Author's Notes: I know the first chapter had some of ya'll reaching for the tissues. And I thank you for coming back in spite of that! Take care until next time!
All I Have to Do
by Kristen Elizabeth
One week earlier
"Sara? Honey…are you awake?"
Shifting in the passenger seat of the car, Sara sighed. "You know I hate sleeping in moving vehicles."
Grissom took one hand off the wheel and reached over to lightly squeeze her knee. "I also know that you've been awake for almost thirty-six hours."
"Keeping count, boss?" She covered his hand with hers. "Sorry. I get catty when I'm completely sleep deprived."
He accepted her apology with a nod. "We're not going to get back into town for another hour. At least close your eyes and see what happens."
"I want to stay awake and talk to you."
"Anything specific on your mind?"
Sara shook her head against the head rest. "No. It's just been an insane couple of weeks. And we keep missing each other in the middle of the chaos."
Grissom glanced over at her. "I've missed you, too."
A pleased smiled spread on her face. "Really?"
"Why do you think I assigned us to the other end of the world tonight?"
"Gosh, Dr. Grissom…I just can't imagine." She turned onto her side as much as she could, to see him better. "Why don't you spell it out for me?"
His hand moved up from her knee to her face. "Four hours, round trip, completely alone with a woman I'm rather fond of…" He cleared his throat. "But I don't want to keep you completely sleep deprived." He brushed his knuckles across her cheek one last time. "Try to sleep? For me?"
Sara tried to scowl, but ended up yawning. Which made her even more annoyed. "It's too quiet to sleep," she continued to protest.
Grissom's response was to turn the radio on. Hard rock blasted out.
You're beside me on the seat
Got your hand between my knees
And you control how fast we go
By just how hard you wanna squeeze
"Next time, we check to see if Greg was the last CSI to use the car before we take it out," he grumbled as Sara bit back a tired chuckle.
With some minor shuffling, they landed on another station.
Pump it! Just pump it! And sigh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Grissom frowned and flipped again.
I've gotta make somebody love me
And now I know, now I know, now I know, I know that it's you
You're lucky, lucky, you're so lucky
"The day has come, and the music has died."
"Isn't it time that they installed satellite radio in these things?" Sara said, lightly. "I think they have a station called 'music for people who don't like anything produced after 1980'."
He tried one more time.
When I feel blue in the night
And I need you to hold me tight
Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream
"I like that," she mumbled, sleepily. "Oldie, but goodie."
Grissom sighed. "I refuse to think about how old I was when this song came out."
"Okay," she said, her eyelids drooping. "And I won't tell you that I wasn't born when it did." She kept one eye open long enough to see him shoot her a slightly bemused look. "Had to say it, baby."
"Go to sleep," he said, his voice low and soothing. "I'll wake you when we get there."
A few moments passed. He was just about convinced that she was finally out when she murmured, "I'm rather fond of you, too."
Grissom couldn't keep the smile off his face as he drove them back to Vegas. Instead of taking Sara to her apartment after they dropped the evidence from their case off at the lab, he took her back to his place, and made sure she got several more hours of rest.
Twenty-four hours later, they had a suspect cornered in interrogation. Unfortunately, JJ Walker had brought his lawyer along for the ride.
"Mr. Grissom, let me get this straight. You had my client hauled in here because you found a single fingerprint of his in a public bathroom?" The lawyer, Randall Malcolm, looked back and forth between the two CSI's. "I always appreciate you guys making my job easy for me."
Grissom opened the file and took out a single picture. "We found your client's print in a recently cleaned public bathroom, on a sink basin two feet away from the body of a woman who was raped and beaten to death." He slid the photo across the table. "This woman. Katie Green."
Malcolm's eyes deliberately stayed straight on Grissom. "Is that name supposed to mean something?"
"It should to your client," Sara coldly informed him. "She had a restraining order against him."
JJ swung a leering gaze in her direction. "Yeah, I knew her. So?"
"So…with the evidence that we have so far, it'll be a piece of cake for us to get a warrant for your DNA. If we match it to what we found inside Katie Green…" She folded her arms. "Go ahead. Tell your client what they do to guys like him in jail."
Learning into his client, the lawyer quietly advised, "Say nothing, JJ."
