Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Soo, it's another long, long, long one. :) Hope you guys enjoy. I liked writing a mean, resentful Grissom.

Also, for those of you who are wondering about Serendipity, I'm working on it. I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but for me, when you write the same thing without anything else for long enough, you kind of lose your inspiration. I have the next chapter written, although not proof-read, but I... I feel like it's kind of blah, and the way it is right now, it's the last chapter before the epilogue. ...And I don't want to end my story with something kind of blah. :) Sooo, there will be an update soon, I just needed to work on some other stuff for a while.

Okay! Thanks for reading, please leave a review to tell me what you think!

Oh, another thing. This takes place after 6x03-Bite Me, referencing the scene in the bedroom. If you're unfamiliar with it...

GRISSOM: That's odd. A man and a woman who don't share a bedroom arrange to
have a night alone, send their daughter to a relative, go out to dinner, have
drinks by the pool, but they sleep in separate bedrooms.

SARA: Maybe one of them snored or had insomnia or liked to work at night.

GRISSOM: Or maybe they were suffocating each other and he couldn't breathe.

(Sara turns and opens the nightstand drawer. She finds a tube and picks it up.)

SARA: Sexual lubricant. It's half empty. Sticky. You know, you don't have to
sleep in the same bed together to have sex or ... have romance.

It's not that I'm an intolerant man. Really.

It's… it's that I tried for so long to ignore what was between us—how I felt for her—and when I finally gave in, it was a failing of will more than an actual choice—a moment in which I simply could not control myself any longer, and so I didn't. And later, when I did think about it… I didn't necessarily realize everything that came along with my snap decision.

…There was a price to acquiescence.

And I didn't mean to tell her that way. Really.

I was honestly talking about the couple in question. Or, at least, I thought I was. And I wasn't wrong—they weren't sharing a bed because they couldn't stand each other anymore, not for some innocent reason like snoring or working at night. …I had thought that, once we were together, we would stop communicating about our relationship beneath the surface of other, more innocuous, conversations. I was wrong, but it wasn't her fault—it was mine. I made the statement. I made it personal. I let my feelings influence how I read the case. And I shouldn't have—it wasn't fair to her. It was just that…

I was being suffocated, slowly.

Well, I mean, it wasn't any one, big thing. …It was more like a multitude of little things. Endless, nagging, unbelievably… smothering… things. And it's not like I let them get to me right away. …This has been going on for quite some time. But now, you know, we've started to talk about living together. I mean, not seriously discussing it—not yet. But that's where it's headed. …They're just idle comments, right now, about how much easier it would be if she didn't have to keep making trips home to keep up with her mail and her cleaning and… whatever else it was she did when she disappeared for hours at a time every few days.

But no, it was more than that… more than the comments. It was the more concrete things, like the pink toothbrush in a toothbrush holder than had held one toothbrush—blue—since I'd lived with my mother. …Like the overcrowded top drawer of my dresser, because I had piled my pajamas into my underwear drawer to clear some space for her to keep a few changes of clothes. Like the presence of tofu in my refrigerator. These weren't the things that bothered me—they were the things that reminded me, constantly, that we were getting closer and closer to cohabitation. But there were things that bothered me. Honestly, more things that bothered me than not.

And I felt awful saying that—truly awful—because I cared about Sara deeply. I did. But…

She was constantly cleaning, for one thing. You get home from a long, tiring shift and all you want to do is have a bowl of cereal, toss your dishes in the dishwasher, and fall—sweaty and smelly—into bed, preferably with a leggy brunette in one of your t-shirts. Now, Sara was always very careful not to tell me what to do in my own home—she may have known that that would be a step too far, or perhaps it just never even occurred to her to tell me to change—but around me, everything changed. I would put my dishes into the dishwasher and head to the bedroom, and if I came back out for a glass of water, she'd be washing both of our bowls, spoons, and glasses in the sink. So I asked her about it. She merely shrugged and said that if you left dishes in the dishwasher for too long, food got stuck and they didn't really get clean… so since there wasn't enough for a full load, she thought she'd just do this quick.

Which was fine the first time or two—but if you do that enough, you'll never have a full load… and then you'll never use the damn dishwasher at all.

And she always, always showered after work, before bed. She had confided, once I asked, that she didn't like the idea of taking the crime scene into bed with her. For a while, then, I had showered with her after work, because I had the scenes on me too… but then this became a issue. …She absolutely hogged the hot water, meaning that I spent the majority of my time standing in the far end of the tub, shivering, waiting for my time under the spray. …I know she does a lot more in the shower than me—she shaves at least every other day, conditioner, body wash instead of a bar of soap, some exfoliating nonsense for her face…—but that's still no reason for the showers to take half an hour. Twenty three minutes of which I spent freezing.

And the cold can be harsh on certain parts of a man's anatomy, nullifying the benefits of being in a small space with a Sara who was wet and naked.

So then I stopped showering with her after work and just showered alone, before work. …She didn't seem upset and she didn't stop sleeping next to me or sleeping with me, but other problems arose. …I would wake up, go start a pot of coffee, and head in to take a shower. Sometimes she was already awake—the woman hardly sleeps, but I'll get to that—either reading or watching TV quietly in bed, and sometimes she's already showered… but usually not. By the time I got out of the shower, the entire bed would be stripped and remade in fresh sheets and all the bedding I had apparently contaminated the night before would be in the laundry room, either already washing or waiting to be thrown in.

And then she would shower, and have the nerve to idly complain that I'd used all the hot water. Me!

The house constantly smelled of bleach or some other kind of cleaner, the carpets looked extra fluffy from lack of dust, the garbage was always taken out, and too much light was getting in because the screens and windows and blinds were always clean. And it's not that these were terrible things, but they weren't my things. They represented that my life—my home—wasn't just mine anymore.

What did bother me was her cleaning in front of me. We'd finally get an afternoon off together, neither of us being called in or having a time-sensitive case we just had to run with, and instead of sitting with me on the sofa to take in a movie or… whatever… she would be up and about, straightening things and wiping surfaces down and generally doing all kinds of unnecessary cleaning. I mean, really, if it's not a surface you're going to eat off of, how important is it to be cleaned every day? If the back of the TV is dusty, the world will not come to an end.

And my books. She would not stop nagging about the books.

…Nagging isn't the right word. I said that she would never tell me what to do in my own home, and she doesn't. 'Teasing' is a better word for it. I have a lot of bookcases, and no particular order in how they're arranged. If it fits, it must mean that that is where it goes. I know this drives her crazy. She avoids the bookcases. She often asks me to get a book for her, if she knows exactly which one she wants, or she brings her own from home. …She only dusts them once a month, and would rather straighten a pile of five books on the coffee table than attempt to go put them away. But eventually, she would break down, and either go look for a book herself or go put away the books we'd used that hadn't been tidied. (To be fair, I used to do a lot of cleaning myself—but she does it before it's necessary, so now I do very little.)

And then, inevitably, I know she's going to call to me, and ask me once again to explain my system.

We both know I don't actually have a system. We know it. The first time she saw my bookcases, she offered to organize them alphabetically… or into categories by subject. Or even just by size and type—big textbooks on the bottom, paperbacks on top, small hardcovers in the middle. But I like my books exactly as they are. I don't know why—maybe it's the sense of organized chaos I enjoy, or maybe it's because it makes this portion of my life feel a little less ordered and a little more impulsive… maybe I just hate change—but I didn't want to let her organize them, and I didn't know how to say so nicely, so early in our relationship. …I'd just told her that I did have a system and, when asked to explain, had to come up with a series of things that connected one book to another.

Robinson Crusoe was beside a book on the rainforest because they both dealt with the tropics. A History of Entomology in Europe was beside Hamlet because there were so many deaths in Hamlet and I liked to speculate on what kind of insect activity those bodies might have encountered. My complete works of Edgar Allen Poe was beside a bathroom reader—a gift from a well-meaning aunt—because they were both… Well, I failed on that one, and ended up telling her that it was because they were both full of shit. She laughed, and the subject had dropped… but that didn't stop her from calling me in to explain, every time. I think she just didn't want to do something wrong—she needed me to tell her where to put the assorted books, because she couldn't let herself just stick them somewhere, and I hadn't given her permission to organize them differently—but it was really irritating. We both knew I was lying about having a system, so just shove the damn books anywhere they fit and be done with it.

