Title: All Things Being Equal
Author: Evan Nicholas
Summary: Lab techs and CSIs move in different circles.
Warnings: Pfff. You jest, right?
Disclaimer: Again, you jest, right?
Notes: For the AU challenge, so it's AU. ...obviously.

1.

The scene was bloody and big: it stretched clear across four lanes of traffic, and the numbered cards they used to pick out evidence were intermingled with smears of red and the inert shells of spent highway flares.

Jim Brass fanned himself with his notebook in the sun. He hated scenes in the desert, and he hated vehicular scenes, and he really, really hated scenes that dragged the night shift CSIs out of bed once the sun was up because they were always in a foul mood. His tie was too tight, but the media hounds were sniffing around the edges of the yellow tape, so he kept his hands from tugging at the knot. Appearances and everything.

He watched Greg Sanders wander towards him, sidestepping the more gruesome body parts and stifling a yawn behind one gloved hand. The other clutched a camera, and every step he took threatened to dislodge the evidence baggies he'd been stuffing into his vest pockets all morning.

"So," Jim said when Greg got close enough, "anything worth mentioning to the press?"

Greg shook his head. "Too many bodies," he said, "I can't even guess how many victims in total."

Jim held out his hand. "Gimme the blood swabs," he said. "I'm going back to the lab anyway, I'll drop 'em off at DNA for you."

"Thanks, Jim," Greg said, and pulled a handful of boxes out of one of his pockets. They were bound with an elastic band and labelled in Greg's appalling scrawl.

"Anything to get out this heat," Jim muttered.

"You're telling me?" Greg asked, and raised an eyebrow. From where Jim was standing, it looked a little strange, that one eyebrow climbing out from behind his shades, but that was Greg for you. If it wasn't one thing, it was always something else.

"Yeah, but this is what you guys do best, right?"

"Ha," Greg said and yawned again. "Listen," he said, "if you see Bobby lounging around in the break room, tell him we could use him out here."

"You got it," Jim said, and turned towards the line of tape. In his car, he cranked up the air conditioning and breathed a sigh of relief as the crime scene faded into the distance on his rear view mirror.



2.

Nick Stokes poked his head out of the trace lab and glanced towards Jacqui deFranco's office. The door was closed. Maybe she was still out at the scene, maybe she was getting her ass chewed out by the sheriff, maybe she was somewhere else entirely. It didn't really matter, because it just meant that she wouldn't notice Nick slipping across the hall into the ballistics lab.

"Hey," he said when he closed the door behind him. "What's going on?"

Catherine looked up at him. "Not much," she said guardedly. "Why?"

"Dunno," Nick said, "I just feel kinda restless, you know?"

She rolled her eyes at him, and turned her attention back to the bullet she was working on. "Don't tell me," she said, "he doesn't even know you exist."

Nick felt a sudden rush of anger, but he damped it down before it got out through his teeth. That's what you got for confiding in someone like Catherine, he reminded himself. He let out a huff of breath. "It's just..." He sighed.

She looked at him over the eyepieces of her microscope. "I know," she said, with a lot more warmth than her first offering. "Believe me, I know. You could always, you know, say something to him."

A flush crept up Nick's neck. "I can't do that," he said. "I mean, he's a CSI. And I'm just a lab tech. He's not going to waste his time on me-"

"He's just a guy who does his job," Catherine told him, "and so are you. And you make more money than he does, anyway."

"It's not about the money," Nick said. "It's never been about the money."

"Well," Catherine said, "we live in a world where success is primarily determined by money. So if it's not the money - if it's not the success - then what is it?"

He sighed. "You sound just like Griss," he mumbled.

"I'll take that as a compliment," Catherine said with a smirk.

"You would," Nick said, and headed back for the door. If he was going to deal with inscrutable Griss-isms, he might as well get them from the source.

"What is with you today?" Catherine asked.

He stopped in the doorway. "All I wanted was a little sympathy," he said.

"You came knocking on the wrong door, then," she said. "I've been giving you sympathy for six months now. I'm running dry."

"Yeah, fine," Nick said, and stepped back out into the hallway. "I'll leave you alone, then."



3.

Bobby flashed his headlights on high beam as he passed Jim's car on the highway. He had the music blaring, the windows rolled down, and for some hard-to-pin-down reason, he felt like he could fly.

He slowed down for the first ring of cops, trying to keep gawkers away by diverting passers-by down a dirt road detour. They peered at him, and waved him by. He sped up again but only for about a minute before the flashing lights made him slow down. One of the deputies flagged him over to the shoulder, and he turned off the engine and listened to it ticking as it cooled.

