Chapter 74

Blowing Up

"Grissom! You're back!" said Greg cheerfully as he stepped into the locker room to find Gil taking off his jacket in there. "Hasn't been the same here without you this week."

Gil forced a smile, although it seemed to take far more effort to do so than it should have. "I bet you all never even noticed I was gone," he opened his locker door, something about the familiar rattle it gave as it swung outwards was comforting in a way he couldn't explain even to himself.

"How was the seminar?"

Gil blinked, "Hmm?" he asked.

"Cath said you were away teaching a Seminar," Greg opened his locker to put his rucksack inside. He examined his hair in a mirror on the door of his locker, he flicked his bangs away from his face so that they stood out, he admired himself for a moment before closing the locker.

"Oh, yes…the seminar was fine. Just fine," Gil replied, he pushed his jacket inside and closed the locker.

"Sara go with you?" Greg asked, the concern in his voice was evident, and Gil couldn't help but admire the young man for it.

"Actually, uh, no," Gil answered rather quietly. The locker room door was open and he hoped no one passing had happened to hear.

"I tried to call her at her house, but didn't get an answer…I've been worried," Greg admitted.

"Don't be worried. She's fine. I saw her less than an hour ago. She'll be back here the day after tomorrow."

Greg paused, staring at Gil as if he were a specimen for observation. Gil became immediately uncomfortable with this.

"What?" Gil asked.

"Nothing, you…just sound different," Greg shrugged, "your voice is different."

"Oh," Gil replied. "While I was at the seminar I went with drinks with a few professors," he lied, "a lot of them smoked cigars, I was practically choking on their smoke – my voice has been a little raspy since."

"No, it's not raspy," Greg admitted, "just…" he paused, trying to find the words, then shook it off, "Never mind,"

Gil headed towards the door, "Seen Catherine anywhere?"

"I just got here," Greg gestured to his watch to point out it was ten minutes before the shift was due to start.

Gil made a face, "if you see her…" he began.

"Tell her you're looking for her?" Greg raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah," Gil answered quietly.

It turned out Catherine had come in an hour early to deal with a case she'd left unsolved the previous shift. Gil hadn't been able to catch her, and he'd been unable to reach her on her cellular phone. He decided either the battery had died, or she might have been out of range.

He assigned cases to the remaining members of his team, letting Warrick fly solo, and Nick take charge of Greg for now, and then retired to his office to take care of any loose ends Catherine hadn't found the time to do. Surprisingly, there was very little paperwork that needed doing. Within an hour and a half he'd managed to cover everything remaining on his desk. Finding a spare moment, he filled in a form to pass on his boss regarding his absence from work for six days. Rather than use sick days, he decided to put it down as vacation time. With the amount of unused vacation time he had stocked up, he had enough cover for it.

After filling out the necessary paperwork, he realised he was indeed sitting idle with no work to do. A strange feeling – the phone on his desk and the phone in his pocket were not ringing persistently. There was no pile of reports piled up on his desk waiting for him to review and sign.

Catherine has done a very good job of keeping on top of things while I've been away, Gil thought in despair. He'd have rather come back to more work than even he could handle, it would have been a nice distraction. It would have been nice to be under a deadline just to take his mind off of his troubles for now.

Gil considered briefly that he should perhaps join his team out on the field. The thought of sitting there for the next two and a half hours with nothing to do was overwhelming.

No. It's likely if I do go out on the field that word will get back to Sara, Sara will be mad at me for tackling anything other than paperwork – which was our deal. I agreed – I promised – all I would do was paperwork. And that's all I've done.

He glanced at his watch absently. Still no sign of Catherine either. He'd left her a message on her voice mail that afternoon to advise he'd be in tonight, but had still received no response. For all he knew, Catherine might not even be aware he was sitting at his desk waiting for her to show up.

With a sigh of defeat, he decided he would go home. There was nothing here tonight that demanded his attention.

The locker room door was closed when he approached, and he swung it open without a thought as to why only surprised to see Catherine changing clothes inside. Her hair was soaked, and hanging in limp coils around her shoulders. Her skin was red, and she smelt like cheap soap and shampoo. She had a clean pair of pants on but her top half was exposed except from the flimsiest of bras.

