Disclaimer: They're not mine.
Rating: T or PG-13 for drug-mentioning and swearing. Let me know if you think it should be higher.
Summary: 'Zwischenzug' – a chess move made to play for time. [GCR]
Forgive me, for my blatant manipulative use of pathetic fallacy. This was perhaps the second or third chapter of this fic that I wrote. I've had this written for a long time and have been constantly rewriting it whilst doing the other chapters. I probably shouldn't have said that. I've just built it up far too much. Shit. If I held on to it for another year, it'd probably look entirely different. (Just to clarify, by the way, I didn't call give this chapter this title because I think this is at all anything like Shakespeare's genius. I suddenly had the terrible thought that that's the impression I'm giving. That would be awful. No – it just sounds nice, don't you think?)
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Zwischenzug. Chapter Twenty-Five. The Twelfth Night
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(Then)
A week after Stephanie's funeral, Catherine slept on Gil's couch – but didn't really sleep. He knew that, and hovered silently in his bedroom doorway at occasional small hours, watching her sit on the edge of the sofa and stare bleakly ahead of her. Catherine never knew he was there – wasn't sure that she really knew anything at all anymore.
"What happened?" Gil had asked the first night she came down from the fourth floor and knocked on his door after the funeral.
Catherine looked at him emptily and said, "Stephanie died last fortnight and Eddie thinks he can make me feel better by fucking me," in this hollow monotone. "Can I stay here for a while?"
Gil let her in and let her pretend to sleep on the couch every night for the next ten days. He told Eddie, when he ran into him in the lobby, that Catherine just needed time. Eddie shrugged his shoulders and collected his mail – he didn't mind – Gil was no threat to him and he didn't really want to live with Catherine while she was like this anyway. Gil thought for a moment that he'd like to punch Eddie in the mouth, but knew Eddie was stronger than him, so didn't.
Instead, Gil went upstairs to Catherine and watched her flick channels on the TV. He noticed that she wouldn't eat unless he forced her to – and only then something like cereal or sugar cubes that she picked with her fingers and took hours over eating; he noticed that she never really slept, but lay half-awake under blankets all day and sat up all night. He also noticed that she hadn't cried about Stephanie at all.
"This isn't healthy, Catherine," he told her gently before he left for work one evening.
Cross-legged on the sofa, she crushed a Froot Loop between her fingers and dubiously licked the dust that stuck to her whorl of her fingertip. "I'm not hungry," she replied.
Gil picked at the paint on the front door and watched as she wiped her finger on the knee of her jeans and put the cereal bowl down on the floor.
"You need to grieve," he said.
"I am fucking grieving," she hissed in broken, angry words and pulled a blanket over herself up to her neck. Grissom sighed audibly on the threshold before picking up his kit and shutting the door behind him.
At work that night, Grissom watched the weather report on CNN in the break room and applied for Thursday night off – the twelfth night since Catherine had arrived and not slept at his apartment.
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On the twelfth night – a Thursday – at about five o'clock in the afternoon, Gil fetched her coat from Eddie's apartment and went back down to his own. Catherine's eyes were glazed, watching an infomercial on a channel he didn't know he had, until he put her coat over the back of the couch and placed her sneakers in front of her.
Catherine looked up at him, standing there in his own coat – car keys in his hand and shoes on his feet. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously and she didn't turn off the television.
"What's going on?" she demanded. Gil gestured to her coat.
"Put it on – we're going out," he said simply. Catherine's expression darkened; she sat back in the sofa firmly and pointedly turned the volume up on the set.
"No, I don't want to," she replied curtly.
The car keys jangled as he put them in his pocket and held out one hand to her.
"Come on."
Catherine frowned and clenched her teeth. "Why?" she spat.
Her fierce expression might've intimidated anyone else she knew, but it flew right over Gil with no effect.
"There's going to be a big storm tonight," he said. Catherine shot him a withering look.
"Surely that's more reason to stay in," she told him darkly.
"Come on," he said again and knelt down in front of her. He picked up one of her sneakers and took one of her feet in his hands, calmly putting her shoes on for her.
