Title: Say It With A Bear
Author: Evan Nicholas
Summary: It's Valentine's, and she's going to kill Greg if it's the last thing she does.
Pairing: Jacqui/Sofia
Rating: All schmoop, no smut.
Disclaimer: Who, me? You've got to be kidding. Pfft.
A/n:
1. Well, why not?
2. I hope the new format for prompts etc doesn't preclude random fics... if it does, just let me know.

The bear is simple and kind of cute, despite the initial swell of nausea that Jacqui feels upon seeing it sitting in the middle of her workbench. She spots it from the doorway, and has a desperately bad feeling about the rest of her night.

She drops her armload of Ecklie-backlog cases onto the counter beside the bear, and then picks it up gingerly, half-expecting it to explode into a swarm of confetti or something. She sighs.

The Holiday Harassment Ban she has in place with Greg is supposed to cover Valentine's Day, but maybe he found a loophole of some kind. She has a copy of the treaty on her computer somewhere, she'll have to look it up and take him to task for the violation. The usual punishment - a full shift in Swami getup - will have to be modified now that Greg has moved out into the field. Maybe she can make him wear lacy women's underwear all night instead. A red g-string.

And then hope that he has to strip down at some point to recover evidence.

She sets the bear to one side, and starts going through the case files.

***

"Got a minute, Franco?"

She looks up. Hodges is filling her doorway with his usual look of sour distaste, which she's come to recognise as Hodges-speak for 'hello, you look lovely this evening.'

"Sure," she says. "What do you want?"

"Grissom asked me to process this," he says, holding out a bagged carpet swatch, "and I think there's a fingerprint on the back."

She takes it from him and turns it over, then brings it under her magnifying light. "That does look like a set of ridges," she confirms. "Give me a second, and I'll lift it for you."

"Thanks." He leans against the edge of her counter while she slits the evidence seal. "Cute bear," he says.

"I think it's from Greg," she says.

"Really? I thought he signed the HHB Accord after the jack-o-lantern incident."

"He did," Jacqui says, "but who else would it be?"

He watches her work for a bit, then picks up the bear. "I haven't seen him around all night, actually," he says, examining the stuffed animal. "Did you know it's holding a little tiny card?"

"No."

"It is. It says, 'I missed you.' Isn't that sweet?"

She looks up from the tangled fingerprint. "What does it say?"

"I missed you." He sets the bear down again. "That ought to limit the field of possibilities. Most of us don't even notice when you're gone."

She sticks her tongue out at him.

***

The thing is, though, that she hasn't gone anywhere. Not in ages, not since her father had his gallbladder removed in June and she looked after his parakeets while he was in the hospital.

"Hear you've got a secret admirer," Sofia says when they rub elbows at the coffee machine.

"Yeah," Jacqui says with a puzzled shake of her head. "My instinct tells me it's Sanders, but..."

"But?" Sofia prompts with a sly smile.

"But the evidence doesn't back it up."

"Do you want it to be Greg?"

"Well..." Jacqui shrugs. "It would give me an excuse to kick his ass - again - but no. I kind of like the idea that someone's flirting with me." She leans in closer to Sofia. "But don't tell anyone I said that."

"Promise," Sofia tells her in an equally soft voice, and pushes a strand of hair behind her year. "Aren't you curious who it is, though?"

"I guess so."

"Well, you are a fingerprint technician," Sofia says with a quick wink. "I'm sure you'll figure something out."

Jacqui watches her stroll back into the hallway.

***

She deals with Hodges' fingerprint and pages Grissom for the results, pokes a bit more at Ecklie's backlog and curses the laziness of the day and swing shifts, and then in the brief lull that descends on her lab, she puts on a fresh pair of latex gloves and picks up the bear.

The card is the obvious place to start, even though it's bound to have Hodges' prints all over it by now. Nevertheless, there a limited number of places on a stuffed animal that one can lift usable prints, so she'll start with the obvious ones.