Gil raised an eyebrow immediately at this.

Catherine tried to cover herself quickly, although Gil found it quite amusing that a woman who'd once been a stripper would be so suddenly paranoid of being caught in her bra with a t-shirt in her hands.

"Don't you ever think of knocking?" Catherine asked, standing with the T-shirt covering her chest, her expression agitated.

Gil stepped in, "Cath, you haven't got anything I haven't seen before," he rolled his eyes and passed by her. Amusedly, he thought, I wonder how Warrick would have responded if he'd been the one to walk in on her…I wonder if he's even mentioned anything to her yet at all? Cath is so perceptive that I find it funny she wouldn't have figured out straight away who was behind the secret admirer thing.

"Doesn't make it right," Catherine responded.

"How can you be shy about your body - you used to be a stripper," he reminded.

"That was then, this is now," Catherine responded, "anyway...how come you're not blushing - if this had happened a year ago, you'd never be able to look me in the eyes again..." she made a face.

Gil mused at this "We share a locker room. The possibility of walking inon aco-worker female or otherwise is always there. If you'd like a more suitable and appropriate arrangement, then I'd suggest taking it up with the powers that be."

"You're my boss. I took it up with you years ago. So did Sara."

"I tried my best, unfortunately I was advised to tell my female staff to consider changing in the ladies restrooms."

Catherine turned her back towards him, and grabbed her clean t-shirt from the bench, "Yeah, well, those cubicles are small and hard to move in," she replied. "Last time I changed in there I hit my elbow off the wall and it hurt for days afterwards. "Besides…I just came from the shower…" There was a small single shower unit in a room at the very back of the locker room that usually went unused other than in states of utter hygienic emergency.

Gil watched her slide the t-shirt on from the corner of his eyes. He bet Warrick would have been sorry to have missed this, even if he could only see her back.Gil was suddenlyaware of the putrid smell of death lingering on her despite the stench of soap had tried to cover over it. "Decomp in an enclosed space," he responded.

"Yes," Catherine sighed. "What is it you always say to use?" she picked up a towel that had been sitting on the bench and towel dried her hair quickly.

"Lemons," Gil opened his locker and took out his jacket. He considered for a few moments how he was going to bring up the situation of her having told Sara about his grieving without letting himself get too flustered about it.

"So when am I going to get the tongue lashing about Sara?" Catherine asked, she searched a hairbrush out of her locker and ran it through her damp hair.

"As of now," Gil answered, glad she'd been the one to bring it up. "Cath, you told me you wouldn't tell anyone," he sighed unhappily.

"I was worried."

"Sara did mention that much," Gil remarked, and his tone had more bite in it than he had intended.

"Gil, are you aware of how different you sound?"

"I've been hearing that a lot lately," Gil replied. "But I assure you, I'm perfectly fine."

"You're acting fine, but your voice tells me different. It's not just the way you say it, it's the change in your tone. Like you don't even have the energy to make yourself sound fine. That's how I knew you weren't okay when you called me two days before the funeral."

"So I wasn't okay then," Gil shrugged, "I am now."

"You're not, I can still hear it," Catherine looked at him, "you think everyone else won't notice? You sound depressed and miserable. If I noticed it, everyone else will…"

"I don't care," Gil replied, although secretly he very much did care. He saw his misery as a weakness anyone working around him would taken into consideration. He didnt' want to be seen as weak right now.

"Why are you even at work? I have everything under control here."

"So I saw. You combattedthe evils of paperwork rather magnificently I must say. I feel I should award you a medal," Gil forced a smile, but it dropped quickly, there was still a slight anger bubbling just below the surface that wasn't about to melt away just her accomplishments at work as of late. "But I'm still…" he trailed off, trying to find the right word.

"Pissed off?" Catherine finished for him.

"In a manner of speaking," Gil replied, "You did betray my trust and tell Sara my what I asked you not to tell anyone when I specifically asked you to keep it to yourself. You asked me if there was anything else you could do for me, Cath…I asked you to please keep it to yourself…" he felt like he should have been yelling, but he had not the energy or capacity right now to raise his voice to much more than a glum murmur.

