Author's Note: For those who may be confused: "PSA" means "Public Service Announcement," as in the ads that appear on TV that don't advertise anything but tell you something like "Drugs Are Bad" or "You Might Have Cancer." I apologize for the brevity of this chapter. The next one will be longer, but this was the most logical part to break at. Enjoy.

He caught a cab off of the corner and noticed the man's expression as he climbed into the car, but the driver said nothing. Greg found it amusing that a taxi driver was disturbed by the smell of a charge and not the other way around, but he too said nothing. He gave him the address and the driver took him home.

"Twenty-four fifty," said the cabbie.

"Aw, shit," Greg muttered. "I have a twenty..."

"Twenty-four fifty," the cabbie repeated flatly.

Greg sighed. "Fine, I have some emergency change up in my apartment, if you'll just wait a minute..." The driver's eyes stared piercingly back at him out of the rear view mirror, his expression bored and stern at the same time. Greg sighed. "I'll be right back," he said, and got out of the cab.

He jogged across the street to his apartment and fumbled with the code to the building when someone called out behind him.

"Excuse me," said the authoritative voice that made Greg stop. The young CSI turned and blinked at a blond man in a blue uniform who flashed his badge at him.

"Can I help you, officer?" Greg inquired, trying to keep the mocking lilt from his tone.

"Are you Greg Sanders?" the cop asked.

Greg narrowed his eyes. "Did I do something wrong...?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me, sir," said the cop stiffly.

"Am I under arrest?!" Greg gasped. "Did Camellia try to pin something on me?"

The cop blinked at him, his expression vacant. "You're going to have to come with me, sir," he repeated.

"You going to tell me why?" Greg asked.

"You are not under arrest, sir. Please, just come with me."

Greg slouched and gestured half-heartedly at the cab across the street, behind which, he noted, there was a parked police car with someone in the passenger seat, waiting for them. "I have to pay my cab driver..." he muttered.

"It'll be taken care of," said the officer.

"May I ask why you're hauling me in smelling like garbage?" Greg inquired. "Can't I take a shower first?"

"My orders are to bring you in as soon as you returned home," said the cop. "Sorry." And he looked like he meant it, his nose wrinkling up like a hamster's as he caught scent of Greg.

"OK, but you're going to have to share a car with me," Greg warned, and went quietly with the officer.

He was escorted into the station with both police on either side, and was not quite sure where they were taking him until they knocked on an office door and someone yelled a gruff, "Come in." The door opened to reveal Captain Jim Brass hunched over a desk and filling out paperwork, looking like he hadn't been home since last month. He looked up and exhaled a sigh of relief upon seeing Greg and nodded at the officers.

"Thank you Olsen. Tillman," he said, acknowledging the both of them. "You can leave us."

And with that, they ducked out, leaving Greg to deal with the detective alone. Greg looked over his shoulder at the door, then up at the detective, baffled. "Just what the hell was that?" he demanded, pointing over his shoulder.

"I'll tell you what the hell that was," said Brass, rising to his feet and seizing his phone. "Last night, I called Grissom to explain what happened and that I had sent you home. Imagine my surprise when I received another phone call a few hours later that told me you were not at your home, nor were you answering your phone, and your car was found abandoned on Lakewood with the keys inside—"

"They stole my keys?!" Greg exclaimed. He hadn't even noticed.

Brass continued, despite this interruption. "—and no one seemed to know where you were. I had a frantic Nick Stokes on my hands demanding I report you as a missing person immediately, but he settled for me putting a detail outside of your apartment, as I couldn't officially report you as missing until the twenty-four hours mark which, by the way, is six hours from now."

Greg glanced at his watch and chuckled. "So it is..." he said, noticing that it was almost five o'clock.

"So where the hell were you?" Brass asked, holding the phone to his ear.

Greg was about to reply when Brass held up a hand to hush him and he snapped his mouth shut, almost offended.

"Yeah, Gil, he's here... No, he seems fine. Smells like someone pelted rotten fruit at him, though... You don't have to do that. I'll send him over to you guys just as soon as I get done chewing him out... Well yes, I'm sure they'll all have a few things to say about it, too... He'll see you when shift starts." Brass hung up.

