Title: Angie Baby
Author: Summer Reign
Rating: As M as I get
Spoilers: Up to season 8 and beyond
Disclaimer: I respectfully borrow them. Thank you.
Summary: Sara is back at work and has to deal with murder, madness and a no-longer secret relationship. GSR, Casefile.
Quick A/N: This is in response to the Geekfiction Summer Ficathon. My prompt will become apparent on the first page. Also, if you want to read/print this all from one screen, please visit my website:
yeah, this thing is a multi-chapter story, and it is complete (glory, halleluia).
Sloane MansionJune 22, 1987
You live your life in the songs you hear
on the rock and roll radio.
And when a young girl doesn't have any friends
that's a really nice place to go.
Folks hoping you'd turn out cool
but they had to take you outta school.
You're a little touched you know, Angie Baby.
(Angie Baby, Alan O'Day)
Angie was ready. Truly ready.
She had already taken the first step. Big Daddy didn't like that at all. When she cried and cried, he finally agreed to let her change her name. Sylvia was a perfectly respectable name, but it was no secret that her mother had named her after Sylvia Plath. Who welcomes a baby into the world that way?
Maybe Mom's name should have been Sylvia. She's the one who, shortly after her child's third birthday, jumped from the twentieth floor of one of Big Daddy's hotels. Perhaps she admired the crazy writer a little too much.
Already, people were saying that Sylvia/Angie was taking after her mother in certain ways. But, Angie knew she was not suicidal. Not at all.
She pressed the button on her red Panasonic tape player.
Her name was now officially Angela Carson Sloane. Angie, baby—complete with theme song.
She had the song recorded ten times on each side so she could hear it for hours without having to get up and restart a record. It was the number one hit on the day her mother took her swan dive in 1974.
She wasn't afraid of what people said about her. Let them talk. There were some problems with her because Mom did drugs and things while she was expecting, and Angie was born real early. She could understand all that, in theory, but she didn't see herself as any different than anyone else. Maybe more of a dreamer, but that was about it. But Big Daddy always said she was special and should be cherished by only a few. Not the world at large. And that was okay with her.
The only thing was, she wanted to choose some of the few. That was her right.
Angie walked to the window. There he was: Tommy. He was the only one who searched for her after she was taken out of school. The others probably forgot her as soon as she left that last day. But he remembered. Tommy with the blond hair and ice blue eyes. Behind the huge oak tree in the back of the house.
She turned on a small light and doused the overheads. Then she walked to the window, fully opened the curtain and threw off her robe.
Completely naked, she began to dance to the music of her theme song, and out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tommy watch her.
Breakroom, Las Vegas Crime Lab
August 27, 2007, 12:10 AM
"Sara," Nick said, throwing his arms around her, "Welcome back."
Sara lightly hugged him and turned to Warrick, who was waiting for his turn to acknowledge her return.
After being passed around the break room, she took her seat and the room was suddenly, uncomfortably, silent.
Grissom stood at the head of the table, looking at them all. He had returned, alone, three weeks before, but this was a whole new ballgame.
He handed out assignments Warrick needed to meet up with Catherine, who had begun working on a suspicious death at the Tangiers. Nick was working solo on a robbery at the Trop, and Greg had a trick roll off the strip.
"DB at the old radio tower. Sara, you're with me," Grissom concluded, as a soft, unmistakably male snicker followed his last statement.
Grissom put down his clipboard and everyone heard the scraping sound it made as it touched the table. Greg squirmed a bit under his supervisor's gaze.
"Uh," he started, brilliantly, "I didn't mean that the way it probably sounded. I just meant…well, it was just nice to hear Sara's name in our lineup."
"Yes, it is, Greg. Now, can we all get to work?"
Greg was the first one out of his chair. As he passed, Grissom said, "Nice save, Greggo."
Greg turned back to him, gave him a sheepish smile and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm sorry."
Grissom nodded and turned back to Sara. "He's sorry," Grissom informed her. "Still glad to be back?"
She got up and gave his upper arm a quick squeeze. "Yes. And life wouldn't feel normal without Greg's daily visits to his junior high school roots. You okay?"
Grissom winced a bit and nodded. Their 'real' relationship was beginning now. The fantasy life they had lived, in their hermetic confines, was history and they were now thrown in a fishbowl. Frankly, it was more than a little frightening.
"Let's go," Sara said, "Time to solve this thing."
"And I thought you were overzealous before. You don't even know what 'this thing' is."
"Doesn't matter. Come on."
Her enthusiasm for work was familiar, comforting. He followed her out of the building, almost feeling like life was back to normal.
Almost.
Calsden Radio Tower, outside of Las Vegas, Nevada1:04 AM
"Now, here's a sight for sore eyes," Brass said, in lieu of a greeting. Sara smiled as he gave her a quick one-armed hug.