But his advice went ignored. "Look, Katie was a whining little cock-tease. Hot for me one minute, fucking frigid the next. I don't put up with that shit from your kind," he snarled, pointing at Sara.
"My kind?" she baited him.
"Stuck-up cunts," he hissed back.
Malcolm ran a hand down his mouth. "JJ, I strongly advise that you shut the hell up now."
"You're just like her, I bet." He looked at Grissom. "She lead you around by your prick?"
Only a very careful observer would have noticed the way Grissom's jaw tightened. "You should listen to your attorney, Mr. Walker."
"Don't let her, man. You can't let 'em get you by the sack. They love that." JJ's eyes narrowed at Sara. "Don't you? Answer me, bitch!"
The officer guarding the door stepped forward, but Sara held up her hand to keep him at bay. She calmly tucked the photo of Katie Green's bloody body back into the file folder. "We should have that warrant in a few hours, Mr. Malcolm. In the meantime, we'll be keeping your client here for…"
JJ shot to his feet, stretched across the table and backhanded Sara hard enough to knock her out of her chair.
The small room was plunged into a fury of chaos. As the officer restrained the struggling suspect, Brass threw the door open and entered to make the arrest, and the lawyer buried his face in his hands, Grissom pushed his own chair out of the way to get to the woman on her knees on the floor.
"Sara!" In a quieter voice, he added, "Honey…"
The blow had been so hard that it hadn't even really been painful. Just an explosion of numbness in her face. Her senses had been jarred and for a moment, her mind went blank. His voice brought her back to reality.
As she turned her head to look at him, Sara wasn't aware of the blood that trickled from the broken corner of her lip. "Gris," she whispered. "We own his ass now."
He barely held himself back from gathering her up in his arms right there. He adored so many things about this woman. Her inability to think about herself, instead of the larger picture, was only admirable when she wasn't bleeding right in front of him.
As it was, all he could do was put his hands on her shoulders and squeeze gently, hoping she understood that he wanted to do so much more. "We're calling for a paramedic to check you out," he informed her. "Don't even try arguing with me on this one. I'm pulling rank."
The blissful numbness was slipping away, and the pain that was starting to settle into her cheek kept her from doing anything more than nodding.
Grissom stood up and helped Sara to her feet. He tried to keep a professional distance between them, but it was hard to maintain that detached stance when she put her hand to her face and closed her eyes.
Brass was in the middle of reading JJ Walker his rights. "Get him out of here," he finished up. "Before I let Sara strike back." The officer dragged the man out of the room, kicking and screaming. "You okay?" Brass asked Sara.
"It's only a flesh wound," she joked. Her shaky voice betrayed her.
Grissom fixed a hard stare on JJ's lawyer. "I think your job just got a little less easy, Mr. Malcolm."
As he spoke, he wasn't even aware that his arm circled Sara's shoulders, protectively.
The lawyer grinned. "I love a challenge, Mr. Grissom."
"I'm not a violent man…" Grissom spat into the sink. "…but I wanted to wrap my hands around his damn throat."
At the other end of the bathroom counter, Sara examined her face in the mirror. The only visible mark so far was a pronounced swelling around her split lip. But there would probably be bruises in the morning. She couldn't wait to document them.
He slammed his toothbrush back into its holder. "I would have, too, if his vulture of a lawyer hadn't been sitting right there."
Glancing away from her reflection, Sara gave him a loving look. "My hero."
"Don't laugh, Sara," Grissom glowered. "I'm serious."
"I'm not laughing. I'm actually enjoying this more…primal side of your nature." She stepped closer to him, her feet sinking into the plush softness of his bathroom rug. "After all, here I am. Letting you baby me."
Grissom's hard expression thawed. It said a lot about Sara's past relationships that she considered "babying" to be someone making dinner for her and insisting that she keep an icepack on her wound.
"I just hate it when you're in pain, honey. I can't stand it. Especially when I can't do anything about it."
She kissed him softly, her swollen lip barely brushing across his. "You can do something about it."
"What's that?" he asked, touching her cheek with delicate fingers.
As they kissed, Sara pushed him into the bedroom. "Make me forget."
And for a few hours, they both did.
To Be Continued
A/N: Bonus points if you can name the three songs Grissom bypassed on the radio. Artists, too!;)
