Title: The Quiet Times
Author: Cath
Feedback/Reviews: Are always appreciated – button_mush@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: They are not mine. I know that. You know that. I'm not sensing a problem here :)
Summary: Ah, heck, who knows?! It would require a plot, and I've yet to understand how that works :) Cath, Grissom, the quiet times.
Notes: This is Cath/Grissom centric. In other words it's about Catherine and Grissom. You've been warned.
Many thanks to Angie and Manda for betaing; and also thanks to the rest of the graveshift gang - you all rock :)
The Quiet Times
She remembers the times, the quiet in-between times, when they used to sit and talk. Sometimes it was when they were filling out paperwork in his office, sometimes over breakfast at her place, his place, a restaurant. She'd start talking about something, maybe something she remembered from school that related somehow to a case, maybe just something that occurred to her. The time that she got locked in the bathroom for instance, and had to climb out through the window, or the one guy she'd sneak out to see because her parents disapproved.
"Just the one?" he'd ask, teasing. And on it would go from there.
When she first joined the team – his team – she'd found it rather daunting. Not the getting to know people, no, she was well-practiced at that. It wasn't the cases either, although she was often uncomfortable at the prospect of yet another violent or tragic last act.
It wasn't any of the work, paperwork, constant learning that went with the job; it was the silences.
Her world was one of almost constant noise: words, music, conversation, laughter. She didn't know silence. Her previous work hadn't allowed her to become accustomed to it, and neither had her infant daughter.
Eddie had /never/ been one for silence.
His alcoholic episodes allowed him to talk incessantly about anything and everything, regardless of whether it made sense or interested her. Sometimes she'd be drunk, too, and they'd talk for hours about god only knew what.
Sometimes, when drunk, or even occasionally sober, Eddie would let her into his confidences; he'd open up in this amazing way and tell her almost everything he was thinking. His uncertainty about his ability to be a father to Lindsey and a husband to her; his dreams for their future, the house he wanted them to live in, the school Lindsey would go to. Sometimes he'd tell her how much he loved her, and he'd make her smile.
Sometimes, when he was drunk, he'd make her scream and shout, tell him to leave her alone. Those weren't good times, but they still were never filled with quiet, even when she was left alone.
She'd never be comfortable with the silences.
Grissom never had a problem with silence. She found it fascinating. They'd be out in the car, music off, neither of them saying a word. She'd watch the world go by for a while, colours and buildings merging into one, but eventually she'd have to say something.
She once asked him how he managed to cope with the quiet times. He had replied that they were what he knew; they allowed him to think, to contemplate. In the quiet times he knew himself better.
She had nothing to say to that, so she turned on the radio.
She'd overcome the quiet times by talking to him; getting to know him, his thoughts, feelings, interests. She spent more time talking about herself, but at the same time avoiding the issues, or her real thoughts.
He could never bring himself to tell her about Eddie and the other women. It wasn't that he lacked opportunity, but she was so busy trying to convince him how perfect her family was, for a lack of other things to say, that he couldn't bear to interrupt.
Turns out, she /knew/ her family wasn't perfect, but she didn't want him to know.
Eventually, over the span of time they spent together, she began to know him in the conversations they shared. How he spent his childhood, how he coped with his mother's deafness, why he became a CSI.
Now, although he's still there, she finds she misses him. But they no longer share the quiet times. Instead she talks to Warrick, Nick, and even Greg: flirting, laughing, smiling.
So she's surprised when one quiet shift he sits in his office, door shut, alone, doing paperwork. Not that this, in itself, is surprising. What surprises her it that this time as she enters, sits down opposite him, and sighs, it is he who starts the conversation.
"Wishing you were somewhere else?" he asks.
"Of course," she replies with a grin. "Any chance there'd be time for us to take a vacation somewhere?"
"Well, since you asked…" he begins.
She lifts her eyebrows. "I've got vacation time?" she questions.
"Well, no, not exactly. I can give you a night off on the fourteenth, though, for good behaviour. And to go to a conference in LA."
She groans. He grins.
"Isn't the fourteenth Valentine's Day?" she asks.
"Had big plans?" he teases.
"And if I did?" she smiles.
He returns the smile. "Then the thirteenth or the fifteenth are equally good nights."
"You available then?"
"You asking me out to dinner?" he asks, but not seriously.
"No. To cover for me," she teases, smirking.
He laughs.
"I missed this," she says after a while.
"What?"
"Us. The quiet times," she replies.
"Catherine, nothing could be quiet around you."
She grins at the truth of his statement. He gives a half-smile in return, and she thinks again about how much she has missed being around him. She amuses herself for a minute and wonders what his reaction would be if she /did/ invite him to dinner. She contemplates it in a silence that she is surprisingly comfortable with. She decides against it and instead stands up and starts to leave the room.
Then she stops at the door, turns round.
"Grissom…"
The End