Disclaimer: I don't own CSI.
Spoilers: Law of Gravity
Summary: Post-Law of Gravity fic. GSR.
Rating: Teen
A/N: Thanks to who I always thank. This fic was a total accident.
A/N Numero Dos: Didn't I tell you this fic was an accident? After the tenth request for a sequel, I went back and looked at the story thinking, "Was it really that unfinished?" Oh my God, it literally was. When I posted it, I thought I had posted it all. The last couple of paragraphs apparently got lost in the fray. So...here they are. My face is red.
Taharah
What a mess.
When Holly Gribbs died, life in the crime lab was chaotic, but it seemed like controlled chaos. Grissom assumed Brass's role as nightshift supervisor, brought Sara to Las Vegas to help solve the murder and investigate Warrick, and then life went back to normal. Holly wasn't forgotten but…well, maybe she was. There were moments when someone would mention "that rookie who died," but she was little more than a cautionary tale for new CSIs rather than a team member who was missed.
Grissom spent a total of five minutes with Michael Keppler. He didn't know him from Adam. But as he watched Catherine stumble onto the sidewalk to vomit into the bushes surrounding the sleazy motel after seeing her new friend zipped into a body bag, Grissom knew that Michael Keppler was no Holly Gribbs. When Nick and Warrick returned to the lab after dawn in tears and toting Keppler's cell phone, a severed hand, and a note attached implicating Frank McCarty in two murders, Grissom could tell that the now-deceased CSI would be a part of the lab for a long, long time.
Wendy sobbed, Archie sulked. Brass, a fellow New Jerseyan, was solemn.
Grissom ignored the stack of mail on his desk as he worked overtime to close the double murder at the hotel and the McCarty-Keppler shootout. He didn't have a chance to go home and change -- he still smelled like plane -- and his stomach had long since digested the overcooked tortellini served on his flight from Massachusetts. He wanted to eat.
And he wanted to see Sara.
Last he heard, she had gone back to her garbage dump case, analyzing the bullet fragments found in the landfill. There was no use seeking her out now. He was expecting another call from the Sheriff and had an emergency meeting with Ecklie within the next half hour. All this he had to look forward to, when what he had planned on originally involved a currently empty suite at the Venetian with a chilled bucket of champagne and a brand new box of prophylactics. And no Ecklie.
Handling the Sheriff wasn't too hard. Grissom had learned that all most higher ups wanted to hear was that the problem was being taken care of, and that they didn't have to worry. Even if it was a lie, it was the only way anyone would get any work done. Ecklie was one of those micromanagers -- he wanted every single detail involved in the "Michael Keppler fallout," as he called it.
"We told the Trenton P.D. what we know and they're dealing with his case history there. And Philly, too. As far as Keppler's work here, Catherine has said it's been top notch," Grissom said simply.
"Apart from that reverse forensics fiasco," Ecklie mumbled. "That was his idea."
Grissom sighed and shook his head. He really wished he had eaten that extra bag of airline peanuts the flight attendant offered him before landing. "It all ended well -- as well as possible. The murderer was caught. If the media asks…say he was a hero. The hooker McCarty was holding hostage said Keppler got shot trying to protect her. He saved a life. Run with that."
Ecklie sank back in his chair. "I'm too tired to do anything but agree."
Running his fingers through his fuzzy beard, Grissom sighed. "It'll blow over. Stuff like this always does."
"I'm glad you're back, Gil. The place is not as…stable without you."
Surprised by the compliment, Grissom pursed his lips and stared as the man in front of him. "Um," he began after a long moment, "thanks. It's good to be back. I missed them."
And one person in particular. When Ecklie left, Grissom pulled out his cell phone and quickly dialed Sara's number. "Where are you?" he asked the moment she picked up.
"I'm in the parking lot."
Excited, he sat up in his chair. "You're going home?"
"No," she sighed. "Back to the dump."
"Jesus Christ, take a break. I need to see you," he said quietly. His office door was open, though no one was in the hallway. "The garbage dump will still be there later."
"And you won't be?" In her tone there was something of a challenge, a dare. It unsettled him for the first time since he entered his office and saw the cocoon in the terrarium across from his desk.
"Of course I will. I just…miss you."
"I'll see you soon. I need to finish this first."
They said their goodbyes. Grissom was tired and needed a meal and a shower badly, but he didn't want to go home. He raided the vending machine and then returned to the couch in his office, putting his feet up as he dug into some stale crackers and a Snickers bar. The sugar should've given him a buzz, but his full stomach made him tired, and he nodded off only to be awoken several hours later by a still-distressed Catherine.
