TITLE: A Number of Other Things
AUTHOR: coolbyrne
CLASSIFICATION: Nothing more than PG
SPOILERS: "Butterflied"
DISCLAIMER: Most definitely not mine. And that sucks.
DISTRIBUTION: If you like it, by all means take it.
FEEDBACK: Compliments and/or constructive criticisms are greatly appreciated. Flames will be mocked in other forums. Send any combination of the above to: coolbyrne@as-if.com.
SUMMARY: Grissom drove four hours to pick Sara up at the L.A airport, but how far have they really come? Post "A Number of Things" fic.
A/N: I think this ended up being an entirely different fic from "A Number of Things", but there are certain references to that fic that necessitated this being a continuation, rather than a stand-alone. I've included the last chapter of that fic so that you don't really need to read the original story… though it would be nice if you did. *grin* My thanks as always to papiliondae for really cleaning up this fic.
*
Don't want to leave you really
I've invested too much time
To give you up that easy
To the doubts that complicate your mind.
"We Belong"-Pat Benatar
*
Despite the crowd of people waiting in the arrivals area, the only person she really saw was Grissom. A huge smile spread across her face and she all but ran to meet him. Slowing down a few feet in front of him, she attempted to reign in her joy as much as possible, but nothing would remove the smile.
"Hey," she greeted.
"Hey yourself," he returned. Seeing her in such a mood was a surprise to him. "Sleep deprivation?" he ventured.
"What? Oh," she realized what he was implying. "No, I actually slept most of the way."
"You? Slept? For almost ten hours?"
"Yeah! Can you believe it? The fact that Tony plied me with liquor at the Heathrow bar as a big send-off might have had something to do with it," she admitted with a grin.
"You're drunk!"
"No, not now. Not really. No." She paused. "Maybe a little. High altitude."
He shook his head and picked up her bag. "Come on. We'll go get some coffee. You can tell me all about your trip."
"It was great," she said. "I had a great time."
"You look like you did. And I don't just mean the booze."
She lightly punched his arm. "You should try it sometime."
"What? Booze or a vacation?" he asked playfully.
"Well, I wouldn't discount the first one, but I think you'd enjoy a vacation more."
Grissom looked like he was giving it some serious thought. "Maybe I'll go with you next time." He took great pleasure in the look of surprise on her face. He started walking away and turned around to find her still rooted on the spot in surprise. He couldn't help but laugh. "Come on. You're going to tell me all about this trip." When she joined him at his side, he said, "So, what did you do?"
They began walking down the hall, shoulders bumping. "Well," she began, "I went on a double-decker bus." He nodded. "Went to the Science Museum."
"Oh, how was that?" he asked, curious.
"It was really cool!" she exclaimed. "Though I got a few looks when I tried to refute one of their experiments."
He laughed. "That's my girl." She bumped into his shoulder again. "What else did you do?"
"Hmmmm… what else?" She thought pensively. "Oh, right. I helped solve a murder investigation."
He stopped in his tracks and Sara turned with an amused grin. "You did what?"
She started walking backwards, encouraging him to continue forward. "I helped Tony and Carol solve a murder investigation." She saw the look of amazement in his eyes. "I did! I have bruises to prove it! They're sending me an award and everything."
"You're drunk," Grissom sighed.
"I'm a heroine!" she corrected with a laugh. "Want to hear about it?" she teased.
Realizing she was serious, he narrowed his eyes in a mock scowl. "You know I do."
She affected a passable English accent and hooked her arm in his. "Well, come on then."
*
The exhaustion finally hit her, and she all but fell into the booth, energy drained.
"You've gone quiet all of a sudden. Did you want to go to the hotel?" Grissom asked. "Having a coffee with me isn't an obligation."
A lazy smile crossed her face. "Sorry, I'm just tired. I think my internal clock has finally given up trying to keep time." He smiled as she looked around the little 24-hour coffee shop they found a short distance from the airport. "Besides, these days, coffee with you is something of a treat."
A waiter arrived to take their order, silencing any response from Grissom. Minutes later he returned, placing the steaming mug of coffee in front of Grissom and the cup of tea went to Sara.
Grissom gestured to the cup in front of her, "What else did you pick up in England?" he asked.
She looked down and laughed. "Oh, you mean this?" He nodded and she pursed her lips, squinting her eyes as if giving his question serious thought. "Let's see. 'Boot' is 'trunk', 'lift' is 'elevator' and I could kill for some curry right now."
