Black Wednesday
TEASER: Sometimes, life is too sad to laugh, Response to the 10-17-05 Unbound Improv Challenge and sequel to "Aqua Velvet".
RATING: M for violent images, language and sexual activity.
SPOILERS: Set between Season 6 "Shooting Stars" and "Gum Drops", though spoilers are general up to Season 6.
DISCLAIMERS: If I owned them, I wouldn't need to write fanfiction. No profit for me. All of that goes to Bruckheimer, et al.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: You'll get more from this story if you read the others in the series first. Reviews appreciated, archived at my site, and even if they aren't my SOX, at least there are SOX in the World Series! First and last lines given, 1000 word limit for the story itself; according to MS Word 2003, I made it with 13 words to spare.
CSI CSI CSI
He stared out of the window, seemingly unreachable for anyone. Sara wanted to sweep Grissom into her arms to comfort him.
"Damn him." The frost in his voice sucked the heat out of the air. His bedroom suddenly felt as cold to Sara as the unseasonable chill outside.
"I know."
The worst had happened tonight; they found a little girl who had gone missing two days ago, bound and gagged in a storm drain. Her kidnapper slipped into the drainage vault through a break in a wall and slit her throat as the team watched helplessly from above.
Telling the girl's parents was the hardest thing Sara had ever had to do. They had been so positive, so certain that they would get their daughter back alive. Their collapse in horrified shock tortured Sara, but it was Grissom's reaction that still shook her, hours later.
Grissom had been unable to say a word as he sat beside Sara listening to her answer their questions, instead shedding silent tears and wringing his hands as though trying to wash blood off of them. He hadn't stopped crying or wringing his hands even when Brass escorted the parents out and then brought coffee, nor had Grissom said a word until Sara led him to his office.
"I'm going home."
His words, so devoid of emotion, brought images of him hurting himself unbidden to Sara's mind and she had let out a gasp before she could find a response. "Not alone."
"Yes."
"No, Grissom." She drew in a deep breath and prayed to the God in whom she didn't believe that she could articulate something that would get through to him. "Gil, honey . . . I need to be with you tonight." She did. If she was worried about him, she was terrified for herself. She was the primary on the case and felt utterly responsible for the whole mess.
He had looked up at her with red-rimmed eyes, nodded once, and pushed past her to the door. He hadn't said another word until his eloquent condemnation of the kidnapper a moment ago.
He turned to her then, the shuffling of his feet on the carpet of his bedroom thunderous in the eerie silence between them. "I fucked up and a little girl died."
She wanted to still the wringing of his hands, but chose not to move yet. "None of this was your fault, Gil."
"I wrote down the wrong address. If we'd been there five minutes earlier . . ."
"We might all be dead from automatic gunfire." Never mind that she had been going through this same mantra since the moment the man's knife gleamed as he slashed the girl's throat.
"Or we might have gotten her out alive."
She sighed. "That's true. But dwelling on what might have been . . . Gil, that's . . ."
"'Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.'"
She slipped into the game without thought. "Sydney J. Harris. 'We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.'"
"Fulton Oursler." He looked at his watch, then met her gaze with the saddest eyes she had ever seen. "I do regret yesterday."
Sara took a step toward him. "Do you fear tomorrow?"
Grissom took a step toward her. "Not as much as I used to."
She inched toward him again and held out her hands. "Me, either. Something's changed."
She didn't even see his hands move before she found herself crushed in his embrace as he sought her lips with his. Sara fell into his need to feel alive and met it with her own, marveling at the feeling of release that came with such naked vulnerability.
She expected fast and fierce, but as if to stave off regret and guilt, his gentle hands along her sides took an achingly long time to remove her shirt. He plundered her navel with his slick tongue forever before he slid his fingers over the satin of her bra. He laid her down on his bed, his blue eyes black with desire and want and fear all at once.
She unbuttoned his shirt while he trailed kisses along her jaw and down her neck. The silken hair on his chest sizzled against her palms and she realized then that her hands connected directly to her core.
He latched onto one nipple and suckled, opening a void within her that she desperately needed to fill or go insane trying. She got his belt unbuckled and his pants unzipped around his ardent worship of her breasts, but she didn't know how he got his trousers and boxers off so quickly, nor when or how her own pants had been removed.
The sun glowed pink over the horizon as he finally plunged into her with a groan of such wanton ecstasy that she heard her own cry only as an echo from across the room. Never in her experience had that moment been so complete – but never before had she trusted and loved a man enough to take him in from behind. Wave after wave of delirious pleasure rocked through her as he rocked into her until her whole body convulsed around him and squeezed him dry with one long moan of her name.
Sara awoke hours later, wrapped in Grissom's arms. Never in a million years could she have foreseen the miraculous changes in him and in her on the day Catherine poured her into a slinky red dress and high heels and left her to be Grissom's early birthday present. For two people who had been stuck in parallel ruts for five years, they had done a pretty good job merging tracks.
When Grissom shifted in her arms and nuzzled her neck in his sleep, Sara smiled softly. Maybe changes weren't so bad after all.
--FIN--