A/N: Okay, I am on a fluffy spree. Let's see how good I am with this sort of thing.

DISCLAIMER: As much as I want to, I don't own CSI: Miami.


At Long Last

She finished looking through the files that Stetler had placed before him and sighed. It was around nine o'clock that night, and Ryan looked like he could've drooled on the case files if he was asleep. She smiled softly. What a day. What a week.

What a year for the CSIs to have gone through.

She nudged him. "Hey, sleepyhead."

He blinked. "Huh? I didn't take the cookies from the cookie jar. And the…"

"Ryan."

He looked up to see Natalia looking at him in a concerned manner. "You alright there? Seems like you're having delusions of the third kind."

Ryan nodded and glanced down at the folder that he had been laying on. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just really tired and annoyed, that's all." He groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Why are you still here? You should be at home taking a nap or something."

She rolled her eyes. "I wanted to stay a little bit to see if you needed anything else on these case files that Agent Stetler decided to land in front of you. You have enough on your hands already, considering the fact you were fired and now you're trying to get rehired." She held up a sheet of pink paper, "And these speeding tickets are frying your brain to no end."

Ryan sighed and rubbed his temples. "I have so much I have to do by the end of this week."

She smiled. "You know what you need, Mr. Wolfe?"

He grimaced at the name slightly but looked up at her all the same. "What?"

"You need a night out. I haven't seen you take a vacation in weeks with any of your friends here in the lab. This brings me to a question."

Ryan waited patiently.

"Do you want to, um… go, uh, see a movie?"

He looked at her strangely.

"As friends," she added on quickly. "Not as… you know. Personally, I don't know why you won't go out with Calleigh, but hey… I'm not the judge of that."

He looked off distantly. "As friends."

Natalia sighed. She had been meaning to ask Wolfe this a few months ago. The two had been on such thin ice since she became a part of the team. Why not break it and do something fun as friends? Shoot, everyone else did it.

He smiled. "What movie did you plan on seeing?"

Natalia grinned back. "Well, I haven't exactly seen Spider-Man 3 yet…"

"Only if you buy the popcorn. Movie tickets are on me."

"This is no date," she warned.

Ryan made a face and got up, leaving the papers in a pile on the table. "This is definitely not a date. That was be just disgusting."

She smiled uncertainly. "So what does this all mean?"

Ryan pulled her into a friendly embrace. "It means I can call you a friend, Natalia."

As the two walked into the elevator, Horatio looked out of the corner of his eye and smiled. Another bond of friendship to not be broken. That was all he needed to see to lighten his day of being lieutenant of the Miami CSI.


A/N: Fluff isn't over in one-shot terms. Review, please and thank you!