Author's Note: This mock essay is accompanying "Why I Love Nick Stokes an essay by Greg Sanders" that I had written earlier this week. Hope it meets everyone's expectations.

Oneshot. Fluff. Nick/Greg. Nick's POV-first person. Slash.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters mentioned, except for Ms. Degan.

Acknowledgements: I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed "Why I Love Nick Stokes an essay by Greg Sanders" because those reviews truly made my day(s).

I would also like to thank Amanda for proofreading and for making me smile.

Summary: For a couples' appreciation course, Nick (willingly) writes an essay on why he can't live without Greg Sanders.

Why I Can't Live Without Greg Sanders

an essay by Nick Stokes

Note: I, like Greg, haven't written an essay in an extremely long time. Ms. Degan, I too hope that this isn't way out of format, and if it is, then it will still get my point across. But unlike Greg, I actually enjoyed writing this. He thinks that song lyrics and some kinds of poetry are the only ways love can be written, and I completely disagree. There's almost a poetic vibe (I haven't used that word in forever) to this essay, and I hope all this is apparent in my words.

The title of my essay should probably give away my relationship with Greg Sanders: He's the one person that is keeping me alive right now. All the things he says to me, the way he touches me, and the way he looks at me keeps my heart beating, my lungs expanding and contracting. Greg Sanders is the blood in my body, if that isn't too weird to say, and even if it is, I said it anyways.

I can barely remember a time when Greg wasn't in my life. Obviously, I had many years without him, but I didn't truly understand happiness until I met him. I had been working at the Las Vegas crime lab for a few years (I don't even remember the exact amount anymore) and I walked into the DNA lab and found Greg twirling and spinning on his chair.

His hair was a light blonde and it was fairly long but straight. His chocolate brown eyes peeked at me through his bangs, and a large, beautiful smile spread across his face. I remember he still had some acne dotted across his cheeks, and his ears poked through his hair.

"Hey," he had said, hopping out of his chair. "My name's Greg Sanders, the new DNA tech. You must be Nick, obviously, 'cause I can see it on your nametag. I love it here already, it's—" I don't remember anything else that he said, because he was shaking my hand. His skin was soft, and it was if an electric shock had jolted through him and into me. My fingers tingled, and I pulled away quickly, and it didn't seem as if Greg had noticed.

Greg was the first guy that had stirred up that kind of feeling in me, and I didn't like it. After saying goodbye to the overenthusiastic lab tech, I remember telling myself to not get too involved with him. To try to keep away, but I couldn't. I just couldn't.

We became fast friends, and he started coming over to my house to hang out. We would laugh, have a few beers, and just talk. I could tell anything to Greg. He became one of my best friends within weeks, and I started to see him almost as much as I saw Warrick, my longtime best friend since I had moved to Las Vegas.

I don't really know if Warrick could tell that shivers passed through me whenever I would sit beside Greg on the couch at my house or in the break room. I never told him, though, and I think he just began to realize that I wasn't the straight guy everyone thought I was. We never actually talked about it, but I want to think that he knows now that we are in love and have been for a long time.

Thinking about Warrick, I can now see how different our relationship is. We would usually hang out two or three times a week, but now we rarely see each other after shift. I go home to sleep, Greg in tow, and Warrick goes off to his own place. Even after all those times when he's asked if I wanted to go to the strip and I shirked it off, he still hasn't up and asked me if Greg's the reason why I don't go along. Does Warrick even know that Greg and I are living together? I'd like to be able to tell him straight up, but I just don't have that kind of courage.

At first, Greg used to always ask me if I was ready to go public about our relationship, but after a few years of asking me, he stopped. Greg has this kind of explosive personality. Almost as if the first time you meet him, it's like BAM! You just know him after that. He doesn't even need to tell you that he's bi, you just get this kind of feeling that he is. I can't really explain it, but I'm sure that there are people on this earth that match this description. Greg's also an extremely honest guy, and I knew this from the first time I met him.

He, unlike myself, can tell people almost anything about his past, his goals and ambitions, and his relationships. Honestly, I wish I was like him in that way. Greg has come close to telling Sara, one of his best friends, about us many times, but he always falls short of the truth. He does this because of me, against his better judgment. He's told me many times that he will wait until I'm ready, because he loves me and he wants me to be comfortable with who I am.

That's another reason why I can't live without Greg—he helps me to be myself. He lets me know that it's okay to be myself. I can either be overly emotional or I bottle up all my feelings, and Greg's always there beside me when I do both of those things. He'll be there to calm me down when I need someone, and he's also there to try to open me up.