"Well?" Greg asked, slightly irked. "Can I explain now?"

Brass fell back in his chair and placed his fingers together. "Please do."

Greg sighed. "I went out," he said simply. "I needed... a distraction. So I went to a club. Met a pretty girl. Got fucked over. End of story."

"Fucked by a girl, how original," Brass mumbled.

"Please, no jokes," Greg groaned. "I'm tired and my head hurts and I smell like cockroach shit. Can I go home now?"

"Grissom wants to see you when you turn up for shift tonight," Brass warned.

"Fantastic," Greg muttered. "Home?"

Brass rolled his eyes. "Get out of here, before you stink up my office."

"Thank you!" Greg cried with relief. He turned to leave when he hesitated. "Hey, do you know if I can get my car out of impound?"

Brass sighed and scribbled a note before handing it to Greg. "See you later, Greg."

"Thanks," Greg said with a grin, and then he was gone.

Greg parked his car across the street and leapt out. He felt as if one of those cockroaches had crawled inside his ear and was now eating his brain to make way for the eggs it was going to lay there. He shivered at the thought, and realized he badly needed that shower, not just to get rid of this stench, but also the filthy ideas that were filling his head. He would probably have to burn the clothes he was wearing as well. It was a shame, he was quite fond of the button down shirt he was wearing.

Grumbling, he approached his apartment for the second time that day and punched in the numbers.

"Where the hell have you been?" The demand was accusatory, but icily quiet. And with that accent, it could have only come from one person.

Too exhausted to deal with an angry Nick, Greg reluctantly turned and waved at the Texan. "Well hello, and good afternoon to you too. I'm fine, thanks for asking."

He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded, his eyes boring into him like oil drills into the earth. "Answer the question. I've been calling you for hours."

"That'll do no good," said Greg, calmly. "My phone was stolen."

"By who?"

"I don't know, do I?" Greg snapped. "If I did, I'd go and get it back."

The tiniest frown flickered across Nick's features. "Well, where were you all night?"

"In a dumpster," Greg replied. "Can't you smell me?"

"I thought that was the cat…" Nick mumbled.

Something meowed behind him and Greg jumped and looked down to see a scruffy black cat rubbing against his legs as if Greg was its new best friend.

"Where the hell did that come from?"

"What were you doing in a dumpster?" Nick demanded.

"I got dumped there, like all trash," Greg replied snidely.

"By whom?"

"A girl."

"What's her name?"

"Bitchy McFuck-You."

"Greg—" Nick growled warningly through gritted teeth.

"Nick!" Greg returned, equally as threatening.

Each of them stood their ground as they competed for dominance, but after a moment, Nick backed down and stepped towards the wall. The cat continued to rub itself against Greg's calf, meowing as if it wanted something from him. Greg reasoned it was probably because he smelled like cat food.

"Now," Greg began, "I'm going to go inside and take a shower. You can stand out here like an idiot if you want, but clearly I'm fine, so there's nothing for you to be worried about. So if I were you—"

"I heard about what happened last night," Nick interrupted. "Brass said you were a little shook up."

"Yeah, well I'm over it," Greg muttered.

"Why are you so bitter all of a sudden?" Nick asked, his tone strangely submissive and quiet, and Greg couldn't place the emotion behind it. "You used to be so much less… sarcastic."

Greg gave him a sardonic smirk. "But at least I'm still funny." He looked at the cat at his feet. Its fur was patchy in places, and one eye was a cloudy white, while the other was a sharp yellow. It looked rather old and half blind and was probably a stray. Greg kicked it. "Go home, Cat."

He punched in the code to his apartment building again. "And you too… Texan," Greg said, glancing at Nick.

Nick said nothing as Greg entered the building. A scratchy meow that echoed in the hall told Greg that he had been followed by at least one of the things he had told to go home. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Nick was no longer by the glass door and sighed with relief. The last thing he needed was Nick pestering him. He looked down at the cat, which blinked its dual-colored eyes at him and meowed again for good measure.

"Fine," he sighed. "Let's see if I have something for you to eat."

