Title: Tangible
Author: Evidence
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: I have to turn everything dramatic I guess. This is my response to a challenge set form by Zenbridge over at YTDaW. The elements were: a torn pillowcase, a Hello Kitty pencil box, a bottle of Clear Eyes, "I'm no expert, but are they usually this small?", and an unmarked bottle of pills.
Age 20: All that was left of their short-lived relationship was a torn pillowcase. She wished she could say it got ripped in some moment of passion but a fight had caused the flower on the case to be split in two. He had wanted her attend a dorm party, she didn't want to go. She was reading a book on Newton and in her perspective found that more important than taking part of the Jell-O shot contest. He hadn't understood. A verbal argument turned violent for a moment but she gave him a crack to the face before he tried anything more with her.
Age 24: He had a goofy grin always plastered to his face giving him the appearance of Howdy Doody. She tried to look past his obvious quirks but any man who thought buying her a Hello Kitty pencil box for a birthday present was a lost cause.
Age 27: She didn't notice at first all the tell tale signs: the mood swings, the constant sniffles, the bottle of Clear Eyes he always carried around to mask the red rimmedness. She thought she had loved him but maybe she had been the one with the real addiction for she knew how wrong he was for her but she kept going back for more. Finally he dumped her and she felt her first moment of anguish.
Now: Her relationship with Grissom was just as confusing and unwelding as some of her past ones. He wasn't violent but he still wounded her. He was quirky and would forget things like the fact that she was vegetation. He had his own addiction, one she shared: work. Sara knew she loved him but couldn't help but question if he felt the same about her. He did, she believed, but was unwilling to do anything about it. This left Sara in a state of limbo.
Her stopped her one-day as she was leaving work. "Sara, wait a minute."
She turned and looked at him thinking a new dead body was found on the Strip.
"Um…I need your help with something"' he asked sheepishly.
"Okay," she responded and closed her SUV door.
"Follow me," he instructed and brought her to the back lot behind CSI headquarters. It was the place where they had spent one night drinking coffee and watching a pig decompose. While this would seem highly unromantic for other folks, for the scientists it was a real moment of togetherness and for Sara the first time she ever really felt close to a man. Grissom was her soul mate even if she could never be with him.
Behind the fence a black towel was draped over something square.
"They just came from African," Grissom said, his face bright. "I wanted you to be the first to see them."
"What are they?" she asked raising an eyebrow.
"You'll see." He slowly raised the towel like a magician performing an act.
In two separate cages where spiders. One for each cage. But the cages dwarfed the poor spiders who were as small as a house spider.
"These are special spiders," Grissom said with a smile.
"I'm no expert, but are they usually this small?"
"They are babies yet. They will grow to the size of my hand."
"Oh," Sara said just glad that Grissom wanted to share his new pets with her.
Grissom went on and on for a good twenty minutes about the spiders and how important they were to the eco-environment. Times like this were always hard for Sara. She was not really with him even though he was standing a mere 2 feet away.
"I better go," she said when she heard him start slowing down in his speech.
"Have a nice day off tomorrow."
She nodded her head although she truly hated days off.
At her apartment she sat for a while and then deciding she would need a little help with sleeping went to the medicine cabinet. All she had it was a tube of Neosporin and an unmarked pill bottle. Not wise to take them.
She laid in bed for a while starting at the ceiling. A torn pillowcase, a Hello Kitty pencil case, a bottle of Clear Eyes, two-baby spiders- these were the memories of her quasi relationships. She turned on her side and began to drift to sleep wondering when the day would come that she would have something tangible to call a memory.
The end.