Disclaimer: I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, and I don't mean to offend anyone's sensibilities.

Thank You: Stelmarta for being there! Mom because I love her!

Special Thank You: To the Duchess of Hell and to Saryn for the wonderful support. Katherine and Anna, for the extra bit of e-mail encouragement while ff,net was down.

Chapter Ten

Catherine Willows was likely the most 'seasoned' of the CSI of Vegas. Her life as a stripper left her few illusions about the world, but every once in a while Grissom sometimes brought her expectations of human behaviour down to the lowest of the low. She remembered well when Sara had 'quit' the first time; or rather she had put in a request for terminal leave that had precluded quitting. Catherine fed him strawberry wine coolers until he called the flower shop and had a potted orchid sent to Sara. She relented, forgave, and everyone was peachy-keen.

Now it was all that Catherine could do to not strangle the insensitive idiot herself.

What possessed him to go ahead and force Sara to reveal personal information of 'that' nature to a group of people she obviously didn't want knowing, Catherine would never understand. All she knew was that he'd put his foot in it, big, this time. She didn't bother knocking on his door, just twisted her key in the lock.

It was a good thing, really, because Grissom had gone way past the strawberry wine cooler stage of life and was hitting it heavy. Good thing Lindsay was already at school, she'd be horrified to see 'her' Gwissom like this.

"Caff-er-wne" he slurred, "Fanshy meeting you here. Dink?" he waved a square glass of amber coloured whiskey in the air.

"Damn it Gil, what are you doing to yourself?"

"I shink iss obvioush, Cafferwne."

"Yeah, real obvious," she sat down next to him, "I take it you never found her."

"Nope, no, no, no…" he said hanging his head and shaking it, "No good. Bad, verwy bad. Gone, bye-bye, all gone."

"OK, Grissom, let's put down the glass and go take a walk, alright?" she slid her arms around his shoulders and helped him regain his feet. "Upsy-daisy, ok, now walk."

She helped him stagger his way to the bathroom of his 'hermetically sealed condo' and stuck his head under the faucet of the tub. She turned on the water, cold. He thrashed under the steady flow, but she held him down until he quit sputtering and then let him lift up his head.  Grabbing a towel she rubbed it in his hair until it regained a semblance of dry and hauled him to his feet and threw him on the bed.

"Gil Grissom you are well and truly drunk, you know that?" He groaned, but didn't respond. She peeled off his shoes and tucked a sheet under his chin. Before she finished he was snoring like a baby. He'd have a headache in the evening, she couldn't doubt that, but before she went back to work Catherine would get the story out of him or die trying.

Camping out on the sofa, again, she sighed, grimacing. This sofa was not built for her. Grissom would pay for this. She would ensure it. On the coffee table she watched the amber liquid of the Jack Daniels bottle catch the early morning light and scatter a warm glow around the room. Giving into the little temptation Catherine uncorked the bottle and inhaled, before chugging a good size mouthful. It burned its way down, but felt good. Smiling she drifted off to sleep.

The next day Catherine waltzed into CSI lab whistling. Not only had she weaselled the important information out of Gil, she had a pretty good idea of where to find Sara. For all of his investigative talents, he was so clueless when it came to personal things that he had no idea about Sara's budding relationship with Nick. Or, rather, Catherine thought he didn't have a clue. He never mentioned it, and his exhaustive search hadn't included Nick's apartment, where Catherine was sure someone had spent the night sleeping over. Watching Nick come in that morning she was vindicated.

"Hey Nick!"

"Yo," he spun in place and faced her.

"My office"

"Yeah," he followed Catherine, albeit slowly. He had a distinct idea what this was about and was mentally preparing to try and pretend that he didn't know quite as much about it as he did. "Listen Catherine…"

"I know what happened to her in Frisco with Jack and her buddy Deng Xao and I know she's with you and that she's probably contemplating homicide."

"Ok," he slumped down in a chair, "I will neither confirm nor deny anything here, but let's take this one step at a time. How did you…"

"Grissom," she said abruptly, "He was drunker than a skunk last night. Got out a bottle of good ol' Jack Daniels and had half of it inside him before the shift was up."

"Damn," Nick swore, "Sara's going to be pissed."

"Providing of course you know where Sara is…" she smiled.

"Damn it Catherine you know full well she's with me." Nick glowered, "Though I don't really know how that got out."

"It didn't 'get out'" Catherine smiled, "I spied, but that's beside the point."

"Of course"

"Shut it," Catherine said amicably, "How are we going to get them back to CSI without strangling one of them to do it?"

"What?"

"Together, you" she pointed a very sharp looking manicured nail at him, "and I have the advantage here. I have access to Grissom; you have access to Sara, yes?"

"Yes"

"Then together we" she gave him a pointed look "are going to see if we can 'fix' Grissom's little gaffe before one of them does something incredibly stupid, like leave."

"Grissom's gonna leave?"

