Catherine flipped through the assignment sheets in her hand as she sauntered down the hallway. It was nights like these when she really missed Gil and even Sara a bit yet. Even with the two new additions to the team, they just weren't staffed up the way they used to be. They were still one body short and Langston and Riley were nowhere on par with Gil and Sara. Riley was good but she wasn't nearly as efficient or intuitive as Sara had been and even though he looked to have a promising future as a CSI, Langston still wasn't even qualified to work a scene alone. Every scene he worked, she had to have someone babysit him which was almost like taking another CSI out of commission.
She knew when Gil had left that she would miss him terribly and she did. What she had never admitted is how much she missed Sara after she left. Although they had been at odds more often than not, she missed the younger woman's dedication and even her spunkiness.
Pausing in the doorway of the conference room, she just watched the team – her team – for a few moments. She still couldn't quite get over it that this was her team. She watched them joking and kidding around. It was sort of reminiscent of how things were a few years ago before kidnappings and shootings, serial killers and teenage gangs and even death had brought a black cloud of despair into their lives.
A wistful smile touched her lips as the memories flooded her of the many evenings they would all be gathered around that same conference table waiting for Grissom to come and give them their assignments. How Greg would pant after Sara like a besotted little puppy while Nick and Warrick would rib him. How Nick and Warrick would bet on everything from sports to cases to what color socks Greg would be wearing that day.
Now she was the one standing in the doorway getting ready to hand out assignments. Now she was the one everyone turned to when the chips were down. Sometimes she longed for those days when she could turn to Gil when she was knee-deep in trouble and he would smooth everything over.
From the bottom of the stack, she pulled out a stiff piece of cardboard with a foreign postmark and just stared at the handwriting. Yeah, she definitely missed them. This new team was forming a bond but she knew it would never be the same again. There had just been something special about the six of them – Gil, Warrick, Nick, Greg, Sara, herself – that could never be recaptured. Not in a million years.
Nick eventually noticed her standing there looking a little wistful.
"Hey, Catherine!" he greeted her, concern tingeing his voice.
She gave him a small, pensive smile.
"Yo, boss lady," Greg cried out in a way reminiscent of his old lab rat days.
She couldn't help but chuckle at his silliness.
"Alright, calm down, Greg," she chided with a gentle smirk. "OK, gang, we have a long, and I do mean long, night ahead of us."
A chorus of groans could be heard all around the table.
"I know, I know. We're all getting tired of slammed. But, first, something to cheer us up," she said as waved the postcard in the air. Looking at Ray and Riley, she realized that this particular piece of mail wouldn't mean much of anything to them, so she amended her statement with, "Well, it'll at least cheer up Nick and Greg."
"What is it?" Nick questioned, thoroughly intrigued now.
Holding up the postcard with the picture facing Nick and Greg, she said, "Take a guess".
Greg studied the card while Nick read aloud the writing splashed across the front, "Corcovado National Park."
"That's one bad-ass looking frog," Greg commented about the small red and green creature captured in the picture.
Bringing the card up close to her nose as she had forgotten her reading glasses back in her office, Catherine read off the back, "Says here it's a poisonous dart frog." She paused a moment and when they still hadn't taken a guess at who the postcard was from, she prompted them. "Well, come on, boys. Who's it from?"
Suddenly a light bulb went off and Nick exclaimed, "Grissom!"
"Close but no cigar. Want to take another guess? I'll even give you a clue. Tall, lanky, brunette …."
"Sara!" Greg screeched. Jumping up, he snatched the postcard from Catherine's grasp. "Oh, my God, Sara!"
"Sara?" Riley repeated scrunching her face in confusion.
"She used to work here before you started," Catherine explained off-handedly as she watched Nick and Greg fight over the piece of cardstock.
Finally, Nick grabbed it out of Greg's hand and held it up high while fending Greg off with his other arm.
"Alright, cool your jets, boys," Catherine reprimanded before muttering under her breath, "I swear I'm more of a den mother than a supervisor."
"Well, if your going to be that way, the least you can do is tell us what she has to say," Greg pouted.
"Down boy," Nick replied distractedly as his eyes skimmed the familiar scrawl. "I've gotta decipher this before I can even tell you what it says." He chuckled. "Never thought I would miss this chicken scratch."
"Come on," Greg continued to whine.
"Alright, alright. She wrote,
'Hey gang,
It's hard to believe it's been almost 3 three months since Gil joined me here in Costa Rica. I just wanted to let you know that we're doing fine. We're spending most of our time on a research project involving the habitat and behavior of the poisonous dart frog and the rest is spent exploring this fascinating country. The scenery here is absolutely gorgeous. Gil likes to grumble about the humidity but I just remind him that without it, there wouldn't be such a vast diversity in wildlife and vegetation and even insects. That usually shuts him up. If you ever get the chance, spend some time down here. You won't be disappointed. I hope everything is going well back in Vegas. My only regret is that I don't get to see and talk to you guys. Stay safe and take care.
