Disclaimer: I used to own them but lost them one by one to Les Moonves in a game of Texas Hold 'Em.
Spoilers: Nope
A/N: This is set mid-season six. Just for me, lets assume that they aren't yet together.
RBI
It was over almost before it began. One minute Sara was crouched at the edge of a river embankment collecting what she hoped were fibers in the muddy dirt. The next she was sliding feet-first down the fifteen foot drop. Despite efforts to stop her descent by grabbing for bushes on the way down, the rain-slicked chaparral whipped through her fingers. She came to a stop unceremoniously at the bottom of the ledge, her lower body half submerged into the swollen river, her arms above her head, fingers digging into the saturated ground.
Acting on instinct, Sara used what the little leverage she had and scrambled up to a small outcropping of rock. The ledge held her weight and though soaked and muddy despite her rain gear, Sara was out of the rushing water.
Grissom caught Sara's fall in his peripheral vision as a flash of neon yellow. First it was there then it was gone. Focused on collecting the few bug samples left behind by the pouring rain it took his distracted brain a second to realize what the sensory input meant—and by the time the message got to his head, his legs were already moving. It took him less than ten seconds to close the 25 yards between the clearing where he had been working and the edge of the embankment.
As Grissom reached the lip, he didn't see her. In that moment, time slowed down, the air was punched out of the atmosphere and he was sure his heart stopped. Frantically glancing down the river, his mind skipped several logical steps and he numbly wondered how she had been washed down the river and out of sight so quickly.
As Grissom willed himself to breathe, his panic was interrupted by a voice below. "Back up Grissom." A distant corner of his consciousness recognized that he must have completely lost it because the voice sounded and awful lot like Sara's.
"Grissom, back up It isn't safe—you'll fall." And suddenly, he was pulled back.
"Listen to Sara," said David, the coroner on the scene, as he tugged at Grissom's arm.
"Sara, are you okay?"
"Yeah David," came her disembodied voice. "I'm fine. I pulled myself up onto a sort of outcropping. Don't come any closer though, the whole bank is liable to give."
"Will you be okay there for a couple of minutes?" David asked.
"I will if you've got a plan to keep me from going white water rafting al fresco."
David jogged of toward the car leaving Grissom standing near the edge.
The rescue took less than 20 minutes. David returned from his van with heavy rope. He, Grissom and the on-scene deputy served as anchors while Sara tied the rope around her waist and used the taunt excess to heave herself up the remaining ten feet. Once at the top, Sara crawled on all fours to the clearing hoping to better distribute her body weight. Only when she knew there was no chance of sliding once again did she attempt to stand.
David was at her side immediately helping her up. Looking up as she took his hand, it was obvious he was holding back a smirk. Whether from relief or the site of her covered from head to toe in mud she didn't know. Grinning back, she wiped at the mud on her face, "People pay hundreds of dollars for this at the spa."
Grissom chose this moment to break his silence. "What the hell happened?"
Grin fading, Sara felt her body steal itself for defense. "The ground must be saturated. One minute I was looking for fibers and the next I was sliding."
His fists clenched and unclenched in a controlled rhythm and though his face was shadowed by the hood on his rain gear, Sara was certain he looked pissed. No—furious was a better adjective for the man's current emotional state. "How could you be so careless? You are a seasoned CSI, you should know better than to put yourself in that position."
Sara's hands raised automatically, palms facing out as she took a step back. "I, Grissom…I was at least 18 inches from the embankment. There was no indication that the ground was unsafe."
Ignoring Sara's response, Grissom turned to David, ordering, "Take her back to the lab with you and the body. Make sure she gets checked out by Robbins. I'll close out the scene."
"Grissom," Sara began, "I'm fine—really." He either didn't hear her or ignored her. He'd already begun walking back toward the crime scene.
Wiping her face in frustration, Sara's hands came away muddy with a smear of blood. Several more swipes and she established that she must have hit her chin on the way down. It hadn't hurt until just now. Shivering, she followed David back to the car.
It wasn't until after David's van was out of sight that Grissom returned to his own SVU. Climbing into the driver's seat, leaned across the steering wheel, willing his pounding heart to slow down. Rain pounding on the hood of the vehicle, Grissom rested his head against the back of his hands. "Damnit."
