AN: Time for some Shelby-proofing! It seems like most of you have been enjoying these bonding moments, but this is actually the last chapter in the little "bubble" this new family has been living in, at least for the moment. Next chapter will feature the whole gang, which I think is going to be a lot of fun too (it was fun to write, at least, so hopefully you'll enjoy it). Thanks for the wonderful feedback on the last chapter, every message really lifted my spirit – you guys are amazing!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything relating to CSI
Chapter 14
It's stupid. Sara sighs, glancing at the clock again. Eleven twenty-seven. She dropped Shelby off at the daycare center at ten and isn't picking her up until three. She's already called the nanny agency Catherine recommended and set up a couple of interviews for next week, gone through the bag of supplies she always keeps in the trunk of her car for work to make sure it's stocked and ready for her first shift on Monday, talked to her insurance company to get the new car added to her insurance, and set up two apartment viewings for Sunday, and she's bored.
And her phone is looking much too tempting.
Damn it, she's not a teenager with a crush. She's a grown woman. She can keep herself entertained for a few hours.
But if court is anything like it normally is, odds are Grissom is just as bored as she is right now, waiting to get called to the stand.
She reaches for the phone and sends a message before she can talk herself out of it.
How's court?
Not the most imaginative, but whatever.
It doesn't take a full minute for the response to arrive.
I would rather watch paint dry
She smiles.
Didn't you do an experiment with paint drying for a case once?
I did. Which means I know exactly how much fun it is, and I would still prefer it over sitting around and waiting
They text about court experiences and experiments they've conducted for a while, until he actually gets called in just before noon. But then he's back ten minutes later, complaining that he barely had a chance to get sworn in before the judge decided to break for lunch.
So, they continue texting while he tries to find something edible within a few minutes of the courthouse – which she knows was pretty much impossible last time she was testifying, but he somehow manages to get a perfectly acceptable sandwich from a food truck – and she only teases him a little that she has a much more delicious tuna salad. At one, he disappears again, to actually testify this time, and she decides to pass some time by cleaning the main bathroom.
Which is why Catherine finds her scrubbing the bathtub when she gets up an hour later.
"Um. I have questions."
Sara pushes herself up and turns around, pulling off the rubber gloves she found under the sink. "Sorry, I'm all done. I was bored."
"By all means. If you clean when you're bored, you can stay however long you want. Rent free."
Sara laughs. "I think you'll get sick of us eventually, despite free cleaning help."
"Maybe." Catherine hides a yawn in the crook of her elbow. "OK, I need coffee."
"Yeah, I wouldn't say no to some before I pick Shelby up. There's tuna salad in the fridge, nothing fancy but if you don't feel like cooking."
"You're a lifesaver."
They settle at the kitchen table, Catherine digging into the salad while the coffee maker bubbles on the counter.
"You talk to the nanny agency?" she asks after a couple of minutes and Sara nods.
"Yeah, they're sending over some profiles, and I've got three interviews set up for next week. Actually, I wanted to ask if you would mind being there? I have no idea what I should be looking for or asking about."
"Sure, no problem."
"Thanks."
The coffee maker finishes, so she gets up to pour them each a cup. She's just put down Catherine's in front of her when she hears the sound of a new text message from her phone, which she intentionally left in the living room so she wouldn't check it every two minutes, and she quickly puts down her own cup and goes to grab it.
Finally done. What are you up to?
She doesn't even realize she's smiling until Catherine laughs.
"What?" she asks, taking a sip of coffee and trying to force a straight expression onto her face.
"I don't even have to ask who that is. I thought he had court today?"
She considers lying as she types a response – Just caffeinating a little before I pick up Shelby – but decides against it. "Apparently they just finished."
Her phone dings again. Give her a hug for me. Going home to hopefully get some sleep now, but I'll see you tomorrow?
I'll be there! she sends back and then puts the phone down on the table.
"No date today?" Catherine asks with a smirk.
"No dates, period," Sara replies.
"But he's not coming over?"
