She finally managed to walk into the lab, but she wasn't looking forward to seeing his tired eyes, eyes once so full of life, now devoid of all their spark.

'Hey Cat.' He mumbled hoarsely, briefly glancing up from his microscope. She realised he must have flu or a sore throat or something.

'Hey Greg, y'ok?'

'Yep. Just finishing something Nicky gave me. With you in a sec.'

Catherine waited, looking around at the walls of Greg's new lab, which of course had already been personalised and splashed with the usual 'Greg- style' that his old lab had to endure.

'So what can I do for you Cat?' Greg enquired .

'Well I was wondering if you had the results of that blue fibre I gave you.'

Greg shifted in his seat.

'Sorry, I have a lot to do at the moment.'

'Meaning you put everyone else's cases before mine.' She snapped angrily, but immediately regretted it upon seeing the hurt look in the lab-tech's eyes.

It's just that she'd been under a lot of stress too. Christmas was coming, and along with the usual stresses that come with the festive season, the entire team had more cases stacked on them than they'd had in a long time. Tempers were frayed, and everyone was losing their cool with everyone.

'No.' Greg snapped, now angry himself.

'Meaning I have a backlog as long as my leg, and as hard as I try, as many hours overtime that I work-even though, I might add, I am not feeling terribly good- I still can't quite manage to swim my way out of the mound stuff you guys dump on me.'

He pushed past her and stormed out the lab.

Sara sat in the break room, nursing a headache and one heck of a bad mood.

Nick came in, his mouth full of the sandwich he was eating, and immediately proceeded to tell Sara the 101 things they had to do that morning, along with what Sara could only understand as something to do with goats (she'd have to ask him about that one though!)

'so.mmmph.we gotta get into..dessert.body wrapped...' Nick began to choke. Sara jumped up and thumped him on the back.

'Jeez,' Nick gasped, slightly winded.

'Sorry. Right now start again. Slo-o-owly.'