fiction: Tumble Dry Low (CSI, Greg/Nick, PG13)
Title: Tumble Dry Low
Author: ihatefastcars (girlcalledjane @ yahoo.com)
Fandom: CSI
Character/Pairing: Greg Sanders/Nick Stokes
Rating: PG13
Summary: Scent triggers memory. This is not always a good thing. 1094 words. (5/28/04)
Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't make money off it.
Feedback: Feedback (general or con-crit) is always welcome.
Spoilers: I think no.
Warnings: MALE/MALE. MISUSE OF LAUNDRY ROOM EQUIPMENT. OLFACTORY OBSESSIONS.
Author's Note: Written for A Thousand Whispers: The CSI T.S. Eliot Challenge, you can find the prompt I was assigned and completely fucked up at the bottom. Thanks to carolinecrane for the beta.
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He can't go in the laundry room of his apartment building and not think of Nick.
It's not the dirty clothes and washing machines and ancient, dog-eared issues of Woman's Day, it's just the way it smells. Like dryer sheets. Like freshly washed clothes. Like Nick.
Nick smells like clean clothes and Nautica aftershave and coffee and a million other things that he can't really place but would recognize anywhere because, in the last six months, he's spent a lot of time cataloging every single aspect of Nick and his body -- the way he feels, the way he sounds, the way he looks -- but his favorite thing, by far, is the way he smells. Because Nick smells clean and safe and entirely too much like an Upstanding Young Person with just a tiny, tiny bit of rebellion and... he thinks he must be really far gone if just the way Nick smells drives him crazy.
And he thinks it's ridiculous because it's not like Nick is the first person he's ever associated different smells with -- pharmacies always remind him of his grandfather and the summer smells of melting ice cream and grass clippings remind him of Hannah Murray, his tenth grade girlfriend, and the smell of apple pie will always, always reminds him of his mother but not because she bakes them, just because she likes them. It's just that the smells that remind him of Nick seem to be everywhere.
Like in the laundry room.
Specifically the dryers of the laundry room where he has to recite the periodic table backward by date of discovery because he doesn't actually want to look like a total freak with a bizarre dryer fetish but it's really hard not to when he's getting these embarrassingly graphic images in his head. Images of Nick pulling off his shirt and pushing his fingers into Greg's hair and mumbling against his throat as they fall back onto the bed that smells like Bounce Outdoor Fresh dryer sheets and... before he even realizes it, his toes are curled in his sneakers and he's biting his lip and wondering why all the little old ladies and housewives haven't banned him from the laundry room yet.
Because he's clearly a pervert.
A pervert with two more loads to dry and he thinks that he really should just start washing them all at once. Or, better yet, just stop washing his clothes all together. Because he thinks it might be unhealthy to be this obsessed with doing his laundry. Thinks that maybe it shouldn't be like such a ritualistic thing.
He shoves the last of the second load of wet clothes into the dryer and considers skipping the dryer sheet but only after he's already thrown it in and closed the door. He wonders if they have support groups for people like him, but thinks that they probably don't because it's not like anyone else has an addiction to the way Nick Stokes smells. Unless... and, no, he's not going to even consider that there might actually be other people in the world -- other people that Nick has dated -- who can't walk into the detergent aisle without getting a little hot and bothered, because that falls into the realm of past relationships which is something that he doesn't really want to think about.
Because he doesn't want to think about all the other people Nick has kissed with cinnamon roll frosting on his lip or all the other people that have run their fingers through Nick's still-wet, freshly washed hair or all the people who have spent $36.78 buying every single brand and scent of dryer sheets in the store because they were too embarrassed to ask Nick what it is that he uses that makes his sheets so soft and smell so good but had to have that perfect Nick smell all over them all the time. Because that way is a dark way and not at all the kind of thinking that Greg likes to indulge in while emptying out his last basket of clothes into the washer and trying to not become a lunatic.
Which is such a hopeless endeavor because obviously he's already way past lunacy if he can't even wash clothes without trying to remember exactly which pieces Nick has pulled off his body.
At the thought his fingers slip against the dial on the washer and he can't stand it anymore. He wonders what Nick is doing and thinks that he's probably asleep because it's nearly 2:30 and, unlike Greg who has the night off, Nick has to work tonight. And a little voice in the back of his head says that if Nick were to wake up right now, he would be fine for the rest of the night. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe but can't get the thought out of his head because his fingers itch to touch and his body is humming with want and... he hates that he's even thinking it. Hates it because this is the kind of thinking -- this kind of obsessive need to be with him as much as possible -- that's going to make all of Nick's commitmentphobic warning bells go ring-ring and force Nick to push him away and thereby force Greg into having to put himself into some sort of dryer sheet rehab.
And he knows all that but he also knows that it's not going to stop him. Because he's already picking up his basket of dry clothes and glancing at his reflection in the window of the nearest dryer and stepping past Jimmy, the kid from down the hall who never wears matching sneakers, and Jimmy's mom, Sherri, who still thinks his name is Brian even though he's told her a million times that it's not. He considers trying to come up with a more convincing excuse to give Nick when he asks what exactly Greg is doing at his house in the middle of the day, but he can't really think of anything. Which, he thinks, is probably for the best anyway because 'my towels smell like you' or 'dryer sheets make me horny' will make Nick laugh and say that he's crazy and pull him inside by the front of his shirt and, yeah, he's definitely out of his mind. But, as he pulls out of the parking lot and onto the street and his hand falls on the basket of towels in the passenger seat, he smiles to himself and doesn't really mind.
end of story.
- - - -
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars.
from "Rhapsody On a Windy Night"
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