The Radio Diner

Summary: They eat strawberry pie and listen to country music in a truck stop outside of Heaven, Nevada, and Grissom can't quite call it a reconciliation, since he didn't quite lose her.

Disclaimer: It would be lovely to own CSI, but CBS does.  So I'm a non-profit organization, and not worthy of being sued.

**

The Radio Diner was a truck stop outside of Heaven, Nevada.  The booths were covered in torn leather, the speakers poured out nothing but strained country, the hamburgers were greasy and served always with bacon, strawberry pie was the house special, and it was more than possible for a quiet conversation to be had at the counter.  That was why Grissom liked it.  He sat on the stool and rotated slowly almost without noticing, running his fingers over the heavy pewter coffee cup.  It was sloppy with cream, and he liked it black, but he drank it anyway.

Sara, next to him, was warming her hands on hot chocolate.  "Fun place for a date," she said.

"I thought you might like it."  He was surprised by the defensiveness in his voice.  Things hadn't been rough between them recently, but they had been - - thin.  Too many conversations had been dropped midway without either one of them noticing, and too many given words had fallen flat.  Sara had started going back to her apartment in the evenings, and that was when he knew that there was a breach to be healed.  "It's quiet, and out of the way."

"You think I like that?"

It was hard to predict her.  "Yes," he said finally.  "At least, I did."

Maybe he said something right for once, because she leaned against him and her hand curled around his in plain sight on the counter.  The bruised Formica looked paler against the knotted hands with their flushed, heating skin.  They drank with their opposite hands.

"You were right," she said finally.

He smiled at her and scanned over the menu.  The Radio Diner couldn't rightly call itself a haven for vegetarians - - most everything listed was meat, and deep-fried and breaded several times, at that.  He suspected a salad might be brown, and wilting.  He tightened his fingers into hers.

"How do you feel about strawberry pie?"

Her smile was sweet, luscious.  "Love it.  You?"

"I've honestly never had any."

He couldn't identify her shade of lipstick and briefly considered searching through her scattered and small collection of cosmetics when they went back home to find out.  It was a darker shade of red, and smeared on the rim of her mug.  His eyes fixed on it, hypnotized.

"Try it," Sara said, her smile widening.  "It'll be an adventure."

Grissom raised his eyebrows.  Sara was the only adventure he'd ever had.  And if she wanted him to have a piece of strawberry pie, he would.  Add it to his growing résumé of the new and different.  She had already forced him to expand.  There was room enough for a slice of pie in him.  Some called it daring, and others called it love.

He tapped his spoon against the cup in that gesture that only worked in movies.  The short-order chefs, buzzing around in the kitchen with their pots of coffee and greasy hamburgers, made no move towards him.  He felt ashamed for some reason he couldn't quite pinpoint.

Sara leaned over the table, her elbow brushing against his hand as she let go.  The warm leather of her jacket sleeve slid over his fingers.

"Can we get some strawberry pie, please?  Two pieces?"

One of the cooks, a short, mustachioed man, turned.  "Yeah."  He bellowed into the back, "Pie!  Two pieces!"

Sara leaned back, satisfied, and gave him an undecipherable look.

"You always did know how to get anyone's attention," he said.

Her intense smile had faded away to only a half-curl, both lips unsure of which direction to take.  And oh yes, there was some secret bitterness in her, some uncertainty borne of the time they'd spent wanting and not taking, and some seeped into her voice.  "It took me longer to get yours."

"You always had it," he said, and adds the poetic touch.  "I just had trouble turning around."

It wasn't all she needed, and that was new to him, because he'd always thought that he was able to be just good enough.

"You're not going to charm me," she said.  "Don't act like you still have to win me over.  You never had to win me over, Grissom.  You had me, and that was it."  She sipped at her hot chocolate, and he wondered if it burned her tongue.  Some things were just so bitter going down.  "I'm never going to have you, though."

He didn't understand; didn't know what she wanted and couldn't make himself see.  She all that he could give her, and if there was more that he hadn't relinquished, then it was beyond his power to give it up.  She knew him better than anyone else did, and he loved her.

"You have me."

She only shook her head, two quick thrashes, adamant gestures of "no."

They didn't talk.  Their pie arrived and he tasted his tentatively, squishing the overripe berries and sugar-laced crust together on his tongue.  The syrup was too cloying to properly be called sweet.  He tried to hold her hand again but the moment had passed.  He leaned back, sipped at his coffee, and listened to the music.  Funny, he thought, how country music was always, in the end, about losing.

He finished off his pie.  "It was good," he said, the lie too small to be noticed.

She let him take her hand again as they walked out to the car.  Almost an hour drive back to Las Vegas, and nothing at all that was possible to say.  He held her to make her stay, to say that she was still part of him, but her hand had gone cold and he knew that even if he had fixed things for another few days, there would come a time, maybe in a week, when she would look restless and the conversations would pull to a halt.  Maybe one day, he wouldn't even be able to do what he did best - - keeping Sara Sidle with him.

One day, she might just be gone, more of a ghost than he ever was, and he wondered what he was doing to her by giving her what she wanted.

"I do the best I can," he offered as he opened her door.

She slid inside, and he caught the scent of the car.  It was like cigarette smoke.  Neither one of them smoked anymore, but the smell lingered, trapped by old habits.

"I know," she said softly.

He got behind the wheel and turned the radio to anything but country.

"And I love you."

He kept his eyes on the road and its ever-extending yellow line, focusing on the other cars and being careful.  Traffic was always bad on those roads.  They were miles from the Radio Diner when he heard her say, almost in a whisper:

"Do you?"

~finis