A/N: As you may have noticed, I'm back! I'm sorry for leaving you guys hanging for so long…I'll try not to do it again, but I can't guarantee. Send me writing vibes or something to motivate me!

Mark pulled Sam aside a few minutes later and began to pick the other man's brain about Grissom. "Do you know what's going on with him and Sara?"

            Sam poked his glasses back into place in a gesture that was oddly out of sync with his trendy look, and considered the question for a moment. "Sophie thinks they've got something going on, I know that much. And probably Jack thinks so too, since he and Sophie spend so much time together that they ought to be sharing their brainwaves by now. Me, though . . . I don't really know. I haven't had much chance to interact with the guy, you know?"

Mark nodded. "Yeah, I know. It's driving me nuts, though."

"Why? I didn't think you were exactly the gossipy type. You being 'Mr. Maturity' and all."

"I'm not the gossipy type, thank you very much. It just so happens that when a guy goes out of his way to demonstrate how much he dislikes me, I have this tendency to want to find out what I did to piss him off in the first place."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "And you think Grissom doesn't like you because of Sara? Like you're moving in on his territory or something?" He let out a low whistle. "Man, either you're paranoid or I'm missing some major drama that's been going on here. What are you gonna do to find out why he hates you, then?"

"Beats me. When he stormed out on me a little while ago, I was going to follow him, but I saw a pack of cigarettes in his hand and I didn't want to have to be the one to tell Sara he's cheating."

"Are you sure you don't have something going on with Sara yourself?"

"No! For the last time, there's nothing between me and Sara, and I don't think either of us wants there to be! Now, can we stop questioning my motives and move back to talking about Grissom's?"

"Hey, no offense intended," Sam said, shrugging. "I just think it's weird that it didn't occur to you that you don't have to tell Sara everything, especially things like her boyfriend smoking."

"You think he's her boyfriend?"

Sam threw up his hands. "I give up. We're going in circles. To review: I have no idea what's going on between Sara and Grissom. I don't think you're after Sara. I don't think anyone in this building is her boyfriend at the moment. Now can I get back to work?"

"Sor-ry!" Mark stepped aside to allow Sam to pass him, then returned to his thoughts.

All this talk of smoking had Sam craving a cigarette of his own, and since he figured he was about the only person left in the building who hadn't quit and wasn't currently trying to, he walked to his locker and retrieved his pack with minimal guilt.

He contemplated Mark's questions as he walked toward the back door. Grissom did seem to want to be with Sara a lot, maybe a little more than normal – but then, so did Mark, at least lately. Who said Sara was interested in anyone in the lab, anyway? Maybe this was all just the workings of two paranoid male minds.

Sam hit the override button on the emergency exit door and pushed it open, intending to head for the dumpster, his usual smoking spot. The spot was already occupied, however, and even from the back he could tell that he was looking at one overstressed, slightly-past-his-prime criminalist.

"Hi," Sam said as he came up alongside Grissom. "Mind some company?"

Grissom shrugged dispassionately. "Whatever you want."

Lighting up, Sam took the opportunity to watch Grissom from the corner of his eye. The older man was smoking with a singular concentration he didn't recall having seen in anyone but criminals who were having their "last free smoke" before doing jail time. Something had to be bothering him, Sam thought, then immediately checked himself. What business of his was it if Grissom was bothered or not?

"I think you're ok," Grissom said suddenly, startling Sam out of his rumination. He gestured at the newcomer's cigarette and repeated, "I think you're ok. It appears to be well and truly lit."

"Oops." Sam flipped his lighter closed and inhaled, closing his eyes to savor the content a first drag always brought. "Don't understand how everyone's so eager to quit, anyway – I'd be way more insane than I am if I weren't a smoker," he added lightly after exhaling.

"But you'd be less susceptible to cancer."

"Well yeah, there is that. But I'm young, and I get physicals every year for work."

Grissom's eyebrows rose slightly. "I haven't heard such a carefree attitude about smoking in a long time."

"Yeah, well, I'm a carefree kind of guy."

