Title: Introspection at twilight
Fandom and Pairing: CSI, Grissom/Sara
Rating: PG-13
Word count: 2,754 for the story.
Disclaimer: Do not own them. Used with out permission. No profit being made off this fic.
Spoilers: Possibly minor spoilers for episodes up until Meet Market.
Thanks: Thank you to mingsmommy for the beta reading job.
Summary: Sara wakes up and thinks about her relationship with Gil Grissom and people of both sexes.
Sara rolled over in the king sized bed, finding herself suddenly awake. In the waning light of day, she could just make out Grissom besides her, sleeping contentedly. Sara sleepily moved her hand up and down his naked chest. She stopped the motion, put her hand on bed to prop herself up enough to look over Grissom's shoulder at the clock sitting on the nightstand. The clock confirmed what the murky light filtering through the light green curtains suggested: It was too early to be up. Sara eased back down on the bed, and she kicked absently at the light blue sheet covering both of them.
Waking up next to him felt good, better than good. They had been together for a year and a half, virtually cohabitating for nearly a year. It left her feeling content, safe and wanted. These feelings happened even with him just being there and asleep. When he was awake, he evoked other feelings, more passionate feelings that gave light to her soul.
Occasionally, only occasionally, despite the security she normally felt in bed with him, she would wake in the middle of the night feeling lost, overly reflective and maybe even a little frightened. It didn't happen nearly as often as it had when they'd first become involved but often enough still that Grissom could pick up the vibe later in the day and try to offer her reassurances for the disquiet she wouldn't admit. Sometimes, but not always, this introspection was the result of a case.
Sara quietly curled her hand into a fist and began to gently run it up and down Grissom's chest. Still asleep, he gave a breezy, happy sigh. It brought a slight small smile to Sara's face.
With Grissom, Sara had finally found a relationship that met all of her needs: Mutual respect and attraction, fidelity, a good working relationship, privacy when needed, an understanding and tolerance of personal quirks, compatible sex drives. The extended length of friendship before they had become involved, various conflicts and lots of discussion had left little room for either of them to hide. They had thirteen years to learn all that stuff. Both had gone in with their eyes wide open: Sara would not have become involved with him if those needs were unlikely to be met.
The smile on Sara's face disappeared. She stopped rubbing his chest. This, this type of introspection she hated. It sometimes felt like bullshit. Things were good. There was no need to think about the past. Absentmindedly, Sara wiggled her toes. Still, her present was a result of her past. She had put up with a lot of crap from boyfriend in order to get where she was. Sara had tolerated those faults from previous guys she had dated or slept with, involved herself with when she should have known better. Was she her mother looking for inappropriate acceptance?
Sara propped herself up on her elbow, to better observe her lover in the growing dark.
No, no, that wasn't it. She knew she wasn't her mother. Her mother had been, before her father's years of abuse had finally worn it away, a wild child. Her mother had flaunted rules and societal expectations. This had been aided by, encouraged by her father. That behaviour had estranged her from her own parents, who had eventually kicked Sara's mother out of their home and into the waiting arms of Sara's father.
Sara moved her hand to gently rub at Griss's now naked chin. Her thumb against his chin, petting it gently while he slept, relaxed her just as much as other skin on skin contact with him relaxed her. Grissom continued to sleep on.
Violating rules, violating expectations, being in a state of disorder was not something that sat easily with Sara. It made her the antithesis of her mother. Rules were meant to be followed. They provided order and structure. They gave comfort. Rules and expectations helped to ensure that feelings weren't hurt.
Sara gave a slight huff, removed her thumb from Grissom's chin and lay her back flat against the bed. If she was going to be introspective, she probably shouldn't lie to herself. She craved rules and meet other's expectation for her because as a child, there were no rules or the rules that there were had frequently been violated. Society said spousal and child abuse were wrong. It didn't prevent her father from violating them. It was hard to have order when you might be yanked from your temporary home. It was easier to follow your peers, do what they did, so you could have a feeling of belonging that other events in your life had conspired to take away.
