Thanks Kirsten for the beta.

Lunch was lunch even when it was eaten at three o'clock in the morning. As long as it was the meal eaten between breakfast and dinner, it was lunch. That was the meal that Warrick Brown was about to indulge in as he stood in front of the microwave.

He seemed transfixed by the burrito circling slowly inside of the machine, illuminated by friendly yellow light. There was a vacancy in his gaze that Gil Grissom, entering the room to retrieve a mug of tea, noticed almost immediately. While adding sugar to the hot water, he gazed over and assessed the man's posture – slumped. Grissom had noted the lack of enthusiasm the CSI had exuded in the past few weeks and while it didn't trouble him, it did interest him.

If Grissom was the type of person to become overtly worried, he might have asked Warrick what was wrong.

"Warrick, is something wrong?" the older man asked delicately, inwardly cursing the part of him that had vowed to 'try more' as of late. The tea bag slipped out of his fingers and into the mug; the two men watched it bob up and down for a moment before glancing at each other.

Once having made eye contact they both shrugged and took a step away, an uncomfortable silence settling in-between them. Talking to someone wasn't easy; talking to Grissom was downright hard. The fact that he had offered in the first place was enough to throw Warrick off his game for a few moments.

Eyes now focused on the floor, neither one of them said a thing before the whiny 'beep, beep, beep' of the microwave startled them.

Some of the tea sloshed over the rim of the mug and landed on Grissom's shoe, seemingly spurring him to speak. "Well, if you need someone to speak with..." but he left it at that.

Warrick nodded slowly and reached for his sloppy burrito. Just as Grissom was posed to turn away, Warrick took his food and threw it down onto the plate hard, beans and melted cheese oozing out from the edges. "I'm, I'm sorry man, it's just that... Tina..."

Grissom cleared his throat and slid into a seat at the table, Warrick following behind him. He sat down across the table from his boss and stared at the mess of meat and tortilla on his plate. Twisting his mouth into a disgusted scowl, he sent the plate skittering across the table until it came to rest just in front of Grissom's newspaper, causing his eyebrows to test the bounds of his forehead. "You know, I never thought this whole marriage deal would be easy but..."

Grissom didn't know if it was even possible for a fifty-year-old man to successfully complete a fidget, but at that comment he did – squirming just a bit in his chair. "Warrick, marital problems are common, especially in the first few –"

"I think she's cheating on me," Warrick said suddenly, vehemently, avoiding his supervisor's gaze; finding it much easier to focus upon the cool blue of the table rather than the lost eyes of Grissom. "And it's not like this is a sudden thing... it's how she looks at him." Warrick glanced up for a moment before adding, "And vice versa."

Grissom placed his beverage on the table and sat back in the chair, giving himself a moment to review the facts that he was sure of. Warrick and Tina had been married for nearly six months, give or take. After thinking about it, he admitted to himself that what he had said about newlyweds wasn't entirely true; the first few months were generally the easiest. Then again, Warrick had only known Tina for a few months before they'd tied the knot, so that may have had something to do with it, Grissom thought. From what he had gathered from overhearing his co-workers speak on the matter, Tina was a nurse, very pretty (as Greg was sure to point out), very friendly, attentive and intelligent.

Overall, she seemed, to Grissom, to be a woman that a man would be lucky to marry, but this was all gathered without ever actually having met her. That wasn't a very good body of evidence to rely on, Grissom thought to himself. "I take it you mean that there's another man in the equation," Grissom surmised, folding his hands on the table to keep them from toying with the edges of the newspaper.

Warrick blinked, his eyes carrying a sort of sadness that Grissom hadn't seen in awhile, and it puzzled him. "There's a man that she works with, a doctor. They used to date... she's been, I don't know." As an afterthought, he added quietly, "Doctor Curry."

