Disclaimer: I do not own CSI or its characters. They're all property of Alliance Atlantis, CBS Paramount and Anthony Zuiker.

A/N: Well, I certainly hadn't expected to take this long to get this chapter posted especially since I started working on it almost immediately after posting the last chapter. I think this is about the tenth version already. Surprisingly, the plot never changed. I just couldn't get the character interaction to feel right. Then suddenly today, it all came together! Anyways, I hope you enjoy it.

"Yes, we finally got him! We got the bastard!" Nick exclaimed as he reviewed the DNA results. He turned on his heel and started out of the DNA lab. "Thanks, Wendy," he said as he waved his files and papers in farewell.

"Glad to be of service," Wendy replied as she pushed her rolling stool away from the table. Breathing deeply, she stretched her arms overhead and arched her back before rolling her head to work out the kinks in her neck. It had been a long night sorting through all of the DNA samples that Nick had dropped on her.

Just then, her stomach growled loudly. She knew she had missed her first coffee break of the night but when she glanced at her watch, she was surprised to realize that she had also missed her lunch break.

She was walking down the hall towards the break room and the tuna salad sandwich that was calling her name from the fridge when she heard boisterous laughter coming from the toxicology lab. Finding it curious as Henry was a rather quiet guy and his lab was usually the quietest of them all – never any music or other distractions – she glanced around to notice that her fellow lab rats were all gathered there.

Even Hodges.

Now that was extremely odd. If Hodges wanted to hold court, he usually did so in his own lab. Knowing Hodges – well, men in general, really – she was sure it was some throwback to their caveman days and establishing their territory. Well, if Hodges was involved, she was sure that some kind of scheme or another was being cooked up and she had better step in before he got everyone fired. Even if everything was on the up and up, she couldn't pass up the chance to needle Hodges. Smirking, she reminded herself to be nice. She knew Hodges had a crush on her and truth be told, he could be cute in an annoying kind of way. But that was no excuse to take advantage of the situation.

Stepping into toxicology, she called out cheerily, "Hey, what's up?" as she came to stand beside Hodges.

Mandy, who had been leaning over the lab table, straightened up. "Hey, Wendy. We were just talking about traveling. You know, like if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go? Myself…..I'd like to go someplace exotic where I could lay on the beach just soaking up the sun, like Tahiti or Morocco."

"Or Texas," Bobby teased as he elbowed her.

Mandy blushed. "Stop it!" she protested as she slapped Bobby on the shoulder.

Everyone chuckled except Wendy who had the feeling there was an inside joke she was missing.

"Texas?" Wendy inquired quizzically.

Archie answered, "Yeah. Or at least Western Texas where a certain someone we all knew grew up and I'm not talking about Bobby either."

"Nope," Bobby interjected. "I'm from Eastern Texas," he stated proudly.

Wendy's eyebrows scrunched momentarily as she tried to figure out Archie's riddle. As the obvious answer came to her, her eyes grew round. "Oooooh." She had always wondered if Mandy had a crush on Nick and if her bright red cheeks were anything to go by, she certainly did.

"Well, they do know how to grow men in Texas," Mandy cheekily commented.

Bobby's chest puffed up with pride. "Yep, they certainly do."

Mandy whacked Bobby hard in the stomach and he deflated like a popped balloon. "Well, at least I don't want to go to Africa and shoot poor, defenseless animals like you!"

Bringing his hands up holding an imaginary rifle and peering through its imaginary sight, Bobby said, "Yep, I'm going to hunt down Simba."

"That poor, little lion cub from 'The Lion King'? That's just awful," Mandy whined.

Bobby waved his 'rifle' back and forth then suddenly shouted "Bang!" as he pulled on the 'trigger'.

The men just laughed when Mandy and Wendy both jumped.

As the laughter died down, Wendy asked, "So what brought this all on? This discussion about where'd you like to travel?"

"We got another postcard from Sara," Mandy replied. Picking it up from the table, she handed it over.

Taking it, Wendy was confused when she saw "The Great Barrier Reef" scrawled over the top of an underwater picture of reefs and colorful tropical fish.

"Great Barrier Reef? That's near Australia. I thought Sara said in her last postcard they were headed to China."

Henry answered, "They were. They still are. They just made a pit stop in Australia." Pointing to the postcard in her hand, he instructed, "Read it. It explains everything."

As she flipped the postcard over to begin reading, she heard Mandy wistfully murmur, "That is just so romantic. To get whisked away somewhere exotic for your birthday. Who knew Grissom could be so romantic."