But it isn't just cleaning or the insistence of the evidence of her presence in my life. There were just so many other things I didn't consider—didn't think about—when I'd taken on the task of sharing this much of my life with someone else.

…I never slept through the night anymore. Hardly ever, anyway. Part of it is Sara's insomnia—if she can't sleep, she'll still try, because she wants to be fresh for work, of course. …And in the mean time, she'll toss and turn and huff and sigh and roll and twist, pull the covers off, put them back on, pull them off again… it's ridiculously distracting, but thankfully it doesn't go on long. If she can't get to sleep in the first half hour, she'll get up and read, and then I can get to sleep. In fact, if I go lay down while she's in the shower, I can usually be asleep before she even crawls into bed—and then the tossing doesn't wake me.

But the nightmares do.

And at first, I really wanted to be there for her when they came. She'd recently confided in me about her past and her parents and I realized a lot of things about Sara—the reasons why certain cases upset her so much, quite probably the reason behind her insomnia, and definitely the reasons for her nightmares. So the first time it happened, the first time I woke to her soft moaning and lightly jerking frame, I only wanted to hold her and help her. I wrapped her up in my embrace and murmured softly to her, and she stilled, without even waking.

…The pride I felt, that night, was comparable to the first time I brought her to orgasm.

When they were bad, she usually woke herself up before I could calm her down, but that was wonderful too. The first time, of course, she was embarrassed and tried to turn away, wiping the streaks of tears from her face, but when I told her that I'd been soothing her and rocking her for the past week… that I wanted to make the dreams go away… she practically flew into my arms, seeking the comfort I was so eager to give.

I just… I longed to sleep straight through a night for once. I was getting headaches more often, found myself distracted at crime scenes, snapped at Greg… well, more than usual. And it was because I couldn't force myself to sleep deeply. Even when she didn't have a nightmare, I woke up every hour or so, my whole being worried that she would stir and I would sleep through it and not be there for her. …God, I'd had nightmares about Nick's kidnapping with her in bed, and did she ever wake up to them? No, of course not. Miss-I-can't-sleep snores through one of the most horrific dreams of my lifetime. …Although, to be fair, Sara would always wake me if the dream was bad enough to wake her—she rarely needed to, but if she did, well… she did. I had sat up in bed in a cold sweat, chest heaving, glaring at her still and peaceful form and refused to wake her…

It had been the first time she'd slept more than an hour or so in over three days, and I sat there angry with her for not knowing I needed her comfort while she slept… even though I also knew that if she had woken, I probably would have brushed her attempts at comforting me aside.

…Do you see what I mean? I was being completely irrational, and it was because she was too close, so close, always, right, there. Of course I lashed out—of course I said those awful things… smothering… couldn't breathe…

Suffocating.

And of course, Sara's response was not anger—though she did have a temper—and it was not to show her hurt or snap back at me… No, she'd picked up more from me in the years we'd worked together than I'd been aware of. She eyed me coolly, the slight twist of her lips making the gaze tender instead of stern, and her expression had become… playfully speculative as she'd calmly, logically disagreed with me. "You don't have to share a bed to have sex… or, romance…"

God, those words rang in my ears for days afterwards. We were masters of saying two things at once, and while she hadn't been cryptic, I still didn't know for certain what she was saying. …Was she saying she'd back off—stop spending the night—and yet continue the relationship? The…sex? Give me space without requiring a lull in the…romance…department? The thoroughly male part of me liked this sentiment, and the purely sentimental part of me felt sick with it… but the part of me that picked apart all those little things wondered why she was so goddamned insatiable.

…Come to think of it, smothering is a good term for our sex life, too.

Let's be honest here—everyone tells the person they're with that they've never had better. And while I would never tell Sara so, more than half of us are lying, including me and most definitely including Sara, when she tells me that I'm the best. …It's one of those niceties observed in relationships that stroke the ego and encourage the sex but don't necessarily have to be true. The truth isn't important. The words though—the confirmation that you care enough about the other person's feelings to lie—that's important. …Despite my many diatribes on the pieces that make up the whole of Sara Sidle, I do care about her… enough to lie, and more convincingly than she does. I care about her a lot.

The thing is that Sara is so adventurous in bed. And so damned needy. …I've heard that women hit their sexual peak in their thirties, and clearly I'm past mine… but I'm a man. Shouldn't it even itself out, somewhere in there? Shouldn't my dwindling testosterone and her raging estrogen meet somewhere in the middle? No. Of course not. …Instead, I'm left feeling like the man who can't satisfy his woman—old and tired and impotent. …Which makes it all the more ridiculous when she tells me that I'm the best she's ever had—I don't know how, but she could at least try to be a little more convincing with the lie. Hell, she could care enough about me to not let me know how unsatisfied I leave her…

And I am old—my knees hurt when we try to do it standing up, I can't carry her anywhere, despite how tiny she is, and when we're in the shower, I have to struggle to get off because I'm terrified we're going to slip—she likes to choose these moments to point out how long I've kept it going and how amazing I am… which does nothing for me, because I would have lost it twenty minutes prior if I'd been able to stop worrying like the practical, middle-aged man I was. She says shit like that and it just makes me mad—although it distracts me enough from thinking about investing in a bath mat that I can at least finally come. Christ.

Honestly, the least strenuous position is with her on top, which is fucking frustrating as hell. I mean, don't get me wrong, Sara is a tiger in bed—she'll get on you and take you straight into the sunset if you let her. But she won't come that way. And it's bad form to come first, always, when you subtly let her know you want her to get on top and do all the work anyway. So you hold out, you encourage her in all ways, verbal and nonverbal, to seek her own pleasure… and she takes you from that fast, frantic, edge of the knife, fucking beautiful place… to slow and steady.

Because despite her daring and creativity and voraciousness, slow and steady is what does it for her.

She tucks her feet under my thighs, squeezes my hips between her knees, braces the heels of her palms against my chest and lets her short nails dig into my shoulders—not hard enough to hurt, but enough to get my attention—and she rocks slowly, pushing hard, my thumb keeping rhythm on her clit. She breathes heavily, she strains for it—reaches for it—and when she's goes it's the most blindingly brilliant explosion of light—it's beauty incarnate—but it's way, way, way too slow to get me anywhere.

So then I have to struggle to stay hard while she collapses across my chest and recuperates. The first few times… Hell, the first fifty times, I had no problem watching her unravel and staying stiff as a teenager while she took a few minutes to let the aftershocks fade, her breathing slow, and her afterglow release her enough for her to be able to lift her body and work at taking care of me. But you do that enough, and no matter how much you want her, it stops driving you crazy and you get… impatient. You don't know why you can't both get off at your speed. Isn't fast and furious supposed to be better for everyone?

And she wants to do this almost daily. I haven't come daily since I was a teenager. Prior to Sara, I didn't think anything of the sort was even close to realistic. …Who has so little going on in their life that they have the time and energy to have sex every, freaking, day? …Now I knew: Sara had the energy, and despite finding it irritating after the fact, prior to my pulsing erection would inform me that I had the time, apparently. Even if it made us late to a crime scene, interrupted our rare plans for going out, or interfered with my somewhat shaky friendship with Catherine and my weekly, mandatory instant messaging conversation with my mother. Apparently, my cock informed me, nothing was more important than satisfying her appetite.

You'd think that would be everything—I mean, isn't that enough to consider oneself good and properly smothered? But no—No, there's more.

