I do not own CSI...only CBS does :)

I apologize for the delay in updating. Cancer has again come into our lives; my brother-in-law has been ill for quite some time now and just finished radiation to discover even more cancer elsewhere

I will update more quickly this next time. For those of you reading, thank you

"Seriously though, I love the little buzz" Nick was looking at him fastidiously, staring at the top of his newly shaved head "Ya got it a little close there on top, though"

Gil's hand instinctively went to the top of his head, feeling for a little bit of stubble "Sara did it" He replied almost sheepishly

Nick grinned "Kinky"

Gil felt himself flush as Nick cleared his throat and turned away from him "Maybe I should shave my head too" he said as he glanced back at him "You know, for unity"

Gil shrugged "At least it will look good on you"

"I dunno, man…" Nick said as he snapped pictures of the evidence laid out on the table in front of them "This new look brings out something in you…"

"Cancer?"

Nick stopped, looking at him and Gil could see his jaws clench momentarily "No," He replied in an attempt to recover "Sexitude"

"Sexitude?"

"Yeah," Nick smiled again, the moment moving past them "…You know how it is when the young girls fall all over you because you have something they want, but they don't even know what it is? That thing"

"Well," Gil grabbed his clipboard and began to log the evidence "…I do not think I have ever had young girls falling all over me…"

Nick looked at him hard before winking "You got Sara"

"Must be the hair" Gil replied before falling into a silent routine. He enjoyed working with Nick. The young CSI always treated him like a friend, not a boss, and had a way of joking with him that, although at times inappropriate, made Gil feel like a regular person

And in this line of work, being a regular person was a real commodity

They had just finished submitting all of the crime scene evidence into the database when Nick's phone rang and after a few moments, he flipped it closed before looking at his boss "Breakfast" he stated "At Frank's. You're buying"

And Gil smiled. Because despite the fact that he was dying, had lost all of his hair and could hardly walk the length of the laboratory building without having to stop to catch his breath, his team still treated him like what he always wanted to be:

One of them

It was nearing the middle of November and the weather in Vegas had been unusually cold. If anyone would have asked her, she'd have said it was because even Vegas knew what was going on. Gil had been doing progressively better, stable...consistent. But even with the weekly exams that showed there had been no change, there was no shaking off the feeling that this would be his last winter in the stark Nevada desert

Sara was pacing the hallway nervously, stopping ever few steps to glance back through the Plexiglas partition between her and the pediatric out-patient surgery center

Alex was in surgery. His condition finally pushing her to a point where she had had to make a decision: do the surgery now, while he still had a chance to gain his hearing back or put it off until there was irreversible damage. Even Sara knew denying the surgery did nothing but satisfy her own selfish fear of the procedure.

It had come to her one day as she watched Alex struggling to understand Gil as he told the children about some rare beetle found only in South Africa. It seemed so blatantly cruel to Sara to rob her son of the ability to have a real conversation with his dying father…to hear the sound of his father's voice before it, too, was silenced

And in the end, that became her deciding factor

Besides, his doctors told them, Alex's immune system had finally matured enough to handle the procedure…it had been months since his last real illness and the procedure itself lasted less than an hour. Still, Sara was nervous. She had developed a rather bitter dislike of hospitals and couldn't shake the feeling that nothing good ever happened in them

Along the wall across from her, Gil sat pouring over one of his cross word puzzles, seemingly oblivious to her growing anxiety. His doctors had decreased his chemotherapy treatments to weekly as they started him on a new experimental medication that left him tired and irritable. The cancer within him seemed to grow quiet, silently lurking in the dark recesses of his body as it watched their lives pass them by. To Sara it felt like they were living with a ticking time bomb and the stress of not knowing when it would go off was almost as bad as the knowledge someday it would

"You're going to wear a hole in the linoleum" Gil finally said, peering over the top of his glasses at her

She stopped for a moment, looking over at him "It won't be the first time"

"Sara, he'll be fine" He told her firmly "You should sit. You're making me nervous"

"You should be nervous" she replied as she crossed her arms "That's your son back there…."

He gave her a smile, motioning back down to the puzzle he held "What do you think this is for?"

She sighed, walking over to sit next to him "I just feel like I've played this waiting game too many times before," she said "…and I hate it"

Without looking over, he reached out to take her hand in his "But at least this time you are not alone"

She smiled, squeezing his hand as she looked over the puzzle he was working on "Sollicitudo" she told him as she pointed at the page "17 down…Latin term for 'worry'…sollicitudo…"

He looked at her this time, a smile playing across his face that spread to his eyes "You always manage to find the right word for the moment don't you, My Dear?"

Before the twins were born, they had talked about leaving Vegas…moving somewhere safer, cooler…greener. To a home with trees in the yard where the children could build a tree fort and have tire swings…where they could be children and go camping and grow up in a world without a constant shroud of violence around them. The plan was to leave before the twins' 5th birthday, before they were old enough to make lasting memories of Vegas and the life it contained; they had actually picked the exact location, the perfect neighborhood in their dream town and even the layout of the home they would build.

Sara would teach physics at the local university, the twins would attend the best Montessori school they could find, funded exclusively by the inheritance Gil's mother had left to them. He would retire, teach when he felt like it and devote his time to his beehives, his bug collections and his children

That was the plan, anyway

Cancer, unfortunately, had completely different plans for them.