"He has no family, Gil."
"Wuh? Huh? Who?" Grissom asked, readjusting his glasses and blinking at his co-worker.
"Michael. He had no one. I just spent hours contacting the lab in Trenton where he worked. Everyone said Frank McCarty was the closest thing he had to a father," she told him, her voice hitching slightly with emotion.
"Okay…" Grissom said, not sure why she was telling him all of this.
"I'm planning a small service -- nothing fancy. I'm not exactly well-versed in Jewish custom, but I know you're not supposed to wait too long between…between death and burial," she sniffed, on the verge of tears.
"K'vod Hamet."
"Excuse me?"
"Respect for the dead," Grissom explained, still exhausted. "The traditions of the Jewish faith regarding burial have to do with honoring the dead."
Catherine wiped her eye. "David gave me the name of his rabbi. I'm going to call him now." She left him alone in his office and Grissom sighed. Keppler certainly had quite an impact on his staff. He shifted in his seat as he thought of Sara. He hadn't seen her since Keppler died. Grissom found himself wondering if she was as broken up about it as Catherine.
Was she even close to Keppler?
The question gnawed at him. Sara was a very beautiful woman. Gorgeous, in his mind. And she had been the object of admiration of more than one man in the lab. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a single, young man like Michael Keppler to take interest in the pretty, smart brunette. The pretty, smart brunette who everyone thought was single herself.
Uneasy, Grissom shifted on the couch.
He had been gone for four weeks and, in his place, a taller, younger man had stood. A man that had managed to endear himself to the whole of the lab, and possibly Sara as well. Immediately, he pictured the two standing next to each other -- Michael and Sara, a pair of tall, good-looking specimens. Close in age. They probably had similar tastes in music, made the same pop cultural references.
I bet Keppler didn't know who Izzy Delancey was, either.
The rather significant age gap hadn't been as much of a stumbling block as he originally thought. Sara could recognize most current movie stars while Grissom didn't know Brad Pitt from George Clooney, but it's not like they spent their days mingling with the Hollywood elite. True, Sara didn't know much about Grissom's precious Star Trek, but everything else in life he prized – science, his bugs, forensics, puzzles – she got. His interests were very, very specific, but they were also ageless. She understood what drove him, and that fact tended to negate her lack of wrinkles and gray hair.
Still, though, there were times when he felt old, when he felt every one of his fifty years. Being surrounded by nineteen-year-olds at Williams College didn't help. It was Grissom's first teaching seminar in over a decade. Staring out into a crowd of young faces was not altogether unfamiliar for him, but something was different about this crowd. He couldn't put his finger on it until about the twentieth time he'd been called "Sir" by a student that first week. He was…old. For all intents and purposes, the lecture hall was full of sophomores and juniors that saw him as their parents' contemporary. He was no longer the quirky, slightly-older guest lecturer as he was for Sara's generation. The faces peering at him now – red from the cold with runny noses and sleepy eyes – saw him so differently. It was then when he stopped shaving – stopped bothering. It felt wrong to call Sara. He was too depressed. His return to Vegas seemed ages away and he feared hearing her voice would make the time eke by more slowly, would make the distance between them that much greater.
He sent her the cocoon almost by accident. It made him think of her, and so, as if on auto pilot, he carefully placed it in a box and addressed it to her. The lack of any type of note hit him later. He sat at the desk in the office provided to him by the university, and wrote what he felt.
They had never outright said they loved each other. They never talked about the future or what they planned to do if and when their relationship was discovered by the lab. Co-habitation seemed to happen organically, with him slowly moving his things little by little into her apartment without a word as to why. Grissom could tell that Sara was a bit surprised their base of operations was her place and not his, but she never questioned his actions and he never bothered to explain why he preferred her apartment to his larger, more spacious townhouse. In truth, he didn't quite understand it until about the second or third time he dropped by his place to water his tragically neglected rubber tree plant. His abode was all concrete, stainless steel, and glass. It was stark. There was a place for eating and a place for sleeping and not much else. It wasn't…home.
Before Sara, for Grissom, the word "home" brought to mind his crowded office at work – full of the living and dead, packed with a little something of everything.
The moment he kissed her, "home" had a new definition. It was her. And where she was was home for him. Her apartment, though a bit cluttered, was full of…her.
And so he needed to be there.
As he began to scribble her address on the envelope to the letter, Grissom froze. He was about to mail her more than he'd ever said aloud. It felt cowardly to reveal his heart via the U.S. Postal Service.
