Title: A Trip Down Memory Lane
Rating: Mature (a little potty mouth, a little porn)
Spoilers: Anything up to the end of Season 6, including the finale, is fair game.
Disclaimers: I just checked again... CSI is still not mine. Dammit.
A/N: I'm not quite sure how to catagorize this one… it's kind of a having an identity crisis. There's some humour, definitely fluff, and in the 2nd half you'll find a serving of smut thrown in, as well as a smidge of pain. In any case, it's hefty enough to warrant breaking up, so this is part 1 of 2. I'll polish off the rest and post it later in the week. Enjoy!
Dedication: WINDBOUND (on LJ) can take credit for helping me to drag this one out, brush it off, and finally get back to writing. Thanks so much!
A Trip Down Memory Lane
I'd like to tell you all a humorous little story. Well actually, it's kind of a tragedy of sorts – a fashion tragedy really. One of those things that we all know about, but figure only happens to the infamous "someone else." Well, in this case it did happen to someone else – but let me start from the beginning...
As we all know, Sara Sidle is not a frilly woman. Oh, she's certainly attractive and well put together, it's just that she doesn't spend countless hours primping before leaving the house every morning in designer duds. Given the right circumstances, of course, she can dress to the nines – last year's LVPD Christmas formal was a perfect example. That jewel blue backless gown was simply stunning, and even Catherine had been impressed at how well she cleaned up, but I digress… My point is that for the most part, Sara does her shopping at Levi's or the Gap, not Gucci or Saks. Her casual style speaks more of comfort and practicality – not keeping up with the latest runway fashions.
Gil Grissom is well aware of Sara's dressing habits. He sees her as a beautiful no-nonsense woman and he appreciates her simple grace. That is precisely why her little secret caught him so off guard when they finally got to the co-habitation stage. You see, Sara has a surprising number of shoes. Astonishing. Bordering on shocking, to be honest. Now admittedly, no woman can live on just one lonely pair of shoes, not even Miss Sidle, but this was ridiculous.
Grissom was stunned at the number of boxes labeled "footwear" that he toted into the bedroom of their new house last Fall. Among them were several pairs of conservative shoes for court, a variety of sturdy boots and oxfords that the demands of work called for, countless heels, sandals, runners, slip-ons, loafers, duckies for those wet days... there were even some that defied classification as far as Grissom was concerned. The biggest issue that he had with them, though, was that the majority of them just lay there gathering dust-bunnies in the closet. Other than a handful that were on her normal rotation, the rest were rarely worn, if ever. But -- she never seemed to get rid of any of them, and even added to the masses on a remarkably regular basis.
And so, on a warm day in early June, Grissom found himself attempting to pack for their vacation. He and Sara wanted to get out of the city for a while, and when he had mentioned it in passing to Brass a few weeks ago, the surly cop had surprised him with the announcement that he owned a cabin out near Walker Lake. How convenient! It hadn't been used much in the past few years, but Brass was more than happy to let them make use of it.
"Saves me the trouble of heading all the way up there just to check on it anyhow," had been his argument when refusing to accept Grissom's insistence of paying rent. Instead, a hand-shake and clap on the back were exchanged, and that was that. The plans were made.
Oh ya, so back to the packing... so Grissom was kneeling in their bedroom walk-in closet pawing through Sara's stockpile of footwear, searching desparately for his sandals – his only pair of sandals. He knew they were definitely in there, but actually finding them was another matter. Sara wandered by, carting a basket of fresh laundry, just at the height of his frustration. It was mere luck that the navy Manolo which came hurtling from the closet didn't whack her on the back of the head. The sound of something thunking off the nightstand startled Sara. When she turned and spied her ridiculously priced pump lying on the carpet, she gasped.
Whirling around she barked, "Gil! What the hell are you --"
Her quick ducking saved her from catching a Nike in the teeth. She stared in shock from her crumpled position on the floor as her fiance, his back turned to her, continued to launch various shoes over his shoulder. When a moccasin landed nearby, Sara snagged it and pelted it back at him. The direct hit to his butt caught his attention and put a halt to the rain of shoes. He whipped his head around. The scowl on his face indicated his foul mood, and she suspected it was there long before she threw him that airborne kick in the ass.
"What is your problem?" she asked, getting to her feet.
Grissom went back to riffling through the clutter but refrained from throwing anything this time. "I'm looking for my Rockports and I can't find them in all this... excess !" he rumbled. He might've censored his explanation, but Sara was well aware that he really meant to say "in all this shit " – meaning all her shit.
As she picked up her Manolo she shot back, "Ya well, that's no reason to toss a $400 shoe across the room."
This caught his attention. He turned his whole body this time and sat back on his tush – both to see her better and because his knees were killing him. "You paid $400 for a lousy pair of shoes? Are you insane? You look like the woman I asked to marry me, but that can't be right because there's no way she'd spend that much on something to wear on her feet !"
She sheepishly corrected him with, "Actually, the $400 is just for the one you tossed. It was about $800 for the pair."
At the sight of his jaw dropping and eyes bugging out, she quickly added, "And before you go ballistic, I bought them with my bonus last summer so don't give me grief. I was having a rough year and I deserved a treat... something special. A little pick-me-up, ya know?" Tilting her head, she smiled and sweetened the pot, "Of course, if I had known that you were going to come to your senses and ask me out just 3 weeks later, I'd have saved my cash. You were a much better perk than these ever were."
