Happy Christmas to everyone and thanks to Lori for the XMas day beta amongst many culinary and cosmetic snaffoos (is that how you spell it?)...
She hated gingerbread, gingersnaps, ginger candy; hated ginger period. But strangely enough, around Yule she constantly found her self buying the Betty Crocker instant gingerbread, adding the butter and water, and mashing out the dough with her hands.
An antique rolling pin, one that had belonged to her great-grandmother and that had somehow found its way into her kitchen (she didn't remember how), flattened the dough into a cakey sheet. Sara found pleasure in curling her fingers around the delicate, filigreed metal, pressing down, down, pushing all of her anger out. And then there were the cookie cutters, several of them in different colors, some plastic, some metal. Christmas trees and snowmen and stars and angels and she pressed them into the soft confection with purpose, peeling away the excess to reveal the small shapes.
The baking would be the difficult part and she always dusted them with sugar before throwing them in the oven, treading a fine line between eight and twelve minutes, finding that her cookies were often times undercooked but more often then naught burnt around the edges.
Several batches would be produced; three or four of them went to the Methodist church down the street from her, wrapped in green and red cellophane, several toys and other food items their companions. They went in big, cumbersome boxes, and she always found it amusing when the nuns rushed over to help her with her parcels.
The other two batches were for her and her alone. It didn't much matter that the cookies were a little too crispy or slightly underdone because she was the only one eating them. Sometimes she found herself eating them with cookie dough ice cream or hot chocolate but they were good with beer too, or eggnog, so it didn't much matter what she drank with them.
Twelve different icing colors went into the making of the cookies. And although it was only her that would see the frosted ones, she made intricate little designs and amateur little doodles out of the colored sugar, crinkling her forehead and teasing the edges of her mouth with her tongue when her designs got a little too complicated.
No, no, she didn't really like gingerbread at all.
But when she made the cookies she ate them all, and though they left a stale taste in her mouth, her stomach was happy and so was her heart.
Those cookies were the last thing that she made with her grandmother before she was moved to Sacramento to live with the Coughlin's. So she made them every Christmas, when she was supposed to remember the good times (and some of the sad times too) and pretended not to be upset about the fact that she didn't have any photo albums.
The tradition followed her when she moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas and morphed a little. She added cinnamon to the sugar on top and added little smiley faces to the cookies that she would take to the domestic abuse shelter. A new beginning meant trying new things and for her, it meant trying to be happier... and meaning it.
Part of conquering her demons was not being guilty of her past and for the first time, she found herself sharing the cookies with her coworkers. The night before Christmas, she piled the thin cookies high on a pizza platter, covering it with the same red and green cellophane as she always did. At the start of shift, she placed them in the break room and as she did, Sara saw some of the tension and anger in her coworkers faces lift.
The meaning of the cookies changed after that and she actually began tasting them, really taking the time to place the flavor of each batch, starting from scratch, determining whether she'd added too much nutmeg or cinnamon, if they were too crisp or too thin and what she could add to rectify the problem. After a week or two in December during her fifth year in Sin City, she found herself actually growing to like the treats, writing down her grandmother's original recipe in a big, faux-leather book and beginning to experiment with the ingredients.
The book began to fill with variations of the cookies and other improvised recipes, many of which she had to put a big red 'X' next to after tasting the end product. But, it appeared she had found herself a diversion and a way to flex the creative side of her brain. Halfway through filling up her book, she'd stumbled upon what she thought to be a masterpiece, a broccoli and cheese soufflé and thought that it would be a nice gesture to share her cooking with someone (as well as really putting her newfound abilities to the test).
That Sunday evening Nick made his way to her apartment, a six pack of imported in tow, to sample her culinary attempt. He left happy, sated, and craving more. He told her so the next evening at work, running into her as he was retrieving a bottle of water from the fridge in the break room. "Sara, I gotta ask... I need that recipe."
Chuckling to herself, she spun to him, hands leaning on the counter behind her. "Sorry..." she sighed.
Nick shook his head in defeat, "Family recipe?"
Sara straightened for a moment, prickling at the thought before her shoulders slumped and her mouth twisted into a placid smile. "Could be, you've gotta give me time," she said, and winked at him before returning to fix her coffee. A feeling of satisfaction and pride grew in her stomach and as she turned to leave, and with a giant smile on her lips she nearly walked directly into her supervisor.
He had become more open recently, finally picking up the old habit of taking everyone out to breakfast at the end of their shift, going to lunches with Catherine, keeping on top of what was going on with the other shift. It seemed he was taking more of an interest in people and it showed more than Sara was sure he wanted it to. "What's this I hear about recipes?"
