She loved Archie. Loved the way his short, spiny black hair stood up without aid of gel nor spray, how there were no fumes to sneak up her nose and cause her to sneeze. She loved the feel of his skin, so soft and warm as she nudged her chin against him, pleasure radiating through her very being like a vibrator on high. As she moved, his eyes locked onto her stark, green orbs and she was sure she was in heaven, his glistening, smart almond-shaped eyes the color of well polished wood. It was everything to her, to be able to look into those eyes and dream of the day she could declare her love for him like she’d always wanted to...

“Dude, you brought a /cat/ in here?” It was the thick, Texan-born drawl of Nick Stokes that drew Archie Johnson and his companion out of their reverie. The beautiful, lean tortoise-shell body of Archie’s feline slipped out of his lap and onto the workstation in front of him, her solemn green eyes locking onto the lanky CSI as he ambled in, and she proceeded to lick her lower region with disdain. “I wouldn’t let the boss catch you.”

“No problem. She’s only temporary, man.” Giving the inattentive feline a scratch on the rump, Archie spun his stool around to reach for a printout from a nearby scanner. “Here you go. Voice print comparisons from your party last night, and the samples you gave me earlier.”

“Thanks.” Nick’s eyes landed on the cat again, and he grinned. “You know, Catherine’s going to be a little envious.”

“Why’s that?”

“She’s not the only ‘Cat’ in the lab anymore.” The joke was not lost on Archie, who chuckled as his own cat wound her way around the workstation, back arching as she rubbed her body against the computer monitor. “But seriously, dude- get her out of here before Grissom gets wind of it.”

“Problem’s already solved.” As Nick exited, the almond eyes turned toward the readouts he’d just printed, still glimmering innocently on the computer screen. “And Greg’s going to be looking forward to all this.”

“Mrrow.” Said the cat.

It glistened like sweat on the skin of a hot, devastatingly limber lover, the scent of him not very unlike that which Catherine Willows carried in her arms at the very moment she arrived at work. Nightshift, Graveshift...the shift that always made you feel like you were the walking dead, although as she carried her cargo through the glass double-doors of the lobby, she felt very much alive.

“Hey, Cath.” Her entrance was intercepted by Warrick Brown, carrying a brown paper bag and bottle of Root Beer toward the breakroom in the back. “Change of clothes?”

“Nope. I promised Grissom I’d pick up his dry cleaning on my way in.” She smiled, securing the bag in which her charge was wrapped. “Have you seen him?”

“He’s in his office.” The lanky CSI peered into his own bag, eyebrows arching as Catherine looked on. “Moniqua made my lunch for tonight. I’m still trying to figure out what it is.”

“You’re a level three CSI, Warrick. You’ll figure it out.” Balancing her load carefully, Catherine continued on down the winding hallway, a smile spreading over her features as the bemused Warrick had his own turn to look on.

It was almost frothy, reminding Gil Grissom of the time he’d purchased a latte at the nearby Starbucks, and the young, busty, overzealous woman at the counter had managed to put far too much foam into his beverage. He’d been forced to lick it off his finger, he recalled, the warm, sweet caramel and lucious foam giving him a thirst he hadn’t been able to rectify for hours. But this wasn’t latte, nor was it tasty foam laced with caramel. It was lather, warm with the water that ran through his fingers, overflowing in his clogged metal sink and onto the onyx tiles that covered his office floor.

“Let’s see...you stopped shaving ages ago...so that can’t be the reason that you clogged your sink this time.” Catherine’s warm, sultry tones washed over him, leaving a sensation the warm water never could as he turned his head to look at her standing in the doorway. A long, limp bag hung over her arms, and he managed a smile in the time of crisis.

“Funny, Catherine. Set that down and grab the plunger from the janitor’s closet. This one isn’t working correctly.” The parcel was abandoned, and Catherine soon returned with a gargantuous plunger grasped within her fingers. The handle was long and smooth, devoid of the splinters which Grissom’s .99 cent version had bestowed upon him, and with the combined efforts of he and Catherine’s hands pumping slowly up and down on the handle, the clog was eventually dislodged.

“So, what’s the cause of this one?” Catherine’s hands still grasped the plunger, inches over those of her friend, and Grissom at last managed to regain his senses enough to tuck the tool aside to dry. “Had to be something pretty obstinate to require the mother of all plungers.”

“Ramen Noodles.” The Graveshift supervisor wasn’t one who happened to be prone to eating such things, and Catherine arched an eyebrow as she headed over to settle upon the couch. “Greg was using the office for his lunch break.”

“Greg was.”

“We were having a discussion on Poe.” Again, Catherine’s eyebrows arched, and Grissom deliberately ignored them. “He’s taking a literature course at UNLV, Catherine. I happen to enjoy Poe.”

“So you’ve told me. ‘Quoth the Grissom...all the time.’.” She smiled at her lame joke, and reached for the object slung over the couch arm. As the boss began to mop up the puddles caused by the Ramen incident, she pulled his leather jacket from it’s plastic confines and began to run her fingers over it. “Red wine really does come out of leather.”

