I was tired of putting stats up here, so here’s a paragraph instead… This is a random little thing I decided to do called Personal Ad. It’ll probably end up being two chapters. Greg puts a personal ad on a dating website and actually gets a response he’s interested in…

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Mans0nM0use – BiWM – M4M or W (see bottom for translation)

Stats:

Height – 5’10”

Weight – I’m not entirely sure why that’s relevant, but I’m pretty skinny.

Hair – Unnaturally blonde (AKA dyed)

Eyes – A lovely chocolate brown, if I do say so myself.

My Descrip: I’m outgoing, adventurous, open minded, hard working, but somewhat of a goofball. I love to take risks, and I’d say I’m a daredevil. I’m willing to try anything once. I love music and listen to it all the time, even when I shower :). I’m very attractive (and modest too).

Warning – I’m nocturnal, because I live in Vegas and most jobs are nightshift…

Seeking – Between 21 and 35, but if you aren’t right on the money, that’s okay too…

Oh god, he was sinking to the level of online dating… Greg stared at the post he’d prepared for an online personal ad agency. It wasn’t that he was desperate, well, maybe he was, but online dating wasn’t always a bust.

He sighed, his mouse hovering over the submit button. Once he did it, there wasn’t any going back. He couldn’t delete the message, but it wasn’t really a commitment. If he changed his mind, he never had to visit the site again. The replies he got could just sit in the database, gathering cyber-dust. What could he lose?

Why was he doing this again? He was charming, witty, great with the girls and the guys, so why was he resorting to this? Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he got very little social time outside of the Crime Lab. He really, REALLY needed a boyfriend… or a girlfriend, he hadn’t been very specific in his ad.

At this point, it really didn’t matter. Greg would take either gender, as long as it got him away from the lab and made him stop thinking about… him… There was no point in pining after what he couldn’t have, so he had to push it out of his mind. A relationship would be a great distraction.

Ah, the simplicity of dating through It was dating without the cumbersome task of going out and meeting someone. If you hit it off online, you could get together. If things didn’t go so well, you deleted your screen name and moved on to the next internet site.

Greg clicked the submit button.

A pleasant tone and friendly window popped up to tell him that the upload had been successful. All he had to do was wait for the responses to start coming in.

He shut down his computer and twirled his chair in a playful 360. Work started in an hour, and he was ready to head out, knowing that he wouldn’t have a reason to long for his associate. Soon, he’d have a quality relationship with someone he’d met on the internet…

His plan was so doomed… There was no way that anything good could come out of his internet escapades, but he didn’t have time to think about that. If he didn’t leave for work soon, he’d never make it on time.

Greg tossed on his fluorescent orange Converse and grabbed his car keys. He couldn’t be late for the next four months, or Eckley would have his hide. Traffic got the best of him too many days to give him a good record with that man. Actually, his lack of interest in any sort of butt kissing was what gave him a bad record with that man.

Rather than risk another tardy, he skipped out on his regular cup of brew and left. Traffic held him up, on cue, but he actually made it into the lab right on time. Greg punched his proverbial card, gave the lady working the front desk a wink and a smile, dropped his junk in the locker room, and made it into the break room with just enough time to spare.

Halfway through a cup of less-than-satisfying coffee (his stash at the office seemed to have MYSTERIOUSLY gone missing), Nick came strolling in. The Texan was smiling and laughing, sharing some joke with Warrick. As always, Stokes was looking damn good in a pair of tight jeans and a black shirt that left nothing to the imagination.

Greg tried to pay more attention to his coffee than to Nick’s ass, but it was difficult and became more so when the man leaned on the counter casually… right next to him.

“Hey Greggo, ready to start the night?” Nick asked him warmly.

Sometimes, even if it wasn’t deliberate, Nick was just plain evil.

Greg was determined not to follow the line of the Texan’s back with his eyes, all the way down and then up again. He couldn’t let his gaze linger on his finely sculpted shoulders, or the wonderful line where the muscles in his neck disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt. Nick was untouchable and maybe that was why Greg wanted him so bad, but a good, catholic Texas boy like Nick was defiantly not gay.

“Well, I would be raring to go, if someone hadn’t used the last of my coffee,” Greg complained lightly, instead of jumping on Nick in front of Warrick and everyone else within sight of the break room. Damn the crime lab and all of its windows.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to have to talk to somebody else about that.”

Warrick chuckled and claimed one of the armchairs in the room, mentioning, “If you find the empty package, maybe you could write off the use of the lab equipment for fingerprint analysis.”

“Of course, that would get you in major trouble,” Grissom mentioned, as he entered with a handful of cases to give out.

