Disclaimer: Please refer to the first chapter. I can't think of something new to say with each chapter. I'm just not that creative...

A/N 1 – Sky M, Ming, this is for you guys. You both know why. Your desperation and hopefulness, respectfully, was enough to make me go back over my mental story outline and make a few adjustments... Okay, this resembles nothing of the original chapter. Hope it lives up to what you've all come to expect. Thanks for supporting me through this wonderful charade.

gsr4ever, thank you. You also know why. I think I either would've lost my temper or laughed hysterically until I fractured a rib had it not been for your shoulder to cry on. You were definitely in the right place at the right time. I owe you one.

I want to thank everyone for their continued support. Your words, dedication, and encouragement have made this a much more manageable and pleasurable process. It may sound trite to say it all the time, but I seriously mean it. You're the best! I can't thank you enough.

A/N 2 – I prepared a long tirade about certain things that have been said in reference to the story, but it's not fair to put that in here. What I will say is this: if you're not satisfied with this, then don't read it. If there's something you think could be improved, then tell me. I do appreciate constructive criticism. This is intended to be a comedy of sorts illustrating the many different ways the relationship is viewed or speculated upon. There is no timeline established, as stated with Chapter 1. That suggests that it could be anything ranging in weeks to years – your choice. This isn't an Oh-my-God-Sara-and-Grissom-just-got-busted Fic.

Now, on with the show...

Gossip

"Hey, Sara, what do you think about this?" Greg asked, sliding a few pictures across the table towards her.

Reading the file folder intently, Sara barely registered Greg's question. She frowned at the pictures as they entered her peripheral vision and Greg's hand drew away from the top of them. Reaching out, Sara pulled them closer without a word.

After a few minutes of scrutinizing them, Sara looked questioningly at Greg. "Um, what am I supposed to be seeing? It's a dead woman slumped over on a park bench." Looking back down at the pictures, she added, "I took the pictures. What do you see?"

"I see the park. Doesn't it look like fun for a quiet stroll?" He tried his best to look innocent.

"Uh... Sure... If parks are you thing," Sara replied, frowning slightly at the unusual turn of events in the conversation.

"Doesn't it look peaceful? Like a nice day for a nature hike..." he prodded her.

"Greg," Sara intoned quietly, "it's a picture of a dead woman. There's nothing even remotely peaceful about it."

"Well, I'm pretending she's asleep... disregarding the blood and obvious hole in her temple, of course." He pointed emphatically towards one picture in particular. "There's a beautiful sunrise behind her, and I'm pretty sure if there was audio that there'd be some birds chirping or something. Think of all the possibilities."

"That's morbid." Sara squinted her eyes and pursed her lips at him in mild disgust.

"Take away the dead body for a minute." He reclined back in his chair and lacing his fingers behind his head. "Wouldn't you want to take a walk with a special someone on a day like that if you had the chance?"

"We're at work, trying to find someone who murdered this poor woman, and you're fantasizing about taking walks in parks," Sara said, shaking her head. "Stay on task, Greggo."

Sara slid the pictures back across the table towards her partner for the night. They turned back to work for a few minutes, Sara pretending to read the case file, and Greg studiously looking over the pictures of evidence. The quiet fell over them as Sara recalled the last walk in the park she had been on. She had left work at a reasonable hour, but unable to put her mind at ease from the grueling shift, she had stopped by the park near her apartment complex.

After an hour of drifting back and forth on the swing and still no more settled, she decided to leave, only to almost literally run into her neighbor who lived three doors down the hall. The guy had been making pathetic passes and feeble attempts at flirting with her constantly over the years she had lived in the building. Although he was a year older than her, had a good sense of humor, and was relatively good-looking, Sara never saw him as more than a neighbor. Every time she turned around, he was there trying to entice her with his sense of humor or some small off-handed comment about going out.

Before he walked her back into her building, they talked for a half of an hour about insignificant happenings like the rain they were in dire need of, the new paint at the diner on the corner, the newest maintenance man in the building, and how annoying tourists were when you had to live in a town that they frequent. Sara, although loathe to admit it to anyone, was happy to have had the distraction that morning. Grissom had to stay late for a staff meeting, and she was restless without him.

"Sandy from HR had a few interesting things to say..." Greg started, pulling Sara out of her reverie. He continued once he saw Sara's attention was back on him. "She was talking to Judy about her sister's new apartment. Couple weeks ago while on break they were talking about you and your boyfriend."

