Disclaimer: All characters belong to CSI and are not mine - I'm just borrowing them. I promise they will be cared for and fed and watered and returned in pristine condition (although only when Jorja Fox signs back up...) Grissom and Sara conversation comes directly from season 5 epi 'Snakes' and isn't mine. I would have never been brave enough to be so damn frustrating!!
Author Note - I'm still so new to CSI, I only started watching properly this year and I'm completely hooked. I'm currently watching seasons 8 and 5 at the same time on dvd and UK TV and this episode of Snakes... just one tiny scene but its so powerful and so frustrating that I wanted to scream at my TV!!
Thank you to grissomsararomance for clips from all the seasons which have been such a pleasure to watch, and kilohoku for the transcript of Snakes.
Snakes bite.
By Rianne
She could do this. She knew she could.
She stared pensively at his open doorway, her angle shielding him from view.
This next conversation was guaranteed to be one of the most awkward in recent history - she knew that going in - she knew that. So no surprises there.
Get it out in the open. Deliver the bad news with a smile. Works for lawyers all the time!
Light, friendly, like they used to be. Force it, she thought. It isn't hard. Think back to the first days in Vegas.
Unbidden that flutter she had felt as she had stood her ground and battled her wits with a group of strangers, who for the first time in years had matched her intellect, began to curve in her belly. It wasn't quite a nervous feeling, it was a sensation that had felt different, had felt like something was on the verge, was just about to start and drag her breathlessly with it. It had been close to exhilarating and being the newbie in the group, being placed with the responsibility of investigating the circumstances of CSI Hollie Gribb's death had forced her to work harder, challenged her to improve, grow, prove herself. 'Two smart women are better than one,' she'd told Catherine and she'd been right.
Yet Grissom.
Even the advantage of those San Francisco conference days, and the countless emails and articles passed between them in the following months had seemed like a single wave in the stormy ocean by the time she had spent little more than a week in Vegas.
Grissom.
If she had been asked back then she would have said that they were friends. Yet time instead seemed to have only shown her that this man was... he was...
What she knew about him then compared to now seemed...
And yet she had come to Vegas for him.
She huffed a breath, eyes flicking up in the direction of the print lab where she could see the back of Warrick's head and the sunken curve of his broad shoulders as he bent to study something hidden by the frame of glass dividing them.
Blinking she realised that she had forgotten that she was standing in the hall. Just standing. Her mind drifting as she worked out how to begin. Attempted to plan the unplanable...a conversation with Gilbert Grissom.
Coming to Vegas for Grissom. She wondered if she had ever told him that? She had told him so many other things, talked about so many things openly, asked the right questions, the important questions directly, only to have them ignored, rebuffed or...
"I don't know what to do about this.' He'd said, his voice lower than usual, private.
The way he had waved the small card in his hand, had created a cold waft in the air between them, a draft which had been as cool to her skin as his words ice crushed her last hopeful spark.
He didn't mean to hurt her, she knew that. She knew that. Or was she making excuses again.
She did that, she knew she did. She openly scorned women who did that, and yet when it came to Grissom she understood that impulse in a way that she never had before.
It had been the first thing her PEAP therapist had made her talk about. Her rationalisations.
She watched Nick, Warrick and Catherine stumble through their love lives, seeming to her to be so much more... so much more experienced with that side of life, she knew she had slacked in that area in recent years. Jealousy? No her reaction to their stories, their companionable teasing of one another was not quite jealousy. If asked she too could come up with several very interesting, somewhat risky and definitely thrilling stories of past exploits, yet when it came to the last few years she had begun to feel that experiences like that had no emotional weight to them, felt a little like she had reverted back into the awkward teenager she sometimes felt inside. Continuing with the kinds of relationships she had in the past held no real temptation for her now. They seemed like empty exercises, albeit mixed with a certain pleasure she desperately missed.
She wanted more.
It made her wonder if her friends faked their enthusiasm for dating, and not settling down. For all the good that it seemed to do them. Yet Catherine had at least had the relationship know how to deduce that Hank hadn't been as open and honest as she had wanted to believe he was. Catherine had known from the moment she saw the seating chart for the night that the old lady had driven her car into Hank's restaurant of choice that fated evening. She had seen the slight change in her friends behaviour and chosen to ignore it. Had defended him, said the woman must just be a friend, hearing the empty way her words sounded and had chosen to ignore it. She had chosen to ignore his less than subtle attempts to avoid her affectionate caresses of concern at the hospital, had chosen to ignore right up until she had been forced into seeing the truth by the photograph of Hank grinning adoringly with his girlfriend on some beach somewhere.
