A/N - This is for geekfiction's I Love the 80's ficathon. My prompt was TV. I'm from Dallas, so it was an easy decision. This is not beta'd, and it didn't exactly turn out the way I would have liked, but read it anyway 'cause it's good.

Nobody knew about Sara's deep, dark secret, and she wanted to keep it that way. She even tried to hide it from Grissom, but figured he'd have to know once they'd been living together for a while. Still, when she told him about it, she made it seem much less of an addiction than it was. Much less.

"Okay, so I watch this show," she told him when they first moved in together. "I don't watch it all the time, just, you know, when I'm bored. I just need you to know about this so you're not surprised when I pop in a DVD. Because I do that from time to time."

Grissom raised an eyebrow. "What show are we talking about here?"

Sara sighed. "Dallas."

"Dallas? As in J.R. Ewing, Dallas? With the oil wells, Dallas?" He sounded...confused.

"Yes, that Dallas, Gilbert. Don't judge me! It's just a quirk you're going to have to live with."

He smiled, and kissed her softly. "I can live with that if you can live with the occasional cockroach."

"Ugh. I don't think my habits compare to yours. But I know you're a package deal, so I'll take it."

The truth was, she was more than a little addicted. She'd seen every episode at least 4 times, and some of them much, much more than that. And it wasn't that she liked watching it, which she did. It brought her a strange comfort that nothing else ever could. It made her feel like she still had a little bit of her father left with her, the good part of her father. She couldn't tell Grissom that, and she didn't know why. She felt ridiculous when she was wrapped up tight in a blanket, Hank at her feet, watching one of her favorite episodes when Grissom came home to see how deeply fascinated she was by this show. To his credit, he never made fun of her addiction, but she still couldn't tell him about it. This was one secret she would keep.

California, 1980

Nobody knew why Jacob Sidle loved watching the show. It was a new show about a wealthy family who worked in the oil business and lived in Texas. Jacob did not have a wealthy family and lived far from Texas. He and his wife ran a bed and breakfast in Tomales Bay. In the sixties, their little B&B had been quite popular among the drifters of California, the hippies that never seemed to want to go home. In the seventies, the popularity of the inn dwindled until what it was in the beginning of the eighties, which was close to nothing.

Every Friday night, Jacob would go into the living room of the B&B, turn on the TV and watch Dallas. Laura would sometimes watch it with him, but she was usually stuck in the kitchen doing the dishes or attending to the guests. Robbie, Sara's brother, was too busy with his Friday night social life to participate in such a routine, but Sara always watched the show with her father. She watched even if she had no idea what the grown ups were talking about, or even when her dad made her close her eyes during the sexy parts.

Jacob never drank while he watched Dallas. He never got angry during that hour. He'd never yell at anybody, not unless they interrupted him during the show, which everybody was too scared to do anyway. He'd let Sara climb in his lap and watch the show, and she'd snuggle close to him, enjoying the hour where he was not going to hit or yell at anyone.

In 1980, the yelling and the hitting was a rare occurrence. By 1983, it was almost every night. Laura Sidle was getting fed up with her husband, but she still didn't leave. By then Sara, at 11 years old, was old enough to wonder why her mother didn't just pack her suitcases, take Sara and GO. Go anywhere or DO anything, it didn't matter to Sara. But nothing happened until Robbie got in between his mother and his father one night, sick of the beatings, sick of the yelling.

"Hit me, Dad," he told Jacob. "If you hit my mother one more time, you will fucking regret it."

So Jacob hit Robbie instead. It was the first time there was actual physical violence involved with the kids. Jacob yelled plenty, but he never hit them. So Laura did the first thing that came to mind - she stabbed her husband with the knife she was using to cut the onions for the salad she was making.

It was a Thursday night. The next day, all Sara wanted to do was go home and watch Dallas, curled up in the chair with her father. Instead, she was at the hospital, talking to counselors and police officers and doctors and nurses. She asked one of the nurses if she could watch TV, and the nurse said, "No, honey, not now." Sara still remembers that nurse, and how much she hated her at that moment.

California, 1984

Sara found it difficult to watch Dallas at her foster home. The first family who took her in were quite religious, and wouldn't let her watch at all.

"Now, Sara, that show glorifies sex and violence, and we won't be having that in this house," Paula, her foster mother, told her gently but sternly.

"But--but it reminds me of my father!" She knew it was futile, but she had to throw it out there anyway.

Paula frowned. "Why do you want to be reminded of him? He was an awful person, wasn't he?"