“I never doubted it for a second.” He’d apparently never been trained as a janitor, and as Catherine pulled the jacket over her shoulders, she rose from the couch to approach him. “It’s too big for you.”

“Ahh, but I digress. If it’s anything like it’s owner, the fact that it’s too big won’t matter once I’m done with it.” The suggestive comment was not lost on him, and Grissom allowed himself to give his newly claimed lover a passionate kiss as he grasped the mop handle for support. “You know, sweetheart, you may be able to fuck me like a rabbit, but you can’t mop a floor worth a damn.”

The crash of the mop against the edge of the sink, oddly, brought no one to the doorway as the calm, collected CSI supervisor threw his leather-clad woman upon the crackling, brown leather couch.

“You did what?”

“Replaced his regular soap with extra-foamy, and told him I dumped my Ramen noodles down the sink drain.” Greg Sanders was overly fond of himself and his practical jokes, and as he sat among the youngest three CSI’s in the breakroom, it was easy to see the pride. “But I’ve been using the sink to wash Archie’s cat.”

“You’ve been washing his cat.” Warrick was still picking at remnants from an earlier lunch, and as he lifted his fork to his full, pouting lips, he raised an eyebrow in amusement. “So there’s cat hair clogging Grissom’s drain-”

“And he had a Cat to help him unclog it.” Greg’s use of the nickname Catherine despised was quickly picked up by Nick, who tossed a crumpled paper cup in his direction with a scolding shake of the head.

“You’d better not let Cath catch you calling her that.”

“For that matter, you’d better not let either of them catch you trying to set them up.” Sara spoke for the first time, slender arms bared as she lounged in a nearby chair with a cup of coffee, wearing a sleeveless white tanktop. “You know Grissom hates that, Greg.”

“And I’m not alone?” The spiny-haired technician shoveled a forkful of pasta alfredo past his own slim, sensual lips and smiled. “Nick, Sara- you want voice comparisons done, you go to Archie. You want secrets to stay secrets- you don’t go to Archie. The man told me everything.”

“And I’m telling you to keep your mouth shut, Greg-o. If you want Catherine to let you come to her house for the New Year’s party this time.” Sara rose from her seat and passed by the young Sanders on her way to the door. “We’ll keep you in the loop- if you agree to keep Catherine and Grissom out of it.”

“That goes for me too, Greg. One word to either of them, and we’ll spill the word about the cat.” Nick’s Texan accent was more prominent when his dander began to rise, and Greg nodded firmly as the two CSI’s disappeared into the hallway, leaving him with a silently amused Warrick.

“Think they’ll get anything from those voice comparisons?”

“Greg,” Warrick himself rose to dispose of his dinner, and gave Greg a wink on his own way out. “We all know that it wasn’t Ecklie and Catherine in the broom closet, don’t we?”

Her long hair was a waterfall of auburn and white-gold, melting together into the sensual, smooth mass that swept across his stomach. Her head moved in a motion that caused her hair to mimic a pendulum, and he felt time ticking away as he watched her perform the gentle ministrations he’d dreamt of since their first night working together.

“Gil, I thought your New Year’s resolution was to go to the chiropractor.”

“And I thought yours was to get that tattoo removed.” Without a sound, the normally proper CSI supervisor gently slapped the curve of Catherine’s gluteal region through the fabric of her faded blue jeans, a smile spreading across his face as her eyes widened. “It’s okay to have harmless crushes, but when you have Archie’s name tattooed across your backside...”

“Oh, and it’s okay for you to have Ecklie’s name tattooed across your own ass?” Catherine delivered a playful punch to Grissom’s slightly plump, yet distractingly smooth stomach before dismounting his body and sliding off the couch. “All that mopping the wrong way really stiffened your shoulders.”

“And you seem to have made it all better.” Grissom sat up and watched as she crossed the room, slinging one leg up as she mounted the corner of his desk. “Care to tell me what that tattoo really is, Catherine?”

“You mean in all this time you’ve never once looked at my tattoo?” She chuckled, fiddling with a paperweight in the shape of the Eiffel tower. “How do you know it /isn’t/ Archie’s name?”

“Could I get a closer inspection?”

“Not if you value your working hours.” She smiled and replaced the paperweight before crossing the room to the doorway. “They wanted me in trace ‘yesterday’.”

“You’re wanted in here everyday, if you’re free to work the kinks out of my shoulders.” Grissom reached for the black t-shirt he’d slung over the nearby file cabinet, pulling it over his head in one smooth, fluid motion. By the time his eyes cleared the collar, Catherine had vacated the room, and his keen eyes spotted the item she had left in her wake.

It was a business card, carefully scripted and stuck neatly into the split of the wood at the top of his mop handle.

/“Full body massage, five-thirty a.m, Thursday. Room 243.”/

A smile crossed his face as he plucked the card from its perch and slipped it into his front pocket.

Room 243 was the broom closet next door.

It was easy to see the bulge from where she knelt, leather taut and swollen over the gargantuous lump that left so very little to the imagination. She raised an eyebrow and smiled, running a hand over the mass and knowing that her eyes twinkled with the anticipation of uncovering what was sequestered beneath.

