Disclaimer: I don't own CSI, etc.

A/N: Sorry for the long delay between postings. I had papers and midterms and all kinds of crazy stuff due these last few weeks, and then on Thursday my puppy decided to eat staples, which only helped the situation. And, I had the chapter half-written and lost it when my computer inexplicably shut down for no reason, and I had to rewrite it all.

Hope you enjoy. Sorry again for the delay. Thank you so, so much for the reviews. They mean oh-so-much to me.

Chapter Fourteen:

I drove home in silence, leaving the radio off. I parked. I locked my doors and unlocked the apartment, stepping inside. I slid out of my shoes. Then my clothes, leaving the heap by the door. I didn't realize where I was going until I found myself there, in Anni and I's shared bathroom, turning the shower knob all the way to the left and stepping under the spray. It was cold and then bitingly hot, and yet I wasn't sure either of those things registered. Not really.

If I hadn't known better, I would have described my reaction as having had a broken heart, but I did know better. I wasn't even lying to myself, the way I had when my first professor—my first lover—had unintentionally revealed to me that his intention had never been to leave his wife and kids. That had been heartbreak and I had denied it. This was different, and I knew that. But it was similar enough to have the muscles in my face twitching, trying to keep the tears at bay. I wanted Anni to come home, but I didn't want to have to tell her what happened.

An acute sense of shame swept over me at the idea of having to tell her—or anyone—that I'd been rejected, and the tears followed that emotion with a force that surprised me. By the time I heard the front door and Anni's voice calling "…Sara?" with a certain amount of amusement, I was thoroughly exhausted, slumped against the shower wall, limbs weak. I knew that the pile of clothes left at the doorway made it seem like I had Dr. Grissom here, wrapped up in some illicit tryst, and that I didn't made my chin quiver again. Like I hadn't cried enough.

I heard the stairs creak. I imagined her pausing in the hallway, listening to the shower run and wondering if I had him in here or if I were alone. I heard her move into her own room. I blinked wearily, remaining still, even as the water slowly turned from hot to warm.

By the time the water was spraying something chillier than lukewarm without being cold yet, Anni was knocking on the door between her room and the bathroom. "…Sara?"

I blinked again, feeling lethargic. The knock came again, more forcefully, the squeak of the knob telling me that she was checking to see if I'd locked it. "Sara? …Sara, I'm coming in." She waited just long enough for me to tell her no before the door burst open and the shower curtain slid aside. I tilted my head up, just enough to see her, and the press of her delicate eyebrows together told me that I looked like shit. Which, you know, could be expected. I was sitting in a bathtub with cold water raining down on me. I'm sure my skin was blotchy, my eyes and cheeks red with crying and stained black from my mascara. I could feel that my hair was a tangled, wet mess.

Without a word, she reached through the spray to turn the water off. As soon as it ceased, I felt both warmer and cooler. I blinked up at her again, and she held out the wet hand to help me up. It was more difficult than it should have been, but I had to admit that I did feel better when she'd wrapped a thick bathrobe around me—hers, mine was threadbare—with a towel tucked between it and my dripping hair. She led me in silence to her bedroom and into her bed. She was about to curl up with me when Todd entered downstairs, calling her name.

She disappeared for a few minutes and I stared at the green numbers glowing from her desk, displaying an incorrect time. Anni had to trick herself into believing she was later than she was in order to get up for school in the mornings. He was evidently shooed away because Anni returned alone and the house remained quiet. She slipped into bed with me, tugged me close, and held me with a tight kind of ferocity that had the waterworks moving again, dragging my lips along with them. I told her everything. Every shameful detail. And then she left again, returning more quickly—with Tequila and a couple shot glasses.

Anni was a really, really good friend.

Needless to say, I called in sick the next day. Eddie sounded suspicious, but took my explanation of stomach flu at face value and told me to get some rest.

Anni and I had our girls' night and went to the club.

It was dark and the music was loud and even feeling dehydrated and drained wasn't affecting the floating feeling that had begun to seep into me the second we walked through the doors—thanks to Tim-the-bouncer, who was in our group but generally found himself busy working when the rest of us were at The Lantern. Of course, he'd asked for IDs when we walked up—skipping the line entirely—but that was for appearance's sake. And now that we were in, they wouldn't card at all. It was crowded and hot and made me feel every inch of my skin, maybe because I was sweating or maybe because the music had my pulse racing beneath my skin.