Despite the compliment, her justification got Grissom thinking back on the troubles that had plagued her over the past year or so before they started dating. His annoyance quickly withered. It really had been a particularly trying period for her. Between investigating a case where 3 young boys were treated like garbage by their aunt, where one starved to death and the others were close to it; the haz-mat scare that she and Greg went through due to toxic mould at a crime scene; being attacked by that psycho at the Desert State Mental Hospital; and the horror they all experienced when Nick was abducted. Describing it as a "rough year" was being generous. Add to that her mandated PEAP counselling and a long-overdue confession to him about her traumatic past, and it was a wonder she held it together at all. He found it surprising that a blow-up with Catherine and Ecklie plus a near DUI constituted the extent of her meltdown. Sara is one tough cookie, and Grissom had only recently begun to allow himself to see that.
Now he felt guilty for making such a big deal over something as trivial as a pile of shoes. He sighed. Softening his tone, he tried a different approach.
"Fair enough. They were a well-deserved reward, so by all means keep the stilettos." There was a slight pause, then he continued, "After all, it would be a shame to throw them away when I would much rather take you someplace fancy so you'll have an excuse to wear them – heels do wonders for your legs... not that you need help in that area."
He quirked a sly grin her way while openly ogling her lovely gams from hip to toe. Yep, Gil was definitely a leg man.
She chuckled at his playfulness, the prior tension evaporating, and Gil found himself smiling along with her. It amazed him that for almost half a century he survived quite happily in his own private cocoon of existence - neat, orderly, quiet. And yet after only 8 months of living with Sara, he found he could hardly remember being without her. It was like some sort of love-struck amnesia. If there was a cure for it, this entomologist wanted nothing to do with it.
After a moment he returned his attention to sorting and re-arranging the shoes in the closet. She collected the ones scattered around on the floor and brought the arm-load of them back to dump them at his side.
"Thanks. Hey, since I'm going through these anyways, what do you say to thinning out the collection a bit?" he ventured.
"Oh, I did that already just before we moved in. I only brought the ones I wanted to keep – that I'll wear again."
He couldn't help himself – with doubt in his voice he retorted, "When you say you'll wear them again... um, do you mean in the next year or just at some point before you retire?"
This earned him another glare, and when she propped her hands on her hips and widened her stance, he knew she was digging in for the long haul. Sara could be a stubborn force to reckon with when she really got behind something and this looked to be one such issue.
"For your information, mister, I do wear them sometimes."
Deciding to stand his ground, he called her bluff. Reaching to his left, he randomly picked one out. It was a flip flop that was all squashed and mis-shapen, and had definitely seen better days. "Even these?" he probed, "providing we can find its mate, of course."
I've gotta tell you... this was the most god-awful thing you can imagine. I mean hideous. The base was a thick white slab of cheap foam with little butterfly images, and not very good ones at that, stamped around the top in a random fashion. The outside edge of it was all scraped up, like the wearer had been walking a little too close to a curb in them for a couple of miles. The straps were in better condition, but sported a bright neon pink gingham pattern. The worst part was the gangly plastic daffodil bloom that flopped up from the thong where it snuck down between your toes. Shaking his head, he assumed the fake flower had been a bright yellow at some point, but had faded to a sickly brownish-streaked cream over the years. Add to that a decade of dust and dirt and you'll have a pretty good image of the horror that was this shoe.
Sara scowled at the look of disgust that he was aiming at her flip flop. "Hey now, those are my Winter Luau sandals from college!"
Grissom shifted his gaze her way, regarding her like she was on crack.
"Every year we had these themed dorm keggers, and in my last year we went with Hawaiian," she went on as she drifted off back to the early 90's. "A bunch of us sat around one night - uh... Lisa, Miranda and... oh, what was her name... J- J- Joanne? No – Jordan! That's right... Jordan Tate. Ya... Anyhow, the four of us spent hours making these. We added the butterflies and flowers ourselves, you know," she announced with pride.
"You don't say?" he responded in true smart-ass form. Luckily it didn't ruin her mood as she continued to speak of the ugly shoe with fondness.
"Ya, and I remember being so pissed off when I knocked over some nailpolish… Some idiot had left it open on the nightstand or something. Well, it slopped across one of my flip flops and I remember cursing a blue streak over it."
Grissom turned it over in his hands and reported that it had to be the other one, as this one had no such stain.
Chewing on her lower lip, Sara went on. "That was quite a party, though. Naturally, there was a lot of drinking and laughing and some really bad singing... and by bad I mean terrible. But it didn't matter, ya know? It was such a great night... the tacky shirts, grass skirts... and we all got lei-ed on every floor!"
Grissom burst out laughing at this. At first she didn't catch on and shot him a quizical look, but then realized her accidental double-entendre and joined him. On a whim she told him to fish out the matching shoe and pack them. "I'll wear them on our trip," she announced.
He realized that she only decided to bring them to prove him wrong about ever wearing them again, but he complied anyhow. If nothing else, they'd be good for a laugh or two. It didn't take long to find the other one. After wiping the crud from them both with a tissue, Grissom noted the aforementioned glittery pink blemish splotched across the heel of the second one with amusement. He dropped them both into the duffel bag along with his own sandals which had inevitably turned up in the mess.
Early that evening, with the packing complete, the couple toddled off to bed. They needed to get some rest before heading out on their trip early the next morning.
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Stay tuned for part 2 later this week...