"Are you going to get me sick? Because if you are I really should leave."
Grissom stood in Sara's kitchen, hand to his mouth in jest as she sneezed once more. Her dour mood shined in the glare she shot him and he turned around and chuckled to himself. Sara, bundled in oversized pajama pants with large, garish polka dots and a snug Harvard tee-shirt, threw herself onto her couch and grunted.
"Is that pancake mix?" Sara asked from her position on the couch, looking out towards the kitchen upside down, her hair dragging on the floor. Grissom looked back at her, wisk in one hand, measuring cup in the other.
"Never had breakfast for dinner?" He asked dryly, clearly joking. Since she worked the night shift, she often found herself eating breakfast food at seven in the evening.
Snorting at him, she shook her head, upside down. "No, I mean you make pancakes from mix?"
He nodded and put the wisk down to balance his hands on the counter, leaning forward. "Yes." He nodded once more, judiciously and regarded her coolly, with a slight air of arrogance. "I don't like it if it's not a specific mix, with a specific syrup."
Sara laughed at him, deep and throaty, due to her cold. "Aunt Jemima?"
Grissom's face broke into a wide grin. "Doused in syrup." He confirmed, and watched as Sara rolled over, onto her stomach. "I mean, it has to be floating." With that, his eyes twinkled and he looked, for a moment, to be about ten years old.
The smile that graced her lips was hopeless and goofy and she felt her sulky mood lift completely from her being. It was amazing how one smile could just morph her entire outlook on the day. With one last glance at her twisted figure on the couch, he turned around and began to prepare breakfast for dinner.
Sara watched on from her perch on the couch, not having the energy to even bother to offer to help. It wasn't until he pulled a package from the bag that looked suspiciously like bacon, that she spoke. "Is that bacon?" Clearly appaled, she sat up and padded into the kitchen to inspect the package.
Her heart cracked a little when she saw what it was. "Facon? You bought Facon?" She was touched, undeniably and didn't bother to hide the emotion that seeped into her voice.
"Spirit of culinary experimentation."
"Opening your mind to extreme possibilities, Griss?" She considered placing a hand on his forearm, but thought better of it. She wasn't sure she would be able to remove it once it was there. He didn' t bother responding, instead rummaging about in her drawers for a ladel.
That's how she left him, as she went into the bathroom to attempt to alleviate some of her sinus congestion.
Grissom smelled her before he saw her, sniffing the air, detecting a hint of menthol and screwing up his face at the familiar but pungent scent.
"Ugh," She said, breezing back into the room, wife beater in place of her tee-shirt. "Vicks VapoRub is a gift of the gods." She intoned dramatically before dragging herself into her kitchen, perching on a seat.
"It smells so foul."
Sara laughed and got up from her seat, getting milk and orange juice and milk out from the refrigerator. She then produced two glasses. "You just insinuated that I smell foul."
"You do!" He was ladeling batter onto the pan and it hissed when it hit the heated surface. He turned to her. "You want me to lie?"
"Didn't your mother ever say, 'If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all.'"
"No," He responded. "But she may have... signed it once or twice." He placed the ladel back in the bowl and turned to face her for a moment.
"Your mom was deaf?" She asked, sounding more interested than shocked. He knew he'd just opened the floodgates to her barrage of questions, but he spoke before she could begin with them.
Grissom nodded and wiped his hands on a dishtowel, though there was nothing on them. "Yes. Shortly after my birth, ostosclerosis." Sara sat rapt, almost urging him on. "I had it too."
"That's what that was!" She exclaimed, after thinking for a moment. "The surgery."
"Yeah." He said non-commitally.
Sara sat back in her seat, pouring them both a glass of juice. "Okay."
"Okay?"
She placed the carton down on the table and looked slowly up at him. "Uh, yeah. Okay. Was that not how I was supposed to react?"
Grissom thought about that for a moment. How had he expected her to react? Did it even matter? So, he shrugged and retrieved the pancakes from the skillet and began piling them onto a plate.
Moments later, they both had their food, swimming in a sea of sugary syrup, Facon and all.
Grissom held a piece of the imitation meat up in front of him. "This tastes so very much like cardboard." He claimed, but chomped down on it anyway.
"Why are you still eating it?" She pointed at him with a piece of her own. He shrugged and they sat there, silently chewing on their food.
Grissom sat in a chair across the coffee table from her, pulling pieces out of a bag. Debating between light blue and orange, he selected the orange piece and placed it in the center of the board. Sara looked up at him and glared. "That's my color." She growled and he stared back for a moment, not particularly caring.
"Is it?"
She smiled and snatched the bag from him, plucking out the brown pie-tray. "Nope, I always choose brown. So underappreciated."
She placed her piece on the board alongside his, the two colors forming a vision of autumn in her mind, and grabbed a deck of cards. Trivial Pursuit, so pointless. She doubted that there was an answer that he didn't know. She knew that she was going down.
Grissom plucked the dice from the bag and set them on the board. "You know, they never change the questions in this game... not that it particularly matters."
"Well then you would think that with our incredibly large intellects we'd make this game moot." Sara took a sip of her beer, the familiar bubbles tickling her tongue, but she was unable to taste them; her nose had closed back up.
"That is true..."
"Oh, shut up and play. That's the furthest thing from modest I've ever suggested and you just took the bait." She wrapped a blanket around her legs even though it was rather warm in the apartment. "Like your head could get any bigger anyway."
Grissom snorted and grabbed his beer. "I choose to completely disregard the fabulous double entendre that creates."
Sara, taken by surprise, paused with her bottle halfway to her lips. "Is, uh, is this part of the 'change' thing? The new you image?" She asked hesitantly.
Quirking his head to the side he said, "Is what part of the 'new me' as you have so named it?" There was a hint of a smile encroaching on his lips.
"The, well, the joking, the looseness. You're not just doing this because you think I want you to do this, are you?"
His head was down, and he, instead of responding, chose to take the dice and roll. Sara watched as he moved his little piece onto a green space, and avoiding giving her an answer, glanced at her and asked,
"Orange. Sports and leisure, ask me a question."