Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Thank you all for the lovely reviews! They made my day. I will try to update as much as possible before school starts, and for those of you who asked questions, I'll try to get back to you individually tonight or tomorrow. :)

But, I will assure everyone: This will be a happy ending. I don't do non-happy endings. :) Let me know what you think!


Chapter One:

I felt amazing the next morning. Despite working late and staying for a few drinks with my friends after my shift, I had managed to sleep more than usual—I woke up around 5:30, took a long shower, dried my hair and dressed, grabbed coffee and a muffin on the way out the door, and still arrived in my first lecture hall twenty minutes before class was scheduled to start. It was Dr. Felton's class, an advanced physics course, and I was almost as excited for it as I was for my forensics class.

Dr. Felton arrived five minutes later—he was an older man, but attractive. Gray hair, tanned skin, deep brown eyes, a muscular build… He smiled at me when he entered the room, but he didn't seem surprised, which surprised me. He set down his briefcase and the pile of syllabi he'd brought it, followed by his coffee, and then turned his gaze to me again. "Sara Sidle, I presume?"

I flushed, grinning. "My reputation precedes me?"

"Indeed it does. Dr. Anderson had nothing but good things to say about you—including that I should expect you to beat me here every day. …I thought he was exaggerating."

"Sadly not." I laughed, and he gave me a smile—like a genuine smile. I felt my heart already fluttering in my chest a little, and tried to restrain it—I didn't want it to get back to Dr. Anderson that I was one of those girls… the kind who sleeps with a teacher. Or, teachers, as the case may be. I usually tried to keep my affairs outside of the physics department, although now that I was taking almost all physics classes, that would be harder. I would have to be careful, at least. I didn't want Dr. Anderson's opinion of me tarnished just so I could suck an old man's cock. I mean, really, it wasn't worth it.

Still, he did seem like the type—he moved around the front of his desk, not even bothering to pretend he was busy with work of some kind, and leaned back against it, crossing his arms and letting me see the quick flicker of his eyes up and down my frame. He was testing the waters—he wanted me to see the look, but it wasn't slow and lascivious… He was gauging my reaction to see how receptive I might be to his advances. I kept my expression carefully neutral, but frowned internally—it was rather early in the semester to already be looking for a hook-up. He should at least wait a week to make sure I didn't drop the class or stop showing up, shouldn't he? His cavalier attitude spoke of… recklessness. It made me uncomfortable, and I looked down at my notebook. Maybe I would just go without the affair this semester… Or, hell, maybe I'd find someone my own age to screw the hell out of me until rushing endorphins and pure exhaustion allowed me a few moments of sleep each night.

Maybe I'd just invest in a vibrator. Sure, Anni would tease me about it, but it might be worth it. …Dr. Felton made me nervous. He moved too quickly—he didn't seem afraid enough of being found out. And if he got caught, I was fucked too.

I was thankful that someone else entered the room before he had a chance to say whatever it seemed he was letting the silence build up between us before saying—God, he was transparent—and he moved back around his desk, looking a little sheepish. I resolved that I would break my pattern—which I stuck to with OCD-like tenacity—and sit in the second row in this class, instead of the first. A little distance might go a long way towards communicating my disinterest.

It was a relief when I got to Dr. Anderson's class, where I could relax. I had had Organic Chem. just before this, and while the teacher was a woman, her T.A. had spent the fifteen minutes between arriving and class starting sitting beside me and talking to me… and while I would usually have enjoyed the attention, I was already on edge from Dr. Felton, whose gaze had been a bit too lingering all through that hour. So it was really a relief to sit in the front row of a class with a non-threatening, familiar face. He gave me a fatherly wink with my syllabus and calmed me with his voice alone as he discussed tests and papers and final projects.