Naive.
Smart Sara Sidle. CSI who prided herself on never letting any details slip her by had... had...
Yet all the time she had heard Gil Grissom in her mind, his telling her to find herself an outlet outside of the office, of crime work and the lab.
She'd failed. She had wanted to do anything to forget that.
Yet it taunted her.
His suggestion had spelt it out for her.
He didn't want her.
Not in the way that his flirting, teasing smiles, and verbal sparring had made her wonder if he did.
He hadn't gone as far as to say that she needed to get a life, a boyfriend, laid. No he had been more subtle than that, yet it had been there. The message underlying his words had been crystal clear. She knew it had been considered long and hard before he had opened his mouth to speak to her about it. He was careful with his words. She knew him that well at least.
She had been so desperate to prove that she could do that, that she could easily have a relationship if she wanted one. Even if it was with someone she wasn't even sure she really liked all that much.
Looking back that made her sad in a way she would struggle to describe to anyone in words, not that words ever came easy to her. Not when it came to admitting to vulnerablity.
Had she really been that lonely?
Yes.
Yet there was no room in her life for pity right now.
And Men?
Men flirted with her all the time in her job, she was one of very few women at crime scenes, she wanted to be one of the boys and as much as she sometimes hated that Catherine used her feminine wiles to get answers and make alliances, she too knew that just a little flirting could ease her way through a male dominated situation, could get her lab work completed just a little quicker than normal. She had seen the way that Greg with his cheeky glint and David and some of the other men looked at her, she had even seen Grissom's response to it on the odd occasion, she wasn't blind to her powers in that area, sometimes she even enjoyed it, but she wished that they worked on Grissom a little more.
"Sara!"
Nick's voice and gentle palm press to her shoulder startled her back to the present, she whirled towards him, but so help her that grin of his was contagious.
"Nicky! So help me...!" She threatened with a low voice echoing her thoughts in her words, shaking her head at him, trying to hide the fact that she had been caught daydreaming.
"What you doing here, I thought this was your night off?" He pressed, unable to ignore the fact that she stood just feet from their Bosses office. No, her bosses office. Damn he still had to get used to that. Catherine had been his boss on the swing shift for a couple of weeks now and it still hadn't sunk in completely. It just didn't sit right with him.
"Here to see Griss?" he pushed, his eyes sparkling with the tease in his words.
He saw the reaction in her eyes and the way she drew herself up taller instinctively to cover it.
"Yeah," she nodded. "How's the case?" she added quickly so he couldn't ask any more questions, deflecting the attention back to the questioner was her favourite ploy when she suspected she was being in some way interrogated.
"Steady," came his confident reply. "I'm on my way to listen to some..." he paused as he lifted the disc player in his hand, "...interesting music."
Her eyebrows raised in a questioning response.
Yet Nick just smiled as he headed off in the direction of the AV lab, tilting his free hand in her direction in goodbye.
Always had to have the upper hand, if she wouldn't let him in on the reason for her visit to Grissom, he wasn't going to give away anything either however insignificant! Truthfully it made her smile, it was good that somethings hadn't changed around here.
She watched him retreat. Then when he disappeared around the corner and out of sight she once again focused on the looming doorway of Grissom's office.
She could do this. Light and friendly. Smiling. Taking the upper hand and grabbing tight hold of it. It was hers and she was going to keep it.
Bright and breezy.
She straightened her shoulders, relaxed her arms, and headed the final few steps.
As Sara approached his doorway Gil Grissom, was none the wiser to the fact that she had stood for more minutes than she could count staking out his office. She simply looked like she was about to happen past and seeing his open doorway had decided to peep in to say Hi.
He was reading something, his glasses reflecting the lamp light which illuminated his desk in a golden haze against the pale blue luminance of the many tanks and habitats which filled the shelves of his unique office. The rest of the room was dark and so familiar to her as to be inviting.
Her smile already smooth across her face she found it was easier than she thought to maintain when she took in his quiet form, his dark shirt blending him into the dimness and knocked lightly on his doorframe, a formality she didn't really need.
"Hi!" she felt the sound of her smile fill out the simple word.
He looked up, only as she spoke, reaching up to remove his glasses, as if he needed a moment to break from whatever he had been reading and reacquaint himself with the present.
She couldn't read the expression on his face. Unreadable as ever. There might have been a slight hint of confusion, or maybe it was just awkward and slightly forbidding curiosity about why she was there. One thing she did notice was that it never seemed to cross his mind that she was in on what should be her night off, yet then again she was often in on her night off, she thought with a slight frustration at the predictability of her own actions, why should he look like he noticed the difference.