Sara stood and wondered about the best way to answer him and eventually settled on the easiest. "I've been experimenting." She smiled shyly at him and he quirked a brow, walking past her to retrieve coffee.
Grissom spoke with his back to her, "With?"
Moving to perch on the edge of the table, Sara spoke, "Mainly desserts, but I've tried a few main dishes too, they've all been pretty good." Taking a sip from her mug, she thought about what she said, "Well... with the exception of an egg white omelet thing I tried that was a disaster."
His answering chuckle warmed her in ways that she had missed. "All of this is from scratch?"
And she nodded although he couldn't see her. "Yeah, I figure then I can't blame anyone for my mistakes," there was a smile in her voice, but the comment spurred him to turn and face her.
A strange look passed over his face but he remained silent for a moment. "But the ratio of the bad dishes to the good dishes..."
"Oh," Sara perked up, "The good definitely outweighs the bad. I've finally gotten over... being bashful... about my cooking." He waited for her to continue. "I tested this broccoli concoction on Nick."
The morphing of Grissom's face was overtly noticeable, passing from placidity into mirth, "And considering that he asked for the recipe, I'd infer that you're a good chef." The teasing tone of his voice and the twinkle in his eye made her slightly uneasy. It'd been years since she'd seen him that easygoing and Sara wasn't quite sure how to react.
"You could infer..." she began shakily, clutching her coffee cup so hard that her knuckles turned white, "Or you could experiment too and find out for sure..."
Grissom slid an index finger around the rim of his mug and thought to himself for a moment as Sara's stomach flipped and flopped all over the place. "When... and where?"
The entire reason she'd said anything in the first place was because she could introduce him to this new part of herself in a place that he felt comfortable, the lab, but his offer to let her choose both the time and the destination had her brain working overtime and before she knew it, she had suggested that they meet one evening for their lunch at a park a few miles from work.
Grissom agreed with a barely perceptible nod of his head and made away with his coffee. Finding the invitation to have gone far too smoothly, she began to freak out and returned promptly to her home after work to begin preparations on a new dish. After three failed tries, she began on an updated version of an old classic, adding more spices than - if she was really honest with herself - she was really comfortable with.
Adding garnish, she stood back and admired her work, finding the food far too simple. Quickly throwing together a spinach salad with craisins, she began work on her beverage of choice.
The beginning of shift that day went as it would have if it had been any other day. Most everyone was confined to lab work, and for the first few hours, Sara was stuck perusing old phone records of a drowning victim. It was Grissom who reminded her that they had a prior engagement when three o'clock rolled around and Sara tore herself away from her work with a blush and a nod.
They drove to the park together, neither saying much of anything but finding the atmosphere to be vaguely relaxed. It certainly wasn't what she had expected to happen, but she didn't say anything about it, didn't want to jinx it.
She brought them a pizza; organic tomatoes, cheese and basil, with kiwi iced tea she had let steep for two days on her balcony in the sun. It was a perfect picnic for three a.m.; Sara was even thoughtful enough to include a traditional red and white checked tablecloth. That made him chuckle and blush and smooth out the ridges so she could lay out the food for them.
They ate, they talked, and he spoke of his families Sunday meals and she admitted that she didn't own a photo album.
Grissom told her how sad that made him and he decided that the picnic would be their first date. And that was how easy it was.
Some nights he would bring lunch and they would eat sitting in the back of one of the department vehicles, other times she would bring another one of her concoctions and they would retreat to their park and talk and eat and drink and smile in a way that they only smiled around each other. It was gentle and smooth and they fell into the rhythm quite naturally, enjoying each others' company as they enjoyed the food.
He kissed her for the first time on the day before thanksgiving and after dinner that morning, they made love on his ugly blue sheets to the whispers of a rising storm.
For Christmas, he talked about the things he remembered about her and brought over eggnog and rum to spike it with, an ancient Polaroid camera and a dinky little scrapbook he'd picked up at the Target around the block from her apartment. He promised her memories on every page and they took silly pictures of each other as they got drunk and knocked heads more than a few times as they attempted photos together.
They woke up together in the morning, an occurrence that was new to the both of them. She snuggled into him, her fleecy red and white snowflake pajamas making her sweat but she paid them no mind.
Instead of pancakes for breakfast they made gingerbread people and decorated them so garishly that the designs gave them stomachaches.
She wasn't sure that she was growing to love gingerbread but she was growing to love him, and when he began adding recipes to her book she fell all the farther.