Bugs and Questions

It was the beginning of shift and everyone was waiting around for Grissom to come and hand out assignments, he was late. Finally Grissom came in and quickly apologized for his lateness, not giving any indication why he was tardy.

"Nick, you and Greg have a domestic at the naughty kitty, Greg, be on your best behavior. Cath, you and Sara have a DB in Sutherland. Warrick, you and I have a suspect waiting for us in interrogation."

Everyone disbanded and headed towards their perspective duties. Sara and Cath got to their crime scene and were greeted by a bug infested body. Cath took out her phone and speed dialed the local, leading entomologist.

"Grissom"

"Hey Griss, this body you gave us is covered in bugs. Can you get over here and do a collection?"

"I can't, our suspect is about to crack. Have Sara do it."

Cath heard the phone disconnect from the other end and looked over at Sara a little skeptically. Sara meanwhile had already gone back to the Denali and retrieved some specimen jars. Cath was finally jarred from her thoughts by Sara.

"Cath, are you going to help? I need a hand with the collection."

"Sara, are you sure you should be doing this?" Cath questioned her. She got her answer when Sara picked up a beetle and inspected it, "An earth-boring dung beetle, of the genus Geotrupes, about 20 mm in size." She pointed at the bug she was holding with the tweezers, "notice the green metallic sheen…odd."

Odd thought Catherine. Odd, the only odd thing is the fact that Sara was spewing out information she usually only heard come from Grissom's mouth. Taking the bite, she asked, "what's odd about it?"

Sara placed the beetle in a specamine jar and explained. "Dung beetles eat dung, and prefer that produced by omnivores. Many of them also feed on mushrooms and decaying leaves and fruits, they do not hang around dead bodies. They do not need to eat anything else because the dung provides all the necessary nutrients to their diet."

Cath was dumbfounded, and for once she was speechless. "Sara…how do you know all this?"

Sara purched her lips to hide the smile, "just got lucky I guess."

"Uh huh…ok…Grissom" was the response she got from Cath. Sara was sure she was going to get the third degree later, but for now she was just going to enjoy the looks she was getting from Cath. Cath, thankfully, dropped the subject for now and began inspected the rest of the scene.

Two hours later the two of them came into the office to drop their evidence. Cath headed towards one of the layout rooms and Sara headed towards Grissoms office, her arms full of specimens.

Grissom was sitting at his desk when Sara came in, "Griss, can you give me a hand here." He looked up and saw her overloaded arms. He quickly got up and relieved her of some of the jars, hardley able to hide his glee.

"So, what do we have?" he said with a light in his eyes.

"Your like a kid in a candy store." She sighed and looking out the door real quick to make sure no one was looking she gave him a peck on the cheek.

He smiled back at her, "I know honey, I just can't seem to help myself."

She placed all the jars but one on his desk. "I do have one oddball for you to inspect" she said holding out the last jar. He took it from her and inspected it. "I um… took the liberty of finding some food for it… to keep it alive for you." There was a spark in her eyes.

He smiled braodly and closed the door to his office. He came up to her and gave her a deep kiss, still holding the beetle in his hand. Sara broke off the kiss and took a deep breath, trying to gain some control over her libido. She knew it wouldn't be long before Cath would start looking for her.

Grissom had just started sorting through the jars when Cath barged into the office, she looked a little dissapionted when she entered and saw Sara helping Grissom with the jars instead of doing something else. Lord knows what Sara thought to herself.

"So…have you decided why your little bug friend was on our body?" she asked as she picked up one of the jars and inspected the flies lying dead at the bottom of it. She curled her lip in discust, placed the jar back on the desk and look at Grissom expectantly.

"Sara just dropped off them off, I haven't had a chance to look at them. I was just about to do so when you came in." he lifted one of his eyebrows and gave her a pointed look. She was about to retort when Warrick came in, "Griss, Brass found the car we were looking for, their bringing it in right now."

Grissom looked dissapointed as he glanced once more at the beetle in his hand and sighed. "Sara, can you identify and sort these out for me? I'll just take them home to create a timeline later." he realized his mistake, pursed his lips and left the room before Sara could say anything back.