"Gil…she was frantic, she didn't know where you were or what you were doing. You didn't even tell her where she could reach you, and every time she tried to call your phone she got your voice mail service…"

"Yes, I know. My phone was switched off alot of the time - I got her messages."

"And you ignored them."

"I wasn't ignoring them," Gil answered, "I was just…not ready to speak to her…"

"Gil…you can't do that to someone you love, even if you're trying to protect them, or yourself," Catherine uttered. "You can't keep your whole life a mystery to someone you love…"

"But still…
"Were you mad when she showed up?" Catherine queried.

"I…" Gil began then stopped, "No…no I wasn't."

"Then what's the problem?"

"The problem is you told her," Gil said, "the problem is I didn't want her knowing. The problem is that it was my business…"

"Grissom, the problem isn't that I told her. The problem is that you didn't tell her, the problem is that you told me instead of her," Catherine pointed out. "If you don't stop keeping secrets you're going to end up a very lonely man, Grissom. If you don't start opening up to her more you're going to lose her – and after all the sacrifice and emotional investment you've put into the relationship, trust me, if you lose her, you'll never be the same again."

"Look, my relationship with her is fine!" he growled, growing quite annoyed with this conversation. It seemed like every time Catherine tried to give him advice as of late she hit a raw nerve, and right now, that nerve was smarting from her words. "I have opened up to Sara, I've confided in her, told her things I never told anyone else. For Christ's sake, I even proposed to her. You don't know how my relationship with Sara is behind closed doors, so don't you dare stand there accusing me of being a cryptic asshole because you don't have a clue! What I did, I did for her. I kept the secret, to stop from hurting her. End of discussion!"

"You proposed?" Catherine blinked.

"I said 'end of discussion'. That generally refers to the conversation being over. If you have something else to say, you'll just have to bite your that venomous tongue of yours," he pulled his jacket on. "I'm going home."

When he left the building, he mentally kicked himself for letting the conversation go that far. He'd thought he'd crossed the line the first time with Catherine, now he was certain he was so far past that line, he couldn't even see it anymore.

Once he'd gotten into his car, the anger seemed to quickly dissipate. The release of the anger had somehow relieved the anxiety inside of him in ways he'd never thought it would.

Gil heard a knock on the window of the drivers side of his car just as he'd been about to start the engine. He turned, he was surprised to see Catherine standing there, looking rather upset. Sighing, he rolled the window down. He waited, expectant to receive an earful of verbal abuse for his poor behaviour.

"Now that you've had your outburst, don't you feel better?" Catherine leaned her arms on the door.

This hadn't been the response he'd expected. He'd expected something more along the lines of having it pointed out of how completely uncalled for his reaction had been. Gil looked at her, "You…knew I'd get mad like that?"

"Sometimes when you're…upset…the emotion just bottles up until you're like a pressure cooker ready to explode. You're full of all this tension…this stress. Only two things I ever found helped when I've felt that way," she held up two fingers, "Sex. And blowing up at something or someone. So…do you feel better now that you've blown up?"

Gil mused, "I…do feel better."

"Normally I don't take such attitude from men, but you're the exception. If you weren't such an emotional mess, I might have had to kick your ass," Catherine warned, but she smiled.

"Cath, I'm sorry…" He put his hands up in defense, "I felt like you'd backed me into a corner and…I just…fought back."

"I know, it's fine," Catherine assured. "Go on. Go home, get some rest…"

"I really, really don't appreciate you enough."

"Stop with the sappy words, and get home. I can't stand out here all day listening to you – unlike some people I have a case to work on," she grinned.

"Wish I did," Gil remarked. It was the last thing he said to her before pulling out of the parking lot and driving off.

Yeah, I know. Blah chapter (other people don't see it as blah but I kind of do).

Thanks to the following readers for reviewing with such kind words...

LGraziano, sarah makinson, csids9, Mystical Panther, CSIFreak92, ElisaCollette, lilegyptiangoddess, Aidrianna, kristy87, djkittycat, me (who is me?), bear72724, CSI-phreak, CSICubsFan, csibugman

I think that's everyone up chapter 72 and upwards - It's getting so hard to keep up with you all:)

PS: This chapter is late because I decided to take a day off in the light of Easter. So much chocolate, so little time.

SS