Rating: PG

Disclaimer: If CSI belonged to me, it would not have taken 6 years.

Prompt: Written for the Summer Blockbuster Ficathon at geekfiction on livejournal. My prompt was "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?" from the film She Done Him Wrong (1933).

Pairing: Grissom/Sara

Word count: 1612

Spoilers: Through 8x02, "A La Cart"

Author's Note: I had a really hard time getting started with this, but after re-watching some of my favorite GSR scenes and thinking about the prompt, this is what came out. I hope you enjoy, and I'd love to know what you think!

It was the 1999 Forensic Academy Conference. During a routine lecture on forensic anthropology, Gil Grissom noticed her. He told himself that he had simply spotted her due to her unending series of questions that he suspected she already knew the answers to, but years later he realized that he had found himself looking her way unnaturally often before she'd even spoken. The ponytail was the first thing he noticed. There was something oddly endearing about the juvenile hairstyle on an otherwise sophisticated young woman.

When the lecture ended he'd taken his time gathering his things, and just as he'd both hoped and expected, she had approached the lecture podium, smiling to reveal the gap between her two front teeth. She'd launched into a series of follow-up questions that surprised him with their difficulty. When the conference coordinators had come in to set up for the next event, they'd left the lecture hall side by side, still engrossed in their conversation. They'd walked halfway across the USF campus before he'd even realized how much time had passed. By the time she finally asked him to join her for dinner at the local diner, he was surprised by the willingness with which he accepted.

By the time their entrees came, they had gradually made the transition from the purely work-related to slightly more personal topics of conversation. She told him about attending Harvard and Berkeley, and her job as a level-one CSI. He told her a little about his professional background, but mainly stayed away from sharing more intimate information, which she respected. He caught himself smiling more than he had in a long time as he listened to her talk.

After stretching their dinner out as long as possible with multiple cups of coffee, they finally headed to the parking lot when the waitress began to not so subtly mop under their feet. Sara scribbled her email address on a napkin, and Grissom gave her his business card, a move he felt exceptionally dorky about for years afterward. After an awkward hesitation they shook hands before going their separate ways.

The entire flight home to Vegas he had been unable to get Sara Sidle and her gap-toothed grin and ponytail out of his mind. He folded the napkin tightly away in his wallet, which turned out to be unnecessary. When he returned home to his apartment, he already had an email waiting from her.

She bit her lip as she sat at her computer. After several months of emailing back and forth with Grissom almost daily, she was about to take a big risk. Well, relatively big, for someone like herself who did not understand the attraction of most risks. Ever since they'd met, she'd been dying to see him again. Several times she had even come close to just hopping a plane to Vegas and showing up at his crime lab, figuring she'd formulate an excuse somewhere along the way. But her cautious side always won out. She had been taken with him almost instantly, but she had no idea if he felt the same way at all. He always replied promptly and enthusiastically to her emails, but she didn't know if he saw her as anything more than an eager pupil. A considerably younger eager pupil.

She exhaled slowly. She knew this was ridiculous. Grissom was out of her league, not to mention that he lived in a different state. For all intents and purposes, Sara was satisfied with her life and job in San Fransisco. But she knew she'd never forgive herself if she didn't at least try. She slowly began to type.

On another note...I wanted to talk to you about something. I don't know about you, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about our dinner together, and I'd really like to do it again sometime.

She pressed the backspace key, erasing it almost immediately. She tried again.

It would be great if we could continue this discussion in person again sometime.

No, that made her sound stuffy and boring. If she was going to do this, she may as well be clear that she intended more than forensics talk to occur if they did come face to face again. She gave it one more try.

Last time you were in San Francisco, you probably didn't get to see much besides USF and that diner. Why don't you come up sometime and see me? I'm sure my coworkers at the lab would be honored to meet the legendary Gil Grissom.

There, that did it. The mention of the diner would hopefully hint that she had more on her mind than forensics, yet the work mention kept things mild enough. She quickly added her name to the end of the email and pressed send before she could talk herself out of it. She sank back in her chair as the pop-up window informed her that her message had been sent. Now all she had to do was wait for his reaction.

When she saw the reply in her inbox the next day, she opened it with anticipation, only to be disappointed. While he had responded to every one of her opinions on forensic facial reconstruction, her proposition had gone ignored.

In the six months that followed, she told herself that she was over Gil Grissom. She began to take her time to reply to his emails, and as a result their correspondence became more distant and less frequent. Yet when she received a phone call out of the blue and he asked her to move to Vegas and join his team, she heard herself accepting the offer before she could rationalize the decision. Maybe she hadn't been so over him after all.

"So you seriously told Ecklie that our relationship started nine years ago?" Sara asked in the car on the way home from the go-kart track.

Grissom resisted the urge to roll his eyes as he clutched the steering wheel. "We're still on this?" he asked, slightly embarrassed.

"I just find it ironic that you feel that way considering all of the years when you completely ignored my advances," Sara mused, unsure if she should be amused or annoyed.

Grissom sighed. "You know that I didn't want to. I've always thought of you as more than a colleague, it just took me far too long to act on it."

She smiled wistfully. "Far too long." She turned her head to look at him. "But sometimes the end justifies the means. As screwed up as the means may have been."

He smiled back. He felt a pang in his heart every time he saw her like this, still bandaged and scraped from her terrible ordeal in the desert. If he had lost her, it would have been no one's fault but his own that they had spent such precious little time together.

Sara started chuckling all of a sudden. "What?" Grissom asked.

"Just thinking about how much we probably confused Ecklie with the seven year disparity in our answers," she said with a smirk. "Not that I care."

Grissom's smile faded a little. "I'm going to miss working with you," he said.

"So will I. But you won't get rid of me that easily," she reminded him lightly. Her expression changed as she thought of something. "Hey...can I ask you something?"

He glanced at her, curious. "Of course."

"This is going to sound really silly...but do you remember after the first time we met, when we would email back and forth?"

"Of course I remember," Grissom said.

"Okay, this is really embarrassing...but do you remember the time when I invited you to come back to San Francisco to visit me? You never responded," she said, cringing a little at the memory of the subtle rejection.

He appeared to think for a moment. "I do remember," he said quietly. There was a prolonged silence as he chose his words. "I think I just knew that if I took you up on that...that a lot of things could change as a result. And up until relatively recently, I wasn't a fan of change."

She nodded, taking that in. "I took it as a sign that you weren't interested in me at all. Which is why I was so surprised when you called and asked me to move to Vegas."

"I was always interested in you, Sara," he corrected her gently. "I think I proved that by calling you the second there was an opening on my team. I trusted you, even though I'd only met you once."

"Well you could have at least turned me down instead of ignoring the question entirely. I spent hours agonizing over that email and even more moping about your lack of a response," she informed him.

"I'm sorry. You were much braver than I was," he said simply. "I hope someday you can forgive me."

She couldn't help but smile. "I think you're forgiven."

He grinned back. "Good to know." He reached over to hold her hand, keeping the other on the wheel as they headed home.