Stolen

TITLE: Stolen
WARNINGS: Yaoi, M/M, smut… This is a man on man relationship, so be forewarned and don’t read it if you don’t like it. I don’t appreciate flames…
RATING: R to NC-17, for later chapters…
PAIRINGS: Nick/Greg
ARCHIVES: If you’d like, just let me know and give me credit…
FEEDBACK: I’d like some. I kind of live off of feedback, so feed me if you would…
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own any of the characters of CSI, they belong to CBS and all of the creators. The story idea is entirely mine. Don’t bother suing me, I live in a cardboard box in the gutter, or at least my mind does…
That’s about it, enjoy.

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Nick Stokes closed his last case file for the day with a content sigh. Work had been difficult, to say the least, and he was looking forward to a heavy dinner and good nights sleep. He still hadn’t completely adjusted to working the day shift, but he really didn’t expect the situation to last. He had turned in several requests to be moved back to the graveyard hours and Eckley didn’t seem too keen on fighting him much longer. Even though the Texan was still working with Catherine during the day, he wanted to be back with the rest of the team. One team member in particular urged his desire to switch.
Strolling at a slow, leisurely pace out of the agency, Nick pulled out his cell phone and dropped the case files in his supervisor’s office. His thoughts strayed to a certain lab tech’s goofy grin and adorable habit of playing music too loud while he worked. A smirk inched across his face as he searched for Greg’s number in his phone. Responding to a few ‘goodbye’s from fellow co-workers, Nick stepped out into the rapidly cooling air of the afternoon. The desired number popped up onscreen and he punched the call button. On the third ring, the lab technician turned CSI, answered.
“What’s up?” questioned that ever playful tone.
Nick tried not to melt. He’d had a rather serious crush on the boy since his first day on the job, but he kept that guilt-ridden little secret to himself. He was fairly certain the boy was straight, after all, he’d asked out numerous female co-workers over the years. For a time, being near him had been enough to sate Nick, but working the day shift had killed that perfect scenario.
“Hello?”
The Texan jumped a little, realizing he hadn’t spoken since Greg had answered his phone.
“Hey Greg, its Nick. I was just thinking that I haven’t seen you in a while and wondered how you were doing. I mean, I see Grissom in the parking lot from time to time and Sarah comes in early enough that our shifts overlap, but I haven’t heard from you.” Nick commented as smoothly as he could. The call was kind of out of the blue and he wasn’t sure what Greg would think of it.
“Hey man! I’ve been doing pretty well. You’re right; we haven’t seen each other in weeks. How’s working with Eckley everyday? I think I would’ve killed him by now,” came a rather pleasant answer.
Nick had to laugh. Eckley had been a pain in the ass, but imagining Greg being questioned about something like that was entertaining. The blonde boy barely had it in him to kill a bug, let alone a person. Underneath it all, it sounded like the lab tech had actually missed him.
The well-muscled Texan hopped into his truck and trapped the phone between his shoulder and his ear to continue the conversation while he brought the engine to life.
“I’ve been trying to ignore him. It seems to work for everyone else. Where are you? It’s really loud.”
“I’m on the strip.”
Nick mentally categorized the ambient noise as a crowd and raised an eyebrow.
“What are you doing on the strip? I didn’t think you gambled.”
The voice on the other end took on a tint of amusement, “You know me, that devilish high roller. I’m looking for some Christmas presents for a few of my younger cousins, the ones that don’t live in Vegas. They usually go for the cheap, useless, tourist stuff. The strip is by far the best place to find that kind of junk.”
An ear shattering noise split their conversation in two and Nick had to pull the phone away from his ear to keep from losing his hearing. Greg barely managed to talk over the sound.
“Jeez! I’m over by that new hotel and they’re doing some kind of show outside. I’m going to find somewhere a little quieter.”
“You mean the one that opened up off Harmon Avenue?”
“Yeah.”
The painful noise faded away, as did the sounds of the crowd.
“There, much better. Why does everything in Vegas have to be way too many decibels over the safe limit for human ears?”
“I don’t know. It just how these people live,” Nick said jokingly. The road was taking a little more attention than he would have liked, but he could drive on autopilot once he got out into the traffic. He adjusted his phone and slipped into a gap between the quick paced cars. “You’re getting Christmas presents awfully early. As a man, aren’t you obliged to wait until the last minute?”
“Yeah well, I don’t get too many days off. I may as well do something with it.”
With a few presents tucked away in his own closet, Nick really didn’t have the right to argue, but he had to pick at the lab tech anyway. He had six brothers and sisters that he had to buy for, not to mention his parents, so he had to start early as well. Nick let it drop as he pulled up to a red light.
“Makes sense, so I’ll cut you some slack. You do work a lot of overtime, so when you have the opportunity to have a life, you should take it.”
“Aw, be nice man! I do have a life; it’s called the office…” The tail end of his sentence faded as he pulled away from the phone to say to one side, “Can I help you?” Nick recognized the tone, both curious, but cautious. Greg usually reserved a tone like that for questioning a suspect he didn’t trust. The Texan wondered what could possibly make him use it outside of work.
He never heard the stranger respond, just Greg’s panicked cry of, “What are you doing?” and then the sickening sound of something hitting flesh, hard. A strangled yowl of pain caused Nick’s chest to constrict with an overwhelming amount of terror.
“Greg?” he shouted into the phone, desperate to hear any kind of response. The only answer to his yell was the loud clattering of Greg’s cell falling to the cement and the slamming of a car door. A few seconds later, a loud, screeching peel-out almost ruptured his eardrum and a deadly silence followed.
“Greg?!”
