Marlou, my lovely beta. The idea was Kay's... and I kinda wrote this for her, but I wrote it for Marlou as well... because she's been asking for smut.
At temperatures this high, sweat wasn't sweat. It was an extra layer of skin that obstructed the cooling process. At temperatures this hot, there was no point swiping at your brow, no point in standing in the shade. The shade was a sorry imitation for reprieve, the trees nearly weeping with the blaze of the sun.
Dear sun, what has Las Vegas done this week to piss you off?
Luckily, CSIs Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom were catching the sleepy vestiges of heat rising over the city. They were finishing up their shift, abandoning the cool night to the heat of the day. Even at eight in the morning the desert offered no pause in the heat wave. It was a startling one hundred and six degrees and the sun wasn't even at its peak yet.
It was on days like this that Sara thanked whomever that she worked night shift and could sleep through the days in a climate-controlled sort of bliss. She was now simply looking forward to finishing up and driving home, to tumble into what she was sure were startlingly cool cotton sheets. She'd left the air conditioning on full blast and her skin was already anticipating the refreshing rush.
But first she and Grissom had business to complete in the desert.
He drove over the parched earth with the sort of detached purpose that she admired. And she would have admired it far more than she was, if she hadn't been stuck to the leather of the seat in a very uncomfortable manner. When she'd first sat in the Denali she had attempted to shift around and get comfortable, but after a while the wet pull of her skin on the leather was too much and she slouched down, miserable.
If Grissom was sticky and uncomfortable, he was good at hiding it. Even with the air conditioning on full blast, the incessant glaring of early morning sun scorched the dark interior of the SUV and made everything unbearably hot to touch. Sweat was beginning to seep along the collar of Grissom's polo shirt and it was only time before it soaked through the back as well.
Sara, for her part, was sweating quite a bit more. Her white, cotton wife beater was nearly soaked through in the back and rivulets were beginning to run down her neck and gather in her cleavage. Ugh, she hated that. It was so very uncomfortable, and even more so to adjust herself.
For a brief moment, she allowed her tongue to slide out of the corner of her mouth. It tasted the sweat on her skin and she cringed. She could only imagine how she looked. Probably dishevelled, intensely dishevelled. Humidity was a huge bitch to her. She closed her eyes and projected herself home, in the tub or perhaps on the couch in front of the central cooling vent. Yes, yes, she was there and she was cool and it was won-
"Sara, we're here. I say we get this over with and go dive into Lake Mead." She watched as he wiped the sweat from his brow and on the one hand wanted to laugh at him, on the other wanted to lick his palms clean of the salty sweaty. Heat, well, damn it, it just put her in heat. Sara brushed it off. It was too hot to be horny.
Sara plopped her forensics cap on her head and maneuvered her kit out from under her feet.
Grissom halted her. "You don't need your kit." Before she could ask 'Why the hell not?', he was gone from the vehicle, squinting his way onto the desert floor.
She followed him, confused and just fucking hot, wanting nothing more than to move to Antarctica for a good few weeks.
"Help me play this out," he requested. His eyes were on the cliffs in the distance and he missed her rolling her eyes behind the light sunglasses that she wore.
Sara trudged over a few steps and then halted. "You're kidding me. Three minutes out here and we'll be lobsters, Grissom. You didn't come all the way out here just to re-enact a scene."
"Just humor me."
"When don't I," she grumbled and moved over to where he was standing. She blew a dry breath between her lips and stood stock still, waiting for him to 'do his thing'.
Grissom kept staring into the distance and then turned to her. "Alright, well he said that they had the argument out here." Sara nodded and swiped at her arm, wiping the sandy grime from it. "And if she lost her wedding ring and was searching for it when he left her... then she would have been face down, correct?"
Sara rolled her eyes distinctly and answered. "Yes, that's correct."
"Then," Grissom continued, moving closer to her, focusing once more on the not-so-distant horizon. "Why was she face up? And why was her arm broken."
There was no point being out there, no point at all. He could have pieced that together in his head in the shower for god's sake, but for some reason he'd felt the need to drag her out into the middle of nowhere to state his damned theory.
She crossed her arms over her chest, pressing her breasts together, the sweat pooling between. She didn't care how it felt, it was for effect. "Because there was a struggle." He went to speak and she cut him off. "Grissom, I hate to be testy, I really do, but it's hot and I want to go home... and Grissom..."
His eyes met hers, a trickle of sweat moving down his brow. Sara was almost tantalized by it, but really, she was too frigging hot to care. Well, not when the droplet reached his neck and swiveled around to trail down his Adam's apple. Then, she was dry mouthed, but for an entirely different reason.
Grissom moved forward and took her upper arms in his palms, squeezing gently. Sara simply stood and waited for him to proceed, but when he didn't she looked up at him. "Griss?"
