Disclaimer: I do not own.

A/N: Sorry, again, for the delay, although it was much shorter this time! :) Yay! Hope you enjoy, love love love the reviews, thank you so much! Despite being crazy busy, life seems to be getting a bit better around here, so I'm going to keep trying for frequent updates. Oh, and I'm sorry if this seems to be moving slowly... I'm finding these characters in these roles difficult to move forward with any amount of haste without taking them further OOC than I want. Grissom definately seems like the kind of man who, if he were to be seduced, would need it to be done in small incriments, or else he would run away screaming...

Sigh. Anyway. Off to read for my hundreds of English classes. I leapt for joy last night that it was the weekend and I could *choose* what to read for a change. :)

Chapter Six:

"You did not lose a body!"

I felt my cheeks get hot under her incredulous gaze, but she was grinning, and so was I. Two days before, she'd stayed hours discussing the most difficult cases I'd worked that dealt with blood spatter analysis, making herself late for work in the process, and today we were discussing something I had thus far only briefly mentioned in my lectures—forensic entomology, my particular expertise. Of course, this had led to the explanation of the… event… several months previous, in which my supervisor had been a little unclear about who was taking point on the case, me or my colleague, and we both assumed it was the other. …The body had gone, unaccompanied, to the city Morgue… without paperwork. It had been a mess.

I took in her reddened cheeks and her bright eyes, the laughter still visible in them, and told myself that so much of her appeal was not in her person but in her youth. I was feeling old, spending all my time with colleagues in their fifties and watching young college students, day in and out, being… well, young. I had never been foolish or irresponsible, but I had been impulsive and fun, in college. There was a part of me that was feeling the loss of that more acutely than I would ever have imagined I might. And though Sara was brilliant and beautiful, it was really that which drew me to her, I was sure; she was the epitome of youth, and of course I was drawn to her while lamenting the loss of my own.

"I told you we found it… I didn't even get in trouble for it. Well, I mean, not much." I qualified, and her grin intensified, showing me a gap between her two front teeth that would normally have put me off, but somehow seemed more alluring in this moment.

She chuckled, shaking her head, and lifted her arms to put her dark brown curls up into a ponytail, her stretch lifting her shirt up to reveal just a sliver of midriff that had me hard in a second. But that was more a reaction to stimulus—a sexy little co-ed stretches in front of you when you've gone without for how long… it happens. It didn't mean anything that it had happened with her now on too many occasions to count, because it would have happened with any attractive young woman. It also didn't mean anything that it hadn't happened yet.

Except, perhaps, that I might be neglecting my other students.

She sighed softly, glancing at her watch, and I felt myself deflate, a little. "You have to get to work?" I asked, trying not to make it obvious how very much I wanted her to stay. The truth of the matter was, attraction aside, I was just hungry for the companionship. That was part of the reason why I'd told Anderson I'd help him organize the interdisciplinary science seminar—he was much older, but he was still a bachelor, like me, no wife or kids… and despite his age, he never felt the need to share about his age-related problems with bodily functions. I was desperate for a little socialization, not because I was all that social of an individual, but because I was used to having a good working relationship with colleagues and a small group of people whom I associated with outside of work. Here, I had neither, and I was… lonely.

She eyed me a little speculatively and, after a moment, shook her head. I wondered what had gone through her mind in the pause. "No… just, uh, didn't want to keep you all night… it's been hours since class and you're probably thinking about getting supper soon…"

As if on cue, my stomach growled softly and she giggled. I felt the urge to ask her to come grab dinner with me while we continued our conversation, and though I do admit that a part of it felt entirely like asking her on a date… there was also a genuine part of me that wistfully wanted not to eat alone again. But that was more than inappropriate, wasn't it? Yes, it… it really was. I sighed. "I guess you're right. …You have the night off? I'm probably keeping you from friends or… a party or something."

She giggled again, though I wasn't sure if that was a disagreement or not. …It seemed more like not. "You're not keeping me—I know it seems weird, but I'm really enjoying myself…"

Her eyes met mine for a moment before turning away to pack up her book bag, and I felt my ears get hot again. With a little uncertainty, I started packing myself up too—glasses back on my face, jacket onto shoulders with my tie tucked into my pocket, papers into my briefcase. I felt like there was now a strange space between us—a tension that wasn't there a moment before—and I wasn't sure how to breach the gap. I ran my hand through my hair and thought about asking her about her plans again, just because I wasn't sure who she was when she wasn't being my star pupil. It was something I felt was very important, but couldn't adequately imagine without some input… some inspiration. Did she like art? Music? Would I find her browsing museum or running in the park or dancing and drinking at a concert?