To Gil, it seemed, cancer had moved into his life and removed the life he had before it came. Nothing was the same and nothing, ever, would be the way it was meant to be. But, he supposed, maybe cancer was what was supposed to be. Either way, it seemed exorbitantly unfair

Two days after Alex's surgery, he could hear the sound of the water dripping in the bathroom. A week after his surgery, he was elated the first time he heard a bird outside his window. That weekend he asked his parents for an MP3 player and by the Monday following he had already downloaded over 500 songs with a little help from Greg

He would spend hours sitting in the middle of Gil and Sara's bed, excitedly talking to Gil about the moon and stars, the new science book he got from his teacher and just quietly listening as Gil told them stories about ancient bees and spiders from India. It was, to Sara, as though her son was hearing the world for the very first time

And, she imagined, in a way he really was

By the morning of Gil's 57th birthday, Alex had already surpassed his doctor's expectations and was excelling in his speech therapy class. It seemed to Sara, that once her son learned how to speak vocally, he also forgot how to stop. Even bedtime became consumed with the constant chatter of children and although Sara would have loved to put a stop to the chaos and give herself even a brief moment of silence, the happiness this time brought to Gil made her pause

She knew that children needed structure, schedules…rules…but she also knew that this time they had with their father was time they'd never get back

On the eve of his birthday, Sara found herself faced with a tangled mess of twine that coiled itself through doors, windows and over the banister to the living room. On either end of this mess was one of her children, an old tin can dug from the recycle bin to their ear, as they attempted to communicate with each other from different parts of the house. There were toys and books and papers scattered in every single room and Sara wondered if the bathtub would ever be the same again.

And Gil, it seemed, was the captain of the disaster, organizing their 'base' locations before sending Sadie off with some note or other prize destined for one of the twins' hidden location

Most of the time Sadie missed her target completely and either ate the note intended for Alex or finding her way to Sara's bed to fall asleep with the long forgotten snack still tied to her back. It was well after 9:00 PM and over an hour past the twins' bedtime when Gil received a call from the lab and had to rush off to take care of the latest person to fall victim to the lure of Vegas

By the time he returned home to climb in bed and wrap Sara in his arms, it was almost 5:30 in the morning. He lay still for a moment, willing the spinning in his head to stop long enough for him to fall asleep; the headache had started shortly after he'd arrived at the scene and twice he had had to squeeze his eyes shut to stop the dizziness that sent the world around him spiraling out of control. One time, he caught himself just as he fell towards the edge of the road, thankful for the rock wall that stopped him and even more thankful that Nick hadn't seen it happen

Next to him, Sara stirred slightly as her hand instinctively went to his arm to brush his smooth skin softly "That was a long night…" She murmured

He sighed, pressing his eyes as tight as he could as their bedroom seemed to swirl unevenly "Unbelievingly"

She lifted his hand to her mouth to plant a kiss along his fingers "You shouldn't work so many hours…" she said sleepily, followed by "Happy Birthday"

He snuggled against her, feeling the warmth of her back on his chest as the scent of her hair filled his senses "Indeed it is…"

And he fell asleep. He didn't really know how long it had taken and didn't remember actually falling asleep, but when he opened his eyes, Sara was gone and the house was silent as the November sunlight filtered its way through the black-out curtains in their bedroom. He realized, with a slight nudge of regret, that he hadn't kissed his wife goodbye before she started the day ahead of her and yet somehow he knew that she had kissed him goodnight as the day he'd had came to an end

He found his first present on the night stand next to their bed, a brightly wrapped gift with a pale green bow from Sara. Smiling to himself, he sat up, relieved that both the headache and overwhelming dizziness were gone as he reached for the package and removed the card on top 'To Celebrate another day, another year…another moment. I shall never take any moment with you for granted' was written on top in Sara's neat print and again he smiled to himself

He removed the wrapping to reveal a stout box with a lid, inside was white tissue paper and beneath it an elaborate leather bound book. He stopped when he saw the cover…a perfect portrait of him, Sara and the twins. His hands fluttered over the picture briefly before he read the inscription below it:

Don't cry because its over. Smile because it happened-Dr Seuss

And so he sat, for over an hour, in the middle of their bed as he read over each passage, turned each page and studied each picture of the life they'd built together. There were pictures from the Forensics Academy Conference where they'd met (even one of Sara in the pony tail he'd loved so much and one of him standing up front and lecturing…he wondered when she'd taken that one), photos of their time in San Francisco, their friends in Las Vegas and all of their favorite things. There were even copies woven within the fabric of the book itself of the children's drawings and artwork, including the picture of Gil in the hat that Alex had drawn for him that seemed so long ago. Sara had somehow captured every single solitary moment of their life and bound it, intimately, within the contents of a hard covered, leather book.

He read and re-read the poems and passages, touched at how Sara remembered each of his favorite verses, all of his favorite poems and many of his own personal quotes. He studied the pictures of Sara…memorizing Audrey's perfect little nose, Alex's solitary dimple…and committed everything he could to his memory, reliving the moments portrayed on the pages as he did. And although he knew that there would be no more birthdays after this, no more presents to open, birthday songs to be sung…Gil Grissom somehow felt like the luckiest man alive

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