Innocence and Beauty Companion: Pedestals
By: TriplePirouette
Category: angst
Disclaimer: They're not mine- I'm a poor college student having fun... take pity...
Distribution: please ask first :)
Summary: Companion to Innocence and Beauty- takes place after chapter 48. We all put people up on pedestals, but what if those people don't want to be there? Greg/OC(Emma)
Author's Notes: I've had a bit of a problem with CSI over the last two seasons- I've watched, but not with the fervor I used to have. Then a few things happened.
1. I wandered across the old IandB file and read some of it. It has been so long since I thought about that story- or even writing in general, that it was great to look back on it. Originally there were supposed to be a handful of additional chapters, but I skipped over them in favor of finally finishing the story, always intending to go back and write more companions. Oops.
2. I've always had a HUGE crush on Greg. I love WP/GG, but it's always been Greg and the gorgeous ES that has really had my heart. So the episode a few weeks ago where that burlesque dancer was all over him? Uh, no. He's my man... er, uh, Emma's man. Yeah, that's right, Emma's man. Got me thinking.
3. The Two Mrs. Grissoms. Oh, weren't fangirls squealing all over the world?
And so you have this. It is a scene that I'd always wanted to write that turned into something I never intended, I hope you enjoy it.
Also, I'm looking to re-vamp Innocence and Beauty as a whole. A lot of my formatting has mysteriously disappeared and I've found typos that I'd love to fix. That will be the next thing I do with the story.
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The first thing I notice about the crime scene is that you can see right through the bar's fantastic wall of windows into the dance club next door. That makes my heart drop into my brand new CSI vest- it means that if they can see into here, there are so many more people that we need to talk to, so many more statements to take and wade through.
The second thing I notice is my sort of girlfriend, my boss's daughter, dancing on a large pedestal above the dance floor. If my heart dropped before, now it's just plain stopped. Kit in hand, I turn and walk down the staircase beside me to the first floor where the rest of the CSIs are. No matter what our "you need to finish college before we're serious but in the mean time let's spend all of our free time together in various platonic and non-platonic ways" situation is, Grissom does not need to see his daughter, his beautiful ballerina of a daughter, dancing like that.
"Greg?" The elder Grissom asks, having not yet seen his daughter but his eyes flickering back and forth between me and the blood spatter. "Do you have some place better to be?"
I take a deep breath and hope that once he looks, because I know he'll look, he doesn't see what I saw. "From the windows on the landing at the top of the stairs you can see into the dance club next door. I was going to head over and see if the windows are one way or two way- and if they're two way check out the sight lines, see if it's even possible that anyone saw anything before we detain them all."
Grissom looks impressed, but turns back to his blood trail quickly. "Good thinking. Don't take too long."
I'm out the door as fast as I can manage, a tight smile to the officers around me as I drop my kit in my car. I'm stunned that more people aren't outside, looking at the spectacle of the crime scene as I duck under the yellow tape. I flash my badge at the door of the club and they let me in without a problem when I explain that we're looking to keep them open rather than shut them down. The bouncer lets me in, a big hulking piece of meat of a man, and points to the left wall that faces the crime scene. From the inside, the glass wall is painted or etched so that the lights from the dance floor bounce around. There's no way that anyone in the club saw anything more than six inches outside those windows. I thank him, tell him I need to look around, and disappear into the crowd. I head right over to the wall, cup my hands around my eyes and look straight over to the bar. The etching makes everything fuzzy from this side, I can only make out the building, not see into it.
With the work portion of this small side trip done, I look around until I spot Emma again. She's a good six feet up in the air, shimmering in an iridescent gold sheath of a dress. Her left hand is full of a glass of something, her right is holding tightly to the straps of her heels. I walk up to the podium and look up, calling her name. It's three more times before she hears me. She looks down, smiles, and then it fades when she sees the vest I'm still wearing. I hold my hand out to her and wave it towards me, trying to signal her in the din and bass of the club. She goes to reach for me, but looks frustratedly at the drink and shoes in her hands.
I smile and shake my head at her, put up my other hand, and grab her around the waist when she bends down. I help her off the podium, trying not to notice how she slides against my body on the way down. "What are you doing here? Is everything alright?" Emma yells, her lips by my ear, her drink dripping cold condensation on my shoulder.