Grissom looked at his own cigarette, silently smoldering between his first and middle fingers. "This isn't the best thing to be carefree about, if you don't mind me pointing it out. There's a reason everyone wants to quit, and it has something to do with wanting to live past 40."

Sam glanced deliberately at Grissom's hand. "You don't seem too concerned about it yourself."

That seemed to catch Grissom by surprise, and he looked back down at his hand, then up at Sam. "I'm concerned. I'm just very stupid."

His blunt honestly surprised Sam. "Oh" was all he could think of to say.

"Don't think I'm happy about standing here," Grissom continued, "because I guarantee you I'm not."

"So then . . . why are you standing here with a cigarette in your hand?"

A bitter smile. "Because like I said, I'm dumb. I quit years and years ago, then picked it back up a couple months ago when I was having a bad week." He stopped, fighting the urge to change "week" to "year," then picked up again: "I figured I couldn't get addicted again in a day."

"And you were wrong?"

"And I was definitely wrong," Grissom said, nodding.

Sam tried to look casual as he asked, "What kicked it off? Just a general bad week, or something specific?"

Grissom's eyes narrowed and he looked closely at Sam for a few seconds. Sam did his best to look harmless, and it must have worked because eventually Grissom said, "A specific event screwed me up, which yielded a week that got worse and worse."

"Dude," Sam said with a wave of his cigarette, forgetting for a moment that he was trying to get Grissom to talk, not himself, "I know that feeling. I almost got married a few years ago . . . then my fiancée broke it off a week before the wedding. The whole week after she did that was a disaster. I couldn't focus on my work, so I kept screwing up simple stuff like labeling evidence. By the day of the wedding – or non-wedding, really – I was just, like . . . disaster. Useless. Got myself crazy drunk that night – Mark and Jack had to come to the bar and drag my blubbering self home around four in the morning." He shook his head at what he now viewed as his own stupidity. "It only made me more depressed the next morning when I woke up with no wife and a hangover."

Grissom cocked his head to the side, drawn in by Sam's openness. "I'm sorry."

"S'ok. I got over it. Well actually, I got over her. She wasn't as great as I had thought she was."

"They never are."

"Nah, I wouldn't say that," Sam said. "Some of them are even greater than you might think they are. But I don't think you really want to hear about my love life. What about you? Did you lose a fiancée too?"

The bitter smile made another appearance. "No, not a fiancée. Not really even a girlfriend, either. Just someone who was . . . really important to me. She got fed up with me and one day she just . . . up and left. I think I'm still in the middle of that bad week, and it's been two months."

"That sucks," Sam said sympathetically. "Sometimes it feels even worse when you don't have a claim on them to begin with. Feels like you're not allowed to be hurt."

Grissom gave him a look of surprised approval. "True. Maybe that's what's been eating at me." He paused, looking like he had lost his train of thought for a moment. "But to get back to the topic at hand, I just figured I had nothing important left to lose anyway, so I might as well smoke if I wanted."

Making quotation marks in the air, Sam smiled. "Insert platitude about how you have plenty to lose here." He dropped his hands, then added, "But seriously – do you still think that, or are you just stuck with the monkey on your back again?"

"Little of both."  Grissom's cigarette was almost burned down, and he flicked a bit more ash off of it. "Seems like the only times I get the really bad cravings are the times when something happens to remind me how far gone from me she is."

Sam took another drag on his own cigarette and gave Grissom a penetrating look. "Did she tell you she was done with you? Or did she just go?"

"She just left one day. Like I said, there wasn't anything going on that would obligate her to tell me." Grissom flicked another bit of ash away, then dropped his butt to the ground and crushed it out.

"No wonder you're like this, then. If I were you, I'd be demanding she tell me what the hell was going on before I left her alone."

Grissom's smile this time seemed more cryptic than bitter. "Technically, I don't think you could exactly say I left her alone."

"Oh? Do tell!"

Grissom shook his head. "Probably not a good idea. But thanks for the conversation, Sam. I'll look for you when I come out to smoke in the future."

"Ok then." Sam looked at his almost-gone cigarette, then back up at Grissom. "Talk to you later."