“Pass me the box cutter, Nick.” Sara’s gloved hand remained where it was, gently probing the lump with questing fingers. She knelt by the rear passenger door of a Volkswagen Jetta, could see her reflection clearly in the glistening silver body as she waited for the proper tool to slice into the slick, black leather upholstery. Uncovering a drug deal gone sour had caused she and Nick Stokes to haul the zippy vehicle into the garage, and although the cops had been through the dealer’s home, she suspected the squad of rookies had been less than thorough with the car. “I’m betting our boys missed a little stash.”

“He didn’t sew it up very well.” Nick hovered nearby as he worked at the front passenger seat, running a UV wand over the unmarred seats. “I can see the loose threads from up here.”

“Well, not everyone’s like you, Martha Stewart.” The barb came lightly, and Sara was promptly rewarded by a thump on the head by the blunt end of Nick’s instrument. “Hey- speaking of illegal acts, Nick- how’s that voice comparison coming?”

“That’s not illegal.” The lean Texan paused in his actions to rock back on his heels and stare at her, feigning hurt. “Archie says they’re a match. It /was/ Gris and Cath in the broom closet last week.”

“Well, I hope Grissom and Catherine don’t get wind of what you guys are up to...or you’re going to wish you hadn’t caught /any/ of what they were doing on tape.” Sara’s eyebrow rose as she recalled exactly what she, Warrick and Nick had listened to the night the two boys had chosen to record the ‘things that go bump in the broom closet’. It had all started only because they’d been dying to discover whom might have been committing the now weekly frantic copulation behind closed doors. “Or you two may wind up cleaning that entire closet inside and out.”

“What closet?” The two guiltily- and innocently- looked up from their work as Grissom ambled through the doorway from the lab into the garage, looking suave and hip in a black t-shirt and tight blue jeans. Sara’s mouth gaped open, and Nick gently nudged it shut with the light he grasped in his hand.

“We think we left the batteries for this in the closet in the breakroom.” Sara covered well, but perhaps not well enough, as Grissom’s sea-blue eyes narrowed, and the boss pulled a cell phone from where it hung upon his belt loop.

“Well, Nick- the closet’s unlocked now, so I’d suggest you go get them.” He watched the young man exit hastily, and turned to look down at Sara. “Sara- you’re doing a good job. Brass told me he had a team of rookies on this, and I’m sorry you have to pick up the slack. Keep working until Nick gets back, and I want you to take a break.”

“Sure.” The sweat beaded on her brow until she’d turned her back long enough for her senses to pick up that Grissom had gone, and Sara Sidle, normally cool, calm and collected...let out the longest breath she’d ever held.

His voice was sultry and warm, sexy and seductive, words dripping from her cell phone and pouring over her body like drops of a warm, summer rain in Montana. She could remember immersing her body in bubble baths when she was newly married, the foam and lather of the Mary Kay bubble bath caressing her curves, her breasts bobbing among the mountains of white as she pinned back her hair and sang lilting French songs in the steamy bathroom. His voice did to her what bubble baths and her ex-husband never could- sent her mind reeling and caused her body to react in such a way she was certain the sex could never be any better than that.

“Catherine, did you hear me?”

“Yes, yes I did. You said...Sara and Nick are onto us.” Catherine blinked back the lust gathering in her eyes from the rash of mental images, crossing her legs and settling back onto Grissom’s office couch. “I did hear everything you said, Grissom.”

“Good. What do you want to do about it?”

“What can we do? They know we’re the ones doing it- and I pressed Greg for information while I was in trace. He said Nick and Warrick caught a recording of us and compared it to the voice samples we both submitted when we were hired. They know, Gil- and there’s nothing we’re going to be able to do about it, save for finding a safer, more secluded place to make wild, passionate monkey sex.”

“And I’ll pretend you never said that.” She could just picture the look in his eyes, the darkening of the rich, blue irises as he imagined just what ‘wild, passionate monkey sex’ could really amount to. It was almost enough to overload her own mind, and the moment he appeared in the doorway, she pressed the ‘end’ button on her phone and cast a smile in his direction that could melt even the most frozen of butter.

“Are you sure the mop is in that closet?” Sara, Nick and Warrick strode side-by-side down the corridor leading to Grissom’s office, Nick chuckling as he explained the need for the mop to his two companions. “Archie’s having a hard time cleaning up after that cat without Grissom catching him. We’d better have some extra strength disinfectant somewhere in there.”

“If he’d taken the cat home tonight like you told him to, he wouldn’t have had the problem of it peeing on his leather pants.” Sara assumed the role of responsible employee within seconds, earning her an eye-rolling stare from the laid-back Warrick.

“He told me he was taking care of it. Besides, Grissom didn’t even notice that-” As they neared their destination, the three CSI’s came to a halt as sounds they’d now deemed as familiar filtered around the bend in the hallway, turning three suave and perfectly calm faces shades of red they’d never been before.

“Gil...it’s getting hot in here.”

“Sweetheart, you wanted monkey sex...so welcome to the jungle.”

~The end.