Disclaimer: I do not own CSI.
Spoilers: Season Seven
Summary: Living Doll-ish. GSR
Rating: T
A/N: Thanks to SBT for the beta and the name!
Recount
"Stop it! Just stop it! Tell me where Sara is!"
He found her painting her toenails on the bathroom floor.
"Since when do you do that?" he asked as he searched the drawers of the vanity for his beard trimmer.
She shrugged. "The drugstore was giving away free nail polish with every purchase of lipstick." With one last swipe, she finished her right big toe. Grissom abandoned the search for his beard trimmer and watched her wait for her nails to dry. She hadn't been talkative since his return and he hadn't had much time to mull that over.
"Sara…"
"What?" she asked quickly, lifting herself up off of the floor carefully so as not to disturb the still-wet polish, her eyes locked on the open bathroom door behind his back. "Is it a bad color?"
"No, it's just…"
"Good. Because I like it."
She left him alone to resume the search for his beard trimmer.
He exited the interrogation room in a flash, gulping down the air of the hallway as if he were taking his first breath in a long while. A nearby police officer wordlessly slipped past him and through the doorway to keep an eye on Natalie while he found purchase on the cement block wall.
Brass met his gaze and nodded. "Once the rain stops, I'll have helicopters in the air, canvassing every square inch of desert."
Grissom counted the floor tiles around his feet. Three, six, nine…
"And Nick and Warrick are combing Natalie's apartment for any clues."
…twelve, fifteen, eighteen…
"Gil?"
…twenty-one, twenty-four…
"Gil?"
"I never told her that I love her."
"Excuse me?"
Grissom toed the corner of one tile. "I never told her that I love her. Not once."
"You can tell her when we find her," Brass said gently. "Let's go, Gil. Someone is going to come to process Natalie. You don't want to be here for that."
Grissom stood still. "You know when I realized it? I mean, really realized it?"
The detective took a step back and sighed. "When?"
"My first morning in Massachusetts. I woke up on my side of the bed. She wasn't even there, and yet, subconsciously, I made room for her." The wall supported him as he stared past the detective and into space. "She wasn't happy that I left. And it didn't occur to me. I couldn't fathom that she'd…miss me."
"How did I miss that?"
They sat in his office with the door locked, hours after shift, huddled together. She placed a comforting hand on his knee but said nothing, as if she knew no words would help.
"This guy is so smart. I should've realized the only way he'd let us in on the where and the when is if the how was not what it seemed. And now a police officer is dead." Grissom exhaled loudly. "He's smarter than me, Sara. That has happened before, but…this guy likes it too much. He likes this game. He's dangerous, Sara. So dangerous."
"He's also crazy. That characteristic is bound to trip him up some time."
"But how many more people have to die before he makes a stupid mistake?"
"I have every faith in you."
They were all staring at him, their faces a mixture of solemn pity and disbelief. Brass led Grissom away from the prying eyes of the lab and into the safe cocoon of his office. "How long have you known…"
"Not long."
"Was it me who gave it away, or was it Sara?" Sara. It hurt to say her name.
"Her ugly purple sunglasses are in your glove compartment. We were driving to a crime scene and you asked me to get the map from the glove compartment, and there they were. That tipped me off. And then…then I guess I knew to look for the signs."
He stood in the doorway, blade in hand. "I need a favor from you."
She had been lying face-down on the bed, casually turning the pages of a magazine. "What do you need me to do?"
He tilted his head to the side and pursed his lips. "Come here," he said lightly, turning into the bathroom without another word, knowing she'd follow him no matter what. When she reached his setup by the sink, he handed her the shaving foam.
Sara raised an eyebrow. "My legs or your face?"
Grissom rolled his eyes and lifted his chin up. Her fingers were so gentle on his face. He closed his eyes and listened to her breathing.
