Disclaimer: I don't own CSI, etc.

A/N: :) Let me know what you think. This idea popped into my head, and it's been a little while since I started something new so... yeah. I'm sorry, I do that... a lot. :)

Also, can anyone guess which one Sara is? She's in this first chapter, but not named yet, as Grissom's being all introverted.

I don't know, exactly, how I ended up in a bar in San Francisco, tipsy off rum and coke, beside a married man who seemed to be seriously considering breaking his vows, eyeing any number of long-legged brunettes.

…No, okay, I know. But it's just not… in character, for me.

For one thing, I generally prefer scotch. For another, I live in Vegas. I don't have any respect for men who cheat, and I just don't do the bar scene. I hardly did it when I was in college, much less now, as a forty-one year old man. …God, I feel old.

I'll start with the simplest of explanations first—I'm in San Francisco to give a series of lectures at this year's Forensic Academy Conference. When you're one of about fifteen forensic entomologists in the country, it's not so much an honor as a duty to speak at these, every few years, especially with the advances we've made. …Well, no, let's be fair—the insects haven't changed, the juries have. They're far more willing to trust an expert witness who says the bugs told him when the victim died than they used to be, so there's a growing demand among criminalists for a basic understanding of timeline regression.

Paul Nygar went to school with me. We were both getting our Masters degrees in Biology at UCLA and working in the L.A. Coroner's Office. He's a few years older than I am, and a little less bright, but not so much that we can't relate. If I'm being truthful, I can say without arrogance that it's rarer to meet someone who is as smart or smarter than I am than it is to meet someone who is not. He's married to Julie, a girl he met while we were in school, and he's got two beautiful teenagers—Kami and Aaron.

Even in school, Paul was a heavy drinker, so I was unsurprised to hear that he was willing to go out for drinks, even though it was a Thursday night. Julie expected it, by now, and I hadn't seen the man in years. I didn't necessarily want to go for drinks, at first—I'd gone over and had a lovely dinner with his family, disgusting Julie and intriguing both Kami and Aaron with my tales of bugs and bodies, death and decomposition. Aaron was like his father—smart, but would probably go to school on a basketball scholarship and take five to pick a major and pursue it. Kami though, she was smart. She listened to my stories as more than something gross and freakish—she picked things out… she was curious about what evidence meant and how we came to our conclusions.

I tried to talk Paul into bringing her to the conference to watch some of the lectures, despite not necessarily being invited—no one would notice if they slipped in here and there, and even if they did notice, Paul could say they were waiting for me. Guests of mine. I wouldn't enjoy using it, but out of those fifteen forensic entomologists, I'm one of the better known and more respected. I've made a name for myself, over the years… guests of mine wouldn't be sent away.

Regardless of the girl's obvious aptitude, I didn't enjoy the dinner nearly as much as I ought to've. I think it was me hitting a mid-life crisis. Yes, Paul was a friend… but he'd also always been the person I wasn't. We were studying the same thing, but I got better grades. He was older, but I was made a coroner before him. He became a coroner and I left it to pursue forensics, and even ran off to the rainforest in between semesters, and still managed to be further along in my career than he in his.

It's a terrible thing to say, but Paul's always been the friend who made me feel like, despite my shortcomings, I was doing okay. …Being in his home, I no longer felt that way. I felt… inadequate. I felt like I'd turned forty the previous year with nothing to my name but a job I didn't consider a career. …Don't get me wrong, I'm a professional. …But I'm not motivated by the opportunity for advancement, and I don't play politics. I'm a CSI because I want to give justice to victims and save lives, when it's possible.

I don't regret this—I dislike the idea of public service of my kind being about a advancement… it skews everything, the science included… the justice included.

But then I was left wondering, absent a beautiful wife and brilliant daughter and son who looked just like me… What had I done, in my life? What did I have, to cling to… to call my own… to take pride in? So it was easy to suggest we go out for a drink, just to get out of the damned house that was making me relive every failed relationship and every opportunity I'd once had to change the path that had taken me up to this moment.

That explains why I'm in San Francisco, and why I'm in a bar, and why I'm sitting beside a married man. I'm drinking rum and coke for old time's sake, I guess. It's not a favorite, anymore, but it had been my drink of choice back when I'd accompanied Paul on his nightly frolics into dens of iniquity such as we found ourselves now. I'd never been a huge fan of beer, and I made enough money playing poker in the back of the bar to fund my drinks for the night… and if Paul was foolish enough to play me in pool, I would make considerably more.

The final two questions, I suppose, are… Why is the married man pushing the line between fidelity and cheating scumbag, and why am I eyeing women half my age instead of preventing my rather intoxicated friend from making a life-altering mistake? …The two of these, I suppose, are connected, I muse, drinking deeper and ignoring the blonde whose hand is slowly inching up Paul's thigh. It had started on his knee, and had moved a good several inches in the last twenty minutes. I groaned, feeling guilty and glancing at Paul.

"Hey—do you need me to call you a cab?"

He gave me a look of confusion, which only deepened when I glanced between him and the woman's hand, and then understanding dawned… but the haze remained in his eyes. "I'm… married." He told his blonde, which did not a lot of good, because she was halfway to his crotch… if she hadn't seen his wedding ring yet, she didn't care whether he wore one anyway.

