Date: September 2006
Title: Greg’s Big Secret
Author: LosingInTranslation
(Jennifer)
Rating: General
Pairings: None – GregFic
Spoilers: None
Summary:
After doing everything he could to be cool, something always got in the
way. Usually, it was him.
A/N: I completely blame someone else for the
genesis of this little Ficlet… And five points goes
to the person who can name the reference and its source in this story.
Greg’s Big Secret
After the
incident with the decon shower, Greg had become even
more self-conscious about bearing his chest. It was a horrifying experience for
him, being stripped, blasted with cold water and decontamination chemicals and
then paraded out naked to be handed a departmental coverall to dress in. And
all of that happened in full view of Sara Sidle, so he knew that a full
description of his chicken body would be disseminated to the whole lab.
Immediately
after that traumatic experience, Greg had vowed to improve his physical prowess
and appearance. He began working out, changed his diet, starting bulking up…
Well, as much bulking up as was physically possible for a pencil neck geek like
himself. But there was one last thing that he thought
would be the perfect part to his new CSI persona, and that was a bad ass
tattoo.
He
searched any tattoo art site he could find and still had not found the perfect
tattoo. He wanted something that would show his wild side, something that would
be impressive to any woman that was given the privilege of seeing him
shirtless. He poured through art sites and Swedish mythology and chemistry
diagrams desperately trying to find something with meaning that he could have
tattooed on his new body.
After all
that searching, it came down to one drunken night with a bunch of old college
buddies in town for the weekend. Halfway through the requested tattooing, Greg
started to sober up as the pain of the process continued. He stopped the artist
and told him he was done getting tattooed, and even though the guy tried to
warn Greg he still got out of the shop in a hurry with his crew trailing after
him.
When Greg
woke up some time in the afternoon, he and his buddies sprawled all over his
living room, Greg had to wonder why his chest hurt more than his head after all
the alcohol he was sure they had consumed. He slowly and painfully got up from
the chair and walked to the bathroom. He was not feeling the need to throw up,
but he needed to splash some water on his face so he could try to clear his
head and figure out what the hell was up with the pain on his chest. The pain
was not in his chest, but on it and that just confused the heck out of his
seriously hungover mind.
Once the
water had been splashed on his face, he blinked his eyes a few times and then
flipped on the vanity light in the bathroom. In an amazing moment of clarity
the entire night came back into focus as he stared at the loosened bandage on
his chest. Peeking out from the top of the bandage was a single flame.
Instantly, all the color drained from his face, and then he squeezed his eyes
shut and prepared for the worst as he reached his hand up to reveal the rest of
the drunken tattoo.
In one
swift move, Greg ripped the rest of the bandage off providing a perfect view of
the biggest mistake in his entire life. This made letting Grissom drop a three
hundred pound dummy on him, or infecting his foot with mold look like sound and
judicious choices. THIS was going to haunt him for the rest of his natural
life.
As he
stared in disbelief at the most astoundingly stupid thing he had ever done, one
of his buddies came in the bathroom and viewed the scene with groggy chuckle. “Dude, that has to be the best drunk story
we ever had…” The man with the spiked and yellow hair shook his head as he
chuckled. “Greg and his Flaming Nipple of Doom!”
And there
it was, Greg had gotten a circle of flames, completely
surrounding his left nipple. And two little lines over the right one, from
where Greg had stopped the tattoo artist. If he thought his chicken body would
have been the source of laughter, he could only imagine the hilarity that a
Flaming Nipple was going to cause him.
There was
only one thing left for him to do… He grabbed the bottle of tequila sitting on
the counter and started pouring it down his throat, because he was not about to
be sober when it did this time either.
As he walked back into the living room again, he just hoped someone
remembered where the tattoo parlor was.