REALLY late Summer Reading Fic-a-thon entry...

Title: Social Butterfly
Author: Divine Joker
Prompt: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Anything Season 7

A/N: An *extremely* late entry for the Summer Reading Fic-a-thon, for which I am going to burn in hell eternally, unless you guys all forgive me. My only real excuse for not having it in at the end of *August* is that I hit a block the size of freakin’ Everest.

Still have it, oddly enough.

Anyway, I hope that this will earn my reprieve from the fiery pits of Hades.



[beginning]

For some reason, whenever he found himself watching her, he thought of some of the other people on the team as well. It wasn’t so much that he was thinking of them in the same way that he thought of her, but the young smile, the laughter and the energy that he found waning in himself were bright and vibrant in the rest of them as well.

There was so much youth in the four youngest members, and even Catherine had him beat by a few years. It made him feel more than old; it made him feel ancient.

He hated that. Hated that so much of his time was spent thinking of the fact that he wasn’t young, that he didn’t have the spunk and expectancy that they carried within themselves.

The only thing he could truly expect of himself from day to day was the growing number of creaks when he climbed out of bed in the morning. Thankfully, Sara said that she didn’t care; once he was warmed up, he was more than anyone else anyway.

Rolling his eyes at the memory, he slipped down the quiet hallway to his office, watching as both Nick and Sarah talked over evidence in one of the rooms, and glancing to the side when he heard Catherine laugh to something said in Warrick’s baritone.

Even Catherine, only a few years younger than him, settled into a place with the rest of the crew, holding conversations, spending time with them off the clock and still taking them under her wing when they needed it. He’d seen her with Greg, with Nick and Warrick and envied the ease with which her laughter and words could calm worries and fears.

If she was mother-hennish to them, that definitely made him the old rooster in the roost.

He definitely felt fatherly, more often than not, to the rest of them; be it mentor, confidante or sounding board, there was so much in the other five members of his teams that he always felt like he was missing out on. Nights where Greg and Nick went out for drinks or Catherine and Warrick invited everyone out for breakfast were moments that Sara often said he should grab by the horns.

He would have been the last to admit to anyone – especially Sara – that his age was holding him back from feeling like one of them. She knew his preferred social inclinations: a book to conversation any day of the week.

And in one of their more heated ‘discussions’, as he blithely labelled them, her retort to his introverted comments had brought about, “Books don’t have an opinion, Griss; neither does your left hand. So why am I here?”

It had stopped him short, preventing him from calling to her as she walked out the door to join Nick and Warrick for breakfast.

Age hadn’t stopped her from anything, and it definitely hadn’t kept her from him. After all, she was as much of an introvert as he was yet she was still going out in the mornings with the rest of them, laughing and eating and being… social.

It had left him wondering for the last couple of days if he was as stubborn as she made him out to be.

She told him, one day they would stop asking him to come with them and when that happened, he was forever on the outside.

Warrick stepped into the frame of his office door, a smile on his face and Catherine at his shoulder.

“Hey, Griss. You up for breakfast?”

Startled by the relevance of the question to his thoughts, it took him a moment to respond and Catherine was itching to go. “Last call?”

Panic took him another few seconds and before he could say yes, Catherine was tugging on Warrick’s arm, turning him out of the office.

“I’ve got a few forms to sign still.” He tried feebly, watching Warrick turn and view him with a jaundiced eye. “Where’re you going?”

Catherine seemed just as disbelieving and paused, still looking at him.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” His voice nearly shaking with honesty and fear.

“Uhm, yeah.” Warrick rattled off their normal gathering place and with a glance at Catherine, steered her down the hall.

Sara came in just as they were out of earshot. Moving swiftly to his desk, she kissed him and then smiled.

“See you at breakfast.”

Smiling to himself as she followed the other two out of the building, he shook his head.

That hadn’t been so bad.

[end]

There are no second acts in American lives. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald