It was coming into the small hours, and Greg and Sara were taking a break. Sara watched with amusement as her young charge bounced around the break room in a sudden burst of domesticity. She looked down at the table in front of her. Somehow Greg had requisitioned a mismatched assortment of implements, and now she found herself eating curry for breakfast off a chipped plate with a plastic fork. Flagging night-workers traipsed through from time to time, sniffing the air enviously as they refilled mugs with over-brewed coffee before returning to their stations. It was a good moment, she thought. For a brief time she was a fully functioning social creature, someone who belonged, not just a lonely single woman who ate lonely meals for one in a lonely bachelor apartment.

'What's it like?' asked Greg, setting down two mugs of coffee before sliding himself into the seat in front of her.

'Mmm,' murmured Sara, her mouth still full, 'mmm… it's really good. Okay, not what I'd usually have for breakfast but, no, it's good.'

Greg cracked open the plastic lid of the Styrofoam carton of soup. 'I'd hope so, given how much it cost.'

'You know,' said Sara, 'I think I'm going to have to check this place out, see what else they do.'

'Be careful, Sidle. You don't want to develop a habit or anything.'

Sara looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

'I'm serious! You start out with a green curry here, a sankhaya pudding there, and before you know it you're sitting in your bank manager's office trying to explain away a five-figure overdraft.'

'Don't worry yourself, Greg; it's not like I've got anything else to spend my money on anyway. And since when did you get all au-fait with Thai food? I thought the extent of your appreciation of Oriental cuisine was microwave ramen.'

Greg clapped a hand to his chest in a feigned gesture of hurt. 'You know, I don't know why it is that everyone thinks I'm uncultured. Who says that just because I'm a young, hip slip of a thing with great taste in music, I can't appreciate a good sambal oelek when I see one? I know my Thai food, yeah.' He paused and glanced at Sara; her expression alone told him she was unconvinced. 'Okay, I looked up their menu on the internet yesterday. Still – that's initiative, right? A desirable quality in any CSI.'

Sara covered her mouth with a hand as she tried to stifle a laugh. Working with Greg was always fun; sure, he could be a cocky bastard at times, but he usually had the good grace to laugh at his own mistakes. That, and he reminded her that life wasn't just about rolling into work every day to figure out how other people ended up dead.

She was drawn out of her reverie by the realization that Greg was waving his hand in front of her face; she'd obviously stopped listening. 'Sorry… miles away for a second. What did you say?'

'Nothing much – just a helpful suggestion on how to get this stuff for free.'

'Oh? What's that?'

'Hot date. First one, of course. That way you don't have to go dutch, with the added advantage that your guy will think you're really keen and want to actually talk and stuff.'

Sara looked at him askance for a moment, before replying, somewhat sadly, 'Nah. I haven't had a date, let alone a hot one in… God, longer than I'd like to admit.'

'Don't worry,' responded Greg cheerfully, 'no one else in the lab has either. It's like we're all cursed or something. Vincent in trace? He's going nuts. Hasn't had any decent gossip in months.'

'Did someone say gossip?'

A click of heels announced a new arrival, and Sara and Greg turned their heads to see Catherine waltz through the door.

'Sadly only the lack of,' explained Greg, before attacking his food with renewed enthusiasm. 'You got any? Any hot dates?'

'Not for me, I'm afraid, unless you count this 'team building' meal I've got with Ecklie after shift. Some departmental heads-budgeting-economizing-buddy thing. Which I imagine means the food will be crap.'

Greg gave a sympathetic sigh. 'Still – at least you'll have Grissom for company.'

'Huh!' laughed Catherine, opening a carton of yogurt she'd found at the back of the fridge. 'I don't trust him to actually remember to show up.'

Just then the rest of the swing shift staggered into the break room. Nick and Warrick exchanged greetings with their former co-workers; since Ecklie had split the graveyard shift, they had all had less opportunity to catch up than they would have liked.

'How about you two, then?' asked Sara. 'We were just asking Catherine if she had any action lined up – what will you guys be up to after shift?'

'Man, I'm so short on action I think my love life should be inspected by Doc Robbins,' sighed Nick. 'Still, my brother's up for a couple of weeks; got him in the guest room as we speak. So after shift, I've got to show him the sights and sounds of Vegas.' His mouth widened in a gaping yawn. 'I'd rather be catching some zees, to be honest.'

'Me, I'm a happily married man,' supplied Warrick, holding up his left hand. At the other side of the room, Catherine muttered something about a report and made a hasty retreat to her office. 'After shift I've got to be off home to Tina.'

'So basically,' concluded Greg, 'we're all as boring as hell. No offence.'

'Speak for yourself, my man,' said Nick as he slid on his jacket. 'Any road – I've got to be off. You coming, Rick?'

'Sure. Be seeing you guys.'

Greg and Sara waved at the swing-shifters as the door closed behind them. Sara had finished her food, and took a sip of her coffee as she watched Greg down the last of his curry.

'Ah,' he murmured with a contented sigh, 'that was good. Not too spicy, not too mild.'

'You tried the soup yet?' asked Sara.

'No, not yet; I was waiting for it to cool down a bit first. Man, I love a bit of shrimp. Anyway, what was it you were saying earlier, when we were with Hodges?'

'What? Oh.' Sara pushed her plate to one side and retrieved the trace report from its manila folder. 'It's just something that the wife said in the interview. I asked her what she and her husband ate that night – she said her husband had the soup, then the curry.'

'Ah… and Hodges said that our vic never ate the curry. Which is a shame, considering how good it is.'

'Right… so I'm thinking little lie, big lie? I think we need to go back, check out all the details of her story.'

'Jesus!' cried Greg suddenly. 'Man, that is…' he began coughing, and, racing to the sink, poured himself a glass of water.

Sara ran to his side. 'Are you okay? You're not choking or anything, are you? Because I don't think I can perform the Heimlich maneuver.'

Greg spluttered and, downing the water, quickly turned to refill his glass. 'No, no, I'm fine. It's just… that stuff is hot.'

'The soup?'

'Yeah. I don't know if it's an off batch or something, but that stuff should have a biohazard label.'

'Maybe. Or maybe you just can't take the heat.' Greg shot her a withering glance. 'Okay, so that was a terrible joke. But seriously, Hodges tested the control sample against what Marshall ate, and it was the same composition. Which may explain how our vic could have taken a fatal dose without realizing it.'

'Yeah,' replied Greg, searching the fridge for something to take away the burning sensation on his tongue. 'You could probably douse that bowl with syrup of ipecac and the only thing you'd notice would be the chili. Well, until you started yakking all over the place anyway.'

'Exactly.' Sara gathered their plates from the table and washed them as Greg hopped around her, sucking on an ice cube. She shook her head and smiled; he was a funny guy, whether he meant to be or not. She glanced across the hall; from her position she could see Archie gazing intently at his computer screen, and Ronnie the paper analysis tech apologizing as he bumped into an intern rounding the corridor. Sara turned and fixed her gaze instead on the smooth glass wall in front of her. The reflection was indistinct, but as she watched Greg pace around, checking Hodges' report, she felt that odd twinge of heart again, the one that caused the blood to rise in her cheeks.

She decided. Without turning her head, she called out his name.

'Uhuh?'

'Do you feel like going out for a drink maybe after shift?' You know… we can be like the mutual consolation society or something.'

For a moment, Greg thought that he might choke on his ice cube. As a dreamy lab technician he'd fantasized about this moment a hundred times, formulated a hundred suave replies. And here he was, living the dream. He felt like kicking himself therefore when despite his best intentions, his forward planning, he heard himself mutter the immortal words 'yeah, okay.'