Sara sat in break room typing up the incident form on her laptop. The drive home had been uncomfortable. While she'd managed to shrug into a jumpsuit before leaving the scene, the storm had gotten worse and she was soaked once again before she could escape into the vehicle's dry interior. Ever thoughtful, David turned the heater up to full and drove quite recklessly in an attempt to get back to the lab more quickly.
Upon inspection, Doc Robbins found no major damage other than the abrasion on her chin and some assorted scratches and bruises. He warned her to take a couple of aspirin before bed because she'd likely wake up stiff the next day and then sent her on her way.
Despite being unable to shake off a chill, Sara really was fine. The whole incident had surprised her much more than it had scared her. And though the situation could have been dangerous, she didn't really feel the weight of its precariousness.
Absently checking for typos, she let mind wander to Grissom. Now that was precarious. Searching through her mental catalog of the hundreds of crime scenes they had worked together, she couldn't think of a single incident where he'd reacted like this. He'd barked more often than she'd like to count and his intermittent lack sensitivity was generally accepted as a personality quirk. Sara's mouth formed into a half smile without her realizing it. On the rare occasion he'd even been slightly, endearingly, overprotective. However, that she could remember, he'd never, ever called her or any other team member's professionalism into question. He himself had never been so unprofessional.
"Hey I heard about your wild ride." Catherine called as she entered the break room, coffee mug in hand.
"Yeah, just when the job starts to get boring something exciting finally happens." Sara smiled at her co-worker. Coffee cup filled, Catherine sat down at the table across from Sara.
The older woman leaned in and in a low voice conspired, "I also heard that Grissom's reaction would put 'Mommy Dearest' to shame."
Sara met her gaze, and though she tried to produce an over-exaggerated eye roll, it didn't hide the sadness Catherine saw there. "Cath, I have no idea what I did. Procedurally, I am pretty sure I was being safe but I guess not. It was an accident. No evidence was compromised. Even David laughed."
Catherine gazed at her intently. She was pretty sure she knew exactly what was going on—unfortunately, neither Sara or Grissom had a clue. "Well, I'd give him a hard time the next time I saw him if I were you."
Sara offered a sagging shrug. "Catherine, I don't think I have the energy anymore."
"Okay, well then, I'm off." Without turning around Catherine called, "Maybe you just scared the hell out of him."
Catherine flipped her hair off of her shoulders as she clicked down the labitrail hall. 'I seriously wish those two would just get it on', she thought. 'I swear, if I had wanted to be the yenta for a couple of social inebriants, I would have been a middle school counselor. At least those guys actually write notes to one another. God, I am going to need a drink after shift.'
Grissom's door was closed and the lights were off. Catherine didn't care and turned the knob anyway. She was rewarded with a slumped Grissom, his hands covering his face.
"I'm not here." he groused.
Catherine plopped herself in one of the chairs in front of the desk. "She thinks she's done something wrong Grissom."
He shrugged.
"We both know she isn't the one in the wrong here." Catherine leaned forward.
"We've known each other for a long time Grissom so listen to me because I am only going to say this once. You are a good man. You have a good heart and a good head. The problem is that your head is so far up your ass most of the time that it's no wonder you can't deal with your heart. Get over it. We are people. We have feelings and I guarantee that after all this time, no matter how hard you try to compartmentalize and rationalize and whatever other-izing you may be doing, those feelings are not going to go away.
I'm going to go home now but so help me, if you don't start to fix this now I'm going to tell Ecklie that I've been ghost writing all of your memos and evaluations for the last five years and you'll get to deal with him."
Sara trudged up the stairs to her apartment. She was glad that Grissom's office had been dark when she went to turn in the incident report. All she wanted at this point was to sink into a hot bath and finally get warm. As she turned the corner to her landing she saw a rather pretty orchid sitting on her welcome mat. Plucking up the card as she put the key into the lock she read softly aloud, "Sara, I was an ass. Grissom." She let out a huff as she opened the door. "Grissom, you ARE and ass" she said to the empty hallway.