Most of the time, I just listen. I'm good at that—I can listen without needing to say anything. I can relate to people and I usually understand their points of view. Greg is generally the one that I spend most of my time talking to, and I also spend a lot of time helping him through things. He sometimes likes to make it seem as if he's always calming me down, but usually it's the other way around. At work, we are both fairly professional, although I will admit that, in the past, my feelings have gotten the better of me. That doesn't really happen anymore, but at home it's another story.

At home, no one can judge you. They can't judge you on your performance (okay, if Greg is reading this, please don't laugh out loud, I didn't mean it like that), and they can't judge you on how well you do your work. There are no Sheriffs or Undersheriffs at home … no one to get mad at you if you break down every once in a while. At home, you can be yourself and let your emotions out.

I can't even count how many times I've had Greg break down. Sometimes he gets angry at the way humanity behaves, and sometimes he just cries. I used to do this a lot too, but I guess I got a little desensitized to the violence and mayhem that is being unleashed on the world every time I go to work. I've gotten used to it, as horrible as that sounds, and I've begun to realize that sometimes all you can do is solve the murder. Sometimes all you can do is tell the victim's parents or friends what had happened to them and say that the murderer is going to be in prison for a long, long time. I've never been in the victim's family's position, so I don't know exactly how reassuring that is, but I can tell by the looks in their eyes that it isn't much.

Sometimes the only way that I can truly forget what is happening to our world is by cuddling up to Greg when he's sleeping soundly and I can't join him. In the artificial darkness of our room, I can still see the outline of Greg, fast asleep right beside me. He sometimes snores in his sleep, but that's usually only when he has a cold. Sometimes he has nightmares, and I hold him until they pass. And sometimes he talks in his sleep, usually telling me an entertaining story about Papa Olaf. His hair is always sticking up at crazy angles, and his shoulders are slowly lifting and lowering. His right hand is always curled around the top of our comforter, and his left is underneath his pillow.

I spend a lot of my time looking at Greg sleep—in his sleep, he is the picture of innocence that parents try to put into their child's heads about the world. The world that is doing fine, the world that isn't leading countries into poverty, into famine, into disease. The world that isn't hoarding nuclear weapons of doom and destruction. No, we preach to our young that the world is okay, don't worry about it. We may reiterate that over and over again, but I think we say it just to try to dispel our own fears. Too bad it doesn't work.

Looking at Greg slumber always makes me sleepy, which I'm thankful for. After a hard shift, all I want to do is sleep, but sometimes I can't. When I start to feel my eyelids grow heavy, I slide closer to Greg and wrap my arms around his chest. Sometimes he'll whisper something under his breath, but most times I'll just know that in his sleep, he's smiling. I'll lower my head onto his pillow, the sweet, almost creamy (and slightly feminine) smell from Greg's shampoo overriding my senses as I drift off to sleep. Even without him saying a word, Greg helps me in more ways than I can count, and one is just helping me sleep—something I've battled on and off for years.

My first sleeping troubles came around the time Greg was beaten up by that gang of "Fannysmackers," as they called themselves. All they were were kids who didn't have a direction in life. Kids who had no idea what they wanted to achieve, no idea what they could achieve. They beat tourists up just because they were bored. Even as I'm typing this, my hands are shaking. Greg had gotten on the wrong side of those punks when he saved a man's life—a man who they had marked as a target. Greg had done what any respectable person had done: He tried to scare the kids away from the man, and when that didn't happen and his own life was being threatened, he reacted in self defense.

Demetrius James is one name I'll never forget. If Greg hadn't reacted the way he had, if he had taken a more passive approach, I wonder if he'd still be alive today. Would Demetrius James have actually killed him? I can't answer that, but there's a cold patch in my heart that makes me think he would've.

Greg paid dearly for his brave actions: He was brutally assaulted and beaten. I'm so thankful Sara was there for him as he was taken to the hospital, because I know he would've needed someone. Sara had told me later, her eyes wet with tears, that he had thought she was there for the evidence. As she held his hand on the way to the hospital, she had a hard time trying not to break down, but I just let her cry in my arms in the locker room hours later. She didn't need to hold her feelings in, the way I was, because my inner torment might've been worse than all her feelings put together.

The realization that Greg could've died hit me the hardest. It was the second time I'd felt that kind of shocking jolt, the first was back when he was a lab tech and the lab blew up. Both times he was taken to the hospital, and both times he stayed there for a while. With the lab explosion, he didn't have any severe scarring from the burns (thank God), but his hands wouldn't stop trembling afterwards. I first discovered this when we were hanging out at my house, and all of a sudden his fingers had started to twitch.

Greg was absolutely horrified, trying to hide it from me. He sat on his hands, thinking I wouldn't notice, but I already had.

"Greg," I had said, inching closer to him. "Why are your hands trembling?"

"Grissom said they would stop, and they haven't yet," he had whispered in response, his eyes moistening.

"This … this is from the explosion, right?"