More likely a bar—I had gathered, from a few comments here and there, that she worked a lot. I didn't yet have the name of the bar, however, or I might have gone so far as to find it and pretend it was accidental while she was working…

I told you I was lonely.

So I went home alone, made myself a TV dinner because cooking for one is both depressing and difficult, because there are the issues of storing leftovers in a small refrigerator with little to no Tupperware on hand and none of the little things on hand that you constantly use without thinking, like salt and pepper. It required an entire extra trip to the grocery store, prior. I watched a little television and prepared for my upcoming lectures, and called Allison at 10:30, which was 6:30 her time. It was one of the few times that consistently worked for both of us. She was awake, but she didn't need to be anywhere for at least a half hour.

"Hello?" She answered, her voice thick with sleep, but not enough to make me think that I'd woken her. She had probably been up five minutes—enough time to start some coffee and blearily begin thinking about her day to come.

"Hey. How are you?"

"Gil," she says warmly, apparently pleased that it's not her mother, the other person who tends to call her early in the morning—her friends usually call her when it's mid-morning for them and evening for her. Her friends have jobs with rather flexible schedules. "I'm good. You? …Tell me about your day."

I opened my mouth, ready to tell her about Sara, and then… hesitated. "I, uh… I'm helping the head of the physics department organize a seminar." I wasn't sure why I didn't want to tell her about my best student, or even if I actually didn't want to tell her—a moment before I had been excited to tell her.

She yawned, not out of boredom, but because she'd just woken up. "I thought you were under the departments of bio and anth…" She murmurs, softly, because the tiny forensics department is not truly a department of its own, but a subset of the anthropology department. I smile, liking the way she sounds in the morning. It puts me in the mind of the several, though far from numerous, times I'd woken up with her.

"It's interdisciplinary—meant to interest people in science in general, but also to encourage science students to bridge the gap between the sciences… have chem. majors taking physics classes and geology majors taking bio classes… foster a generation of scientists with a broader understanding of how the subject overlap…"

"That's good. It sounds like something you could get really passionate about." She observes, accurately, and I smile, deciding to delve into the other reason my day had put me in a good mood, despite spending the evening and night alone.

"I think I also resolved my first student issue." I say, a little proudly, and she chuckles, sounding like she's waking up, slowly but surely.

"Tell me about it." I can hear her sip some coffee and the shuffling of wire hangers pinging together as she pulls clothes out for the day.

"I had a student who was pretty brilliant, at first, but would occasionally seem like she wasn't paying attention or like she was irritated with the class—Intro to Forensics—and then today, Dr. Anderson—the physics department head who I'm planning the seminar with—invited me to sit in on his class when I confided that I wasn't sure whether I was making my lectures interactive and dynamic enough. This same student was in his class and… she was like a different person." I wasn't sure why I left out the incident with the T.A. other than that I didn't necessarily feel like it was related to me resolving the issue of being a more facilitating educator.

"How so?" Allison asks, and she seems fully awake now, giving me her full attention.

"She… she challenged him, rather than him challenging her, as a teacher. She pushed the boundaries of her own understanding, constantly, wanting to know more—she asked questions, questioned him and the assumptions upon which he based his lecture, and she… she was like every teacher's dream pupil."

There was a smile in Allison's voice when she answered, "So… you wondered why she wasn't that way in your class?"

"Right!" I said, enthusiastic. "So I started to challenge her… tried to be more… encouraging, of that curiosity, and she's just… blossomed, in the few days since it happened. I feel like I'm really… I mean, not just making progress with her, but making progress of my own—I'm a better teacher, because of her."

It. I'm a better teacher because of this revelation and the change I made because of it—not because of her.

Allison caught this too. "…Bet she's beautiful." She said, off-handedly, and I frowned. She was not as sly as she thought she was, and yet I felt no surge of pride or masculine arrogance at her jealousy.

"She's a student." I said, a bit harshly, and this seemed to do the trick. I had expected to hear a familiar, skeptical 'Hmm…' from her, which she usually uttered when she disagreed with someone but did not wish to engage in a heated discussion. No, instead, she sounded chastened.

