. Gil Grissom had just taken his seat and was sorting through the assorted bits of paper that were their shift’s work.

“Excuse me Dr Grissom, I have this letter…I think it’s for Nick but it’s addressed to Dr Nicholas Stokes, do you think they’ve got him mixed up with you?”

“No. It is Dr Stokes.”

“What? Are you saying the Nick here’s got his doctorate?” Warrick was incredulous but managed to ask the question…of Grissom. The others just sat and gaped at Grissom; not, funnily enough, at the esteemed Dr Stokes.

“Yes, he has. He‘s had it for years, before he joined the lab, I thought you all knew.” He addressed the team.

“I took it straight after my degree; my Daddy said he’d only finance my schooling if I made sure I had something to show for it, so I reckoned a PhD would do the trick.”

“But you’ve never said, Nicky.” Catherine was flirty with the newly endowed Doctor.

“So what was you subject, man?” Greg wanted to know.

“Behavioural Science…I had thought about seeing if I could get into the FBI as a profiler…you know like Will Graham in ‘Manhunter’, man, that was such a great film; but then I got more interested in the forensic side of things…it’s why I was three years late joining up, you know?”

“So why didn’t you tell us?” Sara was belligerent. She hadn’t bothered with a doctorate.

“It never crossed my mind, no one’s ever mentioned it before and it’s hardly ever relates to my work now…really.”

“So what subject did you choose for your thesis?”

“Social neuroscience.”

The room was silent as they absorbed that fact. Gil Grissom was gloating in the reflected glory.

Catherine was actually feeling somewhat embarrassed because she knew she’d treated Nick without respect on a number of occasions; mistaking youthful folly, it would seem, as ignorance. Nick was obviously not ignorant.

Warrick was astounded that he didn’t know; he could hardly believe that someone with a doctorate would not just mention it or tell people - after all it was a major academic achievement. Nick was too modest for his own good.

Sara was disgusted; she could have got one easily but she chose to put her education to good use immediately, not bothering with academia for a further two or three years when she could use the time to gain on the job knowledge. She knew that Grissom appreciated that more than qualifications.

Greg was impressed; he always thought there was more to Nick than he let on…he pretended not to know things but when pushed he always got the right answer.

“So, Nicky, what’s the letter?” Grissom wanted to know.

“Oh.” Nick slipped his pen along the seam of the cream envelope and extracted one sheet of expensive embossed paper, and then he scanned the contents of the letter. “Seems I’ve been left some money in the estate of my Uncle Nick…my namesake. I wonder why they’ve sent this to work.”

“Are you coming into a lot of money…can you buy us all big presents?” Greg was very eager.

“If I have to buy presents it’ll be for Gil, you know that.”

“So, Dr Stokes, what kinda present have I got in store?”

“Don’t know, it doesn’t say how much money, I‘ve got to contact the lawyers. It won’t be that much, it’s bound to be divided among all of us, and then there are my cousins…so don’t give up the day job just yet.”

“I won’t. Work.”

They were all despatched to various crime scenes, but the talk among the team that night was only about Dr Stokes and his inheritance.

The letter was sent to the lab by mistake…an unobservant clerk had mixed up his home and work addresses.

The money was indeed divided among nineteen family members and a number of other minor benefactors, but Nick still got over a hundred and twenty thousand dollars…it appeared Uncle Nick had lived frugally and invested wisely.

Nick treated the team to a slap up meal ‘Olives’ at the Bellagio; although ‘Olives’ would be appalled to have their food described as ‘slap up’.

Nick bought Gil a Montblanc gold and black resin fountain pen, and made him write him a love letter each week. Gil found that it was no hardship. Nick saved all of the letters, and most of the money for a rainy day.

Gil sent away to the University of Dallas for a copy of Nick’s PhD graduation certificate and had the document mounted and framed and then displayed in the foyer of the lab. Nick actually felt uncomfortable being the focus of such attention and surreptitiously removed it one night. But not that surreptitiously because Gil retrieved the security camera images and made him put it back, on pain of no sex until he did.

He wanted the world to know that his young lover was not only the most handsome of men, but also the most intelligent.

The End