She doesn't sleep with a top sheet. Just fitted sheet and blankets. …Which is fine. I like sheets, but I'm okay without them. Yet she insists on making the bed with the flat sheet, and then kicking it down to the bottom of the bed each night to tangle around my feet or leave a bulge at the bottom of the bed that blocks the cable box so I have to reach way above my head to change the channel or turn the TV off. She's constantly colder than me, so she messes with the thermostat, making the place… well, I mean, not hot—but warmer than I like. She packages all the meat I buy in Ziploc bags, so it can't possibly touch anything else she might eat. She puts my drinking glasses away rim side down instead of rim side up and on occasion she drinks my beer. She buys skim milk instead of one percent and she bakes cookies in my oven for no reason other than because she thinks I need more sweetness in my life. She cooks my half of our meals with meat when it's possible, even though I know she wouldn't touch it for anyone else, and she's put Hank on a diet that makes him miserable.

She leaves sticky notes on the bathroom mirror to let me know if she gets called in and I don't wake up and they never relay just the message; they always say something else, sickly sweet, with a curvy little heart drawn at the bottom. She cleans the bathrooms without complaining about the occasional mess that I don't clean up—from tiny whiskers in the sink to urine under the seat—she doesn't keep her tampons in plain, shiver-inducing sight, and she never comments on how I do the crossword in the paper every morning instead of sharing. She worries about my blood pressure and my cholesterol when she's shopping and when she thinks I'm working too hard or long, she'll find a way to sneak a healthy lunch bag into my office discreetly, so that when I return from a double that will inevitably slide into a triple, I'll at least have something in my stomach.

…She puts toilet paper on so that it rolls over instead of under, she writes notes on the magnetic shopping list pad on my fridge, reminding me of doctor's appointments and dental appointments and Hank's vet appointments. She paints her toenails in bed and she wears tiny, tiny shorts to sleep in and she looks delicious when she comes back from a long run. And recently, she spoke to my mother.

…I had left myself online, and my mother is my only friend—the only reason I instant messaged at all—so when she sat down at the computer, she saw that my mother had been trying to talk to me. …She intended to sign me out when my mother had typed, "I know you're there Gilbert—you just went from 'idle' to 'online'." So she had calmly explained that no, I was at a scene and had simply forgotten to sign myself out earlier in the day, and that this was Sara. …She'd meant to leave it at that—I know, because I checked the chat log the next time Sara made a trip to her apartment—but my mother is hard to dissuade, and she'd jumped on the chance to talk to the woman I had told my mother of, but not about.

But that wasn't the breaking point. No—the proverbial straw to this camel's back occurred just before work the day I let the words escape me. She'd gone shopping, and though her toothbrush was not exceedingly old, mine was in pretty bad shape—so she'd bought a pack of two and thrown the old two out. …They were green and purple. Not our usual pink and blue. Not the gender-specific, easily defined, hers and mine pairing of one which belongs and one which is just visiting… No. Green and purple. I picked up the purple first, and then looked at it strangely, before choosing the green… and hesitated, before thinking that it hardly mattered whose was whose—they were new, and there was nothing in her mouth that hadn't come in contact with mine already.

That was the moment—the step too far. The wrong-colored toothbrushes and my shrugging acceptance of it and everything she was and everything she offered me and everything I wanted to take from her.

Like I said—smothering.

So I snapped, and we did the case and I went home… to nothing. She had left the lab before me, hadn't let me know that she would be stopping at her apartment… hadn't spoken to me much at all. Which was a relief, in truth, after the day I'd had. After the past several months we'd had. In fact, it was pretty much amazing. I walked down the hall to pick up Hank from my neighbor and her six year old daughter—his 'babysitter'—and I gave him two large scoops from the leftover bag of his old, fattening dog food. I made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, put the bacon back in the freezer outside of its Ziploc bag, and left the dishes, unrinsed, in the dishwasher. I didn't shower before bed, I didn't kick the flat sheet to the bottom of the bed, and I slept amazingly. I wasn't woken up, I wasn't solicited for sex, and I wasn't worried about what she might be dreaming. And when I got up, I took a long, hot shower, all by myself and did not change the crime-scene-covered sheets. I left my wet towel on the floor, brushed my teeth with the green toothbrush and then promptly deposited both green and purple in the garbage can. And after I dressed, I picked out a book from my disorganized bookshelf, and left it out.

When I ate for the night, I left my turkey and ham lunchmeat out of their Ziploc bags and I even threw out her tofu in a moment of spite. I took Hank to his babysitter, who tried in vain to get me to stay and play vet with her and Hank, and I went to work. I paired Sara with Greg, because she was his mentor and it only made sense, but I gave them a run-of-the-mill case—not awful, but not too easy. And she was professional and detached and her eyes made no accusations about why I hadn't called to see why she hadn't come home that morning, but that was Sara—ever since we'd started dating, she'd been above reproach at work.

If I had known she could do that so flawlessly, I might have gotten the nerve up to be with her much sooner.

It was an uneventful night, and while she and Greg's case could wait until the next night when more evidence was processed, mine couldn't—I pulled a double, and hurried home for a few hours and a meal before work. It didn't occur to me to be troubled by the fact that she hadn't called or shown up, yet, and I crawled into and out of bed alone and thankful for the sleep I'd gotten. A shower and a fast-food burger that would have Sara fretting about my health later, and I was back in the lab, and so was everyone else. …I had worried, when Sara and I got together, what would happen if we broke up—and now I knew, apparently. Not that… that we were broken up, per se. But… if we did… if it came to that… everything would be fine. Easy.

The next two weeks living as a bachelor again were absolute bliss—I mean, really, I can't believe how long I went without jacking off in the shower. I can't believe how rarely I ate meat and how quickly I'd accepted changes that I hadn't really wanted—Sara might not tell me what to do, but she had changed things, and I was glad—so glad—they were back to normal now. I felt like I should be worried about the eventual outcome of this… We hadn't spoken about anything except work since that fateful conversation, and that in itself should concern me, shouldn't it? I mean, I didn't want to break up with her. I'd wanted to be with Sara for years, and when I say that I gave in to her in a moment of desperation and weakness, I mean that. One part of my brain points out that I could probably go another seven years without needing her that badly again, but the larger part knows that the need increased with exposure—I'd had too much of her to give her up now.

No, I didn't want to end things… I just wanted some space. Some room to breathe. …So I didn't think about her not calling, not showing up, not showing interest… It wasn't like I could miss her, was it? I saw her every day.

And then she did call me. I was sitting in a rather messy kitchen, doing my crossword with some coffee when a familiar ring tone came from my cell phone, eliciting a thudding heartbeat from of me… it was Sara. I fumbled for the device and forced myself to remain calm while I answered—maybe I had missed her, just a little.

"Grissom."

"…Hi. Uh, it's… it's Sara."

I smiled softly, nodding. "I know." Did she think I wouldn't recognize her voice?

"Listen, I… I'm sorry for bothering you. I just, ah… I was wondering if I'd left some…things…there."

I frowned—she not only had a deep dresser drawer of assorted clothing here, she had miscellaneous items spread around the house. …Despite my brief, irrational anger that had spurred me to toss her tofu and toothbrush, I did not want to eradicate her from my life. …I liked the heels in my hall closet and the lacy, frilly, colorful undergarments in the drawer beneath my much more subdued underwear. "You… you have a lot of things here." I said, uncertainly, because this was not what I'd expected.

I'd expected my normal Sara, a little shy around me, even now, especially when she was worried about upsetting me… upsetting the delicate balance of our relationship. I'd expected anger, because the woman had a temper. I'd expected disdain or pleading or… something in those veins, but not this. …Not Sara acting like things were over. Like she was preparing for the inevitable exchange of boxes of each other's things—debris and detritus that accumulated after only a few weeks if you weren't careful. The evidence a relationship left behind. …Would she have anything from her home to give back to me…?

She cleared her throat softly. "I, uh… I know. I'm sorry about that. …I just… I need a couple things, and I'm pretty sure they're there. I'm sorry if this isn't a good time…"

"No. It's… it's fine. I… What are you looking for?"

"Oh. …Just a… a few odds and ends."

"Oh. Okay."

"I, um… I'll be over in ten?"

I glanced around the townhouse, acknowledging the utterly unkempt nature of the place right now and deciding in a moment of split-second defensiveness that it didn't matter if she saw it this way. It was my house. …And if she cared, why hadn't she been here in two weeks? Why hadn't she called, except to tell me she needed something? "That's fine. I'll see you then." I said, like it was nothing, and then glanced around again, beating down my embarrassment with some of that defiance. She's the one who had stopped everything. Had I done anything other than simply discuss a scene with her?

