A/N: Ok, I admit it, I'm a complete and utter feedback whore, and so many people said they wanted another fluff/casefile storythat I decided to go ahead and jump right into a new one. No guarantees about how it'll turn out; I'm just hoping the plot will come together sometime before the story ends!

A/N 2: Oops, made a minor change today (1-24) to fix a continuity error.

It was twelve thirty on a Tuesday and Logan and Goren were huddled over Goren's desk, each holding a sandwich in one hand and a highlighter in the other as they scanned a set of phone records they'd volunteered to work on for one of the other detectives.

Boredom was the enemy when it came to Major Case's best and brightest, and since neither partnership had been hit with a full-blown case in nearly a week, they'd gotten sick of sitting around. Well, it was really more like Eames and Barek getting sick of having Logan's spitballs land on their desks, and everyone getting sick of Goren's restless pacing, but it all amounted to the same thing. Today, they'd finally given up hope.

Eames and Barek, after a few minutes of quiet discussion, had gotten to their feet halfway through the morning and mumbled something about female bonding, making Logan and Goren look at each other blankly. "You'll think of something to do, boys," Barek had said sweetly, patting her partner on the head. "Don't start any fights with each other while we're gone, mmkay?" With that, they'd disappeared, leaving their partners to occupy themselves however they could, which turned out to be by volunteering to check a set of phone dumps for one of the other detectives who was running behind.

"Uh, guys," Deakins said, approaching the two men from behind now as they worked over the phone dumps.

Logan jumped slightly, startled at the breaking of the silence that had reigned for the past hour. Half the lettuce in his sandwich slid out of his loosened grip, landing with a plop just inches from Eames's laptop. "Hell," he muttered, suppressing a less work-appropriate word and quickly grabbing the escaped food, hoping Goren wouldn't mention it to Eames. "What do you want, Captain?"

"Nice to see you boys, too," Deakins replied dryly, raising his eyebrows at Logan's actions. "I've got work for you both. Where are your partners?"

Logan looked blank and shrugged; Goren thought for a second and said, "Probably on the firing range."

"Firing range?" Logan echoed. "How'd you get that out of 'female bonding'?"

"Eames is too professional to sneak out to watch a chick flick in the middle of the work day," Goren said as if it was a given, garnering laughs from the other men. "Eliminate that and an ice cream run, and there aren't too many other things they can bond over."

"You've got a point there," Deakins agreed. "One of you want to call down there and get them?"

Logan wiped the mayonnaise off his hand with a napkin and nodded. "Yeah, sure. I'll do it."

"Good. Let me know when they're back." With that, Deakins headed back to his office, knowing he didn't need to push the detectives to get moving. Eames and Barek would hightail it upstairs at the thought of a possible case.

"Use your phone?" Logan asked Goren, nodding at the desk phone that sat next to his portfolio.

Goren just nodded and waved a hand toward it, then returned his attention to his lunch.

Logan rolled his eyes and dialed the extension for the firing range that occupied the basement of the building.

"Yeah, you got Bullet 'R' Us," said the attending officer who answered the range phone. "What do you want?"

Logan took a moment to wonder why he hadn't taken a job that let him be rude to callers. "Detectives Barek and Eames should be down by you," he told the man when he decided it was because firing range supervisors were almost required to be grimy while on the job. "Get me Barek."

A few seconds later, Barek's voice came over the line. "Logan?"

"How'd you know it was me?"

She snorted. "The guy said the caller didn't have any manners, so I knew it wasn't Goren. I played the odds after that."

"Very funny. Now, grab Alex and haul ass up here, would you, because I think we might have caught a real, live case."

"Hallelujah!" she exclaimed, then cut off abruptly. "Oops. The whole room just heard that and now Eames is laughing at me. We'll see you in a few minutes."

Logan hung up the phone and raised his sandwich toward his mouth, but didn't manage to actually take a bite before Goren lazed back in his chair, crossed his arms, and asked, "You always talk to your partner like that?"

"Shove it," Logan grumbled, resolutely stuffing half of the sandwich remains in his hand into his mouth.