"No, he's going home to sleep. And I need to pick up Shelby, so as fun as this has been…"
"Fine, I'll stop," Catherine relents. "And I know it doesn't take more than ten minutes to get there, if you leave now, you'll be sitting in the parking lot for half an hour."
"Might still be better than this conversation," Sara grumbles, and Catherine laughs.
"Come on, I said I would stop. What're your plans today?"
"If Shelby's not too tired, I was thinking we'd go shopping," she says. "I went through her clothes before we moved and just donated most of the stuff that was too small. I figured there was no point in bringing them, so she needs some new clothes."
"You want company?" Catherine offers. "I know how much fun shopping alone with a toddler can be."
"If you want to, sure."
"If I don't get up and do something, I'll just spend the rest of the day on the couch, so yeah. Give me fifteen minutes to take a quick shower and change?"
"No problem."
She's glad to have the company two hours later, when Shelby throws a tantrum while trying on shoes, and Catherine calmly picks her up from where she's flung herself on the floor and tells Sara to finish up before resolutely carrying the wailing toddler out of the store.
Grissom turns to the last page of the compendium in front of him and blinks to make the text come into focus. He's been going through the budget proposal for two hours now and just wants to get it done so he can leave on time.
How did he ever manage to convince himself he preferred paper pushing to actual field work?
He hears the sound of the door to his office closing and looks up to find Catherine just inside it. "What did you do?"
She crosses her arms over her chest. "What makes you think I did something?"
"The last time you closed that door you told me that a suspect 'accidentally' walked into a door," he reminds her, earning a sheepish look.
"Right, I forgot about that. In my defense, he did deserve it. But nope, no injured suspects in holding today, I just didn't want an audience."
"For what?" He was in the field for the first four hours of shift, then spent two down in the morgue with Al before finally getting around to the budget proposal he's been putting off for the last few days, so maybe he's simply too tired to understand her.
"You and Sara are doing the kid-proofing at your place today, right?" she asks, making the comment about no audience make sense, at least. He's still not sure why she wants to know, though.
"Yes, why?"
"I was going to talk to her, but I don't actually know if I'll see her before she leaves, so I figured I'd catch you instead. There's something I want to talk to both of you about, so I was thinking dinner when you're done at your place?"
"Or you can tell me whatever you have to say now," he suggests.
"Nope, it needs to be a discussion between all three of us. Dinner at six thirty?"
He knows from experience that he's not going to get anything else out of her, so he just sighs. "Fine, if you want to be cryptic."
"Always."
Grissom puts Catherine's invitation and cryptic remarks out of his mind, but when Sara arrives after he gets a much needed six hours of sleep, he remembers.
"Did Catherine say something to you?" he asks when he's relieved her of the security gate she brought.
"I'm going to need a little more context," she replies with a crooked smile. "She talks to me all the time."
"She stopped by my office this morning and said she wanted to talk to both you and me about something and invited me over for dinner when we're done here," he elaborates, and she frowns.
"No, she hasn't mentioned anything to me. But I haven't seen her since she left for her shift last night, so maybe it was just something that occurred to her at work?"
"Maybe." He shrugs. "I hate it when she gets all cryptic."
"I'm sure it's nothing bad," Sara assures him, continuing through the living room and into the kitchen. "So, Shelby's smart, you know that. But she can still get overexcited and forget she's not supposed to do something."
"As do the rest of us, on occasion," he notes, earning a laugh.
"True. Where do you keep cleaning stuff?" Grissom opens the cupboard in question, and she closes it again, producing a plastic strap from the bag in her hand. "This is just me being overprotective, really. She knows not to drink any of this stuff, but…"
"Better safe than sorry," he finishes the sentence. "If you had left me to do this on my own, I probably would have put those on all the cabinets, to be honest."
"Yeah, they actually stayed on back in San Francisco until we moved, but she hasn't tried to open anything at Catherine's, so I figure her fascination with Tupperware has probably worn off by now."
He watches for a moment as she attaches one end of the strap to the cabinet door and the other end to the one next to it, and then tries it to make sure neither of them open.
"When was that?"