She screwed her eyes shut tight, while she started absently playing with a loose thread on the hem of the tank top she had worn to bed. A lot of those early expectations involved boys. Girls should like boys. Geek girls, nerdy girls who spent their time reading books, needy girls who had to work all the time in order to support themselves, they really needed boys. California of the 1970s might have allowed for women to like women, for women to be involved with women, but you could not tell that to a teenager who just wanted to fit in, to meet expectations, to belong. It would have led to being the object of ridicule, to making foster care even more intolerable, to getting harassed and bullied. She wiggled the toes on her left foot, bringing them just a bit closer to Grissom's leg. No one likes to be the victim of a bully if they can prevent it.
She'd briefly considered experimentation at Harvard. Being poor there meant getting by on scholarships, work studies and work. She'd done some partying and had done some dating but always in moderation. She had things to prove to herself, to people back home. Realistically speaking, she felt the occasional pull towards a female teaching assistant or two. At the time, Sara had put that off as stress generated by working too hard, studying to hard and problems in her relationship with whatever guy she was involved with at the time. It had also been easy to dismiss as a form of hero worship because really, there were not that many female role models in science for her to look up to. One boyfriend, upon getting a low grade from a female biology teacher, had called her a dyke who was punishing him because... well, Sara was never sure what he felt he was being punished for.
Sara took a few deep breaths and rolled her shoulders to relax her tense muscles. At Berkeley, she had been busy. There had been labs and labs followed by more labs. She continued with the deep breathing for a few more seconds, while clenching and unclenching her left hand. There had been the work-study at the San Francisco Coroner's office. Dating had just not been a priority and she'd been caught up in trying to get the sort of acceptance she had long craved. It hadn't left much reason to dwell on that issue. Why bother when she wasn't ready to follow up on it? In the end, that had all worked out as she had no attachments that might have necessitated staying in San Francisco when Gil Grissom asked her to stay in Las Vegas.
So no, Sara had never given her sexuality any serious thought.
Thinking about all this was just a bit distressing. Sara thumped her pillow. And then she thumped it again for good measure. Could she really be that clueless, Sara asked herself. The room became darker as the sun continued to sink below the horizon. The nature of her thoughts, the painful introspections and insight into her own character probably explained her melancholy moods on the day following a night which followed introspective, should really be sleeping periods. Tonight, when they officially woke up for the day around midnight, Grissom and Sara were planning to go into the desert, to observe the stars and watch the sunrise on the horizon. She liked that, quiet time with Grissom when they both got to observe the start of something beautiful.
Sara unscrunched her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Maybe her subconscious had needed this, had needed to explore this. It was something close to what she had been discussing with her counsellor. If she was going to think about this, she might as well make herself feel comfortable and safe.
She turned back on her side, wiggled closer to Grissom, put her leg over his and lay her head on his chest. He continued to sleep on; the man had long since gotten used to Sara's wandering movements around their bed and his body during the night. Feeling safe and comfortable once again, she could go back to those troublesome thoughts that plagued her.
Still, what did this mean? The evidence of her own experience seemed to suggest that she was heterosexual. She had never been into looking for kink for kinks sake, never tried to find partners to help her cross off a list of experience of been there, done that. Not that sleeping with women was a kink. She knew better. Her sexual experiences had been satisfying. There was nothing particularly mind blowing in her sexual history until Grissom. And mind blowing sex with him was mostly the result of his focus on her pleasure which had freed her to not worry about the quality of her own performance. It relieved her of her own personal baggage that she brought to the party. Things were not about two individuals having sex but about two people connecting on all levels.
That might indicate that she wasn't exclusively heterosexual but then again, it might not. There were plenty of heterosexuals, especially heterosexual women if all those magazines were to be believed, who had unsatisfying sex lives. Lack of satisfaction didn't mean anything, didn't infer a desire for a relationship with a woman. And it wasn't like she wasn't unsatisfied: sex was just sex.
Clearly, Sara thought, she needed to find more evidence of her own experiences to help her reach a conclusion. Was she enamoured with male genitalia? If she was honest with herself, no, she wasn't. It had taken a bit of work to get over that initial distaste, a distaste she didn't quite understand. Still, she was comfortable with Grissom and his maleness. It interested her and she felt a need to explore it. She could do wonderful things to it which brought Grissom great pleasure.
