Between Seasons
Prompt: Death and The Star.
Disclaimer: I disclaim all the characters contained herein. All of them. To a one. Disclaimed.
Sara comes home to find him restringing a guitar.
A Rickenbacker he informs her, grinning up with a pick held between his teeth in a way that makes her think she may just have found a new fetish.
He holds it like a child, with an odd combination of fear and care.
When he was going deaf he put it away, unable to look at it without wanting to take it out back and destroy it on the patio. He looks almost ashamed confessing it, but more wistful at the time lost.
"I ate and breathed and talked, but it wasn't me. Not really."
Grissom pauses with the razor held away from his face, a new old habit already returning.
"Time wasn't moving. I couldn't see a progression of days, there was just the same day forever. I had nothing to reach for. No dreams, just a wish I wasn't there."
Sara reaches for the flannel and starts to wipe away the remains of the shaving foam.
"What changed?"
"I did. I outgrew my limits. I wanted to want again."
He pulls her close, between his body and the sink. "I was tired of the fear."
Carefully now he rubs the body with his glasses duster and Sara looks again at the man boy in front of her. Not the open enthusiastic man she followed into the desert, not him ever again. But no longer the dried-out husk of a man who made her feel so hopeless for so long.
He is some new configuration of the two. One who has the stability, the space and is willing to open it to her.
Sometimes she wonders if something in her own transformation called out to something hidden in Grissom, triggering his. No matter, they are both different people now. Content in themselves and at peace with each other.
Some mornings, some evenings they sit out on the oversized wicker couch they picked together for the back porch and he noodles aimlessly while she dozes at his side. The high sweet notes thread silver across the lawn.
His winter is passing and Sara watches him bloom again.