For Grissom

by Rianne

Companion piece to 'For Sara'. Her POV on the reunion.

Disclaimer:All characters belong to CSI and are not mine - I'm just borrowing them. I promise they will be cared for and fed and watered and returned in pristine condition. BUT until I'm given Season 9 to entertain me, they are mine to play with… as I like…

Author Notes: This is a companion piece to go with 'For Sara', which I posted yesterday. (And can be found by clicking on my name in the listings above.)

Okay – so I know every writer and her dog is playing with the 'reunion' that we're all on the edges of our seats waiting for… but I have had this idea playing in my head ever since I saw the trailer for 'For Warrick'. I couldn't resist. So this is just a one-shot I dreamed up today.

And I am aware that the two major GSR scenes in that trailer aren't necessarily from the same episode. I'm just playing here!

I also know that their dog is called Hank… but I just couldn't write that name and not spit – and their dog is just so lovely! Poor beast should have been allowed a better name!

So forgive the cliché – and the fact that it's a little different to my previous CSI fare.

I didn't intend for there to be another part to this – but I haven't been able to shake Sara's point of view of the events – so here goes!!

Thank you so much for all the wonderful responses I have had to 'For Sara'. You are all too kind and I am all too humbled x

For Grissom.

By Rianne

"Oh how long have I been in this storm? So overwhelmed by the ocean's shapeless form. The water is getting harder to tread. With these waves crashing over my head. If I could just see you, everything would be all right. If I could just see you, my darkness would turn to light." – 'Storm' by Lifehouse.

She had been in the bath.

Lounging, preparing herself to settle for the evening, to try and rest.

The water had been hot, the bubbles perfumed and sweet, the air steamy and thick, the window wet with condensation.

Her eyes had been closed. Her body limp and buoyed.

The first trill of her phone had been ignored.

The second ring had encouraged one sleepy eye to open a crack.

He had promised to call her tonight. But this was too early.

He usually called her from his bed whilst she curled in hers. Or what had become hers in the last few months.

But this was too early.

By the third ring something had told her that she had to answer that call. Had to.

She had dragged herself out of that bath in a splurge of water.

Had scrambled dripping wet, and bare, on slippery feet to grasp the phone.

Had answered the phone with a smile curving as she said the name reflected back at her on the caller ID.

And then his voice had stopped her world.

In nine years she had never heard him sound like that.

She had barely recognised his voice.

She had sunk to the cold of the floor, instinctively lowering herself there before she fell.

Then she had been moving, scrambling, packing a bag before she had even hung up the phone.

She could barely remember throwing the few necessary items together, pulling on clothes she had dragged to her body without thought or choice.

Her hair had still been wet and flying wild when she clambered into the taxi.

All that seemed like a million years ago. Not a few hours. It seemed a million miles away. Like it had happened to another person.

But it hadn't.

And now, it was real. After months of imagining how this would happen. How they would be when they met again…

It was real.

There was nothing daydream about this.

She was back. She was home.

But there was nothing joyful about it. There was no celebration.

Above her the ceiling fan whirred endlessly.

At the foot of the bed the dog snored. Curled up, but somewhat uncomfortably, ready to jump alert at the first sign of motion.

Just like they all were. All three occupants of the dark and quiet bedroom. Aware. On edge and on eggshells.

He was definitely awake, warm but tense beside her. But he felt so far away. She could hear him breathing, slow and laboured and deep. Could feel the beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his chest. She couldn't miss it, their skin in contact all the way down her, like they couldn't stand to be separated, as she rested her head in the curve of his shoulder, her fingers lying, feigning relaxed, on his chest.

In the last few hours she had forgotten what relaxed meant. Had forgotten all the months of calming, cathartic conversations and confrontations and release.

She was home.

Or was she? Was that what this feeling was?

It had all happened so fast it was hard to take in.

Warrick…

She felt his chest tighten too beneath her, his muscles tensing, as if he could read her thoughts, as he too was driving wild circles through the maze of emotions in his mind.

She pressed her lips to his skin. It felt soft, but her gesture felt like nothing, a single drop in the vast ocean of his pain, but there was nothing, nothing to fix this. Nothing to make it better.

They had all told her, all of them, the therapist, Grissom, they'd told her that she needed to help herself to get better. To help herself before she tried to save others again.

But that phone call…

She had to help him. Helping him would help her, she knew it would.

She couldn't leave him there alone like this.

