There had been no great impetus, no single defining moment in which Grissom realized he'd fallen in love with Sara.

The truth was that he'd always loved her. From the moment they met, she had touched something deep within him, down in his very soul where nobody else had ever been able to reach before.

All his life, he'd carefully crafted thick walls around himself. Walls of stone to shield his heart from the painful arrows of sentiment and loss that inevitably struck even the most cautious of people.

With his walls strategically in place, he'd fooled himself into believing that he could make it through life unscathed by a woman.

How naive he'd been, thinking he would be different from everyone else. Thinking he was somehow special. Thinking he'd never get hurt. Thinking he could escape the trap of love.

There was no escaping her love, for once he opened that box there was no force in the world strong enough to close it again. Like a sweet zephyr she swept into his life, and like a wicked tornado she turned it upside-down.

With one touch, she crumbled his stone walls as if they were made of sand. With one look, she lured him in as a siren did a sailor. With one word, she disproved everything he thought he knew about living life.

He never thought someone could fall in love with him. Him, with his gruesome interests and morbid collections and social backwardness and workaholic syndrome.

He'd never expected to meet a woman who was similar to himself — a brilliant scientist, a tenacious loner, a dedicated workaholic with a zest for knowledge and talent for puzzle-solving, able to focus on a single task to the point of obsession...and who struggled almost as much as he did with relating to the unpredictable human element.

In a simple twist of fate, Grissom met Sara...and for the first time in his life he realized he wasn't the only one.

But she was.

She was the only one.

She was the only one to ever accept him without judgement or agenda.

She was the only one who had never tried to change him or squeeze him into any mold.

She was the only one he thought of when his team was suddenly short-handed and needed help.

She was the only one to uproot her life and move to another state simply because he asked her to.

She was the only one to whom he'd ever sent an apology plant.

She was the only one with whom he always kept his temper in check, because she was the only one he never wanted to alienate with his anger or anything else.

She was the only one who'd ever made him second-guess his entomological findings on a case, and she was the only one who'd ever sat up with him all night in a cold parking lot while he conducted an experiment just for her.

She was the only one for whom he'd feared risking his career in order to have.

She was the only one who never gave up on him, even after warning him that he could eventually be too late.

She was the only one who he'd risked his career for after all.

She was the only one he trusted intimately.

She was the only one to ever forgive him for cancelling a date in favor of going to work.

She was the only one he had ever loved.

She was the only one who'd ever broken his heart.

She was the only one whose absence sent him into depression.

She was the only one who made him realize he didn't want to live without her.

She was the only one who was worth abandoning a lifetime of work and career for, crossing over oceans, and traipsing through jungles to reunite with.

She was the only one he'd ever taught sign language to, because she'd been the only one who had wanted the ability to connect with his deaf mother without a third party translating for them.

She was the only one he would happily marry, stupidly divorce, and still remain so terribly in love with after years of painful separation.

She was the only one to leave him a little speechless upon his seeing her again.

She was the only one for whom his inner lonely whale composed unsung and unheard love songs.

She was the only one he would miss for the rest of his life.

She was the only one to climb onto his boat and into his arms.

She was the only one with whom he wanted to sail off into the sunset.

She was the only one who lit up his world like a thousand beacons in the night.

She was the only one for him.

She would always be the only one.

For a man who didn't believe in luck, it still struck him how incredibly fortunate he'd been to have found her. For all that he'd accomplished in his life, it had been an empty, hollow existence until she entered it.

It was an understatement to say that she restored his faith in the human being. She restored his faith in everything. From her, he had learned empathy and compassion — not only how to feel such things, but also how to show them. And how to accept them gracefully when they were bestowed upon him.

She'd shown him that he didn't have to behave like an emotionless robot. That it was okay to act like a real person. That he didn't have to bottle up his feelings and hide them away like they were something to be ashamed of.

She'd taught him how to truly communicate, how to reveal without trepidation or restraint his deepest, innermost self. She was the one privy to his darkest secrets, and his loftiest desires. With her he shared his regrets, his fears, his hopes, his dreams.

She understood him like no one else ever had, and like no one else ever would. Sometimes she knew him even better than he knew himself.

If he ever had personal doubts about himself, all he had to do was look into her eyes and she would tell him without a word that he was wanted, he was worthy, he was loved.

That was not to say that their life together was smooth sailing all the time. They were still themselves, after all. They were both still human, and imperfect in their perfection.

She could send him reeling like a tidal wave. She could soothe him like a gentle rain. She could shove him over the edge, or she could drag him back away from it.

She gave him headaches, and she gave him healing. She challenged him, she calmed him. She tested him, she trusted him. She defied him, she defended him. She pushed him, she pulled him. She kept him in balance, and she drove him insane.

She gave him strength, support, encouragement. With her in his arms, he was the strongest man on earth. With her by his side, he could grasp the unreachable. With her hand in his, he would follow wherever she went.

He would not trade her love for anything in the world. With her, he was happy. With her, he could be himself. Never did he need to hide from her — he could hide with her.

Words had not yet been invented to adequately describe the intensity of what he felt for her. If he could gather together all the galaxies and multiply them by a million millions, that was almost as much as how infinitely Grissom loved Sara.

She was so much more to him than just a lover, a girlfriend, a fiancee, a wife. She was everything good in his world. She was his best friend. His confidant. His partner. His other half. Dare he say it — his soulmate.

She was his harbor in the tempest.

She was always his harbor.

Sometimes she was even the tempest.


The End