"What have we got, Jim?" Grissom asked, walking toward the body.
"Man walks his dog here every night. A couple of nights ago, the dog goes nuts over this spot. Man doesn't see anything. Dog, apparently, is still flipping out. Tonight, dog starts to dig and voila," Brass pointed to an arm sticking out of the earth, showing signs of decomposition. "We haven't touched a thing but, obviously, this is an extremely shallow grave."
"Sara?" Grissom turned around to look for her, and then quickly looked down toward his feet. She was already on her haunches, unpacking her kit. He smiled softly. She was eager to start working.
She suddenly seemed to remember that he was her supervisor and should be the one calling the shots in an investigation. She stopped rummaging and looked up at him for direction.
"Keep going," he said. "You know what to do."
She smiled back at him, and Brass cleared his throat to get Grissom's attention. He gave Gil a small smirk, and received one in return.
Grissom could 'do' casual. No big deal.
After a few hours of working to uncover the body while preserving the evidence, David did a preliminary examination and quickly announced that the time of death could not be determined by liver temperature. It had been buried and exposed to the elements for too long a period of time. They would have to do further testing at the lab.
"Dead male. Early 30s. UPS uniform. There seems to be some bruising and cuts to his face and head, but he also has multiple stab wounds on his back."
"Wait," Sara said, looking beyond the body. "What's that bit of red over there?"
They took a small brush and started flicking dirt away from the tiny bit of red plastic they saw sticking out from the dirt beyond the body's feet. In a few moments, they dug out a vividly red plastic audio tape recorder/player.
Sara held it up. "What is this?"
"Don't know. Could be nothing. Could be something," Grissom said. "Let's wrap it up."
Sara bagged and tagged the potential evidence and went back to checking out the soil around the body.
Grissom and Sara's Townhouse
11:39 AM
Grissom finally got Sara to leave the lab. She was dead tired, and he knew it, but she was also enjoying her first night back at the lab after the "incident," as Ecklie had referred to it, and didn't want to leave.
Incident.
He watched her go through the doors of their townhouse, give the dog a kiss, ask Grissom if he was going to walk Bruno, and then plop, head first, onto the couch. He now returned with an empty dog and decided to let her sleep on the couch for a while.
"Come, boy," he said and Bruno followed him to his home office.
He sat at his computer and did a little research on the tape recorder they found. It was manufactured in the 70s and made to appeal to teenagers. For all intents and purposes, it was an early, mini-boom box.
Well, that didn't tell him all that much but it was a start. The machine certainly looked well taken care of, but was still old. Nowadays, if an audio cassette was used at all, it would be used in a walkman type of player. This was much bigger and was designed to be used, primarily, without headphones.
He logged off, and wandered over to the bedroom.
Work had been good today but still felt odd. He wasn't entirely comfortable with everyone knowing his business. Sara's business. And, yet, he was the one who revealed it all. He hadn't even been thinking at that particular moment. He remembered them all sitting around, being clinical about Sara's abduction by a serial killer, while his whole life was exploding before his eyes. This was not another victim. This was Sara. His Sara.
He got up off the bed, and went back to the living room to sit on the chair across from her. If he couldn't sleep, he could at least shower. Change clothes. But, he didn't want to leave her just yet. His Sara. Safe, secure, whole, healthy. He had wanted that more than anything and still found it difficult to believe that those particular prayers were answered.
Looking at cases that morning had been a challenge. He wanted something 'safe,' that wouldn't remind her of what she had been through in any way, shape or form.
Sara began to move around on the couch and Grissom held his breath. He didn't want to wake her. She needed sleep badly. But, apparently, she needed to be awake even more. She was up and rubbing her eyes in the next moment.
"Go back to sleep, Sara."
"No," she got up and stretched. "I don't sleep without a shower."
"You did for the last half-hour."
"That was a nap," she said, bending down and warmly kissing his cheek.
She ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.
"Salty. You haven't had a shower either. Want to conserve water?"
He let her take his hand.
The minute the bathroom door was closed, she pushed him against it and started kissing his neck. "I feel so alive today, Gris," she said, and scraped her teeth lightly against his skin.
Grissom shuddered slightly and tightened his hold around her waist. Grissom knew that she hadn't liked her enforced leave. She had injuries that needed to heal, and he was probably being overly solicitous but … that's just the way it had to be. It didn't stop him from feeling guilty, though. God, he wanted her to be happy again. Truly happy. He just had a feeling she was hiding a lot under her 'everything is normal' exterior. He ran his hands up and down her back and pulled her even closer. She stopped kissing him, and looked into his eyes. Sara's fingers moved up and into his curls.
"Stop that," she said, with a smile.
"Stop what?"
"Thinking so much."
It was his turn to smile. "You know that's a physical impossibility."