He sat, alone, in the driver's seat of his car and reached over, unlocking the glove compartment and letting the small hatch hang open. Her ugly purple sunglasses were still there. After a moment's hesitation, he picked them up to examine them. A strand of hair -- long and brown, with a faint curl -- was stuck in a plastic purple hinge. Grissom carefully extracted it from its prison, smoothing out the kinks before holding it to his lips. He did the same with the sunglasses, leaving lip prints and tear stains on the lenses.
His pager beeped. Squeezing his eyes shut, Grissom returned the sunglasses to the glove compartment where their owner had left them.
Cases like these always made her quiet. Someone had died in her arms only hours before. He knew it was always best to let her know his support was ready and waiting should she need it, but to not push. She sat at their kitchen table, her cheek balanced in her palm. "Do you believe in heaven?"
The question took him by surprise. They rarely discussed religion, and from what he knew of Sara, Grissom assumed she was flirting with atheism. "I…don't know. I can't be sure," he told her honestly. "I'd like there to be one."
"Me too."
The acid in his gut was churning violently. It was empty but for the stale coffee he had gulped hours earlier. Grissom stared at the overturned Mustang. He wanted the gastric acid to just eat away at him from the inside, slowly consuming him, drowning him until he was a pile of dust on the desert floor to be swept away by the wind.
The caffeine high from the coffee had worn off, leaving him wearier than he had ever felt in his life. She wasn't there. He had dug through the packed clay and shifted sand at the base of the vehicle and she was nowhere to be found.
"She's a survivor," Catherine informed him.
Her life had been one struggle after another. He had to wonder if there was a tipping point, even for her. Even for a survivor.
She kissed her way down his sternum, her destination clear. Right around the time she reached his bellybutton, she pulled up. "Oh. I forgot to tell you…"
"What?" he asked breathlessly.
"Today there was a moment when I thought that Wendy knew about us."
His eyes widened. "Huh?"
"I don't know…something happened with Hodges. Apparently, he told her the miniatures have been keeping you up at night, and then she asked
me if the miniatures had been keeping you up at night."He exhaled loudly, his head falling back down on his pillow.
"I don't think she knows anything," Sara continued, "but…it was scary there for a few seconds."
"Yeah."
"Um…"
"What?"
She pursed her lips and stared at the pattern on the sheets. "Are the miniatures keeping you up at night? I feel bad because…I don't even know the answer. I mean…I know you've been thinking about them a lot lately, but…they're not…tormenting you or…you're not going to go on another sabbatical, are you?"
He gripped her upper arms, pulling her towards him so he could envelope her in a warm hug. He wanted desperately to say…something. To promise her he wouldn't leave again? To tell her that the next time he was suffering from burnout and had to leave Las Vegas, she could come along?
But he stayed silent, hoping his arms around her was enough.
The sun was beginning to set in the sky. It would've been a beautiful picture -- the burst of colors over the horizon, painting the desert a pinkish hue. He had not laid eyes on his beloved in almost twenty-four hours. It was as close to an eternity as he had ever experienced. That he had willingly spent a full month away from her, thousands of miles from her presence while he immersed himself in his lecture and the peacefulness of a New England winter, seemed mad. It was pure madness.
And that he didn't promise her it would never happen again…that was, perhaps, the bitterest pill to take.
When he returned to the bedroom, he found her where he had left her. At some point, while he worked on his own miniature model, she had turned the TV back on to finish the monster movie.
"I thought you felt sorry for the monsters."
"I like to finish what I start," she said quietly.
The dog jumped on the bed, planting is face in her lap so she could scratch behind his ears, his absolute favorite pastime.
"Off the bed," Grissom said sternly.
Sara looked up at him as the dog leapt to the floor. "Why?"
"I need to take him for a walk."
She got up quickly. "I'll do it."
He furrowed his brows. "You sure?"
"Yeah," she smiled tightly, taking the dog by his collar. "I could use the exercise."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"No. No, you relax. Work on your model," she said as she left the room.
He plopped down on his side of the bed and searched for the remote. It was on her nightstand, next to the empty carton of yogurt.
