A Renaissance Affair
By Chicklit
Time Frame: Mid-Season Five, after "Unbearable" and Grissom's infamous dinner invitation to Sofia.
Disclaimers: I don't own these characters, I'm just borrowing them for a while.
Notes: First off, thank you very much for your reviews. I continue to be amazed by how friendly and welcoming the CSI fanfic community is. Second, I'd hoped to finish this story in one shot but the final chapter is now almost 6,000 words. So, thought I'd post a completed snippet to tide over those of you (you know who you are!) who have asked me to get off my arse and update. The finale will be along in a day or two. Apologies in advance for being a horrible tease (insert maniacal laugh here).
Chapter 7
Mike lingers over pasta and wine and we decide to forego the last-minute art lesson in favor of a leisurely meal. He regales me with tales of his trips to Italy and we laugh about the never-ending battle between stupid tourists and maniacal Vespa owners. Our conversation is friendly, easy and exactly what I need to decompress before shift starts. By the time I leave for work I am feeling confident and in control. It's bizarre. There has been a tectonic shift in my relationship with Grissom this year and the change seems to be accelerating daily. Rather than being freaked out about it, though, I feel strangely calm. It's like the pieces of my life are finally falling into place.
As I drive to work I cannot get that song 'Anticipation' out of my head. It has been ricocheting around for the last twenty minutes and it really needs to stop. I swear it feels like Christmas Eve. I'm excited, jittery and deathly afraid that I won't get what I want most.
The lab seems suspiciously quiet as I walk through the main reception area. I say hello to Judy, wave to Archie and meander down the hall toward Grissom's office. The lights are off so I continue on to the break room. The gang's all there and Grissom is already distributing cases.
"Nice of you to join us this evening," he murmurs as I walk in the door. There's a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth and I wonder if he's thinking what I'm thinking. Eight hours until breakfast.
"It's a public service that I perform from time to time."
His grin widens and he continues with assignments, partnering himself with Sofia on a high-profile investigation. I'm in such a good mood I don't even care. I tell them to have fun and actually mean it.
Greg peers over my shoulder and looks at the slip in my hand. "Smash and grab? Oh, man, don't you have anything more interesting? I could really use a good dead body."
Grissom gives Greg a withering stare. "A dead body is never good, Greg."
My partner opens his mouth to respond but is quickly distracted by the pain radiating from his foot. I recently discovered that smashing his instep is the fastest way to shut him up.
"Come along, Greg." I tow him away like a good dog.
Seven hours and fifty minutes.
XXXXXX
"This is just wrong." Greg sounds like he's been violated.
I stare down at the putrefying corpse in front of us and I have to agree. "You asked for it." I shouldn't taunt him, but I can't help it. Turns out the smash and grab was right next to an abandoned building. A routine police search of the thief's exit route turned up more than any of us were hoping to find.
Our vic is clearly an overdose. A rusted needle is sticking into what's left of his skin. A rotted rubber tourniquet has collapsed around his elbow.
Decomps in closed spaces are ugly, nasty, putrid affairs with no redeeming educational value whatsoever. Just when I think I've acclimated to the scene, I touch the body and a shockwave of stench roils forth to steal my very breath. It's positively inhuman the way the smell fuses to my hair and skin. I feel like I'm bathing in primordial ooze.
There will be no breakfast. Even if Grissom is willing, I won't agree to it.
We take a step back, far enough away from the corpse to breathe fresh air. I use the term 'fresh air' loosely, seeing as how we're standing in a shelled-out crack house.
"This is just foul." I continue. "We need to start carrying oxygen tanks in the Tahoe. Maybe borrow some suits from the CDC." We'd look like complete idiots but I wouldn't care. At least I'd smell normal. Damn it! I am so pissed off at the world in general right now. I want to drop kick this flipping corpse into the next time zone. If this loser had just said 'no' to drugs I'd still be contemplating my breakfast with Grissom.
"Trust."
"Huh?"
"Well, I was going to say 'word,' 'cause that's the traditional urban term to express that I hear what you're saying, but I have it on good authority that 'trust' is the new 'word.'"
"Let me guess. You've been hanging out with Warrick before shift."
"Hey, it beats sitting around watching you and Grissom make goo goo eyes at each other."
"What? We do not." While I'm tempted once again to beat the everlasting crap out of him, deep down I'm afraid he might be right. I can say with authority that I've been on the receiving end of a few lingering stares since Grissom got back from San Diego. I think he missed me while he was away.
"Do too."
"Whatever," I wave my hand dismissively. "Let's transport this thing so we can get the hell out of here and go take a shower."
XXXXXX
My fury knows no bounds by the time we get back to the lab. It's like PMS on steroids. Even Greg, who is usually impervious to female crankiness, is giving me wide berth. And just when I thought my evening couldn't get any worse, the first person we run into is Grissom. I haven't taken my first shower, let alone my second or third.
Whenever I see Grissom there's a frisson of feminine awareness that courses through me. I've never been one to preen, but I find myself standing taller, smiling more brightly when he's around. Now, I just want to disappear entirely. There is absolutely, positively nothing even remotely feminine about this particular encounter.
He looks at me and I can pinpoint the exact moment his olfactory sense kicks in. "Decomp?"
"That pesky smash and grab had an unexpected bonus," Greg confirms sarcastically.
Grissom isn't paying any attention to Greg. He's riveted on me, and he has the grace to look as disappointed as I feel. "I guess breakfast is out, then."
"Yeah," I sigh, mentally revising my morning itinerary. A trip to the grocery store is now in order, followed by the massacre of many, many lemons. It'll be hours before I'm fit for public consumption.
"Wait." Greg's head volleys back and forth between Grissom and me. "You guys were going to have breakfast this morning?" He sends me a piercing, indignant stare.
"I believe 'were' is the operative word," Grissom responds dryly. He seems totally blasé about the fact that Greg knows about our plans. I don't know if he doesn't care, or he thinks he's hiding in plain sight. Now is probably not a good time to inform him that Greg has become my dating guru.
"So, have dinner tonight instead." Greg offers optimistically.
If someone put a mirror in front of me right now, I'm sure my eyes would be as wide as saucers. Dinner with Grissom? Greg is completely unaware that he's just stepped on a hornet's nest of epic proportions. There are connotations to dinner with Grissom. Implications. It wouldn't be a friendly, slightly flirty meal between two colleagues. It would be a date.
"I am actually off tonight." Grissom's head tilts and he considers me with a tentative smile. "Are you free for dinner?"
Forget about the whole 'eyes as wide as saucers' analogy. Now I'm the proverbial deer in headlights. Holy everlasting… He's asking me out for dinner? I actually look to Greg for confirmation, to make sure the decomp hasn't addled my senses to such a degree that I'm now hallucinating things.
"Tonight's my night off, too," he adds in a matter-of-fact tone that belies the look of conspiratorial glee in his eyes. "We can swap shifts if you like."
An entire night off with Grissom? This is a rhetorical question, right?
"Okay." I try to make my voice sound really nonchalant, like Grissom and I have dinner all of the time, but it comes out as squeaky instead. I turn back to Grissom and his eyes draw me in like a tractor beam.
"Thank you, Greg, that's very nice of you," he intones, his eyes never leaving mine. This must be what Greg refers to as 'goo goo eyes.' It's a complete mystery how Grissom can look at me like I'm an ice cream cone on the fourth of July when I smell like a corpse.
Anticipation… Darn. There's that song again…
TBC…