A/N: So, hey, guys. It's been a while. I've managed to buy a house, move into a house, finish a semester of grad school and start a new job in the meantime, and I thought maybe I should try to finish this monster. I don't know if anyone's even still reading this, but if you are, I hope you enjoy.

So, Frank Lowry is the only common denominator between these missing girls.

You sound calm. Professional. On the other side of the table, Warrick twirls a pen between his fingers, then taps it on the table once, decisively.

That's right.

And his shop serviced all those vehicles that turned up with tampered brake lines. That can't be a coincidence.

I should be focusing on the case, so I shuffle the notes in front of me, like they're going to fall into a new configuration that sheds light on this whole clusterfuck.

Problem is, we have no evidence besides Lowry linking the two cases. None of the tampered vehicles belonged to any of the girls. And none of the other accidents were fatalities.

You shrug, glance up for a moment to meet my eyes. It's your calculating face on. I never realized how much I missed it.

Maybe he's running two entirely different gigs, you know? Guy messes up the brakelines of customers who piss him off, that sounds like somebody with a temper. So he gets into it with his girlfriend, maybe takes it a little too far.

He chopped off these girls' fingers and kept them in his fridge, Greg. I'd say that goes beyond taking it a little too far.

Impossibly, you grin.

Okay, so he took it way too far.

I'll say.

Warrick's glancing back and forth between us like he's watching a tennis match, and when he clears his throat we both look at him at almost exactly the same time.

Boulder Highway is convenient to the shop and to his apartment. If he was heading out of town from either location, that's almost definitely the route he would have taken.

So it could be a coincidence.

God, I hate these cases. Fingers belonging to three women in the fridge, all of them removed post-mortem. I'm not sure whether or not that's a mercy. The girlfriend, Maria Gonzalez. Her two roommates, Ellen Weiscz and Karla Patillo. We haven't found their bodies yet.

Maria's younger sister, Isabel, is still missing. She's sixteen.

I hate these cases.

In the truck, on the way home, you turn the music off and roll the windows down and even though it's really too cold, I don't complain. Your fingers are tapping out a frenetic pattern on the handrest.

You think we'll find her?

I don't know, Greggo.

We'll find her. I'm pretty sure about that much, but what you really want to know is that she'll be breathing when we do. Those odds aren't all that good.

You know that, so I don't say it.

Pizza, X-Box, movie, and then the sun's rising and it's time to go to sleep. I go into the bedroom--your bedroom--to grab a handful of clothes, and you fold yourself gracefully onto the bed and watch me hunt for clean socks until I want to squirm.

You could just stay here, you know.

Greg, I--

I've slept on that couch before, Nick. You're going to give yourself a permanent back injury.

I shrug.

It's not that bad, man.

You're so full of it.

I look down at the pair of mismatched socks in my hand, look back up. You're just looking at me, eyes dark and thoughtful. No sign of the sobbing wreck we found in that warehouse, no sign of the stiffness and discomfort of the past few weeks. It's not gone, I know, but for now it's hidden. You look like you always have. Like you did. Before.

Come on, you can even put up a pillow wall between us. No touching. It'll be like a sleepover.

Damn you and your hopeful little smile. It's a bad idea--a really, really bad idea--and I still know I'm going to give in. That's just the effect you have on me, and it might piss me off if I weren't pretty sure you have absolutely no idea how impossible it is for me to turn you down.

I'm gonna take a shower, man.

You smile lopsidedly, kick your shoes off.

I'll be here.

I don't answer, but I guess I don't have to.

You aren't sleeping when I come back into the bedroom, but your limbs are loose and easy, eyes at half-mast, glinting catlike in the light from the hallway. There's already a row of pillows splitting the bed neatly in half.

You don't have to--

Shut up and come to bed, Nick.

So I do.

The weird thing is how weird it isn't, the next night. You wake up first, then wake me up by chucking my running shoes at my chest.

We're going for a jog before work.

What?

Come on, old man.

You're bouncing on your heels in the doorway, wearing an awful green and purple tye-dye t-shirt and a pair of baggy gym shorts.

Greg, come on. It's cold out.

You're going to get fat and arthritic and you won't be able to chase down bad guys anymore.

Then will you leave me alone?

No.

Man, you're a pain in the ass.

But I'm already climbing out from under the covers, and you're grinning like--

This should be weird. But when we get outside, the air going crisp and cool while the sun sinks down behind the hills and your footsteps hitting the pavement in time with mine, your breath in my ears, it just feels comfortable. It feels right.

