Title: Sick-Person Goodies
By: Caster
Pairing: Pre-slash Ryan/Greg
Rating: PG-13

***

It wasn't that Ryan was breaking into the apartment… he just happened to be entering someone else's home while that certain person was unaware he was doing it. But he had a key, so that gave him extra points, right? Besides, he was carting around a paper bag filled with chicken soup, orange juice, zinc tablets, nasal spray, and tissues. That had to be worth something.

He shifted the bag into his left arm and extracted the key from his jeans pocket with his right. Sara had also insisted on bringing Greg Thai food, but Sara was working and Ryan wasn't, which meant Ryan was bringing the Thai food along with the bag full of sick-person goodies. And it wouldn't have been so bad (he didn't mind doing the actual labor), but the problem was that he and Greg had never met. Ever. He'd heard of him through Sara (rock stars? Latex? Coffee? Those words meant something, he just wasn't sure what) but they'd never met, and now Ryan was entering a stranger's apartment with his Sara-given key, and it still felt like breaking and entering even though she had promised, "Oh, don't worry, he won't shoot you."

How comforting.

The door swung open and hesitatingly stuck his head in. "Hello?" he called, taking a slow step inside. "Greg Sanders? Hello?"

There was no one in the living room, dining room, or hallway. The lights were off except for the large aquarium in the corner, and he wondered if Greg was even home. "Hello!" he called again, louder this time. "Greg? H- whoa!"

A blonde suddenly came flying from his room, wearing an old concert t-shirt, boxers, bed head, and wielding a baseball bat like a weapon. He seemed pale, had dark circles beneath his eyes, and spoke like a man dealing with some truly horrifying congestion.

"Who are you? How did you get in here? I'm calling the police!" he bellowed, pointing the bat at Ryan in an accusatory manner.

"No, wait, my name's Ryan Wolfe, S-''

"There's nothing to steal, so just back away!"

"Greg-''

"How do you know my name? Are you a stalker?"

Greg took an aggressive step forward and tightened his grip on the bat. Ryan, accordingly, backed away; he didn't fear the bat, but he did have some serious concerns about how contagious Greg was. Ryan didn't fly down to Vegas just to get sick.

"Nonono, not a stalker. Could you maybe put down the bat? And take a few steps back?"

Greg pinned him beneath a suspicious glare, but lowered his weapon. Ryan cleared his throat. An introduction was in order.

"My name's Ryan Wolfe," he repeated. "I'm a friend of Sara's. We met at a Miami conference-''

"You're the OCD guy, right?"

Wow. It was great to know he had such a sparkling reputation. "Right," Ryan dryly reply. "She wanted to come by herself, but Grissom called her in, so she sent me."

"You? She gave you a key and everything? You could be an axe murderer!"

"But I'm not."

"But you could be."

They stared at each other for a long, quiet moment before Ryan finally said, "If I told there was food in this bag, would you forget that I might be an axe murderer?"

"Depends. Are there tissues in there too?"

"And nasal spray."

"Nasal spray? Why didn't you say that before? Get in here," Greg said, tossing the bat onto the couch and heading towards Ryan. Ryan, although not usually so jumpy, practically leapt back.

"Wait a second, Typhoid Tom. How about you sit down and I take care of this stuff?"

"I see how this is. You don't want my germs."

"And Sara said you were so bright."

"If my sinuses weren't overflowing with mucus, I'd have a stinging retort for that."

Ryan closed his eyes and wrinkled his nose. "Thanks for the visual," he said, but when he opened his eyes again, Greg was grinning at him. He grinned back, and once again they stood in silence, smiling like idiots. Ryan had to admit that even in his trodden state, Greg was kind of cute -don't think like that- and seemed to have a great sense of humor -that's dangerous territory. Greg bit his lip and glanced towards the bag.

"If I promise not to breathe on you, would you share some chicken curry with me? I've been quarantined to this place for four days. No outside contact except for the pizza delivery guy."

Ryan and he shared another smile. "Sure," Ryan agreed, walking towards the kitchen. Why not stay? He was probably already infected anyway, and there was no way he could leave a lonely man to fend off the germs on his own.

Back at the trace lab, Sara glanced at her cell phone. Greg hadn't called to lecture her about why it was bad to give his apartment key to people he didn't know; similarly, Ryan hadn't dialed her while cowering beneath Greg's dining room table, trying to escape Greg's bat-wielding wrath.

She laughed at what she'd done, although David later called it more of a "cackle".

She was a genius.

FIN.