The sky was black once more. Twenty-four hours. Helicopter blades whipped through the sky. One full day. Everyone and their mother was looking for CSI Sidle. One full night.
This time any other night he'd be waking up to the back of her head as her body lay spooned against him, his arm viselike around her waist, her strands of hair tickling his nose and mouth. Any other night he'd be tugging down the spaghetti strap of her nightgown to place a kiss on her naked shoulder. Any other night he'd get to watch her brush her teeth and comb her hair.
Any other night and he'd be in heaven listening to her sip her coffee in the kitchen and tap her toe to the music in her head.
For some reason, he expected her to yell. Catherine did. Even Brass let him have it.
Sara was silent.
Never one to broach an uncomfortable subject, he waited for her to say something, to ask him why he hadn't come home after the previous night's shift. To ask him why he was late home this morning.
She said nothing.
Bundled up in sweats despite the increasingly hot weather, she was huddled on the corner of the bed when he found her. Her eyes were closed, but they popped open the moment he switched on the light. There was no residue of sleep clouding her vision.
"Hi," he said evenly, unsure of her mood.
"Hello."
She closed her eyes once more and inched further away from the middle of the bed, practically disappearing in a sea of comforters and sheets.
He needed to hit rewind. He wanted to go back, to go back one week and tell her nothing had happened. To go back three weeks and assure her that he'd never go on a sabbatical again unless she was by his side. To go back six months and not go on the damn sabbatical at all. To go back four years and say yes when she asked him out.
To go back ten years…
She was just another overachiever -- he encountered dozens every time he did a lecture -- until she smiled. That's what did him in. She smiled.
She was smart, too, and inquisitive and intuitive and sweet and…
Her smile.
It did him in.
She had approached him after the lecture to expand on a topic he had discussed and there was no going back. Usually the stragglers from lectures with more questions than he had answers annoyed him. He often had an urge to point them in the direction of the library so he could go get a bite to eat and put his feet up in his hotel room.
"I was just on my way to get something to eat," he had told her, and that brilliant smile faded slightly.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm keeping you."
"No. Join me."
For the next two and a half hours, Gil Grissom did and said everything he could think of to make her smile. He had a running tally in his head of every grin, every chuckle…two-hundred and forty-six by the time desert was served.
"Do you want some of my cheesecake?" he asked. "It's great."
"I'm not really a big fan…"
"You have to try it," he insisted, and as she shrugged her shoulders in assent and reached for her fork, he quickly cut her a piece with his own, lifting it to her lips and watching as the silver tines disappeared into mouth, coming out clean.
"Good?"
She nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear and smiling shyly.
Two-hundred and forty-seven.
When they found her, it was as if his heart -- frozen for a day -- had suddenly begun beating again. Her shallow breaths seemed to be filling his own lungs with fresh air. Her pulse a sign of the blood pumping through his own body.
He was born again. This was his new start -- their new start. He'd do and say everything he should have, starting ten years ago. He'd reset the clock on his smile tally and spend the rest of their lives trying to make her laugh.
She was whisked away to the nearest hospital, and when next he saw her, she was bathed in white. The white tiled floor reflected the fluorescent lighting overhead, making the curtains, the bed linens, and the pale, battered Sara glow.
"Honey," he croaked.
Her sober brown eyes fluttered open.
"I missed you."
She blinked slowly.
"You gave me quite a scare."
Her eyes remained trained on him. He felt lightheaded and slowly took a seat next to her bed. "Sara, I'm so sorry about this," he said in a single breath. "I can't…I can't imagine what it must've been like. I don't even want to. It kills me to think of…Sara…" He shook his head, leaning his elbows on his thighs and facing the floor so he could take some long, deep breaths and regain his composure.
When he looked up at her, her face was still carefully blank.
"Sara, I love you."
And there it was. The right corner of her mouth twitched, lifting ever so slightly into a half smile.
One.
THE END