Disclaimer: If I owned CSI I would be busy adding more GSR scenes to the season 9 episodes, instead of writing disclaimers for my fanfiction.
A/N: I wrote this about a month ago, and since then have been editing it/getting up the courage to finally post the thing. This fits in the genre of "weird angst", hopefully you'll understand what I mean by that once you've read it.
Thanks (again) to KeeganElizabeth for reading this through, without her this story would be missing a title and would have an overabundance of commas/other issues that make it harder to read. I hope you enjoy...
It took him two weeks. Two long weeks before he realized. Before he figured it out; she didn't need him. Once he realized, it seemed so obvious, he didn't understand how he hadn't seen it before.
Sara didn't need him. She didn't need a chubby old man to complete her life or make her happy. And she especially didn't need one like him, one who had so much emotional baggage that he couldn't even bring himself to say a simple "I love you" to the woman he loved so dearly.
Why else would she leave him? What other possible reason could there be for not calling him or contacting him in any way since she had left two weeks earlier? It was so obvious. She didn't need him. She was better off without him.
Maybe she loved him. That was something he couldn't be sure about. In her letter… she had said so many times and in so many different ways that she did. That she always would. But why, oh why, would a woman like her love a man like him? Over the past two and a half years… she had reassured him so many times that his age didn't matter, that words didn't matter, that being with him was so much better than not being with him. He had believed her then, every time she had said it. He had believed almost everything she had said to him. Now, he was finally seeing the light. She would be better off without him.
Oh, sure, during the past two and a half years that they'd been together, she had been visibly happier than in the previous six, but what about before that? Before she moved to Vegas, before she even met him? He hadn't been there, so how was he to know for certain that those years, after high school but before meeting him, hadn't been the best years of her life? The only reason he had thought otherwise before was because she had told him so.
That was the only way he knew anything about her past. She had told him. But maybe, maybe she was lying. Maybe all she had been doing was trying to cheer up a lonely old workaholic, giving him a real life.
And maybe being apart from her was making him paranoid and crazy. But he pushed that idea aside, certain that he was onto something. Every memory of looking into Sara's eyes and seeing nothing but raw love, all the evidence that led to the conclusion of Sara being in love with him, vanished from his mind. He started to second-guess everything in their relationship, from the sincerity in her acceptance of his 'proposal' to the motive behind her suggestion of moving in together. He even started to doubt his own love for her.
After all, he was pretty sure that he had never been in love before Sara. So how would he know how love felt? Who was he to determine 'love' from 'great like'? He knew that what he felt for her was far more than just lust but exactly how much more?
Two months later, almost exactly two and a half months after Sara had left Las Vegas, she finally phoned him. This was just more evidence to support his theory. If she really did need him, really did love him, he thought, she would need to let him know she was okay. Or not okay, whichever the case was. She would want to share her problems, her failures, her successes.
Hearing her voice; it was like drinking a tall, cool glass of water after days in the desert. But that didn't mean he loved her… did it? It set him back, that phone call. But it was only a temporary setback, in building up his walls again. He had made the mistake of letting them crumble once; he had forgotten to maintain them. He wasn't going to let himself make that mistake again. When they said their goodbyes, she told him she loved him and missed him. He said goodbye and hung up the phone, convincing himself that he had heard a lie in her voice.
When Warrick died, his walls cracked. Part of the cause was grief over his friend's death, but most of it was having to call Sara. Having to hear her muffled sobs after he gave her the news and learning that she was coming home the next chance she had. He fixed the crack immediately after, needing to be strong for when she returned. She didn't need him. He was going to pretend as best he could that he didn't need her.
But his new walls were built atop the broken foundation of the old ones. They were unsteady; they weren't strong. So the minute he saw her again, standing at the door with a suitcase in hand, soaking wet from the rain and looking so unbelievably beautiful, everything came tumbling down. And he must have been in love because he couldn't stop kissing her… couldn't stop himself from leading her to the bedroom, from making love to her. His heart wouldn't stop beating so fast.
He must have been in love because, afterwards, when his heart rate finally began to slow, all he could do was hold her so, so close to him. He still couldn't stop kissing her. He was a drug addict then, finally getting his fix after six months. Six long months of painful withdrawal. He was in love.
He knew that for sure again now. Looking at Sara, naked in his arms with tears drying on her cheeks, he knew. He also knew that he couldn't pretend to not need her. Even if she didn't love him, didn't need him, and would be better off without him, with another man; he needed her and he was going to keep her for as long as she would stay.
So when she asked him if he still loved her after six months of being apart, he couldn't lie. The truth rewarded him with a beautiful smile that reminded him of something else: the evidence didn't lie. And right then the evidence was showing him that all of his earlier theories were wrong, except for the ignored theory that being apart from Sara made him paranoid and crazy. That one was right.
Thank you for reading! I apologize for the cliche "walls" metaphor, I couldn't help but use it. Please review to let me know what you think.