She was overreacting.

"Great." She said, and hung up, like that was it. …And despite my defiance, I hurried into my bedroom to change into an old UCLA t-shirt and jeans, because it didn't look like I was trying to impress her, but Sara had told me how much she liked seeing me dressed-down. Throwing on a pair of jeans in this house—prior to two weeks ago—had been the equivalent of asking if she was in the mood… and she almost always was, I remembered with a throb. How had I forgotten how nice that was? …How had I thought that jacking off in the shower was a luxury when I'd had a beautiful woman who wanted to do it for me? …Hell, one of my complaints was that when she did all the work, I had to wait a minute or so for her to recover from her own orgasm.

Was I crazy?

I frowned, thinking I should probably bag up the meat before she got here, on the off chance that what she needed was the tofu I'd tossed, but the knock on the door—she had a key, she never knocked anymore—told me I didn't have the time. I sighed and moved out of the bedroom, running a hand through my curls before I opened the door.

My breath caught in my throat. She… she was in a dress. My Sara. My tough-as-nails, one-of-the-guys, consummate tomboy Sara, in a black dress and… flip flops. She offered a sheepish smile at my expression, and I realized her black heels were in my closet. "Can I… come in?"

I nodded, stepped back, and turned carefully guarded eyes on the clutter that would not have been there if Sara had been here the past two weeks. And I suddenly felt less impetuous and more embarrassed—I couldn't even keep up my own home for a couple weeks while we… did whatever it was we were doing, right now? "Your heels?" I ask, and gesture to the closet. She tears her eyes from the disorder as well, having followed my gaze to it and now to the closet. She closes the front door behind her with both hands behind her back, and then moves to the closet and turns her back to me, allowing me to appreciate the way the edge-of-the-shoulder, one-inch straps make the back of her dress lower than I'd expected—I can see both shoulder blades standing out in sleek, beautiful definition.

And the way she was bent over, pulling the shoes out… I wouldn't be a man—or, at least, a straight man—if I didn't notice how beautiful her tight little ass looked under the soft, black fabric. The dress was short enough that when she bent over, it rose up her thighs and filled me all kinds of impure thoughts—God, it had been so freaking long, and my body was basically on an everyday schedule thanks to the vixen in front of me… I didn't care if my knees snapped in half, I wanted to take her from behind, against a wall. She had finally managed to find them and drag them out—they were a little scuffed, but mostly no worse for the wear, and she slipped into them an scooped up her flip flops before turning back to me. Looking uncomfortable.

"I, uh… Do you mind if I just… grab something else?"

"Of course not." I say, but when she heads in the direction of the bedroom without me, I find myself trailing behind, curious. I was fairly certain that the only thing in the bedroom was clothes, and she was clearly already dressed…

When I reach our bedroom door, she's standing beside the dresser, already rummaging… and she pulls out something black and… little. I frown, despite not being certain what it is from across the room. "…You going out before shift?"

Her cheekbones redden. "I, uh… I switched with Warrick, remember?"

"No." I said, more worried now about where she was going if I wasn't going to see her immediately afterwards, at the lab, where she belonged.

She frowns, wringing the black fabric in her hands. "I told you this, three or four days ago… Warrick's grandmother has her 85th birthday party in a few days, and he asked me, since it was my day off, if I wanted to switch with him."

"…Ah. Right. …So you made plans."

"Actually, I… I'd already had to decline the offer, but when Warrick asked… everything kind of fell into place."

"What offer?" I ask, and I know my voice sounds harsh. Her expression is torn between amused indulgence, impatience, and a little frustration.

"I… There's a professor, from Berkeley… We've kept in touch and he's attending this dumb cocktail thing at UNLV…"

"So, it's a date."

She pursed her lips and cocked an eyebrow, looking almost amused. "No. …I'm going as his date, but—"

"Wow, you're quick, huh?" I ask, with a snide, condescending chuckle that finally lights the fire in her eyes that she's managed to keep so tightly under control. I couldn't help it—I'm anxious and uncertain about the state of our relationship and she just stands there looking deliciously amused?

"…Excuse me?" The item falls from her grasp, and I eye it—a bra. Her strapless bra. Suddenly I'm fighting a losing battle not to zero in on her chest, because I know she's only got one strapless, which means that under that slinky little dress…

But she's angry. And she knows me too well to not see the look in my eyes if I look at her that way. …I don't want to give her the satisfaction. I clear my throat and my face before meeting her eyes. "You just… didn't waste much time, finding someone new, after we…" I trail off, not wanting to say the words 'break up' out loud, in case that makes them true.

Sara has no such qualms.

"After we… what, Grissom? Broke up? Is that what you were going to say? …Because I don't seem to remember being broken up with. I don't remember anything other than the usual, backhanded, snide and cowardly doublespeak you're just so very good at. …And you are a coward—a messy, selfish, hardheaded coward." And with that, like it was nothing, she slid her arms out of the straps of her dress, revealing bare breasts. My breath caught in my throat and I grit my teeth, watching as she put the strapless bra on and adjusted it, her breasts now pushed up high, giving her considerable cleavage, even as she slipped her arms back into their slots. I felt dizzy, but she just snorted in disgust. "I'd better go… I don't want to make my date wait too long…"

And she strode out with all the confidence and arrogance and daring that I had come to expect from my Sara. My Sara.

I'd like to say that my revelation was instantaneous—that I chased after her, apologized, and dragged her back into my arms and out of that dress. Instead, I went to work early, hoping to have some break in a case that would occupy me. No luck—everything had either not yet been processed or come back inconclusive. So I worked on paperwork, trying not to think of everything she'd ever told me about her teachers at Berkeley. Hadn't she told me she'd had a crush on one? …And was the one who propositioned her after finals from Harvard, or… no, I was pretty sure it hadn't happened when she was an undergrad…

By the time shift started and I gathered the assignments—they were few and far between—I had finished my paperwork and succeeded in raising my blood pressure a considerable amount.

Which meant that when I gave Warrick and Greg a trick roll and Catherine and Nick a suicide with suspicious circumstances (but not so suspicious that I would have sent two if I had anything else for them to do…), I was left with idle hands and a racing mind. I paced my office. I checked through every lab, waiting on the remaining unprocessed evidence. I fed my office pets until there was a pile of food in each terrarium that they were ignoring entirely. Finally, I resorted to turning on the scanner I had in my office, though rarely ever used.

When a call came out for drunk and disorderly, sending a single officer over to assist hotel security at the Luxor—the dispatcher relaying with a hint of humor in his voice that he thought it was some UNLV party and that some bookworm intellectual couldn't hold his wine… I leapt to my feet. …Maybe I would say I'd come to assist. …Maybe I would lie and say that there'd been a call out to one of the rooms… Maybe I just wouldn't draw any attention to myself at all. But I had to see her. Had to see who she was with, when she was dressed like that. Who she had put on black undergarments and makeup for, instead of me…

I beat the officer there, noting the lack of a police car in any of the surrounding parking lots before I parked and moved inside. I had expected to need an invitation and, lacking one, need to either lie convincingly or flash my credentials to get into the ballroom… but the party had started hours before, and any security there was worried about two men at the bar who were being kept apart by colleagues and friends, but who still bore the marks of having been in a heated fist fight recently. Security, despite requesting police presence, did seem to have the situation under control—the majority of the people outside of the bar area didn't even seem aware that there had been a fight.

I drew in a deep breath, aware that while this wasn't strictly black tie, it was a dressy affair and I definitely stood out. When a man passed me with his jacket and tie missing, shirt-sleeves rolled up, and I revised my opinion—a few hours ago, I would have stood out. Not so much now, in my dark blue button down and gray slacks. …I tried to look like I had been here a while, eating and drinking, while I moved around the outside of the room, scanning the sparsely populated tables. Sara wasn't seated at one presently, and I moved closer to the dance floor, cursing her for wearing black.

Everyone here was in black.

