AN: I don't own CSI, it's just a really fun playground.
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"You're baking?" She raised one skeptical eyebrow as he gathered the ingredients he was going to need.
"My mother and I used to bake together when I was a child. This is one of her recipes." He turned to her, a slightly teasing smile hovering on his lips. "Want to help?"
Sara held in a reflexive bubble of laughter. "There's a reason why I majored in physics and not chemistry, Grissom. And that extends into the kitchen."
"Aw, come on," he said, and she knew then that even though she hadn't given in yet, she was going to. "You can mash the bananas. I'm sure you're great at beating things to a pulp, and it has nothing to do with chemistry. It'll be fun."
She wondered for a moment if the double meanings were intentional and then grinned inwardly. Intentionally or not, he had given her an idea and the little creature in the back of her mind that often got her into trouble was uncurling. Yes, it would be fun.
He handed her a bunch of six bananas and went to measure the flour. When he looked back, she was peeling the fruit over the trash can. His eyes followed her slim fingers for a moment as they stripped back the spotted yellow skin. He swallowed, shook his head to clear it, and turned back to the safer, and far more boring, dry ingredients on the counter.
He was listening as each peel dropped, so when she spoke, he had only just finished leveling off the last cupful of flour.
"Where are your knives?"
He dumped the flour into the bowl and turned to her. "Excuse me?"
"A knife to cut them up." She gestured at the six vulnerable looking pieces of fruit she had placed in a large bowl.
Vulnerable? He gave his head another slight shake. Get a grip. "Oh, uh…" he fumbled in a drawer for a moment and handed her, handle first, a suitable blade. Most people, he had noticed, kept their kitchen knives in large wooden blocks on their counters, but he had seen far too many cases where such readily available knives were used as weapons of opportunity to be comfortable with the practice in his own home.
When she began using the knife, he temporarily forgot about the flour. She picked up her first victim and sliced it in half lengthwise and then again. Then she gripped the pieces in one hand to keep them together and cut perpendicular slices with the other. His shirt suddenly seemed very hot and too small. He took a deep, calming breath as she finished with the second banana. She heard him and looked up.
Her lips twitched and her eyes further betrayed her suppressed smile. For a moment he registered with detached outrage that she had to be doing this deliberately to toy with him. She dropped the pieces she held into the bowl and reached for a third. For a moment she gripped it in a way that was not correct for cutting and his breath hitched because it was very correct for…something else. She flashed her full, bright smile and he knew with absolute certainty that she was tormenting him on purpose, but then her hand loosened, shifted, and she ducked her head and appeared to devote her entire concentration to using the knife.
Measuring the rest of the dry ingredients was very difficult because his hands were unsteady and slow to follow his directions. He moved on to the eggs and valiantly attempted to ignore the rattling noises Sara was making with the bowl behind him. When he noticed an increasingly loud squelching noise accompanying each rattle, he almost dropped the egg he was holding. He carefully set the egg down and turned around just in time to see her plunge both fists into the bowl. The resulting squelch was louder than ever.
"Would you like a fork?" His voice cracked embarrassingly. He coughed. "I-I have some tool you could use for that," he added lamely.
She widened her eyes innocently and held up sticky hands. "These," she wiggled her fingers, "are the best tools there are."
Heat rose up his neck and he wondered idly when his ears would go up in flames. His mind was blank.
"What's the matter Griss?" she asked. Her voice was light but her grin was evil. "Are you going bananas?"
"No," he half-growled, "but you're driving me nuts."
She pressed her lips together tightly to keep her laughter in check. "I guess I do, on occasion, drive your—" She broke off abruptly when she saw what he was holding.
Grissom shook the bag of almonds in front of her face. His wide eyes were a blue mirror of the expression hers had held moments before. "Nuts?"
She tried to maintain control, but his lips twitched up at the corners and then they both lost it and laughed until they cried.