"Everything's fine," I shout back. "This joint have a place that's a little quieter?" Emma pulls back to smile slyly and nods. She hands me her drink and uses her free hand to pull me along through the dense crowd to the back. Through a heavy curtain there's a brightly lit hallway with a small lounge and restrooms on either side.
"This better?" She asks, she takes her drink and leaves it on a shelf by us, her fingers moving to intertwine with mine. "Hey," She leans up, caressing my lips with her own. I taste rum, and something a little sweet, and sweat. I would much rather be doing this than photographing fresh blood.
"Much better," I sigh as she pulls back, leaning forward for just one more kiss. "But this is actually a business call."
Emma's arms go around my shoulders, I can feel her rise up on her toes and the shoes she's still carrying fall heavily against my back. "Thought so, you don't usually wear your vest for a night out." She's smiling again, and if I know her as well as I think I do, she's at least one drink in, this is probably her second.
"Well, as much as I love my vest here, I would never accompany a lady such as yourself out in public in it. We're actually next door at a crime scene, and those huge windows? From the bar next door you can see right through them. Right through to the girls who were dancing on the podium. While I was enjoying the view," I smile, squeezing her gently through the slippery fabric, "I didn't think you'd want your dad to see that."
Emma's face drops and she pulls back, biting her lip. "Right, great. Thanks." She pulls back and leans on the wall, slipping her heels back on. She looks up, her demeanor decidedly more frosty than a few seconds ago. "I'll stay off the podium and away from the poles. You can go back to work now."
I reach out and take her hands, "Hey- I didn't come here to upset you. I thought... I was trying to keep you... I don't know."
"I know what you were trying to do." Her voice is flat, but her shoulders slump with defeat. "I appreciate it, I really do."
I dip my head, forcing her to look at me. "But?"
"But... It's my issue, not yours." She leans forward and kisses me perfunctorily, "You do actually need to go back, I'm sure."
"Yeah, but if you need-"
Emma shakes her head resolutely. "No, go. Besides, this is girls night- you're not supposed to be around and my friend Kelley is totally all about castrating any guy that gets a little too close to her, so you should absolutely leave before she finds us." She smiling again by the end of it, but her eyes sparkle just a little less.
"Fine, but..." I think for a second, knowing that I can't stay, but not really wanting to leave.
Emma squeezes my hand, starting to lead us back toward the front. "How about I head to your place, not mine, when the girls and I are done?"
"Deal." I lead her through the curtain, and it's almost an anomaly of science how much louder the music is out here. I expect her to branch back off to her friends, but she follows me to the exit, stopping just before the door, turning me around, and kissing me deeper than I would have liked considering that I can't stay and am going to be working with her dad in a few short minutes.
She pulls away and disappears into the crowd. I step out into the dry night air. This morning will be very interesting.
x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x
"It's hard to explain. It really is. It's like," Emma sighs into the pillow she's clutching. She's sitting on the opposite side of the couch, her face scrubbed clean and one of my hoodies covering her dress. "It's like I'm too perfect. To him. My dad. No matter what, he's always thought I've been so perfect."
She's just started trying to explain what was going through her head at the club to me, and I have to be honest, it isn't making much sense. "That's not a bad thing. You're a good person. As long as I've known you, you've always impressed me."
"That's the problem." She shrugs.
I shrug right back. "You've lost me."
Emma's sigh is heavy. "For as long as I lived with my Mom, I was never good enough. I wasn't bright enough, I wasn't sociable enough, I wasn't popular enough, I wasn't beautiful enough, I wasn't what she wanted, ever. My step-dad was the same. So when my dad would call, when he'd say all these wonderful, amazing things about me, it balanced out. It was what I needed to hear. But now- Now it's all I hear and after that... after that it is so hard to believe."
She looks like she might cry. Her eyes still carry just the hint of eye liner, and I can see them glistening with tears. "Yeah, but, you have me telling you those very same things, so you have to know. You have to know that they're true." I scoot closer to her and hold her chin in my hand as a tear falls. We haven't talked about her mother all that much. The goal was always to keep it light until she graduated. She only did that a month ago, and we were happy, so I didn't push the issue. Light means not talking about your dead mother and step-father who made your life a virtual hell for years on end. I'd only seen the sadness in her eyes once before, rarely seen the pain that her words tell me she carries around with her all the time. "You have to know that."
