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 offered brightly. "She was about six. He was stuck in there until I came home from work four hours later."

Well this got a pretty great response! I would've held out for more reviews cos I'm like that, but you responded just so quickly. Thanks, reviewers – icklebitodd, DrusillaBraun, CinnamonFaerie, sitarra, haley104 (Clearly not), charmed1818 (Yep – there is!), AngelJunkie, Review1234 (Ha ha – very smooth!), jamie, September (Thank you!), Nix, Lizzy Sidle (Ouch – how long were you stuck for?) and Amanda.

I hope the whole time-frame jumping business doesn't get too complicated, but basically – it'll stick to this main format of Present/Past/Present if that's all okay with you. And yes – all the chapter names are anagrams of "Neutrogena." Oh, and I've tried to get some Jackpot-style phone misunderstandings going in this chapter and in another chapter too. Enjoy! Love LJ xXx

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One Mississippi. Chapter Two. Run To A Gene

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03:51

Whilst considering more anagrams of Catherine's shampoo bottle to keep himself occupied, Gil hears a faint sniffing outside the bedroom door where he'd finally convinced Lindsey to go to sleep only an hour earlier.

"Lindsey?" he calls. "Linds?"

He sits up in the bathtub and, in attempting to leap out, catches his foot on the edge of the tub and falls onto the linoleum painfully, knocking the wind out of himself. Groaning and rubbing his ribs, he shuffles over to the locked door and peers through the crack under it: Lindsey sits cross-legged in her pyjamas on the carpet outside and rubs at her eyes, crying.

"Mommy..." she sobs.

Gil exhales frustratedly once again for being on the wrong side of this damned door and tries to get the little girl's attention.

"Lindsey, sweetie?" he calls again. "Honey – what's wrong? What's up?"

Lindsey, evidently forgetting that she'd locked her Uncle Gil in the bathroom, is only more freaked out by the disembodied voice and cries louder.

"No – no, Lindsey, honey, don't cry," he pleads hurriedly. "It's Uncle Gil. It's me. I'm just shut in the bathroom, remember?"

The six year old seems to weigh up the probability of this in her head before remembering accidentally locking her Uncle Gil in the bathroom so she creeps closer to the door and puts her hand on the wooden surface. She lays her head down sideways on the floor and blinks the little bit of the familiar face that she can see.

"Hi!" Gil greets her cheerily for want of something better to say. Lindsey blinks some more.

Then she sits up again and resumes crying. "Mommy..."

"Oh boy." Gil mutters quietly to himself. He pulls himself sitting, wincing over his bruised ribs, and flips open his cell phone to press his speed dial one – Catherine – who else? And for the fourth time that night, Gil Grissom's name flashes up on Catherine's caller ID.

-

The first time was when he'd called her up so Lindsey could say goodnight before he took her to brush her teeth. That'd been a relatively normal phone conversation compared to the others that followed it. Gil had assured her that he had things under control and Lindsey had told her that Uncle Gil had turned her baked potato into a ladybird, with carrot-stick antennae and everything. When Catherine hung up the phone, she had sunken down a little more in the seat of her Denali, thinking about how much she hated those nights when she'd say goodnight to her daughter over the phone, not being the one to tuck her in and kiss her. There were too many nights like that.

And then she got a second phone call, just twenty minutes later.

"Catherine," Gil began carefully. "Lindsey's got her teeth brushed and is all ready for bed..."

"Great – thank you, Gil. I really owe you one," Catherine gushed.

"– But..." he went on, and Catherine froze up.

"What? What "but"? What's happened?" she demanded, switching automatically into Panicked-Mother Mode.

"But I'm stuck." he said.

There was a long pause and all Gil heard was silence down the line before Catherine finally came back to him with:

"Stuck?"

"In your bathroom," he elaborated. "We brushed Lindsey's teeth and she's already for bed but the door shut and now I can't open it."

Catherine groaned; the door had a tendency to do that and, as far as she was aware, it could only be reopened from the outside. And the only person who could do that was herself.

"I'm sorry, Gil. I'll be home as quickly as I can..." she said, lamely. Great – not only had she forced him out of his rare night-off, now she'd also had him imprisoned in her bathroom.

"What are you trying to say, Catherine...?" his voice was cautious, not liking where this was going.

She chose her words carefully, feeling a sinking sense of guilty when she delicately informed him, "You might be there a while."

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04.00

Catherine is sitting in the interrogation room with the standardised security guard and the woman she's questioning.

"So run that by me once more, Mrs. Palmer – you came home from work at quarter past five where you found the front door was already open?" Catherine begins slowly, studying the woman's reaction carefully for any blips and hesitations.

"That's right," she answers with a nod. Catherine opens her mouth to carry on but, just then, her cell phone goes off. A frown creases her face and she sighs apologetically when she reads the name on her cell phone screen.

"I'm very sorry, Mrs. Palmer – do you think you could hang on for just one second for me," Catherine says. "I've really got to take this call."

Mrs. Palmer nods. "Go ahead." And Catherine smiles briefly, heading to the corner of the room to flip open her cell.

"Hey, Gil." she greets him, already dreading what this phone call might hold in store for her, after all that's happened tonight.

"Catherine. Come home." he says immediately.

She smiles slightly at his desperate tone. "Gil, I told you, I'll be home as soon as I can make it but that won't be for another hour at the very least." And then she hears Lindsey crying in the background. "Wait – is that Lindsey? What's wrong? Why is she crying?"

"Cath, she's fine but she's woken up crying and asking for you – what do I do?" Gil asks her urgently. Catherine pauses, thinking this over, having to take into account the fact that Gil locked in the bathroom.

"Well you know what usually gets her back to sleep, don't you?" Catherine prompts him, knowing he's done this enough times to know.

Grissom hesitates. "I think I've forgotten the words." he offers lamely.

"Liar," Catherine retorts fondly. "You're the only grown man I've met who knows all the words to It's Not Easy Being Green."

"But I don't sing!" Grissom protests weakly.

"Sure you do! You sing in the shower," Catherine argues back. Gil doesn't say anything back but only whines slightly – singing was not his forte.

"No good can come of this, Catherine." he warns her. She only smiles.

"You'll be fine – you've done this before," she assures him, kindly. "Hang in there; I'll be home as soon as I can make it."

Catherine hangs up the phone, gazing at the empty screen for longer than she needs to, before turning back to the woman with another apology.

"It's fine," the woman replies. "I take it you're a mother then."

"Yeah – these hours mean I can't be there when my little girl wakes up in the night," she answers dully and holds up her cell phone with an ironic smile. "This is the closest I get."

"That's tough," Mrs. Palmer tells her sympathetically. "But at least you've got help; I don't think my husband knows the names of his kids' friends, let alone The Muppets song lyrics."

Catherine smiles at her, picturing Gil singing It's Not Easy Being Green through the bathroom door keyhole to a distressed six year old at this very moment.

"Yeah – I don't know what I'd do without him."

And she doesn't even think to correct Mrs. Palmer on their ambiguous relationship technicalities.

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