DISCLAIMER: They're not mine, and I own nor make nothing. CBS reigns.
This story copyright seeyoustandingthere 2007.
Author's Note: I seem to have a preoccupation with the way that these two got together. This is my third take on it, and I'm sure there will be more.
Wave On Wave
Grissom turns the page and sighs, trying to dispel the tension building behind his eyes. He has been sitting here for hours, possibly a day, and there is so much still to be done. He reads and reads and absorbs and digests and his brain pounds along a metaphorical, analytical pavement, damned to solve it, determined to find something that wasn't there before.
His eyes ache in his skull, the tell tale signs of the double he is in the middle of pulling. He doesn't consider stopping. He is relentless, and he will stand firm, the proud leader of a good team who are all, at some remove, doing the same thing. Nick and Catherine are locked in interview rooms, pacing and questioning, trying to break the silence. Warrick is back at the scene, scouring and re-tracing and re-examining and sifting. Sara and Greg are in the lab. They all know there is something they have missed, and the race is on. It is not a competition, at least not in-house. They run together, towards the same distant line.
Grissom wants the answer to be in the book beneath his nose. He likes hard facts. Irrefutable, black and white paper facts that can be copied and analysed and produced in court, things that were true and tested long before he was relying on them as evidence. Things that there can be no arguing with.
Briefly, he surfaces. His eyes are tired, letting his down. He relents, and promises them coffee, if only a short break. He walks quickly to the break room, enjoying the feeling of being on his feet after so long, stretching and rejuvenating his circulation. The coffee is cold. There has been no time for breaks today. He starts the machine again and places a hand against the pot, feeling it begin to warm as the coffee starts to drip.
He closes his eyes, and goes over it one last time. A locked room. A dead man. A clean weapon left casually behind. One suspect, swearing blind never to have met the deceased, nor been in the room. Not one shred of evidence to tie him to the crime, only a healthy motive in the dead man's girlfriend being the suspect's ex-wife. Grissom rubs his brow, wishing the coffee would hurry up. Either the suspect was lying, and a very careful killer, or there was someone else involved. Add to that that the ex-wife had a cast iron alibi, and things were not moving along as Grissom would have liked. In questioning Catherine had noticed the man had a slight rash on his forearm, and Grissom, for want of a better idea, had retreated to his office and his medical books, and had not been seen since.
Opening his eyes, Grissom looks over to the lab and sees Greg, head bent intently over a microscope. Grissom thinks about offering him coffee, and decides against it. He knows Greg is most effective when in the throes of work, uninterrupted. He looks around for Sara, who should be there too. She isn't, and Grissom turns back to the coffee pot, wondering where she is. He fills a cup and tastes it, letting the smooth brown heat slide down his throat, affording instant relief. After another long sip, he turns to go, having broken his work trance for quite long enough.
He leaves the break room and walks back towards his office. He passes the lay out room, and he stops. There she is. The room dark but for the fluorescence of the magnifier, Sara is illuminated, silhouetted almost, against the blue wall. She bends delicately, her hair tucked behind her ears, her sleeves rolled up. She carefully slides the magnifier back and forth over the victim's bloody clothes, a painstaking search. She is absorbed, and he is dumbstruck by the sight of her. She lets go of the large lamp and uses her gloved fingers instead, pressing each fingertip lightly down on the fabric, intent and focussed. He admires her for a long moment, both impressed as always by the meticulous standard of her work and beset by a strange desire to see her break rhythm, do something unexpected, surprise and enthral him.
She looks up, catching him there. He is not embarrassed, nor does he rush to rearrange his facial features that he might not give away his musings. She smiles, uncertain at first what his look says. Sara likes to read people, he knows, and she will be wondering about this moment, about his thoughts. He smiles in what he hopes is a supportive, authoritative way. Her look tells him he has succeeded, and has not stood there too long. She stands up straight, arching her back and stretching her arms.
"Anything?" He asks, quietly. She shakes her head.
"Nothing." He nods. He turns to go. She calls his name.
"I mean nothing yet." She smiles again, and her face tells him what they are all feeling. They will solve this. There will be a key, and they will find it. He winks at her, almost imperceptibly.
"Coffee's hot."