Grissom nodded and waited for him to continue, partly because he didn't want to push him, but also because he truly didn't know what to say. "She's been going out with friends a lot more, coming home late... she keeps getting calls and having to take them into the other room." Warrick paused and rubbed his temples, hard. "I don't want to be that guy, you know?"

The older man nodded, "I understand," Grissom said, his voice low and patient. Then it turned rather wistful as he said, "But you can't help it either." Warrick shook his head, looking up. "Everyone has a jealousy gene Warrick. Everyone."

A sigh filled the space between them and the room went silent again. Just when Grissom was sure that the conversation was over and he was about to get up to leave, Warrick asked in a hushed voice, "Even you?"

Snapping his head up, eyes wide in shock, Grissom opened his mouth to speak. Then, he closed it again, cocked his head and pondered the question. Eventually, he came to the conclusion, "Yes, even me."

"Picture that," Warrick chuckled quietly and brought the goop of a lunch back in front of him with one finger. "This is disgusting," he chuckled again, the comment served to break the tension that had settled over the pair. Grissom nodded and sipped the dregs of his tea, moving back to the sink to make a new cup.

"That it is," he replied absent-mindedly, missing the entrance of Sara Sidle, balancing a thermos of something and a tupperware container with a piece of paper attached to the top.

Warrick voice caught Grissom's attention and he spun around just as she set down the items on the table. "Hey, girl. Whatcha got there?" Sara pushed her hair out of her face and smiled, plopping down in the seat that Grissom had vacated.

"It's not what I've got, it's what you've got," she pointed out and slid him the container whilst frowning at the food on the plate in front of him. "Your blushing bride left these at the front for you." Sara grabbed the thermos and held it up, sniffing at it. "I told her I'd bring it back."

Warrick smiled and peeled the piece of paper from the top of it and then popped the lid off of the tupperware, sending a delicious aroma throughout the break room. "Whoa, lasagna," he exclaimed, a slow grin forming on his face. "The lady can cook," he explained to Sara, who smiled and nodded and sat back in the chair.

"Yeah, it'd been a while since I'd seen her; she invited me to her book club," she mentioned casually, looking over the half-finished crossword puzzle on the table. "Mind if I finish this?" she called over her shoulder to Grissom who uttered a polite 'no', and began fixing her a cup of tea.

Warrick looked up, confused. "Book club?"

"Mmm, Tuesday and Saturday mornings. She said it's with some people from radiology and admitting," Sara said as she picked up the pen on the table and began filling in clues. "They're reading 'Lolita'," she added as an afterthought, scrunching her brow at one of the prompts on the paper.

"Oh," he said, as he opened the sheet of paper and ran his eyes over the words quickly. The smile that was on his face blossomed into a full grown grin, complete with a short burst of laughter. "Yeah, she uh, wants to talk this morning," he said and folded the paper neatly before tucking it into his breast pocket. "Relationships are never easy, right?"

"They shouldn't be," Sara said quickly, in a voice devoid of emotion. "That would take all the fun out of it."

Warrick nodded and gathered his new lunch, appreciative of what Sara had said. "I hear that, I hear that." He left, taking the appealing scent of lasagna with him.

Grissom glanced at Sara, who'd pulled her legs underneath her and begun to attack his puzzle with a vengeance. "This is wrong," she said to him, pointing at the paper. "It's Oman, not Iran," she supplied and scratched out his answer to fill in her own.

Slowly, he walked to stand behind where she was seated and watched her work for a few minutes. Then, he placed the tea down in front of her and she smiled up at him briefly, returning to the puzzle almost immediately. "It's not supposed to be easy?" he questioned, lingering in the doorway.

"Nope. It's not," she replied without looking up.

Grissom nodded, looked both ways down the hall and then back at her. "Stop by my office when you're finished, I'd like you to come somewhere with me."

She would have replied to this with 'anywhere', but she was too busy filling in the little gray boxes with the word 'nowhere', in response to the clue "negation of location, fashionable imperative."

TBC (Damn you WIPs, why must you taunt my muse so!)