It was her laugh, ultimately, that drew my eyes to her form—catching sight of her bare shoulder blades and her sweeping curls atop a slim, gently curving silhouette, the black silk stopping just above her knees, showing off shapely calves above the heels that had been pressed up against my work boots hours before. And over her shoulder was the face of a very handsome man—older than her, yes, but probably my age or younger. …His gray hair was limited to his temples, the rest a sleek dark brown. He had rugged stubble across his jaw that would have looked silly and unkempt on a man like me, but on him simply accentuated the sharp look of him in his tux, his bow tie untied and hanging around his neck with a reckless kind of devil-may-care attitude. He was taller than me, too—Sara was only an inch, inch and a half, shorter than me… in her modest heels she was at my eye-level or higher. But with him…

The top of her head came to his eyes, and I wondered if she liked that—looking up at a man, even when she was decked out in heels. She had told me that dating in high school had been hard for her, because no one wanted to date a girl who they had to look up to to kiss.

His hand on her waist was cordial and respectful, but still comfortable and firm, and though they didn't dance pressed together, the proximity was not that of strangers. I frowned, wondering how I hadn't known that Sara was quite a good dancer—he was pulling out all the stops to impress her, and yet her feet glided smoothly along with him, her eyes calm and unchallenged, like it was second nature to her. …And she was speaking animatedly, keeping him riveted. I sighed heavily, taking the champagne a wandering waiter offered me and ordering a scotch on the rocks from him while I downed the flute.

Did I interrupt, sweep her into my arms, demand she come home? …Did I leave her with someone she was obviously happy with, realizing that I'd taken seven years to make a move and yet I'd managed to screw it up in less than seven months? This was why I hadn't wanted to take the risk in the first place—I was awful at relationships… people stuff… and Sara was far too desirable for her own good.

Or mine, for that matter. My chest was aching, and I wondered if I was having a heart attack, or if she was indeed capable of inspiring this kind of pain in me, when she was only dancing…

The soft, jazzy number ended and another started, and though he seemed like he wanted to dance through, Sara made a motion indicating that she was hot and wanted to sit and get a drink. I expected them to leave the dance floor together, and he seemed to as well… She thanked him for the dance, and turned, but he followed her, gently catching her elbow and gesturing to the bar—he wanted to get her a drink. Instead, she politely declined, and I instantly understood—she had obliged the man with a dance, but he was not her professor. She hadn't come with him… and was clearly not interested. Despite her shaking her head and trying to leave him again, he grasped her again, a little more firmly, tugging her back and saying something his face told me he thought was charming and winning.

I took a step forward, intending to let him know what it meant when a lady said 'no,' but Sara's real date intervened then, offering her a flute of champagne and sliding a hand into the small of her back, saying something cordially but firmly to the first man before guiding Sara back to their table, relief in her eyes.

I could have laughed out loud—her date had to be pushing seventy, his white eyebrows untrimmed and a little crazy, white hair showing signs of having been combed down carefully at the beginning of the evening, though it was tousled now. I took the scotch from the waiter, and decided that I would watch her another moment or so, since she was so very lovely, and then call Catherine and tell her I was taking the night off. I'd wait outside her apartment, and when she got home, we'd make amends.

And I did—watched her speak to the man and laugh with him, noting the solid gold band on his left hand. I wondered if his wife was deceased or simply not in town… my mother still wore her wedding ring. I watched Sara touch the man's forearm affectionately, leaning back in her chair in a slouched, relaxed position, entirely inappropriate for this venue and that dress, chatting to the man like he was an old friend. …Which he probably was, I figured, belatedly, realizing that as this wasn't a real date, they must be fairly close for him to ask her to be his date tonight. I gave my empty glass to another passing waiter and pulled out my phone, glad that I was back against the wall enough to muffle most of the party sounds, and called Catherine.

"Willows."

"Cath, it's me."

"What's up? We're just about done here—suspicious circs were the lack of a suicide note and no pill bottles near the body of our OD victim. But we found the note and the mother just admitted she cleaned up the bottles because they were pain killers from over the border—which opens a whole new can of worms, but that's not our problem."

"Mmm," I said, only half-listening. Sara's professor had patted her hand on the table gently and risen, moving in the direction of the bathroom. Sara had tilted her head back, drinking from her champagne. "Listen, Catherine, I'm glad to hear you've got some time—I've had some things come up. Can you cover shift tonight?"

There was a pause, and then, "…What things?"

"Family emergency." I lied, and her voice softened—she was no doubt worried something had happened to my mother, and I felt guilty, but not enough to correct her assumptions.

"Oh. …No, of course I can take it. I… Do you need a few days off?"

"No." I said, watching Sara's scruff-faced admirer take the empty seat beside her. "No, I don't think so. Listen, I'll talk to you tomorrow, I gotta go." I hung up, not allowing her to respond, knowing she'd forgive me, my feet taking me forward without thought. Sara was shaking her head, pulling her hand from his grasp, and as I moved up behind her, pieces of the conversation drifted to me between the gentle rise and fall of the music.

"…think you've had just a little too much…"

"…dance. I know you were…"

"…Sorry, really, but I'm seeing…"

"…here with Old Man Time…"

"…is a very dear friend of mine. Now, forgive me, but I'm not interested."

"…May I have this dance?" I asked, just over her shoulder, extending a hand to her. She turned to look up at me with her eyes wide, surprised and startled, and within a moment I could see her debating whether it would be harder for her to bury her pride and dance with me or attempt to discourage Scruffy by herself. Scruffy made her decision for her, however, standing up and wobbling, explaining why he'd been concentrating so hard on his dance moves before. He was clearly intoxicated.

"Excuse me, but the lady and I are having a conversation." The words were not confrontational, just a little slurred, but his body language was. I stepped closer to him, letting my hand fall onto Sara's exposed shoulder.

"No, I believe the lady was trying to gently dissuade your advances by telling you that she's already seeing someone, and you were displaying your inability to take 'no' for an answer… Sara?"

I turned to her, and she glanced between us before standing and slipping her hand into my proffered one. Scruffy turned to her with narrowed eyes. "You know this guy?"

She stepped a little closer to me. "He's my…"

"Boyfriend." I helped her, tugging gently on her hand to guide her towards the dance floor behind me. "Excuse us." We moved away from the table and onto the center of the dance floor before she would meet my eyes and raise her complaints.

"What are you doing?"

"Rescuing you." I told her, tugging her more closely against me and sliding one hand from the small of her back up to her bare shoulders and gently into her curls. I knew that this wasn't what she meant, but feeling her close again after so long… after believing she had been spending the night in the arms of someone else…

She stepped back, not out of my embrace, but putting space between us. "Don't be flippant, Gil. Why are you here?"

I let my eyes drift from hers, which were too intense, to her collar bone, the line of her shoulders, the feet of dancers behind her. She was right at eye level in her heels, and I didn't like the comparison I made to her last dance partner. "I… I'm not good at this, Sara."

She pursed her lips, and though the indignation in her eyes didn't leave, she allowed me to tug her back against me. "…I didn't need to be rescued, you know."

I smile softly, knowing this to be true—she was trying to avoid conflict, but at some point she would have been pushed too far, and if an aggressive tone didn't dissuade him and a security officer wasn't nearby, I was willing to bet she'd have put one of her heels into the man's crotch. 'Self-defense,' I can hear her telling me, in my head, with that lilt of amusement in her voice. "No, you didn't. You don't. …You're more than capable, but… I didn't particularly want to watch him touch you over and over while you tried to be polite."

She doesn't exactly smile at that, but her lips quirk. We're quiet through the rest of our dance, and when we return to the table once more, only her professor is present. She puts on a brighter smile, obviously a show for the man, and reaches out to grasp his forearm when he stands at our approach. "Dr. Andrew Weinstein, I'd like you to meet Dr. Gil Grissom."

I extended a hand, and the older man smiled and shook it. "Ah, Sara's boss… I've heard a lot about you. You know, before your seminar, I was her favorite teacher. ...Bah, but what old man like me could compete with bugs and bodies, though, eh?" He joked pleasantly, and I found myself liking the man a lot, despite hardly knowing him. I grinned, remembering hearing quite a bit about the man, now that I'd heard his name… and wasn't blinded by overwhelming jealousy.