Sara'"
A silence hung in the air for a few seconds after Nick finished reading.
"Gil. As in Gil Grissom?" Ray inquired looking back and forth between Nick and Catherine.
"The one and the same," Catherine confirmed.
"Sara's his wife then," Riley stated. "I didn't even know he was married."
"She's not," Nick started explaining. "She's his …. Uh … girlfriend." He shook his head and groaned, "I still can't get used to calling those two a couple."
"And she used to work here?" Riley asked.
"She sure did," Greg quipped. "She was f-ine. One hot babe."
"Greg, man," Nick addressed him as he punched him in the shoulder. "You've gotta get over her. She's Grissom's woman."
"So what did she do? Which shift did she work?" Riley asked ever the consummate investigator. She knew this Sara couldn't have worked the nightshift. That was against policy. She remembered reading that in the employee manual. No two people on the same forensics team could be involved in a romantic relationship. She was sure it was even more highly discouraged for a supervisor and a subordinate to be involved.
"She was on our team. A CSI like all of us," Catherine answered. "Well, at the end, she was on swing shift but that was only for a couple months."
"Oh, so they must've got together after she changed shifts."
"Uh, actually, that's why she had to change shifts. The higher ups found out those two were in a relationship and it was either one of them change shifts or get fired."
Riley eyes went wide trying to reconcile the gruff supervisor she had known for a few short weeks with someone who'd actually have an affair with a subordinate. "I just …." She slowly shoke her head as a nervous little laugh escaped her. "I never would've pictured him as one to break the rules. He just seemed so….stuffy."
The old team members had a good chuckle.
"Well, we all were a bit shocked when we found out," Nick stated.
"Speak for yourself," Greg groused. "I knew about those two long before then."
"And I still don't believe that you knew anything, Greggo. I think you just like to think you knew."
"Huh! I'll have you know …."
"Enough!" Catherine exclaimed.
"That just….blows my image of him," Riley mumbled. Intrigued by the history of this team that she was now a part of, she continued asking questions. "How long were they having an affair before they were found out?"
"No one really knows," Catherine answered. "They never said."
"We're talking here about the two most private people you will ever meet," Nick jumped in. "We still don't even know exactly how they ever met or how long they knew each other before Grissom brought her in. We have only a few sketchy details."
"Brought her in? You mean they were like doing the horizontal mambo before she even started working here?" Riley was even more astonished.
"No. Well, at least I don't think so," Nick replied looking around at Catherine and Greg for confirmation of his statement. "They claimed they were just friends back then."
"Grissom brought Sara in to conduct an internal investigation and since there was an opening, she stayed on permanently," Catherine explained.
"So he hires a colleague of his …" Riley begins only to be cut-off by Nick.
"Actually, student."
"Huh?"
"She had originally been a student of his," Nick said. At Riley's questioning look, he stated, "Sara's my age."
Riley quirked an eyebrow as she stared at Nick. "So, he a hires a young female student to come in and conduct an investigation, they claim to be friends and then end up having an affair?"
"Oh, honey," Catherine chuckled. "That barely skims the surface. One day they'd be chummy and acting like the best of friends. The next, they could barely tolerate each other. We are talking about the rockiest, stormiest, most secretive relationship you have ever seen and that's just the parts we know about. Who knows what all went on behind closed doors with those two."
"This is beginning to sound like a soap opera."
Catherine, Nick and Greg just looked at each other then burst out laughing. Gil Grissom, Sara Sidle and soap operas. Certainly not a combination of words they ever thought they would ever hear strung together yet amazingly descriptive.
Wiping away the tears from her eyes, Catherine glanced at her watch. "Oh, hey, guys, we really need to get to work. Like I said, we've got a busy night. But tell you what, why don't we meet for breakfast after shift?" Touching Riley lightly on the shoulder, she said, "We can give you the whole rundown on the Grissom-Sara drama then."
TBC
Disclaimer: See chapter 1.
A/N: Well, I certainly never intended to take this long to get the second chapter up. But quite frankly, I find the characters of Riley and Langston to be quite …. uninspiring. Yet, I wanted to bring those two into this chapter to get them caught up to the GSR relationship in case I need to use them in future chapters. I hope you found this chapter satisfactory. Please R&R. I would appreciate it so much.
Excuse me for a moment while I step onto my soapbox..... I am so disappointed with how CSI has been going since Grissom left. I think they had a chance to still have a really great show if they would've focused on the original team members and brought Riley and Langston into the picture slowly. Instead, they've turned it into the Ray Langston show. I was relieved to find out I wasn't the only one to feel that way when I checked out the CBS forums. If you feel that CSI is headed the wrong direction, there is a petition started to "Give CSI Stars the Respect Earned". It can be found at www(dot)petitiononline(dot)com/csis9ch/petition(dot)html. I don't suppose it will help much considering they're giving LF $14 million but at least TPTB will know that not everyone appreciates what they are doing to our favorite show. Thanks if you've stuck around long enough to listen to my rant and rave.