He needed her.

She needed him.

She needed to be needed.

The wait for the flight had been torturous. Her eyes had strained to focus unwaveringly on her flight number on the departures screen. Unable to look away. Ready and on her feet the moment it had flicked over to read 'now boarding'.

The entire journey she had been haunted by the sound of his voice. She had heard it echo again and again, reverberating in a pain-filled and broken beat, rattling around in her brain as she had tried to dull it, to drown it out, but it had been stronger, had plagued the brief delirious sleep she had fallen into, waking her, what felt like every two or three moments, with a sharp shock of pain and discomfort. Her mind suddenly remembering.

She had barely had time to foresee, to even imagine, how their reunion would be.

She felt a little guilty now about how she had treated the woman who had been unfortunate enough to have been allocated the seat beside her for the entire journey. The waves of tension crashing off of her alone, must have been overbearing, before you added to that her rigid posture as she had been unable to sit peacefully and the fact that she had been extremely sharp with the very pleasant lady when she had tried to start up a conversation.

The woman had been a tourist, clearly excited about her weekend in Vegas.

She hadn't treated another person with so little respect or regard for a long time.

But she had had way more important things to worry about.

Stumbling blindly from the airport and into another taxi she had gone straight to the Lab.

Knew that was where he would be. Or at least where he would end up.

She had been relieved to find that security was familiar, recognised her and remembered her, wrote her a Visitors pass without asking any questions.

Word had clearly been issued about the events of the day.

The Lab had been a honeycomb of activity, tech's and CSI's, some she recognised some she didn't, all buzzed frantically in their glass hives.

One of their own was down and they all knew that their task was instrumental, detrimental.

She'd managed to slip back in unnoticed. Avoided the awkward reunion confrontations. The attention she had feared.

She was not important today. In a disgustingly self-centred way she was grateful.

Walking like a ghost she had gone where she knew.

She had taken refuge in the place she knew the best.

His office.

Had waited there.

The longest, hardest, most emotionally fraught wait of her life.

It felt like hours, but if she looked at the clock, she never saw the hands, never clarified the time.

Time was irrelevant.

Her hands had been visibly shaking.

She was so desperate to see him.

So frightened of what she would find.

Her stomach had been twisting knots, quivering with rolling waves of nausea. She had been glad she had turned away the food on the plane, as her stomach had been heavingly unsteady.

She had clasped her hands together to dull the shaking but they had just shaken more.

Her had heart hammered. Forcing the blood around her body.

She couldn't even pace. It felt like her legs wouldn't carry her weight, so she'd leant against his desk. Couldn't bring herself to sit in his chair. Even now, after all they had been through, all they were to one another. That was his place. The place she saw him in when she closed her eyes.

That office, all the memories it held, from celebrations, to humiliations, to complete devastation.

It still smelt the same, still had the funny lighting that made her blink, still was more of a museum than a place of administration.

In a small way it was comforting to know that some things hadn't changed.

But they were about to.

Her heart had stopped the moment she saw him. It had fallen in her chest.

She had viewed it all as if in slow motion.

He had been walking towards her. His Forensics windbreaker on.

He had looked so different.

Greyer. Older.

And she'd known then in the first rush of excruciating pain, as her heart had pounded harshly as it re-started in her chest, that she had done that to him.

Her leaving had done that to him.

Not Warrick or the events of the day.

In a rush she had wanted to fix it, wanted to fix it all, to protect him, to help him, to make it better. To take away all that had happened. To beg for forgiveness.

But she was so overwhelmed. He was there and she just had to be in his arms.

And then she was in them. Clinging breathlessly, his warm arms surrounding her tight.

The pain and the world receding into the distance.

It had only been then that she had really understood what she had seen expressed on his face as she had launched herself at him.

The shock, the amazement.

She had literally seen his heart breaking.

He hadn't known she was coming.

In all her rush, she had realised at that moment that she hadn't told him she was. She had forgotten. She had just assumed that he'd know. That he never needed to ask with her.

That he needed her and she'd be there. Always.

But she couldn't slow to express anything right now. She rumbled on blindly.

She just couldn't stop touching him, her fingers flexing so hard into his shoulders they must have hurt, but she couldn't let go.

How had she let go of him before?

Why had she?

She'd not realised until she had been there with him just how much she had longed for this.

Longed for the comfort of his arms.

Longed for him to hold her through the aching heartbreak as she had cried.

