Title: Appearances Author: Amy aka Lady Julieanne Pairing: C/S Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own the rights to the show or the characters. I am still coming to terms with this. Feedback: Please? Pretty Please? C'mon I'm begging here... js1n2001@y... Distribution/Archiving: Just ask. I like to know where my work goes. Summary: A string of strange murders causes the whole night shift to pull extra shifts to try to catch the killer. A/N: This one is slow going, but that's only because my brain is working on a couple more stories as well. It will all wrap up in a nice neat package, I promise. We're getting there... ************************************************************************* Sara remains in her office after Catherine leaves, silently trying to pull herself together. Never before had she felt such a strong emotional pull toward another person. Never before had she wanted someone so badly. Two days apart and she was ready to ravage Catherine on sight. Sara realized she was definitely going to have to learn better control. If it wasn’t for her pager, she would have taken Catherine right there. As if on cue, her pager beeped at her again. She collected her thoughts and headed off towards Grissom’s office. Just inside Grissom’s office, Catherine too is waiting. Sara double-checked the number on her pager, and sure enough, it was Grissom’s office phone number. But where was he? Sara turned to Catherine to ask when she saw Grissom’s head pop up from behind his desk. “Sorry ladies. I lost my black widow. You haven’t seen her have you?” Grissom asked in complete seriousness. Sara was now giggling. Who would have thought Grissom would lose a spider? He’s the bug man. Thoughts like these made Sara giggle just a little more as Catherine stood next to her with a look of shock on her face. “You didn’t call us in her to help you look for a spider did you?” Catherine questioned with mock indignation. “Because I think our talents are best used elsewhere.” Sara smiled at the thought of Catherine’s many talents. She couldn’t seem to get sex off of her brain and was just trying to focus her energy on not letting it show outwardly too much. Sara had had months of practice in acting as if her attraction to Catherine didn’t exist and now she was trying her best to remember how she did it. “Of course not, but watch your step please. I actually paged you to tell you to get to Cesar’s. Victim number four was found a little over an hour ago. Warrick and Nick are on their way the Excalibur with number five.” Grissom ducked back under his desk, and stood up a second later triumphant. His black widow was safely encased in his coffee cup. The only thing Sara could think was ‘Eww’. “Okay.” Sara said to Grissom. She turned to Catherine, “But only if I get to drive.” Catherine smiled and walked out of Grissom’s office with Sara. “Oh no. I want to make it to Cesar’s alive. I drive.” Sara caved easily. She agreed to let Catherine drive, but diverted the two of them to Greg’s lab before they left. “Greg?” Sara questioned, trying to get his attention from the magazine he had his nose buried in. She tried again when he didn’t respond. “Greg?” Greg’s eyes peered over the top of the magazine and he mumbled, “I’m not talking to you.” Sara couldn’t believe he was still acting like a child. After all, she had delivered her end of the deal. Just because it didn’t help him figure it out was not her problem. “Aw. C’mon Greg. I’m going to need help tonight. We’ve got two more cases and we’re going to need you.” Sara was playing on Greg’s need to feel important around the lab. Usually this trick worked. If he couldn’t be out in the field with the team, he needed to know he was still important. “Nope. Not going to work. I’m still mad at you.” Greg moped. “Greg, c’mon. We’ve got to get going on this. Don’t be mad at Sara.” Catherine intervened on Sara’s behalf. “But I want to be mad at her. She won’t tell me who the mystery man is that is sending her flowers. I thought we were good friends.” “Okay. Tell you what. Stop being mad at Sara, do the work that comes in on priority, and I’ll tell you who the mystery man is.” Catherine tried to deal with Greg. “You know? Sara how does she know?” Greg was apparently done being mad at Sara, as he had now dropped his magazine and was staring intently at Sara. “Well, I had to tell someone,” Sara told him. “Besides, I told her days ago, so it’s not like I told her to make you jealous or anything. Forgive me?” Sara pleaded. She knew that Greg would forgive her. But now she had to worry about what Catherine was going to tell him. They still hadn’t talked about telling the team yet. “You know I do,” Greg said with a big grin. “Now, if you expect me to run tests, you’d better get your scene processed. And Catherine, I’m going to hold you to that deal. I fully expect to know the source of those flowers when I’m finished working.” Sara and Catherine headed out of the lab and towards the parking lot. Sara was still a little in shock that Catherine had so easily agreed to tell Greg that it was her who had sent the flowers. Catherine slid into the driver’s seat of the Tahoe and Sara settled herself in the passenger seat. “Are you really going to tell Greg?” Sara asked as they pulled away from the lab. “Of course. I mean, I did make a deal. Besides,” Catherine reached over and grabbed Sara’s hand, “If you keep trying to make out with me at work, they’re bound to find out someday.” Catherine grinned widely at Sara. “Hey now. That was you who came into my office today. I can’t help it that you’re irresistible.” Sara scoots closer to Catherine, thankful that the Tahoe has lots of interior space. “That’s not fair. All I wanted to know was if you got the flowers. I figured you’d call and be irate or something, but I hadn’t heard from you all day.” Catherine finds Sara’s closeness to her distracting. Sara inches closer and closer. She only stops moving when she is close enough to practically be on top of Catherine. Sara says a small prayer for big trucks and bench seats. Without them she would still be on her own side of the truck. “Right.” Sara slips her hand onto Catherine’s thigh. “Have I thanked you for the flowers?” Sara’s fingers traced small circles up Catherine’s thigh. Catherine gripped the steering wheel hard, she could barely focus with the distraction Sara’s hand was causing. “Yes, you did. As a matter of fact, I remember a rather heated thank you