AN: And now the follow-up. Sorry that took a million years—working for a living totally sucks. It really cuts into your fanfic time. Anyway, since we've had no new Miami in forever, I had to do something to break up this dry spell. Hope you like!

II

The night shift had removed all traces of Valentine's Day by the time the day shift shuffled in on Thursday morning. They had prepared themselves for a particularly gruesome day. February 14th, while being the international day of love and romance, also tended to bring out the malevolent killer in an unhealthy amount of people.

Just one of those things.

The team was paired off and split up for the better part of the day—Horatio and Calleigh off to clean up what was left of a lovers quarrel in Coconut Grove, Natalia and Ryan investigating three bodies found in the dorms over at Florida International, and Eric and Frank dealing with a bad case of a woman scorned down in Little Havana.

"Just fills you with the warm fuzzies, doesn't it?" Natalia asked, dropping her evidence box onto the glass table. She removed a blood-caked instrument and grabbed the log book.

Valera's nose wrinkled. "Is that a box cutter?"

"It is," Natalia agreed with a sigh. "Suicide weapon number one."

"Suicides?" Calleigh asked, pushing open the door with her hip and placing her own evidence on the table.

"Hey, hey, hey," Maxine pointed to the boxes. "What the hell is this? The evidence locker is down the hall."

"This is just DNA," Calleigh said sweetly, resting her hand on the lid.

"You're kidding!" Valera exclaimed hopefully.

"I'm not."

She looked to Natalia. "Yours too?"

"Mostly," she said regretfully. "I'm going to take a few things over to Fingerprints and QD...but the rest is for you." She turned back to Calleigh. "But yeah, it's looking like a triple suicide."

The blonde tilted her head in interest. "Some kind of pact?"

"Nope," Natalia pushed back her hair. "Doesn't look like it. Just three totally unrelated girls who decided to kill themselves."

"On Valentine's Day," Calleigh mused. "What are the odds?"

"Speaking of..." Blood spatter, murder weapons, and suicide notes completely forgotten, Natalia crossed quickly to the other side of the lab and closed the door the rest of the way. "How was your night?"

A pleasant blush rose to Calleigh's pale cheeks. "It was...nice."

Natalia's dark eyes narrowed. "Nice? C'mon."

She let out an embarrassed laugh. "Natalia, I am a southern lady. We do not reveal our conquests."

Valera felt herself grinning. "Oh so there was conquesting? Did you conquest him or did he conquest you? Or was there mutual conquesting?"

"Wait," Natalia held up a hand. "What exactly are we using 'conquesting' as a euphemism for?"

Calleigh laughed again and busied herself with the DNA log. "You're not getting any details."

"Oh please! I spent the night drinking daiquiris with my sister—I need some kind of juice."

She looked up, still a happy shade of pink. "All I will say," she paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the looks of anticipation, "is that he was most definitely worth the wait."

There was a small outburst of giggles and a few 'yay's before Calleigh announced they all needed to get back to work.

"Oh, wait," she stopped at the door. "Valera, how was your night?"

Maxine smiled, remembering the stunned look on Ryan's face when she'd pulled away from their kiss the night before. "It was good."

"Yeah?" Natalia asked. "Did you and Justin go somewhere?"

"Oh," she waved her hand. "Justin and I broke up."

"What?" Calleigh asked abandoning the door and moving back to the table. "Why? What happened?"

"Who knows?" she shrugged. "He called about three and dumped me and then Ryan and I went out."

"Wait a minute," Natalia shook her head. "You and Justin aren't together...and you went out with Ryan?"

"Yeah."

"Wolfe?"

"Yeah," she assured them with a laugh.

"The CSI?" Calleigh asked, motioning back to the lab.

"Yes!"

"And this isn't the first thing you say when I walk in the door?" Natalia looked offended.

"Well you were busy with your suicide girls," Maxine reasoned. "I didn't want to interrupt."

"So wait," Calleigh interrupted, "what happened? What did you guys do?"

"We played Bingo."

This was met with silence and an exchange of looks.

"Is that a metaphor for something dirty?" Natalia asked deadpanned.

"No!" she exclaimed. "We went to the JCC and played Bingo with his Uncle Ron. It was fun."

"Bingo..." Calleigh repeated slowly, absorbing this new information.

"As in..." Natalia clapped her hands, "I-N-G-O?"

"Do you know another Bingo?"

"So you played Bingo and then...?" Calleigh prompted, still unconvinced.

"And then we went for Chinese and then he drove me home and he told me I was magnificent and then I kissed him and then I went to bed."

"You did what?!" Natalia yelled, covering her mouth after receiving an alarmed look from the security guard across the hall.

"Well," Maxine relented. "I watched Sex and the City first. And then I went to bed."

"Maxine..."

"Yes," she rolled her eyes. "I kissed him—do with it what you will."

"Where?"

"In the car."

"Maxine!" Calleigh snapped, beginning to grow impatient with this runaround.

"Oh, you mean..." she shrugged her shoulders. "On the face."

"The face?" Natalia echoed dubiously.

"The mouth."

