Chapter 3-- Stranger in a Strange Land
"Oh, you must be Mr. Sanders?" Sara's landlady stops Greg just as he steps through the first floor doorway.
"Yes, and you have got to be Mrs. Callahan. I've heard so much about you." He replies, trying to be nice to the short blue-haired old woman, knowing that Sara was not exactly on her good side at the moment. "Do you know where I can find Miss Sidle?"
"Second floor, first door on the right from the stairs."
"Thank you." He smiles, but the unimpressed expression on her face doesn't change.
He hurries up the stairs, away from the old woman's glares. He is a bit late, an hour actually. Once he gets to the top of the stairs, which he pictured would be a terrible obstacle if he ended up moving anything big, he finds her door open and Sara standing in the middle of the main room sealing up the last of the boxes.
"Hey," She parts her eyes from her packing to see him leaning on the door frame watching her. "What took you so long?"
"I...uh...I had some cleaning to do before you came and I met...uh, Mrs. Furley downstairs. I'm sure glad I didn't decide to move in here." He comes in and looks around at her bare apartment. There was nothing in there except for a small pile of boxes in front of her. "Where's all your stuff?"
"Well, while you were 'cleaning up' I went with my neighbor and brought the stuff I didn't need to storage until I find another apartment."
"I'm sorry, Sara. I..."
"No, it's okay. I never asked for your help, you volunteered yourself, but you're here now." She reminds him, putting a big box in his hands to carry out to her car. "I don't think anything can break in there."
"Oh Greg, I love your place." The place was a lot different from Sara's. Hers was so plain, white walls, not at all welcoming, and it never really felt like her home. After all, she spent more time at the crime lab than she did at her apartment anyway.
His place just felt so warm and inviting, like she wasn't intruding by staying there. When she walks in, she can smell something cooking in the kitchen to her left and sees a hallway to her right to where she imagined the rest of the rooms were.
Greg follows behind her, though unable to see anything past the two boxes blocking his peripheral vision. He walks past her and in to the living room. "Make yourself at home. Mi casa es su casa." He sets the boxes down in the corner underneath the old framed Superman comics on the wall and a shelf of Star Wars figurines, then heads for the door to get a couple from their cars.
"Who are these guys in here?" She looks back and forth from one clear glass cage to the other; a turtle in one and four hermit crabs in the other.
"That's Walter there on the left, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo on the right."
"Why would you name crabs after Beatles?"
"I'm not Grissom. I don't have bugs as pets, but crabs and turtles don't die easy. Notice that's why you don't see any plants...or sea monkeys, but we won't talk about that."
"What's cooking?" She asks stopping him in the door way.
"Oh, you'll see."
"Have a seat." He says, pulling out her chair from the small breakfast table between the kitchen and the living room. "I wanted to make up for being late, so I actually cooked dinner."
"Should I be worried?"
"I promise, my cooking does not kill...well, not since college, but even then it just made my roommate sick for a week. He deserved it though." He jokes, before disappearing behind the barrier closing off the table from the rest of the kitchen.
"Are the stars out tonight? I don't know if it's cloudy or bright." He comes out of the kitchen singing with both plates of spaghetti, a towel draped over one arm, and an old Fedora rested crookedly on his head.
"Greg--" She starts so speak, but he keeps singing, not comparable to Frank himself, but still not too bad.
"'Cause I only have eyes for you, dear. The moon may be high but I can't see a thing in the sky." He sets the plate in from of her and one at his seat then takes a lighter out of his pocket to light the single candle in the middle of the table. "'Cause I only have eyes for you." He shakes the lighter and tries again but it simply refuses to light. "Okay, fine then. No dinner by candlelight." He speaks directly to the stubborn stick of wax in front of him.
"No wonder you were late." She laughs. The whole thing was a bit out of character for the man with the punk rock taste in music, but never had anyone else done anything comparable to it just for her. "Do you think fast on your feet, or do you do this for everyone who stays at your place?"
"No, just you Sara. And don't worry, it's a special vegetarian recipe. I know about your whole pig experiment experience."
"How thoughtful." She wasn't sure how to take this; as a friendly gesture, or an attempt to make up for their past dinner date she ditched him on to work on a new lead for her case.
They both sit down to dinner, Greg trying his best to be polite. Normally when eating pasta he'd look like a little kid using eating utensils for the very first time, but he wanted to be on his best behavior with Sara. She never could tolerate how he would goof off in the lab or how he could never take anything too seriously, but he wanted her to see how he could be if he tried.
"You didn't really sneak out, did you?" She just shakes her head. "I knew you couldn't do it and Gil would just let you go without question because you're Super Sara, his favorite CSI."
"I am not."
He doesn't continue the argument and moves on. "About work, my money is on the missing wife or the mysterious plumber, but it's proving it that's the hard part. She could be anywhere--" He takes his napkin off the table and neatly places in on his lap.
"Greg, stop it."
"What? I'm not just jumping to conclusions here. The tire treads in the driveway match the kind of car that the neighbor placed at the house. You'd have to be leaving in a hurry to leave behind tire treads in a twenty foot driveway."
"No, that's not what I mean. Greg, this isn't you. You don't cook. Every person at Ming Gardens knows you by your first and last name and the usual Lo Mein and wontons, you're there so much...and half of them don't even speak fluent English. You cleaned up before you came to get me. Trust me, I know you don't clean. Imagine how the lab would be if Grissom didn't scare you into keeping everything organized into specially marked plastic bins!"
"Well, I--"
"Just be yourself." She says calmly.
"How can I be when you can't stand me to begin with."
"I do not. Well, maybe the Greg I met when I came to Vegas. If you hadn't noticed; you're a lot different. You're finally growing up, Greggo." She laughs. Not that she was at all immature to begin with, she had noticed a change in herself when she first started as a level one, but it was even more so that she saw happen with him in just the last few months.
"So, do you like Chinese take out? I didn't think you would."
"I'm not too picky. I'd rather sit in front of the TV, a take out box in one hand and a beer in the other, than go to the lab's annual black and white banquets...if that helps you any."
"So I can leave dirty socks on the bathroom floor?"
"Now, let's not go that far."