Sara looked up into Greg's eyes, frantically searching his face to see just exactly what he knew. Trying to look impassive, but failing, she at least tried not to look stricken. The thought that Greg quite possibly could be the first to approach her was not the most comforting scenario. She was not sure Greg knew what the word discretion meant, let alone ever heard of it. Forget even thinking that the lab personnel also knew.

"So, anyway..." Greg said dramatically as he raised his eyebrows. "Since you don't seem to want to tell me on your own, I have to resort to eavesdropping around the water cooler to get the juicy details of your life." He paused for a moment and added, "So, when were you going to tell us?"

Sara averted her eyes back to the report in her hands. "Tell you what?" If there was one thing she knew she would not do, it was give him any more information than he already knew. Sara felt certain that if she could get intricate details of a crime from an uncooperative witness or suspect, she could certainly get Greg to crack.

"About your boyfriend. I want details, Sidle. How long has this been going on? How serious is this? You've been sneaking around on us, and that's so unfair," he accused her. "I tell you about the girls I go out with."

"Just because you feel the need to tell me all of your intricate affairs doesn't mean I want to live vicariously through your life, and I certainly don't want people doing that with mine. We value our privacy."

"We're your friends. You should be able to share these things with us." He placed his arms on the table and leaned towards her. "So, what's his name? What's he do? Where does he work?"

Sara breathed a heavy sigh of relief which appeared to Greg as a sigh of surrender. She realized at that moment that Greg had overheard the same conversation she had caught in passing, as he appeared to not know the guy. "That's what this whole park thing was about." She offered him a small smile. "He's not my boyfriend, Greg. He's my neighbor."

Greg sighed overdramatically, and leaned back in his chair again. "You want to play hardball, huh? Will you tell me if I promise not to tell anyone else?"

"Seriously. I'm not dating him," she stated firmly. "Can we change the subject, please?"

"Sure," he acquiesced, apparently having missed Sara's use of the word 'we' rather than 'I' in her earlier statement. "So, how was your forced vacation?"

While not entirely happy with still having to tell Greg all about herself, Sara smiled pleasantly while thinking over her five days with Grissom at a cabin near Lake Mead. It had been utterly peaceful and quiet. She had always known that once she got inside the world of Grissom that she would be pleasantly surprised. He was quite a different man when he was at home, not having to hide from his coworkers, and even more so when the potential to bump into any of them was not hanging over their heads. Dinner at a romantic restaurant, moonlit walks, picnics in the woods, relaxing and reading together.

"It was good. I did a lot of relaxing. Getting kicked out of the lab was a downside, but I made the best out of the situation," she answered him vaguely.

"You do know," Greg said hesitantly, "that Grissom was out at the same time, right?"

Sara looked at him earnestly and settled herself more comfortably in her chair. "So I gathered when I got back into the lab. A bug seminar out of town I heard."

"I have it on good authority that he didn't go too far out of town," Greg told her, conspiratorially lowering his voice to barely above a whisper and leaning forward again. "Judy says that Sandy says that Becky in Payroll saw him at Lake Mead during that time. And, she also said that Paul in the Mailroom can confirm the story. He saw Grissom at a convenience store in that same area. Talk is that he was picking up supplies to make breakfast, and it didn't look like he was only feeding one person."

"This is interesting, because? You know, your voyeurism in this matter is beginning to disturb me." Sara found herself not having to feign annoyance. She knew, however, that her reasoning was different from the way Greg would perceive it.

"Because he lied to us about where he was going. Grissom. Lied. Doesn't that pique your interest in the least?" Greg's scoffed as if that was the obvious answer.

Grissom had never lied to them. He avoided and mislead, but he never lied. In fact, he had immediately had an epiphany when he received the invitation to the seminar. He had walked into the bathroom, thrusting the newsletter into the shower as Sara was getting ready for work one night. We're going to spend some time away from our houses, and this is the perfect excuse, he had said. Sara rolled her eyes and snorted at the time, but after he explained the plan, she had been enthusiastic.

Grissom placed a vacation memo on Catherine's desk and a vacation request on Ecklie's, and then he let the issue drop before suspicion was raised. Sara worked as many hours as she could on the cases Grissom directed her way. Cautious planning for an entire month of dividing the cases to make sure Sara had enough work to cause the hours they needed. Of course, Sara had actually worked the hours diligently, as it was never their intention or in their nature to steal company time.

