Title: Familiar Strangers
Author: Evan Nicholas
Summary: Grissom and his damn bugs, man.
Pairing: Bobby Dawson/Nick Stokes
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None
Disclaimer: Would that they were mine... sighhhh.
Notes:
1) This is for amazonqueenkate because I owe her one. What can I say... "Scott" is such a perfect name. Am I licensed to use it again, if it comes up?
2) Still not beta'd, because I still suck.

"Most of the tick's life is spent waiting for the stimuli that can trigger its feeding and reproducing regimen. Some ticks have been known to be able to wait for their meal for over twenty years." ~ J.T. Fraser, Time the Familiar Stranger, 1987

There was a stretch of silence between Grissom's departure and the resumption of normal conversation in the break room.

Bobby Dawson looked at Nick Stokes and said, "Was that supposed to have some kind of relevance to something?"

Nick shrugged and went back to his cautious examination of the coffee percolator. He knew that Greg had been in here and had most likely made coffee, but Nick didn't put it past the guy to have made one cup and one cup only, and left the rest of the team to slurp Sara's toxic brew.

"I have no idea," he said, pouring himself less than a mouthful and bringing his cup up to his nose. "Grissom and his damned bugs, man. He lives in his own little world."

"But don't his truisms generally have some connection to his case?"

"Sometimes. But it's like a zen koan, you know?" He sniffed the coffee a second time, and debated borrowing Warrick's electronic nose to solve the question rather than risk a mouthful of mud. "The connection will hit you at two in the morning in a burst of enlightenment."

"Huh," Bobby said, draining his mug of tea. "I'll still be here at two in the morning. Let me know how it turns out, 'kay?"

Nick grinned at the ballistics tech as he left. "You got it," he called after him, and then returned his attention to the potentially lethal drink in his hands. How lucky did he feel tonight?

***

Two autopsies later (no ticks, Nick noted with a grim satisfaction that was hard to place), they were in the break room again, Nick and Grissom discussing the inconsistencies in their case and Bobby pawing through the cupboards like a man demented.

"So either the neighbour is lying," Nick speculated, trying to ignore the noises of boxes being hastily rearranged.

"-or the witness has the timeline wrong," Grissom finished, then turned around to eyeball Bobby's back. "Can we help you look for something?" he asked, his voice verging on caustic.

"Huh?" Bobby's upper body emerged from the cupboard, empty-handed and with his hair sticking up in three distinct directions. "Oh, sorry about that, Doctor Grissom. Won't be a minute." He grinned, and disappeared again.

Grissom and Nick exchanged a look.

"Uh," Nick said, "what are you looking for?"

"Coffee filters," came the muffled reply.

"They're usually under the coffee machine," Nick told him.

"Not those ones..." More muffled moving of boxes and Bobby emerged, triumphant, with an unopened box of filters that looked like they'd been there for a while. "Got 'em. Sorry."

"What do you need them for?" Grissom asked as Bobby made for the door.

"Testing gunpowder," Bobby told him. "Dave won't give me any titration papers." He waggled the box. "Don't need 'em." Another grin, and he was gone.

Nick tore his eyes from the retreating form disappearing down the hallway, and forced them back to his case notes. "So if the witness has it wrong," he started, then glanced up and caught a funny look from Grissom. He faltered on his hypothesis. "What?"

"I don't have any cases with ticks," Grissom said, almost conversationally.

Nick blinked. "Um?" he said.

Grissom sighed. "I know that I don't provide a particularly good example of balancing work and social life," he said, "but humans are not meant to be alone, Nick."

This time, Nick blinked twice, and glanced at his case file in case the magic answer was in there. "What?"

"Sometimes," Grissom said sagely, "what you're looking for is right under your nose."

Obediently, Nick looked down. "...the 911 call?" he asked. He was staring at a transcript, annotated by the dispatcher who'd taken the call: notes on the caller's inflection, background noises.

"Let's leave the 911 call for now," Grissom said at length, "and concentrate on the neighbour." The look he was giving Nick could best be described as pity tempered by expectation, although for the life of him, Nick couldn't figure that out. Grissom was pitying him? What for?

***

At shortly after two that morning, Nick found himself standing in the doorway to the ballistics lab with a baggie of bullets, watching Bobby take notes with his nose buried in a microscope.

The thing about Bobby, he told himself, watching the man work, was that he was familiar. He felt like home in a way that nothing else in Vegas did. Maybe it was the accent, although that sounded more like Georgia than Texas to Nick, but that drawl was seeped in comfort and warmth. Even the way he walked seemed like home to Nick; that half-saunter like he didn't have a care in the world.

Bobby glanced up, saw Nick, and straightened with a smile. "Hey," he said, and Nick felt a little bit of homesickness wash against his ankles in that one syllable.

"Hey," he said, coming into the glass room. "How'd that titration thing go?"

"Wild goose chase," Bobby said, "but that's life." He nodded at Nick's evidence bag. "That for me?"

"Uh, yeah," Nick said, remembering why he was here. He held out the bag and smiled. "Recovered from the bodies," he said, and handed him a file folder, too. "They don't really look like they're from the same gun, but that's just a guess."

"An educated one," Bobby said, peering through the plastic at the bullets within.

"Cool," Nick said, "I guess I'll leave that with you, then." He had a pile of stuff to go through in trace, anyway.

"Sure," Bobby said, slicing the bag along the evidence tape.

Nick lingered a moment longer, then told himself sternly to get a move on.

"Hey, Nick," Bobby said at the last second.

He stopped in the doorway, turned back to that smile. "Yeah?"

"You figure out that koan yet?"

He opened his mouth to say, No, except then it hit him: that easy smile, that voice like warm milk, the way Nick's eye was drawn to his every movement. "I think so, yeah," he said.

"And?"

He swallowed in the light of his understanding. "Wanna get some breakfast after shift?"

A beat, and then Bobby's smile got even warmer, even more familiar. "I'd love to, Nick."