Sara sighs inwardly, half ashamed, half delighted as usual by the feeling she gets when he pays her such quiet, personal attention. She knows that he checks up on all of them. But the way he stands before her, the way he lowers his voice and says so much by way of so little. It leaves her with a charge running through her, and her breath catches in her throat. She is distracted now, and is glad that he has gone. She decides that coffee sounds good, and walks to the break room. She can vaguely smell his cologne. Vague because he wears just enough that it can only be detected if you are close enough. Sara is not close enough enough. She savours this little pleasure and places her hand on the coffee pot, inviting the thought of another. She smiles as she remembers his words and enjoys the thought that he may have stood here and thought of her. About time.
She is exhausted, she realises, and needs to sit down. She looks over to where Greg is working, and reasons that the answers may be easier to find with a clear head. She will rest, briefly, then get Greg to do likewise. She sits on the easy chair in the breakroom and lets her neck sink slowly down into the warm foam of its backrest. The relief is instant. She closes her eyes, knowing that although she will not allow herself to sleep, she will feel better for this interlude.
She has not reckoned on her deeper self, who instantly seizes this opportunity to flood her with thoughts of him. Respite equals honest thinking in Sara's head, and there he is before long, walking and talking as only she wishes he would, to her. She thinks of him every day when she wakes, content to get out of her too big bed and go to work where he will always be, somewhere in the vicinity, never too far from where she is. It is a comfort that their proximity is guaranteed, that she never has to wonder where and when she might see him, or orchestrate it so. That kind of infatuation would make her weary. She has no energy for minor flirtations any more, only the real deal, and she has reluctantly come to realise that he is it. That this many years cannot mean she merely has a certain affection for him, or that it is just in her nature to cross lines and want the wrong men. She would want him, any way, any where. But she is unsure how to proceed, and work is her life, and unless he knows something she doesn't, she can't make any moves on the board. He has the better hand.
Four hours later, Grissom knows it is time to change tack. He has stared too long at the pages, and nothing productive has happened yet. He discounts the fleeting images of Sara that have come and gone across the paper as any kind of reason for this. He is tired, and he knows the rest of the team are too. He does the rounds, telling them all to go home and sleep for a few hours. They gratefully take him at his word, and he watches them go. Sara gives him a beautiful smile and says a simple goodnight. He is not sure what else he wanted, but when they have all gone he realises he would rather she were still there. He knows that he would love the way the air moved in the building if it were just her and him in it. He half waits for the door to re-open, knowing she is one for afterthoughts, sometimes more able to say after a moment's consideration what she wasn't brave enough to say at first. She has that over him. He doesn't get braver with seconds passing. He just doesn't say those things.
No-one comes. He doesn't bother packing up his briefcase, knowing he will be back soon. Instead he picks up his car keys and slides his arms into his jacket. He tucks his cell phone into his pocket, surreptitiously checking the screen for calls or text messages, although he knows there are none. He isn't sure what he is looking for, but feels somehow incomplete walking out into the warm air and getting into his car, alone.
Grissom drives slowly home, thinking about the case. All of his working life he has felt an attachment to his job that has stopped him worrying about the rest of his life. He has driven home so many nights thinking only of what awaits him the following morning, and now on grave the hours are reversed but the feeling is the same. Lately, though, something has shifted, and now when he leaves he thinks of work as work and of free time as just that. Free. He thinks of Sara the same way, admires how ungoverned she is, how no matter how many orders she takes the spirit never leaves her eyes. It isn't a great leap to make to join free time to free spirit, and today as he drives he finds himself wondering what it would be like to spend it with her.
It comes upon him so slowly, wave on wave, creeping up from his feet. He feels the surge of the car through the pedals, and then the breeze against the fabric of his trousers. The sound of his keys knocking gently against the console is suddenly shrill, and the rush of movement around him is so intense he can hardly bear it. He is disorientated at first, able to recognise only the feeling in the pit of his stomach which has not changed, which has remained since she has left, and he knows. This is change, and this is what it is to feel. To really, truly feel, to be awake and atuned to the world and what it can do to him. What she does to him. He makes it home and shuts the door, leaning heavily against it. Trembling, he closes his eyes.