The guffaws and groans of the men became background noise as she began reading.

Greetings from sunny Australia!

As you can probably tell, we're not in China, at least not yet. When we landed in Sydney, I knew that we were spending a night's layover. What I hadn't expected was that Gil had arranged for us to spend almost three full weeks in Australia before continuing on to China. He says it's my birthday present but he's having just as much fun as me. We've been surfing at Bells Beach, snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef and even attended a performance at the famous Sydney Opera House. (I'll never understand his love of opera but I indulged him anyways.) Tomorrow, we're flying into the Outback for a few days before returning to Sydney to meet our flight to Bangkok. By the time you get this, we should already be there. Take care, be safe. - Sara

As Wendy laid the postcard aside, she was drawn back into the continuing conversation as Archie was saying "… so I'm sure they had a lot of good surfing at Bells Beach. It's a pretty famous international surf spot but if you're heading to Australia just to surf then the Gold Coast is where you wanna be. "

"Is that where you'd go if you could, Archie? The Gold Coast?" Mandy asked.

"I might," he replied. "But the gnarliest curls are at places like Teahupoo in the Tahitian islands or the Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu."

"The Pipeline. Isn't that like a really dangerous place? " Henry asked.

"Yeah. You should see some of those crazy dudes. Man, that must be a thrill," Archie enthused. "That would be the life. Hanging around the beach. Catching some rays. Doing a little surfing. Just waiting to catch the perfect wave."

"You'd actually risk your life for a three-minute thrill ride?" Hodges questioned snootily.

Wendy was not at all surprised by Hodges' question. What had surprised her was that he had been able to keep his opinion to himself for so long.

"Well, if I was good enough to surf any of those places, I sure would love to get the chance. But I'm just not that good. The California beaches are more my speed." Archie went quiet for a few seconds seeming to be lost deep in thought. "You know, there are a couple really good surfing spots on the Costa Rican coastline. There's Tamarindo. That's supposed to be a pretty good beginner's spot. Then a little south of there is Playa Negra." Glancing around the circle of lab techs, he pondered, "Huh. Wonder if they did any surfing while they were down there."

Hodges sarcastically muttered, "Oh, puh-lease," under his breath as he rolled his eyes.

Annoyed, Wendy turned towards him with a disgusted look and arms folded tight across her chest. "What is your problem?!"

For a moment, Hodges was startled by her attack. When he saw the same looks of disgust and irritation on everyone else's faces, he went on the defensive.

Looking down his nose at Wendy, he stated snootily, "You seriously cannot believe that Grissom is going to be satisfied very long with globe-trotting, surfing and counting monkeys in the rainforest, can you? Men of Grissom's and my intellectual caliber need stimulation. We need complex problems to challenge our minds and to have someone with whom we can discuss a wide variety of highly complex issues at a very scholarly level, not in layman's terms."

"Oh. My. God," Wendy drawled disbelievingly. "Do you hear yourself?"

"Why, yes, I do."

"So you seriously are saying that Sara isn't smart enough to keep Grissom interested? That she's not his intellectual equal?"

"I know this may be hard to hear, Wendy, but few people are of quite the same ….. shall we say, aptitude….as Grissom and I."

"You are an ass!" she hissed. Looking at the others, she asked them "Can you believe him?" as she held out her hand indicating Hodges.

Archie, having been on the receiving end of one of Wendy's tirades in the past, recognized all the signs. Leaning towards Hodges, he whispered, "You are so in for it now." Then he leaned back in his chair and smirked as he folded his arms across his chest preparing himself for an interesting show.

"You think that being in a relationship is only about being intellectually equal?" Wendy screeched. " Is that what you think? Well let me tell you buddy, it's not!"

Hodges stepped back slightly from the full force of Wendy's outburst but she wasn't letting him off the hook that easily. She matched him shuffle for shuffle as she jabbed her finger in his chest.

"It's about being there for each other through the good times and the bad. It's about having someone to count on when everyone else disappears and about having a shoulder to cry on when times get tough. It's about having someone to laugh with and share memories with. It's about trust and knowing that no matter how badly you screw up, someone is still going to love you. And it's about sacrifice, too."

Slowly, her rant was winding down and her voice slipped into a wistful, sad cadence.