Sara heard a car honk outside the townhouse, offering her a brief distraction. There were some voices before silence returned. A few seconds later, she pursed her lips. This wasn't the sort of tangent she necessarily needed to take. It was making her horny and Grissom needed his sleep. Plus, plenty of time later to have sex under the stars. She moved her thigh up and down Grissom's leg and watched as his body unconsciously responded to her stimulation. No, this was definitely not the path to take because it melancholy, horniness and introspection combined to make a feral mix of frustration. She stilled her leg.
She needed to take Grissom out of the equation. It just muddled things. Her relationships with men that she was close to tended to be friendly, but like that of siblings and father figures. She competed with them, allowed them to protect her, protected them, and helped them out. She joked with them. They in turn treated her the same way, or like one of the boys. Her gender was rarely something they reflected on. Or it was something they learned to look past. Working in law enforcement, this was an asset. Women still didn't get the respect they always deserved because of gender prejudice. And this still didn't answer the question. If only knowing was easier and if only that little seed hadn't been placed in her mind by her latest case and her counsellor.
Sara thought about her relationship with women. They were some of the people she was closest to, when she allowed herself to get closer to one. She trusted them more than men, judged those she was closer to harsher than the men in her life. Betrayal hurt worse. Sara had, on occasion, lamented the lack of more female companionship in her life. Some women who she found most antagonistic, Sara found herself violating their personal space with out knowing why. This had happened on more than one occasion with Catherine and Sofia. The tension vibrated between them uncomfortably. And thinking about it, these violations of personal space seemed to happen most frequently with women who Sara could acknowledge were attractive, beautiful, cute.
This thought led Sara to run the fingers of her right hand slowly up and down Grissom's side. Grissom snorted in his sleep and attempted to roll over onto his side. Sara gave him the space to do that and then spooned him from behind.
That last thought was kind of eye popping. She had never considered it before and it surprised her that her psyche had allowed it to come forward. Generally, it seemed to her, that her talent for deep rooted self-deception would not allow such a thought to come that far forward. And it left her feeling unsettled. Was it possible?
Sara rested her forehead between Griss's shoulder blades. She took a couple of deep breaths. Introspection sucked. Sometimes it was better to not be self-aware.
Okay, it was possible that she might be more attracted to women and less attracted to men than she thought, or had ever acknowledged. There had been no reason to and every reason not to. Thinking more deeply, opening the flood gates to her unconscious mind, she realized she was attracted to women, very attracted to women but she just suppressed it a lot. This was not good, not good at all.
Sara took another couple of deep breaths. Assuming that the conclusion she reached was valid, what did it mean? Generally, when you came to such a conclusion, when evidence yielded up something this important, you took action. At work, this action might mean telling Brass and accompanying him to pick up a suspect. With her counsellor, such a conclusion might mean that she would have to follow up such insight with a discussion with Grissom.
She put her leg over Grissom again, pulling him just a bit closer. Sara was still vaguely horny and that wasn't helping her mindset at all.
Think, she told herself, think. She was attracted to women. Did it mean she should or would leave Grissom? No. No, it didn't mean that at all. She still wanted Grissom. She was still attracted to Grissom. The insight did not change the satisfaction of her physical relationship with Grissom. Grissom still gave her what she needed most in her life. She could not picture herself in a relationship with anyone else besides Grissom.
Sara moved her head away from Grissom's back to lightly blow on it. She then traced a circle in that spot with her pointer finger. This caused Grissom to stir a little, wriggle away from that particular stimulus. Sara smiled and held fast.
This, this revelation, Sara concluded, just confirmed that her relationship with Grissom was solid. It cleared up some lingering doubts she still had as a result of Grissom's sabbatical. It gave her a new sense of self-awareness and self-awareness could be a good thing. In fact, this might help improve her working relationship with both Catherine and Sofia now that she understood some of what was going on there from her side.
Sara blew on Grissom's back again. She was about to put her finger on it when Grissom shifted on to his back and closed his hand over her offending digit.
"Stop that and go back to sleep," he mumbled before shifting so he could spoon her. "You think too much and plans later. Need you awake then." With that, he apparently fell back to sleep.
A smile graced Sara's face. So, that was that. And having reached a conclusion and having already determined her course of action, Grissom really did have a point. She didn't need to be awake any longer. And who knew, maybe she wouldn't be melancholy when it was time to start the day.
With that thought, Sara fell back asleep.