Title: Tuna in the Brine
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: gen, Greg Sanders
Fandom: CSI: Vegas
Rating: PG-13
Table: Liquids, mission_insane
Prompt: 10, Brine
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Greg Sanders, unfortunately, just borrowing him for a while. Please do not sue.

***

"You've got to be kidding me." Greg looked from Sara to Nick, his eyes wide with surprise. "You found this guy face down in a barrel of water -- with some fish chowing down on him?" His voice betrayed his disbelief, even before he shook his head.

"Tuna," Sara supplied helpfully, nodding at Greg. "That's what was making a meal out of him. Can't help but wonder if it's some kind of poetic justice. Maybe he ate a lot of tuna in his lifetime, and this is karma coming back to bite him in the ass. So to speak."

Greg couldn't help but laugh at those words; trust Sara to have something like that to say about the grisly photographs they'd shown him. But he still found it hard to believe .... "Tuna?" he asked, raising his brows, sure that they were making that part up.

But both of the other CSIs nodded; it was obvious that they were telling the truth, given the way that the man in the photos looked. His remains had been partially eaten by something -- and if Nick and Sara said the offenders were tuna, then they had to be.

"It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase 'dream with the fishes,' doesn't it?" Nick remarked with a wry smile. "And it wasn't water we found him in, Greg. It was brine. The kind of brine used to preserve fish. So it makes a kind of sense that tuna nibbled on him."

Greg nodded slowly, his imagination running riot. He didn't want to think of what it might ahve been like to go that way; maybe the fish had gotten to this guy before he'd died, and he'd known that he was being slowly eaten as the life drained out of him.

He couldn't hold back a shiver; it wasn't something that he wanted to think about. Of course the guy hadn't been eaten alive by a bunch of fish, he admonished himself. That wasn't possible. The cause of death had been blunt force trauma to the back of the head.

He'd been dead before he'd been tossed into that barrel. Maybe his murderer had been hoping that the fish would get to him enough before the police found the body to obliterate all traces of their crime, and they'd think he had merely stumbled, fallen, and come to a tragic end.

"I guess the next question is, who would have wanted to preserve him?" Greg mused, looking at the other two CSIs. When Nick and Sara both gave him puzzled looks, he laughed, realizing that they didn't see the significance of the liquid that they'd found the body in.

"Brine is used to preserve meat and fish," he explained, picking up one of the photos for a closer look. "But from the look of this, they might have been planning to dump his body in a larger pool of salt water to make it look like an accident."

"Ah, I get it," Nick said, nodding. "Brine is naturally occurring salt water. So whoever killed this poor sap could have been planning to dump him in a lake somewhere and hope that his body wasn't found until he was pretty well decomposed -- and lunch for the fish."

"But why tuna?" Sara asked, a frown on her face. "If they wanted to get rid of the guy's body, why didn't they just pickle him in the brine, then dump the body into a larger area of concentrated salt water? Why dump the tuna in with him?"

"I guess we'll know the answer to that when we find out who killed him," Nick said, picking up the photos and heading out of the lab. "I want to show these to Russell. Maybe he'll have some kind of insight that we don't. At least whatever he says is bound to be interesting."

Greg nodded, watching the two of them walk away before turning back to his own case. He had some DNA work to do, but he couldn't keep his mind on it; his thoughts kept wandering back to the tuna in the brine with the body, and wondering what the fish were doing there.

Trust him to get more wrapped up in somebody else's case instead of his own, he chided himself. But that one was fascinating -- though the one he was dealing with wasn't anything to scoff at, either. It was going to take a lot of work to solve this one.

Sighing, Greg glanced towards the hallway, wishing that Nick and Sara would come back and let him know what Russell had said. He didn't mind working alone, but it was always more fun to have someone working with him to bounce ideas around with.

There were times when he wished that he was still a lab rat, confining himself to the complexities of the DNA lab. It brought back memories -- and he had to admit that at times, he really missed being able to say that this as "his" lab and that he ran it.

But he was much happier being a CSI, even if that meant that he'd had to take a pay cut and work his way up through the ranks. He'd done that; he was now a level three CSI, and he was proud of all that he had achieved. He'd done good work as as a CSI, and he knew it.

If only he could keep his mind on his own case, instead of wondering what was going on with someone else's! Greg tried to focus on what was in front of him, but found that he was having a harder and harder time doing so. He couldn't keep his mind on his own work.

Sighing, he finally put what he was doing aside, deciding that he would come back to it after he'd taken a lunch break. His head was pounding; he needed to put the concentration on DNA samples out of his mind for a while, and let his thoughts drift.

Wandering out into the hallway, he decided to go to the cafeteria and see what was in the machine; he didn't usually eat from there, but he hadn't thought to make anything to bring to work with him today, and he had to admit, he was feeling hungry.

Before he could head in the direction of the cafeteria, he saw Nick coming down the hallway towards him, carrying what looked like a bucket full of water. When the other man got close enough to him, he peered inside, wrinkling his nose at the scent.

"It's brine," Nick told him, a grin flashing across his features. "A sample of what we found our body in. We might even have a couple of the tuna around -- just to see how motivated they are to nibble on whatever we happen to drop in here. Russell's idea."

Greg shook his head, holding up his hands and backing away. "I think I'll skip that," he mumbled, any semblance of appetite he'd had only seconds before deserting him. I was going to get some lunch, but now I'm not sure so sure I feel like eating."

"Lose your appetite?" Nick asked, grinning again. "Think of how Sara and I feel. We're the ones who've got to deal with this crap. I doubt I'll be having lunch today. So enjoy lunch for me." He stopped for a moment, then went on. "Maybe a .... tuna sandwich."

Greg throw him a dirty look as Nick laughed and continued on down the hallway, turning the corner to go to the part of the lab he and Sara were working in. A tuna sandwich. That was easy for him to say. Or maybe, given what he was working on, not so easy.

He didn't want to think about their case, or about what the tuna had been doing in the brine. Or about what they'd been munching on -- and how the body had looked when they were done. He could almost feel his stomach doing somersaults and threatening to heave.

What was wrong with him? Greg thought. He'd seen more than his share of bloody crime scenes -- and he had seen worse than what was in those pictures, much of it up close and personal. He had no reason to start getting a squeamish stomach now.

He made his way to the cafeteria, stopping in front of the machine to take a look at what was there. The first thing that happened to catch his eye made him blink and look again. Then, he laughed aloud, shaking his head and almost wishing that Nick was here.

The first thing that he'd seen when he looked into the machine was .... a tuna sandwich. Definitely not something that he wanted to think of at the moment -- and he was sure that he would never look at that particular meal in quite the same way again.

***