Grissom's eyes opened wide. "Curry?"
Hers did the opposite. Closing them contentedly, she all but purred, "Yeah. Curry."
Now it was his turn to laugh. "If it makes you happy, I suppose." Sara's eyes snapped open, then narrowed in his direction. In an attempt to cut off whatever response she was about to give, he added, "Looks like England made you happy."
"Yeah," she agreed. Recalling her trip, she repeated with more conviction, "Yeah. It was exactly what I needed."
"And what would that be?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. Just… a different environment, different expectations. Different people."
Looking down into his coffee cup, he did his best to dull the edge of his next question. "And how is Dr. Hill?"
Sara choked out a disbelieving laugh and shook her head. But rather than letting him off the hook, as she had done so many times in the past, the weariness from the long flight gave her the courage to plunge ahead. Knowing the rest of the conversation would not be as playful as it had been up to this point, she answered. "Tony is… really good. There was such a comfort just being around him." Grissom glanced up, but she carried on. "I think it would take years to really get to know him, and yet I never felt like he was shutting me out. I think… maybe in another lifetime, he'd be the kind of guy I could lose my heart to."
His eyes left hers again and he failed miserably at sincerity. "That's… nice."
She leaned back and crossed her arms in front of herself. "Don't."
"Don't what?" he asked.
"Don't keep me at arm's length and then expect me to do the same with everyone else who comes into my life."
"Is that what I'm doing?"
"And stop using questions to avoid entering into an argument."
He didn't respond. She leaned forward, her arms resting on the table, a position less defensive than the one she had before, yet the silence still stretched out between them. Stretched out so long that she had time to create a small mountain of confetti from the napkin she nervously began shredding. Dejectedly she rested her chin in her hand, smiling sadly at the symbolism.
"That's my heart."
Grissom sighed. "Sara…"
She waited for him to continue, but nothing came. Sitting back again, she held out her hands. "What? What? You always say my name as if it's the beginning and end to all your problems, but you never finish. Like I'm supposed to glean all the information I need simply from you saying my name." She looked out the window into the night. "For two weeks, I felt like a different person. I can't remember feeling so good about myself. Two weeks. And it only took two hours to change it all back again." Still, nothing came from him. "God," she whispered, "the four hour drive is going to kill me."
He didn't mean to, but he said it anyway. "Sara…"
Whether it was the lingering affects of the alcohol still in her system, her lack of sleep, or simply a streak of odd humour in her, she laughed out loud. A genuine, heartfelt laugh that caught Grissom off-guard.
"At least you can laugh about it," he said.
Giving him her full attention, she answered, "I've cried enough about it."
He was the first to break eye contact.
She followed his gaze out the window. Chewing the inside of her lip, she contemplated the sanity of her next comment. Figuring it was now or never, she went ahead with it. "I need to tell you something, Griss." She glanced over to him, but he was still looking out the window. Pressing forward, she said, "I was in the interrogation room."
His brow wrinkled in confusion. "What interrogation room?"
"You." She took in a shaky breath. "When you were interrogating Dr. Lurie."
Sara could have sworn she felt the cold grip his heart, as surely as if it had gripped her own. It was the only acknowledgment he gave that he had heard her. He didn't say a word. Frustrated by his lack of response, frustrated at the situation he had put both of them in, frustrated by the fact that she had to hear him admit his feelings for her to a complete stranger, she slammed her hand down on the table, causing the spoons to rattle, and Grissom to jump.
"Dammit, Grissom!" He looked at her, taken aback by her outburst. Just as quickly, her volume lowered and she took a moment to inhale a deep breath. "I suppose I should be happy to find out that you actually return my feelings, that I'm not losing my mind, that I haven't wasted eight years of my life waiting for something that doesn't exist. You'll have to forgive me for not seeing the silver lining in all of this."
His mouth was agape. "Eight years?"
She waved away his comment. "Nevermind." She took another deep breath. "Carol joked that I had to prod you every once in a while with a stick or you'd curl in on yourself. Tony told me to give you space. But both of them were wrong." He couldn't help but raise his eyebrow, encouraging her to go on. "When I prod you with a stick, you just curl in on yourself anyway. You get all defensive and curl up in the fetal position to protect yourself. And yet, when I give you space, you get farther and farther away from me." Her voice broke and she barely got out the last sentence.
He instinctively reached over to cover her hand with his own.
"No, don't do that," she admonished as she pulled her hand back. "Don't do that. Don't sneak out a moment of compassion through a crack in your armour then take it away from me again. Do you not see what you're doing? What you're doing to me?"
