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."
Good evening, folks! And welcome to the final instalment of One Mississippi. Thanks for all of the great reviews that have inspired me along the way, especially those of you who reviewed the last chapter, Krys33 (Heh heh, after this one, I'm all out of ideas), September (Thanks – and it's anagrams, my love! Acronyms are something else...), charmed1818, icklebitodd (send her straight home, I'd say! And Sara's probably been off somewhere in my head, having some happy WarrickSara action...), Daisyangel, daynaaa, cherishedcrush (Aww, I hope you're alright, my dear. You don't sound all too happy), Mrs. Rhett Butler, Ophelia-Speaks, haley104, Dragonfly Faith (Oh, definitely totally), coolcatz, Nix707 (very well said! I never got GSR personally) and Review1234 (did you get my email?)
Anyway – I've left the end off this chapter title so you can make a word out of the remaining letters from Neutrogena. I'll give you a hand. The remaining letters are T, O, N, G, U and E. It was just wild coincidence. But then again, is that too explicit for a K+ fic? Remember folks – Gil and Cath only get together in Chapter 12 of Wake The Hope; this fic is only a sideline from that, so I really should stick to my story... Well anyway, thanks for reading! Enjoy! Love LJ xXx
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One Mississippi. Chapter Five. Earn...?
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05.31
Gil sits straight up suddenly and knocks his skull on the dangling showerhead when he hears a car pull into the driveway on street-level below. He leaps up and dashes to the bedroom window in time to see Catherine running down from her parked car towards her front door. He hears her keys rattle impatiently and turn in the lock; hears her kick off her shoes at the front door and race up the stairs.
"Gil?" she calls softly through the house. "Hello?" And she stops when she reaches the bathroom door and sees her little girl asleep against it.
"Oh, Linds," Catherine murmurs with a sigh. "My poor baby – sleeping out here in the cold hall. Let's put you to bed, sweetie..."
"Catherine?" Gil calls out. He sees shadows move under the closed bathroom door. Catherine presses an eye to the bathroom keyhole and sees that familiar grey-blue iris on the other side.
"I'm sorry for this, Gil," she says and offers a small smile that he sees only in her eyes. "I'll get you out of there – just give me a second. And stand back."
Gil chuckles slightly; she made it sound so dramatic – but then again, this has been one of the most eventful babysitting evenings he's ever done. He takes a step back as Catherine gently moves her sleeping daughter out of the way and leans her shoulder against the door.
"It's got some kind of catch on it – you gotta press it in and to the left when you turn the door handle," Catherine mutters distractedly and the door swings easily open as though it had always done. "I've been meaning to get it fixed."
She shrugs her shoulders apologetically and smiles again, sheepishly. "I guess I forgot."
"I guess you did." Gil smiles back and, for a moment, pauses in the doorway, looking at her. And then Catherine breaks his gaze, carefully picking up Lindsey.
"I'd better get you into a real bed, huh?" Catherine whispers in Lindsey's ear as she and Gil carry the sleeping girl off to bed.
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06.15
With take-out Chinese food scattered in boxes over Catherine's kitchen table, Gil catches Catherine glancing up guiltily at him again. He sighs melodramatically and sets his wooden chopsticks down onto the tabletop, fixing her with a stare.
"Catherine..." he begins. "It's okay – it doesn't matter."
"Sure it does," Catherine replies. "You take one night off for the first time in years and you end up locked in my bathroom all night with me yelling down the phone at you. I'm so sorry, Gil."
Gil pauses for a moment, pondering this before answering, "That makes twelve times you've apologised to me tonight." he tells her and she only grins briefly, shaking her head. "It didn't cost me anything – unless you want to pay me back for the twenty cents phone call it took to cancel my plans."
Catherine raised an eyebrow. "You really did have plans?" she asks, guilt spreading across her face again. "Jesus, Gil – I thought you were just making up an excuse. What kind of plans?"
"A date." he answers directly. Catherine narrows her eyes slightly and then she grins, turning back to the portion of egg fried rice.
"Very funny – you almost had me there." she smiles. "See, this is why I can never take you seriously, Gil."
Gil looks mildly amused at her comment. "Well, I'm insulted that you think I can only be joking when I say I've got a date." he tells her, not at all insulted.
"Oh God – you're serious," Catherine drops her dinner and leans across the table at him, wide-eyed and guilt-ridden. "I'm so sorry. Jesus, Gil – I'm really sorry. Who was it with?"
"Uh – Teri," he mutters, awkward now.
Catherine's forehead hits her palm with a groan. "Christ Gil – that's like – what? – the third date? That's a big deal for you. And you missed it...for me."
"For you. Yes." he nods. "It doesn't matter, Cath. It wasn't going anywhere."
"A third date and you say that's not going anywhere?" she says dubiously. "Now I know you're lying. You never go on more than one date with someone unless you think it's going somewhere. Two, maybe, if you're being polite."
Gil shrugs his shoulders. "Well it's certainly not going anywhere after this. Something about short notice and my maddening incapability to empathise." And then he laughs slightly at Catherine's mortified expression.
"Oh God," she repeats, burying her face in her arms, slumped across the table. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," Gil assures her once again. "And anyway, I recall you saying the same thing to me once."