Across town, Sara stands in the shower, letting the hot, heavy droplets rinse the night away. She feels full of work and washes it away, sloughing it off as dead skin, letting it drain quickly down to the ground. Alone and in the privacy of her own thoughts she allows him to creep around the edges. But this is no trickle, and as the water beats down on her skin, he floods in. She is taken by surprise, blind sided by the power of her own imagination, as behind her heavy eyelids he moves against her, wet skin sliding slowly over hers. She lets her mouth fall open to release the breath she is holding, and sinks down into the wall, sliding recklessly into a sitting position in the shower basin. Trembling, she opens her eyes.
It rains that night. Grissom arrives for work on edge. Sara is already there, acutely focused, sharp and determined. He is glad. He has not slept. He has spent the most part of the night in the same position against the door, needing its strength, taking in what she has done to him and unable to move for fear of it overcoming him again. He walks into the layout room where she works, and she flashes him a brilliant, triumphant smile. You have no idea, he thinks, that you have kept me up.
" I found something."
"What?"
"Skin."
"Skin?"
Sara drags the fabric back under the microscope, beaming inwardly. He stands beside her, and she inadvertently moves away from him, just an inch. For safety. So that she might not be subsceptible to any more deluges of the imagination. He doesn't notice. You have no idea, she thinks, what you do to me. She shows him the dead skin cells on the shirt.
"I had to look really hard, but there are a couple of cells.I know that you said the suspect had a rash. Maybe, if these cells show that same dermatitis…"
"Get them to trace."
"Have you identified what it is yet?"
"No." He whips around and is striding quickly down the hall before he thinks, and turns on his heel. He opens his mouth but she beats him to it.
" You mean… yet." It is all he can do to tear himself away, glad there is no-one waiting for him in his office to see just how long it will take to wipe this smile from his face. Catherine crashes into his reverie not fifteen minutes later. Still unable to make a proper diagnosis, she saves him the trouble.
"I've just come from the morgue. Doc Robbins says the victim has now come out in a rash."
"Post mortem?"
"Not exactly. It was probably in the advanced stages when death occurred so it had chance to show before the skin died off entirely."
"Did he say what it is?."
"His best guess, something viral."
"So, contagious."
"Yeah, meaning that if the victim also had a rash that could account for the skin cells Sara found in the shirt."
"But it means they had some contact."
"Exactly."
"Enough for a warrant."
The rain beats down on the windscreen as Grissom sits in the car, waiting. The search of the suspect's house has yielded nothing. Nick and Sara have some bagged evidence to re-examine at the lab but there is nothing promising. He waits now as Sara gives instructions to the officer at the scene.
He has watched her in the house. He has been aware of her out of the corner of his eye as she has worked, he has seen her bend and heard the faint creak of her Kevlar vest as she does. He has seen her wipe her eyes with her sleeve as dust has risen from the sideboard she examined for prints. He knows he is watching her like she is a suspect, wanting to know her every move, wanting to be close enough but not too close, wanting to feel involved with her, able to catch her eye should she look his way.
She has looked his way today. She knows that she has stopped trying so hard to hide it, and she doesn't know why. Something in his behaviour is striking, and she would like to watch him, out of the corner of her eye, but she cannot, because he is watching her.
Sara opens the passenger door and gets in, rain glistening on her cap and jacket. She takes off the cap and shakes out her hair, a stray rain drop finding its way into Grissom's face. He fights the urge to touch it.
"Where's Nick?"
"Talking to the neighbours. He'll be right here, he said."
"Okay."
There is a comfortable silence as they watch the rain. Grissom wants to dry her face with his sleeve. She is soaking wet.
Sara lets the silence wash over her as the warmth of the car seeps in. She is cold, and her face is wet. She likes the feel of that, and imagines resting it against his, nothing between them but the rain.
" Still nothing."
"There is always something. We just haven't found it yet."
Sara shakes her head slowly.
"What makes you want to kill someone for loving someone? When it's someone you yourself have loved? I don't get that."
"Jealousy."
"And the ex-wife is so sure that her boyfriend couldn't have done it. "
"I guess we never really know some people. Or know how they feel about us."
Sara turns her head slowly, blinking. Her eyelashes are thick with a stray raindrop that falls like a tear.
"That's true. You for one have no idea."