"That is truly a sad statement on the human condition," Grissom's voice interrupts her as she dusts the back of the tiny card.

She turns and looks at him. "What is?"

"I know that's not a piece of evidence," Grissom says with a half-smile, "so I can only assume that you're systematically deconstructing the mystique of a secret admirer."

She looks down at the brush in her hands. "I used red powder," she defends, "so it's not like I'm being a total Scrooge."

"Scrooge is Christmas," Grissom tells her. "I'm not sure who the anti-Cupid would be."

She sighs. "If it's Greg," she says, "I'm going to castrate him with a plastic fork."

"Ah." They consider each other for a moment. "You have a fingerprint for me?"

"Yeah," Jacqui says, and pulls the folder from of her outbox. She hands it to him and tries to dust off the smudge of red transferred from her thumb. "Crap, sorry about that."

"I'll survive," he says. "Anything interesting?" He flips the folder open.

"Match in CODIS," she tells him. "Details inside."

He scans the document, and the way his eyebrow arches tells her that the information is useful. "Thank you, Jacqui."

"No problem. Oh, and Grissom?"

He stops in the doorway, turns back to her. "Yes?"

"Don't warn Greg, okay?"

He smiles. "That would be unsporting."

***

She lifts three distinct prints off the card, and then a partial off one of the bear's plastic eyes. She preps them and scans them, and sets the search parameters to go through the staff exemplar database. She knows it'll take a couple of minutes, so she wanders back out to the coffee room.

A two-minute cupboard-by-cupboard search uncovers Greg's latest hiding place, and she brews up a pot of Hawaiian Blue and takes it back to her lab, enjoying the twin thrills of quality coffee and the comfortable knowledge that Greg is going to be pissed off that she pilfered his stash.

Her computer is flashing a message at her, and she toggles it out of its waiting mode. Two matches. "Gotcha," she says under her breath, and brings them up one at a time.

The first is D. Hodges. Expected. She discards his file. And the second is...

Oh. She raises an eyebrow. Ohhh.

***

"You paged me?"

Jacqui looks up from the file she's sifting through and smiles. "You bear-grammed me," she accuses gently.

Sofia comes into the lab and stands across from her, the lab bench between them. "I did," she confesses.

"That was - nice of you."

A shrug from one of Sofia's shoulders, the elegant economy of motion making Jacqui swallow. "I know we only went for coffee the once," Sofia says softly, "but I had every intention of asking you again."

"And I had every intention of saying yes," Jacqui replies, "except..."

"Except then I quit the lab and disappeared in a cloud of smoke."

"Something like that."

Sofia smiles. "I didn't mean for my departure to be so abrupt," she says. "But then that training opportunity presented itself, and I just had to grab it."

"You're back now," Jacqui points out.

"So I am." Sofia leans forward, resting her elbows on the cool counter top and bringing her face to within a few inches of Jacqui's. "And you're still here."

"Where else would I be?" Jacqui asks.

"Want to get a coffee sometime?"

"How about dinner instead?"

Another devastatingly slow smile from Sofia. "That sounds even better."

"Jacqui!"

The familiar holler from the far end of the corridor makes Jacqui smile and lean back just as Greg barrels into the lab. Sofia regards him with amusement, still propped on the lab bench.

"So I hear you're out to get me?" Greg squeaks. "What'd I do?"

Jacqui sighs. "You were wrongly accused," she tells him. "Blame Hodges."

"Hodges, eh?" Greg says, hands on hips. "Thanks." He spins on his heel and stalks across towards the trace lab.

"Did Hodges really-"

"No," Jacqui says, "but I like to watch them fight."

Sofia grins, and straightens up. "I've got to get back to work," she says. "Just let me know when you're free, okay?"

Jacqui returns the smile. "You got it."

"And I promise not to run off and change careers this time."

"I'll hold you to that, Sofia."

"I hope so."