A/N: Many thanks to the talented and grammatically apt happyharper13 for the beta on these four chapters! :-D
Please Review.
-LLK
April 9, 2002. 3:00 PM; PST.
--
Greg pulled on the heavy police department door and walked into work. He had arrived a few hours early, but as a favor to the daytime DNA technician. Though he wasn't looking forward to the extended shift three hours of overtime weren't going to hurt his paycheck any, especially right before he had a vacation planned.
Before he'd even settled into the DNA lab to start working, one of the day CSI's, Sophia Curtis, had come in and asked him to run a piece of evidence for him. He'd only met her a few times before, when he'd been working day shift, but he had grown to prefer her to most of the other CSI's on her shift. Trying to make the most out of his extended day he set to work quickly and began testing the three identical infant pacifiers, having to admit to himself that sometimes the things people brought to him made him wonder.
He'd been working for only about twenty minutes when he heard his phone ding to tell him he'd received a text message. He finished the part of the test he was doing, settled all of his materials into their proper homes, and moved towards his phone.
Tell me a joke.
Naturally, it was Tess making demands without even greeting him first. He laughed at the prospect and then sat back in his chair trying to think of one. Finally, after a few moments of thought, he felt as though he had a joke that would be adequate.
Y shouldn't U play cards n a jungle?
Why?
Cuz of all the cheetahs.
That was the lamest joke I've ever heard.
U kno U laughed.
Maybe just a little bit. Tell me another joke.
Y?
I don't know. I guess I just need to laugh right now.
Is something wrong?
No. It's just really quiet here for some reason.
Oh.
Greg looked around the lab to make sure that none of stricter members of the Day Shift were in sight or earshot, and then quickly dialed Tess' number. He set her on speaker phone and put her down on the desk next to a piece of paper he was filling out with case information.
"Hey," she greeted, happy to hear from someone. Then, a moment later, he heard her grumble, "You've got me on speaker again?"
"I'm at work," he told her as he poured a bit of a testing solution into the GCMS. "So if you want someone to entertain you, you're going to have to be willing to be on speaker."
"Fine," she told him playfully. "How come you're in work so early?"
"Doing a favor for the day shift tech," he told her methodically as he finished measuring liquids and putting things away. The Day Shift tech was even messier than he was. "I think his kid had a soccer game or something."
"What's his name again?" Tess asked, sounding as though she was trying to remember for herself. "I mean the tech, not his kid."
"Michael," Greg answered absently. When he heard the machine behind him ding, stating that a test from earlier that day had been completed, he shifted to gather the results. Calling over his shoulder, he said, "I'm pretty sure his son's name is Dalton."
"Right," Tess remembered. "Claybourne, right? He's the one that finds your porn and then re-hides it in different places around the DNA lab?"
Greg stopped in his tracks and turned around to glare at the phone. "I do NOT have dirty magazines around the lab."
"Greg, everybody knows that you used to keep them in the third edition medical text, second from the right, top shelf... left side of the room," she told him playfully. "That is until Claybourne found them and started making you sweat by moving them around."
"How'd you -- " He didn't finish his question. Finishing his question would mean admitting that she was right, and he just didn't want to do that. "You know that's just stupid. Why would I keep porn at work?"
"Because you're Greg?" she asked with a laugh. "And I knew that because I know everything."
"You have a spy," he accused. Then, getting into the act, he added, "Who is it?"
"Well, I'll just say that he's a CSI and he's taller than you..." she teased him.
He just couldn't figure out how or why she was talking to Nick or Warrick -- unless they'd told her when she had come to visit in January. He'd brought her into work a few evenings, and it would have been easy for them to plant seeds of untruth in her head while his back was turned. Or — he had to admit — seeds of embarrassing truth. And, of course, she wouldn't have said anything then. She was the type to save things like that as ammo, so she could use them to her advantage later.
Sometimes he hated the lengths she would go to to play a joke. Mostly because they were usually jokes played on him and they always ended up making him look like an idiot, though, if he was honest, he'd have to admit that he brought it on himself most of the time.
"Which one?" he asked her. She made a humming sound. "I guess if you won't tell me, I'll just have to pay them both back."
She kept humming.