Disclaimer: I don't own CSI. Or tacky crime dramas. Or Bachelor Chow. Or the Superbowl. Or the 3 stooges. Or Debbie Does Dallas, Amistad, and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Or any other pop culture reference. It's so sad, I keep having to change this with all the things who's copyrights I'm infringing upon…Well they can just bite the weenie.

A/N: This chapter is so much longer than the others it's almost ridiculous. And it also has long stretches without dialogue! Description! W00t! I'm maturing as an artiste! Such bullshit.

OH, and I apologize for all those who actually use purple condoms. I think I've just ruined them for like…everyone. Except people with Barney kinks.

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Grissom had a bizarre fight with his body outside of Sara's apartment. He suddenly felt awkward and out of place, and it seemed impossible to him that anything he could do would alleviate his fears. He looked down at the flowers he'd purchased for Sara in scorn. The whole situation seemed so impossibly cliché. In a spur of the moment decision, Grissom tossed the flowers into Sara's neighbor's doorway, smoothed his hair, and knocked on her door.

Actually, he didn't actually knock on the door, his knuckles brushed against the door as it swung inward.

"Don't throw those flowers away!" Sara pleaded, as she stepped out of her apartment.

"How long have you been watching me exactly?" Grissom queried with a furious blush.

"About fifteen minutes, my favorite part was where you were talking to yourself."

Grissom shuffled his feet and pretended to be keenly interested in the wall as Sara picked up the flowers, making sure nothing was broken or squished.

"You look nice," Sara smiled, turning her attention towards Grissom who was still perusing the wall.

Grissom looked at her like she was talking to someone else. He was wearing the same suit he used for all his court appearances, accessorized with a new tie. A horrible tie, which to Sara was begging to be put out of its misery. Frankly, she'd bagged more attractive vomit.

"Nice tie," Sara lied, as she delicately fingered it.

"You look really pretty," Grissom offered as means of compliment.

In fact, Grissom was currently trying to regain his tenuous grasp on reality as he admired Sara in her simple, but elegant red evening gown.

"You're drooling just a little bit."

Grissom wiped his mouth.

"That was a joke," Sara snorted, "So, where are we going again?"

"I have reservations, to this restaurant, which sells food."

"Wow, a restaurant with food! I'm so spoiled. I feel so special," Sara grinned.

"It's Italian."

"The restaurant or the food?"

"Both actually, here do you have to get anything from your apartment?"

"Well, um…yes actually. The flowers distracted me; I had to save them from their fate to be squished by the crazy lady in 315."

Grissom followed Sara into her apartment, awkwardly leaning against her kitchen island as she scooped up her purse.

When she'd collected these items, Grissom offered her his arm playfully, "M'lady."

Sara scoffed and shook her head, but Grissom noticed distinctly that she didn't refuse to lock her arm in his.

"So, which Italian restaurant is this?" she asked as she got in the Tahoe.

"The one with the gondolas."

"That's a highly disturbing comment," Sara mumbled, "And besides, this is Vegas that doesn't narrow it down."

Grissom just shrugged his shoulders non-commitally, and in an effort to not ruin the surprise, changed the subject as per his specialty, "So, tell me about the crazy lady in 315."

"Oh, well. You know the type, to many cats, to little litter boxes, occasionally she hits you with her cane and accuses you of stealing the paper that she doesn't even subscribe to. I used to worry I'd turn into her one day."

Grissom frowned, "Don't talk like that Sara. Cats are horrible creatures."

Sara chuckled lightly, "Don't worry Grissom, hopefully you'll save me from the fate of Cat Lady. I don't foresee any Pussy McDarling's or Mr. Whisker's in my future. Unless we both go crazy…"

Grissom chuckled, and the conversation lapsed into silence as Grissom daydreamed lightly about a future with Sara. Of course he nearly rear-ended a Mazda in the process, but really, those cars are just expensive phallic symbols.

They finally got into the restaurant, a fancy high-priced one which Sara would've never dreamt of going to. She was honestly impressed that Grissom had put forth the effort. From the way Catherine was talking she'd assumed they'd be dining at a Dairy Queen.

Grissom walked up to the front desk where an over-hassled under-qualified young woman was huffily taking reservations and attempting to seat people. She flashed Grissom a look of disdain, quickly rushed someone off the phone, and then finally focused her attention on the pair as though they were inconveniencing her somehow.

"We only take people with reservations," she huffed, displaying a row of sharp teeth in something so far removed from a smile that Sara felt suddenly dirtied.