So I was calm when I moved into the class I'd been looking forward to all day—and was surprised that although I'd had a lunch break between this class and Dr. Anderson's and was therefore able to be my usual twenty minutes early, I had not beaten Dr. Grissom there. He had boxes spread across his desk and half the desks in the first row—this class being held in a regular classroom, not a lecture hall—as well as covering more of the floor space around his desk. I hesitated in the doorway, uncertain, and he glanced up at me and smiled, his glasses sliding down his nose. "Hello…" He glanced at the clock. "Intro to Forensics? You're a little early…"

I gave an uncertain half-smile. "I like to be early… I, uh… I can wait in the hall, though, if… you… don't want to be interrupted." I wrinkled my nose—it wasn't that the man was unattractive, but he was… a little sweaty, a little disheveled… but not in the sexy way. Just in the… messy way. Maybe I ought to just resign myself to a celibate semester. There was an adult bookstore just off campus…

"No, no, come in. Find a seat. Just push my stuff out of the way."

I wound my way through the debris on the floor and moved to lift the box from the chair that was front and center, but glanced down into it and backed away in alarm. It was filled with bloody pictures from crime scenes, and it was little consolation that none of the pictures showed faces, to protect the victims' privacy, I imagined. He glanced up at me and offered a small, sympathetic smile. "Sorry about that. It can be a kind of gruesome field…"

I frowned at him, thinking he certainly should have warned me rather than allowing me to approach the box unaware, but I still lifted it gingerly and set it on the floor, sliding it forward as far as I could, so as not to see it all through class. Then, I plopped into my seat, thinking that this was not shaping up to be what I'd imagined at all—and this was supposed to be my fun class. …Maybe I'd have to see if there was room in Anni's creative writing class… Chances were it was an Intro Level. I could manage that.

"Dr. Grissom." He introduced himself, and I forced the smile I didn't feel.

"Sara Sidle."

He nodded once, and then seemed to think this was all that was required of him, conversation-wise. And, it was… but it bothered me. Usually my teachers were eager to talk to me. …Well, give it some time, I reassured myself. He certainly had a lot to get done before class started. The classroom literally looked like a tornado had gone through it. I pulled out my textbook and opened it, reading so that I didn't have to sit and awkwardly watch him while I waited for class to start. This might have to be another change in my meticulous pattern—I doubted I would be coming quite so early to this class if he were always here and always so… strange.

Despite believing rather fervently that there was no way he would sort all of his things before class started, somehow, miraculously, he did. The boxes were tucked against the wall, under the chalk board that he didn't seem to have any intention of using, and all of his display items were lined neatly on the desk, although still giving him enough room to slide his butt onto said desk, sitting about four feet in front of me, and sit comfortably, waiting for others to arrive, with five minutes to spare. Which made me uncomfortable, but he seemed to be under no pressure from social norms to make small talk with me. He smiled pleasantly, his eyes up and to the side, and from the occasional twitch I caught of his lips, I realized he was going over his lecture in his head.

Well, that, at least, made me worry less about finding something to say to this strange man. Science teachers were always a little weird, but this guy… Hell, he was young. If I had to guess on looks alone, I'd say he was in his late twenties—his doctorate degree, however, told me that he was likely older than that. But maybe not. …But he ruined all of that… potential… by wearing those large glasses, the stuffy, clichéd brown 'professor's' sport coat with patches over the elbows, and being entirely too clean shaven. Really, I had a thing for intellectuals, and even I thought the nerd routine was a little much. I was so very thankful when others began trickling in. He didn't speak to them either—he offered a smile before turning his gaze back to the ceiling. The room wasn't full, but it was reasonably peopled, and precisely on the hour, he turned his gaze to us and smiled.

If I hadn't been so close to the front, I might have missed that his quiet, polite smile held a quirk of impishness that was actually kind of appealing. And with the glasses in the way, I certainly would have missed how blue his eyes were. But this didn't change my mind about him, per se—he was still weird, and the eyes and the smile only told me what I already knew… The man was wasting his potential. The next time I saw a win-a-free-makeover drop box, I was dropping his name in it.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Grissom, and this is Intro to Forensics. If you're not in the right class…" There was a shuffling, and two confused freshman picked up their things quickly and stumbled out. The man smiled. "Anyone else? … Great. I do have syllabi printed out and we will go over them, a bit, but I don't particularly feel the need to walk you through something that's going to be 90% the same as every other syllabus you've gotten so far. So, let's begin!" He slid from his desk and his face was so animated that I wasn't certain the glasses really mattered so much.

