Over-Stimulation

“Sara please I need you,” was the plaintive cry she heard over the phone.

Grinning at the panicked tone of his voice, “Okay, Grissom, I’ll come over,” she replied before she could stop herself.

“It’s just so much harder than I had expected,” the whining continued on the other end of the line.

“Grissom!” she fairly shouted down the phone, “I said yes. Now quit moaning like a baby.”

“Oh. Okay. Sorry,” he returned, a contrite tone to his voice. “When will you come?” he asked, a whine creeping back into is voice.

“I’ll be there within the hour, I need to pick up a few things,” Sara replied with frustration.

“What should I do until then?”

“You’re a big boy, Grissom. I’m sure you can think of something. Just don’t touch it until I get there. It sounds like you’ve made my job tough enough as it is.”

With a shake of her head, Sara hung up the phone. She gathered her bag and keys then headed out the door.

Grissom stood for several moments with the phone against his ear listening to the tone of the hung up call. Putting the receiver down, he began to anxiously pace his living room as he waited for Sara.

An hour… he sighed. Maybe I should just take care of this myself. It’s not like I’ve never done this kind of thing before. No. She said not to touch it. Anyway, this was her idea in the first place. Telling me I needed to loosen up a bit. I was quite content to take care of these things in my own way. So what if my way was a bit old fashioned? It’s worked for me this long… another deep sigh escaped his lips as he moved from one end of his townhouse to the other.

This is so frustrating. I need something to occupy me, to keep my hands busy. To distract me from the urge to play with it. Drink? No. Drinking and Sara can not be a good combination. Besides, I’ll need to have my wits about me.

I know. Coffee. By the time I’ve ground the beans, 4 at a time, and put them on to brew she should be here. Coffee stimulates, makes you more alert. Hmmm, maybe I don’t really need any more stimulation. He shrugged as he began grinding beans.

At least my pulse is back to 70, bloody thing has a mind of its own, like something else I can think of.

Sara will be here soon, and then she’ll take care of it.

Grissom grabbed a cup of coffee and sat down slowly on the lounge to drink it, never once considering that just maybe he was overreacting, slightly.

Sara chuckled to herself at a mental image she had of the frustrated Grissom as she left her house to walk towards her car.

For a brilliant man, he really has no idea about some things. I mean, he works in a state of the art Lab full of the best modern facilities yet in so many ways he is completely old fashioned in his outlook.

Shaking her head as she started the engine, Sara mused, You’d think something like this would come naturally to someone with his intelligence. Oh well, at least he’s trusting me enough these days to let me into his private life.

I still can’t believe what a baby he is being about all of this. I’m sure that if he took a deep breath, calmed down a little and thought about it rationally, it would be obvious to him what to do.

Okay, fifteen minutes since we got off the phone. I need to duck into the chemist, that shouldn’t take more than five minutes. I hate it when I’m unprepared; typical he would pick today to start this, oh well, can’t be helped now. Then another twenty to his place, I’m sure he can hold it together until then.

I can just imagine him pacing around, taking everything in him not to touch it. Grissom certainly isn’t one to easily give up on something. I had no idea when I first mentioned it that it would cause him this many problems. I just wanted to help him loosen up a bit. The guy carried around so much tension from the job, I thought this would be a good release for him and for a man with his reluctance at social interactions something he can do in private.

Sara shook her head as she exited her car, determined for this detour to take as little time as possible.

Okay that was fun, she thought as she left the shopping centre car park, why do you always get odd looks when you buy just the one thing. I’m going to buy a bunch of things I don’t want so I can disguise the real reason I was in there. It’s a chemist for goodness sake. I got the product off the shelf and why do they insist on having young men at the registers when it’s clear they are incapable of handling a woman purchasing such ‘personal’ items -like they’d ever offer to buy them for you.

Okay concentrate Sidle, it’s been a while since you’ve been here. Okay, that’s it, next right and we’re here.

Sara slammed her car into park and wasted no time exiting her car. Running up the path to Grissom’s townhouse, she knocked impatiently at the door.

Grissom was sitting on his lounge, staring into the now cool dregs of his coffee as if he’d find all the answers to all the questions of the universe in the murky darkness.

A loud rapping at the door roused him from his musings and he leapt quickly from his sitting position, dousing himself with coffee in the process.

Cursing, he slammed the coffee cup on the table, wincing as he heard the loud crack, fearing he’d cracked the surface. Shaking his hands of the brown liquid, he cursed as he headed towards his door and the increasing loudness of the knocks.

Opening the door, he nearly had his ear taken off as Sara leapt across the threshold, shoving him out of the way and entering the house.

“Bathroom,” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Down the hall second door,” Grissom replied limply as he reached up to rub his throbbing ear.

“Thanks for coming by,” he pouted as she disappeared down the hall.

Shaking himself from the shock of Sara’s appearance, Grissom collected his coffee cup and took it to the kitchen where he rinsed his sticky hands. Reaching for two clean cups, he poured them both a cup of coffee, adding milk to his and leaving Sara’s black for her to administer to. You never knew how she would take her coffee form one mood to the next. Black when she was tired, with milk at meals…

“Hey, thanks,” Sara's voice broke through his thoughts as she reached around him for her coffee, adding a dribble of milk she took a sip and then motioned to Grissom that she was ready to get started.

“Sorry about my entrance,” she apologised.

“Is everything okay,” he queried, a look of genuine concern on his face.

“Yeah, it’s nothing. I was a little early and unprepared. I hate it when I’m early.”

“But you’re not early, you said within the hour…” Sara winked at him and, “Oh, umm. Oh,” he stammered and blushed as he realised what she meant.

“It won’t get in the way of this will it?” he asked with concern as he gestured toward the offending object.

"I’m sure we’ll find a way to work around it,” she deadpanned back to him.

“Okay, let’s see exactly how much damage you’ve done.”

Leaning down to get a closer look, Sara couldn’t help but chuckle when she saw exactly what was wrong.

With a few deft movements, Sara had everything working as it should and a very embarrassed looking Grissom at her side.

“All you needed to do was click ‘I accept’ to the licensing agreement.”

“But I didn’t see a button.”

“That’s because you had the window too far down the screen, you just had to scroll down,” she laughed. “Honestly Grissom, you use computers everyday at work and you couldn’t even install a messaging programme on your lap top?”

Looking over and seeing the expression on his face, Sara immediately relented.

“Hey, we all have our flaws, at least yours came with an easy fix…now what do you want as your user name?”

“What? There’s more…” Grissom exclaimed and they both burst into laughter.