I gestured to the waitress who'd been hitting on me all night—perhaps the reason I had continued by all-too-male perusal of the occupants of the bar—and she nodded that she'd bring me another, before glancing at Paul again, who was losing the battle. Guilt struck again—I wouldn't have let it go this far if I hadn't been feeling so petulant—a small part of me wanted him to screw it all up, because then I wasn't the friend who was a failure anymore. But if I did that, I certainly couldn't describe myself as any kind of friend.

I leaned across the table, catching the blonde's attention. "He's got a daughter just a few years younger than you. There's more than enough single men here to entice you… Find one of them."

She rolled her eyes, her fingertips brushing dangerously high—Paul's eyes were drifting closed, and I shook my head. Whatever I had or hadn't wanted, it would still be his own damn fault for allowing this to get so far. I reached over and pulled her hand away not a moment too soon. "I lied. He's not married—he's my lover who can't decide if he's in the closet or not, so he flirts with women to make himself feel better, and I allow it because the make up sex is... fabulous. That ring is his commitment to me, but… I mean, if you want my sloppy seconds, I'll still take him back when you're done with him…"

Whether she believed me or not, she clearly wasn't willing to risk sleeping with a man who'd been with another man. She was up and gone before Paul was even aware of what I'd said, and then he was laughing and denying it, his eyes still closed, thinking she'd start touching him again if he just said the right thing. I rolled my eyes and leaned back, away from him. My drink came to rest in front of me a moment later, and I reached for my wallet, pulling out the appropriate bills and passing them to her. "Thank you."

She offered a flirtatious smile. "Anything for you, honey. …Is your friend okay?"

I glanced at him, eyes still closed, muttering about how he was as straight as they came. I chuckled. "Actually, do you think someone could call him a cab…? He's hit his limit."

She laughed, her hand coming to rest on the back of my chair, fingertips brushing my shoulder as she did so, none of this unintentional—she was working for tips. "There should be three or four empty ones waiting outside already." She turned to walk away, an exaggerated but entirely appealing sway in her hips, but stopped and turned back around. "…You're should stay though. Hang around."

I wanted to roll my eyes at her—logically, I knew the game. Turn on the much older man who has been watching you since the first round of drinks, remembering what it felt like to grab as ass that firm or run your palms over legs that long and smooth, and walk away a very well-paid waitress. Knowing the game didn't dampen its effectiveness, however. From the crown of her head, dark locks cascading into a petite frame with enough curves in her t-shirt and short, black jean shorts to make an old man like me lose his mind, to the tips of her feet at the bottom of those endless legs, the waitress had me watching.

Maybe it was just how invigorating it was to flirt with someone so young and vibrant. …It made me feel younger, myself. Because it wasn't that the waitress was so much more beautiful than any other girl in the room. It was that she made me feel like a younger man. And those feelings don't just disappear—I knew I wasn't going to give the waitress a hundred just because she'd casually touched me, just like I knew I wasn't going to do more than flirt and watch her walk away—but they manifest themselves in other ways.

…Which, I suppose, is how I found myself eyeing every dark-haired girl in the place.

The first floor of the bar, which I could see down to from where I was sitting, was a dance floor, a large bar, and rows and rows of pool tables. The second floor wrapped around the outer edges of the massive room, stopping short of the dance floor so that second floor patrons could look over and observe the action. Up here, we were seated by the bar—but there were tables all the way around. Near us was a group of people who clearly worked together—they all had square name tags around their necks or pinned to their bodies, somewhere, and wore similar clothing… dressy, but functional. There was a brunette in their midst in a skirt that should be down to her knees, but she was leaned back in her chair, laughing a laugh that brightened the room, and the skirt had slid up, revealing some of her thighs.

Off to my right somewhere was a large group of girls, probably here for a bachelorette party, because the girl in the center was wearing a veil that looked like it had condoms stuck to it. She and several of her friends were brunettes, and quite beautiful, though they were far enough away for details to be obscure. Across the dance floor were a group of men, younger than me, watching a game I couldn't see. The waitress serving them was clad in the same impossibly short black shorts, her long, dark hair up in a sleek ponytail that brushed across the delicate nape of her neck when she bent down to hear them better. Near there was a young group of kids… college age, probably, with three guys and two girls. One was a redhead, the other—you guess it, dark hair. It was in a messy ponytail at the back of her hair, delicate wisps falling over her flushed skin, teasing her cheek bones and her ears and her shoulders. And still finally, to my left, was a girl with brown curls who was leaning with a girlfriend on the railing, overlooking the dance floor, drink in hand.

Like I said—I don't know what caused me to behave so out of character, and a mid-life crisis alone could not be blamed, no matter how wonderful Paul's family life seemed… there was just an electricity in the air around me, like I just knew something was going to happen, and I wanted it… I could taste it on the tip of my tongue, like when the air tastes like rain before a storm.

And even if it didn't make sense… even if there was no logical reason for me to be where I was, much less wanting this unexpected thing that seemed to be edging closer and closer…. I wanted it. I wanted it more than anything I had wanted in as long as I could remember…. So I waited for it, sipping my non-traditional drink and ignoring my friend, who had finally realized his blonde had left him, and was now discussing the final points of an autopsy with the table in front of him. Something was about to happen, and I was going to be here--not putting my friend in a cab--when it did.