Nick sat, completely stunned. His heart was racing and nausea threatened to overwhelm him at any moment. He had no idea what he’d just been whiteness to, but it had been bad and it had happened to Greg, his Greg. A blaring car horn brought him, full force, back into reality. The light had changed at some point and he was the only vehicle in the line holding things up.
Without any regard to traffic laws or the cars around him, Nick made a highly illegal u-turn across the cement median and sped back toward the crime lab. He was going to get answers and he was going to get them now.
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The CSI headquarters were relatively quiet. Things always were between shifts. Those coming in were not quite awake yet and those leaving were too tired to make much noise. This serenity shattered as Nick barreled through the corridors at break-neck speed. He slowed only once between the front door and his destination, and that was to avoid running over a startled young woman with an armful of reports. When he barged into Grissom’s office, he was out of breath and still extremely wound up.
The older CSI nearly dropped his early evening coffee at the sudden intrusion, not expecting it so early in the shift. Gil turned and took in Nick’s distressed babbling as best he could. The Texan didn’t make much sense between his panting for air and his elevated stress level. Alarmed, Grissom set down his coffee and said firmly, “Nicky, you have to calm down, I can’t understand you. Take a breath and start over.”
Nick did as he was told, trying to quell his rushing thoughts. It was in this moment that the nausea decided to swamp him and he had to run to Gil’s trash can to avoid retching on his boss’s shoes.
The graying supervisor had never seen Nick react that way a single day in his career, and the level three CSI had been through a lot. His level of alarm increased tenfold as he knelt by the Texan’s tense form. He waited until Nick was done tossing his lunch to question him, “What happened?”
Nick met Gil’s steely blue gaze and croaked out, “Something happened to Greg.”
“What?”
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Five minutes later, Gil Grissom stormed from his office. It was like a bad case of déjà vu. A member of his team was missing and none of them would rest until they found him. He located Sara setting up in the lab and cut off her unspoken question with two short words, “Meeting. Now.”
The brunette closed her mouth and had to drop her things to race after her boss. He gathered the rest of the team in a similar manner, barely catching Catherine before she left for the evening, and led them into his office. By the time he’d returned, Nick had managed to compose himself slightly and was heading for the door. Upon seeing the entourage, he just moved away to let them in.
Gil was speaking when he opened the door, “… and I want you to call Warrick and get him here as soon as possible.”
Catherine voiced her concerns as soon as he was done. “What is this all about? Gil, you haven’t explained anything.”
“I want you to tell them exactly what you told me,” Grissom ordered the shaken Texan.
“I think Greg was kidnapped. We were talking on the phone when it happened.”
“Where?”
“He was at the intersection of the strip and Harmon Avenue. He went to find somewhere quiet nearby and someone snatched him. I know he was still outside because I heard the escape car.”
Grissom took over when Nick’s pale face somehow managed to lose even more blood, “Greg had the night off, so he wasn’t in uniform or wearing a badge. Either this was a random act and Greg was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the kidnapper was aware that he worked as a CSI. The fact that he would attack Greg while he was on the phone could mean several things. One, he wasn’t very intelligent. Two, he didn’t care. Three, he’s confident that no one will find him, so it doesn’t matter that there was a whiteness, or, four, he wanted us to know. I want Nick to go with Catherine and Sara to the scene and I’ll go see if any of the traffic cameras caught our culprit.”
The initial shock of the news barely had time to pass before they were out the door. Nick gave Grissom the precise time of the call from his phone before following mutely behind Catherine and Sara.
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Darkness and pain was all Greg could comprehend when unconsciousness left him. It felt as though someone had hammered his guts with a heavy object. Second thought, someone had hammered his guts with a heavy object and, if he remembered right, it had been a baseball bat. His initial notion was that he’d been mugged. It happened a lot in Vegas, but it usually happened to tourists who let their guard down. There were much easier ways to steal money in Las Vegas and Greg hoped the thief was greatly disappointed with his thin wallet contents. The lab tech had learned long ago never to carry around more than what you wouldn’t be too upset losing.
Greg shifted uncomfortably. The hard surface he was laying on was unforgiving to his stiff muscles and he’d lost the feeling in the arm that was crushed under his body. He groaned and tried to adjust, but was startled to find that his wrists were bound behind his back.
Panic seized him and his brown eyes flew open to find more darkness. Terror took over from there. Greg tried to reign himself in and analyze the situation. For thirty seconds, he took deep, steadying breaths and slowed his racing heart. Things were never as bad as an overactive imagination could make them. He stilled his morbid thoughts and managed to pull himself upright.
The heavy silence around him suggested that he had been moved indoors and the feel of a low thread count cloth on his face said he was blindfolded, not in a dark place. The cold floor beneath him was definitely cement, the smooth kind that went in warehouses other facilities. Greg ceased his scrutiny when a wave of fear washed over him. There was someone else in the room.
The light breathing that gave him away was almost inaudible. Greg could feel the man’s eyes on him. A violent shiver swept down his spine with a very bad feeling about his watcher. Heavy footsteps crossed the room to where he was kneeling, blind and helpless.
“What do you want?” he asked in as bold of a tone as he could muster.
The deep, unnerving laughter that followed his question confirmed that the watcher was indeed a man, but didn’t help his situation any.
Greg resisted the urge to beg for his life. He’d processed enough murder evidence to know that begging and bribing typically didn’t work. Instead, he tried a different angle, “If it’s a ransom you want, you won’t get it. No one I know is rich enough to provide a ransom.”
That same, mocking chuckle answered him before his kidnapper spoke. “It’s nothing like that, boy.”
The lab technician swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat. If it wasn’t a kidnapping for money, then it meant that Greg could be under Dr. Robbins’s observation later in the week. Only Dr. Robbins would be looking for his cause of death.