"First of all, please just call me 'Grissom'. My mom is the only person I know longer than five minutes who I'll tolerate calling me 'Dr.' and she's allowed—she's pushing sixty." He paused a little while we gave him weak smiles, and then continued. "Well, I got my undergrad and my Masters degrees at UCLA, and then moved to Chicago to get my PhD, because they had one of the foremost experts in forensic entomology on staff at the time. I am an forensic entomologist, which means that I use insects to solve crimes—but we'll get into that eventually. Friday we'll just be looking at Forensics as a broad science—there are so many subsets that I think it's appropriate to take a day to go over them. …Other than that, I… grew up in the L.A. area, I love baseball, and I'm currently living in Minneapolis—Go Twins!"

He smiled and moved to his first box—it was clear plastic, complete with air holes, and contained several insects—beetles and flies and maggots and then some… "While I pass around our specimens, I'd like to hear a little about each of you…" He placed the container on the desk of a blonde girl, down a few chairs to my right, and she squealed and slid out of her chair, backing away. He grinned. "They won't hurt you and they can't get out… C'mon. Look at them and pass it on. You… start with your name." He said, and the boy a few chairs to my left picked up the conversation. …There were far too many people in the room to remember all their names, much less what they said about themselves, but I was hardly listening.

As people were talking, he kept passing new 'specimens' to the blonde who had retaken her seat, and she looked quite alarmed, wondering when they would stop. When the first container reached me, I peered in—there were no bees, so I was okay. Bees were really the only insect that bothered me. The label said something to effect of these being typical insects used in linear regression, and I committed the information to memory before passing it on. The only thing I minded that he did pass was the stack of pictures—all from crime scenes, and all pretty gruesome. I knew what he was doing—it was obvious. It was what most teachers did with their syllabus… try to scare the undesirables into dropping the class. Most teachers didn't want lazy students… apparently, Dr. Grissom didn't want them to be squeamish either.

Still, the crime scene photos did bother me—they made me think of my own crime scene, the one that had thrown me into foster care—and I was torn between being angry with him for subjecting me to my own memories and being grateful… if this type of thing was going to be common in the class, it was best to know it now, rather than be surprised by it later.

When it came my time to speak, I was flustered—I hadn't been listening to anyone behind me, but rather eyeing a diagram about spatter patterns and analysis with interest. The person behind me cleared their throat and I looked up in surprise. "Oh. …Okay. Uh… I'm… Sara Sidle. I… I'm a junior. My major is theoretical physics, though I enjoy throwing in other science classes, and I'm from California originally."

I glanced at Dr. Grissom uncertainly, wondering if I'd missed anything he'd asked for specifically, but he gave me a disinterested smile—polite, but cursory—and turned his gaze over my shoulder, to the next person speaking. …That was strange. Teachers never overlooked me. I was the star pupil, always.

Always.

I frowned, thinking that he was probably judging me by my uncertainty—I hadn't been paying attention to people's introductions, after all, and it'd been pretty clear. In a day or so, he would clearly see the error of his ways and realize that I was the best student he would ever have. I nodded, putting my worries to rest, and listened as he finally collected the things that reached the end of the last row and the blonde girl shakily introduced herself. And then… he was talking and… and it was beautiful.

The man was passionate and vibrant and… and… beautiful. Not in any kind of sexual way, but he just… he no longer seemed old and boring and not living up to his potential. He seemed too big and bright for the room, the way he spoke about justice… about speaking for those who couldn't speak for themselves… about using science to save the world. The clothes and the glasses and the serious demeanor that he was really too old for faded away, and… and I knew that no matter what I'd been planning, I could not drop this class for Creative Writing. Not even if I had to look at bloody photos and relive my very worst memories each and every day because of it.

This man… this man was… He inspired me. He filled me up in a way that school and learning and other classes had always attempted and yet fallen short of. I knew, instinctually, that there was very little that he could not teach me… At least, when he was this man. …I had the feeling that he only bloomed like this when he was teaching—talking about what was clearly a calling more than a career. And I had the deepest, most profound urge to draw him out more… make him be this person always.

My eyes were bright and my steps light when I left the class, and I was so dazed that I forgot to stay late and make a good impression and ask a million questions. …I was still reeling. I was floating.

He was amazing.