A/N: I took a little break to romp around London for two weeks, but I am back! This is just a silly little one-shot about... hair... but I hope you enjoy it! And happy belated New Year :)

He'd always been a sucker for ponytails.

He'd told that to an ex-girlfriend once, and she had stared at him like he'd had two heads. Ponytails weren't sexy, she said. They didn't even sound sexy. But there was something… mesmerizing… about looking at it, all the hair swept back from the face. When he was seven, he had had his first kiss, right after playing a co-ed baseball game. He still remembered her name; Nicole Daley. And he still remembered that she had had a long, blond ponytail. To him, there was nothing that said confidence more than a woman with a ponytail.

Sara had a ponytail when they first met. A curly brown one, gathered at the nape of her neck with a tortoise shell barrette. As they talked, he had been captivated by her sparkling eyes and her alluring smile. And as she had walked away, coffee plans set, he found himself smiling as his eyes followed her bouncing ponytail.

At some point, she must have either grown out of or grown tired of the hairstyle, because years later, she wouldn't often wear her hair back while at work. But when she did, he couldn't help but stare at her. She'd be at some kind of grungy scene, and he'd watch as she crouched, her long legs folded underneath her, over some sort of evidence. The image would give him a jolt to his stomach every time. Or sometimes she'd be in the lab, her nose inches from a microscope or magnifying glass, her spine curved and the back of her neck exposed. Even if he were only passing by, Grissom would get goose bumps up and down.

Sometimes, pieces of hair would fall out of her ponytail and dangle down to tickle her nose and chin. It never seemed to bother her, but he would always be struck with an urge to reach out and brush it away. He would always long to tuck it behind her ear and intentionally brush his finger across her cheek, just to see if was as soft as it looked.

Even more years later, after they'd become intimate and exclusive, she still didn't seem to know the power the ponytail had over him. She'd pull it back messily, securing it with a few pins or a twist-tie, and wonder why deep desire was reflected in his eyes. She didn't seem to realize how much he loved twisting the ponytail around his fingers, eventually releasing it from its rubber band confinement and running his fingers through it some more. Sometimes she'd do this elegant twist to it, and no sooner had she pinned it back that it was falling out again, as Grissom failed miserably to contain his desire to devour her.

All of this was running through his head as he lay stretched out on the bed, watching Sara brush her teeth through the cracked bathroom door. She was wearing a tank top coupled with a pair of impossibly short boxer shorts, her long legs outlined by the door frame of the bathroom. She rinsed her mouth and her toothbrush and wandered into the bedroom, pulling her hair back into a black elastic band. She stopped short at the look on his face.

"What?" she challenged, a look of confusion crossing quickly over her face as she folded her arms in front of her.

"Nothing, dear," he said as innocently as possible.

Still suspicious, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed a little, but she unfolded her arms and finished her path to the bed. She reached out to pull the covers back on her side of the king-sized mattress when Grissom caught her mid-stretch. He put both his hands on her hips and wrestled her onto the bed and onto him. He tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear, smiling, before he ripped the elastic band from her hair, her ponytail falling loose and curls tumbling down to frame her face. He leaned in to kiss her. As their noses touched, she put her palms on his chest and pushed away, observing him.

"What's gotten into you?"

He merely shrugged in response, his mouth busy working at her neck. She sighed a little and threw her head back as he kissed her.

"Well, whatever it is, I like it," she murmured.

He flipped them around so that he was straddling her now, his hands pinning her wrists to the mattress. She moaned gently as she began to kiss him back. A forgotten elastic band lay beside them on the sheets as they tossed and turned, tangled in each other.

Like he said, he was a sucker for ponytails.

The End