The cat trotted after him as he climbed the stairs to his apartment. The second he opened the door to his place, the cat raced inside ahead of him like a bullet, as if it belonged there. It went straight to his kitchen and sat by the fridge, its tail swishing back and forth expectantly.

Greg chuckled lightly at the cat's persistence as he opened the fridge and scrounged around. He didn't have much, he noticed. Something smelled as if it had died in there. Discovering an old take-out box, he pulled it out. He opened it to the stench of rotting meat and saw that parts of it were green. He seemed to remember ordering liver at restaurant about a month ago with a mildly interesting prosecutor. Or was it two months ago?

The cat meowed eagerly as the stench of the decomposing meat wafted into its nostrils.

"You want it, you can have it," Greg muttered, pulling out a plate and lopping the liver onto it. He put it on the floor and the cat greedily attacked it. Greg emitted a curt laugh as he watched. "You're fond of liver, huh? Well then, I guess you begged the right guy. So what am I going to call you, then? You don't seem to have an owner, because if you did you'd probably be in better shape. You look in just about as bad a shape as your meal, little guy…"

As if in response, the cat looked up at him and licked its whiskers before abruptly returning to its meal, even though Greg still saw a piece of meat on its nose. He smiled.

As the cat ate, Greg stripped off his clothes and dumped them in a plastic bag to be disposed of later. He climbed into the shower and allowed the water to pelt his shoulders. He turned it up so it was scalding, and he felt his skin erupting with heat with every drop that crashed against his body. He scrubbed madly at his hair, desperate to rid himself of the stench, and lather-rinse-repeated three times until he was satisfied. He seized his soap and scoured his skin with it until it was raw. Finally, he stepped out into a bathroom so consumed by steam, he could barely see two inches in front of him. But by groping around, he eventually found the door and it all spilled out into the hall.

As the mist cleared, he saw his new friend sitting out in the hall waiting for him, his tail swishing back and forth against the floor. Greg frowned at him. "You know… you could use a shower too," he said.

The cat had no idea that by accepting Greg's free liver, he would have to endure the torturous experience dreaded by all cats: soap and water.

A day that begins by waking up in a dumpster is bound to not be a very good day. After struggling with a frantic cat in a bathtub, Greg had passed out on his bed and was only awoken when something near his lap began to vibrate. At first, he thought it was part of his dream, which was a rather embarrassing one involving Nick, until claws dug into his thigh, successfully waking him up.

Grousing, his hand perked up and his nose twitched as he watched his new pet claw at the sheets and walk around in a circle before settling down on the bed again and wrapping his tail around himself. Soon enough, the vibrations began again, and Greg could hear the low rumble of a contented feline.

His head fell back into his pillow and he stared at the ceiling for a moment before he even thought to check the time. 1:00 blinked at him in a dangerous red and Greg's eyes doubled in size.

"Shit!" he exclaimed, kicking the cat as he leapt out of bed. The beast swiped at him angrily for disturbing its slumber, but Greg ignored it and pulled on his jeans as he made his way into the kitchen and groped for his landline phone.

"Shit, shit, shit!" he muttered over and over, dialing quickly. It rang three times before someone answered.

"Grissom."

"I'm alive, I'm OK, I'm not in a dumpster, please don't send any cops to my house, I will be there in thirty minutes, just… don't freak out!" Greg said all of this as quickly as physically possible.

"Greg, is that you?"

"Yes, it's me!" Greg hissed. "Sorry, I crashed, overslept and all—"

"Greg, slow down!" said Grissom. "Why don't you take the night off?"

"I took last night off… Well, half of it at any rate," Greg replied, though he did pause in his frantic activities to get ready.

"So take this one too. You haven't had a good day."

"No, I guess I haven't," Greg said. "But Grissom—"

"No buts! Just don't end up in a dumpster again."

Greg scoffed. "Yeah, sure thing boss."

He hung up and stared at his phone. His cat leapt up onto the back of his couch and watched him out of his good eye. "So now what?" he asked the feline.

The cat simply meowed in response.

"Helpful," said Greg.

The cat leapt to the floor and trotted over to the door before meowing again.

Greg chuckled. "You think I should leave the house."

The cat blinked at him.

"Fine," he said. "I know exactly where I should go, too."