Grissom's eyes widen, and his heart stops. He turns, very slowly, to face her. Their eyes are locked, and he watches the raindrop nestle between her eyelashes as he tries to comprehend what she has said. He face is so near, and time seems to slow as he takes it all in. Her damp, beautiful hair falling heavily around her shoulders, framing her pale, cold cheeks. Her breath rising before them in the condensation, making a small patch of fog on the windshield. Nothing moves. Then, suddenly, the car door opens and Nick slides quickly into the back seat. Sara turns slowly to stare straight ahead. Grissom knows he has approximately five seconds to turn away from Sara to avoid arousing any suspicions, but he is lost, and she has just drawn a map that he cannot read.
"Neighbours don't even know the guy. Say he only moved in a couple months ago, and he's a real private person."
It is as though Nick has not spoken. They do not hear him. Grissom reaches down and starts the car, without a word.
"Guys?" The car moves off.
An hour later, they question the suspect again. Catherine and Sara accompany Brass in the interview room, and Grissom watches through the wall. Catherine takes charge, explaining to the guy that they have successfully matched the rash on the victim to the one on his arm, proving that they had contact, and proving that he lied.
"So you see our point, " she concludes, "if you lied about that, what else did you lie about?"
The suspect purses his lips and shrugs. He is slack jawed and nonchalant. Sara does not like him.
"Nothing. I didn't lie."
"Come on." Brass is growing impatient.
"I'm not a liar. I never met the guy. I swear." Sara turns to the suspect, angry.
"We already know that you lied, so why don't you just tell us what happened."
"Nothing happened." His face is infuriating, indifferent, arrogant. Grissom is glad that he is not in there with them. Sara leans on the table, standing over the suspect, and fixes him with her steely look.
"We know that you killed him."
He looks up at her, leering, and in slow motion Grissom sees him push his chair back. She is not ready for him, and as he explodes across the table she is knocked to the floor. Grissom hears her head hit the table as she falls. The sound goes through him. He is through the door before he can think. Brass has the suspect against the wall, none too gently. Catherine is already crouching over Sara, and Grissom bends down next to her. Sara is barely conscious. Blood trickles from her forehead. Another officer comes running, and he and Brass march the suspect out of the room. And not a moment too soon, Grissom thinks, feeling scared and protective like he never has in his life.
The ache courses through her, exhausting her. She sits as told on a chair in the waiting room, a thick gauze dressing against her head. Her eyes feel heavy, from the pain, and she wants to close them. Not to sleep, not to run the risk of fading the memory of this day, the day she has advanced a step closer than ever before. She is existing in no man's land now. She has said something, and he has not responded. But she saw the look on his face when she said it, and she knows that this will only make the game more interesting.
Hours seem to have passed, and she is still sitting on the same chair. The suspect is now wearing an orange jumpsuit and languishing in a police cell. If he wasn't directly implicated in a crime before, he is now. At last, Grissom comes around the corner.
He takes a sharp intake of breath when he catches sight of her. He knows that she has been stitched, of course, but the sight of her bearing that white dressing tugs at him. She looks small, and he feels responsible. Without words he takes her hand and escorts her to the car, daring only to hold her hand until she is seated, not a moment longer than is merely practical. He does the same when they reach her apartment. She protests that she can manage, but it is nearly midnight, and Grissom takes no argument. He follows her in and turns on some lights, pouring her a glass of water and laying out the painkillers that the paramedics have given her. She leans against the door, watching him in her space, in mild protest at the invalid treatment but in awe of his presence nonetheless.
He stays a minute or too longer than he has to, checking and double checking mentally that she will be alright alone. Thinking through the possible scenarios in which she might require assistance, he comes to the conclusion that she is strong and smart and can take care of herself. He sees her still standing against the front door, watching him, and he begins to feel as though he should not be there.
"I'll leave you in peace." He says, and picks up his car keys from the counter. She does not move. He moves towards the door, waiting for her to slide aside and let him out. She has a strange, peaceful smile on her face. He is tired, he thinks, and she must rest.
"Don't come in tomorrow."
That forces her to break her silence. He knew that it would.
"I'm coming to work, don't think for a moment that you can sign me off."
He is brought up short by her insistence. He knows she hates her free time like he hates his. He feels a slight sadness as he regresses to the feeling he has been entertaining lately, the desire to make something beautiful out of his time away from work. Somehow what she has said has shattered any notion he may have held that she wanted likewise.
