Title: Games We Play
Author: monkeyscorpion
Words: 363
Pairing: Grissom/Sara
Spoilers: none
Summary: 26 down: Japanese 9x9 grid logic puzzle (also the solution for the last line). One shot.
Disclaimer: I don't own CSI, or the two puzzles I managed not to mention by name in this fic.
Author's Note: Thanks to Anne who did a quick beta and fixed a couple of tense issues I had from writing this at o-dot-stupid in the morning.
It was their routine. It started in the beginning of their relationship, long before they decided to cohabitate under the same roof. Oh, it varied occasionally due to double shifts, meetings and what-not, but on a typical weekday morning after coming home and washing off the grime of the Vegas graveyard shift, this is how you found them.
On the larger of the two couches – yes, there were two, no, you don't need to know why – he lay propped against the left arm. Why the left arm was anyone's guess, but he was a man set in his ways, so the left it was. She was sprawled on top of his chest, with her legs between his, one bent at the knee. Her back to his front, she would hold the newspaper against her raised thigh so as to give it a bit of support for when either of them decided to bring pen to the less than sturdy paper.
The only sounds in the house on these mornings would be the soft crinkle of paper, the occasional jingle of dog tags, and the refrigerator as it cycled on or off. Two sets of eyes were glued to black boxes on newsprint. While he would occasionally reach over her shoulder and carefully mark letters in empty boxes set across and down, she had her eyes; and her pen, directed to the lower corner of the page where a 9x9 grid of squares demanded her attention.
If they were feeling decidedly ambitious, they would race each other to see who could finish their part of the page first. When she won (which was the majority of the time), he tended to pout and say she only had 81 squares to fill in while he had an average of 225. At that point, her eyebrow would rise in either disbelief or challenge, and since she was atop him, he was at a startling disadvantage.
Not that advantage or disadvantage lasted long after clothing started being removed, the paper that had so held their attention fluttered to the floor in front of the dog. There were only 6 open squares left on his part of it.