Her friends exchanged looks again. "You're just letting these things just fall right out of your mouth, aren't you?" Natalia asked dryly.

"You only kissed him because you were sad and he made you feel better...right?" Calleigh asked for clarification. "It was like a thank you kiss?"

Valera pursed her lips, twisting her mouth from one side of her face to the other. She had thought about that; she had thought about that a lot, actually. All night almost. Why had she kissed him? Surely there were other ways of saying thank you for a friendly night out. Hell, the Chinese food probably would have been enough, truth be told. But she'd definitely kissed him—on the lips, open mouth. And what was more interesting was that she had wanted to kiss him. Wanted him to kiss her back. What was that all about?

"Maxine?"

"I don't know..." she answered honestly. "I think..." she paused, weighing the consequences of what she was about to send into the universe. "I think I might like him."

"Like a friend?" Natalia asked hopelessly. "You mean like a friend you go play Bingo with on Wednesday nights?"

"I don't know," she threw up her hands. "Why does it matter? It was just a kiss! Who cares what it means."

Calleigh looked at her watch with disappointment. "All right, I've really got to get back to work." She pointed to Valera. "Don't think you're off the hook—we're going to talk about this later."

"Can't wait," Valera muttered, turning back to her microscope.

"Hey, hey, hey," Natalia cleared her throat. "I'm still here—not done talking to you. And it matters a lot, he cares what it means because I'm betting it wasn't just a kiss to him."

She sighed again. "I know."

"So you're going to talk to him, right?"

She nodded. "Yeah, I was going to anyway."

"And you're not going to break his heart, right?"

"It's not on the agenda for the afternoon, no."

"Good." With a regretful glance at her own watch, Natalia removed a few more things from her box and pushed it toward her. "The up side, however, is that you're probably going to be so busy with all of this stuff that you're not going to have time to worry about what you're going to say to him."

"Thank you, my eternal optimist," Valera called after her.

***

Natalia turned out to be wrong, though. Because although Valera was up to her eyeballs in samples for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, she had long ago mastered the art of multi-tasking. Worrying about her next run-in with Ryan had no problem filling her thoughts while she tested and printed and cross-referenced all day.

In all seriousness, it was good that she was so busy. For one, it gave her much needed time to think, and for another, it gave her something to do to avoid looking up every time she felt Ryan's eyes boring through the glass when he walked past the lab. She did look up once though, just by accident, and caught him staring at her from Trace. They smiled at one another for a moment before she turned back to work, a pleasant bubbling feeling blossoming in her stomach. After that, the decision she'd been agonizing over didn't seem that difficult at all.

She caught him just as he was headed for the door. "Ryan!" she called, dismayed when his pace seemed to quicken. "Ryan! Wait up!"

He turned around, a pained expression on his face. "What?"

Her brow furrowed. "What's wrong?"

"Well, I was sort of hoping I could go home without having this conversation and try to maintain my high from yesterday but..." he gave a defeated sigh. "I guess you just want to get it over with."

Valera felt her eyebrows inch closer together. "Get what over with?"

"Come on, Maxine," Ryan gave her a look. "We both know what you're going to say." He looked around, deciding they were too public, there in the middle of the lobby with the receptionists eyeing them with interest. He led her around the nearest corner and resumed his speech. "I get it, okay? It's no big deal—you didn't mean anything by kissing me, you're still upset about your break-up, it was a whim...." he shrugged again. "I get it. No hard feelings, we can pretend like it never happened and—"

There was more, he'd had a whole little moment planned that he was unable to continue with because Valera had placed her hands on his shoulders, pushed his back against the wall, and covered his mouth with hers. Again.

She pulled away after a few moments, and took a breath. "Could you please shut up?"

He blinked. "That was...unexpected."

"Look, I've been thinking about this all day and the thing is, I think I like you."

"You think?"

"No, I mean, I know I like you, I just don't know how much I...like like you. To speak in seventh grade terms." She rolled her eyes at her own word choice. "Wednesdays suck, okay? They're stupid and they're in the middle of the week and I always think 'Oh my God, it's only Wednesday,' and I'm depressed and..." she stopped herself again and took a deep breath. "My point is that I had a really, really great Wednesday with you—my first great Wednesday in a really long time, maybe ever—and..." she struggle, choosing her words carefully. "If you would like to do it again sometime...I'd be okay with it."

He studied her. "You would?"

"More than okay, actually," she said, reconsidering. "I'd probably be pretty happy about it."

Ryan smile started small, tentative. "You know the best thing about Wednesdays?"

She raised her eyebrows hopefully as he reached out and brushed her hair away from her face. "What's that?"

"There's another one next week," he said, leaning in for a kiss. "And the week after that," he continued before their lips met again. "And the week after that."

Valera grinned against his mouth. "How do you feel about Thursdays?"

AN: That actually turned out much cuter than I expected. I think I'm developing serious feelings for this pairing. They're so cute and awkward. What's not to love? Oh, and to lay to rest any rumors, I will NOT be writing an EC spin off as to how they spent their Wednesday night. I figure there's enough EC love floating around on these boards. I'll think of something for you guys eventually. Stay tuned!