"I don't know if that's true, Dr. Weinstein—she still talks about you and your lectures often."

He smiles, turning soft, almost fatherly, eyes on Sara. "Is that right…?" Sara beams and blushes under his gaze, but reaches out to his arm again.

"You promised me a dance before the night was over… and I think that's pretty soon—your colleagues are overindulging."

"It's Vegas, baby!" he said in his slightly shaky voice, but with conviction, and Sara giggled as they moved to the dance floor, albeit rather more slowly than she and I had. I took the seat her professor had vacated, trying to organize my thoughts in my head. I wanted Sara to come home with me, tonight, and that was the most prominent thought… but I had other, more fearful thoughts. Like guilt over the meat and the tofu and the toothbrushes I'd thrown away. …And concern over how she would react, when she saw those details, which were far more disrespectful to her than my messy home had been.

I didn't have much time to worry, however… it seemed that they were done, after a dance, the man retrieving a black clutch from his suit pocket and passing it to Sara. I followed behind them just a pace or so as they moved out to the lobby, speaking softly about how good it was to see one another again and how lucky that she'd been able to figure out work so she could be here. I let myself fall another step behind, giving them a moment, as the older man hugged her gently to his chest and kissed her forehead. She beamed, blushing at the affection, and asked if he needed help getting up to his room. He shook his head as if this were the most ridiculous question in the world, and informed her that he wasn't an invalid yet, to which she smiled softly and let him go… but didn't turn to look at me or leave until she saw he had safely stepped into the elevator and pressed the number for his floor.

I watched the line of Sara's back as she went from wistful and relaxed to upset and determined—her muscles tensed, her posture changed, and the knuckles of the fingers on her clutch turned white as she gripped it more tightly. She turned back to me, and though she didn't shout, I knew she was angry. She didn't speak in the lobby, but walked outside, into the night, and stood off to the side, out of the way of the rush of tourists surrounding us.

When she pulled a pack of cigarettes from the clutch and pursed one between her lips, I frowned. I mean, sure, she still had the occasional smoke after particularly tough cases—the stress got to her—but it was rare since she'd taken up vegetarianism and especially since her suspension and Nick's kidnapping. Warrick might have wanted to live for the moment, but Sara dealt with the almost-loss differently, because she had come close enough to self-destructing enough times in her past for it to scare her. She took on the mantra that her body was a temple, and usually refused to do anything to it that would harm it—not just no meat, but she only ate processed food when she went to the diner with the team. Otherwise it was no preservatives, no additives, all natural, organic foods. Even the meat I ate was free range and organic. She started running again, something she hadn't done consistently since college, and took up yoga. She'd been to counselors, only drank in moderation, took vitamins…

"Well…" she flicked the lighter and lit the cigarette before replacing both the pack and the tarnished silver Zippo lighter with the now barely-there picture of four symbols—the symbols from the inside cover of the Led Zeppelin IV album, representing each of the band members—that she'd managed to keep through foster care and beyond as a reminder of her brother, whose lighter it had been in the first place. He had been a fan—Sara was just sentimental. "Thanks, I guess, for getting me away from him." There's no need to specify—she means Scruffy, and we both know it was more for me than her.

"…Did you drive here? Let me give you a ride."

"No, I drove." She inhales with a certain amount of pleasure on her face, and I have the urge to snatch the stick from her lips, but I don't.

"I… could give you a ride anyway. You've been drinking…"

"So have you." She tells me, though I don't know how she knew that… Scotch on my breath, probably. I frown, shoving my hands in my pockets.

"I… don't want to go home alone."

She eyes me speculatively, but not like she's thinking about coming with me—it's like she's analyzing me. I wait for her to tell me 'Too bad,' or that she does want to go home alone, or that she didn't give a fuck what I wanted… I'm prepared for that, at least. But she doesn't—for a woman with a temper, she shows a surprising amount of restraint most of the time. At least when it comes to me.

Instead, she takes another drag, the tip of her cigarette glowing in front of her face. "…What are you doing, Grissom?"

We both know that that is worse than if she'd yelled at me—she only calls me 'Grissom' now when we're in the lab or if she's mad at me, and she's demanding an explanation rather than lashing out. …If she got yelled, I could fight back, and eventually we'd both apologize and go to bed. What she was doing instead… required discussion of emotions. It required… things I couldn't do. I watched her helplessly and she shook her head, dropping her smoke to the ground and putting it out with her heel, but then bending to recover it and bring it to the garbage can with the sand in the basin on top, to dispose of it.

Sara Sidle, even angry, didn't litter.

When she comes back to me, she looks more disappointed than angry. She twists her lips, nods, and sighs. "I'll see you tomorrow night at work, Griss. …Unless you want me to come by sooner and get my things."

"Y-your things?" I ask, stunned. She had said earlier that I hadn't broken up with her… she had told Scruffy that she was seeing someone. She had told him that I was her… Oh, no, I had provided the word boyfriend. I felt my face contorting, though I didn't know which emotions it seemed to be shifting between. We were just… in a fight. We were… having problems. We weren't about to be done… And if we were, it wouldn't be Sara who ended it—she had wanted me for years. Surely this wasn't happening.

She nodded, and she did seem a little sad—a little affectionate—watching me struggle with this. She took pity on me. "…Even if you don't think you know, honey, you've been telling me from the beginning exactly where I stand. …Hell, I've been reinforcing the idea, because I wanted this for so long. I spend the majority of my time trying to perfect the space in which you live, so that things are easier for you, because I know how hard you work and how much cases affect you, despite how well you hide it. I… I'm constantly thinking about your needs ahead of mine, and it… it only seems to annoy you. And I probably would have gone on like that for a long time, if you hadn't brought the problem to light—I am a little smothering, but only because you give me so little reassurance… so little consideration. It leaves me feeling insecure."

I opened my mouth, and she paused, letting me know I could speak if I wanted to… but no, I had nothing… I gaped like a fish for several moments, and she shook her head, like she'd expected as much. Still, her voice was gentle. "I'm not saying it's entirely your fault, Gil. I did this to myself… But the reality that a few poorly chosen words at a crime scene reduced me to hardly sleeping, always clutching my phone, having a fucking duffle bag sitting by the door, ready to go, on the off chance that you might call me and ask me to come back into your life.. I spent so long chasing you that I didn't realize I was still doing it, even once we were together. It was just a natural state of being, for me. …But I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not waiting around on you and I'm not going to spend any more time trying to convince you, by word or action or deed, that I'm worthy of your love and a place in your life. …So, when you're ready for me, I'll come get my things."

And before I could process even half of that, she had left me behind.

Returning home, I played her words over and over, first in disbelief and then in denial… in angry justification. It took me a long time to realize that she was right. The sun was coming up by the time I had really figured it out—not just what she was saying, but what needed to be done about it. I made a quick trip to the store, for a few things I had foolishly thrown away, and then came home to tackle the problem. I started in the kitchen first—the fridge specifically. I re-bagged all of my offending meat and moved it to the reach-in freezer in the garage and proceeded to scrub fridge thing out… There would be tofu in here later, and I didn't want any of the meat I had left out of their bags to contaminate it. I cleared out one drawer for whatever lunchmeat, etc., that couldn't be kept in the garage freezer, and replaced everything in the now-gleaming appliance. Then, with a heavy gaze, turned to the rest of the townhouse… I had a lot to do.

I scrubbed every surface, finding dust that even Sara had missed. I didn't run dishes through the dishwasher, but washed and dried each by hand—I was raised Catholic… penance came naturally, and helped with the guilt—and I stripped the bed, flipped the mattress, and remade it clean, without the offensive flat sheet. I found all of Sara's toiletries and put them out beside my counterparts, rather than tucked under the sink or in a single, tiny drawer. I even pulled her tampons out from where she'd tucked them behind a large bottle of Windex and put them in the drawer directly across from the toilet, thinking that perhaps this would be more… convenient… for her. I put a purple and a green toothbrush in the holder.