She grabbed his hands and moved him over to the shower enclosure. It was built for two, easily. All dark gray stone with a bench built into the wall. When they selected it on special order, Grissom had actually blushed and Sara quickly followed. The salesman had looked as if he was going to laugh out loud over the reaction from the two adults before him. It had proved worth the embarrassment.
Sara was turning on the water without either of them removing one article of clothing.
"Sara, stop."
"Nope. I'll take care of them later," she said, unbuttoning his shirt, and running her mouth over his exposed skin.
"Wet clothes are harder to remove than dry, you know," he said, feeling his heart grow lighter by the moment.
"I know. I love a challenge."
He lifted the hem of her shirt but the water cascading from one of the four showerheads directly on that spot made it slip out of his fingers.
"Damned water," he said, trying again, this time successfully.
Sara laughed and pulled his shirt off entirely.
"Don't be so happy," he told her. "I might start to question exactly how you became so proficient at clothing removal under extreme conditions."
She laughed again and got to work on his pants. He only managed to get her down to her underwear, when she had completed his stripping.
She put her hand in the middle of his chest and pushed him toward the bench. "Sit," she said.
Suddenly, he stopped and looked serious, "Sara, no."
Her fingers went back to his hair and she pulled him down for a kiss. She immediately sought, and received, the warmth and softness of his mouth and her kiss was none too gentle, a little desperate, and over as soon as his moaning began. She pulled her mouth away, while holding his head firmly in place, so he had no other choice but to look her straight in the eye.
"I'm fine and I want to do this. Just…sit, okay? It's all right. Everything is all right," she said, seriously, and then smiled, "You've never stopped me before. Let's not start any nasty precedents, okay?"
He looked down into earnest brown eyes and nodded quietly. He knew she hated being fussed over. He wasn't crazy about it himself. And there were no serial killers after her right now. He had to remember that. They were safe. Nice and cozy in their warm cocoon of a shower. They had lots of hot water, a locked door downstairs, and a good dog who barked at the least hint of any form of life that was not his people.
They were safe.
He sat down and she was already moving his thighs apart and stroking his flesh.
"Nice to know at least one part of you is willing to cooperate," she said, before leaning over and tasting him.
He moved his head back against the wall and looked down at her. She was so intent on what she was doing. Hands and lips and mouth. He lightly ran his fingers through her hair to stroke the silky strands as she stroked him.
He briefly closed his eyes and reveled in the sensations.
He was a very, very lucky man.
Sloane Mansion August 23, 2007,2 PM
When he walks in the room, he feels confused
like he's walked into a play.
And the music's so loud it spins him around
'til his soul has lost it's way.
And as she turns the volume down
he's getting smaller with the sound.
It seems to pull him off the ground.
Toward the radio he's bound…
never to be found
(Written by Alan O'Day)
Angie was not happy.
Stupid UPS man. Stupid, stupid NEW UPS man.
Where was Roger anyway? He was a good guy. She liked Roger. He came every day, like clockwork. And Big Daddy let Lucille take her down the stairs to pick up her package. No, this one, this stupid Mark guy held some of her packages back so he'd only have to make one or two trips a week.
That was the only thing she was allowed to do. Didn't he understand that? Go downstairs and pick up the packages.
Every day, every day, she'd watch the shopping channels and order something. Or she'd go on the internet and buy something from ebay or Amazon. Big Daddy let her have her own account. $200 a week. That was her "allowance." Of course, she was way too old for an allowance. Time did go by. But it was an agreement. She stayed at home, guarding the house for Big Daddy and he gave her money for her books and things.
But Lucille was in the bathroom when the doorbell rang and Angie ran downstairs anyway. She wasn't supposed to answer the door without Lucille but, she—Angie—was the houseguard. Not Lucille. She could answer if she wanted. Plus, it was way past the time that Mark should have been here and she wanted her package of books.
She opened the door and found him there. Three packages in hand. Stupid, hoarding man.
"Where's Roger?" she asked him, suddenly.
"Roger? The guy who worked the route before me, you mean?"
She didn't like this Mark guy. He treated her like she didn't have any brains. Like there was something wrong with her.
"Yes, the nice UPS man who worked here before you did. He delivered my packages every day."
"Uh, well. I guess you ordered more stuff back then," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. She hated twinkles. They made fun of her. "He's working the other side of town now. We change routes every few years."
Angie didn't like that. Not at all Still, maybe it was just a matter of making new friends. She could make friends with this Mark guy.
She could ask him if he wanted to see her room. No. No, she couldn't. He wouldn't like that. Especially without Lucille there.
"I have a package that needs to go back. Can you help me with it?"
Mark looked around the big mansion. She could see him trying to figure out if she'd tip him. She had a few dollars in her pocket. She'd tip him.
"Sure," he said, and followed Angie up the stairs.
End of Chapter 1