Just a quick one and recycling a bit of a previous story that didn't work out...

Thank you for reading.

x

Warrick entered Catherine's office, holding an oblong, cardboard box. A deep, soft female aura emanated from her. The deep magenta, almost mauve, shirt was giving her skin a deep carnal glow. Her hair was waterfall of sunshine, cascading and glittering in twirls.

"What are you thinking about?"

"What makes you think I'm thinking about anything?" Catherine replied as she looked up and Warrick saw for the first time how elaborate and flawless her make-up was, her fine black eyelashes curling exquisitely and her lips perfectly toned

"I know you." Her glinting, neon blue eyes looked at the very longing expression on Warrick's face and she stepped up out of her chair, wanting to know what was in the open, brown parcel that had darker tinges of wetness around the edges.

"What's all this?"

"Lunch." His eyes unconsciously rose to the hanging, wall clock. It was just past two thirty. "I was hungry. Sometimes I get a hankering," he faintly blurted out, words seeming spontaneous.

"You had a hankering for ham, tuna fish and roast beef sandwiches?" Warrick looked at her neck. He noticed the pale blue artery beneath the flesh, suddenly visible, as she had meant for him to see it, as her hands looked at the sliver packages that entombed food. A small, chain, locks of sliver clashed around her neck

"You missed the PB and J."
"Soup and salad, too? What is going on, Warrick?"

"I couldn't remember what you liked." Her necklace flashed suddenly as if sparked with electric light, eyes like spiralling blue iron but still soft and deep

"Why didn't you just ask me?"

"Well after your movement back to nightshift," he chose his words carefully, "you kept saying, why is everyone asking you if they can get you anything, and I didn't want to do that..."

"So you did this?"

"Yeah…" he murmured, keeping very still, his eyes not leaving hers until his self-consciousness kicked in he looked down at the floor.

"Thank you." Warrick reached out very carefully, strengthen the grip of the box with his left hand and touched Catherine's cheek. He touched the tiny fine lines that surround the corner of her deep-set of remarkable topaz eyes against her pale, milk skin. She smiled but she stepped out of his touch.

"Married, remember."

"Right."

Catherine picked her sandwich and held the silver package as if it were the Olympic torch.

"Thanks for the food. Make sure you share out that stuff with everyone else." She turned around to her desk and gilded to her seat. Catherine removed the foil wrapper and tuna fish oozed out, the salad squashed slightly and a lettuce leaf drooped out at one end miserably. Warrick watched her.

"You can get out now." She was having a bad night. Another arguement with Lindsey, a case that was going no where and an intimate moment with someone who she slightly resented for getting married...

"Catherine-."

"Look, since life is so short, you won't want spend much time in this office, particularly in this office because it is dull and boring and not the cutting, risky lifestyle of Carpe Diem." And because your life might just end up being that much shorter.

His mouth opened to speak but she interupted.

"Warrick, please, I am busy." Her thinning lips brightened by rose lipstick and her left hand raised to cover her eyes, nails glittering in pearl polish. Her right followed, palms pressing on to her eyelids. He heard her sniff and he put the box on the floor as he heard her say "Go back to your perfect marriage."

"Actually, it's not that perfect. No marriage is. You should know that...It is just that, you were my boss and we would have ended like Sara and Grissom. Chasing each other and becoming bitter. I didn't want that to happen, I couldn't…" Warrick looked at her to find she was staring back.

They plunged into a vibrant ringing silence, slightly enthralled in each other.

"I was scared Cath," he gave a nervous laugh, shaking head. "And I mean terrified. The flip of a coin…if it had landed…I probably wouldn't be here…"

Her nose crinkled.

"You don't have to believe that but I know it." The two CSI's hearts became little knots, emotion infecting them, crippling them.

"I really love Tina, I do," if Warrick had a point Catherine hoped he would get to it fast, "but sometimes I feel like I don't know her. It feels like it's the ending, and we haven't really begun…"

Catherine had had enough of Warrick and her eyes glittered at him. Catherine felt her eyeballs pulsing in their sockets, it was like her retina's were going to pop. She heard her own heart and felt a windy whoosh of blood rushing through all the avenues of her body. She snapped, both mentally and verbally.

"Are youungrateful?" She made him a slave to her eyes. Eye shadow stained her lids and her mouth was cold and flawless.

"What?"

Her expression was intensely dramatic and anyone who looked at her would sense an immediate and sweeping probe of their mind. Warrick felt chills down his backbone. Her were eyes picking him apart.

"You have a wife, someone who loves you, even though you have known her for less than a year…" She wondered what Tina had that she didn't. It was something she thought about everyday for about thirty seconds. Did she have almond-shaped green eyes like him? Was she extraordinarily pretty without make-up, with lashes so thick, they looked false. Did she have no creases? Make him laugh? More intelligent?

"I have seen you cry, I have seen you smile." She said it so absently, "I would have loved to have been the mother of your child and spend the rest of my life time with you."

Her lower lip was trembling as she spoke. Her voice, quaking and almost choking on words she wanted to say and as she unscrambled her thoughts. She didn't look at him. She looked at the 'flimsy-assed' ducks she wanted to smash with the golf clubs which were being tested for blood on her current case.

"But I can't," she said in a lighter tone, chin tilting up slightly, "so I am just going to have to live with that."

She smiled brieflyat him, lips sticking together.

"You and Tina, you are having doubts, but I am sure you will be fine. You will work through it and if don't I can give you the number for my marriage counsellor."Her face was not losing her softness and her teeth give the impression they were expanding as her lips parted to form a smile, a very opulent smile. Warrick smiled back as he picked up the box of food.

"I'll keep that in mind." She was sure he winked at her.

Hespun clockwise to the door and left. Catherine kept smiling for a second before she let her eyelids drop and her facial muscles were released from the dulling ache of smiling. She sighed and looked at the framed photo of Lindsey. She had lost many people in her life and the idea of losing her daughter was always eating and rotting away in her mind. She picked up the black, office phone and her fingertips pressed at the numbers.

"Hey Linds…its Mom…I-I'm glad that this is your voicemail because I wouldn't want to have woken you … I know things have been bad for a while now…"

She played with the river of blonde curls seemed to frame her face perfectly and her eyes flirted between a china green duck and a glass swan. Catherine wanted to scream at most parts of her life, Lindsey wasn't one of them.

"I know…I know that you might not like or understand the rules sometimes, but I promise you, baby, they have always been with your best interests in mind. It may not seem like it…"

The butterflies in the pit of her stomach weren't helping. She took a steadying breath and swallowed.

"I just wanted to let you know that you make me so proud and to have a daughter like you is more special than…" she breathed down the phone, very softly.

"..than anything else in the world."

She didn't breathe for 5 seconds and continued.

"Maybe we could go somewhere soon, somewhere nice… or if you don't want to we could just spend some time together…shopping or the movies…"
"Okay, I'll see you when you get up." she said lazily, looking at the glistening dark gold bread of the sandwich, it was going in to her bin as soon as she finished the phone call.

Catherine's hand stretched out she prepared to hear the click that ended the monologue. She licked her lips, tongue just tracing the edges.

"I love you, Linds."

Click