A/N Evening! This is just a short drabble, purely for my own pleasure - I've been writing mainly multi-chapter serious stuff, so I felt I needed a break from that! This is dedicated to my mother, who I am a total cow to sometimes! She knows how Catherine feels!
He wasn't sure why, but for some reason he and Lindsey were on their way to the supermarket. In his car, Marilyn Manson blasting from the stereo and out the open windows into the normally quiet street. Well, something needed to dissolve the silence inside the car. Neither looked at the other. The silence was making Greg uncomfortable.
"So, how's school going?" he asked, a little desperately. Surely he hadn't been this difficult at her age?
"Fine."
"Oh. Ok."
'Oh, boy', he thought to himself, 'this is going to be fun.'
All he was certain of was that they were going there to buy lemonade. As many different varieties as you can fit into the back of your car, Grissom had said. But why Lindsey was with him, he wasn't certain.
"I can't believe my mother doesn't trust me enough to stay in the break room alone for ten minutes." she said suddenly.
That was it. Catherine had asked him – Greg Sanders, the lab's official screw-up – to watch her daughter for a few minutes. She obviously trusted him more than her. Probably because he had been a not-so rebellious teenager not so long ago. He, too had taken to calling his parents 'mother' and 'father' with an incredulous look when they had done something to embarrass him or piss him off. He thought it was only him that did that.
And then Grissom asked him to run an errand, so he took Lindsey with him – he was beginning to regret it now, though, as she looked as if she might scowl him to death. He remembered being angsty, but not towards cool people like himself. Or perhaps he was being slightly naïve.
"There's some gum in the glove compartment, if you want some." A simple peace offering, and he was surprised when she gave what he thought was a smile.
"Thanks."
"How old are you now? I remember you coming to the lab when you were a little kid."
"And I remember when you were a total geek. Those shirts!" she giggled, then stopped suddenly and straightened up. "I'm almost sixteen, although you wouldn't know it, the way she treats me. Like I'm still a child." She rolled her eyes.
"I was never a geek! I always have been and always will be totally cool!"
"Yeah, OK!"
As they carried on their debate about Greg's cool status, they pulled into the parking area of the supermarket. Their laughs could be heard outside the car.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Twenty minutes later, the two of them emerged through the automatic doors, laden down with bottles of lemonade.
"Wouldn't it be hilarious if we got back to the lab and Grissom didn't need any of this?" Lindsey said to Greg between laughs.
"Oh, man, I don't think I could ever drink all of this!"
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the car, on their way back to the lab, Lindsey was more chatty. But now, back in the break room with Catherine, she had gone back to being her normal scowling, moody self.
Grissom came in to find Greg.
"Oh good, you're back. Change of plan, we didn't need all that lemonade after all, we figured out what type it was in the vic's stomach. You can get rid of it all now."
Without saying anything else, he left, and Catherine followed him out. Greg felt rather defeated. All that time wasted, for nothing. And he hadn't succeeded in getting Lindsey to cheer up.
"Hey, Greg," she said suddenly with a smile, "Want some lemonade?"
'Well,' he thought, 'At least the day hasn't been completely wasted…'