Disclaimer: Not mine, etc. etc.
A/N: So I felt guilty for yesterday, and I thought the next chapter would help--it isn't what you'll be hoping for, but there's some sweet smut in there... well, kinda. ...Long-distance smut. :) Let me know what you think!
Chapter 9: Friends
I had thought that I knew what loss was—but apparently time does make you forget the intensity of the pain. Somehow, at least, in this pain, I kept my head. Ten minutes after she walked out my door, I had picked myself up and called the airlines—telling them that if they were unable to switch her flight when she asked them to (I was informed it would mostly depend on when she asked them and to which flight she wanted to be switched), that they should charge the new flight to me. I gave them my information, asked that they simply tell her it could be switched, either way, and then I let myself fall apart.
And by Monday, I had narrowed down the applications to twenty interviewees, and with Brass' go-ahead, I scheduled the interviews. I hadn't really slept, and if I'd thought I was devoted to my work before now, I had been mistaken. I hadn't known what devotion was. I pulled as many doubles as I was allowed, went over my allotted overtime every month, left late and came in early, even if it meant not clocking in so that I couldn't get in trouble for it. I purchased an average vehicle—decent, that would last a while, but nothing flashy—and went back to my lonely life.
I had received a picture of Amber in the mail—with no return address—about a month before the conference and had put it up on my dresser. When I was at home, I took to talking to it… she was fifteen now, and I talked to her about how important her grades were for that college education I expected her to get, and how she needed to respect herself… and all about the evils of teenage boys and how she really shouldn't wear make-up so young, and did she really need to be reading Cosmo?
When I finally realized that talking to the picture of the daughter-who-wasn't-really-mine-and-whom-I-hadn't-spoken-to-in-five-years was maybe a little borderline crazy, I emailed Sara. She had said she would email me, and she hadn't.
A part of me wanted to tell all my secrets… explain all my faults. But I restrained that impulse—I was afraid of further rejection, and afraid of her scorn. I didn't want her to laugh at my pain, or minimize it, or rationalize… and I didn't want to hear that my faults were too great, after all, for her to be with me… that even if I hadn't been so weak, or cowardly… even if I'd told her everything, right away, that I still wouldn't have been enough to make her stay.
So I emailed her as a friend—I talked about work, and the people we interviewed, and her opinion on articles in the forensic journals I knew we both subscribed to. I asked after her new job, her new cases, and Kelly—whose due date I knew was approaching fast. And to my great joy and surprise, she emailed back, also keeping to strictly friendly topics, but it was enough to keep me going… to get me to eat, and sleep. I would drift off replaying funny things she'd written or trying to solve difficult dilemmas, either in her life or her case files… wanting to solve all her problems… wanting to know she was happy.
A week or so into June, she suggested I install something called instant messaging on my computer… something I didn't know much about, but I followed her instructions and there, like a miracle, was as close to a face-to-face conversation as either of us would dare.
SidleOnOver: Hey, shouldn't you be at work?
Grissom: Ha. Jim made me take a night off…
Grissom: Something about needing to take one day off a month…
SidleOnOver: :( I think he made that rule up.
Grissom: Probably. How've you been?
SidleOnOver: Good, good.
SidleOnOver: …Tough shift today.
Grissom: Oh?
SidleOnOver: Thirteen year old girl, raped and murdered.
SidleOnOver: I like the dad for it, but right now it looks like he's going to get away with it…
SidleOnOver: Anyway, not your problem…
Grissom: Anything that upsets you is my problem…
SidleOnOver: …Yeah, I'll talk to you later, Gil.
SidleOnOver is now Offline.
So I stopped asking personal questions… stopped trying to be concerned, or sweet. Mostly we small-talked, or discussed cases… never the emotions behind them.
The only other conversations we had were... surprising, to me. She wouldn't allow any kind of emotional connection between us, but sometimes the conversation would evolve, playfully, in other directions… and she didn't avert it the way she usually did when I was sweet. I wasn't sure why, but I lived for those conversations… even if I questioned the morality of it all…
Grissom: Hey
SidleOnOver: Ugh. Hey.
Grissom: Ugh?
SidleOnOver: Lol, sorry. Just trying to get over the day I've had…
Grissom: Psst. It's like 6 in the morning… you haven't had much of a day yet.
SidleOnOver: Psst. I haven't gone to bed yet, so it's still technically yesterday…
Grissom: What happened?
SidleOnOver: Too much. I think I'm drunk…
Grissom: You're still typing clearly…
SidleOnOver: lol, I hate men.
Grissom: Tell me what happened.
SidleOnOver: Nothing, just several bad cases… peeping tom turned stalker turned window masturbator turned rapist… seems like they all come at you at once, you know?
SidleOnOver: And then there's this new DNA tech who creeped the hell out of me today, so…
Grissom: What did he do?
SidleOnOver: Well, first he took my picture when I walked in to check to see if we'd gotten anything from the semen…
Grissom: Right.
SidleOnOver: I didn't like it, but he said he was a visual person, you know? He wasn't good with names… he was taking a picture of all the CSIs…
SidleOnOver: But by the end of shift, no one else has gotten their picture taken in front of me, so I ask my friend if he did it when I wasn't around… he hadn't.
Grissom: …okay.
SidleOnOver: Exactly—Creepy. So I go try to get it back from the creeper, who laughs and makes me chase him around the f-ing DNA lab to get it back.
Grissom: Did you get it?
SidleOnOver: …No.
SidleOnOver: He put the damn thing in this… random porn magazine he pulled out from the back of a drawer… and then sat on it.