involving your tongue in my mouth.” Catherine was trying to focus her attention on anything other than the simmering heat between her legs. Sara’s thumb reaches the apex of Catherine’s thigh and brushes lightly against the heat underneath the fabric. Catherine nearly jumps out of her seat and quickly grabs hold of Sara’s wandering hand. “Sara, please. I’m trying to drive here. Later.” The death grip that Catherine has on her errant hand shows Sara that Catherine is completely serious, but Sara can hear from the tone of her voice that her actions are having the desired effect. “See. Irresistible. I can’t even be left alone with you. But I promise to behave, for now.” Sara flashes a gap-toothed grin at Catherine and literally moments later they pull up in front of Cesar’s Palace. Sara, having established a pattern with these crime scenes, processes the room while Catherine does the FI’s. Sara is secretly happy that she has already run two similar scenes because it means that even though Catherine out-ranks her, Catherine will let her run the scene and she can blissfully avoid the interviews. Catherine was more than willing to do the interviews. She knew that she could have made Sara do the interviews, and knowing how much Sara hated them she was really tempted to punish Sara for her behavior in the Tahoe. But then that would have meant that Catherine was basically alone with her thoughts. Sharing a room with a dead body isn’t always conducive to conversation. And being alone with the thoughts running through her head, which involved Sara and nakedness, would definitely have distracted her enough that running the scene would have taken way too much time. Catherine returns just more than two hours later, having interviewed everyone she could think of who would have come in contact with the room. She was not surprised to learn that no one remembered anything, or saw anything unusual. Most cases were built and prosecuted on evidence because the human memory is easily influenced and often faulty. As Grissom was found of saying ‘the evidence never lies’ and as irritating as that little witticism had become over the years, Catherine knew it was true. When they finally nailed this guy to the wall, they would have all the evidence they needed to permanently remove him from society. Sara was finishing up as well. The coroner had taken away the body nearly a half-hour ago, and she was packing things up when Catherine walked to the door. “All set?” Catherine asked leaning on the door frame. “Sure you don’t want to stay? Maybe grab a room?” Sara’s mind was running on one-track tonight, and she enjoyed watching Catherine blush at the thought. “Kidding. I was kidding. Yeah, let’s get out of here. I have about enough of these scenes as I can take.” “Few too many, huh?” Catherine asked as she helped Sara finish putting the equipment away. “One is too many. This is the third that I’ve processed. I hope we get this guy soon. Evidence looks pretty good for this one. Couple of prints, more epthelials, not much to go on, but at least it’s solid.” Sara and Catherine had made their way down to the Tahoe. “Catherine?” Sara asked as they loaded the back of the Tahoe with evidence and equipment. “Yeah?” “Can I have the keys? I’d like to drive back. I promise I’ll be good.” Sara smiled at Catherine. “Oh no you don’t. We talked about this remember? Something about you driving to fast. Remember that?” Catherine’s tone was serious, but Sara could see the laughter in her eyes. “Okay. If you insist.” Sara said heading for the passenger side of the Tahoe. “But I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to keep my hands to myself.” The smile on her face only got bigger as she watched Catherine blush. “Well, if that’s the case then maybe you’d better drive.” Catherine tossed the keys at Sara over the hood of the truck. “Let’s go.” The pair returned to the lab to find Nick and Warrick already turning evidence over to Greg. Catherine and Warrick immediately started talking about the field interviews to see what they had in common. Sara and Nick both headed towards another lab to help with fiber analysis and hopefully get this going somewhere. With the two of them working together, entering the information in the CSI database took less than half the time it did normally. “Sara?” Nick queried as he peered through the microscope in front of him. “Yeah Nick?” Sara was across the room patiently waiting for the computer to finish printing its comparisons on the fibers. She was hoping that the computer would be able to come up with something, anything to help them close this. So far the only matches they got on the fibers were form the previous victims. Which is all well and good, but it doesn’t help explain where the fibers originated. “What did you do to Greg to get him to work? Grissom tells me he was all business yesterday, and today he seems the same. He’s not kidding around, and he’s virtually running around the lab to give people the reports they were asking for. Grissom’s says it’s you we have to thank. So fess up. What’s the trick?” Sara pondered even responding to the question. Sara had always been so lost in her own world that she never really noticed how much her coworkers seemed to gossip. To her, it didn’t matter what she had to do to get Greg to work, just that it got done. But now everyone seemed to want to know. And if she told them, it only invited talk of her personal life, which was something she definitely wasn’t comfortable with. She waited until Nick looked up from his microscope. “Actually all I did was make a deal. Traded information, you know.” She was hoping that Nick wouldn’t take it any further, but was not too surprised when he questioned further. “So what did you trade? You didn’t agree to go out with him did you? He’s been crushing on you since you got here.” Nick actually looked worried that Sara may have agreed to a date with Greg. Sara smiled at Nick. “No. Definitely not that. Information only.” Sara was hoping not to have to elaborate and was actually pleased when the computer beeped at her indicating the comparisons were finished. Sara grabbed the report and skimmed over everything she already knew. Almost hidden at the bottom was a glaring oversight that Sara wondered how she had missed in the previous printouts. **************************************************************** I hereby demand feedback. I tried asking nicely. I even tried begging. Now I demand. :)