Dislclaimer: They're not mine, although I'd love them to be. I own nothing but these words.
Small Swords Chapter Three
When she got to work, Sara waited for reality to dawn. She deliberately walked into Grissom's office, expecting the old shot to the stomach that she feared would hit her. Guilt, mixed with anger at him for never quite getting his act together. Nothing came, and as she waited for it and waited for him to look up, she realised that the longer he took to notice she was there, the less she cared. Eventually he greeted her, and then rushed straight off to the toxicology lab. Barely a word, barely a look. Sara ran a finger over her lips and in spite of herself hoped that today was not a one off.
Grissom rushed down the hall at an unnecessarily rapid pace. There was nothing terribly urgent in the results he was waiting for, and he could have spared Sara a minute or two. But the way she had approached the office, the way she had stood there, the way she had looked, had unnerved him. Something was different, and he did not wish to stick around and find out what it was. Something in his bones told him she had seen that man. And that was a result he was in no hurry at all to have confirmed.
Sara spent the next couple of weeks waiting for Drew to screw up, or waiting for him to behave impeccably in such a way as would prompt her to screw up. When she had spent four perfectly pleasant lunches with him, she became suspicious that it wasn't going to happen. He was just so laid back, she couldn't fault him. He called when he said he would, and not before. He offered to drive and pay approximately half of the time, not through any calculation she was aware of, but through some haphazard sense of what kept things comfortable. He made her laugh, in spite of herself, and his kisses left her breathless for more. It took at least three dates for it to occur to her that she was, in fact, being well and truly romanced. A few more for her to admit that it felt good.
It was also simple. Drew took her out and kept her company and made her feel good and never alluded to a bigger picture. There was no spiralling towards an inevitable relationship, no physical burgeoning in his kisses which might tip her off to his fading restraint. He just enjoyed her company, and talked, and listened, and became, gradually, a fixture in her life that she wasn't altogether unhappy with. It allowed Sara not to think about what it all might mean. She told herself that if he disappeared tomorrow she would be fine.
She saw very little of Grissom. At work, of course, but it was a busy few weeks and he had a court date that lasted most of it. He called to hand out assignments. He talked to Catherine who talked to the rest of them. He called Sara once, as she was driving home from work, to enquire how her case was going. His tone was light, and hers was lighter, and it kept them from thinking beneath or beyond the work.
The benefit of dating a cop, she soon realised, was the shift patterns. They were very similar to hers, and it gave him a variety of times off, always one that would coincide nicely with her schedule, and they changed often enough that she still got time to herself. It was this that led Sara into the fire. On a beautiful Vegas morning she pushed through the front door of the lab and strode casually towards her car, thinking ahead to the breakfast she was about to share with Drew. She had about twenty minutes to kill. No rush, but somewhere to go. She loved that feeling. It was, she had been forced to recently admit, far superior to a long, weary day of her own company stretching out ahead of her.
As she stepped off the kerb into the lot a car swung quickly in to her right. She looked up to see Grissom sliding the gearshift into place and getting out. She reached her own car and put her kit in the trunk.
"Hey," he called out to her. She shut the trunk and idled towards him a few steps as he approached.
"Is it over?" she asked, realising this was the first time she had actually laid eyes on him in almost two weeks. The sun was in her eyes, and she didn't catch the dip in his stride as she said it.
Over? He hated the sound of the word as soon as she said it. He knew she was talking about the case he was trying, but it hit home regardless. I wonder, he thought.
"Finally," he replied, coming to a halt a few feet from her. She nodded, squinting slightly at the glare. It was warm, and she liked being outdoors after a night in the lab.
"Result?"
"Twenty five to life." It had been a hell of a few weeks. Worth it all, though, he told himself again, as he had been telling himself the entire drive back to work, beating back his desire to sleep and shower.
"Congratulations, " Sara said, smiling at him. She knew how much faith and pride he placed in the justice system, and how seriously he took his part in it. Seriously as… well, yes, as she did. Just one more point on the list of things they had in common. Her shoulders sagged momentarily and she felt a pang of regret. Stop it, she told herself, calling to mind an image of the pleasant, easy morning she would soon be beginning with Drew. Grissom was looking at her. He looked so tired, she thought. She wanted to hug him, to reach out and envelop him in her arms, just to make him feel a little better. Not for any reason but, she scoffed inwardly. I am over that. Over.
