Disclaimer: I own nothing, get nothing, and if you think I do, bless your little heart
A/N: Completely Un-beta'd- Sorry for any mistakes I'm sure are there.
It was unfair. In fact, it sucked. She had been working on swing shift for about 2 weeks. She finally had that damn cast off, but she still had to wear a brace to work. This meant she could go out in the field, but was seriously restricted as to what she could do on her own. Plus she had to deal with that new girl, Ronnie, asking ridiculous questions ALL of the time. After the first case it got better but it was still an issue. She definitely wasn't going to discourage the girl from asking relevant questions that had some relation to the case at hand. But she was getting ridiculous.
She may have had a bit more patience if she was seeing the rest of the team, or her old team anyway, at any point during the shift she was still adjusting to. She knew when she made the decision to switch that she would miss them, but she may have underestimated the toll it would take. As it was, she was invading their crime scenes during the few valuable hours she had to sleep before Grissom came home, just to talk to them for 5 minutes.
It was all very frustrating. Even as time went on and she found Ronnie less bothersome, she still was feeling less fulfilled by her work. When she thought she had found a Native American burial ground, it was the first time since returning to work that she felt a genuine excitement about the job. When she found out it wasn't, she fell right back into her apathetic routine or work.
To top things off, she hardly ever got to see Grissom. They were only averaging 6 hours or so a day that they were both off the clock. And during that time Grissom was just going to sleep and Sara was just getting up and ready for work.
To reiterate, it sucked.
While they were forced to spend their time physically apart, Sara was finding an increasing amount of evidence that Grissom's thoughts were never to far from her. She frequently found little notes in her locker, her kit, he purse, and her car. Were they any other couple, she would have called them love notes. But since she was her, and he was him, she had coined them as notations of affection.
Usually they were brief, maybe 1 or 2 sentences. They ranged from sweet and romantic, like "I love the way your hair curls around your ears". To straightforward, like "Love you- Miss you". To notes that made her blush and quickly thrust it back from where it came, like "When I get home tonight, I'm going to take you on the kitchen table, be ready." These notes would always be followed by 14 or so hours of sexual anticipation. Followed by Grissom following through on his note almost before he was in the front door.
They'd already had a noise complaint from a neighbor.
Aside from breaking into crime scenes, Sara looked for other ways to get time with Grissom. Which is how she found herself now in a ridiculous looking bee keeper's suit and mask. She listened to Grissom talk about his colony, and when he told her it was okay to take her glove off she was wary, but she trusted him. And besides, after being kidnapped, crushed, and cooked in the desert, a potential bee sting was nothing if it made him happy.
One of the bees landed on her hand and it was just crawling around over it. Go figure, the entomologist was right. Grissom was looking at her a little funny. He clearly was thinking something. He looked like he was seeing something for the first time.
The proposal came out of nowhere. At least it appeared to. But Grissom never said anything without thinking it over for an appropriate amount of time. So she couldn't even being to imagine how long he had been thinking it over in order to make it come out sounding so nonchalant.
Sara froze. Did he know what he was saying? What that would mean? She was shocked. Apparently the bee felt her tense up because it chose that moment to sting her right in the palm. Anything she was going to say was wiped out of her mind when Grissom took her hand and setting about the business of removing the stinger.
He apologized for some reason, and then launched into an explanation about the best way to remove stingers. She was sure that whatever he was saying was pertinent, but she didn't care. She was too busy staring at him. This man, who claimed to be no good at relationships had just delivered the perfect proposal.
Perfect for them anyway.
Sara was far from a traditionalist, and Grissom getting down on one knee in the middle of a restaurant or in front of the fountains would have been forced and so not them it would have ruined it. But a seemingly spontaneous proposal suggestion, surrounded by bugs, combined with the determined, yet nervous look on his face, made it just right. She didn't even have to think about it.
He had fallen silent and was entirely focused on looking at her hand, not her face. He turned slightly red as he quietly asked what she thought. Before he could even finish his sentence her answer was out.
"Yes".
He looked at her, almost surprised she had taken to the idea. He thought she was going to give him a speech on why marriage was an antiquated practice of female oppression where the bride is passed from one man to another in a show of who is going to 'take care of her' now.
"Let's do it". Her enthusiasm took him aback for just a moment, but then he realized that this woman had just agreed to marry him and he didn't really care why.
They grinned at each other like idiots for a few moments and then they felt themselves gravitating toward one another. They both forgot they were wearing those silly helmets and ended up bumping hats instead on kissing romantically like they had planned. They both looked down, embarrassed for a moment, then Sara looked up and ripped off the helmet and dropped it to the ground.
"Sara! I don't want you to get stung again". Grissom exclaimed
Sara pushed him against the chain link enclosure, away from the bees before pulling his helmet off as well.
"I don't care". She murmured before crushing her lips against his.
TBC
There will be probably only be one more chapter since I wrote this (clearly) a VERY long time ago and promptly forgot about it. Let's see how long the next chapter takes to write. :)