"Hey, just asking," Goren said, holding up his hands in mock-surrender. "Because she doesn't strike me as the type to -"

"I thought I told you to shut up."

"If you say so." Goren flipped open his portfolio and promptly became absorbed in something inside it, appearing to forget that the other man was near his desk at all.

Barek and Eames, both slight winded from their run up the stairs, jogged up to his desk a few minutes later. They'd expected to find their partners bouncing around like impatient little boys, but what they found was that each man was scowling and pointedly concentrating on something that wasn't near the other man.

"Well?" Eames prompted, taking in the two sulking men and waiting for them to announce the details of the new case. When neither answered, she turned to Barek and sighed pointedly. "So much for 'don't start any fights'."

"Yeah, really." She swatted Logan on the shoulder to get his attention. "You guys are pathetic, you know that? You can't even eat lunch without bitching at each other!"

"Goren, Eames, Logan, Barek!" Deakins called from the doorway of his office. "In here, now!"

The four obediently trooped into the captain's office, and a quick game of musical chairs ensued as Barek and Goren claimed the two chairs, Eames sat herself on the corner of Deakins's desk, and Logan was left standing in the middle of the room with a frown. After a second, he shrugged and moved to stand behind Barek's chair.

"You know," Deakins said when everyone was settled, "you guys get good results when I put you together, but it's a damn pain in the ass to yell all your names in a row. Not to mention the chair situation."

"I hear if you put in a requisition now," Eames spoke up with a grin, "you can have a new chair in here by next Christmas."

"Yeah, just what I always wanted," he muttered darkly, re-capping his pen and dropping it on his desk.

"Chairs not on the top of your list?" Logan asked with a grin. "Who knew?"

"Very funny, Detective."

"I try."

Barek twisted around to glare at him. "Maybe you should stop trying quite so hard."

Deakins stood up and cleared his throat pointedly, regaining everyone's wandering attention. "Can we get to work now?" When scattered nods answered his question, he nodded in satisfaction and sat down again. "Like I told Logan and Goren, I've got a case for you."

"Uh, sir," Eames said, shifting her weight in her chair nervously, "why don't you sound too happy about that?"

"Because it means I've got to give up all four of you again, and that leaves me in a bind when the next case comes in," he said with a sigh. "Not to mention that I'm getting sick of all the fighting you guys do."

"We'll behave," Barek assured him, turning and giving her partner a look that promised retribution if he didn't.

"Does getting called in together mean we're working together again?" Eames said, looking around at the three other detectives. "I mean, not that I have anything against working with Logan and Barek again, but . . ."

"Two victims," Deakins replied with a sigh that indicated he wasn't too big a fan of the circumstances surrounding this case. "Actually, it's more like two crimes."

"Two crimes?" Logan echoed, wondering if he'd heard wrong. "But only one case?"

"Yes. And that's why I need all four of you on this, two and two." With that, Deakins slid a manila folder across his desk to Barek. "You guys get the murder of one Aaron Weiss."

She opened the folder and held it so that both she and Logan could read the pertinent information on the first page. "This happened almost a week ago? Why are we only getting it now?"

"Because," Deakins replied, handing a second folder to Eames, "up until today, he was just another dead kid."

"So . . . what happened between then and now?" asked Logan.

"Jeremy Carter happened, apparently," Eames said, eyes still on the open folder in her hands. "Twenty-two years old, killed yesterday. What's the connection, Captain?"

Deakins just leaned back in his chair and gave the four detectives a chance to finish looking over the contents of the files. "They were both known associates of the Net Kings," he said when all eyes were on him again. "Some kind of 'cyber gang.'" He said the phrase tentatively, as if he couldn't quite believe something so unusual was coming out of his mouth.

"You're kidding me, right?" Logan burst out. "What's a 'cyber gang,' a pack of geeks with sharpened slide rules?"

"You know, I think I've heard of them," Barek spoke up, ignoring him. "They're still up-and-comers, but they're suspected of being the source of some of the nastier worms and viruses that have gone around lately."