Sara stares at him, on delicate ground. She wants to elaborate, and explain that the thought of not going to work is bad, but the thought of therefore not seeing him is worse. The thought of him walking out of this door without any acknowledgement of the things that have passed between them today is far worse still.
"Well, that's your call." No, she thinks, inwardly agitated again, at his propensity to sit on the damn fence. Get up, she thinks. Jump down and say something.
Grissom knows that his words are ambiguous, and that he hides behind them. Vague is his friend, keeping things so much simpler than the delicious but terrifying set of complexities anything more than this close to Sara would present. He knows that he is in danger of giving something away, and he knows that this is not the time. He must leave, but she is still blocking his exit.
"I should go."
That is enough for her. She snaps, quietly, shaking her head and letting out an exasperated sigh.
"Aren't we going to talk about what I said earlier?"
She is right in front of him now, and he is dangerously close. He can see her chest rising and falling as her patience wanes.
"I don't think this is the time."
She throws her hands up, frustrated. He is alarmed, and amazed, all at once.
"Will it ever be the time?"
How can he tell her that he wants to talk, he wants her to say more things like that, but he is paralysed with fear? How can he make her understand that he is scared to death of what happened to her today and of how it made him feel? How can he begin to tell her that when he can make no sense of it himself?
He also knows that her words mean more than that, that she is not merely lamenting the conversation that Nick interrupted, but the whole sentiment, the entire sum of their relationship that is never unravelled. The waves rise over him again, threatening to carry him against his will. He is so tempted to let go, to go with the current. But he cannot. He can only coast.
"I think you need to rest. It's late. If you want to talk, we can talk tomorrow."
"Right."
Her face is virtually unreadable now, and he fears that he is losing her. She is sinking back into her familiar pattern of scrabbling up onto a ledge, out on a limb all on her own, and then sliding back down on her ass when he is done emotionally procrastinating. She has done this so many times and each time the bruises take longer to heal.
She lets him go. She moves out of his way and lets him open the door, sure that once he crosses that threshold the moment will have passed and she will be right back to the proverbial square one.
"Goodnight Sara." She looks down at the floor.
"Goodnight."
She closes the door, and lets out the sigh she is holding in. Her head pounds, and suddenly she feels weak and fatigued, no longer able to maintain her posture or hold her head up high. She is disappointed, bitterly, and there is no escaping it. She turns, and walks wearily towards the counter, takes the pills he has left there. With a heavy heart she goes into the bathroom and turns on the taps. She hears something, and shuts off the water. What is that? Again, the noise. Knocking.
She does not stop to consider what this will be. Her deepest sense of self preservation kicks in as soon as her ears translate the sound. She will not imagine that this is him, or that he has something to say, because the come down from that being just a wishful thought will hit her hard.
She opens the door. Grissom doesn't wait, but steps straight inside. There is a look in his eyes that tells her this is not the same man who left just moments ago.
He doesn't say a word. He takes her face in his hands, quickly, before he can think, and kisses her. The first touch of their skin is like coming home. He wants to cry, he can scarcely believe the way she feels. The warmth and the fervour is almost too much for him, and he stifles a small moan.
Sara does not need telling twice. In a moment of utter relief and pleasure she quickly releases all the frustration, emotion and desire she has not let him see into that gesture, into that first kiss, which melts slowly into a second and a third. He feels it, and is blown away by her, by the depth of her emotion that previously he could only guess at. Now, hands running over fabric and into hair, bodies tentatively pressing into one another, there is no denying it.
He is holding her with both arms, and she is leaning back against his grasp, a tension which serves only to lock them in further, feeling as Grissom has always believed these moments ought. She is tender, but so urgent, and he finds himself shaking, anticipating, hungry for her.
It feels like hours. It could easily be hours. Slowly they begin to pull apart, the kisses fragmenting, becoming smaller and more chaste. Their raging pulses calm as they do, and finally they are cheek to cheek, breathing hard.
"What happened to talking tomorrow?" Sara asks, stroking the hair at the base of his neck. She takes a second to wonder at the sensation of that, something she has never, ever touched. So simple, but for so long not hers.
He takes her wrist gently and pulls back her sleeve to reveal her watch. 12.10.
"This is tomorrow." He says, and without fear or hesitation, wraps his arms around her again, pulling her as close as he can, a smile erupting that he just cannot fight, and God knows he isn't going to try.
END.