Title: Consequences

Author: Jeanine (jeanine@iol.ie)

Rating: PG

Pairing: Grissom/Sara, Warrick/Sara

Archive: At my site, The Band Gazebo ()

Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing.

Summary: Choices have consequences.

Author's Notes: Another one that Heidi's to blame for, introducing me to the livejournal Writer's Choice community, and the theme of "Choice"

***

Choices have consequences, he knows that. He's an adult, a grown man, not some little kid. He's known that for a long time. He knows that he has to live with the consequences of his actions, and he's never had a problem with that.

He's never had to live with the consequences of his inaction before.

There were always so many good reasons why they couldn't be together. She was so much younger than he was. He was her mentor, then her boss. He wasn't good at relationships, didn't want to mess up the friendship that they had. She was dating a paramedic. He was going deaf.

All perfectly fine reasons.

Then the lab blew up and she could have died, and she came to him and asked him out for dinner. Yes was on the tip of his tongue, but foremost in his mind were all the reasons why it was a bad idea, so he did what he'd been doing for months.

He dodged the question.

"Sara…I don't know what to do about this."

She didn't miss a beat. "I do." She paused, as if to let him consider those words, then followed it up with, "You know, by the time you figure it out, it really could be too late."

Then she was gone, leaving him standing in the open door.

He thought that she'd left the door open in more ways than one, thought that the choice was deferred for another day.

He'd thought wrong.

She'd never once talked to him about her feelings for him since that day; it's as if that whole scene never happened, as if he dreamed it all. He was fine with that, for a time, because he thought that things were going on as they always were, that he had all the time in the world to make a choice.

Then he began to notice things that he hadn't noticed before. Conversations that stopped when he walked into a room. Fleeting whispers of her name in the halls, reactions of amazement and amusement in equal measure, and once he'd caught Greg teasing her about something, her cheeks bright red, eyes dancing, but they'd both clammed up when they saw him standing there.

For a man who makes his living observing the nuances of human behaviour, he didn't have a clue what was going on, until he was driving through the city one afternoon, on his way home from the lab. He'd taken a bad turn, hoping to get avoid one traffic hotspot, getting caught behind construction work instead, and he'd been looking out of the window to pass the time. He'd seen them then, walking down the street, Sara's arm around Warrick's waist, his arm slung casually around her shoulders. Sara was looking up at him as they walked, the kind of smile on her face that Grissom had only ever dreamed about seeing from her.

He was stuck, unable to move, unable to look away, so he saw as if in slow-motion Sara throwing her head back in laughter, reaching up to swat Warrick's chest. He saw Warrick's teeth flash white, saw him grasp the hand that Sara tried to pull away, saw him dip his head towards Sara's.

He couldn't look away even as the two of them kissed right there in the middle of the street in the middle of the day.

He kept watching once they came on shift that night, saw all the signs that he'd missed for so long, heard all the whispers and comments that he'd missed. He saw them and he wanted to say that it was wrong, but he couldn't, because they looked so happy together.

He's been watching them every day since then, just like he's watching them now. Of course, every eye on the room is on them now, on Sara, so beautiful in her long white gown, on Warrick, who every female in the room is swooning over in his tux. Just like that day on the street, they're looking at one another like they're the only two people in the world, as if the rest of the room isn't looking at them dance their first dance as husband and wife.

He's happy for them.

He really is.

He reminds himself of that every minute, just like he reminds himself that choices have consequences, that he always knew that and he shouldn't complain.

Even if he didn't know it at the time, he made his choice.

And now she's made hers.