"Hmm… she must have been six or seven months, I think," Sara says with a slight frown. "She was still crawling, one day while I was getting breakfast ready, she pulled pretty much the entire contents of my lower cabinets out onto the kitchen floor. So that was the day these went up. But this should be enough now."
"I also don't have much Tupperware."
"Even better." She straightens up. "Knives?"
Grissom gestures at the knife block on the counter. "Should I put them in a drawer instead?"
"Yeah, that's probably best. I don't think she'd climb up here to get them, but again, better safe than sorry."
The knives go in a drawer instead, which gets its own strap, which apparently concludes the kitchen since the stove already has child locks. They move back into the living room, where she just makes sure there's nothing he would be too torn up over losing within easy reach and that any lighters or matches are high enough, and then continue up the stairs.
"I only got one of these," Sara says when they've reached the landing, nodding at the security gate she grabbed downstairs. "You don't need to keep it closed when you're with her or anything, it's more for when she spends the night or takes a nap and you're downstairs. She's good with stairs – our apartment in San Francisco was a duplex – but I've almost fallen down them myself when I'm barely awake, you know?"
"I do know what that's like," he agrees, holding the gate in place while she fiddles with the mounting mechanism.
"There. And to open you just…" She demonstrates the opening mechanism. "Just make sure you don't trip over the bottom; I've stubbed plenty of toes that way."
"I'm sure I will at some point."
"Yeah, I think it's inevitable. OK, bathroom." Grissom leads her into first the main bathroom and then the master one, and she deems both fine since the medicine cabinets are too high for Shelby to reach. "You'll probably need one of those plastic stools so she can reach to wash her hands and brush her teeth, but they have those at any department store."
"Noted. What else?"
She frowns for a moment. "I guess windows? Do they have any locks or just a handle?"
"They do have a latch," he says, leaving the bathroom to check the one in the master bedroom. She follows him, watching as he opens the window.
"Yeah, that should be fine, she won't be able to get that open. So… that's it, I guess."
"Already?" he asks with a frown, checking his watch. "I know you said it wouldn't take long, but I did think it would be more than twenty minutes."
Sara laughs. "I guess I overshot pretty bad, yeah."
"Well, while I have you here, maybe you could help me with something else?"
"I'm going to need more details before I agree to that," she replies with a suspicious look.
Grissom frowns. "Seriously?"
"After everything you've asked me to help with over the years, absolutely."
A few of the favors he's asked her for at the lab flash through his mind, and he has to admit she's probably right to be cautious. "OK, point taken. But I promise, no bodily fluids or bugs or decomps are involved."
"Then OK."
"If Shelby's going to spend the night here at some point, she needs somewhere to sleep, so I wanted to clear out the office and turn it into a bedroom for her," he explains.
"When," Sara corrects him gently. "Look, this whole, taking things slow with you two, it's not that I don't trust you to take care of her, you know that, right? I just want her to get used to you, make sure she's comfortable."
"Oh." He has to swallow to continue. "I wasn't sure, but… thank you."
"You don't have to thank me for anything," she says with some exasperation, but immediately takes the edge of with a smile. "I know you're new to all of this, but trust me – even after just these few days, you are a better father than most guys with a lot more experience will ever be. So don't ever doubt that, got it?"
Her little monologue has him completely speechless, and all he can do is nod.
"Good," she continues, the smile turning into a smirk. "But I'm not helping you move that enormous desk; it has to weigh a ton."
Grissom laughs at her attempt to lighten the mood. "No, I was more thinking going through what I need to get, maybe see if I can get some stuff ordered."
"That, I can do."
So, he brings his laptop down to the kitchen table and they pore over it together, making a list of things for Shelby's new room as well as other necessities. By the time they leave, he's ordered a bed – which looks very much like the one he saw in the store window the other day – a dresser and matching bedside table, a toy chest, two bookcases – Sara tries to argue that the ones in the office now will be fine, but he insists – an adorable, children's size winged armchair, stepping stools for the downstairs bathroom and main upstairs one, and a couple of nightlights. They agree to let Shelby pick some of the decorations herself.
He can't wait until it all arrives, and his little girl will be able to spend the night in her new bedroom.