"…You're right. I'm sorry, Gil. I… It's hard, missing you all the time…"

I felt myself soften and sighed. "It's hard for me too. I think about you all the time…" Which was true. Mostly. I hadn't thought about her as much Monday or today, but I had spent all of yesterday—Tuesday—missing her.

"I, uh… have a little bit of time, before I need to jump in the shower…" Her voice was suggestive, and despite my slight irritation with her for taking my single triumph so far in this teaching venture and twisting it, I felt myself responding accordingly. …I told you it had been a long time, and she had apologized. I could understand her jealousy—if she'd been talking about a young college student studying with her, I might have responded in kind.

"Oh yeah…? Well then why don't you tell me what you've been missing the most…"

"Your eyes…" she uttered, on a sigh, and my breathing accelerated.

I fell asleep easily, that night, when we got off the phone for her to shower. I was feeling far less frustrated than I had been for the last couple of weeks and still thoroughly proud of myself for addressing a problem straight on and working to remedy it. You know, maybe there really was a place for me in teaching… Maybe I would stay at Harvard, for a while, if they wanted me. I mean, they'd solicited me for a year, but surely if they had sought me out, they wouldn't be opposed to keeping me on a big longer? I wouldn't want to stay away from The Cities and the Lab for too long, but I was also beginning to feel that I could be very, very happy, being a teacher.

Thursday dragged on and on, and it wasn't until Friday morning, when I woke with a bright smile on my face, that I realized what I was excited for… what I'd been anticipating. I even found myself sliding into the very back of Dr. Anderson's lecture during a time in which I ought to have been in my office, preparing for a test I was giving next week in my Forensic Entomology class, telling myself that I had learned so much from him on Monday, but knowing that I just wanted a chance to watch her without her knowing I was doing so.

Despite having been introduced to his class on Monday, none of the students in the back row with me even glanced in my direction when I sat down. One girl was deeply involved in a novel, and her friend was reading the newspaper, and a boy to my right was having an in-depth conversation with his friend. Which was fine—class hadn't started yet—but I got the feeling that none of this would cease when it did. When I'd been in school, I'd never seated myself so far back, and it was definitely a different experience than sitting in the front.

Tony stepped in a minute later and I bent my head, hoping he wouldn't notice me, but besides the cursory scan of the room as he began—once again asking a broad question that Sara leapt to answer—his eyes didn't reach this far back. From that point on, I focused on the brunette in the front row with bouncing curls who struck me as just… exquisite. She was less reserved, I noticed, now that she didn't know I was watching her ask her questions. Though, I told myself a moment later, I could hardly assume that the slight change was due to my presence—Monday, she'd just been attacked. That was far more likely to have caused a difference in behavior than I was.

I was assuming that I affected her as much as she affected me, which was a mistake. For me, she was young and beautiful and brilliant—she stood out among students—and for her… I was one of many teachers. If I stood out in her mind, it was because I had, up until a day or so ago, failed to challenge her. Class ended and I slipped out in the crowd, out the back door, avoiding her and Tony decidedly, feeling like some inner conflict had just come to a head, despite the silence and isolation of said moment.

I had just admitted that she was different. She was not the average co-ed, and I was not thinking about her this much simply because she was just the most noticeable and vocal of many. That admission changed nothing, of course… it was still wildly inappropriate, still entirely one-sided, and still something I would never, ever act upon. But the fact that I wasn't lying to myself or rationalizing it away… was significant.

I resolved my inner conflict with difficultly, over the hour and half between Tony's class and mine—though I really only had an hour, as Sara was always early. I couldn't stop letting her stay to ask questions, because that had been one of my successes, thus far, as a teacher, but I needed to remove myself, a little… be more professional and detached. My conviction in this resolution remained firm until the moment she moved through the classroom's door and I glanced up expectantly.

I hadn't noticed what she was wearing, when I'd sat in on Tony's class, and the tiny, black leather skirt took me by surprise, the air leaving my lungs like I'd sustained a blow to the stomach. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue shirt with a round collar—not remotely promiscuous. She was not trying to provoke a reaction. But she was getting one.

This girl was going to be the death of me, and I knew it, and yet I couldn't see how to stop myself.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to.

Fuck.