Yet he had noticed but chose not to comment, not since his last conversation about her working so much over time and its toll on her personal life had involved him openly encouraging her relationship with Hank, the name stuck in his brain even though he hated it and had similar feelings about its owner. He'd told her that what happened in court was nothing to do with the relationship she had with that guy. He had heard from Catherine how that had all gone down. Sara had never mentioned it. Never mentioned being questioned about her relationship with him her testimony either. The mere thought of that night when she had brushed chalk from his cheek with such tenderness... Yet the whole series of events had revealed a little too much to him about his own... his own...that he really didn't want to be forced to confront and yet it gave him migraines when he didn't.
"You got a minute?" it was phrased like a question, but one he couldn't really refuse.
"Sure," he said with an ease he did not feel. Shaking his head in slight bemusement as he tried to study her mood as quickly as he could, taking in her casual clothes and her relaxed waved hair and her smile.
He realised that she had carried on talking after he had responded, something about not talking since the staff changes. Her words were quick and precise in their delivery, but she wasn't looking at him as she lowered herself into the seat before his desk. She was nervous, she had once told him that she was always over talking around him. He had noticed, yet it had taken her comment for him to really recognise the reason for her nervousness and again he had not dealt with the important information she had delivered behind the simple words.
He felt his eyes focus on the way her necklace swung out towards him as she curved her body down to the chair in a fluid motion and he forced himself to concentrate on her words.
"I er..." she paused as she forced her eyes up from the surface of his desk to meet his before she continued, desperate to get the words out without sounding as flustered as being the sudden focus of his attention always seem to make her. " I wanted to let you know that I said some things to Ecklie that might have done the team a disservice."
She said the words, yet in such a way that he knew she was just attempting to open the lines of communication between them once more. She knew there was nothing that could have been said which could have changed Ecklie's mind about anything.
"Ecklie wanted to break up the team," Grissom began in a calm voice, his head shaking slightly in a way as to dissuade her from any feelings of guilt that she may have. "And he did."
The words of a man who was resigned to the change even if he was not happy with it.
Yet she continued on, still determined to have the power in the conversation.
"He asked me if you and I had had our post PEAP counseling session."
"And we didn't," he conceded softly. "Regardless, you should never have to cover for your Boss," he said lowering his gaze, realising that what he really felt was shame, shame in knowing that she had attempted to talk to him at least once and it had been so easy for both of them to find ways to avoid having a conversation they both knew would cut to close to home and neither was ready to deal with that full on.
"I'm sorry," he spoke, his voice low and quiet now in the dark of the room, he was sincere, and sad. He knew that he had failed her when she had needed him the most.
Yet her next words, "You've always been a little more than a boss to me." She nodded slightly as she spoke. Taking in the way that he lifted his gaze back to hers and for the first time she saw something flicker in his eyes.
Her words. They weren't really a surprise to him, she had always been more than just a colleague, just a subordinate, yet she said them in a way that told him she needed to speak the words just as much as she needed him to hear them.
She'd done it. She'd spoken the right words, when she had wanted to say them, directly to his face and she found her courage rising. Her thoughts flicking back to the ones spiraling in her brain when she had stood in the hall waiting just minutes before and she found the words slipping out of her mouth before she could stop them.
"Why do you think I moved to Vegas?" She said the words with humour in them, wry humour, her mind still instinctively attempting to cushion her words for her as they fell from her lips as she was already anticipating the patented Gil Grissom response. All these truths would make excellent pillows when she crashed and burned to the ground.
His gaze dipped momentarily as if he tried to hide the emotion he felt at her words from her. He had never considered that. Well, never with any real weight behind it.
And for a change she read him correctly. He may have looked the calmer of the two on the surface, but for the first time in a long time Gil Grissom had no words. No handy quote to deal with this, no prized words of wisdom from some greater mind than his. He was tired, and his mind was reeling from the power of her simple honesty. The way she was smiling at him, with such sadness as if tears were just moments from her eyes.
She had to tell him this, had to get the words out so that at least when it was over she would know that she had tried her utmost and done everything she could. No regrets.
The silence between them grew. So she filled it with more words, smiling softly and watching helpless as he tried to process, beginning to squirm in his chair.
"Look, I know our relationship has been complicated. It's probably my fault."
Doubting herself again, he felt that pull at his heart, she was so beautiful, so wonderful, so vital and still so many people, including himself had treated her insuch a way that she doubted her every move outside the safety of her work. She was trying to make it better, ease the tension clouding the room. He licked his lip thinking hard. He needed to think of something to say. Anything to relieve her of the misery of his silence.