"Mister Dawson?" the deputy asked, leaning down to peer through the window.

"Yeah?"

"Are you all right?"

"Sure," he said with a smile, and hauled his kit out from under the passenger seat. "Never better, man."

He got out and stood for a moment, stretching his legs after the half-hour race from the city. "What's the word?"

"It's pretty bad, sir," the deputy said. "CSIs Sanders and deFranco have been waiting for you."

"Waiting on little old me?" he said with a grin. "Well, can't have that, can we?" He slipped his car keys into his pocket and hefted his case in his hand. He left the windows down and the doors unlocked, partly to keep it from turning into an oven, and partly because no one was going to steal a car at a crime scene. Right?

He was almost whistling as he ducked under the tape.



4.

Grissom and Sara were having a low, hushed conversation over the lab counter, and Nick hesitated at the door. They were kind of obviously dating, right? Except officially, they weren't. So was he supposed to pretend that he was oblivious and just walk in, or be nice about it and knock discreetly?

Sara looked up and saw him, and leaned back from the counter. She didn't even look guilty about it, being caught well within Grissom's personal space. She was almost cocky about it, and Nick felt like growling. She knew he'd had a sort of crush of Grissom for a long time, and now that she was unofficially-officially dating him, she liked to lord it over him. Passive-aggressively, of course. How could Sara do anything else?

Grissom followed her gaze, and at least he looked contrite. "Hi Nick," he said. "How's it going?" Easy smile borne of long friendship.

For a moment, Nick couldn't quite remember why he was here at all, then he reminded himself that Griss was clueless, not malicious. He hadn't noticed Nick's hard-on for him in the three years it had been there, so why would he be aware of the trickle-down aftereffects of its rather violent demise?

"Same old, same old," he said as neutrally as he could.

Sara was looking at him like he was supposed to justify his presence in her DNA lab, like he wasn't allowed to just drop by to chat.

He cleared his throat. "I, uh, any word from the CSIs about when their evidence is supposed to arrive?" That was a safe enough opener; word was there'd been some horrific pileup on the highway in the middle of nowhere, tour bus collided with a petrol truck and they were working the scene in an ever-increasing radius of blood and evidence.

"Not yet," Sara said. "But you'd probably better get your lab ready, because I'm sure they'll be bringing some by soon." In other words, Back the hell off.

"I already cleared my plate," he said defensively, then squinched his eyes shut. "You know what," he said, "never mind." He didn't need this pissing contest with Sara, not when she had already won, not when it was clear that Griss would never be interested in Nick. Not when Nick was already pining for someone else. "I'll catch you guys later."

Sara waited until the door was almost closed behind him before sing-songing, "See you around!"



5.

They were having an argument in the shade of one of the fire trucks. Even Archie was there, propped up against the red siding and looking like he was going to melt. "This was my day off," he was whining, but without much heart. Everyone knew he had no life outside of work.

Jacqui ignored him. "We follow procedure," she said firmly. "No deviations."

"I'm just saying," David Hodges complained, "that we don't even have coherent witness statements. Two guys having a fight in a pickup truck going eighty say the bus swerved into the truck, but they were having an argument and speeding. Then we've got-"

"I know the story," Jacqui said.

"Then we've got two old ladies and a guy who doesn't speak English who - apparently - say they saw the truck steer into the bus."

"Hodges-"

"And then there's the pilot who was illegally practicing mock approaches along the highway, who says that it was obviously an accident."

"David." A beat. "What's your point?"

"My point is," Hodges said, "that we're wasting valuable resources investigating what could very well be an accident."

"We follow procedure," Jacqui repeated. "Just because we don't know that it wasn't an accident does not mean that we stop investigating."

"I'm not saying we should stop investigating it," Hodges snapped, "I'm just saying maybe we should send someone to the shooting downtown." Another beat of silence. "That's all."

Jacqui said, "We started the scene, we finish it. Day shift can take the body on the strip." She stared everyone down in turn; Hodges was the only one who even bothered to try to hold her gaze. "Does anyone else have something to say?"

Reluctantly, Greg raised his hand. "I'm out of evidence bags," he said, "and I've got a trunkload of stuff that needs to be processed."

Jacqui sighed. "Fine," she said, "take it to the lab, restock on supplies, and come back out here."

Archie said, "You want some company?"

Jacqui said, "You're not going anywhere."

"I need some more swabs," Archie said, "and I'm dying of heat exhaustion."

"Greg can bring back supplies for everyone," Jacqui said, "and some water. Happy?"

"I seriously have no more swabs left."

"Then process something else. Next?"

No one said anything.

