Title: Scarred
By: postnotice
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG-13
Note: It's been a while since I updated. I had all intentions of finishing and uploading a Christmas fic by the end of 2010, but it's pretty obvious that didn't happen. (fun fact: I've been working on it for about a year and a half. Yes. I started it in the summer...ish?) I have a few ideas in the works, partially based on upcoming episodes/spoilers, BUT finals are soonish and afterwards I'm hoping to start a collaboration on original fiction, so. My fanfic generally takes the backseat to my originals, but if you're interested in reading my originals for whatever reason, let me know~
Summary: Nick admires Greg's body. An old reply to a comment meme prompt on the nickngreg LJ.

"...What about this one?"

It's dark, the outside light blocked by the black-out shades in Nick's bedroom, and Greg shivers when Nick's fingers brushes against his side, trailing a precise line up his torso. "Oh. That one."

He feels Nick smile against his shoulder, emitting a low hum from his throat. "Yeah. This one."

Greg starts to pull away, hoping to maybe get some sort of distance between them, to gather his thoughts or something, but Nick grips at his wrist and grounds him.

"I don't-" He sighs slowly, air puffing up his cheeks before he lets it all out. "It's sort of a long story."

A beat, then, "There's time." But Greg doesn't start talking, so Nick picks up the movement again, slowly tracing the scar that travels along Greg's body like the seam on a t-shirt. "Greg?"

"When I was fourteen," he says, the clarity in his voice surprising compared to the fog invading his head. "I fell off my bike." It plays out in his head less like a memory and more of a story passed down through generations rather than an image burned in his brain. "Tumbled down a hill and, uh..."

He pauses; Nick's hand stills. "And what?"

There's a sudden lurch in Greg's stomach, a piercing, hot stab of something akin to guilt, yet he can't quite place it. "I spent a week in the hospital while they made sure I wasn't going to bleed out."

Nick's fingers grip tighter at Greg's wrist, like they do when Greg starts talking about near-death experiences or an ex. "Bleed out. From a bicycle accident?" When Greg doesn't say anything, Nick's hand grips tighter around his wrist, fingernails digging into skin just enough to sting. "Greg?"

In a voice barely above a whisper, Greg asks, "What if I said it wasn't… really an accident?"

It takes a moment, but then Nick sits up, pulling his hands away from Greg like he's been burned. "What?"

"That's not what I meant," Greg says quickly, sitting up and turning on the lamp on the nightstand. Nick looks – understandably - confused. "Come on, I was sort of a daredevil when I was a kid. You knew that." Nick's lips sort of twitch upwards at the corners, but he doesn't let the smile through, still watching Greg, waiting for an explanation.

"I was trying to do this trick one of my friends dared me to try, and you know how my mother never let me play sports or anything, and when I fell off my bike, it was a lot worse than we expected it to be because I'd just hit a growth spurt and still hadn't gotten used to the extra inches in my limbs, and—" He takes a deep breath and slows down when he notices the half smirk on Nick's face. "Anyway, I mean – we were talking about who had the most brutal of injuries, and I decided." He sort of laughs, not sure what to say. "One guess who won that contest."

Nick reaches across him to shut the lamp off again, amusement still playing across his features.. "That wasn't so long."

"I cut it short."

When they lay back down, Nick's touch changes from the light, feathery graze he'd started with to a deliberate tracing along the scar, and Greg has to ask, "So… Do you have some sort of soft spot for scars?"

Nick pinches the soft skin just under Greg's armpit, but his voice is light when he says, "Your scars, yeah."

And, okay. Greg can be all right with that.