A/N: Only one more chapter to go after this! Thank you to all those who have read and reviewed - I know that Adam/Angell isn't the most normal of pairings, but I'm so glad that you're all enjoying it. And once again, thank you to my wonderful beta Jayden Bell.

Disclaimer: I own Jess' family but any CSI characters are not mine.

"What is that?" Jess asked as her brother David walked into the living room.

"Nothing."

"It's a box. You can't lie to me and say that it's nothing."

He smirked. "Well if you already knew what it was, then why did you ask?"

Jess rolled her eyes. "What's in the box, blockhead?"

"Jessica, don't call your brother names," her mother called out from the kitchen.

Adam chuckled in the background, and as Angell turned to glare at him, David smiled broadly.

"It's a Wii," he explained. "I thought we could try it today since there aren't any games on."

"Aren't the Pats playing?" Adam asked.

Jess opened her mouth to warn him, but her father walked into the room and cut her off.

"Adam?" he said slowly.

"Yes, Mr. Angell?"

"We do not mention that team in this house unless we're celebrating the fact that they were defeated. Understood?"

Adam swallowed hard and nodded. "Absolutely."

Allan smiled and took a seat on the couch next to him before nodding at his son. "So what's this thing?"

"It's a Wii," David explained as he opened the box and started setting the system up.

"That means absolutely nothing to me," he admitted.

"It's a video game system," Adam told him. "You remember Nintendo?"

"Yes. The boys used to fight over it constantly."

"Well, this is…it's the newest version of the Nintendo, basically. But it's more interactive. When you play baseball, you actually have to swing the controller and stuff."

Nathan stood in the doorway, a beer in hand. "You play?" he asked.

Adam looked up at him. "Uh, yeah. I've played."

Jess laughed. "Pull out Mario Kart," she told her brothers. "Adam will leave you all choking on his dust."

David grinned. "Let's play then."

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"This is insane," Jacob commented an hour later. "You're like, the Mario Kart Master."

Adam blushed. "I wouldn't say that."

"I would," he said firmly. "You've kicked all our butts multiple times."

"I'm, uh…I'm a bit of a geek."

"Nothing wrong with that," Nathan interjected. "David here wanted to be a chemical engineer for awhile."

"Yeah?" Adam asked. "What happened with that?"

David shrugged as he loaded a new game into the Wii. "I took my first science class in college. The registrar said it was the fastest major switch she had ever seen." He glanced at Adam. "What about you? Did you always want to be a scientist?"

He shook his head. "No. For awhile, I wanted to be a racecar driver. And then I wanted to be a vet."

Jess tilted her head and looked at him with surprise in her eyes. "Why didn't you go into veterinary science, then?"

"My uh…my dog died. It was the worst thing ever and I cried for days. I knew right then I could never actually put an animal to sleep."

"I'd be a wreck if I had to do that," Jacob muttered.

Nathan laughed. "It's true. He cried when his goldfish died."

"Hey, I loved that thing!"

"Do you even remember its name?"

Jacob frowned. "That's irrelevant. I loved the fish then. I didn't say anything about loving it now."

They all laughed at that, and then Patricia stuck her head into the room.

"Will one of you help me with dessert?"

"I will, Mrs. Angell."

She sighed. "Adam, it's been four months. When are you going to call me Patricia?"

He blushed. "Sorry." Looking back at Jess, he held up his controller. "You wanna play for me, Jessie?"

"Yeah." She took the controller from him and settled down between her brothers as Adam got up and left the room.

"Still letting him call you 'Jessie,' huh?" David asked with a smirk.

She punched him in the arm, never taking her eyes from the game. "Shut up."

"You're pretty good at this, Jess," Nathan commented, grimacing as he tried to maneuver one of the turns.

"Yeah, never pegged you for a gamer," Jacob said.

"I'm not. But Adam has this at home, and we play a lot. So I've gotten pretty good."

"So you go over his place a lot?" David asked, unable to hide his smirk.

She punched him again and kept playing.

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"Please tell me you got some answers for me, Ross."

Adam smiled as he looked up to see Jess walking into the lab. "I do, actually."

"Enough to get this scumbag?"

"Yep." He pointed to the test results on the table. "There you go."

Jess frowned as she stared at the paper. "You don't actually expect me to understand any of this, right?"

Adam smiled and moved over to explain the results to her. As he opened his mouth, though, he heard a soft snicker behind him. Looking at Jess, he saw the way she blushed and kept her eyes locked on the ground, and he knew that she had heard it as well. Adam turned around and looked at the new lab tech.

"Something funny, Harris?" he asked crossly.

The tech looked up, his eyes lingering on Jess with a hint of amusement behind them. "I was just thinking it's a good thing these cops have us to explain things to them."

Adam's fists clenched as he glared at the guy. "And it's a damn good thing we have them to actually catch the bad guys. 'Cause I'm pretty sure if I put a gun in your hand, you'd just shoot your foot off." He sighed and shook his head, turning back to the results. "Get out."

"Excuse me?"

"Get out!" Adam exclaimed, pointing to the door. "If you can't show respect to the people you work with, I don't want you in my lab."

Harris dropped what he was working on and held up his hands. "Fine," he bit out. "But Taylor's gonna hear about this."

Jess waited until the guy was gone before she turned to Adam. "Thanks," she said quietly. "You didn't have to do that."

"He's an ass," he said firmly. "Besides, normal people don't understand the complicated science stuff, Jess. That doesn't say anything bad about you." He took a deep breath. "You're smart – don't let anyone ever tell you different."

Giving him a small smile, she reached out and squeezed his arm. "Thank you." She nodded at the results. "So you gonna explain these to me or what?"

Adam chuckled. "Of course."

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"You're gonna fall asleep, aren't you?" Adam asked.

Jess shook her head as she sat beside him on the couch, even as she yawned loudly. "No."

He chuckled. "You're such a liar. If you don't like the movie, though –"

"No, no. I like it, Adam. I've just pulled too many doubles this week."

"Do you…we could turn it off. I mean, if you wanna go home and get some sleep."

She shook her head again before resting it on his shoulder. "I don't wanna go."

"Okay."

He turned back to watch the movie, but found that he couldn't pay much attention to it. Jess snuggled closer to him, and he took a deep breath as he lifted his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her left hand came up and rested on his chest, and within a matter of minutes, her breathing had evened out and he knew that she was asleep.

For a long time he just stared down at her, taking in how beautiful she looked. Then he reached up and turned off the light next to the couch, tightening his hold on her just a little as he turned his attention back to the movie.