"It's doing things for that other person that you would never consider doing otherwise in a million years. And you know what? That's exactly what Grissom and Sara have. You think it was easy for them to keep their relationship a secret around here? I'm sure it was hard, really, really hard, but they did it because they wanted to be together. You think it was easy for Sara when Grissom left on his sabbatical? And I cannot even begin to imagine what Grissom must have gone through when Sara left so unexpectedly!"

Wendy paused a moment as her voice started choking up. The room was so quiet that only the distant ring of the phone at the reception desk dared disturb it. "They both sacrificed a lot just to be together so why can't you just be happy for them?"

"I…uh…," Hodges stuttered as he shuffled restlessly. "I guess I never thought of it that way."

"Yeah, David, that's the problem. You don't think. You're smart. I'll give you that. But you just don't think."

Turning on her heel, she started to leave but just as reached the doorway, she stopped and looked back. She had a bit more to say. A few more home truths for Hodges.

"By the way, if you think Sara isn't Grissom's intellectual equal, you are dead wrong. Did you know that she was accepted to Harvard when she was only sixteen and that she started only a couple weeks before her seventeenth birthday?"

Hodges slowly shook his head.

"Or how about the fact that she had completed her undergraduate degree and was already working on her Master's when she was only nineteen or that she had already been accepted to the physics doctoral program at Berkeley when she decided to work for the San Francisco Crime Lab instead?"

Once again, Hodges shook his head.

"I had only been working at the Frisco lab a couple months when Sara left to come here. I didn't know her at the time but I still remember how they tried everything to get her to stay. They offered her promotions and raises and all kinds of incentives because they didn't want her to leave. Even though she was only a Level Two, she was one of their best investigators."

She paused a moment as she watched Hodges sheepishly hang his head a little.

"So I think it's a pretty safe bet to say she's Grissom's intellectual equal. She definitely would be your equal. No, I take that back. She's probably your superior. You know, if you kissed a little less ass around here and really got to know people, you'd first find out how awesome and amazing all your colleagues are."

With that verbal smack down, she turned and left the toxicology lab and her stunned co-workers behind.

Once she had turned a corner down the hallway and disappeared from sight, Hodges felt all eyes turn on him with looks ranging from Bobby's pity and Henry's disgust to Archie's smirk and Mandy's misty eyes.

Feeling like the ass that Wendy had so loudly proclaimed him to be, he tried to speak, to possibly explain himself but all that came out was a few stuttered syllables.

He quickly fled Henry's lab and rather than risk running into Wendy in her lab on the way to his own Trace lab, he headed to the break room instead. With his head down upon entering the room, he was already several paces in before he realized that Wendy was also there getting her lunch out of the fridge.

For a long, uncomfortable moment, the two just stared at each other.

He solemnly greeted her with, "Oh, huh, hey, Wendy."

"David," she stated flatly before she turned her back on him and stepped up to the sink to rinse off her apple.

Hodges shifted nervously knowing that he had to say something – apologize – if he ever hoped to have Wendy speak to him again much less, well, consider him as a potential romantic companion.

"I..uh…um…I guess I don't know what to say, uh, to all that."

She sarcastically cracked, "Well, that's a first!"

"You're probably right. I guess I don't think sometimes."

Stunned, Wendy turned back towards him.

Hodges shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry?"

A small smile tugged at the corner of Wendy's lips before she turned her attention back to washing her apple. "There may be some hope for you yet, Hodges."

"Really?"

She quietly chuckled at the way Hodges' tone lifted up into a squeak at the end.

"Yeah, there just might be."

She shut the water off, wiped her apple down and then turned around leaning her back against the edge of the counter. "You just need to learn that the whole world doesn't revolve around you. Sometimes, you need to think about others and their feelings."

"Yeah, ok, I can do that," he stated as he stared off into space almost like he was planning everything in his mind.

She shook her head doubtfully. She was positive that Hodges thought he could do it but she would have to see it first to believe it.

She grabbed her sandwich off the counter and started crossing the room. "I think I'm going to go eat my lunch outside."

As she was just about to pass him, she paused.

"David?"

"Hmm," he replied as he met her gaze.

"I wouldn't mind someone sacrificing a Saturday evening and a little money to take me out for a nice dinner." She smiled coyly as she arched an eyebrow then walked away leaving a stunned Hodges behind.

"Wendy, do you mean…." He turned around to discover he was talking to an empty room. Deciding that she had truly meant it as an invitation for him to ask her out, he cockily swaggered from the break room as he congratulated himself.

"Way to go, Hodges, way to go."

TBC

I love to hear what everyone thinks so reviews are really, really, really welcomed!