Title: Stalemate in a Sandbox
Author: ScullyAsTrinity
Category: Romance/angstyness...or is it angstiness? Know what? Neither of them are real words.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own the park, I created it in my head.
Author's notes: This whole story is going out to Joan, who has been nothing short of spectacular helping with my fan ficcies. She's fantastic and amazing and I thank her. I also, shall continue to thank Lauren, who just... she's just fantastic as well.
ALSO!!!!: I didn't realize this until I was on page... 12 of this story and listening to the song at the time... that this song is perfect for the mood I was going for in this story... so if you can, while reading, listen to Third Eye Blind's "Deep Inside of You" off their album "Blue." It's amazing.
Another note: I'm trying to finish this as I watch 'Prelude to a Recount' on 'The Daily Show' so... it might... you know, be crap.
Summary: 'She reached out and traced random designs in the grainy surface, wiping them away when her arm had reached its extent, and starting over.' G/S
HERE WE GO! EVERYONE READ! If you don't feel like reading consensual sex between two adults in an R setting eventually, bail the boat now. I've updated the story, revised, and re-rated. So, if you have a problem with my writing, please by all means send me and email and I'll address the issue at hand. Thanks so much. Here's Stalemate though, back from the dark, dark abyss. THANKS MARK!!!
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It's inevitable.
Power must shift. Balance is thrown helter-skelter. The status quo favors one side or another. And it all happens in time. For some, it takes an ungodly amount of years, a glacier movement to turn the tides. For others, a decision is made in a matter of a moment-an instance-in which someone says or does something that's unable to be undone.
Then, the ribbon unravels and unleashes chaos, or anger or unbridled passion or love. But at that moment, the ribbon is pulled taut-and a thin line must be walked. Because that new establishment that has been made, the new change that one has come to terms with, it is already unbalanced. A small breeze can set off a storm of events, ending in catastrophe.
In such cases, each person must be willing to mold around the mirrored aspects of the other and offset the rocking. Surely, if both were crowded at one end of the spectrum, everything would tilt and spin off into the inevitable: stalemate.
A lone woman sat on a worn wooden plank. The other end of the plank high in the air, no one to counter balance the child's plaything. Her chin rested on her knees, partially to block her upper body from the cool desert night air and partially because her head felt heavy. So heavy, that she couldn't continue to walk with it, with all the thoughts there.
If felt as if thousands of protons were slamming against each other inside her skull, all looking to bond but finding no opposite charge to bond with. No counter, no balance.
Everything, everything was off balance.
There, under the bright October moon, Sara Sidle allowed her head to sway, letting her cheek come to rest on her right knee. The position was slightly uncomfortable but thought that the new position would perchance dislodge some of the charged particles floating about her person.
It was frightening that the small park offered her more solace and solitude than her own apartment did. There, in her own home, she felt caged and closed in. Often Sara found herself moving from one task to the other, without having completed the previous task before abandoning it. Her body no longer felt comfort sleeping in her bed, and no tension was released when she would bathe in bathroom. She felt as though she could not cook in her kitchen, as though all of her creativity was stolen from her when she crossed the threshold into a supposed sanctuary.
The implements of childhood memories were strewn about her. An impeccably clean sandbox to her left and a swing set to her right. She glanced at it for a moment, watching at the swings swayed back and forth in the breeze. One swinging forward while the other completed its period and moved in the opposite direction. It reached its maximum point of energy and swung back, still offsetting it's partner. Back, and forth, so fluid. So easy.
She rocked herself forward, planting her hands in the dewy earth. Her feet pressed down as well, surely creating impressions. Good impressions to cast she thought idly to herself. Her mind, a closed circuit, always seemed to return to the forensic, to the definite and the logical.
Unlike the swings, she didn't let a little breeze offset her carefully practiced motions. It had taken her a good time to set herself in motion, allowing herself to find peace and comfort and balance in the fact that her life wasn't balanced. It took her a good time to fall headlong into work, forgetting that she wasn't his, that she would never be.