"Good thing we have reservations then." Grissom replied in his most patient tone.

Sara was always amazed by Grissom's unending pool of patience. She frankly was about ten seconds away from beating this woman to death with her high heels, but blood spatter would ruin them, and they were really nice.

"Name?" the women asked callously.

"Grissom."

"Um…lessee…I'm not seeing it."

"That's impossible," Grissom replied calmly.

The women clicked a few keys of her computer and huffed, "Oh, here it is…right time…wrong day."

"What?" Grissom snorted all calm collectiveness evaporating.

"Yeah, today's the 19th. Not the 20th."

Grissom became very white and muttered to himself, "Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit"

"Fils de put," Sara interjected.

"What?"

"I'm giving more culture to your profanities. It means 'son of a bitch' in French."

"Sara this isn't funny. I screwed up worse then the time I ordered all those business cards over the internet and I mispelt my own name. 500 cards for a Gil Grissmo."

Sara chomped down on her lower lip in an effort to suppress a fit of nerve-induced giggling, and took a deep calm relaxing breath.

"Hey, no reservations, then get the heck out of my restaurant," the snippy women interjected.

Sara's deep calm relaxing breath was shot to hell, "Listen Missy, you're in the service industry, and that means you serve, and it wouldn't kill you to be polite, and-"

Before Sara had a chance to choke the women, Grissom intervened, "Uh, cancel my reservation for tomorrow, and thank you for your time."

Grissom practically dragged Sara back to the car. He then made a big show of fiddling with his keys.

"I'm sorry," Grissom mumbled to his car door, "Listen, I'm going to salvage the night, it's very important to me that everything be very special. Like we could go to the movies."

"Dressed like this?" Sara asked dubiously, "besides, I hate theatres. People spill candy, vomit, and ejaculate in them. You crawl on the floor of a movie theatre and you'll be infected, sugar-coated, and impregnated all at once."

"But you went to movies with Hank," Grissom whined childishly.

"I also fucked Hank. Wanna go do that?"

Grissom dropped his keys and had to go digging around the gravel of the parking lot for them.

Sara succumbed to her fit of giggles.

"I hate giggling women. It's like the shrill cry of evil," Grissom grumbled after successfully recovering his keys.

"Just keep telling yourself that," Sara replied cheekily, "You know you love me."

Grissom rolled his eyes, and jammed his keys into his car door with perhaps a little too much force. It was only after they had both seated themselves in the car when they begin to further discuss they're plans for tonight.

"Ok," Grissom grumbled, "Since I screwed this up, I should fix it."

"Seems fair enough," Sara agreed.

Grissom glared at her, "You're supposed to say something comforting like, 'This isn't your fault, Gil. It's all going to be okay. Anything I do with you always turns out great.'"

"Yeah, but a third of that would be a lie, and the other 2/3's would be massive hyperbole."

"Fine, but I propose that we go to my townhouse for a nice supper. I can cook, and then we can watch a movie and…we'll see where things lead."

"Sounds lovely," Sara agreed.

When they got to Grissom's apartment, Sara relaxed on his horribly uncomfortable couch as Grissom flew into a panic in the kitchen. Sara was watching some tacky crime drama on television, so she didn't get a chance to notice Grissom's desperation.

Upon ransacking his kitchen, Grissom was faced with a bleak realization. He ate like a man, and he hadn't been to the grocery store in over a month. He also seemed to have 10 pounds of ground beef in his freezer, which did nothing to help his predicament. Feeding Sara meat would be like giving ski's to a legless man.

If that wasn't bad enough, he had realized that he was being a horrible host.

"Hey, Sara?" he asked, trying to keep his voice even, "Would you like a drink?"

"Yeah, do you have beer?"

"Uhhh…" Grissom said, and he begin digging through his refrigerator, finally he found what he was looking for; a bottle of beer who's commemorative label indicated that it had been made for the 1986 Superbowl.

He walked out from the kitchen and handed Sara the beer, "Here you go. I'll just warn you that this has been in my refrigerator for a long time, right next to dead bugs, and something I believe is either urine or lemonade…oh and it's quite possibly as old as Greg."

Sara took the beer carefully, "I'm feeling adventurous."

"Good."

"Um, Grissom, I don't mean to be rude but…opener?"

Grissom smacked himself on the forehead in a comically Three Stooges move that made Sara giggle, and he went back to dig through his kitchen cabinets and drawers.

He came back with an opener which said 'Antigua' in bright colors, and handed it to Sara who opened her beer and handed it back to him.