She took a deep breath, and let it out in a whoosh. "Look," she said, backed down considerably from her authoritarian streak, "I know it's late. We should all be in bed right now. We're tired, we're hot, and this crime scene sucks. And yes, we may be doing a lot of busywork for something that turns out not to be a crime. But this is the job, remember? This is what we do. So let's just do it, so that we can go home."

"And shower," Bobby snarked, elbowing Greg in the ribs.

"I showered last week," Greg groused back at him. "Two weeks ago, tops. I don't know what everyone's complaining about."

Jacqui smiled at her team. "That's more like it," she said. "Back to work."



6.

Warrick was nowhere to be found, and Nick left the A/V lab feeling slightly dejected. He struck out with Catherine, Griss was otherwise occupied, Sara was a no-go, and Warrick - his last and only shoulder to cry on - had pulled a disappearing act.

He let himself back into the trace lab, and pulled out some of the paperwork he'd stashed away before. He hated paperwork as much as he'd hated homework in high school, but it was a necessary evil of the job.

The thing was, he'd been noticing a lot of necessary evils about this job lately; the whacked out hours of the night shift, the fact that he lived his life under fluorescent lights, the way he was always detached from the actual solving of the crimes. Sure, what he did was important, none of the cases would get solved without his knack for identifying polyester fibers or paint chips from a 1987 Buick, but...

...but he was starting to think that maybe he needed more out of life. Maybe he'd like to be in the field, doing something useful. Something that actually felt like police work.

A tap at his door, and he looked up. Grissom was standing there, his hands in his lab coat pockets, giving him that warm appraisal that used to send shivers up his spine.

Nick sighed and said, "Come on in."

Grissom walked around the lab, the circuit he always made, inspecting the samples that had already been processed and were stacked by the door, and then moving on to the ones that were still waiting. Nick watched him, and waiting for him to say something.

"You seem distracted," he eventually said.

"I guess I am," Nick told him.

"That can't be good for your work," Grissom said, but Nick knew him well enough to know what he wasn't saying: I'm worried about you.

"It's fine," Nick said, "it's nothing new."

"No," Grissom agreed, "it's not new. It's been building for a while. Sometimes laying something out, point by point, goes a long way to unraveling a puzzle." Griss-speak for, You can talk to me if you want to.

And why shouldn't he? They'd been friends since Nick had moved out of Texas, and if that didn't qualify as grounds for talking things out, then what did? And if it happened to irritate the hell out of Sara, well... so be it.

"I'm getting sick of being in the lab," Nick said.

"Oh?" Griss raised an eyebrow in inquiry. "Why?"

"I want to-" Nick rubbed his hands on his jeans, trying to think of the right words. "I want do more than this."

"More than what?"

"More than scutwork in the lab," Nick said.

Grissom considered him thoughtfully for a while. "You think what we do here is scutwork?"

"Don't you?" Nick asked.

"No," Grissom said, and the way he said it meant that he had honestly never looked at it that way. "I love what I do. I like the detail, I like the direct application of knowledge. On the surface, yes, what I do is kind of silly. I match fingerprints with a database of known criminals. But there's skill to it, too. Knowing what's significant, knowing what's common..." He shrugged. "I'm good at it, and I like it."

"Plus you race cockroaches," Nick couldn't help adding.

That got a twitch of a smile from Grissom. "There is that," he says.

"Maybe that's what I need," Nick mused, looking down at his paperwork and not really seeing it.

"What's that?"

"A borderline strange hobby. You know, become eccentric."

"Eccentric is fun," Grissom says. "And it sort of comes with the lab coat." He patted the lapels of his own coat, and left fingerprint powder smudges there.

Nick opened his mouth to say something but his beeper went off at the same time that Grissom's did. They both reached for them and angled the tiny screen to catch the light. Nick found himself staring at Greg's cell phone number (not that he had memorized it or anything, nope nope nope) and the message, Evidence incoming. Man photon torpedos. He snorted. And people the lab techs were geeks? At least they were science geeks.

He looked up to find Grissom watching him instead of looking at his own pager. "What?" he asked.

"You're not contemplating becoming a CSI just to get his attention, are you?" Grissom asked in a voice too soft, too understanding, to be mocking.

Nick felt himself flush, and he stuffed his pager back in his pocket. "Of course not," he blustered.

Grissom's eyes were soft. "Oh, Nicky," he says. "That's not healthy."

Nick shrugged and made a fuss of re-filing his paperwork. "It's nothing," he says.

Grissom doesn't say anything for a bit, so Nick finally looks up. "What?"

"You want him to notice you, Nick, not your position in the lab."

