I don't own CSI. Kind of a weird fic… looking back on it now, I'm kind of confused as to where I was going with it. I may re-write it in the future, but now you can take it as a day in the life sort of situation, if you want
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Thump thump thump.
'Ugh,' Sara thought in disgust, 'Who the hell could that be?' She groggily opened one eye, sneaking a peek at the digital clock on her nightstand.
3:17 AM, the red display glared. What an ungodly hour to be up. 'Don't answer it,' she ordered herself wordlessly, snuggling back into her comforter. 'Whoever it is can come back in the morning... The actual morning, when real people are awake.'
Thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
Sara growled, rolling out of bed. She flicked on the hall lights and cursed under her breath as her sleepy eyes fought to adjust to the sudden brightness. Already in a foul temper, she stalked down the hall. She rubbed her eyes and ran a hand over her ponytail to smooth down a massive case of bed-head, her feet padding noiselessly across beige carpet.
The tired CSI caught her reflection in the full length mirror near her door. Eh, so-so. Her straight brown hair was pulled back and not as nearly as frizzy as she had feared. Her fitted gray tank top and low slung plaid boxers weren't exactly the best for entertaining visitors in, but she was damned if she was going to go all the way back to her bedroom for her bathrobe. She looked out her peephole with an ireful glance, wondering who her late night – make that early morning - visitor could be.
Gil Grissom stood on her doorstep, looking conspicuous, anxious, and not at all aware that it was well into the wee hours of the morning. She turned the knob with a knowing harrumph. This was so characteristically Grissom it wasn't even funny. He looked rather surprised when she opened the door, and a bit put off by her attire. "Sara, hi… did I wake you?"
She gazed at him in a mix of exasperation and resignation. "You do realize that it's three in the morning?" she asked.
He glanced at his wristwatch. "So it is." Grissom. The living enigma.
She saw the light in 406's entryway turn on, evidenced by the glow bleeding under the adjacent door's bottom. Her neighbors wouldn't be too thrilled with her if she woke them up by talking in the hallway. Sara stepped back, inviting Grissom in with a tired gesture.
He stepped in behind her, closing the door and standing awkwardly in the threshold. "I don't mean to sound rude, Grissom, but what are you doing here?" she rubbed her forehead tiredly.
"There's been a B and E on Roosevelt and Vineyard. I need you there."
Sara moved to the kitchen, absently brewing coffee. If she was going to have to wake up, she may as well be awake and functioning. "Nick and Catherine?" she asked, more out of curiosity than to try to persuade Grissom to put someone else on the case.
"They're working a quadruple."
"Ouch…" said Sara with a wince.
"No kidding. And they're having a hard time finding any evidence; the perp torched the place after the murders."
"Ooh, double ouch." Arson and murder. She didn't envy Catherine and Nick. And Warrick was still in Desert Palms recovering from having his appendix removed. Trivial surgery, but enough to keep him from coming to work. "You know that it's my week off, right? I've got to use my vacation days by next month or I don't get them at all."
"Sara Sidel, you can't tell me that you only have one week saved up." Grissom said, lifting his chin to give her an accusatory (yet all too knowing) look and a smile. He leaned against her kitchen counter, enjoying the warmth of her apartment. It was cold outside.
She glanced over her shoulder and then turned back to the coffee maker, grinning. "Okay, it's more like six. But I knew that you couldn't last without me for forty-two days."
"Quite true," he said, accepting the offered mug of coffee and taking a sip.
"Why did you come all the way here just to tell me that you need me to work?" she asked. His apartment, the lab, police station, and crime scene were all at least forty-five minutes away.
"Because you were incommunicado. I tried to email you, but your ISP was fixing a maintenance glitch, and your phone, cell, and beeper were turned off," he said, raising his eyebrows.
"Oh… right." Sara had turned them off yesterday morning. Just after she had gotten home, Greg had called to ask her where her file for the Emma Rodriguez case was. She had resisted the urge to snap 'In the drawer labeled case files, moron, with all the other case files.' But after the ninth call within the hour from various members of the Las Vegas Crime Lab she had snapped, unplugging her phone cable and turning off her cell and beeper. "Sorry about that."
Grissom finished his coffee and pushed off from the counter. "Well, let's go, then."
"Um… Grissom… aren't you forgetting something?"
He looked completely nonchalant. "No. I didn't bring anything with me."
Sara gestured, indicating her pajamas and bed head. "I can't go to a crime scene looking like this."
"Oh… right. Well, I'll give you the address for the scene, then. You can head over when you're ready. Do you have a paper and pen?" He lifted his hands and pantomimed writing something. Sara was not a morning person, and it was a wonder that in the vaguely crabby mood she had woken up in she hadn't snapped, 'I know what a pen and paper do.'
"It won't do any good. My car's in the shop being serviced. I have no way of getting there. The first bus doesn't leave for another…" She checked the clock on her wall, "Two hours." She looked at him apologetically. "Could you give me a ride?"
He, too, glanced at the clock. "Yeah, I have an hour and a half before I need to be back at the lab." She looked at him questioningly. "The benefits of never taking your vacation days is that you get really long coffee breaks."
She allowed a small smile. "Okay, thanks. I'm going to go get ready, then."
"Wait, I need to brief you."
"Can't you do it on the ride over?"
"I'd rather not…"
And so somehow Grissom ended up sitting on a stool in her bathroom, going over the particulars of the case while Sara, hidden by a plastic shower curtain, tried to compose her appearance.
"What did they find at the scene?" she asked through a head of sudsy shampoo.
Grissom was momentarily distracted by the smell of her soap. White tea and ginger, he mused, then focused again. He flipped through the report. "A smashed window where the perp entered, a partial off of the windowsill, and, get this, he slashed himself on the broken glass on the way in."
"DNA. Nice."
"I'm having Greg run it now, but I doubt that we'll find a hit. If this guy is new, as the crime scene suggests, he won't be in CODIS."
"That's all right. When we find him we can nail him with his own blood. I'll dust the broken glass for prints. Could you hand me that towel?" she asked, sticking her dripping head out from the side of the shower curtain to point to a towel rack.
Grissom handed it to her. Standing, he walked out of the steamy bathroom and sat to wait for Sara in the living room. She emerged a few minutes later, toweling her hair and, to Grissom's relief, fully clothed.
"Okay, just a sec…" she ran a brush through her straight brown locks, tying it back into a still-damp ponytail. She didn't have time to blow-dry it, though she would have liked to - it made her hair much more manageable.
Grissom stood as Sara threw her towel onto a chair and sped around the room, turning off the lights and grabbing her purse, keys, and jacket. He watched her shove her feet into sneakers and held the door open for her as she juggled her possessions.
And so they sped off towards Roosevelt and Vineyard, with Mozart in the stereo and two massive cups of coffee, tearing down the strip, at four in the morning. Sara smiled to herself as she looked over at Grissom's hands, clutched with a comical intensity around the steering wheel as he concentrated on the road with his usual attentiveness. A day in the life.