Natalie straightened and stretched, working the sore muscles of her right arm and shoulder to relieve the kinks. She's realized too late last night that she should have hired someone to help her move her furniture around. Or gotten Nick to give her a hand.

But she'd been stubborn. And she'd also been uncomfortable with the idea of strangers going through her things. Or of Nick going through her things, for that matter.

So she'd decided to move things around herself. It had taken her most of two days and the violation of several laws of physics, but everything was gathered in the center of her living room and covered with several large tarps. Her super had said he'd be by tonight to start painting it.

For perhaps the hundredth time in two days Natalie gave serious thought to buying her own place. Her apartment wasn't much, and it was in an old building, but she loved it. But now that she was making more money maybe it was time to think about a place of her own. One she could decorate herself, rather than have the owners decide for her.

Expecially on color schemes, she thought ruefully. She'd tried to talk Ed out of using the plain light gray he used on everything, but it hadn't worked. Natalie would even have settled for a nice off-white.

With a grimace, she reached up and dug her fingers into her left shoulder, massaging the aching muscle.

"Rough night?" a voice said from the doorway, with just the barest traces of a leer.

Natalie turned and grinned at Nick and Schanke who stood just inside the door of the morgue.

"Standing over the stiffs is making me stiff," she explained, dropping her hand and moving over to her desk.

"You wild woman, you," Schanke added.

"That's me, Natalie Lambert: Party Girl."

Nick had been standing next to Schanke quietly smiling at the banter. Natalie was pleased to see him starting to relax with Schanke. She swore the first month of their partnership had been harder on her than either of them, since she was the one they each complained to about the other. She was now intimately acquainted with all their bad habits.

She'd done her best to smooth ruffled feathers, reassure both partners, and assuage bruised egos. And in the process, Natalie decided she'd missed a calling as a marriage counselor somewhere along the line.

She and Nick and Schanke spent the next five minutes reviewing the results of the autopsy on their current case. Natalie wasn't ruling out suicide, but she wasn't saying that was definitely the cause of death either.

Schanke heaved a heavy, deep sigh. "So, another round of questioning little old ladies," he said, his shoulders slumping.

"It's either that or you could catch up on that paperwork from your last five cases," Nick said.

"Don't remind me, "Schanke protested, holding up his hands. To Natalie he added, "If I sat down and caught up on all the paperwork I'm behind on, Jenny'd be in college before I finish." He glanced down at his watch. "Speaking of which, I have a date with my daughter in an hour. Can you check in with Stonetree about this?" he asked. "I gotta help Jenny with a book report."

She had to admire him, Natalie decided. She had enough trouble making her own life work, and she didn't have a spouse and a child to deal with. Just a cat.

And a vampire.

"Got something for you," she said, holding up one finger and moving toward the refrigerator as Schanke left. The grimace on his face was priceless. "I guarantee you're going to love it," she said, pulling out the pitcher and holding it up for his inspection.

Nick groaned, then stared in dismay at the container of thick liquid in front of his nose. "Nat."

"Don't 'Nat' me," she scolded good-naturedly, marveling at the fact that even 800-year-old men still whined when they had to take their medicine.

"But it's orange!" he protested.

Rolling her eyes with a sigh of mock exasperation, she plucked her coffee mug from her desk. With a small grimace she downed the cold dregs of coffee in it, then handed it to him.

"That's disgusting."

"This from a man who drinks cow blood? Just rinse it out. It'll be fine."

Nick managed to make a show out of carefully rinsing the mug out, then scrubbing it with a paper towel. "There's a coffee ring," he explained, as he rinsed it out again with hot water.

"Stop avoiding," she said. "It's not like you're going to catch anything from it," she added, taking the now clean mug from his hands and pouring a generous amount of the protein shake into it. Triumphantly, she handed it to him. He took it and peered intently down into the fluid for several long moments.

Natalie leaned forward and joined him in looking into the mug. "What do you see in there, Nick? You're future?" she asked softly.

"It's really orange," he remarked. "I mean, really, really orange. The last thing I saw that was this orange was on a Chinese opera stare about two centuries--"

Natalie managed to head off the flashback with a deep sigh. "Think of it this way," she said, trying to sound persuasive. "Orange is the color of the rising sun. Just imagine that you're drinking a sunrise." It sounded dorky to her ears, but from the way Nick's face lit up, she realized it had had the desired effect on him.

Who was she kidding, she told herself. Great marriage counselor and mother. Because if <anyone> ever acted like a two-year-old at times, it was Nick.

He actually managed to choke down most of it, too, which pleased her to no end. He was gasping for breath, but he held out the cup, with one or two sips left behind, for her inspection.

"Good boy," she said, patting his hand before taking the mug. "That wasn't so bad, now, was it?" Natalie covered the pitcher and returned it to the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. But when she straightened, she felt something stiffen painfully in her lower back. With a small groan, she straightened. "Damn," she said.

"So, you really were partying last night," Nick commented with a grin, sitting on the edge of her desk.

"Hah, don't I wish," she said. "Nah, I was moving furniture around in my apartment. Ed wants to paint it."

"Ah," Nick said, smiling. She observed that he'd mostly recovered from his shake. "What color?"

"Ed paints everything beige. Hallways ceilings, walls, doors. You name it. I had to kennel Sydney, or I'd come home to a beige cat."

That earned a chuckle from Nick. "You should have called me. I'd have given you a hand."

"I know," Natalie said with a shrug. "I didn't want to bother you."

"Nat," Nick admonished gently. "You'd never bother me." He had that sincere, worshipful look on his face that simultaneously turned her knees to mush and filled her with guilty despair.

"Yeah, well," Natalie replied softly, felling suddenly embarrassed. "I've got to get back to work," she said.

