LOST PROPERTY
The first Sara hears about it is when she is summoned to a meeting. It is unusual, as the summons comes post-shift, at that particular time of morning when the sun first peeks its nose over the horizon, and when the entire team is preparing to make a run for it – home to their burrows across Vegas. When Grissom appears at the door of the break room the coffee cups are just being rinsed, Catherine is finishing off loading the dishwasher, and Grissom doesn't even pause to say hello.
"Ladies – my office."
Sara and Catherine look at each other, but he has already disappeared. Nick, absorbed in putting on his jacket, does not seem to find it odd that he has been excluded, and after sharing another puzzled glance Sara follows a curious Catherine out through the door. Along the way, Grissom pokes his head in to summon Wendy, and also Sofia, who has spent the night going over a case with them, and the four of them are ushered into his dark office, and waved toward the chairs – despite the fact that there are not enough.
Sofia perches against a side table, looking slightly harassed.
"What's going on?"
Grissom clicks the door closed, flicks the blinds, and Sara gets an ominous feeling.
"Spill, Gil," Catherine recites, looking ever at ease.
"It's just a quick one," Grissom says, and he introduces the topic in a way that Sara thinks must go down in the history books: he opens a drawer beside Sofia, pulls out a single garment of underwear, and stretches it between two fingers to hold it delicately up.
It is a G-string, a purple one, and it is distinctly feminine and lacy. A tiny purple bow is attached to the elastic at the front.
Sara stares, and the only thing she can think to say is something stupid.
"Did you go shopping on your meal break?" she asks.
He stares her down, and she sees that he looks tired, and not in the mood. The underwear swings slightly in his grip.
"It's a thong," Catherine translates, bluntly.
Catherine, as ever, is skilled at getting straight to the point.
"A pretty one," Wendy offers.
"I found it in my locker," Grissom explains. Now sure they have all got a good view, he drops the item back into the secrecy of the drawer, and stands to face them.
"And?" Catherine asks.
"And I'd like to return it discretely to its owner," he states. "Now, I'm not going to ask what it was doing in my locker, but if the relevant party would like to collect it, it's in the drawer."
No one makes a move, and for a second everyone's eyes are trying to catch everyone else's. Sara can see from the stunned look on both Sofia and Catherine that they know nothing about it, and are equally wrong-footed.
"Why would someone put that in your locker?" Sofia asks.
"After work shenanigans," Catherine concludes, with the air of a wise old owl. "The room does have a lock on it."
"You really think someone would have sex in there?" Wendy asks, all innocence. "And leave that behind?"
"Maybe things got hot and heavy and they left a calling card," Catherine replies.
She raises an eyebrow at Grissom, but he does not return the humour.
"People never fail to surprise me," Wendy says.
"They've long stopped surprising me," Sofia adds.
"Well it isn't mine," Catherine concludes.
In fact, she stands, and Sofia backs her up, looking ready to round up the conversation.
"And it's definitely not mine. I wouldn't wear that to work, and even if I did, I wouldn't carelessly leave it in the locker room for my ex-boss to find. Evidently someone has a screw loose."
"Sounds to me like they had a loose screw," Catherine jokes.
"Maybe you have a secret admirer," Sara suggests, and she dares the slightest hint of a smile, toying with him. She knows that he won't rebuke her.
"Who leaves a G-string as a token of their affection?" Wendy asks.
"Well it's a bit more direct than a Valentine," Catherine says.
"You certainly couldn't misconstrue their intentions," Sofia adds.
"It didn't come in the mail," Grissom states. "The only people who have access to that room are in this building, and the four of you were the only women here last night."
"What makes you think it's owned by a woman?" Catherine asks.
Grissom stares, and for the first time Sara senses him falter, displaced, as usual, but Catherine's excess of life experience. He quickly tosses the thought aside.
"Whichever. If the relevant owner would like to collect it, I'd be grateful."
Sara moves to leave, and she is at the door when she hears one last exchange, from Wendy.
"You really think a man would wear that?"
