Queen or Peasant
Summary: Catherine the great or is she? One shot.
I don't own CSI
No romance but maybe a few implied ideas
Catherine walked into the lab that evening looking as immaculately clad as usual. Like the Queen of her Domain, high heels boosting her 5'6 frame up 3 inches. Her slacks were tan and skin tight, showing off every curve, her blouse also a tight fitting curvy feature of her ensemble. Every guy in the lab was practically drooling. Her hair was swept back off her face and the sweet scent of soap and shampoo left a lingering taste in their mouths. They all thought the same thing, 'She's gorgeous' but not one of them would say it out loud as they valued their manhoods.
In the break room the team had gathered and Sara was sharing a laugh with Catherine. "Ya know Cath it is kind of funny when you think about it, I come to work dressed for practicality and not a second glance from anyone except the team. You however come in like a scene from The Devil Wears Prada, and almost every guy in the place is wanting to kiss your shoes."
"Oh that's gross Sara, besides I'd have noticed if anyone was gawking at me, which I haven't," replied Catherine.
"You don't honestly think they'd risk the Willows glare do you? Hell when we first met you scared me to death," teased Sara. They both laughed.
Grissom chose that moment to walk in to hand out their assignments.
"Catherine, you and Nick have a DB out at the dump. Sara, Warrick and Greg will handle a suspicious find two blocks down from it then join you. Be careful as we don't know all the details yet."
Catherine sighed with despair, the garbage dump wasn't her idea of a fun night, but she went to her locker and grabbed her gun, kit and protective overalls and boots.
Nick drove to the crime scene and talked to the cops on scene. A body had been discovered on the huge trash piles accidentally after a man lost control of his dog and it ran onto the site. The smell was overpowering, rotting garbage and decomp, what a combination.
Both Nick and Catherine changed into their protective clothing, grabbed up their kits and walked up the mound of foul smelling garbage to look at and photograph the DB and surrounds.
One officer called out to them from below urgently. "The site manager said that the pile isn't stable so watch your footing."
Too little too late!
Catherine yelped as the ground beneath her opened up and swallowed her, down into the depths of the garbage.
"NICK!"
Nick dropped what he was doing and crawled to the edge of the hole, only to find his weight was too much and he plunged downwards to land on top of Catherine.
"You rang my lady?" he queried, stifling a laugh. After all they were only in garbage and people knew where they were.
The rest of the team had finished up at the scene two blocks away, finding a dead skunk in a dumpster, no great crime. Now they arrived at the dump with no Nick or Catherine to be seen anywhere.
The cop on scene said they were up on top of the pile and had heard what sounded like a yelp or even a help then heard nothing else.
Sara, the lightest of the trio, crawled her way to the top of the dump after sensing trouble, and she found it. She found the hole and shone her flashlight into it only to see Nick and Catherine down at the bottom.
"I know you should have gotten a room you two, but isn't this a bit ridiculous?"
"Just get us out of here Sara, and can the wisecracks," replied Catherine, not amused.
"Be right back, hang on."
She couldn't help but laugh. She went down to Warrick and Greg.
"I need some rope and something to tie it to so that we can get them up out of that hole."
The coroner had arrived and was waiting on the DB but nothing up there could be touched until the two CSIs had been extracted.
Nick and Catherine had been exploring their temporary prison, and what they found did not please them one bit. Yellow bags of biohazardous waste were all around them, some ripped open spilling all sorts of blood soaked material, syringes, everything. Suddenly this wasn't funny anymore, not that being buried in garbage is anyway but this was deadly.
"Sara you there?" called out Nick.
"Yeah Nick just got the rope ready to toss down so we can pull you both out."
"Call a HAZMAT team, this place is full of hospital waste."
"Hell, either of you hurt?"
"No."
Sara relayed the message and a HAZMAT team was on their way.
"Right Nick on their way, now loop this rope under Catherine's arms and we'll pull her up."
Catherine was pulled to the surface quickly and efficiently and Greg cheekily took a photo of her, claiming it as evidence.
Nick then came up equally quickly and had his picture taken as evidence.
Both Catherine and Nick were checked over by their colleagues and they got away with only scratches. Due to the hazardous materials they were exposed to they decided to see their own doctors if any problems arose.
Driving back to the lab as they were was a torture in itself, they smelt awful, felt awful, looked worse and were covered in muck.
Entering the lab was worse, choruses of laughter followed them into the locker room, even Grissom, the usually dour, emotionless man, was laughing.
Catherine was furious, so furious in fact that she stripped naked in front of Nick, threw all her clothes in the trash, and climbed under a hot shower and let it soak the dirt away. She then realized she had another problem.
All her clothes were ruined, she had nothing to wear and couldn't go home naked.
"Cath you in there?" called Sara.
"Go away, I'm not seeing anyone in this state right now, I can't go home like this," she cried.
"Hey it's ok Cath, firstly here's a nice fluffy towel, and I stopped by your place and picked up a change of clothes for you, with Lindsays help."
Catherine came out of the shower, naked, took the towel gratefully and smiled.
"Thanks Sara, what would I do without friends like you, I mean I wouldn't make it past Ecklie like this would I?" she asked, dropping the towel.
"Ecklie maybe, anyone else, no way," she laughed."Now finish up and get dressed we still have work to do."
In the A/V lab Greg had been busy printing out the pictures of Catherine and Nick, then he took them into the break room and plastered them up on the notice board and added a caption.
IN OVER THEIR HEADS WITH WORK
Then he carefully went and found some work to occupy him until his coffee had finished brewing.
When Catherine and Nick went into the break room for coffee after a long night they saw the photos and the caption and had to laugh, only Greg could have done that and it was done to lighten the mood, to make them see the funny side of that awful dump. The pictures showed them covered from head to foot in garbage, including rotting vegetables among other unmentionables. The day shift took over the dump case.
From that day on Catherine always made sure she had a spare change of clothes in her locker, just like Sara had, and she stopped dressing up to the nines just for work. But she didn't stop being beautiful or wearing nice clothes, just not as dressy. And more conservatively.