Entering the apartment she tugged off her shoes and went immediately to the kitchen to put on water for tea. Halfway through filling up the kettle she heard the doorbell ring. Though tempted to ignore the chime, curiosity gave in and she opened her door to empty space. Looking down she saw that her door mat held another object. Opening the box as she re-entered the apartment she discovered a large, hot take-out cup of her favorite tea and her favorite bagel. Stuck to a side of fresh fruit was a note. "You're right. I am an ass."
'Okay, this is getting creepy.'
Spidey sense prickling, she tiptoed to the door. Peaking through the spyhole she saw Grissom, pointed finger about to ring the bell. Again. In a preemptive strike, Sara opened the door to a startled entomologist.
"Earl Grey can't fix this Grissom."
It was his turn to be supplicant. Raising both hands palms out, Grissom took a step toward the door. "I know Sara. Hear me out."
Throwing the door open in false welcome Sara returned, "Knock yourself out, I'm all ears."
Grissom followed her to the small sitting room. She chose the chair, pulling her feet up under her body. Grissom sat opposite her on the couch.
Fixing him with a gaze, Sara raised an eyebrow expectantly.
"Today my worst fear happened." Sara curtailed the desire to fire back something about a stick and his derriere.
"For years I've been careful not to let my feelings cross over with work. If things fit into categories, there's no cross-contamination. Today my personal feelings toward you paralyzed my ability to take action when you needed it. If it had been Nick or Warrick—or even Catherine I would have done exactly what David had to do for me. But you…" he trailed off, taking a shaky breath.
Sara shivered at his confession and unconsciously pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands. Grissom grabbed the throw blanket off of the couch and began spreading it over her lap. She snatched the blanket out of his hand, "Grissom stop. I'm fine."
"I'm not."
"Huh?"
"Encountering your biggest fear causes you to think." Grissom settled with his elbows on his knees, eyes intent on hers. "Do you know anything about baseball?" Faint alarms went off in the back of Sara's mind.
"There is a quandary that sometimes happens when the runner is going from one base to another. Sometimes the second baseman catches the ball when the runner is halfway from first. So, the runner has a choice. He can let the guy at second tag him out, or he can make a run for it and try to get back to first. Of course, you see the problem in this equation—the ball can obviously travel faster than the runner.
The thing is, a pickle always favors the defense. Going for first is a risk but second base is pretty much a guaranteed out."
Sara was admittedly lost and it must have been obvious to Grissom. "Look, Sara," he breathed out, "I've been stuck in the middle for years now—unwilling to make the decision to follow my feelings or go the safe route and give up the risk. In the past, the part of me who didn't want to take the risk was afraid of exactly what happened today. That my feelings would get in the way of my actions. In our line of work, it could cost a life."
Sara nodded in aknowledgement, lowering her eyes as she anticipated what was going to come next.
"But in those few seconds when I thought you'd fallen into the river, all I could think of was what didn't happen between us. With a little ass-whipping from a colleague who shall remain nameless, I realized that not taking the risk wasn't going to change how I felt. Hell, it hasn't thus far.
Sara just blinked.
"I don't have a clear plan on how to proceed and I wouldn't blame you for turning the tables on me and serving me my own pudding."
Sara pursed her lips against the smirk that was threatening to form.
"But, I thought maybe we could start with dinner."
Sara leaned back in the chair and regarded Grissom. "Can I have some time to think about it?" He wasn't getting off that easy.
"Sure." He replied getting to his feet. "In the meantime, I'm going to show myself out before I say something to get me back on your ton ten list of asses."
Sara walked him to the door. He turned in the doorway as she leaned against the edge of the open door. "How are my odds?" he asked.
"I'd say they are good" and she finally allowed herself the smile that had been threatening to break across her face. The grin caused her to wince as she moved the muscles in her injured chin.
Grissom leaned in and gently grasped her chin, turning her head so he could get a better look at the bump. Pretending to inspect it closely he nodded. "I think you'll live," his thumb lingering for a moment on her jaw line.
Feeling both shy and reckless at the caress Sara ventured, "You know, all this talk about baseball could get a girl thinking that you were looking to score."
Grissom smirked and winked as he turned to go. Three steps into the hallway he looked over his shoulder. "Well, third base at the very least."
-Fin