I really debated on whether to post this piece or not. True addiction is a horrible disease, and it's not my intention to minimize or mock it here. This story is the product of my warped and often inappropriate mind.
It started out relatively innocent. A lingering look here, a double-entendre there...but in no time at all his craving had evolved into sexual tension, intimate subtext, fleeting touches, and bold violations of personal space.
The personal space violations especially gave him a delicious, heady buzz. It frightened him. It excited him. He flirted with the possibility of having a bigger indulgence, of exploring that promising adventure of 'what if'.
In such ignorant denial, he told himself that some casual experimentation wouldn't hurt. Just a little recreational sampling — a touch of her soft skin, a taste of her inviting lips. Enough to experience a stronger high, but not actually slide down that steep precipice into hardcore consumption.
When he finally yielded to the great temptation and imbibed in a whole handful of her narcotic, it was life-changing. In her arms he'd felt gloriously alive, but in her bed he found pure ecstasy. He hadn't known such euphoria could even exist, and instantly he was hooked. She was the needle in his vein, and he could not get enough.
Grissom was an addict, and his drug was Sara.
Before he knew it, his strictly-recreational hobby had smashed into a full-blown dependency. Night after night, again and again, he went back for more. Like a junkie counting cash to buy their next hit, he counted the minutes until she was back in his arms and he was feeling that sensational high once again.
But she was proving to be one very expensive habit to support. Already he'd burned through every last cent in his savings account of solitude, and now he was on the verge of draining dry his precious lockbox of privacy, as well.
His reflection in the mirror gravely informed him that he'd become a Sara-holic. The more of her substance he ingested, the more he needed in order to survive. Didn't matter the cost anymore — he would give her his future and sell her his soul if that's what it took to keep her.
He knew he'd lost all control over his addiction. If he drowned in her, he would willingly sabotage anyone's attempt at rescue. He was in over his head and he did not want to be saved.
And then one day he reached for his lovely intoxicant, only to find a devastatingly empty bottle. She was gone — claiming burnout and the need to bury her ghosts before she self-destructed in front of him.
Severed from the source of his addiction, the withdrawal threatened to devour him. Insomnia, darkness, despair — these detox tremors were inescapable. Her drug wasn't going to kill him, but his being deprived of it just might. Desperately he clung to the memory of her hypnotic love — sobriety was a reality he wanted nothing to do with anymore.
He needed a fix, and he needed it badly. So he reverted back to a dealer of a different potion — his work. Yet no matter how deeply he tried to lose himself in it, his job could no longer placate. Although in the past it had always offered him immediate exhilaration...now, somehow, it no longer delivered any real, lasting elation.
His heart's true addiction called out to him from the far reaches of the earth. She still had a grip on him, and he could not be sated until he partook of her narcotic once again.
His only option was to chase that one magnificent high...wherever it took him. So he chased her — all the way to the rainforests of Costa Rica.
And as he dropped his knapsack on the ground and moved to embrace two greedy armfuls of his beautiful opiate, one singular thought wafted through his drug-addled brain:
He fully planned to overdose on her tonight...and it was going to be the high of a lifetime.
The End