Grissom narrowed his eyes as though he could read her.
"You look well, Sara" he said, and his tone said something she could not decipher.
"I just closed the high school case," she said, nodding, as though that accounted for it. She knew, and he was starting to see, that for once work had nothing to do with how she was. It was a new dimension, and they were not good at it.
"Good," he said, and turned to look at the front door as though it beckoned him. As he did it opened to release Greg and Nick into the sun soaked lot. Seeing them, they began their approach as Sara felt inexplicably lost, as though there were something else she was desperate to say or hear before they reached earshot, but she had no idea what that might be. Then it was too late, and Nick was clapping Grissom on the back and exclaiming how quiet the lab had been without him.
"We're taking you to breakfast, boss," he said, leaving no room for argument.
"Damn right, " Greg seconded, turning to Sara. Shit, she thought, please don't ask me.
"You coming?" Greg asked. Nick smiled, and she thought for a wonderful moment that he was going to save her.
"She can't. She's got plans. Right?" Nick grinned to himself as he cranked open the can, and turned to head towards his car as the worms spewed forth all around Sara's feet.
Grissom looked at her, waiting for her to confirm or deny. His heart began to pound a loose tune in his chest. It was clear that Nick knew of Sara's plans, which suggested only one thing. Sara sucked in her breath. She could not pretend that it wasn't glaringly obvious.
"Right," she said, quietly. Grissom nodded imperceptibly.
"Right," he whispered, and turned to go.
Sara watched him walk away, feeling a tightness in her chest that she could neither believe nor accept. He doesn't want me, she reminded herself, placating the rising panic within her. He doesn't. That's not what that was. He's tired, and probably disappointed. In what, though? In my weakness, she chastised herself. He'd like nothing more than for me to spend my whole life alone, wedded to work. It's what he considers natural.
When Grissom slid into the booth opposite Greg and Nick, he was already irritated by the chatter. He thought, against all his usual dismissal of the subject, how nice it must be to want to spend your life any way but alone.
Sara arrived five minutes late for breakfast. She stood outside Drew's door, waiting for the sound of footsteps, summoning strength and resolve and trying to cool the raging unrest she felt. When he opened the door, keys and jacket in hand, it was not the coldness she had dreaded that rose up within her. She pushed him back inside and kicked the door shut. She grasped at his shirt and felt an uncontrollable surge of emotion, something she could neither define nor stem, and she found herself sailing over a boundary she had been terrified to cross. Any man but Grissom was not a man she had ever seen herself with. In her dreams and terrors it was only his face, and as she waded out into the middle of something alien, she realised how much she liked not knowing. His smell, the tone of his skin, the shape of his shoulders beneath his shirt. Nothing that she had ever wanted, and for that she wanted it all the more.
Amazed, taken by surprise, Drew eventually gathered himself enough to slow her rush. He picked her up in both arms and laid her gently down on the couch, leaning in to caress her neck as she, more steadily now, unbuttoned his shirt, thinking of nothing at all but the feel of the fabric and plastic between her fingers.
Later, when they lay side by side on Drew's bed, the covers kicked to the floor and their clothes still somewhere in the other room, the guilt descended. Sara bit her lip as she felt the feeling take her. She slipped her hand out of Drew's and got up in search of the bathroom. It was the first time she had been in this apartment, and she wanted to run away. Not that she had not languished in the pleasure she had felt. Not that she hadn't welcomed him into her personal space, feeling hungry for him as he was for her. Not that she hadn't felt the tension ebb and seep away as she relaxed afterwards. Not that he wasn't the epitome of sweetness. But a dark hand in her mind swept all these things to one side and presented her with the one resounding, overwhelmingly unfair sin she had allowed herself to indulge in. As she came, as she lay beneath him letting the waves rock her, a sensation she was surprised to find she had missed, she looked up at him and it was someone else's face she saw.