"Sara, I'm sorry."
She ran a trembling hand through her hair. "Do you even know what you're sorry for?"
Nervously rubbing his forefinger along his bottom lip, he answered, "I'm sorry… for hurting you."
She shook her head. "Don't be sorry for hurting me. I'm just as much to blame for my unhappiness as you are. I heard it right out of your own mouth that you can't make that commitment, and I'm still clutching at straws." She knocked over the confetti mountain with her finger. "But what about you?"
"What about me?"
"There's more to life than just living, you know. In that interrogation room, you said… you said that you couldn't take the risk." She reached over and curled her fingers around his forearm. "But isn't that what life is about, Griss? Isn't that how we know we're alive?"
"It's so easy for you, isn't it?" he said defensively. "When you have nothing to risk."
"Nothing to risk?" Her eyes opened wide, her voice incredulous. "No, I guess not, except for the risk of being hurt, being rejected, feeling like I am nothing to the one person who means everything to me, no, I guess I have nothing to risk."
He sighed. "You're not nothing. You're young. You're beautiful. You have your whole life ahead of you."
"We both have our whole lives ahead of us, Griss. We should live them." Silence stretched out between them once again. "You know," she finally said, "one of the best things about England was watching things between Tony and Carol. I mean, here was this man, so tentative about this new thing in his life, this new wrinkle, getting completely mowed down by love." Her laugh was a heartfelt one. "And I couldn't help but get caught up in it, too. The newness of things between them, and yet, somehow so natural it made you believe it had been there forever. And I guess in some way it was. It just took both of them taking a risk to get it out." Her gaze returned to the window. "I think I've taken all the risks I'm going to take, Griss."
Her voice was tinged with sadness, and a finality that made Grissom's heart freeze.
"What does that mean?"
She shrugged. "What does it matter?"
He looked down at his forearms, where her hands were still resting. He took them both in his. "You matter."
She felt the warmth of his hands around hers, but didn't bother pulling away this time. "Do you think if I went away and came back five, ten years from now, that things would be better? That we could be friends again? Like we used to?"
He wanted to pull back his hands in fear, but somehow found the resolve to hold onto her tighter. "No," he answered, "I don't think it would help at all. I think it would only serve to make things worse."
When she turned to look at him, her eyes were brimmed with tears. "Can it get worse than it is? Really?" She lowered her chin to her chest, her dark hair shielding her face from his gaze. "I'm tired," she murmured, then rested her head on top of their entwined hands. "I'm so tired, Griss."
After several minutes of quiet, he finally spoke up. "Come on. The hotel's only ten minutes away."
*
"I thought it was best to stay as far away from downtown L.A as possible," he explained as he saw her look around the hotel parking lot. "Avoid the traffic as much as one can avoid traffic here."
"No, no, it's good," she said. She flashed a wan smile. "Any hotel I haven't investigated is fine by me."
They stood quietly together in the elevator until Sara asked, "What time did you check in today?"
"About four, why?"
"No reason."
Deciding silence was more comfortable than attempting more awkward small talk, the ride continued without another word. Finally, arriving at their floor, the doors opened and Grissom gestured for Sara to step out. Exiting the elevator and unaware of the direction of their room, she waited for him to join her. He took her bag and slung it over his shoulder while gently taking her arm and guiding her to the right. Still, not a word was spoken.
They stopped outside a numbered door that she assumed was her room, so she reached out for her bag and the key. Looking at him for the first time since they left the coffee shop, she was surprised at the myriad of emotions that crossed his face. Her head tilted as she waited for something to be said. He opened his mouth once, but was silent. Closing it once again, he looked away, as if the words to be spoken were written on the door to her room.
He licked his lips then pressed them together before finally saying, "Sara, I… I can't change overnight."
She wondered how long it took him to get out that much, but instead of asking, she simply shook her head. "I don't want you to change. That's just it, Griss, don't you get it? I love you for who you are." Seeing the shocked reaction to her admission, she nervously laughed. "What a pair we are. I over-talk and you… you don't say enough."
She turned her back momentarily to put the key into the lock. Hearing the successful click of the bolt releasing, she ventured a final look in his direction. "I don't want you to change, Griss. I just want you to let yourself be happy." She turned the door handle. "And let me be happy, too."
*
A/N: To be continued at some point, just not right now. I really don't know where these characters are going at this point, not only in this fic, but on the show. Thanks for reading.