Despite that awareness, I don't remember much. I remember Anni and I jumping into a group doing body shots, vividly. She sprawled herself across a table and with the kind of arrogance that comes from shocking others I bent over her lasciviously, licking salt from her stomach and downing the shot she had tucked into her cleavage and biting on the lime between her dark lips. Juices ran and we pulled apart, the lime falling to the floor and both of our tongues seeking out the little wet trails. We were aware of a great many eyes on us—appreciative in a way that we had come to know very well—and it inspired nothing short of exuberance as I took my turn. I didn't have the chest she did, but I was wearing the black leather skirt, which made up for it. Salt from stomach, shot perched between my upper thighs, and then lime in my mouth… Impulsively, I let the lime fall before she could grasp it in her teeth, though she must have expected as much, because she kissed me as though it had been our plan all along.

From that moment on, neither of us could move for most of the night without being offered a drink or asked to dance. And while our intentions had been mostly to be daring and dangerous and to say fuck you to social conventions, even if we weren't breaking them for the right reasons, this side effect was nothing short of delicious. …Which is part of the reason I can't remember everything. A lot of guys bought me drinks. When possible, they would slide up between us, an arm slipping over each of our shoulders, and offer to buy us a drink. And, once satisfied that an order had been placed and that he had our attention at least that long, would find some way, tactful or no, to suggest a three way. We would tease them—a different argument each time. We'd never been with a man, we'd just been joking and had never been with a woman (this was true, but not the reason we said no), our last threesome partner had wanted a relationship, had had a heart attack when we went down on him together, had been unable to hold off long enough to please us both… etc. Which was beyond amusing, let me tell you.

But at some point, while dancing, someone said my name. We'd spent the night telling people our names were Muffin and Candy, but the man behind me sporting the erection I could feel even through my drunken haze breathed "Sara" into my ear. I wasn't thinking clearly, but it did occur to me that this was strange. I turned, and found Dr. Felton, far too old for this club, grinding himself into my ass like there was no tomorrow. My gut instinct was to recoil. To slap the bastard and run away. …But my responses were slow, and by the time my body had caught up to my mind—or was it my mind to my body?—I was aware that Dr. Grissom would never have done this. Dr. Grissom didn't want me, but Dr. Felton… Dr. Felton wanted me. That much was obvious. …He had a lot of want for me.

And Dr. Felton's attentions were different from those of the average drunken college student trying to bang Anni and I together. …His attentions were solely for me, and not because I put on a big show in a bar, but because… well, I mean, not that he knew me… but he knew me better than these guys. And his approval was… different. In retrospect, I can pull out my inner psychologist and tell you that my experiences with my father made me seek out acceptance and validation from older men. But in the moment—in the unthinking, half-blind, drunken stupor of the moment—I just knew that I preferred his attentions to those from men my age, even if they inspired the urge to vomit as well.

So I let him grind himself against me, I let him put his hands on my stomach and his thumbs brush the bottom of my breasts like he thought he was getting away with something, and when it got late and he was poised to invite me home with him, at least half of me was considering saying yes. What would Dr. Grissom think of that? He'd certainly feel like an ass if he ever found out. And even if he didn't, it would be like an arsenal in my corner… his rejection couldn't mean anything, not really, because I knew what his denial had resulted in. I knew what he had missed out on because I would have given it to someone else.

But I didn't. Anni found me and dragged me off to meet someone and I told him I'd be right back, and then forgot about it. I don't even remember leaving NightLife, the club. I remember someone passing a joint around in a car in a parking lot—but not the night club's parking lot—and throwing up out the window before it got around to me. And then I remember stumbling, with Anni, clad in our ridiculously high heels, back home and passing out in the living room.

I dragged my ass into work on Sunday, but Eddie took one look at me and sent me back home. I hoped that I looked sick instead of hung over, but I couldn't be certain. Regardless, I welcomed the night off—if not the lost wages—and showered and fell into bed, sleeping for twelve hours.

I hadn't slept that much in a very long time, and it felt good, but it meant that I had to wake up and get ready for the day with little to no planning time as to what I was going to do about Dr. Grissom. It didn't even occur to me to worry about Dr. Felton, although when I stepped into his class I felt his eyes boring into me, wondering what I remembered no doubt. I felt a wave of nausea at that, and spent the hour ignoring him. Between Dr. Anderson's class and Dr. Grissom's class I had a lunch break and I went home to eat and to think and to most likely touch up my makeup and change into a push-up bra to give me cleavage. And yet, I couldn't decide if I was going to go.

My first thought was that I had to go. I had to pretend like nothing had happened and put on a strong front and show him that it didn't matter. That he didn't matter. That Friday night was forgotten and with it, him. But I didn't think I could go twenty minutes early and maintain an aloof and unconcerned throughout. But to simply arrive on time would be as bad as not going, except without the embarrassment of going. I didn't decide not to… I just put off making a decision either way until five minutes until class would start and there was no way I could make it on time. At which point, I rationalized, I couldn't go. Walking in late was the worst of the options I'd had.