Now, the cool stream of air that blew across her face caused the particles in her head to attempt to break mach speed. Sara could feel the beginnings of a migraine tickling the bottom of her skull and winced whilst pinching the bridge of her nose.
Brown hair fell into her eyes, and she shook her head, disrupting the molecular commotion in her cranium. Slowly, gazing down at her feet, she moved over the silver-strewn ground until she reached the sandbox and perched herself on the edge. She reached out and traced random designs in the grainy surface, wiping them away when her arm had reached its extent, and starting over.
It took her some time, but she managed to concoct a rendering of the park in the sand. Sitting back, she stared down at it, leaned in and drew in a stick figure on the edge of the sandbox. Her lips twisted into a ghost of a smile. Sara found a stick on the ground behind her and began on another scene. As she drew with her right hand, she swung her legs over the edge and into the sandbox, bringing her knees up once more. She leaned her left elbow on her knee and her cheek on her palm.
The wind picked up and blew grains of salt over her new picture. They came to rest on the left side of the box, creating mini sand dunes. Sara thought of snow, and began tracing a winter scene, complete with snowmen and skiers.
Sand drifted up, mingling with the wind to settle in her hair, and over her arms and legs. It was pointless to brush it off, content to let it settle into her pores, refreshing her in an odd manner.
Behind her at some distance she heard the soft closing of a car door, it echoed back at her off of the trees, and she turned to see Grissom, hands in his pockets walking towards her.
He looked younger, healthier than he had in ages. Worry lines on his face thinning and disappearing, bags under his eyes receding ever so much, ever so little that the only person able to perceive the change was someone who watched him constantly. Someone who could decipher him. As he walked, slowly, he bowed his head, his eyes becoming obstructed by the Red Sox hat that he wore.
That was something new, Sara realized. He always favored his forensics cap even when he was off duty. But she noted the dustiness of it, the frayed brim and saw it as a treasured article of his, just another morsel of knowledge that she had learned about him. Her cheeks became hot when she smiled, remembering that he had once mentioned his affinity for baseball.
"Hey." She called brightly, yet softly, as if the decibel level might crack the placidity of the moment, destroy the moon's grace on the grass. He heard her words and his lips perked a tiny bit, his eyes rising to meet hers. A silent question was posed.
"I was headed home, and saw your car. Just wondering what you're up to." The calmness of his voice, the sereneness of his eyes somehow prompted her to turn back to the sand and resume drawing. He stood up on his tiptoes, gaining a better view of what she was doing, and truly smiled, but wiped it off of his face a moment later when she spoke.
"I'm just... drawing." Sara replied, swirling the stick around in the grains for emphasis. This time, all of her shapes and renderings were abstract. Her mind couldn't seem to focus on one particular thing she wanted to draw. It seemed as if the arrival of her supervisor had quieted down the particles in her head, setting the ones that resided in her stomach off in a frenzy.
She got the sudden urge to run over to the seesaw and find out if her weight could be counter balanced by his but she refrained from movement. Holding the thin stick in her hand, she waited for him to speak, to see if he would want to speak of abstract things with her. He sighed and moved directly behind her. She poked his foot with the stick and looked up, silently asking him to sit with her, if only for a moment.
Quiet moments were all too few in her world, as in his and she hoped he would accept her invitation.
His eyes flitted briefly to the moon, then back down to her eyes. His teeth came down and worried his bottom lip as he bent and settled in next to her, his heavy boots sinking in the sand, making slight sinking impressions around them. They both watched as the grains slowed and stopped in their movement towards the ruts his body had left.
"I can't imagine you came here just to find a blank canvas." He too reached out and found a piece of stick and began drawing in the makeshift canvas. His eyes followed the lines that his hands dictated as she picked up her ministrations again.
"That was merely an added-" She paused as she put the finishing touch on a Christmas tree. "Bonus." She finished, sighed and leaned back, stretching out the kinks in her back. He moved his hand and solved the equation she had drawn in the sand and dropped his stick on the grass, turning his attention to her, though not looking at her.
"I see." He didn't see, but he felt as if he should say something to break the stalemate they had both willingly fallen under.