I reorganized my books, alphabetically within their specific subjects, and then moved into my bedroom, where I proceeded to empty out half my dresser and half my closet, packing the items into totes and then into my car. I threw away Hank's old food—I was pretty sure it had been giving him the runs anyway—and filled his bowl with the healthy, lean stuff Sara had bought. And finally, I pulled out every picture I had of us together, whether with the team or from San Francisco or the few we'd managed to accrue in our relationship thus far. I framed the ones I had frames for, pulling other, less important pictures from their places to accommodate us, and put several on the fridge.

I kept thinking about the fridge, even as I showered and dressed to go see her. If I had to wager a guess, Sara hadn't gotten a lot of praise as a child… probably very little put up on the fridge, whether it was drawings or report cards or tests, despite how brilliant she was. With a little uncertainty, I moved to my briefcase, digging until I found the stack of papers I should have filed months ago—reports on each member of my staff. I took Sara's, made a copy, and put the report on the fridge with a heart-shaped magnet, underlining her solve rates with a red pen and writing the cheesy, generic teacher-comment of 'Wow!' beside it. I smiled at that, and headed out.

I debated bringing the totes up to the door with me, and decided it could only help… only emphasize my point. So I hauled them up two flights of stairs because her elevator wasn't working and set them in front of her door with a huff before knocking. I was grateful I'd opted for jeans and t-shirt, as I was now sweating, and it would have been worse in nicer clothes. I glanced at my watch when she didn't immediately answer, wondering if she was still asleep… After some hesitation, I knocked again, louder this time. When I heard soft movement, maybe stumbling, from within and then the door swung open to show me Sara in a tank top and a pair of my boxer shorts, I smiled in relief. Surely she wouldn't be wearing them if she didn't still feel for me, right? I still had a chance.

"Hi."

She sighed and leaned her head against the side of the door, eyes droopy and hair tousled from sleep. "Gil… What are you doing?"

"I…" I hesitated, but before she could roll her eyes and turn away from me for my lack of words, I forged ahead. "I'm fixing… this."

She frowned, eyes open wider, but suspicious. "…You can't."

"I am. I… I've been up all night, all morning…" I add, realizing it is nearing noon now. "And when you see my place, you'll see a lot of what I've done… but we're not going there yet, because we're never here. …Can I bring this stuff in?"

Her gaze turned to the totes, but she didn't back up to let me in. "I… What is all of that?"

I shrugged, a little self-deprecatingly. "A lot of things… I, uh… I want to ask you about them, but I don't want to just leave them out here while we talk."

With a confused frown lingering on her features, she backed up, holding her door wider, and I hefted them up again, bringing them through her door and into her living room until I found an empty space of floor. She closed the door behind me, crossing her arms across her chest. "Okay, Grissom… talk."

Uh oh. She was mad again. I swallowed, fumbling with my hands and finally resting them on the stacked totes between us, just to have them somewhere. "I… I realized you were right." She snorted, but I pushed onward. "Not just… just, you were right about our relationship dynamics. …You were right about the cause. …I spent so long being pursued by you, that even when I gave in to it, I… I felt like I was doing you a favor, when it was really for myself that I'd given in. …I needed to convince myself that it was more about you—your wants and needs—because I didn't want to admit to myself how much I…" I glance up from my hands, to her, and her eyes are wide, no trace of derision on her face. I take this as a good sign and turn my eyes back to my hands. "I didn't want to admit how much I needed you, Sara. It was easier to continue with the status quo… let you continue chasing me, because it meant I didn't have to address any of my own insecurities… like the fact that, now I had you, I could never stop being afraid of losing you. It was… I…"

I was floundering again, and gripped the edge of the blue plastic hard. "I don't… want to be with you, like that, anymore. I don't want to be chased, and I don't want you to chase me. …I want us to find a place to just… be, together. And I… I know enough about human nature and… enough about my own… shortcomings… to know that it won't be easy, or happen overnight, and that mistakes will be made. I know that. …But I want to try, Sara. You're worth the risk and you're worth the effort it'll take to change, and I just hope that maybe I'm still worth all of that to you."

She blinked rapidly, trying to regain control of herself. She grit her teeth. "You said I was smothering you."

"I know."

"You never appreciated anything I did for you. You were constantly inconsiderate."

I nodded. "I know."

"You let me clean your house, constantly. …Stopped picking up after yourself."

"I know."

"You would never come here, even for a few hours…"

"…I know."

"...I was always on top."

The corner of my mouth quirked, but I repeated, "I know."

"…You never tell me that you love me."

I drew in a slow breath—Sara hadn't done so either, but she didn't have to, really. We both knew it. I swallowed.

"But I do."

"…T-that's not going to fix this." She countered, looking like she hadn't expected that answer.

"I know." I said, again. "I know all of that, Sara. I'm… we're… going to have to work on fixing it, if you believe it's worth fixing. …I do."

She swallowed and looked away from me, eyeing first the framed black and white photographs on her wall, and then moving her gaze to the totes I was clutching. "…What do you have in those, anyway?"

I inhaled deeply and let it out in a rush. "Clothes, shoes, a book or two…"

"Why?" She asked, eyeing the large containers, clearly confused at the sheer amount they must contain.

At this, I managed a smile. "Well… I cleaned out half of my closet and dresser, so I thought… maybe, if you… wanted to work on this… I'd leave this stuff here and we'd take half of your stuff back with us. …So we can stay either place, instead of… just at mine."

She looked like she wasn't quite ready to accept that explanation. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "Easy way to explain me not moving in… to justify…"

I shook my head slowly. "No, it… it wasn't easy. You know me, honey… how I like my space and my order and my way of doing things. And if I'd thought it would be good for us, I would have come over in a U-haul instead of dragging these heavy things all the way up the stairs. …I want to live with you—I don't ever want to sleep alone again—but I want that step in our lives to be unblemished by all of this stuff. …We'll work through this issue of too much give on your part and too much take on mine… and then we'll get a new place, together."

"A…new place? You mean… with both our names on it?" I chuckled softly, nodding and finally stepping around the totes to come closer to her.

"Yes, with both our names on it."

"That's a… public record… of our relationship." She said, shakily. I smiled wider, understanding, and caught her arms, just above her elbows, in my palms.

"You're right… it is. And if the lab finds out, they can go f—" She lunged forward and kissed me, cutting me off with a smirk on her lips and holding me there for several long moments, before pulling back, leaving me breathless and wanting more.

"Do you kiss your mother with that dirty mouth?" She asked me, coyly, and I felt heat surge through me. God, I wanted her. God, I loved her. I tugged her back to me urgently, pulling her by the hips directly against me, watching her eyes widen as she encountered the physical proof of what she did to me.

"I'd love to kiss you, all over, with this dirty mouth…" She shivered visibly and nodded, and, for the first time, led me back to her bedroom. I took it in briefly before she'd spun around to kiss me again—burgundy walls, white and brown bed, two full sized mirrors, unframed and pushed together, on the wall across from the bed. I felt another jolt of heat deep in my stomach, wondering why we hadn't come here for this before… those mirrors…

I pulled back, framing her face in my hands, meeting her eyes and waiting for the haze to clear before I spoke. "…I love you. I love you and I missed you and those two weeks were just…"

"Awful," she supplied, and I nodded, fervently.

"I'm sorry." I said, brushing hair behind her ears. She smiled softly and moved her hands up to my face too, thumbs caressing my cheek bones.

"I'm sorry too."

I dipped to take her lips again, and she sighed into me, arms sliding around me. I backed her up slowly until we fell onto her bed, tangling my free hand in her curls while I kissed her deeply and thoroughly, only now realizing how close I'd come to losing all of this… how terrible the two weeks had been, despite me telling myself that I was grateful for the space. I wanted her—I really, really wanted her—but I also just wanted to lay here and kiss her and kiss her, until there was no breath left in my lungs. She tasted so sweet beneath me, her lips so very soft, the occasional, sneaking dart of her tongue an absolute thrill. How had I waited so long to let myself have her? …How had I ever convinced myself that any part of me would be relieved at the distance?

