A/N: We own nothing, just enjoy putting our own ideas into little bits of fiction! Enjoy, this one is not going to be long and we are putting our "spin" on the future of our favorite CSIs!

A Pleasing Finale

Chapter 1

Cool fingers lightly touched his arm; he twitched, deep in sleep. The touch stroked his skin—not in a caress, but not roughly. His mind tried to crawl from deep sleep as his hand reached to cover the fingers. His eyes struggled to open. He heard her voice before his eyes could adjust to the bright lamp light.

"What are you doing here?"

His mind clicked. Catherine—Catherine's office—the sofa in her office. And he smelled coffee.

"Gil, what are you doing here?" Catherine Willow's voice was more curious than concerned.

Gil Grissom, forty-five minutes from a nineteen hour flight, finally shook himself awake from his cramped position of sleeping while sitting upright, an elbow crooked in an attempt to support his head. Raking his hand across his face, he realized how tired he was. "I should have gone home," he mumbled, his mouth dry as desert sand. "Hoping to catch Sara." Knuckles rubbed his eyes. "Hodges said all of you were on a multiple."

Catherine handed him a mug of hot coffee and sat beside him. "I'm too old for this, Gil. Five bodies in a storage unit—Nick's the lead. Sara and Greg have two new guys with them."

Grissom wrapped hands around the coffee cup before taking a long sip. "Thanks. Five—been there long?"

Catherine reached for the cup and toed off her shoes. "Oh, yeah. Wrapped in plastic—probably two years up to recently." She laughed. "I know this will make or break the new group, but so far so good. I think I picked the best of the recruits." Propping her feet on the table in front of her, Catherine brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. "I think its time, Gil."

Grissom's eyebrow arched; he had heard this same line from Catherine on numerous occasions. However, this time a certain tone in her voice made him think a change was coming.

"You'll know when its time, Cath. Don't wait too long."

She smiled. "Sara says you have a grant—a big one this time."

He nodded. "Back to Costa Rica—where it all started. Both of us this time."

Catherine laughed, making a face only she could achieve. "And all this time I thought you two started out here—at the lab! Dear God, I'm going to miss her!"

Grissom ignored her jab. "What are you going to do?"

She eased back on to the sofa, wrapping both hands around the hot cup. "Travel—I'm going places I've only read about," she made a soft laugh. "Not the jungle or rainforest like you and Sara, but London, Milan, Venice, Paris, Rome—maybe Barcelona. Nick and Greg are good—they will have two, maybe three new guys—well trained by the time I get around to leaving."

Grissom made an agreeable sound.

Catherine continued, "Linds graduates from college this year. She wants to work for Sam's business and the board is thrilled she's interested. But before she enters that world, we are going to travel."

"What about your love life?" His question was asked as a tease.

Catherine settled further back, stretching legs and feet to the center of the table. Her forehead puckered slightly before she smiled. "Perhaps he'll join me." She hesitated. "You know—you've always known I suspect—the true love of my life slipped away—married someone else when I wasn't paying attention."

Another sound came from Grissom. "Warrick—I always knew there was something between you two."

"I wish there had been more—unlike you and Sara, I was afraid to take that road—or our timing was off." She sighed, "Things just never fell into place for us."

Several moments of silence followed as both remembered Warrick Brown. Finally, Catherine spoke "Once Sara told me she had always loved you."

He chuckled, "She does say that. Truth told, I actually fell in love with her the first time we met…"

"The photograph on your refrigerator—San Francisco."

He nodded. "She was so young, so energetic, laughed so easily, so much of what I wasn't—when she came to Vegas, I thought it would be easy."

Catherine snorted, laughing, "That explains a lot!"

"What does that mean?"

"You sent her on trash runs, decomps, crawling under houses! Stuff no one wanted to do—you sent Sara! I wondered for years why she stayed with us—except if she was doing the nasty work it meant I didn't have to do it!"

"I didn't want to show favoritism."

"You didn't." She nudged her shoulder against his. "Tell me—when did you actually—you know," her hand waved in a twirling motion. "Come on—tell me!"