Sara wanted to tell Paula about the good times. She wanted to tell her about when she would watch the show with her dad, and everything was right in the world. She wanted to tell this woman, this near stranger, that Jacob Sidle wasn't always such a bad guy. When she was 4, he taught her how to ride a bike. When she was 7, he let her drive his VW Bug around the block, and wasn't even mad when she dinged the fender on a garbage can. When he would take the family out in the Bug to look at Christmas lights, singing carols and drinking homemade eggnog. Her family used to be like that. She wanted to tell Paula that everything used to be okay, but she didn't, because things are not okay anymore, and Paula wouldn't understand.

California, 1988

At 17, Sara Sidle was smart, ambitious, and going places. She'd already received early admission from Harvard, and was heading there in a matter of weeks. Her current foster family, the Bradleys, were nice people, and she was going to miss them.

Vera Bradley, Sara's foster mom, even watched Dallas with her on Friday nights. Carrie and Lawrence, the other foster kids, would watch, too. Vera didn't know why Sara was so addicted to the love lives of the Ewings and the Barnes, but she let her foster daughter watch the show all she wanted. By 1988, the show was on its last legs, but that didn't stop Sara from putting her physics textbook away and watching the TV with as much attention as she gave her homework.

"I cannot believe J.R. is going to prison!" Vera said after one tumultuous episode. "How are they going to get him out of that one?"

"Oh, come on, Vera, I'm sure he's going to bribe the shit out of them!" Sara exclaimed.

Vera laughed. "It's not looking so good for J.R. and Sue Ellen," she told her foster daughter.

Sara pouted. Only Vera knew of her fondness for that couple. Sara rooted for them to end up together, and she wasn't sure why. J.R. was a philandering idiot, and Sue Ellen deserved better, but Sara couldn't get enough.

A few days before Sara left for Harvard, she visited her mother in prison. It hadn't been easy over the past couple of years, and Laura was very bitter for a while, but eventually they were able to make peace with each other.

"Sara, promise me," Laura said after they sat down. "Promise me that you'll stay at Harvard. Promise me you're going to leave here and never look back. Promise me that you will leave this place behind. Leave ME behind."

"Mom, I don't...why would I leave you behind?"

Laura Sidle sighed. She took a long drag off her cigarette. That was a habit she picked up in prison.

"I never had the chance to leave. I met your dad when I was 16 years old, and that was it for me. You don't have to stay here. You have your whole life ahead of you, Sara. And if you make the same mistakes I do, you will always regret it.

"Mother, please," Sara said, annoyed. "I AM getting out of here. Why can't I have you in my life, too? You know, they still have stamps and envelopes and telephones in Massachusetts."

"You don't need me, I'm just weighing you down. Go to Harvard, and then do something great with your life. I'm serious, Sara. Get out of here."

Trying to reason with her mother was like trying to reason with a 7-year old, so she said, "Fine, Mother. I'll do that. Don't worry about me."

So she left. And when she came back to Berkeley for grad school, she didn't tell her mother. It was just easier that way. But sometimes, just sometimes, she wanted so badly to talk to her mom. In 1991, after the season finale of Dallas aired, she wanted nothing more than to call her mother and cry. Because she missed her family so much, it physically hurt. She wanted to talk to her mom when she graduated from Berkeley. And she definitely wanted to call her mother to tell her about meeting Gil Grissom. But she never did. It was just easier that way.

California, 1998

She had to ask him to dinner. He reminded her, just a little bit, of Bobby Ewing. He had that classic eighties TV look, and she was finding it hard to concentrate on whatever it was he was lecturing about. Bugs, maybe.

They did go to dinner. And over pizza and red wine, she discovered that talking to him made her forget about her problems for a little while. He was so cute and charming and intelligent, and more than that, attentive. It was so easy to lose herself when she was with him. Maybe a little too easy.

Vegas, 2005

Their first kiss. It wasn't exactly earth-shattering--his technique was a little rusty--but it was nice. She almost warned him then about her TV show addiction, but she didn't want to send him running away screaming quite yet. Instead, she kissed him again, and a few more times, thinking that practice makes perfect.

Vegas, 2007

It wasn't like any proposal she'd ever seen on the show--it was better. Instead of a ring, she had a bee sting. She never wanted the sting to go away.

She did wonder, though. Did he propose because he almost lost her? Did he propose because he saw how broken she was, and he wanted to make her better? It confused her, and she hated that because she was so godawful happy with this man.

It made her think. And later, it made her act. She didn't know where she was going, or when she'd be back. All she knew was that she couldn't get married like this. It wouldn't be fair to either one of them.

So again, she left. And again, her problems caught up wth her. And again, she tried to ignore them. And again, she found that she couldn't. Not alone. Not anymore.