She'd dreamed of this, craved his touch.

Just seeing his face had been just what she needed.

But seeing him this broken…

There were no words for how her heart was breaking.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she had been vaguely aware that she had been speaking, her voice gravely and foreign, but she had no idea what she had said.

He was clearly still in shock too, his hands had been ice cold, his eyes had been bleary and unfocused.

Haunted.

They had remained like that, entwined like that, frozen in place, for the longest time.

Then they had left in silence. Both too lost in the chaos of their thoughts to speak.

She hadn't been able to take her eyes off him as he had driven them, not once did her attention move to the crazy lights of Vegas that still shined regardless of the horrors of the day.

She hadn't missed them.

She'd had concerns over his ability to drive, but his extreme focus quashed them.

It wasn't like her hands were steady enough to drive carefully either.

She missed being in his arms already. Her body felt cold without them. There she had felt safe, protected, like nothing had ever changed.

But it had.

The closer they had moved to the home that they had shared the more glaring that became. The more her fingers twisted and wrung.

The heavier the air around them became.

But still neither spoke.

What could they say?

Every word had been spoken between them. Every apology, every fear, everything.

It was so much easier to wear your heart on your sleeve when you weren't looking in his eyes. Hadn't she said that to him once? A lifetime ago.

They had healed so many old wounds in the last few months, working them out without being face to face. The wonders of technology allowing them to bare their broken souls, crying down the phone lines to one another, feeling the others breakdowns tear at them, before they both came away calmer from the purging catharsis.

Being apart had made them brave.

So much had changed since the last time she had driven from Las Vegas to the airport.

So much water under the bridge.

She had learnt so much about herself. Was finally, yet painfully slowly, beginning to feel more comfortable in her own skin.

To relax, to let the little things go.

She was even learning to sleep again.

It had surprised her just how quickly she had gotten used to sleeping at night. Not that she ever really slept all that much, more pulled the blinds and lay staring up at the ceiling daydreaming of him to keep the fears at bay, but she at least attempted the feat now. Her hours of rest were finally growing exponentially as the speed she lived her life had slowed.

Sleeping had been one of the first things that she had been forced to address by the therapist she had been seeing for the last few months. Yes, forced. She still had some fight left in her and the poor guy had bared the brunt of that during their first tremulous sessions. He was a patient soul.

Sleep was restorative, he'd told her. Sleep was calming. Sleep was healthy.

The life she had been living when she had fled Vegas, and she had fled, had been none of the aforementioned. None at all. She hadn't needed to pay someone good money to tell her that.

After the desert, after the weeks of recovery, the helplessness, the awkward physicality of her broken body, her move from Graveyard to Swing had served only to deeply unsettle her already battered, battle-scarred psyche and things had only gotten darker and darker as she had found herself loosing her grip and going under.

She had been the one to offer to be moved, the one who always put others first. The one who couldn't stand to do that to the team, to have Grissom change the job he loved so much.

She had been the one who felt better equipped to handle whatever was slung her way.

She'd done it before.

But this time she had been wrong. Dead wrong. Drowning in her misery wrong.

But she had been too stubborn to speak up. A part of her must have known that there was no one out there qualified or equipped to help her but herself.

She had kept busy answering questions from her new partner Ronnie. Finding herself short tempered with the sweet girl, jealous and saddened to see such a spirit in the new recruit as she had once possessed, and know the inevitability of the poor girl being crushed by the haunted shadows that came with the territory. For those shadows had claimed them all, in one-way or another.

Natalie Davis, Walter Gordon, Debbie Marlin, Paul Millander…

The darkest of the shadows had turned out to be her own.

Living on a different Swing timetable had been hard to adjust to. Her life running new rhythms, her friends fading into blurs in the corridors, or overtime conversation beats, and she had missed them.

But she had missed him the most.

She had missed him so much and they had lived in the same house.

Her life had returned to the quiet one she had gladly given up two years before without a second glance. She had just now lived in a house furnished with an eclectic mixture of their belongings.

She barely saw him from day to day.

Felt like they crossed like strangers in the daytime.

She had missed him when she ate, missed him when she turned to share a quote, a moment of laughter, a look, and found his space in her life unoccupied.

Missed him in her bed.

Before Natalie and the miniatures she had been learning to sleep without the help of an exhausting triple shift. Finally used to the warm body, the comfort of cradling arms that reached for her and settled her in snug.

