Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Haha! I was stuck on Attrition for soooo long, and now I think I've got it back! :) Thanks, of course, go to my awesome beta and awesome-r friend, Pati, and, of course, to everyone who wished me well while life was hard. I heart you all.

Sooo read, enjoy, review... :) And I'll work on another update.

Chapter Twenty:

"Thanks for agreeing to meet with me. I know we're only halfway through the semester, but I've had some personal things come up, and I'm going to need to be done here, sooner rather than later. I know that this is inconvenient and unprofessional and, believe me, I'm aware of the opportunity that this job was for me. If there were a way to avoid this, I would, but…"

Tony eyed me speculatively—I had already spoken with the bio and anthropology department heads, and technically I didn't even need to address him with this matter. But we'd been planning a seminar—a longer version of the interdepartmental science one we'd tried out this fall—and despite our differences in age, he'd been the closest friend I'd made in Boston, other than Sara.

This was arguably the most foolish thing I'd done, if not ever, then in a long time. I hadn't applied at the crime lab in town here, and so my plan to do consulting work was speculative more than anything—I was assuming they would have use for a forensic entomologist, as there were only a handful of us in the country. I knew I wouldn't have trouble finding a job somewhere else if that fell through, but in my head, that made the most sense. How else could I justify not returning to Hennepin county? How else could I have enough control around my schedule to place no burden on Sara—who was much more pressed for time and short on money than I was.

At least for the time being. Once I was out this salary, that might not exactly be the case.

"…There's absolutely no way you could just finish out the semester? I know you're not technically a part of my department, Gil, but all the science programs were excited to have you on campus. You're an asset to the students and, quite frankly, there's no one qualified to take over your intro level forensics class."

"I discussed that with Harper already—I had my lesson plans done several weeks ahead of time. I'll take the next week, working at home, to finish up the lesson plans, study guides, tests, and answer keys for correcting. Whoever takes over for me, so long as they have minimal knowledge of forensics, should be able to handle it—they're a good class."

He leaned back in his chair, and the look in his eyes hadn't changed. He wasn't ready to accept anything I said at face value. It was a look I saw on some of the best detectives I'd worked with back in Minnesota. With a glance at my feet, I straightened in my chair. It didn't really matter if he saw through me, but I knew—vaguely, in an uncertain kind of way—that this man's opinion meant a lot to Sara. She wanted his approval. She didn't want me—or us—to come between them. So I needed to keep my composure.

Of course, I hadn't discussed this with her, primarily because I didn't want her to feel guilty or to tell me not to. I had told her that I would take care of everything and make this work for us, and I was doing so. If I told her after the fact, then she wouldn't bear the responsibility of having been a part of the decision-making. I cleared my throat, finally out-waited and out-silenced.

"Tony, there are just… some things—personal things—have come up and I need to make them my priority. This is the only way for that to happen. I… I'm sorry that I've disappointed you, but…" And I was. Briefly, I understood what Sara must have felt when she believed Tony might be disappointed in her when she wasn't attending my classes. He was a paternal kind of man with soft features and he'd taken me under his wing and befriended me in a way that no one else on campus had.

"No, no, Gil, you haven't disappointed me. Of course not. Things come up and you have to deal with them; that's life." There was something in his tone that was a dismissal, and I nodded, standing and shaking his hand, ready to leave the campus I no longer had any claim on, hoping against hope that this had not been a terrible mistake. I trusted Sara, but that was not to say that I hadn't come to a healthy appreciation, in the month we'd been pretending we could be friends, of just how secretive she was. He waited until I was nearly out the door before he added, almost softly, "Be careful with her, Gil."

I turned back in alarm, but the man was already shuffling papers about and looking intent upon what he was doing. I didn't necessarily buy the act, but it was a clear sign that I was not being invited to question his words and what he thought he knew. I had already emptied my office, so I let myself out of the building.

I knew Sara was working tonight, Friday, and Saturday, but I was fairly certain she had Sunday night open. So I went home, trying to keep Tony's words from replaying themselves in my head, and started to plan our evening. I would need to call her and ask her officially, of course, but in the month I'd spent being Sara's friend, I had gotten the impression that she hadn't been pampered much in her life, either by family or by boyfriends, and it was my sincere intention to change that.

The problem was, I couldn't keep Tony's words away entirely—What exactly had he meant by that? Be careful not to hurt her, because he cared about her? That seemed the most logical, and though it was troubling—Sara would likely not be happy if she knew that her beloved Dr. Anderson knew about us—it was only moderately so. She was an adult, I was no longer her teacher—there was no reason we shouldn't be together. But there was some part of me that couldn't accept that as the true meaning behind his words. Or, at least, not the entire meaning. Certainly Tony cared about Sara—I'd seen that firsthand—but there was also a kind of ominous tone to his words. His inflection was like a veiled warning, and the only way that made sense was if he'd been telling me to be careful with her for my own sake.

Why on earth would he say something like that?