"Well, Sara, if you're not going to struggle this whole thing was pointless. So struggle!"
Sara groaned and began to struggle to the best of her ability in the heat. Her resistance was slightly less than what it should have been and he picked up on it immediately. "Ah, so the heat probably had something to do with her incapacitation." Grissom let her go and looked down at the ground. "Now, pretend to search for your wedding ring."
Sara stiffened and glared at her boss. "On the ground... you want me to search... for my... 'wedding ring'." Grissom nodded and waited. "But, but, it's... hot," she finished dejectedly and got down on her knees, pressing her hands to the dry sand. As soon as she put them down, she pulled them back.
"Jesus! Too hot!" Sara stood and wiped her hands on the sides of her pants. Then, a light bulb went off in her head. "That's why her hands were burned!"
Grissom smirked. "Precisely." Then he stood back and surveyed the ground she had attempted to crawl on. Then he looked at her. Sweat had soaked through the chest of her wife-beater, exposing her modest white bra beneath. At that point, he didn't quite know what to do.
He knew what he wanted to do; hell, he'd known what he wanted to do for years but there was that little problem of wanting to do something, but needing to do something entirely different.
Sara lifted her hat to rid her brow of some of the sweat, and looked over to him, and gave him a small smile. The heat must have been doing things to his head, it must have been. There was just no way...
Sweat clung to her upper lip, almost screaming at him to lick it off. No, no, he had to get himself under control. Control, control... but why? Why bother?
Grissom looked into her eyes and spoke. "I'm… I'm very lightheaded."
Sara's hands immediately detached from his and went to his neck, as if to steady him. "Oh god, heat stroke? Grissom I told you-"
"No, not a heat stroke." And he took her by the wrists and held her still.
Sara was both vaguely aroused and concerned. His eyes had darkened and the grip on her wrists had increased. She didn't need to struggle, but she knew if she really wanted to, he would hold her there.
His voice was broken, perhaps disoriented when he spoke. "Sara..." He wanted to say: "Don't let me do this," "Push me away," "This can't happen,"... but he didn't. There were no words.
And then somehow-no, not somehow, there was purpose behind it-his lips landed on her hard, knocking what little oxygen she retained from her lungs.
His mouth too was dry but when he kissed her there seemed to be an oasis created with their mouths. Yes, they were in lush, green vegetation, swimming in some sort of imaginary pond. Oh, screw it, they were just kissing, hotly, deeply, sweat mingling.
If it had been anyone else, anywhere else, Sara would have been vaguely disgusted but damn, this was Grissom, and this was his sweat. This was him, and so she lapped at his neck and tasted the salt there, made him moan, and smiled. They were making out in the desert, how strange.
They were making out. How strange.
Her arms wound around his neck, lubricated by the salty moisture there. She loved it, she loved the feel off him hot and heavy, wanting to take him right there on the sand in the sun.
Sara tore her lips away and felt something within her snap. Something in her head, it just unleashed. Her lips went directly to his neck and began to suck, to bite, to rid him of each tiny droplet that clung to his skin. They had no right to cling to him, it was her turn to cling. Sara moaned and it reverberated in his own throat and she became so unbelievably wet and laden with some sort of rampant desire that she wrapped one leg around his thigh and pressed into him.
He could feel the heat through the denim, regardless of the temperature and layers of fabric.
"Mm, mmm, ga, mmm," Sara mumbled against his skin as his hands yanked her head back so he too could feast. Grissom attacked her neck with purpose, sucking and pulling and licking until her hips were in a constant up-and-down motion on his thigh. Her hands were locked behind his neck for leverage as she moved against him.
His lips trailed wetly up her neck to her ear and bit. Sara came hard.
"Ahhhh," she sighed and pressed to him a few more times before pulling back and looking into his eyes.
Grissom's eyes were wide and his lips were so very red and so very plump that she just had to kiss him again to be sure that she had been kissing those same lips all along. "Jeeee-sus," he swore, digging his fingers into her hips. Damn it all, he wanted her out of those pants. Now.
As Sara lowered her leg, Grissom began to walk them back to the car. Her face fell and she wanted to hide the embarrassment that crept up. But instead of stopping by the passenger side door, he moved them around to the backseat, opened the door, untangled himself and crawled in.
Sara looked at him with an odd expression. "Get the hell in," Grissom ordered and Sara hesitated for only a moment before complying. She climbed into the pleasantly cool cabin and he pulled her on top of him swiftly. She was insanely glad in that moment that he had thought to leave the car running with the air conditioning on. It was seconds before their lips met again, mouths open and hungry, tongues tangling and sliding against each other.
Moments later they became heat like the desert and everything crumbled to sand.
Yeah, seems like something is missing from this eh? Yeah, the real version is over at GeekFiction if you care to read.