For prompt_in_a_box #17: "You meant to make me happy, make me sad, want to make it better so bad" (Bottle it Up)

Sophia's words kept echoing in the back of Greg's mind, repeating over and over in a loop, a broken record stuck on one repeating line—"I heard you used to be a funny guy."

In the empty apartment, the words only seemed to ring more true. 'Used to be a funny guy… used to be.' the words haunted him as he trolled the apartment for something from that point in his life, when he was a carefree lab rat, before his vision had been jaded by the harsh realities of humanity.

The closet; he was sure he would find some shred of evidence in the closet. A bright red and orange silk shirt, his favorite gaudy gold polyester shirt that he found for thirty-five cents at a thrift store back in college, the daisy-dukes he had to wear to the LVPD Halloween party a number of years back after losing a bet… something. Greg knew he could find what he was looking for hanging next to Nick's conservative black, gray, and blue hues, but all he could seem to find was his own subdued collection of shirts and pants. No flashy gold or orange, the only red being his old Stanford sweatshirt.

'When did I get so boring?' Greg wondered, falling backwards onto the bed he shared with Nick. 'When did I become that guy? That guy, the conservative, serious worker who would rather spend his time at home with his boyfriend, watching the Discovery Channel, instead of going out on the club circuit on his night off.' The thought spooked Greg—he was becoming everything he had been fighting his entire life. The gaudy, bright clothes fighting conformity within the workplace, his sunny and bouncy personality belaying the darkness and serious tones of adulthood. In spite of himself, he had become that guy, and he didn't like it one bit.

"You used to be a funny guy…" the words reverberated off the walls of the bedroom, no longer Sophia's haunting voice, but his own accusatory one.

The case had been hard on him earlier that day, hard on all of them, but Greg's self-realization only added fuel to that fire. Fire, what a bad analogy after the case he had been working, but that's exactly what it was. Fire was a necessary means of destruction, of killing off the old brush to usher in the new growth, of destroying what something has become to take it back to the beginning, a phoenix reborn from its ashes. Greg knew that it was his time, his chance, to catch flame and go back to the beginning, to find himself, to regain his lost identity.

In a split-second decision, Greg scribbled a note and made three phone calls as he walked out the door, one to a taxi company, one to Grissom, and one to an old friend of his.

***

Three hours later, while Nick was still in the field working through a double-shift, Greg was stepping off a plane into the blinding sun of Los Angeles.

"Sunny!" Greg waved at his old colleague as he exited security, hugging her warmly as he struggled to keep hold of his bag and her at the same time.

"Hey Greg," Sunny's smile radiated her warmth and happiness at seeing Greg back in LA for the first time since he had moved to Vegas more than six years earlier. "I'm so glad you could make it! I was starting to think you were ignoring my emails," she teased, her keen eye taking in his somewhat disheveled appearance.

"Not ignoring you, just busy," he assured her, releasing her from the hug and walking out towards the parking garage. "But I did make time to come all the way down here just to see you," Greg teased, bumping her with his shoulder like they used to when they were younger.

Sunny bumped him back, her voice light but hinting that she knew that there was more to his re-appearance than he was letting on, "I'm glad you could make time for little ol' me in that busy schedule of yours."

"Actually, it was more because Jenna begged me to come down here," he teased, "You were just the added bonus."

"Did you call your mom yet?" Sunny asked, opening the trunk of her hybrid so Greg could drop his bag in.

"No, not yet," he replied, climbing into the passenger seat. "I just decided to come down a few minutes before I called you."

"Really?" she asked curiously, "You don't have anyone you have to run things passed before you take off?"

"I let everyone know," Greg said definitively, successfully ending the conversation. He didn't want Sunny asking too many questions about why he had decided to leave Vegas for a while, because then he would have to think about Nick and the lab and things he'd rather not think about while he was in sunny California only a few short miles from the ocean.

Adeptly weaving her way through airport traffic and heading into downtown, Sunny let the conversation drop, making a mental note to bring it up again later when Greg was less defensive. "Do you want to crash at my place and get some sleep, or are you okay to just go into work?" she asked after a few minutes of silence.

"I slept a little on the plane," he spoke more to himself than to his colleague. "Let's just go into the lab."

