Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Rating: PG or K+
Summary: "Want me to tell you about the time Lindsey accidentally locked Gil in our bathroom. She was about six. He was stuck in there until I came home from work four hours later."
Wow – two updates in one day must be a record for me, so I hope you enjoy this. This is my birthday present to you since it's my birthday today so, if anyone's looking for a good gift to get me, I'd love to see the cast of CSI on my doorstep, but I'll settle for a review. This chapter is only short, but they do get longer.
Thanks to everyone's who's been reviewing "Wake The Hope" – you've really been great, so this is for those of your who only read it for the now-finished GCR moments. Also this is for the last reviewers of the GCR "Perpetuity": Lissa88, dawn2323, sitarra, Lynh, September, bloodymary2, Miggyrow, Review1234 and cherishedcrush who were just as fantastic. Thanks again. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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One Mississippi. Chapter One. A Urgent One
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"Want me to tell you about the time Lindsey accidentally locked Gil in our bathroom?" she offers brightly. "She was about six. He was stuck in there until I came home from work four hours later."
Sara laughs again but more bitterly this time. "Hell yeah." - Wake The Hope
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03:22
Two hours is a long time to remain in one place with nothing to do, Gil ponders as he lies in Catherine's bathtub, fully-clothed and dry. He throws the bar of soap up and down in the air lazily until it slips from his hands and he decides it isn't worth reaching for. This is, he thinks to himself, the very last time he does a favour for Catherine Willows. But then again, he knows that isn't true.
He yawns widely and glances at his watch. Maybe she's right. Maybe this mess is partially his own fault...
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"Please, Gil!"
"Cath..."
"Pleaaaase?"
"Catherine, I'm really sorry but this was my night off for a reason. I've got plans..."
"What sort of plans?" Catherine demanded, dubiously. Gil Grissom was not the type of person to Have Plans – not social plans, at least.
"I've just got..." his cheeks burnt red, "plans." He looked at her rather lamely and she did not look impressed.
"And I've got a six year old who's going to get dropped around my house in less than an hour only to find that nobody's there," Catherine answered sharply. She looked at him appealing. "Please, Gil – if I'm not there, Eddie'll file another complaint and who knows what'll happen to Lindsey and me. I couldn't live if she was ever taken away from me..."
Gil sighed and softened. That changed things somewhat. He remembered only a month ago when Catherine turned up in his office holding that complaint filed by her jackass. Sorry, not 'jackass' – 'ex-husband'. He often got them mixed up but then, he reasoned, it was an easy mistake to make. He remembered how she shifted from mood to mood: first furious then upset and then just hurt. Oh well, he thought, it's not as though what he had planned was that important...
"Fine." he relented and Catherine beamed, jumping up and hugging him tightly.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she chattered with such a broad smile across her face than Gil grinned back, despite everything. "You know what to do, right?"
"Are you kidding me? I've done this enough times to know by now," he smiled slightly. "Read a story...put her to bed at half seven..."
Catherine shook her head slightly with a smile, "How could I doubt you? I knew you wouldn't let me down." And she pecked him on the cheek before dashing off to where Brass and Nick were waiting outside, ready to roll. Grissom watched her go before heading to his locker.
"I would never let you down."
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03:37
Now without the amusement of throwing and catching the soap, Gil feels blindly around him on the edges of the bathtub, not even bothering to look. His hand grasps a shampoo bottle and he holds it above him to read it.
Neutrogena Clean.
For dry/damaged hair.
Gil ponders this for a moment. Catherine's hair didn't look dry or damaged. Maybe this is why. He uncaps the bottle and sniffs the contents with some sleepy satisfaction – it smelt like her hair and he liked that. But now he sits up in the bath and looks at himself in the opposite mirror with a frown. What is wrong with him? He, Gil Grissom, is actually lying, still dressed at half three in the morning, in Catherine's empty bathtub and considering how effective her shampoo is. He has never been this apathetic in his life, he is sure of it.
Still holding the bottle in his hand, he stares absent-mindedly at it. How ever did he get himself into this stupid mess? Right – of course – helping out a friend. And Catherine, at that. Helping out Catherine would always be different to anyone else because he would always, always, without fail, drop everything to give her a hand. He really did have his own plans. A urgent one.
He pauses and frowns. That thought was grammatically incorrect, he muses. Have two hours of solitary confinement really done this to him? Because it never really hurt him before...
And then he realises what he's staring at and he smiles. He's found something to do.
A Urgent One, he discovers with a grin, was a subconscious anagram of Neutrogena. And how terribly appropriate.
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