I tried to focus on the restaurant reservations and the plans for a highly romantic and extremely indulgent evening, and later on retyping up my resume and tailoring my cover letter to the director of the Boston Lab, whom I knew by reputation, though not personally… but it just kept coming back to me. I wanted to find him and demand an explanation or call Sara and insist that she explain what, exactly, I needed to be worried about in pursuing a relationship with her.

Of course, I did no such thing. I went to bed, and woke around one to my phone ringing—Sara was home from work and calling me. The conversation was short, and mostly consisted of shared greetings, me asking her about work, a sentence or two of a response, and then her asking me about my day. She always tried so hard to stay up and talk to me, but was almost always asleep within minutes of me telling her how my day had been. Generally I would have been insulted by this, but Sara had nothing but rapt attention for me in class and in person. If she called at the end of a long day just needing to hear a familiar voice, I was more than happy to serve the purpose of comforting her into sleep. Especially because she was a self-proclaimed insomniac. I liked that I could give her a little rest when she seemed to otherwise get so little, despite all the things she was juggling.

This meant that I had no opportunity to explain to her that I would not be in class the next day to teach her—I had wanted to explain myself to her, personally, before that happened. I called in the morning, before class, hoping that I could catch her—but Anni picked up the phone after probably ten rings, sounding less than happy.

"Hello?" I'd definitely woken her up. I frowned, feeling bad.

"…May I speak to Sara, please?"

She sighed in frustration. "Is this Dr. Grissom? She doesn't sleep. If it's past six a.m. and no one answers after the first couple rings, she isn't home. And if it's before eleven, I'm sleeping." And she hung up.

Well, she was a sweet girl.

I resorted to trying to find her on campus. I hovered outside the physics building in my leased vehicle after the class she would finish about an hour and a half before my—well, her Intro to Forensics class. She came out, looking distracted, and I had to shout her name out the passenger window to keep her from walking right past me, oblivious. She turned in surprise, a wide smile lighting up her face, and then schooled it into a professional half-smile, politely bewildered.

"Dr. Grissom. I was just on my way to your office to ask about my last assignment. I guess I'm too early."

Wow. She was good at this not-arousing-suspicion thing. I wasn't sure why that bothered me, but it did, a little.

"Can I talk to you quick? Jump in."

She looked at me like I had lost my mind and looked around to see if anyone else was paying attention to this interaction before she slipped into the passenger seat. "…This isn't a good idea. Can't we talk in your office?"

"Are you working on Sunday night?" I asked, while driving us a little down the road and into a tiny, deserted driveway beside one of the buildings for garbage pickup.

She blinked in surprise, and then offered another bright smile. "Dr. Grissom… Are you asking me out?"

I felt my ears turn red, but I nodded. "I am, Miss Sidle, if you're available…"

She had an amused smile on her face, a kind of pursuing of her lips that did crazy, terrible things to me, and this moment was no exception. "I work until four thirty on Sunday, but I have the night free…"

"Then would you please, dearest Sara, do me the honor of allowing me to take you out and express my affections for you?"

She blushed at that, losing the self-satisfied pucker on her lips and nodded sheepishly. I grinned and took her hand in mine, kissing the back of it. "Do you have a nice dress, sweetheart? I want to take you somewhere nice, but I don't want you to feel like you need to buy something or…"

"No, no. I have a few dresses. Her face was still red and her smile still a sweet, shy, beaming, and I wanted to kiss her so badly. Instead, I continued with my plans.

"I, ah… I'll pick you up at six? Does that give you enough time?"

"Yeah, of course. I…" she bit her lip and shook her head sweetly again, looking like she was still getting her bearings. "Did you… did you plan this? Leaving your office and coming out to find me just to ask me this outside of class or your office or… 'school'? That's really sweet."

Oh. Shit. I shook my head. "No, honey, I… I mean, yes, I wanted to ask you, but… but that's not why I did this. I wanted to make sure I told you, before class started—"

"Oh," she said, realization dawning and a knowing smirk coming to life. "No, I know. We can't let anyone know about us. I understand… Doctor Grissom." She breathed, in a soft, husky, whispery voice that had me standing at attention faster than you can say "sex kitten". I was dizzy, likely from the surge of blood away from my brain, and so it took me a second to realize she was looking at something out the window. She turned to me quickly, offering me an apologetic smile. "Hey, I'm sorry to cut this short, but I just saw someone from a class I missed yesterday when you let me sleep in—I'm gonna run to catch up with her. I'll see you upstairs? Great!" And she was out of the car and racing across the campus before I could even get a word in edgewise.

Shit.

I tried my best to drive around and follow her progress, so that I could wave her over after she'd finished catching up on her assignments, but I was certain I'd lost them. I caught her moving into a building at the last minute and looped around to rest outside the door she'd gone in and waited. …And waited and waited. I waited until she was absolutely going to be late for class, at which point I realized that the door on the other side of the building was closer to the building my—her—class was in. …I'd already missed her.

Well, she was going to be in for quite the surprise, apparently. With a heavy sigh, I turned my car back towards home, knowing that I would likely be receiving a call within the next hour and a half.