Disclaimer: I don't own them.

A/N: :)


Chapter 10: Flirting, Time-share Coffins, and Religion…

On a good day, I liked Catherine a lot. We hadn't grown up in the same households, granted, but… certainly in the same socio-economic class. She was raised by a single mother, and she'd been a stripper to pay for college and support her family. Although I couldn't see myself doing such a thing—not least of all because I don't have the body that Catherine does—I empathize. And in truth, Warrick's growing on me too. I don't open up to him or even joke with him, the way I do with Nick and Greg, but… he's got similar roots too. Something that Nick and Greg can't quite grasp because they never had to live it…. and even Grissom doesn't get it. Not really.

Despite starting to feel like I was… a part of the team, now… I appreciated it when Grissom gave me solo cases… a little time away from the others, and a small showing of faith in my abilities… nothing else like it to lift my spirits and give me a little false hope to cling to. This case, however, was… strange. I had a DB in a dumpster covered in embalming fluid. Confirming that she had, indeed, been embalmed sent me to the morgue… where I learned that she had had a funeral the previous week… and where David Phillips attempted to flirt with me.

I had only met David the previous week—there were an awful lot of M.E's in the Vegas lab, although it seemed like, with the volume of the cases, they must all be needed. Except for Jenna. I had noticed that Grissom was almost as close to her as he was to Catherine. …She probably wasn't needed.

David was a quiet, shy man, a little older than me… but not in the way that generally attracted me to older men. If I hadn't had any visual cues to tell me so, I wouldn't have known he was older… and really, it was less about appearance, and more about compatibility, with the older members of the opposite sex.

Still, he might have been the kindest person I'd ever met… hesitant and courteous, and deeply sentimental—you could just tell. He might cut people open for a living, but he couldn't hurt a fly. You could tell that he was the kind of man who would feel guilty for killing a mosquito that was biting him… and not because he could knew how it fit perfectly into the food chain and provided balance, or because he could list all the positive benefits to human society the creature's existence created, or even because he just really liked bugs that much… but because the act of taking a life was beyond him.

And when a man hits on you, in the way he hit on me… you can't help but feel a rush of affection for him, even if you're not interested. Especially if you're in a tank top in a freezing morgue, and his eyes don't even look tempted to flicker below your face, because he honestly respects you that much.

He telss me he 'really admires the gusto with which I approach my job.' …He really is too sweet for his own good. I let my eyes flicker to him and away, considering his comments for a moment, a smile creeping over my lips. "Are you… hitting on me, David?"

He smiles shyly, looking away and back, and I feel like it would almost be unkind to give him the generic—although heart-wrenchingly true—response that I'm hung up on my ex… and instead, I glance over the man as a prospective love interest for the first time. Maybe I could help him out, anyway…

"Let me give you some… friendly advice." I grin, making my expression playful, to ease his discomfort. I don't want him to feel like he's being rejected. "If you wanna pull chicks, you gotta get aggressive…" He looks down."You gotta drop the glasses, lose the coat… grow some scruff." He looks a little embarrassed at my criticisms, but I keep my eyes locked on his. "You do get a C for 'cute' though…" His eyes flicker shyly to me and away, but a bright smile crosses his face.

I fight the second surge of affection for him, restraining myself from standing and pulling him into a hug, because he's so sweet—a teddy bear of a man, really—and it breaks my heart that my minimal attention and compliment can make his face light up so much. I turn to the computer instead, and am immediately distracted—my DB had been buried the previous week.

It was a disturbing case—at first I thought it was simple grave-robbing, but the funeral director was too nervous for his own good, and the lack of a coffin in the woman's grave was… suspicious. They were dumping bodies and reusing—reselling—caskets. For around ten thousand a piece, apparently. …Was there to be no rest—no freedom from the ills of the world and the greed of the masses—even in death?

I had said I wanted to be cremated on a whim, really—I just didn't like the idea of grave robbery. And then… to be so disrespected and disregarded after death by the people you paid to take care of you when you were beyond helping yourself… it felt wrong. Almost like a personal kind of betrayal. Maybe cremation was the better alternative after all.

Kelly teased me for being a hippie, often, although she was certainly one herself… but really, the whole 'dust in the wind' concept worked for me. I had always had trouble with the idea of something all-knowing and all-seeing. This wasn't because I thought I wouldn't have grown up the way I had if there had been a God to save me from all of that… I wasn't naïve enough to believe that my problems were the worst on the planet, or even that they were rare. It was worse because my childhood was all too common…

I just felt like if there were evidence on either side of the debate, it was in favor of the atheists… hadn't every culture in the entire history of the world worshipped something? Psychologically speaking, wasn't it true that humans, as a whole, needed to believe in something bigger than themselves to give their lives a sense of purpose?

Religion seemed like the natural solution for—and a fairly negative side-effect of—a species which had reached a cognitive ability advanced enough to realize how insignificant they, as individuals, truly were.

But if I did believe in something, it was in the nature of the world. I believed that animals evolved in ways that helped them survive—and that this was for the greater good. I believed that it was beautiful that everything alive was made of the same element… that all life was equal, in the greater picture… and that my death could provide life for the future. I believed in psychics, and the laws involved—the precise mechanics by which everything functioned. I believed in chemistry, and the chemical make-up of everything in existence being precise, and orderly, and breathtaking in its simultaneous complexity and simplicity.

If science could be a religion—not a study or a respected truth, but a faith in every sense, to be followed and worshipped and treated with reverence—it would be mine.

And this belief did give me a feeling of belonging and significance in the greater world around me, so perhaps I was using science to fulfill that basic human need which I had scoffed at. Still, it was a positive thing for me, all in all… being married to my job at twenty-eight had been a rather sad prospect in my mind, especially after losing Gi—Grissom, and with him, any desire I'd hidden away of being a mother. Finding meaning in that job—the noble pursuit of science for the greater good—became what I imagine colonizing missionaries must have felt in their vocations, although perhaps without the harmful side-effects of killing, enslaving, and forcing assimilation…

And in truth, I needed that kind of devotion in my life, from one source or another.