I clutched her closer, needing, and her fingers wrapped into my hair at the nape of my neck, one leg lifting to wrap around my hips and drew me closer, right in between her thighs. "Mmm," I felt myself groaning at the contact, and my resolve slipping. I shifted my weight onto my left side, not removing my hand from her hair, and moved my right hand to her waist, pushing up her tank top and trailing my fingertips over the skin I found there. She shivered, and I pushed further, finally brushing against the underside of her breast. Her breathing accelerated like I'd flipped a switch, and her hands slid down my back, dragging up my shirt and tugging roughly when I didn't immediately lift my arms for her. With some difficulty I freed first one arm and then the other, alternating them to keep my weight off her, and shivered as her smooth hands moved over the planes of my chest.

"Jesus, Sara… I missed you so much. Missed your hands and your lips and how you feel… the way you touch me…" She stopped her frantic kisses across my throat at that, turning soft eyes up to me… and then she was gently rolling me onto my back, unfastening my belt and then my pants and dragging them and my boxers down until they caught on my shoes. With gentle care, she slid them from my feet and removed my final layers of clothing. She stood up then, beside my feet, and tugged her own clothes off in a cascade… long arms twisting out of the tank top above her head, my boxers slipping down her long, long legs, and then she was above me, straddling me.

Her eyes were still soft as she reached down between her thighs and grasped me gently, stroking down and then up again, just once, before positioning me. I gasped, tugging my hips back, but she shook her head. "I don't care if it hurts, at first… I want to feel connected to you." She didn't say that it was what she needed, but we both knew it. …I needed it too. Still, I reached between us, pressing my erection down to my stomach and then pulling her down to me, to lie across my chest. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed, and with a little effort, I rolled us so that she was beneath me. Her eyes went wide.

"…I think it's about time I did a little of the work in this relationship, honey…" Unwilling as she was to remain separate, I grasped myself and pressed against her, but hesitated, concerned about hurting her… her hand wrapped around mine and together, we guided the union. She hissed, but encouraged me further, until I was buried. I slid both hands into her curls again and laid kiss after gentle kiss over her face, shifting myself forward in a slow rhythm. It was not hard enough to be called a thrust, but she was letting a hum slide up from the back of her throat with each movement, and I felt her relaxing around me… getting wetter… and finally, her hips nudging up to meet mine, time and again.

"Sara…" I said, pressing my forehead to hers.

"Mmm…"

I pressed a little harder and groaned. "Sara…"

"Hmm?"

She just felt so fucking good. "…Sara."

She snorted a laugh. "What, Gil?"

I smiled, her laughter filling me up. "I… I don't know. I just… love saying your name. Love knowing that it's really you…"

Her feet slowly slid up from my ankles, over my calves, to hook around the back of my thighs. "…Don't your knees hurt?"

"Not enough to make me want to stop…" Another deep thrust.

She shuddered. "Oh god, this is nice…."

I smirked—we had never, ever talked so much during sex. …You would think it would kill the mood, but no… it felt like that was exactly the mood we were in—slow and gentle, opening up to each other. "…I didn't know you liked being beneath me so much…" I teased, nipping at her collar bone and drawing a gasp and then an appreciative moan.

"I like feeling your weight on me… makes it feel like… you're all around me. Makes it—Ohhh—more concrete…"

I groaned, speeding up despite myself. "So then… if I were still… on top… would you want… to switch?"

Her eyes narrowed, uncertain what I was saying, but she nodded and I slid out of her with a gasp at the cold air. I grabbed one of her pillows and placed it at the foot of her bed. With a raised eyebrow, she moved to it, laying her head back against it. "…Roll over?" I asked her, tentatively, but I shouldn't have been—she flashed me a grin and rolled, lifting her hips in the air, her sleek back and the exotic outline of her spine trailing up to the most perfect ass I'd ever had the privilege to see, let alone touch. She wiggled it invitingly at me with a giggle, her arms wrapped around the pillow, and I moved up behind her, slowly pushing inside until I was home. Then, carefully, I lowered her hips with me inside her, until she was flush to the bed. I nipped the shell of her ear. "Look…"

She glanced back at me in confusion and then turned her head until it was upright, and she was staring at both our faces in the mirror. She gasped softly and I thrust into her to emphasize my point. She groaned and quickly fixed her pillow, clutching it in each hand by the bottom two corners, so that her chin could rest on the pillow and she could see us, unobscured. Then I slid one arm around her body, beneath her breasts, to hold her tight to me, the other sliding beneath her hips and between her folds. She shuddered as I finally put my weight down on her, my chin resting over her shoulder.

"…Ready?"

"…Oh Gil…" she murmured, her eyelids fluttering in the mirror. I kissed her temple.

"I love you." I arched back, gripping her tightly for leverage, and slid back in hard. She slid forward an inch, letting out a shuttering exclamation, and one hand moved to grip her footboard to keep us in place. I kept moving, unable to keep silent—she was so tight in this position, and despite not being able to fully sheath myself, her whole body was trembling with each thrust, letting me know that I was doing something right. It was probably because I couldn't move very quickly, despite wanting to—I told you, slow and steady does it for her. My right hand slowly began sliding over her bundle of nerves, and then she was louder than I was, a jumble of incoherent sounds and half-words, her body clenched around me, making holding out nearly impossible.

I locked eyes with her in the mirror and moved my hand more insistently, gritting my teeth in an attempt to maintain control. I had it in my head, when she first started saying, "Oh god… oh fuck… close… so fucking close… love you… love you… almost… almost…" that I would wait out a few, let her come as many times as I could manage before I let go. …She deserved as much and more, so much more, and I wanted to watch her unravel again and again in our reflections…

I underestimated what it would be like, however, when she did go over—the way her body would clench and spasm and coax my orgasm from me… the intensity in her brown eyes that she managed to keep open and fixed on mine in the mirror, despite every other part of her body writhing… the sweet longing in my chest to remain in sync with her in this moment. A stronger man than I would not have been able to hold out, and with a pulsing, blinding, overwhelming feeling of ecstasy moving through me, I let myself go with her, slow and steady and undeniable.

Another two things I'd been wrong about: slow and steady could get me off, and it was unbelievable—like nothing I'd ever known—and Sara was the best I'd ever had. I mean—it wasn't that she knew any tricks or did things a certain, special way (although she did do this thing with her tongue, occasionally, that c0uld bring me to my knees…), it was just that… everything was so much more intense when I was with her.

Because I was with her.

I would like to tell you that this was the end of our fighting and the beginning of our Happily Ever After. …That as I laid and kissed across her sweaty shoulders and pulled her even closer to me, remaining inside her, all of my grievances—and hers as well—slipped away.

This, of course, is not true. Often times we found ourselves slipping back into the old patterns… often times I found little things she did beyond irritating, and she felt the same way with me. …It was almost a year before we moved in together, but when we did, it was into a place we'd purchased together, both names on the mortgage, a public record of our relationship.

Even so, I often complained about her anal retentive tendencies—not least of which, her need to make the bed and take out the trash before she left the house, even to run a quick errant. This bothered me more once she told me the reason why—her concern that if she didn't come home, due to some senseless act of violence and the unpredictable nature of a world in which she had learned to see death around every corner, her friends would see her home in a less than tidy state. And she complained that I needed to clean up better after myself and about bugs that got loose in the house and about the experiments in the back shed that had our neighbors giving us strange looks when we took Hank on his walks.

We compromised, eventually—my office could be less put-together, provided that meat stayed in the reach-in freezer and my single drawer in the fridge, bugs were restricted to the garage, and I tell her when my knees were hurting while making love instead of insisting that I be on top just because I knew she preferred it. Though, in truth, I think I preferred it now too—she was right, what she said, about me being all around her that way.

In the end, it was a matter of not allowing yourself to be suffocated—not letting the little things build up and become so overwhelming that they were all you saw when you looked at the other person, who was otherwise the reason you drew breath at all—the person who had become more important than your own existence. The important thing was to communicate, to give and take equally and lovingly… and to keep breathing, in and out, slow and steady.