"You weren't there, Nick." A distressed expression crossed her face, "He's about as heartbroken as I've ever seen him. He's as proud as a brand-new-daddy of Sara and has no idea how to show it. She crushed his little ego."

"Little?" Nick asked.

"He's just so clueless, Nick. She's got the power to turn him inside out and he hasn't the foggiest idea how to get that across to her." Catherine absently traced a scar on her cheap, Government Issue desk, with a sharpened nail, "And there's no way in hell Sara understands just how much she means to him."

"Yeah, well she spent half the day screaming at me because of his insensitivity," Nick shrugged back into one of the two 'guest' chairs, "and the other half crying her eyes out because she'd ruined everything."

"Hey, I hate to spoil the fun, but anyone planning on letting me into the know?" Warrick, leaning casually on the doorframe, "After all, it's not like this is an exclusive little club, huh?"

"Sure Warrick, why don't we just open it up and let everyone in" Nick said sarcastically.

"Very funny," he pulled up a chair, backwards, and put his chin on the edge. "C'mon, what do Grissom and Sara have that the rest of us human beings don't?"

"I dunno, a whole bunch of vacation time to waste?" Nick grumbled.

"Bingo," Warrick lifted his head. "They live this job." He spread his arms wide. "You, me, Catherine, we go home in the morning and we got stuff there. I got my music, Cath's got Lindsay, and you play Rugby" he generously ignored Nick's enthusiastic grunts, after all: boys will be boys, "but what do Grissom and Sara go home to? The JOB. They never stop, Hell, man, Grissom was born to be a CSI. Look at those damn bugs. He goes home at night and plays with those bugs. Sara doesn't even go home. I mean have you ever seen her apartment?" both Nick and Catherine shook their heads, "Neither have I. I don't think she even sees her apartment on anything approaching a regular basis."

"So what do we have to bring them back together? We got the job." Catherine grinned, "Warrick, you're a genius."

"Yeah, well  ..."He was cut off by a well timed cuff from Nick. "Seriously, I got two DB's one found out west, just skin and bones. A perfect match for our bone enthusiast, and I got one DB in the park with all sorts of nice little baby bugs crawling about for our resident bugman."

"So I get the bugs," Catherine snapped up the folder.

"And I get the bones" Nick grabbed the other.

"That leaves me with the unenviable task of dealing with the families that are coming to ID the bodies." Warrick pushed off from his perch. "You know what you got to do. Let's do it. You owe me, big time."

"Operation 'Restore Hope' will now commence"

Catherine put in her call to a very hung over Grissom, who could no more resist the siren call of the bugs then he could lift off the ground and fly. She made a cross town detour to his condo, promised to never ever tell anyone he was helping her out with this, and promptly called Warrick to report a mission success when Gil turned his back.

Nick had a little more persuading to do; Sara was very much asleep. He learned, no surprise, that once Sara Sidle actually got to a bed and succeeded in falling asleep she was as immoveable as the proverbial Rock of Gibraltar. That was the infamous Sidle single mindedness for you.  She didn't move, didn't roll over, and didn't hog the covers, which to his mind was the single fastest way to ruin an otherwise smooth relationship.

She was just a pain in the neck to wake up. Even his Sleeping Beauty kiss-the-lady-awake-before-you-go routine didn't garner more than a grunt before she lapsed back into oblivion. He didn't even want to think about the size or decibel level of the industrial strength alarm clock she probably had stashed somewhere in her apartment. Bones however were her pride and joy, and as soon as he pierced the formidable wall of her sleep, she was dressed and ready in minutes. Score another mission success.

Managing to contain the distraught families of the victims was Warrick's unfortunate task. Actually, in this case, the victim came last. His most pressing priority was to ID the bomber; she was the ultimate link to the bank manager. Unfortunately only two of the three families of Jane Doe # 13 spoke English well and none of them spoke it at all after seeing the remains. He really couldn't blame them, it wasn't a pretty sight. Espanol was, however, not his language of choice. Thanking his lucky stars that there was only one hit on AFIS for the male Chinese, Warrick postponed that meeting until Thursday.

Grissom, though considered oblivious by his peers, had no problem seeing through Catherine's pretension of 'inviting' him back to 'help' her with the scene. There was enough evidence screaming out loud that had nothing to do with bugs that would allow her to wrap this up in no time. He had other, more pressing issues to deal with. A well placed call to Chinatown, in San Francisco, led to a most satisfactory response. He had an unenviable eight hour car trip ahead of him, but that was beside the point. He'd get to Sara, one way or the other.

Author's Note(s):

Saryn where the hell is your E-Mail address? Been looking for it forever! I could've got the whole thing to you while FF.net was down, but I couldn't look you up. You are a wonderful human being for taking out your time to review me. Please, will ya?

Another big set of Kudos to Silver Epiphany and Duchess and all the rest of the wonderful human beings who've gone so far as to give me some feedback. I well and truly appreciate it.