She'd been getting four and five hours a night, well a day, they both had.

But then it had happened, Natalie had chosen to target Grissom. To hurt him by taking away from him the one person he had ever loved.

Chosen her.

But she'd chosen the wrong woman.

Underestimated the love Grissom felt for her. The love they all felt for her.

She may have survived, but she had been a shell.

A ghost of her former self had crawled from under that car and staggered towards safety, barely recognisable to any of them.

That moment had crept slowly upon them all after that.

But she knew he had known she was floundering.

He had tried to help her. Had tried so hard. She had treasured the way in which he had tended to her, easing her through her recovery, his little attentions the glowing light to the darkness of her days. He'd tried so hard to get her to talk to him, to let him help her, and it had hurt her all the more to know that he couldn't help and that he knew that too.

She'd had to get away. Had to before she broke him too.

The moment she had been waiting for, had feared was coming to ruin it all, had arrived and the bottom had fallen out of her dreams.

They hadn't even been grand dreams where she had asked, or expected too much.

Just simply to be happy, calm and content.

To stay in one place and be wanted there.

She'd spent her entire life chased by the demons and ghosts of her past, but in Vegas, in Natalie, in Hannah West, in the darkness that took away her laughter, she had lost herself and powerlessly succumbed to the evil of them.

But she'd always known things were too good to be true. Typical Sara, always learning to expect the worst. Life having proved to her on many an occasion that she was right to fear.

She'd fled. But in doing so she had hurt him the way she had tried to be so desperately careful not too.

Returning to the house had been strange. She had been excited, but she had also been wary.

Once they had parked up she had tumbled from the car. Needing the wave of the fresher air to rid her of the terrifying strength of her frantic thoughts.

From the outside it looked just the same.

Even the door still creaked as it swung open.

Then his arm was heavy about her shoulders and she dazedly turned in confusion, only to hear a pleading howl, before she was leapt at by forty, slobbering pounds of dog.

Her dog.

Giving her the welcome home she had always dreamed of.

Breaking the ice in a deafening scatter of claws on wood. The beast's emotions not reined in by the social niceties of the civilized. She sank to the floor beside him and endured the licking and the shudder of his bark, the feel of his short coarse hair, and quivering muscles under her fingers.

Poor thing was literally shaking, just like she was when she first saw Grissom again.

Maybe humans weren't so far removed.

She could feel Grissom's eyes on her. Watching her. Trying to fit her back into this place. Into his life.

But it was never going to be that simple.

The final swipe of the beast's tongue across her cheek had been the last straw and she had felt a shock roll down her body at the volume of the raw laugh that tumbled from her. Breaking out of her on the peak of the sharpest strain.

There was too much attention on her. Too much scrutiny.

Then thankfully the dog had tired. Satisfied that she was really back and remembered him.

The beast had wandered a few paces, then sank to the ground in a heap and settled, but kept watch on her like he expected her to disappear again at any moment.

It was exactly the look Grissom gave her when she finally met his eyes again.

But she had looked around the place before she had braved that. Putting it off until she really had too.

Nothing seemed to have changed at all. Everything was as they had left it, right down to the pictures on the fridge.

So familiar. Yet it brought her into clarity. She had seen right then just how far she had really come in recent months.

When she finally drew the courage to look at him she saw the anxiety. Saw the vivid distance between them. Saw the fear, saw the weakness behind the happy words and bravado he had forced for her.

Both had tried to speak. Suddenly frightened of the intensity. Both had said something similar, something banal, whilst their eyes had asked for something else, their spoken words falling ignored in the air around them.

They had wanted. They had asked.

She had felt the answer in her eyes recognised. Felt the plea she stressed there answered.

She had been in his arms again in less than a second.

And then his mouth had found hers and she had crumbled to pieces in his arms.

The musk, the heat, the taste, the pain of him.

The way he tugged at her lips, swiped sensitive tongue against sensitive flesh.

He had shuddered hard, barely restraining himself, but if there was one thing she'd learnt it was that bottling things up was unforgivable.

A shiver had rumbled down her spine as she had felt him submit to his desires. To begin to move her backwards, tightening his hold on her almost too intensely as they stumbled across the room.

The dog had barked, had sensed the thunder that boomed between them.

The dog had howled as he had been shut out of the bedroom, probably with a smack in his already squashed nose.