Grissom grinned. "We were always together, Catherine." He twirled his hand in a way to imitate hers. "But what you're talking about—it was a Sunday." His voice mellowed as he remembered. "We had a body in a ditch off Fort Apache Road—it was when Ecklie had separated us and Sofia had the night off."

Spring 2005:

Grissom waved an assignment slip at Sara Sidle, who was sitting across the table from Greg Sanders. A newspaper was spread between them. "We've got a dead one—let's go."

Greg, always eager, jumped first, bumping the table, noisily scooting his chair on the floor, causing everything on the table to move. "Shot gun!"

Sara rose from her chair with her usual ease and grace. "In your dreams, dear. I'll drive." Her head moved in Grissom's direction. "The boss rides shot gun."

Grissom tossed her the keys.

A slow night for crime, they easily found the place with all the police cars blocking the highway and lights spotlighting the body. Yellow crime tape marked an area half the size of a football field—most of it down a steep embankment. Grissom watched as the two younger, more agile CSIs rappelled down the almost vertical bank to a trash-filled ditch. He talked to Jim Brass as several others clipped belts and harnesses to rope and followed Sara and Greg. It took all of them to place the body on a stretcher and haul it to the highway.

"Nothing down there but trash—looks like he washed out of one of the flood drains," Brass said as he pointed north.

Grissom frowned. "When did it rain?"

Brass checked his notepad. "Three days ago. He was found when a homeless couple was going through the trash along the ditch—looking for anything they might use."

Grissom found the couple drinking coffee from paper cups. Their story was familiar but they could provide no information about the man they had uncovered. When the body was brought to the highway, Grissom took a quick look at the advanced decomposition and knew the man had been dead much longer than five days.

By the time Greg and Sara joined him, holding bags filled with damp trash, they smelled as bad as the body.

"We collected as much of the small stuff as we could," Sara explained.

"No identification?"

Both heads shook. "Dave said to leave it for the morgue—the body is pretty much mush," Sara added.

At the morgue, they stripped and changed into coveralls, but the smell of wet garbage and decomp clung to their hair and pores; Doc Robbins did not appear to notice as he and Dave worked on the body. They finally pulled a soaked, old wallet from an area in the vicinity of a hip.

Grissom found name and address on an old driver's license issued in Florida. "It's expired but might help identify him," he said as he placed the faded plastic card into an evidence bag along with a few coins and the wallet. He pulled a magnifying glass over the card. "If this belongs to our vic, he's nearly eighty!"

"Lots of post-mortem wounds and he could be eighty," Doc Robbins said as he examined the body. "Let me look inside—nothing obvious."

The three CSIs quickly left the room; none wanted to be around for opening of this body.

***Catherine's office:

Grissom closed his eyes as he leaned against the corner of the sofa. "Remember those old showers—never enough hot water—and the women used the back side?"

Catherine nodded, "Yeah."

"I thought Sara and Greg had gone for the night—I heard Greg leave—there wasn't anything happening. So I went in to shower and heard Sara singing—can't tell you what it was—she was certain she was alone. Instead of leaving, I sat on one of the benches and listened." He smiled at the memory. "And I smelled lemons. She was washing her hair with lemons to remove the odor of decomp." He shifted and took the coffee cup from Catherine, taking a sip before continuing. "Right there, I decided it was time to do something—even if it was wrong!"

Catherine said nothing, knowing fatigue and lack of sleep caused Grissom to be in a reflective, talkative mood. He continued, "Finally, she came out, fully dressed, and saw me sitting there like a—like a bug on a windshield—and said something—I don't remember what she said but I do remember thinking she was the most beautiful person I'd ever seen and I knew what a fool I had been. So I asked her to go to breakfast and we did."

Open-mouthed, Catherine stared for a long minute. "That's what you call getting together? Come on, Gil—there's more to it than that!"

His eyebrow shot up. "Nope. After that day, we were never apart. A few months later—after Nick was kidnapped—she moved in with me and after a while we bought the condo." He chuckled. "The details will be kept between me and my wife—but now you know how this stubborn fool finally figured out what to do."

A/N: The story will continue-read, enjoy, we appreciate hearing from you!