"Honey, I've lived in this town a long time," Catherine says, following Sara out. "Nothing surprises me."
XXX
It is not long before the rumour leaks out into the office, and like all good rumours, grows of its own accord. What starts out as an honest, joking account to Nick from Catherine, who feels an immediate need to share, soon grows like a virus that has been coughed all over the lab.
Sara manages to ignore this for most of the following day, having little interest in sharing in it, until she walks in on Warrick having a joke about it with Nick in the DNA lab, and discussing the finer points of the garment in question.
"I mean, it was barely there, man. You never really know a person, right?"
"Maybe it was a practical joke," Warrick voices.
And at that point, Sara has to intervene.
"How do you know what it looks like?"
Nick looks over the top of a folder, stunned at the question – and her sudden presence.
"I was there," he says simply, shrugging. "I was standing right beside him with Ecklie when he pulled it out. You should've seen the look on his face."
Sara's heart clenches.
"Man, I would've paid to have seen it," Warrick adds, grinning. "That's once in a lifetime."
All Sara can do is nod.
"Why?" Nick asks. "Are they yours?"
"Is that any of your business?"
Warrick raises an eyebrow, sensing her defensiveness. She immediately regrets it. "I just don't think we should be speculating. Whoever's they are, it's private. I don't want to humiliate anyone."
Nick softens, and gives a shrug, though she can tell he doesn't agree. It is common knowledge that Sara will argue the point on just about anything, just for the sake of it. She is not as liberal in her humour as Catherine.
"I didn't mean to offend. It was just a joke. Got you loud and clear."
Sara addresses the question that she had been there to ask, and then retreats into the corridor, just in time to hear Warrick's whisper.
"You think they're hers?"
"Sara's?" Nick asks. "No way, man. She's Captain Conservative - she wouldn't even know where to buy them."
And judging from the nod Sara catches, Warrick appears to believe him.
XXX
Sara naively thinks that she has closed the subject, and is disappointed to find it still leaping about the lab over the course of the following week. Of course, this is not helped by Catherine, who decides that jokes are few and far between, and that this one should be fanned as long as possible. She has a roguish sense of humour, and Sara starts to wonder if Catherine's private life is so stressful that she is simply looking for an outlet.
"Oh, please, boys," she says, giving them a coy look when they suggest it's hers, "Can you see me in lavender? With my hair?"
"Am I allowed to answer that?" Warrick responds, glancing her up and down.
The two hold eyes for a moment, and Sara briefly reflects that they are both so obvious with each other that it is disgusting. Still, it is none of her business.
Only hours later, Sara catches her at it again.
"How do I know they aren't yours?" the redhead teases, smiling flirtatiously with Nick as they head up a corridor, on case.
"Hey, I'll show you mine if you show me yours," he quips.
"Meet you in the locker room after hours?"
"Just remember to lock the door, baby."
The two wink at each other, knowing they aren't serious.
Sofia, it turns out, is just as atrocious. Though Sara had never had much experience with the detective's sense of humour before, their paths generally only colliding in times of horror, Sara becomes suddenly acquainted with it late one night in the break room. They are discussing a case, piecing everything together, when Sofia flips her blonde hair over her shoulder, stands up to conclude the meeting, and whips a folded catalogue out of her pocket, flicking it playfully onto the table.
"What's this?" Warrick asks.
"Victoria's Secret," Sofia supplies, smile tugging at her lips. "I thought you guys might like some reading material."
And despite all the speculation about whose underwear they are, Wendy also catches the same train of humour, and when Greg fondly states, "Hey – don't get your panties in a twist", Sara hears her promptly reply, "What, my purple ones?"
The situation degenerates into an office betting pool, until Catherine bluntly points out that it's a waste of money, and they might as well flush it down the toilet – short of DNA they have no way of proving whose they are. And the culprit will never own up.