Catherine looks up and smiles lamely. "And I meant it, too," she asserts.
He grins and, suddenly averting his eyes from her stare, points his chopsticks at the last remaining spring roll. "Do you want that?"
Passing it across, Catherine shakes her head. "No – no, go ahead."
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07.03
Catherine lies stretched out across her couch, her feet in his lap and the early morning sunlight creeping through the blinds, strips of gold tiered across the carpet. He ponders her feet in his lap, remembers when they had stepped to throbbing bass beats in ridiculously high heels – painted toenails and bright lights everywhere. Now they spend double shifts moving just as elegantly in leather ankle boots, a far cry from some years back – somehow he liked them even more now, but maybe that was just natural – and maybe he'd like them even more tomorrow.
"You should call her," she says, out of the blue. "Teri Miller – you should call her. You can use the house phone."
Gil looks at her and then shakes his head. "No. I don't...I don't think that'd be a good idea."
She sits up on her elbows and raises her eyebrows. "That bad, huh?" she sympathises. "I'm sorry – it's all my fault."
"No, it's not," he insists. "It wasn't just tonight – she has a problem with you. Or rather, with us."
"In what way?" Catherine asks, one arched eyebrow.
Gil smiles slightly and shrugs his shoulders. "I guess she's always been a bit suspicious that what we have isn't something more – something suppressed." He laughs awkwardly and shrugs his shoulders once more. "The fact that I cancelled on her to come here seemed far too much for her – I guess she stopped believing me whenever I told her nothing was going on."
Catherine kneels up, closer to him and half-smiles. "Jesus, it really is my fault." she mutters.
"No – no it isn't," Gil repeats earnestly. "It's just her. And probably me, too. But not you."
"And Nick and Greg," Catherine adds darkly. "Apparently, they'd been wondering when we'd 'get together' or words to that effect."
Gil chuckles. "How come everyone else can see it apart from us?" he wonders out loud. "Is there something here that I'm missing?" And Catherine looks at him carefully.
"Maybe there is," she says slowly and they find themselves leaning closer in the partial light. "Maybe they're right."
And there falls a sort of stillness. Everything seems to freeze. His lips touch hers – as though they always had done. And he takes her lead as her eyelids flutter shut. And now it's dark and silent and there might as well be nothing at all – nothing else at all...
"Mommy! Mommy – you're back!" Lindsey's yell from the fourth stair up jumps them apart. The six year old leaps down the rest of the stairs and half-runs, half-skids over to the couch, pouncing into her mother's lap and hugging her tightly.
"I sure am, baby – just like I said I'd be," Catherine beams and glances intermittently across at Gil who smiles shyly to himself. "And did you have a good time with Uncle Gil?"
"Yup!" Lindsey grins back and looks at Uncle Gil. "He turned my baked potato into a ladybug. And then I ate it."
"You ate a ladybug?" Catherine teases, wrinkling her nose in mock-distaste. "Ew – what was it like?"
"Kinda crunchy, right, Linds?" Gil chimes in with a mischievous glint in his eye. Lindsey giggles at the pair of them.
"Uncle Gil's being silly, Mommy," she tells her mother. "It wasn't a real one."
Catherine smiles at Gil. "Uncle Gil is always being silly, sweetie."
Gil shrugs his shoulders innocently and gets to his feet, picking up his jacket slung over the sofa. "Well Uncle Gil's gotta go home now since he really needs some sleep." he says.
"No, wait," Catherine stops him. "Stay – take the spare; you can sleep here."
He pauses by the front door. "I don't know if that's such a good –"
"Gil. Don't pretend we don't need to talk about this," Catherine urged him, softly. "Please tell me it hasn't just been me going crazy over this lately. Please tell me you'll stay – just to talk it over."
There's a long silence in which everything – all the moments they'd shared between the day he'd first met her up until this very second, tumbled wildly in his head. Finally though, he let out a sigh and looked directly at Catherine with a tinge of sadness.
"We do. And I have – I really have," he assures her. "But this isn't the right time. You know it isn't; we both know. It just isn't, Cath."
He offers her a smile and slips on his jacket. "I'll see you tomorrow." And he was gone, through a front door that had had his back more often than it'd had Eddie's.
Talk it over? Catherine supposed they just never got round to it and eventually the whole memory became like a fragile dream that they just couldn't bring themselves to talk about just in case trying to get a stronger hold on it, shattered it forever.
The closest they both came to confronting it was when Catherine's sister had to leave Lindsey with Catherine at work. The six year old had sat patiently in the break room, colouring in pictures and talking to whichever CSI was in the room, keeping an eye on her.
As Catherine's shift finished up and she headed over to take Lindsey home, the little girl just so happened to be in the middle of casually telling Nick Stokes about that night when her mom and her Uncle Gil locked themselves in the bathroom all night and wouldn't come out.
And Nick had raised an eyebrow at Catherine. "Not together my ass," he'd muttered cynically to himself before saying goodnight to the confused CSI Three and seeking out Greg to share the news with.
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Need the GCR fix that never was? Try Chapters 12, 13 and 16 of Wake The Hope. Or dig up some other wonderful fics by our many talented GCR writers. Have a wonderful 2006!
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