The three men let the joke go, getting down to business. Gil handed out the work for the evening with very little ceremony. Fortunately, Greg was paired off with Sara, so there was no need to keep his hormones at bay. He liked Sara, but she’d shot him down and he never looked back. The partnership allowed him to give his full attention to their case.

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A double shift, forty-seven shell casings, and three unruly witnesses later, Greg dragged into his apartment. He was tired and disgusting. The case had required him to crawl all over muddy, garbage-strewn alleyways, looking for clues to a murder that no one had been witness to except the victim and the killer.

How the victim had managed to dodge through alleyways under heavy gunfire and survive taking eight rounds to the back before collapsing was beyond imagination. What was even more shocking was the fact that absolutely no one heard the encounter.

All Greg wanted to do was wash the difficult case down the drain with the plethora of stains he’d acquired chasing the evidence. The hot water did the trick, soothing aching muscles and stressed mind, until Greg was happy punk-rocker goo in a bath robe.

He wandered back into his living room, on his way to the kitchen, when the computer caught his eye. It was possible that he’d received a response to his posting, but it was probably too soon to tell.

Greg debated booting up the machine to check on results, but decided that he was jumping the gun. It was too soon and there was no need to be overeager. He continued on to the kitchen to grab a glass of chocolate milk.

It was probably sad that he had a gallon of chocolate milk in his fridge and not regular milk, but he never drank the other stuff and it was his fridge anyway. What could he say; he was a child at heart. A few early morning cartoons would seal his fate as a goober, but Greg fell onto the couch the way only a young male could, with a heaviness that exceeded his actual weight (it was more like tossing himself onto the couch), to enjoy the TV shows of his childhood.

After about half an hour, Greg couldn’t keep his gaze from straying to his dark computer screen.

It wouldn’t hurt to take a peek. If he didn’t have any responses, then it would put him to rest and he could get in bed. If he did… well, he’d deal with it accordingly. He had his doubts as he pressed the button to wake up his computer. There couldn’t be anything after such a short turn-around, could there?

Greg logged onto the Vegas Singles website and a friendly tone informed him that he’d received a message in his inbox.

“Ah, write it and they will come,” Greg alluded with a grin.

A search of his message center produced a surprising amount of interest in his ad, as there were six responses waiting for him. He clicked on the first one. It was for a girl, which was not a bad thing:

ActiasLunas – SWF - W4M - S4D

Stats:

Age: 26

Height - 5'3''

Weight - I kick box for an hour and a half everyday. Thin.

Hair - Black

Eyes - Blue

Descrip: I work late hours, so I don't meet many people here in Vegas, at least not the dating type. People often refer to me as scholarly, but I really try to avoid that 'good girl' librarian stereotype. I hobbies include DDR, videogames, doodling, sculpture, and finding songs off the radio to download. I consider sleep one of the most unappreciated aspects of life, and enjoy it thoroughly. I also like to talk to random people at clubs, and to gamble. Poker is more than a hobby; it's a way of thinking.

Greg never even made it past the first line. Okay, he’d taken Latin at some point in his college career and, while he was sure that she was a nice girl, Latin and dating didn’t seem to mix… Greg moved on to the next response:

JESSIBL3 – HetWF – B/D

Height – 5’2”

HWP

Age - 22

Hair – red

Eyes – bright green

Description: I’m extremely assertive and enjoy all kinds of dark play. I’ve experimented with BDSM and am a fan of S&M. I’m looking for someone who is willing to try new things with me. If you’re interested, drop me a note, and I’ll show you the darker side of Vegas.

Greg closed the message. Perhaps he should have filled out the ‘seeking’ form a little more thoroughly. While he was up to new things, that really wasn’t a world he was willing to jump into on a whim. It wasn’t working out the way he thought it would. So far, he was approaching the whole online business at the wrong angle. He made a few additions and alterations to his public info before moving on to the other messages.

Greg went through two more notes, his tiny faith in the system dwindling with every moment he spent in it. With the changes he’d made to his profile, things would get better, but he was beginning to wonder why he’d thought that the internet will solve his problems.

About ready to shut the whole thing down, Greg decided to check the last entry:

NightOwl – M

Statistics:

Height – 5’10”

Weight – 164

Hair Color – Brown

Eye Color – Brown

Age – 31

My Description – I work mostly nights, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not available during the day. I wouldn’t say that I’m a risk taker, but I do enjoy a good challenge, especially if it’s athletic. I paraglide when I can find the time. I’m kind of looking for something that could possibly become long-term.

Question: In your description, it said you like music, what kind?

What kind of music did he like? Greg smiled. That could potentially be a very long list. This guy defiantly caught his attention, and not in a bad way. No one else had asked him anything and it was kind of charming.