"Eraser and AntiSocial come to mind," Eames said, nodding. "They modeled themselves after the Masters of Deception, but with a lot less ethics."

All three men in the room looked at her blankly, while Barek just smiled and shook her head. "You're good, Eames."

"Why, thank you," Eames replied with a grin. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Ok, ok, so we've established you're both smarter than the rest of us put together," Logan grumbled. "Now can we get the details of the case?"

"Aaron Weiss was found dead in his apartment five days ago," Deakins supplied, glad to be back on track. "Gunshot wound to the back of the head, no obvious signs of a struggle. He's been at the bottom of the list for autopsy, since he wasn't a pressing case, so we don't have anything from there yet."

"Looks like we get to go harass the M.E.," Barek said with a grin.

Logan sighed. "Oh, that's just great. I can't stand the smell down there."

"Wuss."

"Jeremy Carter," Deakins went on, pointedly speaking over their joking, "was killed last night, also in his own apartment. He was strangled; it looked like it was done by hand, but I'm still waiting to hear from forensics about whether they got any prints off the skin."

"And these are considered one case now . . . just because the victims knew each other?" Eames said dubiously.

"According to a high-class snitch I keep on hand," he replied, "there's a rumor on the street that one or both of them had created a new computer virus and were preparing to deploy it. So far, no trace of it has turned up in the computers Tech impounded, though. The scenes haven't been thoroughly searched, but as of now, there's no disk labeled 'Hello, my name is Virus' lying around in plain view in either guy's apartment."

Goren, who had been observing silently, nodded now and said, "And you think . . . whoever killed them was after the . . . the, uh . . ."

"Source code, would be my guess," Eames supplied. "The program itself's useless without that."

"Uh, right," he said, giving her a slightly confused smile. "The source code. You think someone killed Aaron for the source code, couldn't find it, went to try Jeremy and either got it from him or killed him when he couldn't find it? Is the program worth enough to justify something like that?"

"It's a virus, Bobby," Eames said with a sigh, kicking him lightly in the shin to express her exasperation. "You can't exactly market a destructive worm - or at least, if you can, I don't know how - so it doesn't have any monetary value, except maybe to another hacker who wants credit for writing it."

"Why would you want to take credit for writing a virus?" Logan asked blankly. "You'd be arrested the second it hit the news."

Barek and Eames looked at each other, silently acknowledging that their partners were way behind them in terms of computer knowledge. "I think maybe we should go spend the rest of the day doing some, uh . . . foundation work," Barek said, glancing pointedly at the men. "You know, get ourselves up to speed."

"Sounds like a plan," Eames said, sliding off the desk onto her feet. "Not much else we can get started on." Heading for the door, she added, "Guys? You coming?"

"Right behind you," Barek said. "I'm herding them, don't worry."

Barek, the last one out, closed the office door behind her and thenturned to the other three. "I think we need an emergency hacking tutorial."

"I think you're right," Eames agreed after stealing a quick look at her partner, who, she was thankful to see, didn't seem to be insulted by the idea. "Dinner? Where should we do it? I'll bring my laptop."

"Yeah, dinner." Barek looked up at Logan, smiled brightly, and then looked back to Eames. "Mike volunteered his apartment."

"I . . . what?" Logan yelped. "No I didn't!"

"You did now," she told him with a smirk. "You just didn't hear yourself say it; you must have been talking real quietly. You know me and Eames have already done it once each; now it's someone else's turn. Besides, your place is a mess; it's not like we're going to break anything that's not already broken."

"His apartment's a mess?" Eames asked casually, raising her eyebrows. "You know this . . . how?"

"Oh, bite me. You've been in Goren's place a million times, I'm sure, even before -"

"This conversation is over," Goren said firmly before Barek could finish her sentence. "You guys just let us know where and when, when you figure it out." With that, he took Eames's arm and, ignoring her protests about wanting to finish the conversation, began to drag her back toward her desk.

"Spoilsport," Barek teased over her shoulder as she turned and followed her partner back to their desks.