So Grissom returned to Las Vegas ready to face Sara and tell her he loved her. He was giddy at the sight of her and at the prospect of picking up where he left off, only with more vigor and momentum.
But a landfill and a dead CSI got in his way.
He dialed her number again, hoping she had finished whatever she needed to do so they could have a moment alone together before Keppler's funeral. Though she had initially seemed happy to see him, her demeanor seemed to become more and more guarded the longer he was back in Vegas.
"Hello?"
"Honey," he blurted out, eyes immediately darting to the door to make sure the hallway was empty.
Sara's voice was low and quiet. "Hey."
"Where are you?"
"Trace. Hold on," she said, and then he could hear her mumble something to whoever else was in the room with her. "Are you in your office?"
"Yeah."
"I'll be right there."
Grissom braced himself. He combed his fingers through his beard, making sure it was free of crumbs. He really needed to shave, or at least trim the damn thing down.
Sara appeared at his door, knocking twice before leaning against the doorjamb. Her hair looked slightly damp, and was pulled into a curly ponytail.
"Another shower?"
She nodded. "The garbage dump strikes again."
"Come in," he coaxed, sliding over on his sofa. She stepped forward but didn't take a seat. "Catherine is planning a small service for Keppler. It's probably going to be later today."
"Okay."
"This isn't how I planned my return, Sara," he sighed, visions of the luxury suite he had booked in his head, the two of them getting…reacquainted after a month-long absence.
She shrugged. "I guess I should pick up my black suit from the cleaners."
Since she wasn't going to sit down, Grissom got up. "Are you done with your case?"
"For today," she sighed.
"Me too," he smiled quietly. "Going home?"
"I, uh, guess. After I hit the cleaners." She crossed her arms and he got a bit nervous.
Fidgeting, Grissom began to clean up the candy wrappers that had been thrown haphazardly about his couch. To his surprise, Sara bent down to help him. "Do you need a ride?"
To his place or hers?
He cleared his throat. "That would be great."
She dumped the last of the garbage in a nearby wastepaper basket. "I'm just going to get my stuff out of my locker. Meet you in the parking lot?"
"Yeah."
Grissom watched Sara leave. He missed her already.
And she didn't know it.
All the feelings running through him, all the epiphanies he was having, and Sara had no idea. There was so much for him to tell. Grissom was near to bursting with his love for her, and she was ignorant of it all.
For someone with such a command of the English language, verbalizing his feelings was never something Grissom found easy when it came to Sara. More often than not, he was speechless. He would open his mouth and soundlessly gape at her like a fish out of water. Before they got together, the silence would usually be followed by Sara leaving the room, upset that he was unable to share. Once they became a couple, she'd taken to kissing away the awkward silences. Her acceptance of this fault of his was initially a relief. She didn't need him to tell her everything.
It took him by surprise that he wanted to tell her everything.
He piled into her Prius, desperately trying to think of some way to get the ball rolling.
As he saw her veer towards his townhouse instead of her apartment after picking up her suit from the drycleaners, Grissom got nervous. "I want to go to your place," he blurted out. "If that's okay."
"Sure," she said lightly. "I think you have a couple of suits in my closet." She changed direction and headed for her apartment. "I called Catherine about the service. It's at six."
"Where is it?"
"It's being held at the gravesite."
Grissom sat back in his seat. "Were you friendly with him?"
"With who? With Mike?"
"Yeah," Grissom said, a bit uneasy at Sara's use of Keppler's first name.
"I didn't really spend any time with him. He worked mostly with Nick and Catherine."
"Oh."
She turned to smile at him. "He thought you made the models."
Grissom furrowed his brow. "The models?"
"In your office. I found him there one day, examining them. I think he was…impressed."
"Did you tell him I didn't make them – that a serial killer made them?"
Sara laughed. "Yes."
He smiled at her. It was the first time he had heard her laugh in over a month. He wanted to bottle the sound. Like a puppy, Grissom followed Sara out of the car and to her front door. Once inside the apartment, he breathed deep. Home. He was home. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her to him, ignoring the slight stiffening of her body.
Grissom just held on.
"It's good to be back," he mumbled into her hair.
"Yeah," she said, her voice hoarse.
The tiny moment of levity they shared in the car was gone and Sara had retreated once again. "You need to take a shower," she said. "I'll, uh, fix us something to eat."