Seattle, Christmas, 2007

Sara and Laura Sidle sat together, wrapped in a blanket, holding hands. They were watching the episode where it was finally revealed who shot J.R. Even though Sara had, of course, seen it just about a million times, she still acted like she was surprised when the identity was revealed.

"I still can't believe it was Kristin, of all people!" Laura said, shaking her head. "Why couldn't it have been Bobby or even Sue Ellen?"

"Well, she was his mistress, Mom. And pregnant with his baby. And pissed off."

"What a waste," Laura said, turning the TV off.

On the coffee table, Sara's phone vibrated. Sighing, she picked it up to see what he had to say now. I love you. Please come home, the text message said. He sent one like that every day. She wished he would stop.

"Sara..."

"Mom, please. I don't want to talk about it."

"Then just listen to your mother!"

"Fine! You know I owe you that much."

Sara left the lab a month before, needing to get away. She and Gil were engaged, and that was the only thing that got her out of bed in the morning. There had to be something more than that. She needed to know how to fix things with herself, and she couldn't do that around Gil Grissom. Because sometimes, and she'd never tell anyone this, sometimes she felt like he was too good for her. And that was not going to work if they were going to get married.

Once she left the lab, she looked her mom up. Laura Sidle was living in Seattle. She said it was a good place for an old hippie like her, and nobody knew her or remembered her. So that's where Sara went, and she'd been living with her mother for almost a month now.

"Sara, listen to me. I know you have issues to work out, and I know you've been through a lot this year. I'm so glad you got in touch with me, and it's been an honor to get to know you again. But you have to leave. You have to go back and let that man of yours help you."

"Mom, I can't let Grissom help me, I have things I need to work on by myself."

Laura shook her head. "If you're going to spend the rest of your life with him, you have to let him in. He was there, too, Sara. He wasn't kidnapped by a batshit crazy lunatic, but he was there when they found you. He had to see you struggle to come back to life. He had to deal with the fact that it could have been his fault. Sara, TALK TO HIM."

"I can't. I just...I can't talk to him," Sara said, looking at her feet. "I don't think he knows how messed up I am. I don't want to scare him."

Laura sighed deeply.

"Does he know about me?" She asked her daughter.

"Yes," Sara said softly.

"And he was the one who made you see that counselor when you were drinking too much, right?"

"Yes."

"And he was there in the helicopter after Nick found you in the desert?"

"Yes."

Laura put her arm around Sara.

"From what you've told me about him, he's an extremely intelligent man. Just because he doesn't know how to reach out to you, that doesn't mean he doesn't want to. That doesn't mean he can't tell how lost you are right now. Tell him. Show him how to help you. You can't run away from your problems, and I think you know that."

Sara assumed her mother knew what she was talking about. She did, after all, have 10 years in prison to think about how she could have made her particular situation better without doing what she did.

"Go home, Sara. Next Christmas, you two can come here. But for now, you need to go home."

So she did.

Vegas, New Years Eve 2007

Sara went home when she knew her fiancée would not be there. Hank was in the backyard, and didn't stop giving her kisses for an hour when she let him in.

She put her season 2 DVD in and watched 6 episodes straight. By the time Sue Ellen was deciding whether or not to leave Dusty and Bobby discovers J.R. mortgaged Southfork, Grissom came home.

When Sara was wiping away her tears, Grissom slowly sat down next to her. He held her hand and watched the episode with her. When it was over, she wiped more tears away and turned off the TV.

"My dad and I used to watch Dallas together. It was the only thing, after a while, that made him happy."

Grissom nodded, watching her closely.

"My dad wasn't a bad guy all the time. This show reminds me of the good times, and I guess I kind of cling to it to help me when I'm down. But I can't do that anymore. I can't get through it alone anymore."

"You don't have to," he said. "You'll never have to get through it alone again."

"I thought I had to get away, Griss. I thought I needed to get my head together, get my shit together. But after everything that's happened...my dad, Natalie, all this death we see all the time...I can't handle it by myself anymore. And I'm tired of being too strong to ask for help."

"I'll do whatever it takes," he said. "God, Sara, you have no idea how much I want to be here for you. That's all I've ever wanted, and I'll do what it takes to make it happen."

She looked at him through her tears and gave a weak smile.

"I know you will. I've always known that, I just couldn't ask. But now I can. And I have to."

She scooted closer to him, and he kissed her. It was a simple kiss, but it said so much. It was telling her to stay, to marry this man and let him help her with the things she thought couldn't be helped. Just like J.R. and Sue Ellen were in the made for TV movie J.R. Returns, they were back together. She knew they had a long way to a happy ending, but at least they were in it together.