Nick waved a hand at him. "Go get ready for evidence," he said, and fussed with his lab equipment until he left. Then he closed his eyes for a moment and tried to focus on work.



7.

Bobby was the only one whose kit was still stocked, so he took over blood swabs. Greg took lunch orders from everyone, lingered to flirt with one of the bored firemen, then climbed behind the wheel of his car and headed back to town.

He knew the fireman was straight. He knew that everyone he worked with was straight, except possibly Bobby, but Bobby - for all his buoyant charm and energetic wit - was an enigma and he never let anyone know about his private life. Anyway, Greg wasn't interested in Bobby; truth be told, he wasn't interested in any of the CSIs he worked with. For one thing, he couldn't imagine working with someone all day, and then spending all night with them, too. He needed some kind of change of scenery throughout the day or else he'd go nuts. And nutso Gregs didn't last long in relationships.

It's not that he was lonely, exactly. He had his share of one-night stands and even a handful of two-night stands, but that was the problem with working this job. Well, that was two of the problems, actually: the utter evilness of the night shift, and the bitter reality of what he did for a living. People were either grossed out by what he did, or morbidly turned on. The latter freaked him out (oooh, can I see some crime scene photos? is that real blood? what does a decomposing body really smell like?), and the former bored him. His work was such a big part of his life, he couldn't possibly be happy with someone who Didn't Want To Know.

So really, he was shit out of luck. He didn't want to date any of the CSIs, he'd have liked to date a cop - maybe - but they were either straight or deeply, deeply closeted, and other than paramedics and firemen, there weren't a lot of other options out there. And he was rapidly working his way through both of those groups, crossing people off his list of potentials. Hell, he'd even tried dating a couple of girls, but that had been - strange. Odd. Strangely and oddly unsexual. Yep, he was gay. No two ways about it.

There were, of course, the lab techs he could think about... and he had, in fact, thought about them. But he could just imagine what Hodges would say if Greg suddenly showed up on the arm of...

...well, who? Grissom? Ha. Brains were sexy, but the guy was straight and kind of intimidating. Warrick? Hot, but definitely definitely straight and a gambling addict to boot, so. Too much work.

Then there was Nick. Mmmm. That was a happy piece of eye candy, wasn't it? And sometimes Greg got the distinct impression that the trace tech was interested in him, and then sometimes he really didn't get that impression at all. So confusing. At least, though, he wasn't a closet case.

Still. There was separation of church and state, and likewise, there was separation of CSIs and lab techs. Archie had made a joke once about interbreeding and subspecies, but it had been so convoluted that only Jacqui had gotten it; but it was a point well-made nonetheless. Techs dated techs, CSIs dated CSIs (well, they tried to anyway - and who could forget that picture-perfect disaster of Jacqui and Hodges trying to go out for dinner?), and never the two shall meet.

Greg pulled into the parking lot and snagged his usual good spot by the door. He popped the trunk and took a long, hard look at the sheer volume of evidence there was to bring inside. It would take at least - he narrowed his eyes and tried to gage how much he could reasonably carry at once - three trips. Or one trip in, snag a volunteer, and one joint trip.

He started loading up.



8.

He wasn't stalking him. Really, he wasn't. He was... he was being proactive. Lurking in the lobby, waiting for evidence to come in the door, that's all he was doing. Beating the rush.

Nick almost believed that until the door opened and Greg staggered in carrying more tagged evidence baggies than any one person out to be able to carry at once. Nick believed his own little pep talk until his eyes settled on Greg's legs, and then his arms, and then the top of his head...

...and he knew he was sunk.

"Let me help you with that," he said, hurrying forward.

Greg dumped an armload of red-taped packages on him, and they juggled the stragglers between them. "Thanks," Greg said.

"No problem," Nick said, trying to ignore the faint tingling in his hand where their fingers had brushed. He hoped his voice wasn't squeaking.

"Let's get these into trace for now," Greg said, "and then you can help me bring in the rest."

"There's more?" Nick asked, and then felt stupid for having said it. Of course there was more. Why did he feel the need to fill silence with vapid non-conversation?

Greg didn't seem to notice it, though. "Yeah," he said, "this is just the first trip. We ran out of supplies."

"Oh," Nick said. "Wow."

He had a hand free and he got to the door a second before Greg did, so he held it open and then followed the taller CSI into the lab. Greg dropped his load on the lab counter, so Nick did the same, although he would have rather sorted it out as he went. Still; it may have been his lab, but it was Greg's case, after all.

"So," Nick said in the slightly awkward moment where they were staring at each other. "Next load?"