Still receiving no response she plundered on. Her words sounding heavier and heavier.
"It's probably, definitely, my fault."
Then he had it, gazing at her intently he asked, "You completed your counselling, right?"
"Yeah, yes," came her definite response, his question knocking her out of her uncomfortable babbling.
"And?" he was quickly taking control of the conversation again, always an unconscious battle between them.
She had wondered if he would ask her. And now she would have to tell him. She eyed him, a sudden thrill stealing through her as she realised what she would have to tell him was really what her counsellor had encouraged her to tell him. How did he just know these things without even trying, was it really just luck?
"Well..." she paused, feeling almost sensual she looked directly into his eyes, "lets just say that..."
She paused again, her new found courage failing her a little as the real intimacy of revealing this secret of hers made her glance shyly away from his attentions.
Then her eyes flitted back to him as she continued "...sometimes I look for validation in inappropriate places."
Yet when the words came out they didn't sound as flirty as she had imagined they would. They sounded sad, like the lost little girl she felt inside so strongly.
These weren't just the words of the latest in a long line of therapists she could dismiss as she always had before, these were the words she could finally admit that she could associate with herself and her actions.
He was quiet again. He didn't even smile wryly like she had expected him too. He knew that she meant him. There was no other interpretation of those words.
She looked down at the desktop again, missing the soft way that he nodded slowly at her revelation.
She focused on the desk, her left eyebrow lifting as her mind raced back over the last few minutes and tried to examine the way she felt now that she had spoken the things to him she had needed to say for months.
It felt different to the way she had expected. She felt stronger, and freer, and at the same time sad and there was a new ache in her chest, the exhilaration of her honesty quickly ebbing with her adrenaline.
He looked up at her, watching the way her eyebrow arched as she considered his desk.
Was this his chance to fix this? Was this his final moment? His last chance? She had certainly given him enough time to think this over. Enough proof of where she stood. But was that enough? Enough to convince him that he wouldn't eventually walk away from this alone and...
"Look..." he said slowly, breaking her out of her gaze but he wasn't looking at her now, his heart was beating in his throat. He was frowning slightly as he fought for the right words to say and came up short.
"Lets... erm..."
This was it.
This was it, she realised her eyes widening as she felt her mind rush clear and then it came to her.
It was too late.
This, this with Grissom, she had warned him once that by the time he figured this all out it could be too late.
And here they were, here they finally were, and she realised that it was. It was too late for her. It was the wrong moment. Everything about it felt off.
She had waited so long to speak freely to him, to let him know just how she felt and yet now the words were out there...
And he would, he would choose this moment to try, how did they manage to always be so out of sync?
That freedom she had felt, it was because right now it just wasn't the right moment and this wasn't how she had wanted it to be, how she had imagined it at all.
She had never wanted to force him into wanting to be with her, never wanted to bring that look of confusion to his face like that, to put pressure on him.
He wasn't sure he wanted this and maybe he never would be.
She loved him, she knew that. She couldn't make him be anymore than he was, and she didn't want to, she didn't want to change him.
She was lightly frowning as he met her gaze again, he made an O with his lips as he tried to speak again, but there was something different in her eyes now.
"It's Ok." She cut in, wanting desperately to release him from this pain she had caused him. "Ok." she practically whispered, her voice filled with the depth of her feelings for him in a way that no one could have struggled to decipher.
She was giving him that out. She was smiling, that wonderful sad smile of hers. She was pulling away again. She had tested the waters and it had been too choppy and emotional to swim.
But did he want that? In that quiet moment she took the option away from him and...
"You know what, we did our session." She carried on, suddenly feeling the frantic need to flee the room, to be standing out in the middle of the desert or anywhere far far from here. She should have trusted that feeling in her belly. The one that had forewarned her that change was coming.
He made movements with his mouth, but he again couldn't find the words to say, feeling her slipping through his fingers.
"Don't forget to document this for Ecklie," he heard her say, but the humour in her voice fell flat and listless to the ground. She was back steadily on the grounds of work where she felt comfortable and she had left him floundering out at sea.
She smiled that smile again and he realised that he should say something.
He heard the word "Right," fall from his lips, but it didn't sound like his voice.
Still smiling she thanked him, rising from the chair, never noticing that he remained motionless staring at the middle ground in front of his desk.
She slipped away to be swallowed back into the windowed maze of the surrounding labs. She fled.
She was gone, and still he sat there his mind replying the last few minutes on a loop, reliving them like he was dreaming. What had just happened here?
He stared hard at the chair she had vacated, half expecting her to still be sitting there, but the black canvas remained empty and for a crazy moment he wondered if he would ever see her again.