"So, you've been to Antigua?" she asked.

"No."

"Oh, but you have the opener…"

"I don't know where this came from…I mean other than obviously it originates from Antigua…"

"Actually, it says 'Made in China', but I get the picture. I have mouse ears that say 'Steve' at home, and I've never been to Disney. Or Steve for that matter."

"You lived in California all those years, and you never went to Disney?"

Sara shrugged, "It never seemed that important, I mean honestly, 'Woo multi-ethnic singing robots! Hoorah, flying elephants!' I'm not a big amusement park person."

Grissom's face dropped, "But roller coasters!"

"I get motion sickness."

Grissom shook his head in horror as he scurried back to the kitchen in a delightfully domestic manner and began digging around his cupboards to try to scrounge up something edible. He finally settled on leftover Chinese noodles, a can of baked beans, and granola bars. He heated them all up (except for the Granola bars), and turned to set the table.

"That…smells interesting," Sara said, sneaking up behind him and making him start.

"Uh, yeah I call it…Food!"

"What's in it?"

"Beans and noodles and granola bars."

Sara scrunched up her nose, but smiled pleasantly, "Sounds good," she lied, with so much sugary cheer in her voice that all the diabetics in Clark County went into comas.

Grissom returned to his cupboards and struggled to find something to improve the atmosphere. He knew he had a candle somewhere. Unfortunately, to many hot Vegas summers had reduced his candle to a deformed ball of wax with an almost comically drooping wick. He placed it on the center of the table and then fumbled around to find something to light it with.

Slightly uneasy about watching Grissom bumbling around for another fifteen minutes, Sara whipped out a cigarette lighter and lit the wax ball.

"Wow, what else do you have in there?" Grissom asked, peering as Sara replaced the lighter into her purse.

"One lighter, a tube of lip gloss, a tin of mints, fingerprint powder, tape, stamps, some unknown vial of some unknown liquid…I think it might be perfume…maybe…and a bunch of other stuff. Oh wow, I think I found Greg's brain in here…I've been wondering where he left it."

Grissom appeared impressed as he trotted off to the kitchen. He returned to serve his bizarre configuration of food to Sara and then trotted off again. This time he returned and placed a large fake Poinsettia in the middle of the table.

"It's a centerpiece," Grissom explained.

"It's a Christmas ornament," Sara countered.

"It adds atmosphere."

"It's silk!"

Grissom rolled his eyes and dug into his Bachelor Chow. Sara did the same and tried not to vomit.

"This is horrible," Sara finally said, through a full mouth of half-chewed beans and noodles and granola.

Grissom spat into his napkin, and then nodded, "I was just thinking the same."

"You know, I'm not really that hungry, and besides, can't we like…order pizza?"

Grissom squirmed, "Sara, I was just trying to make a perfect date. Pizza isn't perfect."

"Says who?"

"Says the International Confederation of Perfection."

Sara rolled her eyes, vision of Catherine's 'I told you so!' dancing in her head.

"Listen, if you're not that hungry, how about we skip to the movie part of dinner and a movie?"

"Wonderful," Sara nodded.

Grissom quickly disposed of his Bachelor Chow down the garbage disposer. And returned to where Sara was sitting in front of his TV.

"Alright, I got this movie grab bag at this used bookstore. So um, let's open it up and see what's in it?"

Sara nodded warily, "You just buy things without knowing what they are?"

"Yeah? Why? It was only a dollar."

Sara rolled her eyes and tore open the bag, which contained the classics; Debbie Does Dallas, Amistad, and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

"Wow, sex, slavery, and stoners. Awesome value there, Grissom."

Grissom gritted his teeth together, "How about music, I don't think I can screw that up…"

Sara suspected that he probably could, but she allowed him to walk over and turn on his CD player. The CD promptly began to skip.

Debbie Does Dallas met its untimely end as it smashed into the wall, by way of the Grissom Express. Poor Debbie, Dallas knew you well (some would say too well).

"Violence is never the answer," Sara admonished lightly, picking up the sad VHS remains of Debbie and her Dallas adventures.

Grissom shook his head sadly, "That CD was working perfectly yesterday, and I haven't even removed it from the stereo. How does something get scratched when it hasn't even been touched?"

"It's obvious that God hates you."

"Not helping," Grissom growled.

Sara just giggled, "A wise man once said, 'The best intentions are often frought with disappointments.'"

"Whoever said that didn't know the last thing about love."

"No shit. You said that."

"Oh…you really do tape everything I say don't you?"

"Nope, photographic memory. You're ATM pin number is 1635784."

"That's so creepy. I'm going to have to change it now."

"Your email password is dh9376. You might want to change that too."

Grissom eyed Sara warily and she shrugged.

"All I need to do is see something once, and I'll remember it. If it makes you feel better I know Warrick's credit card number, and Greg's Social Security number."

"That doesn't make me feel better. It makes me feel ill-at ease. I also pray to God you don't team up with a terrorist organization to use your Bionic Brain for badness."

"Whatever. Back to the moral of my story. The moral is; you can't always get what you want, but you can always get crabs."

"That's the moral?"

"Kinda. It's also this really nice t-shirt you can buy at Joe's Crab Shack though. The point really is that no matter what I do, as long as I do it with you, it shall be perfect."

"But you said it wouldn't be back at the restaurant."

"Yeah, I was just being annoying. Besides you were amusingly flustered. Now you're just sad, and I can't bear to see you all mopey. It makes my stomach go 'Womp'."

"'Womp'?"

"Yeah, it's an unhappy gurgle kind of thing…never mind."

They both lapsed into an awkward silence. Grissom suddenly realized how moist his palms were and decided to wipe them on his pants in a frantic manner.

"Do you have a knife?" Sara asked.

"Yeah, why?"

"I was just going to cut the sexual tension."

"That's the worst line ever."

"Yeah, it is pretty bad. Right up there with, 'is that a lightsaber in your pocket, or is the force with you?'"

"My palms are moist."

"You know what? I don't really care. We came here tonight to have sex didn't we."

"Well…pretty much yes. We've done all the other stuff, the wine and the dine, and the…whatever the hell that place with the muskrats was."

"Right, so we're two grown mature adults about to have consensual sex. Accept that neither of us are doing anything, and you're worried about your hands being sweaty."

"Palms specifically."

"Whatever. The point is we're acting like teenagers."

"Actually, this is so much better than what I did as a teenager. I'm actually talking to you, and I haven't vomited yet."

"Fantastic. Do you have a problem with purple condoms?"

"Condoms?"

"Yeah, do I have to explain the functions of condoms? Because that gets into one of those awkward conversations, like Your Body, Yourself."

"No, I just naturally assumed you were on the pill."

"Don't make me hit you."

Grissom ducked, "Right. Condoms.'

"All I have are purple condoms. There was a bit of a mix-up in the condom buying department."

"Purple? I have moral objections to purple condoms."

"How can you have moral objections to purple condoms? Did they crucify Jesus when I wasn't looking?"

"It'll make me feel like Barney."

"The dinosaur? How do you even know who that is?"

"Lindsay. There's Barney, Babybop, and BJ."

"Wow, BJ. What an unfortunately named dinosaur. I'm sure his ass got slapped by many a towel at Dinosaur High School."

"We're totally avoiding the subject," Grissom acknowledged.

Somehow in the time between the original condom comment and Grissom's words, they'd moved infinitely closer together, so that they were almost touching. Some impulsive desire seized him and he brushed his fingertips against the side of Sara's face. Sara merely lifted her eyes towards him and without another word, their lips came together.

Grissom shrugged out of his jacket, and Sara immediately began unbuttoning his shirt without even really thinking about it. He was impulsively, almost instinctively moving them towards his bedroom, where they practically tripped over his bed.

Sara disengaged from Grissom's lips quickly enough to ask, "Condom?"

"Oh right, condom. I think I have a condom. Maybe."

Grissom got up, went to his bathroom and dug around in there a little.

"Um…no condom."

"Wait. No condom as in…there are none?"

"Well, sort of. No condom as in, they expired two years ago."

"That's so sad Grissom. I may be a sad, lonely, work-aholic, but my condoms don't expire if I can help it, damnit!"

"Not helping! Besides what do you suggest?"

"Well. Purple condom."

"No…not the purple condom!"

"What other choice do you have? It's all down to this: Sex or Condom Colors. The eternal questions of life. I'm going to bet you don't have enough self-control and that we're going to end up using a purple condom."

"Oh Sara, that's where you're wrong. I have an endless amount of self-control. I've known you for what? Seven or so years? And we haven't had sex yet! I am a man who's middle name is self control."

Sara got up off the bed, "I thought it was Arthur. Wait, was that a threat?"

"No, I was just proving a point. Give me the damn purple condom."

CLIFFHANGER! Dum, dum, duuuuuum. I thought this was going to be the last chapter…but it might not be. Yeah, I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet. To RST or not to RST. Review. Please.