"Yeah," Greg said. "Next load."

"There's really that much to process?" Nick asked as they walked back out through the maze of glass walls.

"You have no idea," Greg said.

"You, uh, you need an extra pair of hands out there?"

Greg paused in the lobby. "Are you volunteering for field work?" he asked.

Nick shrugged. "Kinda, I guess... yeah. Yeah, I am."

Greg looked at him for a bit longer, then said, "I'll mention it to Jacqui."

"Would you?" Nick asked. "Thanks."

"I thought you liked the lab."

"I do," Nick said, "but... I think there's more to it than processing trace."

"Hm," Greg said, and popped the trunk.

They didn't really say anything after that; they brought the rest of the evidence in, and then Greg thanked him for his help, and asked him to sort out the pile of bags and distribute them to the appropriate labs.

"Sure," Nick said, "no problem."

"Thanks, Nick," Greg said, smiled at him, and left.



10.

By the time Greg got back out to the scene, Bobby's supplies had been spread pretty thin among the night shift CSIs, and most of them were sitting around by the ditch drinking water they had cadged from a patrol cop.

"So," Jacqui said conversationally.

"So what?" Archie asked.

"Greg. And Nick."

Hodges started laughing.

"What?" Jacqui demanded.

He shook his head. "Sanders may be a loser," he said, "but he's not that hard up."

"When did you get to be such a snob?" Bobby asked.

"Mr Secrecy speaks?" Hodges asked with a surprised lilt. "Mr It's None Of Your Business has an opinion on the matter?"

"Mr Dawson certainly does," Bobby told him. "So what? Lab tech, CSI - what's the difference?"

"They're lab rats," Hodges said. "Rodents. Big teeth and no social skills. Ring any bells?"

Archie stifled a laugh and got a withering glare from Hodges. "Sorry," he said, "I just found that funny... coming from you."

Hodges stiffened. "I have highly refined social skills," he said. "They're so far evolved beyond yours that you don't recognize them."

This time, Jacqui was laughing, too.

"Here he comes," Bobby said, shading his eyes and watching Greg duck under the tape.

"Does he still look dejected and single?" Jacqui asked.

"Hard to say," Bobby reported. "He's got a huge box with him."

"Maybe it's an inflatable boyfriend," Hodges said.

Jacqui stood up as Greg got close, and took the box from him. "Evidence bags?" she asked, lifting a flap and peering in.

"Bit of everything," Greg told her and hiked a thumb over his shoulder. "There's two more in the car."

"I'll get 'em," Archie said, screwing the cap back on his water bottle.

"What's the discussion topic this time?" Greg asked, looking around the group. He knew them well enough to tell that someone had been picked on, and that someone was probably Hodges.

"Lab techs," Bobby said, at the same time that Hodges said, "Lab rats."

"Ah," Greg said.

"Tell me," Hodges said suddenly, looking up at him from the kit where he was sitting. "If you had to be a lab rat, which one do you think you'd be?"

Greg blinked at him. "...Catherine?" he guessed. "She's pretty hot."

"No," Hodges said and rolled his eyes. "Not which person. Which genus of the species? Laboratoria genetica? Laboratoria technica?"

"Oh." Greg thought about it. "I have no idea. I've always wanted to be a CSI, since I was in college."

"I bet you'd be a trace technician," Bobby said.

Jacqui started coughing unconvincingly.

"What?" Greg asked.

"Nothing," she said. "How about you, Hodges? Which would you be?"

"Me?" He raised an eyebrow haughtily. "DNA," he declared. "It's the most scientific of the lot."

"I guess I'd do ballistics," Bobby said. "You know how much I like guns."

"Yes, we've all noticed the gun rack in your truck," Greg said.

Archie came back with another box. "There's food back there, too," he said.

"You said the magic words," Hodges said, and scuffled towards the car.

"I don't think he could handle DNA," Jacqui said, watching him go. Hodges waved a raised middle finger over his shoulder at her.

"Definitely not," Bobby agreed. "How about you?"

"Me?" she said. "DNA? Naw. Fingerprints, maybe."

Bobby laughed. "Now who's choosing the person instead of the job?"

Jacqui flushed. "I'm not saying I would date him," she said. "Just that he's kinda sexy."

"Why wouldn't you date him?" Bobby asked. "Because he's a tech?"

"Because he's Grissom," Jacqui said. "His idea of fun is watching a dragonfly clean its wings. Can you imagine waking up next to that?"

Archie looked from Jacqui to Bobby to Greg and back to Jacqui. "What'd I miss?" he asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," Greg said and rolled his eyes. "Just business as usual."



---
The end.