Grissom said he would tell her to take the time off after it was 'discovered' that she had maxed out her overtime. He had meticulously thought about his choice of words, ensuring that he was using misdirection rather than a lie when he told them where he was going. All the work had paid off, and they enjoyed their five days of peaceful bliss alone at the cabin as their much-deserved reward.

Sara scoffed good-humoredly at her young friend. "Do you... actually work here or just sit around and get paid to gossip all night? I feel like I should have my hair in curlers and sitting under a blow dryer in a beauty parlor."

He waved his hand dismissively. "I am a man of many talents, Ms. Sidle. You're just seeing some of them for the first time... Not that I haven't offered before, but..." He finished with a suggestive, yet playful wink alongside his overly bright smile.

Sara rolled her eyes and looked out through the glass wall behind Greg's shoulder. She felt somewhat comforted that Greg was not pushing too hard with the information he had. The secret was safe for the meantime, but she still felt slightly unsettled. Hearing about her personal life told in such disjointed detail was rather disturbing. These people knowing those small bits of information, although still not piecing them together was like them having a window into her privacy.

"Oh!" Greg exclaimed suddenly, his eagerness to tell her the scoop forcing his words to run together. "I also overheard Becky telling Judy that Mark in Accounting saw Grissom at the Barnes & Noble at the mall."

Sara nodded. She remembered hearing that particular piece of information in the hallway as well, and then quickly rushing off before hearing about her own life voyeuristically any longer. "So?" she said devoid of emotion.

"It's poetry, Sara. C'mon." He waggled his eyebrows. "And a cookbook."

Pursing her lips to keep the smirk from forming, Sara felt herself stifling a giggle. Grissom had not been at the mall buying poetry. He had not even gone to the mall for himself. He may have asked a clerk about a book of poetry or a cookbook, but he was actually there with a list of Sara's preferred reading to get her some new books before their mini-vacation. Tess Gerritsen, James Patterson, Sidney Sheldon, Tom Clancy, Stephen J. Cannell, and Max Allan Collins were certainly not in that genre.

"He quotes poetry all the time. He's Grissom. Buying a book of poetry is not something I would say is a very damning characteristic, especially for him."

"You're not the least bit interested in why Grissom'd want a book of poetry?"

"Not really." Sara looked earnestly at him. "Do you, uh, think you could get back to work?"

"We're working while we're talking," Greg countered dismissively.

"I believe you're doing more talking than working, Greg," a distinctly annoyed voice said from behind him.

Greg peeked over his shoulder to make the visual confirmation. He hung his head at the sound of Grissom's authoritative voice. Sara took the moment to smirk at Grissom, her eyes dancing around his face with delight. He looked back at her and winked.

"How do you do that?" Greg asked, his voice sullen and muffled by his hands cradling his face.

Grissom ignored the question. "While your interest in my personal choices in literature is intriguing, I do believe your time would be better served spending your intellectual capacity on cataloguing the evidence of the case you're supposedly working than divulging facts from people's personal lives."

"Yeah, Greg," Sara added, clearly amused. "Use your head, not your mouth."

"That includes you too, Sara," Grissom said darkly.

"I—I—I wasn't gossiping. I was working," she pleaded the excuse to Grissom's back as he walked away.

"Oooohhh..." Greg said animatedly as he took in Sara's shocked face and dropped jaw. "I can't wait to tell the Gossip Club that you just got in trouble. This is going to be so sweet that they'll be forced to buy me lunch."

"You never learn your lessons the first time, do you?" She shook her head ruefully. "Anyway, how will that get you lunch?"

"I can't tell all my secrets, but I will say that they all thought he'd be a lot nicer after vacation if he was seeing someone."

"Greg, you do realize that he yelled at you, too?" Sara asked, raising an eyebrow, uncertain as to why he would only tell them about her.

"Sure." He gave her a wide grin. "But, I can't tell them about me or they'll know that he overheard the gossip about him. Grissom hearing the rumors directly is a major violation of the rules." He rifled around on the table for a few minutes organizing the pictures. Almost too quiet to hear, he added, "Or, I could tell them all about how I stopped over with a six pack and chips only to find your apartment was vacant during your time off."

Sara blinked in disbelief.

To Be Continued...