But the last time they had forgotten to shut him out he had gone crazy, ready to protect, like Gil had been attacking her and there had been definite tension between the two males of the house for a good few days after that adventure.

Once the door was fast they had swayed a moment. Dizzily, and then fallen straight back into one another.

He had dragged the clothes from her body. Throwing them aside.

She had to wonder what he had seen.

She looked different. She knew that. Her new haircut was only the beginning. A few months of regular, healthy, homemade meals had also seen to the changes. She hadn't taken many clothes with her, but she'd had to buy more as she had seen the hollows in her cheeks fill out, seen the haunted, gaunt look fade from her eyes.

She'd even been tempted by real colours. Her, the woman in black.

Close up he seemed thinner too. Like he had not had her to remind him to eat.

His beard was stragglier, his hair curled more, and there were new lines around his eyes.

But it was still him.

She had craved him. Longed for him. Pined for him.

She had dragged his shirt away, pressing herself tightly against him to feel him there.

She had been crazy to deny them this for so long.

They still worked together, her knees had given out and she had found herself lifted into his strong arms, and her legs had found their way around him finishing the embrace.

They staggered backwards, the bed rising up to meet them in a rush of cold softness and she had gasped wild as the breath had surged from her at the sensation of his weight, of him so close to her once again.

Her body was alive beneath him, hot blood pounding in her veins.

She'd grasped for his belt, had she ever been quiet that forward with him before?

Had either of them ever been that desperate?

Yet by then his trembling fingers had been unhooking the clasp on her bra and he had been everywhere at once.

His first more gentle touch to her breasts, had still made her growl, there was no other way to describe it. The rush of desire had flooded deep. Then she had given up with his belt and had just clasped the sheets tight in uncontrollable response to the feel of his hot mouth, the rasp of his beard, his tongue, his lips, tugging on her painfully sensitive nipple in a pull she had felt all the way through her.

Then he had been moving away, the air chill against her skin as he had torn the rest of the clothing away.

She had grasped for him, enjoyed his fight for control as she had hungrily squeezed. Like a Devil woman. But he had only been able to withstand her touch for a few seconds before his fingers were brushing her away, gasping, his eyes pleading with her for mercy.

Yet he hadn't shown the same as he had explored her.

She had cried out as his fingers had touched her, it had been so long since she had felt the touch of anything but her own fingers.

She had wanted their first reunion encounter to be romantic, but instead it was frantic and emotional and raw. Yet she had wanted him to bury inside her and stay like that forever.

The sound that had escaped her as he had filled her had made her flush, but she had forgotten everything as she had felt the sudden splashes of wet that had landed on her, running down her cheeks, drawing goose bumps across the burning skin of her neck.

He had been crying. Huge wild tears.

She had reached for him, cradling him tighter.

The motion of them had built, the heat between them making the room spin for her as she had clung to him.

She hadn't noticed that she had begun to cry too until he started to kiss away the trails of her tears.

He had whispered to her, telling her he loved her. Telling her he had missed her.

Telling her never to leave him again.

It had been making her crazy, the movement, his words, her pounding heart and body.

It was overwhelming; her mind had reeled, she just clung tighter to him, feeling her tears become full body shaking sobs.

The sensations sweeping her were so intense and they were only building, building until they were burning together. Till they had crashed together blindingly.

She had rippled apart around him. Shaking all over, feeling the burn of his release inside her.

And then it had been over.

He had been pulling away, his body soaked and trembling. He had fallen over onto his back, holding her to him.

Holding her like he never wanted to let her go.

Would hold her forever if he could.

And they had lain. Hearts slowing, skin drying, breathing becoming more even.

Once she'd had her legs again she had slipped away to the bathroom.

She had returned to find him staring out the dog, who had seized the open door opportunity.

Gil…

He'd looked at her. His deep gaze so powerful. His fear clear even as he tried to hide it.

The trust between them was shattered, or at least in tatters.

He'd already thought she was making plans to leave.

But that was the thing. Right now she had no plans.

None at all.

Just choices.

And she had made one in coming here.

But she had others to make. And other people to consider.

He had hidden it well, but when she had slid back in to his side, feathering the covers over herself she had seen the relief flicker in his eyes.

She had snuggled closer. As reassuring a gesture as she could muster without making any promises.

He reached out and clasped her fingers in his. Holding them tightly. Pressing them to his heart, and she got the message loud and clear.

Whatever happened, she was in there. In his heart.

They were in this together.