When they finished their steak dinner, Beth stood up, picked up her dirty dishes, and brought them down the hall to the kitchen sink. She began to clean them, but Greg quickly caught up to her and put his arms around her waist.
"Excuse me Beth, but what do you think you're doing?"
"I thought I was cleaning my dirty dishes, but if you don't approve…" Beth spoke with a smile in her eye.
"As King of the DNA lab, I don't approve, and I hereby make a royal decree that one, Beth Morstan, shall never do anything that may be remotely related to work in my house."
"I don't think you can claim your royal status as King of the DNA lab outside of the DNA lab. I think it's kind of a territorial thing. But I approve of your decree, and as Queen of the DNA lab, I ratify it…or whatever queens do."
He playfully dragged her away from the sink towards the couch. They dropped onto the couch and before she knew it, they were cuddling together, watching one of her favorite movies, Never Been Kissed. The excitement of the evening kept her from falling asleep, even though she was very tired. When the movie finally ended, her exhaustion sank in. Greg noticed just how tired she was and offered to drive her home.
"Hey Beth, would you like a ride home? You look like you should return to the land of the living before you attempt to drive."
"Greg…" She mumbled something and proceeded to fall asleep on the couch. Not wanting her to wake up with a backache, he picked up his Sleeping Beauty and carried her to his bed. He placed her under the covers and tucked her in. He kissed her forehead, whispered good night to her and made his way to his guest room where he collapsed onto the bed. Within a few minutes, he had fallen asleep to thoughts of his beloved sleeping down the hall.
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When they went to work the next night, they tried to act normal. They had decided to see how long they could keep their newly developed relationship unnoticed. It wasn't long. About three hours into the shift, Grissom called the two chemists into his office. He had them sit and asked them flat out if they were dating.
"Are you two officially an item?"
They looked at each other and then smiled back at their supervisor. It wasn't until then that he noticed that they were holding hands.
Greg spoke. "Yea, I asked her last night over dinner."
Beth was on the edge of her seat as she spoke. "You should have been there Grissom. He made this awesome steak dinner, and he had the candles, and roses, and music-"
"Whoa Beth! Slow down, and breathe. I'm proud of you two. Just make sure that you don't get all mushy on the job. I need you guys to be at your best. Can you handle that?"
The chemists smiled and nodded their agreement. "Hey, Grissom, would you mind not telling anyone yet? We want to see how observant your CSIs really are." Beth added the last comment as a referral to the subconscious, good-natured competition between the lab techs and the CSIs.
"I suppose I can do that. But I give them one day, two days tops before they all know. And I promise I won't tell them anything. I have the utmost confidence in my team." He smiled as he dismissed the chemists and sent them back to their work.
A few minutes after they had left, Beth returned to Grissom's office. "Hey Grissom, I gotta know. How did you know we were officially a couple?"
He simply replied, "I'm an investigator. 'It is my business to know what other people don't know.'"
"Is that Sherlock Holmes I hear? Could it be that the meek and humble Mr. Gil Grissom is placing himself on the same plateau as The Great Detective?"
"Hey, what can I say? 'I have a turn both for observation and for deduction.'"
"Oh no, you didn't. One quote is fine, but two quotes is over the edge. This is where I call you on having an obsession."
"Now, wait a minute. If I quote them, and you recognize them, wouldn't that make you just as guilty as me?"
Beth opened her mouth to say something, but caught herself before she could dig herself a deeper hole. She simply shook her finger at him, smiled, and went back to her lab.
As Beth settled back into the lab, she thought about her conversation with Grissom. Most of the CSIs had a hard time getting through Grissom's "shell." They regarded him as incapable of emotion, an anti-social being content to remain alone in his corner of the world. There were only two people that could truly get behind the wall that Gil had erected, and those two people were Beth and Greg. Catherine was a very good friend of Gil's, but he still had a hard time sharing emotions with her. Gil was a man with no immediate family, save his deaf mother, and he had a hard time with relationships. But somehow, Beth and Greg had managed to get through his shell. They looked at him as a father-figure, and he looked on them as the children that he never had. Neither Beth nor Greg was fully aware of just how much they meant to Gil.
*********************
Later that week, Beth called Greg and invited him over for dinner.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Greg, I was wondering if you wanted to come over to my place for dinner tonight."
"Wait a minute…are you implying that you will be cooking dinner? For me? I don't know if I can handle that Beth. Do I need to call in a hazmat team?"
"The hazmat team won't be necessary, Greg. So are you coming or what? The offer won't stand for too much longer."
"I'll be over in a few. I wouldn't miss your cooking for the world."
Secretly, he wondered what she was planning since she had never really invited him over for dinner. She never considered herself a cook and her idea of a home-cooked meal was showing up at his house or calling out for Chinese. Nonetheless, he dressed himself in his favorite pair of khakis and a nice silk button-down shirt. As he walked out to his car, his mind jumped from explanation to explanation as he tried to figure out what Beth was up to. When he arrived at his Honda Civic, he still had no ideas as to what was going on, so he jumped in the driver's seat and drove over to her place, very excited to see what was in store.
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