It had been a while since Greg’s last boyfriend. He missed some of the things he could only get with a man, like the deep bond that’s both friendship and love. He was still good buddies with the last guy he’d gone out with, even if the relationship did go to hell in a hand basket. Some of that bond still remained. Thinking back, Greg had dated Andrew in college, so it had been far too long.

Greg typed up a response for NightOwl, not bothering with the standard statistics that accompany the first message exchange:

Mans0nM0use – That’s a hard question to answer, I like so many different genres of music. I’m really a big rock-n-roll fan and I’ll listen to anything from oldies to death metal. On occasion, usually only after a really stressful day, I’ll toss in a bit of classical, but that never lasts long.

What about you? I know you like to paraglide (which is really awesome btw, I want to try that some time), but what other sports do you like? I like to surf when I can get out to the beach.

Oh, I also would like a relationship that could get serious. Let me know what you think.

Greg sent the message and sat back. Perhaps something good would come out of his escapades after all. He went to bed, already anticipating the answer he’d get. It was good to have a little something to look forward to at the end of the day.

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“Hey Greg… Earth to Greg, come in Greg…”

Nick had to put his hand on the spacey CSI before he got any kind of reaction. Greg jumped at the touch, whipping around to see who had snuck up on him. When Nick smiled at him, he pulled his ear-buds out and shut off his IPod.

“What’s up?”

Nick shook his head and glanced over Greg’s shoulder. Normally, it wasn’t a good idea to listen to music while on the clock, but Greg could get away with it when he was reassembling the contents of a shredder bin. It was mindless work.

“I wanted to know if you’d sorted any of this out yet. We need a good lead,” the Texan said, fingering one of the bills Greg had managed to assemble. Greg swatted his hand away. Nick couldn’t stop the smirk that twisted his lips up at the corners.

“Well, you need to let me finish first and then I’ll tell you what I’ve got. You’re so impatient,” Greg complained and continued to sort the tiny strips of paper. It taken him a little over and hour and a half to put together the four documents that he had, and he really didn’t need Nick rearranging his workspace. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy having the A&M alumni hovering at his back, but he was trying to cut back on his ‘getting hot over Nick’ time.

Chuckling, the Texan held up his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright, why don’t you page me when you’re done,” he said and backed off. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

“I’ll bet you will be,” Greg muttered as the older CSI disappeared down the crime lab corridors. It was wrong for one human being to be so incredibly attractive.

Greg sifted through the tangle of paper to separate out a single strip. It fit perfectly in a spot he’d been trying to fill for ten minutes. As he continued to work, his mind strayed to NightOwl. He wondered if he’d gotten a response yet.

It wasn’t like he even knew anything about the man, but some part of him had giddy anticipation about getting home to his computer. The other part was too busy telling him that he was lame to be excited, but he told that section of his brain to shut up and go to hell. It may have been lame, but he would have a good time of it yet.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of work left for him to do before he could go home. The case they were currently solving wasn’t one of the worst that he’d ever been assigned, but it involved a lot of fraud and destroyed paperwork (which Greg was painfully made aware of when Warrick had dumped the shredder contents on his table).

“God, I can’t look at this stuff anymore,” Greg moaned and ran a hand through his hair. One could only look at shredded paper for so long. It was defiantly time for a well deserved break and some lunch. He taped together the documents he’d completed and set out for the sandwich waiting for him in the public mini-fridge.

Some kind of unique stench assaulted his senses when he opened the fridge. Greg tried to ignore the experiment Grissom had stewing on the top shelf and grabbed his ham sandwich. He could only hope that the fumes hadn’t soaked into his food.

Since there was no one in the break room, he took his sandwich into one of the computer labs. He logged onto the Mac closest to the door and typed in his desired webpage. Rather than the Vegas Singles homepage, the LVPD shield came up on the screen with a warning stating that the website he wished to visit was blocked by the company firewall.

Greg frowned at the block. He’d never actually encountered the filtering system before, but he had heard rumors that it existed. Most websites could be considered research in a CSI’s work, so the list of blocked sites was extremely limited. Online dating services, however, had no practical application in police business. It was a shame.

He’d have to wait until he got home, which was proving to be difficult with his level of impatience. There really wasn’t any hurry, but he found himself wishing that the shift would just end.

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To be continued...

Translation for letters -

BiWM – Bisexual White Male

M4M or W – Man looking for man or woman

SWF – Single White Female

W4M – Woman looking for man

S4D – Single for dating

HetWF – Heterosexual White Female

B/D – Bondage and Disipline

BDSM – Bondage, discipline, slave, master

M - Male