SidleOnOver: I gave up after a half an hour, when I realized he was enjoying my attention too much…
SidleOnOver: But now a creeper has a picture of me tucked between giant, glossy vaginas, and I can't stop snapping my head to the windows, expecting someone to be outside, jerking off.
SidleOnOver: …In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good thing to start drinking when I was worried about that…
SidleOnOver: But it made me stop worrying, for a while…
Grissom: …Do you really think you need to worry about this guy?
SidleOnOver: …No. I think he thought he was flirting with me. He's pretty young.
Grissom: Fifteen years younger?
SidleOnOver: Lol, no.
SidleOnOver: I almost feel bad for him though… Poor kid's barking up the wrong tree.
Grissom: What do you mean? …Saying you don't date perverts?
SidleOnOver: Lol—I think you would be Exhibit A to the contrary, Dr. Grissom. …No, I'm just saying I prefer older men…
Grissom: Exhibit A? When was I ever perverted…?
SidleOnOver: Ha! You're joking, right?
SidleOnOver: Mr.-I-have-a-weakness-for-red-lace…
Grissom: I'd hardly call that a perversion…
Grissom: And you wanted me to have a weakness for it.
SidleOnOver: I can't make you have that weakness though… I just sensed that it was already there.
SidleOnOver: Case in point, if I told you I was wearing only that red lace set right now…
SidleOnOver: Could you honestly tell me your thoughts wouldn't be in the gutter?
Grissom: No… but I'd also question your judgment.
SidleOnOver: Judgment?
Grissom: You're afraid of peeping toms at the moment, yet you stay up all night on your computer, in red lace and nothing else, getting drunk?
Grissom: I almost wonder if I shouldn't send an unmarked police car to watch your apartment…
SidleOnOver: No, you almost wonder if you shouldn't offer your own protection…
Grissom: No.
Grissom: You, in lace, feeling vulnerable from the cases you've been working, tipsy enough to bring up old moments of my apparent 'perversion,' but sober enough to make me feel like it would be consensual…
Grissom: I wouldn't trust myself.
SidleOnOver: …I am sober enough.
SidleOnOver: It would be consensual.
Grissom: … For the record, I liked you in my old t-shirts as much as I did in the lace…
SidleOnOver: The chaise in your office can attest to that.
Grissom: Really? And what do you think the carpet under my desk would say about you, Miss Sidle?
SidleOnOver: That I give great head.
Grissom: …
SidleOnOver: Well, you know what I'm wearing…
SidleOnOver: What about you?
SidleOnOver: No, wait, lemme guess.
SidleOnOver: You finished shift about a half hour ago… you probably ate something little, and were checking your email before bed… so, worst case scenario, you're still in work clothes… best case scenario, a t-shirt and boxers…
Grissom: Apparently it's a good day?
SidleOnOver: Tease.
SidleOnOver: …I must be drunk. I didn't mean to type that.
Grissom: You once told me that you weren't a tease if you intended to follow through…
SidleOnOver: …Gil, do… do you miss… being with me? Like, not together, but… the sex, I mean.
Grissom: Every day.
SidleOnOver: …I'm sorry, I shouldn't be doing this. I'm gonna put my wine away…
Grissom: What I miss the most was feeling the vibrations through your body, when you moaned deeply… feeling and hearing and seeing, simultaneously, how good I made you feel…
SidleOnOver: Gil… I don't know if I'm sober enough to stop this…
Grissom: I'm sorry. I'll stop.
SidleOnOver: …Please don't.
Grissom: …
SidleOnOver: I wasn't lying… I'm wearing the red lace set…
Grissom: I wanted you so badly, that day… I don't know how I stopped myself.
SidleOnOver: I don't think you did… a cold shower in the rain slowed you down, but…
Grissom: You felt better than anything I'd ever known, Sara…
SidleOnOver: If I were there right now, Gil…?
Grissom: I would make sure I took my time, kissing you deeply…
SidleOnOver: Mmm, I don't think I'd let you take your time… it's been so long since we were together.
Grissom: I'd tie you up if I had to, sweet. Nothing would rush me…
SidleOnOver: Are you touching yourself, Gil?
Grissom: I'd move my kisses down your body…
Grissom: …tease every inch of you.
SidleOnOver: …are you touching yourself?
Grissom: slowly slide the lace from your body…
Grissom: trace my fingertips along the newly exposed skin…
SidleOnOver: Gil…
Grissom: Yes?
SidleOnOver: Are you touching yourself?
Grissom: Are you?
SidleOnOver: God, yes.
Grissom: I wish it were my fingers… my tongue, Sara.
Grissom: I would bring you to the edge, but not let you go over… again and again.
SidleOnOver: Gil.
Grissom: And when you were begging for mercy…
SidleOnOver: Gil.
Grissom: Only then would I push inside you.
SidleOnOver: Gil!
Grissom: Yes?
SidleOnOver: Please tell me you're touching yourself… are you thinking of my hand? My mouth?
Grissom: Your mouth… your body. I wish I were inside you.
SidleOnOver: Does it feel good?
Grissom: Not as good as you did.
SidleOnOver: God, I know…
SidleOnOver: …I need to finish, Gil. Will you finish with me, right now? I want to know that you are too…
Grissom: I'll be thinking of you.
This was the first of many, though when they happened, I made sure she hadn't been drinking first… that assuaged my conscience a little. We never talked about it, after the conversation had finished…but I lived for those moments when I could be with Sara again, in the only way she would let me.
And for a while, it was enough just to have a part of her… it made me feel like I was still the only man in her life, even if I wasn't what I wanted to be to her.