"Alrighty," Sunny glanced over at her friend, taking a moment to observe him while he stared vacantly out the window. "You look good, Greg," she announced, squeezing his knee lightly before placing her hand back on the steering wheel. His normally wild hair was cut shorter, flattened down with the gels he used to use to stand it up in crazy directions; his bright shirts replaced with a nice blue button up and fitted jeans. He looked older, more weary, like he had taken the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that worried her.

Choosing to ignore the comment because he didn't necessarily agree with it, the CSI tried to find all the things that had changed since he left LA. Surprisingly, there weren't many, especially as they moved closer and closer to the lab. "They finally finished the work on the 10," he observed absently, noticing the lack of orange construction cones closing down the left two lanes. "I thought they were going to be working on that until the world ended."

"They did," Sunny laughed, "When the new mayor was elected it felt like the world had ended."

Sunny's laughter was contagious, infecting Greg even through the gloom surrounding him, causing him to laugh. "Finally, someone doing something good in this town," he grinned at her, the familiar sparkle in his eyes.

"Thank god," she agreed as they pulled into a parking spot on the street. "Because that just cut thirty minutes off our drive."

The pair was still laughing as they made their way into the building, stopping at the front desk only long enough for Greg to pick up his name badge and access key. Their next stop was the fourth floor DNA lab, where Greg ran into his old boss.

"Greg Sanders, as I live and breathe," Jenna greeted him with a heavy southern accent that had faded noticeably in the last six years. "I never thought I'd see you in these halls again."

"You just caught me at a good time," he conceded, giving her a hug. "It doesn't look like much has changed around here."

"Oh, you know, new equipment, new faces, that's about it really," Jenna gave him her best motherly smile. "There's already a pile of backed up work on your desk."

"Ah, that's the Jenna we all know and love," Greg grinned, shaking his head in amusement as he headed down the hall to his old workstation. It was like coming home, he noted, walking the halls of his old stomping grounds in the FBI lab, his smile coming easily as he waved at people he recognized and introduced himself to those he didn't. Just an hour in LA had already lifted a weight off his chest he hadn't realized he was carrying.

He laughed as he slid his access key through the lock, already able to see that Jenna was going to milk him for all he was worth while he was visiting, if that was any indication by the week's worth of work already piled on his work station. He happily noted that everything was exactly where he had left it before he had moved away, as if the office had been frozen in time, no one disrupting his space in six years time. Even his favorite green coffee mug was still sitting upside down to the right of the computer monitor, not a trace of dust marking the passage of time since he had last set it down there to dry at the end of a long day. Flipping on the lights and machines to start warming up, Greg easily fell into his old routine, his mind comfortable in the familiarity.

He worked quickly and efficiently, sorting the paperwork and files into separate case piles and starting tests. Greg worked quietly with no distractions, unaware of the uncharacteristic silence filling his lab, his normal loud rock music forgotten. Since being promoted to a CSI he had no need to blast his music anywhere other than the car, the need for the distracting music having been left as part of his old life as a lab tech.

Sunny and Jenna stood together outside his lab for a few moments, watching him work in silence with no crazy dancing or loud music coming from inside. It was as if Greg had finally grown up a little, but he wasn't the same Greg who had left them to work in the lab in Las Vegas, almost as if he was an empty shell of his former self.

"What happened to him up there?" Jenna asked, one eyebrow raised as her former employee kept himself bent over the machines, not even looking up to notice the two women standing in the window watching him.

"I don't know," Sunny admitted, worry filling her voice, "I really don't know."

"The last I heard, he was living with his boyfriend and had just passed his proficiency exam to be a CSI," Jenna offered, baffled by the change in Greg's demeanor since she had last spoken to him on the phone. "He was so excited… what would make him want to go back to lab work?"

"Something with the boyfriend?" Sunny asked, unsure herself as to what had caused the change in her friend. "If he did anything to hurt Greg, I'll kill him myself," she promised, fiercely protective over the lab rat-turned-CSI.

"I don't think that's it," Jenna said, placating her colleague with a hand on the shorter woman's arm to lead her away from the window. "But I'm sure we'll find out. He's here for two weeks, after all."

Eight hours later, after Sunny had finally pulled Greg away from his lab with promises of Korean barbeque, the girls were no closer to finding the answers to their questions.

At the same time, Nick was just beginning to ask his own questions when he arrived home from a double-shift expecting to find his lover asleep in their bed, but only finding a note scribbled in Greg's chicken scratch:

Nicky,

Went to help another lab with some back-logged paperwork and cases. Should be back in two weeks. I'll call you when I can.

Greg.