Catherine hated it – why was he being so infuriatingly patient? Couldn't he just get that she didn't want to go with him for whatever stupid science thing he probably wanted to do in a storm? Couldn't he just leave her alone?
"I'm not a goddamn child, Gil," she snapped and kicked her foot from his grasp. She wanted to kick him, too – while he was knelt right in front of her like that. That would've shown him, she thought. But she didn't.
He stayed there, knelt in front of her and looked at her when she tried to look past him to the TV screen.
"Come on, Catherine," he said softly and wouldn't let her avoid his gaze. "We're going to go somewhere where everything feels like how you do inside."
Then he got up and went to the door. After a few minutes, Catherine pulled her coat off the back of the sofa, slung it around her shoulders and followed him out the front door – her untied shoelaces trailing behind her down the third-floor corridor.
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She didn't say anything to him while he drove – down the Strip and kept going until the bright lights became sparser and normal people's houses lined the roads. The roads got smaller and more rugged the further they went and, when they finally went off road into bumpy, trackless desert, Gil just kept driving. Catherine said nothing.
Finally, after about ten minutes of driving off-road in his work-issued Denali, Gil slowed the car to a halt, put the handbrake up and switched off the engine.
"That's it?" Catherine turned to him. "What now?"
"Now we wait," he said. Catherine sighed exasperatedly and twisted beneath her seat belt before she released it. It was all rocky, desert horizon.
"Okay – so we'll just wait out here until, yknow, we get eaten by wolves or something?"
Gil unbuckled his seat belt and looked at his watch. "There are no wolves in the desert, Catherine," he told her and they didn't say anything for another seven minutes.
"This is fucking stupid," she shouted suddenly in the car. She looked at him with blazing eyes and Gil wondered why she'd get angry – yell and swear at him – but never cry for Stephanie. "I didn't want to come out here tonight, Gil, and now we're just sitting in your fucking car doing nothing. What the fuck do you want from me?"
He waited until she'd finished yelling and sat fuming beside him before he answered with maddening serenity,
"Just wait."
Catherine snapped – this was so fucking pointless. Why the hell didn't he just leave her at home? Why couldn't he just give up and ignore her like Eddie had done? Not drive her out into the middle of the goddamn desert to sit and wait for some fucking storm that she didn't want to see anyway.
"I'm fucking sick of waiting," she bit furiously into his ear and, before he had time to react, snatched his standard-issue gun from the glove compartment and ran outside.
"Shit," Grissom swore under his breath – he'd forgotten about the gun. He always kept it in there – didn't like taking it into the house or carrying it on him. The other CSIs and cops might be fine with that, but it didn't feel like him – so he left it in the glove compartment and didn't think about it. Catherine had remembered, though, evidently.
Gil jumped out of the car.
"Catherine," he called to her as she ran out in front of his car and stood in the middle of the desert which looked the same at dusk for miles around. "Catherine – give that back."
She spun around to look at him, holding the gun in her right hand – her eyes flashed dangerously.
"What are you trying to get out of me, Gil?" she shouted. "How the hell do you know how I feel? You have no idea. You didn't lose her. I lost her. Just me – no-one else. Her Mom is dead, her dad was never around, her sister ran away to Chicago when she was fifteen; nobody fucking cared about Stephanie – but I did. And I was the only one to lose."
Gil didn't say anything, but watched her yell at him, loud as she could, waving that gun around with the safety off. He wondered if she'd cry then, mentioning Stephanie, but her eyes stayed dry.
"So don't tell me how I feel because you have no idea," she continued, her voice getting hoarse. "And I'm not gonna wait out here for your goddamn storm. I'm not going to wait."
She yelled that last word harder than any of the others, raised the gun above her head and fired a shot into the heavy clouds above her head as though trying to puncture a hole. She'd never fired a gun before. It felt good.
"Fuck – you," she screamed and Grissom wasn't sure if she was yelling at him, at whoever killed Stephanie or at the higher power she never believed in anyway. Either way, she emptied the cartridge at the sky and just stood there and screamed when she didn't have angry enough words to say. Gil lifted himself up and sat on the hood of the car – just let her do it.
