Noah had no idea what CJ and Logan would be up to once they got back to their respective jobs. He could guess at it of course. He wasn’t a big fan of the entire premise of guesswork. It never got you anywhere except down an improvable track of logic that was more often than not wrong. Gut instinct may have worked for detectives, and deception may have worked for lawyers, but a medical examiner had to see facts. And that was something Noah liked, in and out of work. So he could have assumed CJ was off in some luxuriously furnished office with his designer shoes kicked up on a mahogany desk as he got his secretary and assistant to do work around him. And he could have guessed Logan was at some battered old desk following leads and eating fiber enriched, good for  your health AND your status as a cop!, donuts. But he wouldn’t.<br/><br/>Instead Noah would do what he did best. His job. The nitty gritty work that never got any attention. Lawyers were always in the public eye, making press conferences, spouting elegant speeches about the scales of justice and how Lady Justice might have been blind but the attorneys office would never turn a blind eye to crime. Police got the promotions and the medals to pin on their chests when a crime was solved. The medical examiner? They just toiled away in the basement morgues and worked. Because law and order both needed a face. Death was best left lurking in the darkness.<br/><br/>And it made sense. No one wanted to know just what people could do. How deep and dark thinks could get. The sad and secret truth was that human beings could quite creative in the ways they could think to hurt each other and in the ways they could actually end up causing the death of someone else. And it was Noah’s job to let the victim speak, to explain what happened, through the physical evidence provided.<br/><br/>It wasn’t so fancy as TV made it out to be. The glitz and the glamour just made for good TV, not for anything real. So back in his office, Noah only had a few minutes to jot some notes down, send out a thank you call for the speedy return of the blood results, and then? A new body, a new task.  While CJ and Logan did their tasks, Noah was elbow deep in blood and ichor. And that was where he stayed until he dragged himself home, having taken public transportation, not owning a car himself. Sitting next to strangers, smelling of chemicals and cleaners, anything to dull the smell of death, he was often stared and, but had long since stopped noticing.<br/><br/>The first thing he did when he was home was to strip off his clothes, place them neatly into and around the hamper, and then take a long, long, shower. After he washed his hair three times and used more soap and body wash than most would in a week he felt clean and presentable. With a tired sigh from hunching his tall frame over an examination table for far too long he stepped out of the shower and made the short trek to the bedroom in his small studio apartment.<br/><br/>It was a stretch to find anything that would pass as fancy enough for a restaurant of CJ’s caliber. And Noah knew whatever he picked would never be close enough anyway. He had the suit he wore to graduation. The suit he wore to job interviews. Both screamed non designer off the rack clothing. But he had them taken in to fit his frame better at least. And neither was stained or dirty. That was a plus. Neither screamed medical examiner, he had no white lab coat thrown over them. So that was an even bigger plus.<br/><br/>He settled on the dark gray suit, pulled it on and spent far too long looking for the tie that went with it. Unable to find it he settled on a novelty tie he had received as a gift before. A cartoonish grim reaper, someone’s idea of the kind of morbid work he did. He found it cute, though likely inappropriate. A car pulling up outside took away any chance to find something better, so Noah hastily tied the near garish neck tie and raced down the steps of his building, slowed as he pushed the outer doors open and did his best to not roll his eyes at the over the top richness of CJ’s choice in cars. It wasn’t like he didn’t expect such a thing from the guy who wore designer suits.<br/><br/>“Tall guy in the back, classy,” Noah said with a grin as he climbed into the car behind Logan. Logan who had given himself a ton of leg room. “Who rode back here last? Your grandmother? Geeze…” Noah tucked into the seat as best he could. And they were off. To some fancy restaurant which likely charged more for water than he made in a week.<br/>