Title: Trojan Tomato
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, sadly.
Rating: G
A/N: Thanks as always to CSIShipperGirl for her excellent beta work.
Grissom approached the tomato warily. When he got a phone call about a dead body on the UNLV campus from a suspiciously laughing Jim Brass, he didn't expect to find a body sticking half-out of a door cut in the bottom hemisphere of a six foot tall, rather rickety-looking wooden tomato.
"Jim, why is there a giant hollow tomato here?" he asked curiously while Sara did the walk around the crime scene and David the coroner's assistant examined the body.
"It's a prop from UNLV's theatre department. They used it in a fairytale revue last year. Apparently Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater became Peter Peter Tomato Eater for some reason," Brass shrugged as if to say that he didn't make this stuff up, "It's been stored out here behind the theatre ever since."
"Ah, so it's a Trojan tomato," Grissom said with an eyebrow quirk.
"Say again?" Brass's expression indicated that he was not thinking about the Greek definition of Trojan.
"It hid something sinister," Grissom said, shrugging as if this should be obvious.
"Anything interesting, David?" Sara asked as she began taking pictures of the body.
"Not really. It's a gunshot wound to the chest and he hasn't been moved," David answered with a smile, standing back to let her finish taking pictures before transporting the body to the morgue.
Sara smiled back. "Okay, thanks, we'll see if we can find anything to determine who killed this guy."
As she walked around the tomato and began taking pictures, it began to creak rather ominously.
"Sara, be careful!" Grissom called to her as he began walking towards her, worried about a possible collapse.
"I'm fine, there's a shoeprint and a shell casing here that I need to get," Sara called back as she reached down with her tweezers to get the casing.
At that moment, the tomato began falling towards her. Grissom, reacting out of some long-ingrained chivalrous instinct, grabbed her and threw them both to the ground while covering her with his body as bits of the tomato fell everywhere, effectively showering the two of them with wood and paint.
Once the tomato shower had ended, Grissom helped Sara up and they began brushing themselves off. Grissom then noticed that Sara had a slight smirk on her face and suspected that a smart-aleck comment was on the way. He was not disappointed.
"Who knew it'd take a giant wooden tomato to get you on top of me?" Sara asked with a full-scale smirk now.
"Sara, I was merely protecting you," Grissom said in his most serious, supervisory tone. Unfortunately, the effect was marred by the wood and paint in his beard.
"Uh-huh, and the fact that you nearly copped a feel while 'protecting' me was just an accident?" Sara asked with a skeptical eyebrow lift.
"Not necessarily, but I'll deny it if you ever mention it to anyone," he responded with a smirk of his own.
"That's what I thought. Hey, at least you admitted it to me. That's all I care about. We better get this evidence back to the lab so we can start processing it. You and I need to clean-up, anyway."
"Why, what's wrong?" Grissom asked, seeming genuinely unaware of his appearance.
"Griss, you look like there was an explosion at The New Yankee Workshop and I don't think the wood-spattered look is really conducive to respect for your position at CSI headquarters."
He looked at her then reached up and pulled a little chunk of wood out of her hair, saying as he did, "What do you know; it was a Trojan tomato after all."
"Huh?" Sara had clearly forgotten the earlier conversation with Brass, or perhaps she was just blocking it out.
"It attacked when I least expected it," Grissom said with his most beatific smile.
She chuckled as he picked debris out of his beard.