She pushes her face into my hand, her cheek rubbing into my palm gently. "I want to believe it, so badly. And most of the time I do. But... that's not even it. You- Greg," She presses forward, or foreheads touching, "you get me. You understand me as a dancer, and as a girl, and as the daughter of a man who plays with bugs for fun, and in so many other ways. You've held my hair back when I've had one too many and told me flat out when you hate what I'm wearing." Her kiss is soft, reverent, and all too brief. "You get me."
Emma pulls back, taking my hand in hers. "My Dad... I'm afraid. I'm absolutely terrified that he sees me as this small, delicate thing and one day, one day I'll do something to shatter that. He thinks I'm perfect. And that kept me afloat for so long before I came here. Some days his belief in me was all I had to make me get out of bed. I'm terrified of changing that. I'm terrified I'll lose that." Emma shook her head sadly, "When you came in tonight at first I was happy that you pulled me off the podium, but at the same time... It's like I'm almost waiting for that other shoe to fall. If he saw me, then maybe it would have happened- maybe he would have seen through that perfection that he thinks is there and-"
A tear falls. I wipe it away and she forces the corner of her mouth up. "And what?"
"Maybe we would have fought. Maybe he would have disowned me. Maybe nothing. I just... I'm scared, Greg. I'm not ready to be on my own like that... I waited so long to get my dad back into my life, and now that I have him-"
"You feel like it is too good to be true." I run my hand through her hair, I can feel the remnants of hairspray that's she's brushed out. I smooth it down, and pull her head to my shoulder.
"You're not going to want to hear this, but your dad? Your dad lives and breathes by you. He's always going to see you as perfect- because you're his." She pulls away quickly, but I puller her back.
"I'm not perfect, Greg."
"I didn't say that. I said he'll see you as perfect. Even your flaws- even those he'll see as parts of you that he loves." I hold her tight, pulling the pillow out from in between us and shift so she's pulled into my side. "The parts that I love."
"I'm going to disappoint him one day." She says quietly. "I'll disappoint you, too."
"Last I checked, you're still human." I kiss her forehead. "It's not like you're looking for ways to try to upset him, or me. It will happen, I'm sure. And when it does, it won't stop either of us from loving you."
She's quiet for a while, and I suppose that's better than crying or trying to convince me that I'm wrong. Another quiet minute goes by and I shift, pulling her closer and lying us down across the couch with her on my chest. Just when I think she's asleep, she looks up at me through tired and slightly red eyes. "Hey Greg?"
"Yeah?" I pull the hood from the sweatshirt up over her head, tucking her hair into it playfully.
"Did you just say you loved me?" Her hands come up to rest on my chest and under her chin, we stare each other down for a second.
"Yeah. I guess I did." I push the hood down, pulling her hair over her shoulders- it's prettier that way. "And I do. Emma Grissom, I do believe that I love you."
She smiles, pushing up my body, her hair tickling over my collar as she kisses me. I wrap my arms around her and pull her tightly to me, our legs entangling. Emma pulls back until our lips are barely touching. "I love you too, Greg."
It's only another short kiss before I pull back, looking at her cautiously. "So, I love you, and you love me, and we're still pretty serious about this, right? I mean, I am."
Her leg slips over mine as she pulls back as far as she can wedged between me and the back of the couch. "I am too, why?"
"Well," My hand slides down her side to the edge of the skirt that is peaking out from the over sized hoodie, "I'm just thinking that any girl who loves a guy who has a guy who loves her back probably should not be wearing such a beautiful and yet form fitting and, well, sexy, dress in public when said guy isn't there." I smile at her playing with the hem of her dress.
"So you like my dress?" She asks coyly, sitting up.
"It's gorgeous, but..." I play along, shrugging and looking away.
"You just don't want me wearing it." Her voice is light and playful, such a more welcome tone than before.
"No," I start to qualify it, mostly because she looks breathtaking in the form fitting lame, but before I can she's pulled her head and arms into the sweatshirt, and the hem I've been running through my fingers disappears from my grasp.
The dress nearly flies through the collar of the hoodie and into my lap before her head reappears and her arms slide though the sleeves. "Better?"
I smile at her, and toss the dress over my shoulder before pulling her back down to me. I don't know if it's better or not, but I'm definitely not disappointed.