A part of me was convinced that he would come looking for me. That he would bang on my door or show up at work that night, concerned and angry and, above all, repentant. That part of me was severally disappointed.

On Wednesday, I got all the way to class, twenty minutes early, determined to give a good excuse for having missed Monday and to seem entirely unaffected. I ended up going to the bathroom, nervous and shaking, and staying there until well after class would have started to leave, so that I wouldn't run into him in the hallway. Still, he did not appear in my life, demanding an explanation and a second chance.

It was on Friday that something happened, though it was not what I had wanted. I spent the entire day brooding over how, a week previous, I had had in my grasp just about everything I wanted and now I had nothing. I had been avoiding thinking about Dr. Grissom's class up to that point, but now Dr. Anderson was winding down his lecture and I would have to force myself to go, today, because we had a test on Monday and he was going over what would be on it and whatever fear was otherwise dominating me, the fear of ruining my perfect GPA took precedence.

I was packing up my bag as people filed out when my name reached my ears. "…Sara?" I glanced up. Dr. Anderson was eyeing me with concern. I pursed my lips and nodded, zipping up my backpack and moving over to stand by the podium at the bottom of the lecture bowl. He seemed to want to wait until everyone had left before speaking, so I stepped off to the side while he answered a couple questions and packed up his belongings. When the room had cleared, he turned soft eyes on me.

"I, ah… Is anything wrong, honey?"

Despite how kind and affectionate Dr. Anderson has been with me, his tone is still suspicious. He's walking on eggshells, and his hands are trembling just enough to betray him. "…What do you mean?" I ask, not wishing to give anything away until I know what he knows.

He clears his throat. "…Dr. Grissom spoke with me this morning. He's, uh… concerned." He paused, waiting for an explanation, and when I didn't give him one, choosing instead to stare at him wide eyed and uncertain, he continued. "He… he said that you've been in all his classes, except that you've missed two this week without any explanation. He asked if you've been in mine which, of course, you have been… and then expressed worry over this… behavior."

I cleared my throat, fingers flexing around the strap of the backpack over my shoulder. Trying to think of an explanation.

"…Did Dr. Grissom do something to… upset you, Sara?" I looked up at him in surprise, and he took a step closer, glancing around us and lowering his voice further. "…If there's a problem with grading or… something, I can talk to him. And… and if that problem with him is… most personal…" he glanced around himself again, before meeting my eyes with intensity, "Well… that's not something you should keep to yourself either, honey. I… I can help you."

I blinked in surprise, realizing he was asking me if Dr. Grissom had solicited me. I felt the spite I felt—the bitterness—boiling within me and for a moment I was poised to accuse him. The man was so fucking noble that he'd probably admit to it, take all the blame, just because something had almost happened. But I didn't. I don't know if it was my conscience reeling me in or just the realization that Dr. Grissom must have looked pretty guilty for Dr. Anderson to be asking this kind or question, but I shook my head and sighed. "No. …No, he hasn't… It's nothing like that."

Anderson eyed me for a moment, and then slowly nodded. "…Is there something else going on? Something I can help you with?"

I shook my head, feeling embarrassed. If I didn't have a good reason to miss, then I was just skipping. I knew that this would change the way he saw me… this man who had only ever had good opinions of me and who liked me and appreciated me without feeling the need to extend that into a relationship. The bitterness welled again, but I bit it back down, shaking my head more firmly. "I, um… There's just been some stuff in my life that has… overlapped… with his class. I should have talked to him about it but it's just… come up fast. I'll talk to Dr. Grissom about it today."

This seemed to reassure him, at least, and after another minute or so he let me go with a paternal smile that almost covered the worry still in his eyes. I smiled and waved and walked as though nothing was wrong in the world… right to Dr. Grissom's tiny guest professor's office, knocking on the door aggressively. Fuck subtlety. This kind of backhanded betrayal deserved nothing less than a full out confrontation. In the back of my mind, I recognized that perhaps I was letting my temper run away with me… but I also recognized that anger was driving me to action, whereas fear and embarrassment had driven me to inaction. And action was always preferable to remaining in stasis.

I heard papers set down, a desk chair squeak, feet on carpet, and then the door opened. He looked… like shit. He had bags under his eyes and his hair was rumpled, his clothes not wrinkled but not smooth exactly either, and his posture was stooped and tired. He looked at me in surprise, jaw dropped in silent shock, and I tossed my hair over my shoulder, letting my anger take over and relishing in the feeling of power that doing so sent rushing through my veins.

"We need to talk."