Saying nothing, Grissom headed to the bathroom. He scrubbed off the last thirty-six hours of dirt before letting the hot spray beat down on his tired back. He had so much he needed to fix.
He toweled off and slipped on his boxers and a T-shirt. "Sara?" he called out.
After a moment, her voice rang though the apartment. "Yeah?"
"Is my beard trimmer anywhere?"
"Did you check under the vanity?"
Grissom bent down and opened a door. "It's not here."
There was a long pause, and then her voice pierced the silence. "Check the nightstands."
He did, finding his beard trimmer buried amongst a copy of "Moby Dick" and some forensics magazines. Several minutes later, a newly shorn Grissom found Sara scooping pasta into bowls. "Penne with vodka sauce okay?"
"Sure. Thanks."
She had changed into shorts and a sweatshirt while he was in the shower, exposing the mile-long legs that he'd missed for a month. Sara turned and handed Grissom a bowl. "You look nice."
"Uh, thanks," he said, using his free hand to self-consciously stroke at his beard. "Do you want me to shave it all off? I could."
"It's your face," she said noncommittally.
They sat down at her small kitchen table and ate. Though his face was turned down to his meal, Grissom kept a continuous eye on Sara. He wanted to scream out load that he missed her, that he woke up reaching for her after long nights of staring at the empty pillow next to his on the bed. But the words wouldn't come.
When they finished dinner, Sara quickly took his bowl and washed everything in the sink. "Go get ready," she told him, not bothering to look back.
Grissom took his time for no reason other than he wanted to be in the bedroom while Sara was getting ready. He missed that little slice of domesticity.
When she walked into the bedroom, fully dressed, he was understandably crestfallen. "You're ready?"
"Yeah, I got dressed in the bathroom when I was putting on makeup."
She looked…beautiful. He wanted so badly to tell her that. Her hair was up in some kind of complicated twist. She was wearing earrings. High heels. Though she was going to a funeral, she couldn't have looked lovelier. The voice in Grissom's head was whispering loudly, "Tell her. Tell her she looks beautiful. Tell her you've never seen someone more exquisite."
He could only gape.
"It's getting late," she said, noting he had yet to put on a tie and shoes. Sara turned to go before backtracking. "Uh, do you want to go in separate cars? Just in case…"
"No," he said firmly.
She nodded and left him alone.
They drove to the cemetery in silence. Grissom recognized many faces as he and Sara made their way to the burial site where Catherine was standing with the rabbi and David. Other lab personnel stood solemnly in the surrounding area, waiting for the ceremony to start.
"What a waste," Sara muttered.
Grissom turned to look at her, but could say nothing. The rabbi began to speak and the large crowd of Las Vegas law enforcement fell completely silent.
The wind began to pick up as the rabbi came to a close. Catherine, Wendy, and a few others dabbed tissues at their tearstained faces, but Sara's remained blank.
As the plain, pine coffin was lowered into the earth, Grissom placed his palm at the small of her back for no reason other than to ground himself. Life was so fleeting. He saw evidence of that each day, and there was something about that moment, something about seeing the coffin of a man whose hand he had shook not twenty-four hours earlier, that drove that fact home.
The crowd began to peter off until few but the CSIs remained. Nick stared down at the upturned earth covering his former colleague. "My dad used to tell me life was the choices you made – that you chose your direction when you made your decisions. And then when I was…when that happened," he said, referring to his own devastating brush with death, "I thought…life is all chance. We have no say."
Greg's forehead creased. "And now?"
"I think it's a little bit of both. Choice and chance. And we just…have to make the best of it," Nick answered. "You all are…really important to me. I know I don't tell you enough. Or ever. But you are." Catherine sniffled and Warrick clapped a brotherly hand on Nick's back while Grissom just stared. It was so easy for Nick. He could bare his heart, share his soul with such ease that Grissom could only stand back with wonder.
Everyone eventually left the burial site, leaving Grissom and Sara alone in the darkening night. "We should go," she said softly.
He stared straight ahead into the horizon. "When I die, I want you to scatter my ashes in the San Francisco Bay. So I'll always be close to where we met."
"Don't talk like that," she said quickly.
"No," he shook his head. "That's what I want."
It was Sara's turn to gape at Grissom. So much more than the sentiment of his request, the implication of it seemed to stop her cold. That he would be with her until he died – it was all he could wish.
"I don't want to die alone like Keppler, Sara."
"You won't."
He reached for her hand and gripped it tightly, surprised by the tears springing in his eyes. "There's so much I have to say."
"I'm here. I'm listening."
THE END