Once Grissom and Warrick had left the room Cath gave Sara a pointed look. "So…Sara…is Grissom's bugs the only thing your identifying and sorting for him?" Sara thought the best thing to do was to say nothing at all. She just started to do the task assigned to her and asked her own question, "so…Cath…how is Warrick lately?" that shut her up.

"I'm going to go process that evidence of ours" she said quickly and left the room. Sara just smiled.

It took the rest of the shift to sort out the insects, even with Grissom's teachings she had to look a couple of them up. The body had been ditched in the woods surrounding Summerland and consequently the only one probative was the beetle. The rest seemed to be indigenouse.

She was tired and had just finished logging the last one when Grissom came into his office covered in grease. Sara looked up at him and laughed. "You find this funny do you?" he said with his own smile.

"Acctually, I find it rather sexy. Are you going to clean up here or at home?"

He walked a little further into the room wispering, "If I do it at home, will I have some help washing my back?"

"I can't say much for your back, but I would be more than willing to wash your front." She said seductively. The smile on Grissom's face was wide when Sara placed all the jars in a box and headed out of his office. "I'll just go and put these in the car."

Grissom gave her about five minutes before following her out.

Cath came back around the corner, somehow not so surprised at what she had seen and heard. She was going to tell Sara what she had found from the evidence but Grissom had managed to get to the office before her and they were so consumed with their own conversation they didn't even notice her.

When Sara left his office she looked back in to see Grissom scrambling to get his stuff together to follow the brunette out. Cath followed him out and was certain she would find Sara waiting for him, and she was not dissappointed.

She quickly got into her car and followed them. She assumed they would head to either Grissom's or her apartment but was surprised to see them heading in the other direction. It took almost a half an hour to get to their place and the look of their home surprised her.

It was a warm yellow with a zero lanscaped front lawn. They pulled up into the drive and got out of the SUV. Grissom opened the back and handed Sara her bag, kissing her before pulling out the box containing the jars of insects.

The two of them headed inside and Cath put her car in park, switched off the engine, and headed towards the house. She got up to the front door and laughed, they had put a butterfly shaped rug on the stoop, was that Sara's or Grissom's addition.

She walked up to the door and banged on it.

Grissom was in the process of removing his dirty clothes and Sara was starting the shower when they had heard the banging and the two of them froze and looked at each other. Nick was the only one who knew where they lived and he wouldn't resort to banging on their door.

Sara looked at him, "who…" this was as far as she got when they heard Catherine screaming from the other side of the door. "Shit, she is going to have the whole neiborhood up." And she ran from the bedroom to answer the door.

Cath was about to yell again when the door opened, Sara reached out, grabbed Cath, and pulled her inside. "hey!"

"Cath are you trying to wake the entire nieghborhood!!"

Catherine began looking around, "where is he, where is that slimy little bug lover." Sara was trying not to smile when Cath turned on her. "and you, you better wipe that smile off your face, your in just as much trouble missy, GIL!" she yelled once more.

Grissom finally came out of their room de-greased and with slightly damp hair. Catherine looked from him to Sara, who was still sporting a smile. Catherine was about to say something when she was bowled over by a large dog. "Ahhh, what is this, a horse."

"I see you've met bruno, he seems to like you Cath. Care for some breakfast." Grissom asked like they did this everyday. Sara went over to her and pulled the dog off while Grissom headed towards the kitchen to make breakfast.

Catherine finally settled down when Grissom placed a huge plate of omlett and hash in front of her, though she still had plenty of questions. She asked and they answered as many as they felt comfortable with and she finally seemed to be satiated.

Grissom cleared the table and Sara looked over at Catherine. "Cath, I know all you want to do is scream this new found information across the entire city, do you think you could keep it to yourself please. We still aren't ready to reviel it yet."

"Yes, I will keep it to myself." She sighed. It was about half an hour later when they finally got the woman to leave and they ticked her off the list of people they were "accidentally" revieling themselves to.