Sara lives in fear for a day that one of them will risk running it through the DNA database, but thankfully there is a backlog of cases, and no one actually suggests it. That same backlog is the reason she does not see Grissom out of hours for a whole week, and the matter goes undiscussed between them, a weight on Sara's mind, and a strain on her sanity.
XXX
The weight is lifted when Sara least expects it. It is the next shift that Grissom has sent out everyone into the field – everyone but Sara – and she is sitting down in his office reviewing the write-up of one of her cases when he puts the file aside. Like last time, she senses his eyes make the most minute movement toward the door, checking it's clear, but there is no one there. Rarely, for them, they are alone. Sara cannot even hear any distant footsteps.
"You have that look in your eye," Sara observes.
"What look?" he asks.
"The look of a private conversation," Sara supplies. She lets him digest this for a minute, and then glancing around herself, decides the time has long come to address it. "You want to talk about the underwear."
He raises an eyebrow, and for a second looks caught straight between playfulness and the seriousness of a supervisor. She watches him teeter, but he doesn't, for the moment, choose a side.
He points, innocently. "They're still in the drawer."
They size each other up, and Sara wonders who will be the first to break. She suddenly has a vivid flashback of being pressed up against the locker, of someone – who had it been? – making a dare.
She will not break first.
Instead, she chooses the safe route, and teases. "You know, as a responsible CSI, I feel I should inform you that they aren't mine."
"I'm glad to hear it," he states, seizing her humour. "Because if they were yours, as your supervisor I'd have to point out the inappropriateness of that behaviour."
"Well then, hypothetically, if they were mine, I'd then have to file a complaint about my boss holding them up in front of half my colleagues, the lab supervisor, and subjecting me to the humiliation of the speculation and investigation."
"Has there been any speculation that they're yours?" he challenges.
"No," she admits, and suddenly wonders why that is. Probably because of everyone knows Catherine was a stripper. "Everyone thinks that they're Catherine's."
"Or a secret admirer," he adds.
He stares at her a minute, and Sara sees a twinkle in his eye, and that the supervisor has now left him. She knows what he is remembering, even as she remembers it herself – and the thought travels straight to her groin. She shifts, uncomfortable. A random memory of how cold the lockers had been behind her back makes her shiver. It had been a silly thing to do, and she would never have imagined that Grissom, so serious, was capable of getting so carried away. But people were people.
"I'm sorry Ecklie stumbled in," he admits, lowering his voice. His eyes do not leave her face, and she sees genuine distress there. "I had no idea he was there. You'd left them behind, I was moving them out of sight, he saw, I had to make an excuse -"
Sara nods – that part had been difficult. "… and he made you launch an investigation." She pauses. "No harm done."
It would not be the first time Ecklie would get in the way, and it would not be the last, and she was not inclined to let her life be driven by him. He nods – a peace offering – and she smiles, washing it all away. Later, she will make him pay for it, and she sees the same thought in his eyes, as they dip momentarily to her cleavage. He will pay her handsomely.
"Having said that," he says, and the glint returns to his eye, "You did leave them there."
"It was an accident," she says. And then, playing on the gleam in his eye, adds, "You going to punish me?"
She bites down on a grin, and she sees him still, fingers hovering over a motionless pen, fixated on her, pondering her meaning.
The air is electric; but he swallows, recovers, and then promptly one-ups her.
"I was thinking perhaps a spanking."
Sara takes in a breath, and suddenly it is her staring like an idiot, fixated on his lips. After all this time, he can still surprise her.
She feels a momentary urge to grab her bag, to leave, or to climb in his lap, but then stifles those thoughts, somehow. Did he just suggest what she thinks he did?
He smiles, knowing he has won this round, and she is so dazed she lets him.
She stumbles out a reply. "I'll see you at home?"
"In half an hour."
He winks, picks back up the pen and puts it a holder. She is at the door, feeling in a dream, when he calls her back.
"Sara?"
She turns.
He motions toward the drawer.
"Put them on."
And, much later, she does. It was not a bad week after all.
XXX
End.
A brief piece inspired by a rumour that went around work this week - workplaces are amazing things!