You steal the first shower, and we ride into work together, and it's like everything's just fine.

A club owner finds the bodies of Ellen Weiscz and Karla Patillo wrapped in plastic tarps and stuffed in a dumpster in his back alley. In addition to having their fingers chopped off, they've both been raped and beaten. He finished them off with .45 slugs to the forehead. Semen matches the exemplars we took from Frank Lowry's house, not that we needed a test to figure that out. Still. At least it looks like he was working alone.

I know I'm not the only one watching you covertly when Doc Robbins gives the report. Sara's fingers are twisting the cuffs of her long sleeved shirt into knots, and Catherine's biting her bottom lip. Only Grissom seems oblivious.

You don't so much as flinch, and if your face looks several shades paler than it usually would, well, it's easy to blame the white overheads in Autopsy for that.

Isabel Gonzalez is still missing, and nobody's seen hide or hair of Frank Lowry.

Warrick corners me in the diner on my lunch break. Doesn't even ask, just drops into the booth across from me, beams at the cute blonde waitress who brings him a cup of coffee without even needing to be asked. We come here too often.

I take a bite of my turkey sandwich and watch him stir sugar into his coffee with an expression of serious concentration, and by the time he looks up I'm pretty sure I've got my poker face all set.

So. You and Sanders.

I take a swallow of bad diner coffee to wash down the sandwich and raise my eyebrows at him, going for innocently baffled. He snorts.

Don't even try that shit, man. I can read you like a book.

You think so?

I know so. Cut the crap. What's going on with you two?

Nothing.

Right. You sleeping with him?

It takes all the self-control I have not to spit coffee across the table.

What? No.

You sure?

I think I'd know, Warrick.

Uh huh.

He raises his eyebrows at me, and I know I'm blushing. Damn it. This is not a conversation I need to be having right now. Not when I don't even know what the hell's going on between us.

It isn't like that, okay?

Okay, man. Just asking.

The waitress comes back and he orders enough food to feed a small country, and eats it without bringing up the subject again. I drink three more cups of coffee and don't touch the other half of my sandwich.

The only good thing about this case is the fact that it means everyone's too distracted to fuss over you endlessly. That's a good thing, because you disappear after shift, and it takes me a good ten minutes of searching to find you out by the back lot, sucking down a cigarette like your life depends on it. There are already two butts ground into the pavement, and when you jerk your head up to look at me, your eyes are dark and wounded. No sign of the grin you were wearing earlier, and you don't need everybody else to notice how frayed your game face is getting already.

I know better than to ask if you're okay.

You ready to head home, man?

You hesitate, then nod and toss your half-smoked cigarette on the ground.

Yeah. Let's go.

We'll find her. Right?

No wall of pillows this time. I'm flat on my back, one arm behind my head, and you're curled into a ball on your side, facing me. It should feel uncomfortably intimate, especially after the disastrous attempt at making out the other day and the frankly awkward-as-hell chat with Warrick earlier, but right now sex is the furthest thing from my mind.

I don't look over at you, but I inject as much certainty as I can manage into my voice.

We'll find her, Greggo. I promise.

Thanks.

You sound wry, like you know I'm just saying it to make you feel better, and even though that's more or less the case, I can't help but try and back it up.

I mean it.

You can't make things true just by wanting them to be.

I do look over at you now, but you seem more tired than upset.

I shouldn't do it, I know, but I reach across the foot of space separating us and squeeze your hand. You lace your fingers into mine, tight enough that I couldn't pull away without an effort, turn your face into the pillow, and shut your eyes. Conversation over.

You don't do your octopus imitation this time. When I wake up the next night, five minutes before the alarm goes off, you're snoring lightly, one leg thrown over the blankets that you always kick off. There's a small damp patch on your pillow where you drooled in your sleep, and your hand is still wrapped around mine.

I just lie there watching you until my alarm clock starts blaring Kenny Chesney. You jump, snort, blink, and let me roll away to turn it off.

When I sit up, scrub my hands through my hair and look at you, you're watching me with an expression that's at least second kin to a smile. I can still feel the phantom impression of your fingers on mine. It makes me feel warm, panicky and confused as all hell. You're too screwed up for this, still, and God knows I'm too screwed up to even think about fixing the damage.

We're quite the pair, that's for damn sure.

This time, it's a pillow you throw at me, and when I glance over, you roll your eyes. It's not quite easy, not quite the cheerful college-boy attitude problem that you've always carried like some kind of badge, but it's close. God, it's so close.