Nick stood and nodded, but there was a strange gleam in his eyes. "You're pulling a double aren't you?"

"Don't I always?"

"Yeah, but this one you're scheduled for," he teased.

"I figured it was a good time, since Ed'll probably start work on my apartment tonight. It's only the living room, and he said he'd only need an evening and part of tomorrow morning. If I ventilate the bedroom well enough I should be able to sleep without being overcome by the fumes."

"You could-" Nick started to say, then caught himself. "You could...set up...a fan," he said softly. "That should help with the ventilation."

Natalie knew what he'd been about to say, what he'd been about to offer, and the panic had just started to rise in her chest when he had apparently caught himself. Things were strange between them. They'd been strange since Anne Foley. The easy camaraderie was still there, but there was a new tension lurking beneath the surface. Natalie hadn't exactly been subtle, and she sometimes wondered if that had made him uncomfortable. Most of the time, however, he didn't seem aware of it at all, a fact that both saddened and relieved her.

"That's a good idea," she said, perhaps a bit too stiffly. She wouldn't have taken him up on his offer to stay overnight at his place anyway. Would she? "But in the meantime, I really should get back to work." Suddenly she wanted this conversation to end, preferably before she got too lost in the blue of her eyes. She glanced pointedly over at the shrouded body waiting for her on the table. "Bodies don't autopsy themselves, unfortunately," she said with a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

"Yeah," he said, reluctantly moving toward the door.

"Nick?" she called after him, impulsively.

He paused with his hand on the door, then turned and looked hesitantly at her.

"Thanks for drinking most of that," she said, indicating the empty cup. She didn't reinforce that behavior often enough, which was probably one of the big reasons it was so hard to get him to cooperate.

He beamed at her. "For you, anything," he said, with a grin, then he was gone leaving a gentle swirling of air from the closing door in his wake.

"Don't I wish," she said softly, knowing that despite the immediate sincerity of Nick's statement, it was far from the truth.

"Home, bath, bed," she chanted to herself as she trudged up the steps to her apartment. Though she often worked day shift voluntarily, she had been especially tired today. She was never going to have her apartment painted again, she decided. It was simply too exhausting. The paint could chip off and leave bare, dilapidated walls before she ever put herself through this again. Or better yet, she'd just move out.

"Home, bed, bath," she breathed again. "Not necessarily in that order." She paused and shifted the bag of groceries more comfortably in her arms. "Well, except for the home part. I'm flexible on the other two. And talking to myself, too," she said aloud.

"Get a grip, Lambert," she muttered to herself, slipping the key into the lock and pushing the door forward. It was dark and smelled like paint. Carefully, she reached over to her left and flipped on the light switch.

And froze in her tracks.

"What the hell!" Natalie exclaimed, dropping her bags right where she stood in the doorway of her apartment. All the furniture was still in the middle, though someone had removed the protective covering.

But that wasn't what was concerning her at the moment. With wide, horrified eyes, she stared at the walls of her apartment.

"It's-it's-it's-" she gasped.

"Orange?" a male voice provided helpfully from the short hallway leading to her bedroom.

Stunned, she looked over in the direction of the voice to see Nick emerge. Reeling, she took a step back.

"You're-" she cried again, then just pointed at him.

He was orange, too. From head to toe. More correctly, his skin was orange, and stood out in stark contrast to the white coveralls splattered with orange paint that he wore.

"It's sweat," he said smiling as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. It didn't help much. "From your protein shake. Usually it's blood."

Finding her voice at last, she said, "My protein shakes make you turn orange."

"Only the orange ones," Nick replied with a grin.

Natalie blinked at him, the walls momentarily forgotten. She should have thought about that. "So the green one I made for you last week?"

"Yep," Nick nodded. "Except that I drank some blood after, so I ended up purple."

Suddenly Natalie began to laugh hysterically. "You look like an Oompa Loompa," she managed to gasp out.

"A what?"

"An Oompa Loompa," she repeated, still giggling, then just waved her hand at him. "Never mind."

Nick spread his arms out. "Well, do you like it?"

That was enough to make her laughter die down, as her attention was again drawn back to her garish looking walls. "It's-it's-" she began.

"Orange. Yes, we've established that." Nick moved closer to her. "But do you like it?" he asked.

The truth was, she was trying to calculate how many coats of paint it would take to cover it back up again. Nick was obviously playing a joke on her, getting her back for all her colorful protein shakes and their unforeseen side effects.

But when she glanced over at him, she saw that look again, that adoring, soft look that made her chest puddle somewhere near her feet. That look that made her want to give him her heart, her life, her whole world without a second thought or reservation.

She hated that look.

Still smiling, he stepped closer and grasped her hands in hers. His were still tinted orange, and filthy, and they dwarfed her smaller ones. He held her fingers gingerly, as if they were made of china and he was afraid he might break them.

"Orange is the color of sunrise," he whispered, looking down into her eyes. "It reminds me of you, what you're trying to give back to me," he said.

No pressure there, Natalie thought to herself.

"And it reminds me of all the things you've already given back to me, things I thought I'd lost forever," he added. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek, and Natalie allowed herself to imagine that his lips lingered there perhaps a bit longer than they should have. When he pulled back, he squeezed her hands. "I hope you like it," he said.

Natalie didn't know what to say. She didn't know whether to cry tears of joy over his sincerity or laugh as she gazed up at his orange tinted face.

She settled, instead, for simply saying, "I love it," and smiling softly. She glanced around at the walls of her living room willing her smile not to fade or slip into a grimace. What else could she say? He either meant it, or she was the biggest sucker history had ever produced.

Natalie preferred to believe he meant it.