Greg had only nodded, letting a lone tear stream down his cheek. I reached up and brushed it away, only letting my hand stay against his warm skin for a second. His eyes found mine, and there was an almost wondering glint in them, as if he too had felt something from the touch.

"It will," I promised, giving him a shy smile.

That was the last time his hands had ever bothered him, or that's what he tells me nowadays. Sometimes I think he's just saying that, but maybe it's true. Who really knows.

I seem to be getting a bit off topic, so I'll go back to what I was originally talking about—the realization of Greg almost dying. I think that Lemony Snicket described it best in his book titled "Horseradish", and the saying is as follows: "It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. … It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things." It's pretty much the same way when I almost lost Greg. There was that realization that he had almost been gone from the earth, that sense of falling, and then once I got to the bottom, I had to readjust. I couldn't worry about losing Greg in the future because no one knows when the end is near. All I know is that Greg didn't die that day in the lab or that night in the alley. If he had, well, who knows where I would be right now.

I'm fairly sure all the CSI's at the Las Vegas crime lab have their own near death experiences, but I'm going to talk about mine here, because it changed how I viewed my relationship with Greg. We had gotten into a huge fight only a few weeks previous, over something as stupid as who's turn it was to go get groceries, and then we just broke up. I felt as if my whole heart was completely numb, but somehow I kept living. I forced myself to act natural, and no one could tell that my soul seemed to have died.

When I was kidnapped and put into the coffin, my only reflexes were to survive. I wanted to live—I didn't want to die in there. I had a lot to live for: my career, my friends, my future, and Greg. When I felt the gun in my hand, Greg's face flashed across my sight. It was almost as if it was a warning (maybe a beacon of hope?) to tell me that they were looking for me. I would be found.

Later (was it hours? Minutes?), I heard the fan give out. No more air. No more life. The ants were already all over me, my skin on fire, and I was ready to throw in the towel. Enough was enough. I was out of oxygen and the ants were going to eat me alive. The gun that had, at first, felt so heavy in my hand began to feel light, almost like a feather.

I put it up to my jaw, tears leaking out of my eyes, but I couldn't pull the trigger. My finger was twitching, and all I could think about was everyone I was going to lose, especially Greg. It had been weeks since I had told him I loved him, and I was sure he thought I had stopped loving him. He was wrong, one hundred percent wrong.

I could never stop loving him; no little fight would ever make a difference in how I felt about him. It was too bad that I had never told him that, because I could feel myself tightening around the trigger …

Everyone at the Las Vegas crime lab saved my life that day. They all had a part to play in that, and I will be forever grateful to them for it. Without them, I'd be dead right now. Without them, I wouldn't be living with Greg, and a beautiful cat named ShamWow (name courtesy of Greg).

Now I seriously am off the topic of why I can't live without Greg (or maybe I am on it, and I just don't really realize it), so I'm going to get into a few more reasons why I can't live without Greg. For starters, he is just one of those people that can always make me laugh. Even if I'm having the worst day of my life, he can still make me laugh so hard I'll cry. Or, if I'm not laughing, he'll say something sweet and I'll smile.

Greg gets such a big thrill out of me smiling that sometimes I'll laugh at his silly jokes just to see his delighted expression. His smile is radiant, absolutely beautiful, and it radiates this angelic light. It's almost a light that's warm to the touch. His eyes are perfect and gorgeously brown, and there's a deep soul behind them. Greg and I both believe in souls (even if we aren't religious, if that makes any sense), and we both think that the eyes are the most telling. His eyes also have this ethereal quality, this almost innocent wisdom that shows the world as it is. The world is harsh and cruel, but there is a beauty to it—humanity is just destroying that splendor.

I honestly think that Greg has kept me alive these past few years just because he was there for me. I've had my friends, it's true, but having someone who'll just hold you when you need it (even if it's in the middle of the night) is kind of … reassuring. I know that Greg and my time on earth is limited, but I deal with that fear. I know I worry about him (he does the same, he just doesn't think I know), but all you can do is live your life the way you do. Be a good person, treat others right, be polite, be a good friend, be a good lover (again, Greg, not what I meant), and just be there for others.

He helps me achieve every single one of those things. Greg's been there to support me through the most important part of my life so far, through the hospital trips, the down time, and the nights off. There were those times when I went to visit Greg at the hospital, or at home because he was sick, but that's still time we've spent together, supporting each other.

Greg's my crutch, and I'm not afraid to say that. If he was suddenly gone out of my life, I would fall straight down. I don't think there'd even be a bottom. He's also a part of me (the better part, I'd say), and if he suddenly left, a part of me would be missing too. My brain, my heart, and my soul.

I can't live without Greg Sanders, because I love him too much to be apart from him.

Coming up next in the series:

Why Lady Heather Should Leave Las Vegas

an essay by Sara Sidle

Just kidding!