When the sixth and last bullet flew up, lost momentum and fell back down, it pinged to the ground by Grissom's car. And then, he noticed on the dirt beside it, something else fell from the sky. And then another, an inch away from Catherine's feet. Rain. The sky opened up and screamed its storm right back down on them.
Catherine's arms hung down uselessly and she let the gun fall from her hand as the rain pelted down faster and harder than she'd ever felt it rain before. Within seconds, her clothes were soaked through and her shirt clung to her skin while she tried to blink the falling rain from her eyes, peering through the storm to find Gil. He slid off the hood of the Denali as it got too slippery and removed his jacket – heavy with rain. Standing on the desert ground, which attempted to soak as much rain into its parched sand as quickly as possible, Gil looked around for Catherine.
Suddenly, she came through the rain and appeared in front of him. Her cheeks were wet but, on closer inspection, Gil saw it was only rain.
"Gil," she said in his ear, over the sound of raindrop thudding on the car. "Gil – fuck me."
Gil's eyes widened. "What?" he asked in disbelief. Catherine leant close, pressed herself up against his body – both of them soaked. Grissom swallowed hard – he couldn't do this, Catherine was upset – but he was only human and, worse, he'd wanted this more than she knew.
"Eddie can't make me better with sex," she hollered over the sound of the rain. "But you can."
She placed her palms on his chest and ran them up, over his shoulders, pulling him in to kiss him – open-mouthed – on his neck. The rain ran rivers down both of them and Grissom clenched his fists to feel her tongue on his skin – raw and animalistic.
"Don't," he said, struggling to keep composure.
"I'm empty, Gil," she groaned into his ear – her lips close enough to feel. Catherine knew how to manipulate a man; she made a living from it, and formed every word with full, willing lips as she breathed, "Fill me up."
Her hand travelled down his body and teased the zipper on his pants; her nail clicked down – counting every metal tooth of his fly. A small, purposeful smile crossed her lips as she felt Gil's body respond beneath her cupped hand. Gil squeezed his eyes shut and hated her for doing this to him – he loved her – and he wanted her to be happy – but this wasn't the way to do it.
Reacting before he had time to rethink, before his body overtook his senses and allowed him to do what he'd dreamt of doing more times than he could count, Gil pushed Catherine off him in one strong move.
"Stop it, Catherine," he yelled, now the furious one. Catherine stumbled backwards and stared at him through the rain, shocked. "Stop fucking around. You only have two real friends in this world and one of them is dead, so don't lose me like this."
Catherine didn't do anything but stand there in front of him for a while. Then, finally, she cried. Gil saw her crumble and shrink to a ball on the floor, burying her face in her knees like a small child. Her shoulders shook and she sobbed so loudly he couldn't even hear the rain anymore. Gil breathed a sigh.
After a few minutes of Catherine's anguished sobbing on the desert floor, Gil went and knelt beside her. He put his arms around her and pulled her like a baby onto his lap, holding her close. She turned her face into his chest and cried and cried – a month of unshed tears that wracked her whole body and more.
"It's okay, it's okay," he murmured into her hair and rocked her gently. After ten more minutes, it had stopped raining and Catherine stopped crying. She sat in his lap and pressed small kisses to his face as tears ran quietly down her cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, Gil."
He wiped her eyes with his sleeve and kissed her tear-stained cheeks. "It's okay."
She blinked a couple of times. "I love you," she whispered.
It was getting darker now and Gil hoped they would be able to find their way back alright. He got to his feet and picked her up.
"Let's go home," he said and carried her back to the car. Drained, exhausted, and on her way to being healed, Catherine fell asleep on the long drive home.
Gil laid her on the couch and covered her over when they got home; happy when she slept through the night, frustrated when he felt her fingers tempt the zipper on his pants again that night in his dreams. Catherine would never know how hard she was to get over, but it was some consolation to Gil Grissom when he watched her get better over the next two weeks.
On the last night that she stayed at his apartment, he came home from work to find that she'd cooked macaroni and cheese for them both. He saw her smiling in the kitchen – uncorking the wine, eating with him and laughing as she'd always done.
The next night, she was back on the fourth floor, sleeping with Eddie on creaking bedsprings above Gil's head.
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